National
Montana GOP expel trans lawmaker for remainder of session
“This is an anti-democratic effort to censor one of their own colleagues for using her voice and platform to represent her constituents”

Democratic Montana state Representative Zooey Zephyr (HD-100) has been silenced by the House Republican supermajority for the remainder of the legislative session. She will lose all speaking privileges and will vote online.
Prior to the vote that barred her from participating on the House floor after she protested House Republican leaders’ decision earlier in the week to silence her, Zephyr said:
“It is my honor today to rise on behalf of my constituents for members of House District 100, and my members who elected me to represent them This legislature has systematically attacked that community. We have seen bills targeting our art forms, our books, our history, and our healthcare. And I rose up in defense of my community that day, speaking to harms that these bills bring.”
“A trans teen attempted to take their life watching that hearing. In that hearing, our caucus pleaded to the leader of that hearing to keep decorum and we were told that many people have many different opinions about those things.”
“If you use decorum to silence people who hold you accountable, then all you are doing is using decorum as a tool for oppression. When I continued to not be recognized, my community came and said that they let me speak. When the speaker gaveled down, he was driving a nail in the coffin of the nail of democracy. But you cannot kill democracy that easily, and that is why they kept chanting let her speak.”
“I’m not sure what comes next here, but I will do what I have always done. I will rise in support of my community. I will take the hard and moral choice to stand up for the people who elected me to do so. And I am grateful for those who stood up in defense of democracy. I hear from my constituents, I hear from your constituents that stood up on my behalf.”
“I know in this building, in these quiet halls, the staff come up to me and say thank you, for defending our community. I will always stand up for them, and I will always stand up for democracy in the state of Montana.”
As I left the House chambers, I pressed my light to speak—a reminder that this legislature is removing 11,000 Montanans from discussion on every bill going forward.
— Rep. Zooey Zephyr (@ZoAndBehold) April 26, 2023
I will always stand on behalf of my constituents, my community, and democracy itself. pic.twitter.com/H3CLZufy6E
Zephyr was supported by Native American lawmaker Rep. Jonathan Windy Boy (D) – HD32, who told the chamber: “The community that I represent does have trans. Some tribes, we call them two spirit people. My late uncle, one of my teachers in my way of life, has always told me … no matter who you are, we are all equal under the eyes of the almighty.
“There’s been a lot of things that have happened in this body over the last 21 years. This is nothing compared to things we’ve seen. We had a Democratic representative almost go fist to cuffs in the gallery. That was uncalled for. Why didn’t they get taken to the level of this,” he added noting: “Even in the Senate, we got up and we hit the desks. We almost got charged for messing up the state’s property. Why weren’t we disciplined like this?” “We are picking one person in this body for something she believes is right.”
“We need to just put this behind us, let her represent the people she represents, do the people’s work and move on,” he finished.
Another lawmaker then stood and berated the Republicans for taking this action. Representative SJ Howell (D) – HD 95, a trans nonbinary lawmaker from Missoula said:
“A yes vote on this motion puts our Democratic process and job as legislators second. Though I love my job, I have faced a series of deeply offensive behaviors. There has been a pattern of unwillingness to listen to a diverse set of opinions in front of us.”
“The right to protest is a clearly upheld right in the state and US constitution and we took oaths to protect that constitution. It is deeply unsurprisingly to me that the community responded the way it did. Its not just one of our own that has been silenced. It happened after a session where bills have targeted us, struggling for equal treatment under the law.”
“We are here because we are struggling with a debate we have had since the beginning of this session on a set of bills. Bills that directly impact the safety of the LGBT community. Not one Dem brought any of those bills,” Howell said.
Reaction was swift from LGBTQ and civil rights groups:
“This is an anti-democratic effort by House leadership to censor one of their own colleagues for using her voice and platform to represent her constituents,” said Keegan Medrano, policy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Montana. “Rep. Zephyr is a duly-elected member of the legislature and entitled to represent the people of their district. In voting to take away her microphone, the House is attempting to silence Montanans and trans people from speaking to the harm of all these bills. This is another shameful day in our state’s history and we’re determined to protect every transgender Montanans from these vile, bigoted attacks on their dignity and equality.”
“There is a name for when elected officials attack and silence other elected officials they don’t agree with to prevent them from fulfilling their duties – it’s called authoritarianism,” said Deirdre Schifeling, national political director at the ACLU. “Freedom of speech is essential to our democracy. Trans people are an essential part of our democracy — both as voters and lawmakers — and must be defended.”
“For anti-LGBTQ lawmakers to launch a verbal and legislative war against transgender Montanans and censure the state’s only trans lawmaker for telling the truth – that they will have blood on their hands – is destructive and absurd. Her comment is incomparable to the harmful and hateful rhetoric of these anti-LGBTQ lawmakers and incomparable to the undeniable harm this legislation will have on trans people. Rep. Zephyr’s voice is needed more than ever at this moment and her opponents understand that. It is the reason they are determined to silence her,: Elliot Imse, executive director of the LGBTQ+ Victory Institute, said in a statement.
“Government representation is essential for LGBTQ+ community members who rarely see themselves reflected in positions of power, especially in conservative states like Montana. Transgender people must be part of the conversations about their lives,” Imse added.
Sarah Kate Ellis, president of GLAAD, issued the following statement:
“The silencing and threats of censure and expulsion against Rep. Zephyr for speaking up in support of transgender Montanans is an attack on our nation’s democratic ideals and free speech values. It’s an assault on democracy to suppress the already marginalized and under-represented voices of LGBTQ people and people of color, and the lawmakers who were duly elected to represent them. The attack against Rep. Zephyr is the latest in a disturbing trend across the country as LGBTQ and ally lawmakers in Tennessee, Oklahoma and other states have also faced recent threats of censure simply for speaking up for their constituents. Speaking up is literally what they were elected to do. This news is a strong reminder that our voices are our power. When we speak, extremist lawmakers can’t help but hear us.”
In the past few months, a number of additional elected officials and/or protestors at state capitals have faced disciplinary action for vocalizing their support for LGBTQ people or progressive issues:
- Three state lawmakers in Tennessee faced disciplinary action following their participation in a gun violence protest shortly after a school shooting in Nashville. Resolutions for expulsions of two of the three lawmakers — two black men, Rep. Justin Jones and Rep. Justin Pearson — passed with a two-thirds majority, while the third — a white woman, Rep. Gloria Johnson — failed to pass by one vote. (The lawmakers were all later reinstated.)
- In Oklahoma, protestors opposing a ban on health care for trans residents were escorted out of a House floor hearing, one of whom — a trans man — was thrown by a state trooper to the floor of a stairwell and handcuffed as he was held face down.
- Shortly afterwards, Republican House leaders announced a censure of Rep. Mauree Turner, a Black Muslim legislator and Oklahoma’s first and only nonbinary elected representative, claiming that Rep. Turner “impeded law enforcement” by helping one of the protestors in their office. Rep. Turner continues to be censured to date as Oklahoma legislators continue considering a slate of anti-LGBTQ bills.
More than 500 anti-LGBTQ bills have been proposed in state legislatures in 2023 seeking to ban health care for trans Americans, prohibit transgender youth from being allowed to participate on school sports teams, prohibit any mention of LGBTQ people or issues in school curriculums, criminalize drag performances and Pride celebrations, and more.
LGBTQ Political Representation
LGBTQ people make up 7.1 percent of the population but only a small number of elected officials, although the number has increased over the past few years:
Number of trans/nonbinary elected officials according to the LGBTQ+ Victory Institute:
- The number of openly nonbinary elected officials has grown from five in 2019 to 20 in 2023.
- The number of openly transgender men in elected office has grown from five in 2019 to nine in 2023.
- The number of transgender women in elected office has grown from 15 in 2019 to 41 in 2023.
- In total, the number of openly transgender/ nonbinary elected officials has increased from 25 in 2019 to at least 70 in 2023.
National
Medical groups file lawsuit over Trump deletion of health information
Crucial datasets included LGBTQ, HIV resources

Nine private medical and public health advocacy organizations, including two from D.C., filed a lawsuit on May 20 in federal court in Seattle challenging what it calls the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’s illegal deletion of dozens or more of its webpages containing health related information, including HIV information.
The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington, names as defendants Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and HHS itself, and several agencies operating under HHS and its directors, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration.
“This action challenges the widespread deletion of public health resources from federal agencies,” the lawsuit states. “Dozens (if not more) of taxpayer-funded webpages, databases, and other crucial resources have vanished since January 20, 2025, leaving doctors, nurses, researchers, and the public scrambling for information,” it says.
“These actions have undermined the longstanding, congressionally mandated regime; irreparably harmed Plaintiffs and others who rely on these federal resources; and put the nation’s public health infrastructure in unnecessary jeopardy,” the lawsuit continues.
It adds, “The removal of public health resources was apparently prompted by two recent executive orders – one focused on ‘gender ideology’ and the other targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion (‘DEI’) programs. Defendants implemented these executive orders in a haphazard manner that resulted in the deletion (inadvertent or otherwise) of health-related websites and databases, including information related to pregnancy risks, public health datasets, information about opioid-use disorder, and many other valuable resources.”
The lawsuit does not mention that it was President Donald Trump who issued the two executive orders in question.
A White House spokesperson couldn’t immediately be reached for comment on the lawsuit.
While not mentioning Trump by name, the lawsuit names as defendants in addition to HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., Matthew Buzzelli, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health; Martin Makary, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration; Thomas Engels, administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration; and Charles Ezell, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management.
The 44-page lawsuit complaint includes an addendum with a chart showing the titles or descriptions of 49 “affected resource” website pages that it says were deleted because of the executive orders. The chart shows that just four of the sites were restored after initially being deleted.
Of the 49 sites, 15 addressed LGBTQ-related health issues and six others addressed HIV issues, according to the chart.
“The unannounced and unprecedented deletion of these federal webpages and datasets came as a shock to the medical and scientific communities, which had come to rely on them to monitor and respond to disease outbreaks, assist physicians and other clinicians in daily care, and inform the public about a wide range of healthcare issues,” the lawsuit states.
“Health professionals, nonprofit organizations, and state and local authorities used the websites and datasets daily in care for their patients, to provide resources to their communities, and promote public health,” it says.
Jose Zuniga, president and CEO of the International Association of Providers of AIDS Care (IAPAC), one of the organizations that signed on as a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in a statement that the deleted information from the HHS websites “includes essential information about LGBTQ+ health, gender and reproductive rights, clinical trial data, Mpox and other vaccine guidance and HIV prevention resources.”
Zuniga added, “IAPAC champions evidence-based, data-informed HIV responses and we reject ideologically driven efforts that undermine public health and erase marginalized communities.”
Lisa Amore, a spokesperson for Whitman-Walker Health, D.C.’s largest LGBTQ supportive health services provider, also expressed concern about the potential impact of the HHS website deletions.
“As the region’s leader in HIV care and prevention, Whitman-Walker Health relies on scientific data to help us drive our resources and measure our successes,” Amore said in response to a request for comment from the Washington Blade.
“The District of Columbia has made great strides in the fight against HIV,” Amore said. “But the removal of public facing information from the HHS website makes our collective work much harder and will set HIV care and prevention backward,” she said.
The lawsuit calls on the court to issue a declaratory judgement that the “deletion of public health webpages and resources is unlawful and invalid” and to issue a preliminary or permanent injunction ordering government officials named as defendants in the lawsuit “to restore the public health webpages and resources that have been deleted and to maintain their web domains in accordance with their statutory duties.”
It also calls on the court to require defendant government officials to “file a status report with the Court within twenty-four hours of entry of a preliminary injunction, and at regular intervals, thereafter, confirming compliance with these orders.”
The health organizations that joined the lawsuit as plaintiffs include the Washington State Medical Association, Washington State Nurses Association, Washington Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Academy Health, Association of Nurses in AIDS Care, Fast-Track Cities Institute, International Association of Providers of AIDS Care, National LGBT Cancer Network, and Vermont Medical Society.
The Fast-Track Cities Institute and International Association of Providers of AIDS Care are based in D.C.
U.S. Federal Courts
Federal judge scraps trans-inclusive workplace discrimination protections
Ruling appears to contradict US Supreme Court precedent

Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas has struck down guidelines by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission designed to protect against workplace harassment based on gender identity and sexual orientation.
The EEOC in April 2024 updated its guidelines to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), which determined that discrimination against transgender people constituted sex-based discrimination as proscribed under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
To ensure compliance with the law, the agency recommended that employers honor their employees’ preferred pronouns while granting them access to bathrooms and allowing them to wear dress code-compliant clothing that aligns with their gender identities.
While the the guidelines are not legally binding, Kacsmaryk ruled that their issuance created “mandatory standards” exceeding the EEOC’s statutory authority that were “inconsistent with the text, history, and tradition of Title VII and recent Supreme Court precedent.”
“Title VII does not require employers or courts to blind themselves to the biological differences between men and women,” he wrote in the opinion.
The case, which was brought by the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation, presents the greatest setback for LGBTQ inclusive workplace protections since President Donald Trump’s issuance of an executive order on the first day of his second term directing U.S. federal agencies to recognize only two genders as determined by birth sex.
Last month, top Democrats from both chambers of Congress reintroduced the Equality Act, which would codify LGBTQ-inclusive protections against discrimination into federal law, covering employment as well as areas like housing and jury service.
The White House
Trump travels to Middle East countries with death penalty for homosexuality
President traveled to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and United Arab Emirates

Homosexuality remains punishable by death in two of the three Middle East countries that President Donald Trump visited last week.
Saudi Arabia and Qatar are among the handful of countries in which anyone found guilty of engaging in consensual same-sex sexual relations could face the death penalty.
Trump was in Saudi Arabia from May 13-14. He traveled to Qatar on May 14.
“The law prohibited consensual same-sex sexual conduct between men but did not explicitly prohibit same-sex sexual relations between women,” notes the State Department’s 2023 human rights report, referring specifically to Qatar’s criminalization law. “The law was not systematically enforced. A man convicted of having consensual same-sex sexual relations could receive a sentence of seven years in prison. Under sharia, homosexuality was punishable by death; there were no reports of executions for this reason.”
Trump on May 15 arrived in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.
The State Department’s 2023 human rights report notes the “penalty for individuals who engaged in ‘consensual sodomy with a man'” in the country “was a minimum prison sentence of six months if the individual’s partner or guardian filed a complaint.”
“There were no known reports of arrests or prosecutions for consensual same-sex sexual conduct. LGBTQI+ identity, real or perceived, could be deemed an act against ‘decency or public morality,’ but there were no reports during the year of persons prosecuted under these provisions,” reads the report.
The report notes Emirati law also criminalizes “men who dressed as women or entered a place designated for women while ‘disguised’ as a woman.” Anyone found guilty could face up to a year in prison and a fine of up to 10,000 dirhams ($2,722.60.)

Trump returned to the U.S. on May 16.
The White House notes Trump during the trip secured more than $2 trillion “in investment agreements with Middle Eastern nations ($200 billion with the United Arab Emirates, $600 billion with Saudi Arabia, and $1.2 trillion with Qatar) for a more safe and prosperous future.”
Former President Joe Biden traveled to Saudi Arabia in 2022.
Saudi Arabia is scheduled to host the 2034 World Cup. The 2022 World Cup took place in Qatar.