Federal Government
Previewing LGBTQ public health under new Trump administration
Experts discuss everything from PrEP access to blood donation
Recent years have seen major inroads in the fight against HIV, including through the development of new preventative medicines that have become more affordable and accessible thanks in part to government interventions like the Affordable Care Act’s federal health insurance coverage and cost-sharing mandates.
Over the past four years under the Biden-Harris administration and U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, health policy has focused to a significant extent on health equity, including for LGB and trans or gender diverse populations.
President-elect Donald Trump’s record from his first administration, plans laid out in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 governing blueprint, and the policies championed by voices closest to him offer a roadmap for how the federal government is likely to approach public health issues important for the LGBTQ community in the second term.
Speaking about these matters with the Washington Blade earlier this month were two experts from the Human Rights Campaign, Torrian Baskerville, who serves as director of HIV and health equity, and Matthew Rose, the organization’s senior public policy advocate.
Appointments
The discussion happened before Trump’s nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to serve as HHS secretary, Dave Weldon for director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Marty Makary to lead the Food and Drug Administration.
“HHS will be very important for us,” Rose said. “Who they put at the Office of Civil Rights at HHS will be incredibly important for us. The assistant secretary for health has, under Democratic administrations, and in Republican administrations, been a champion for us, sometimes” like Trump 1.0’s Assistant Secretary for Health Admiral Brett Giroir, who “did what he could for us.”
He continued, “This is the first time that CDC requires, will require, a Senate-confirmed person, and so that is going to be something to watch. I’m not as concerned about NIH always, unless they find someone really, really crazy to take over. FDA is a worry because it could change just how we view drugs and drug regulations and how those get approved.”
Rose added that he is “always watching OMB, because the people who make the budget decide how money gets spent” and it remains unclear whether the new administration will see a new director of the Office of National AIDS Policy.
Concerns
“I know a lot of people, particularly LGBTQ folks, who are like, ‘oh, shit. We are in trouble,'” Baskerville told the Blade. “And what does that mean for my care? What does that mean for” people who are saying, “I’m a Black trans woman who’s living with HIV — these proposals that folks are talking about, particularly out of Project 2025 and Trump, and the rhetoric — how does that impact me?”
“While we are desiring and hoping for the best,” Baskerville said, “the reality is that things that we have seen, at least the rhetoric, hasn’t been hopeful. And so we’re just hoping that there are guardrails in place that help to maintain and control as best as possible some of the things that may be going on.”
He added, “As a community, we’re really just thinking like it’s going to be a shit show, but what does that mean for us? How do we persevere through and what do we need to do to hold him accountable, hold his administration accountable, and continue the fight of advocacy?”
Baskerville said his biggest concern is “safety” and the ways in which the “Trump administration is going to challenge folks’ ability to feel safe” whether based on their immigration status or gender or sexual identity.
“Trump, in his rhetoric, has emboldened folks with different ideals and opinions to really lean into some of the hatred and the bigotry and the things that challenge and impose difficulties on folks’ safety,” he said. “If folks aren’t feeling safe at home, if they’re not feeling safe in their communities, they’re not going to access any of the health care, or any of the other things, and feel like they’re empowered to do that.”
In the case Braidwood v. Becerra, the Biden-Harris administration has defended the principle that the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force can make coverage determinations about preventatives like pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), which is taken to reduce the risk of HIV transmission.
Under the next Trump administration, “We’re actually very concerned about the government reversing its role,” Rose said, which could jeopardize coverage mandates for contraceptives, too. “Changing the position on Braidwood is pretty quick and easy for them to do. They can pull out of that pretty fast.”
“It’s a whole sweep,” he said. “Like, the argument is that the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force is not an assigned body and voted on and thus they should not have prescribing authority to set standards, and that whole piece has been sent back to the district court” from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
“Nobody wants to pay for preventative medicine, is what they are trying to say,” Rose explained. “And that the government doesn’t have a right to tell us what the preventive medicine is. And then they asked [for the court to strike down] the whole ACA, which was just fantastical. But it’s still an active case, and we don’t know what’s going to happen if the U.S. government switches its position on it. I imagine that state attorneys general, who have been tracking the case, would step in, but we’ll have to see what their capacity looks like.”
“Our argument has always been that if you want to have your religion, that’s fine, but you don’t get to use government dollars to discriminate,” Rose said. “And if you want to have the government plan, and you want a government support, you can’t discriminate against people. If you wanted to set up your own private system, that’s on you, but you don’t get to take public dollars and do that with them.”
With respect to PrEP as well as other public health matters, Rose noted some other reasons for concern — including “some things in Project 2025” that indicate there will be “greater deference to all things like religious exemptions and conscience clauses and whatnot,” though he said it is unclear how far the next administration would be able to take this.
Trump 1.0
“Some of their biggest health people aren’t all anti-PrEP,” Rose said. “The HIV community has continuously reminded Republicans that Donald Trump did create the Ending the HIV Epidemic initiative that has helped move the needle. And so there is some promise there. They aren’t all full-on, like, anti-PrEP all the time, but they are wary of it.”
He added that while officials in Trump 1.0 were not “the biggest fans of the CDC,” they were “fighting so many other battles” that they were unable to substantially reorient the public health agency.
“They didn’t go back to some of the regressive years of, like, no promo homo, where you could not talk about gay people or anything that made gay life seem like a good thing,” Rose said.
“There were more Bush people back then,” he said, a lot of whom “still have the legacy of doing PEPFAR with the president,” like Giroir, who “worked on pediatric AIDS as part of his career, and so he was willing to push for some things that we wouldn’t have seen otherwise.”
Rose added that “that’s how he” and longtime National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci “got together and worked to create, with the Trump people, the Ending the HIV Epidemic initiative.”
“At the same time, those same people who said, ‘wow, these HIV numbers are really bad and we should do something about it’ we’re like, ‘but we hate all these LGBTQ people and their health, and so we’re not going to have any non-discrimination [rules], and we don’t care if we kick them off their health care, and we don’t care if they’re invisible in society,” Rose said.
This is a problem, he said because “given where the epidemic has always been in the community, it’s hard to end the HIV epidemic without talking about LGBTQ people and the resources that we use in the community, and the lives that we live, and the lives that we have.”
“And so, it ends up being this weird place of like, you have these religious, fundamentalist nationalists who want one thing; you have these quasi-public health people who are like, ‘oh, the private sector can help;’ and you have these government people who are like, ‘we’re not spending any new money,'” Rose said.
“I will say that, despite his saying he was supportive, every budget produced by [Trump] when he was in office decimated funding for the CDC and HRSA and HHS in all of the HIV line items,” Rose said. “So, he didn’t wholesale eliminate anything, but he shaved those things down to bare bones.”
Timing
Asked whether the FDA under Trump would be likely to consider rolling back the expanded guidelines on blood donation for men who have sex with men, Rose said no.
“One, it’s very small potatoes for them,” he said. Plus, “because it was done through formal rule making, it would take a lot of effort to roll it back” and the guidelines — while they are substantially better than the categorical ban on blood donation by gay and bisexual men that persisted for decades — are not exactly perfect.
At HRC, Rose said, “we would say [the policy is] still not in a perfect place, because it still requires a level of deferment that is not the same for heterosexuals who engage in the same sexual activity, where data could just tell you and you’re going to test the blood anyway.”
More broadly, Rose said, “I think about what levers can they pull when. Like, dismantling the Affordable Care Act is going to take a while. He has ‘concepts of a plan,’ but until he gets rid of concepts and actually has a plan, no one’s buying that.”
The proposal for “block granting Medicaid” is also unlikely, Rose said. “Medicaid is one of the largest payers of HIV services, both for treatment and prevention, because there’s just a lot of low-income people on Medicaid and the poverty tracks are similar to the HIV tracks. So changes to the Medicaid program, I worry about like things like work requirements, which they’ll try again. That will happen faster than block granting.”
Timing-wise, Rose said, “For health, there’s just a lot of regulation to get through” so, “we’ll have less acute pain than some of the immigration stuff” where the administration will “hit the ground running on day one.”
At the same time, he added, for people living with HIV who are in mixed-status families, or who are undocumented, there will be a “chilling effect” that “will happen really soon, or could happen really soon,” which is “something I worry about the most, right away.”
PrEP
Changes to America’s healthcare governance come as the outgoing administration has pushed to expand access to preventative medicine for reducing the risk of HIV transmission, which follow major advancements in drug discovery.
“There is a new version that Gilead Sciences is putting up, lenacapavir,” Rose said, which is administered twice per year with a subcutaneous self-injector. The drug ” will have a different name when it comes to market, just like cabotegravir became Apretude,” he said.
“The coverage determination that the administration just released last month covers all PrEP products,” Rose said. “It happens to cover all three of them right now. Technically, it’s just a clarification of the existing rule already.”
He continued, “The ACA already required that you provide any Grade-A rated, preventative service at a zero cost sharing. And this clarification just says, ‘Hey, you were supposed to be doing this. We heard some of you aren’t doing this. If you want to sell in the marketplace, you have to do this.’ We saw the same [thing] with contraceptives also had to have this clarification.”
PrEP enjoys the rare distinction of being a drug regimen that is covered along with preventative services like mammograms, Rose added.
“In the early days of PrEP, we made the case to insurance companies that they should cover it,” he said, because “from a financial standpoint, at the time it was $16,000 a year for Truvada, which now has gone down with the generic. It’s around $18,000 for Descovy, but that is still cheaper than the overall cost of [HIV] treatment a year, which is, you’re looking at $62,000 plus additional medical expenses and costs.”
“Without guidance from the government, it was kind of a free range and the insurance companies said, ‘well, we’re going to put in prior authorizations to cost-control this,'” Rose added.
Baskerville detailed how HRC will continue to serve populations impacted by HIV.
“One of our biggest initiatives around wellness and action is our HIV self-testing kit program, understanding that there is a group of communities who will not go into a brick and mortar house and get tested,” he said. “And so providing them with another option” is important, and so on this initiative “we partner with seven community-based organizations across the U.S. mainland, and Puerto Rico, to distribute testing kits throughout the country.”
“In that partnership we have also worked with CVS Health,” Baskerville added. “What’s different with our program than other self-testing kit programs is that all of our partners also work to do a follow-up, so a navigation piece, once they distribute a testing kit, following up with them to see one, have they taken the test? If they have not taken the test, figuring out what barriers are in place, to get them to take the test and addressing those barriers. And then if they have taken the test, figuring out what their result was, and then connecting them to either care, if it was a reactive test, or connecting them to PrEP services if it was non-reactive.”
Baskerville continued, “We also have our leadership development program where we work with different populations over a course of six months to educate them around health equity, HIV, to then empower them to go into their communities, to help them be spokespeople and be advocates for HIV and help their community get the services that they need. This year, we particularly work with Black, sexually minoritized men living with HIV at the intersection of mental health, understanding that post-coming out of COVID, there have been a lot of issues with mental health things and depression and anxiety among populations.”
Additionally, “we have our public education sexual health platform, which is our My Body My Health” portal, Baskerville said, “where we provide all sex-positive, body-positive sexual health education as well as resources.”
“We’re currently developing what we call an HIV service provider index, and that is to assess service providers and their quality of service provision as it relates to providing HIV services to individuals, particularly Black and Latin LGBTQ community folks,” he said. “And so we’re utilizing that because we hear stories all the time around folks going to their providers and being denied PrEP or being told they can only get one particular version of PrEP when they want something different. It should be completed and developed by the end of February 2025, with implementation expected to happen kind around May – June.”
“We are constantly working with our federal partners to ensure that community’s perspective and the voice of community is is a part of the conversations when they’re thinking through policies and procedures,” Baskerville said.
Federal Government
Protesters say SAVE Act targets voters, transgender youth
Bill described as ‘Jim Crow 2.0’
Members of Congress, advocates, and people from across the country gathered outside the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday to protest proposed federal legislation that voting rights activists have deemed “Jim Crow 2.0.”
The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act would amend the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 to require in-person proof of citizenship for anyone seeking to vote in U.S. elections.
President Donald Trump has also pushed for the proposed legislation to include a section that would ban gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors, even with parental consent, and prohibit trans people from participating in school or professional sports consistent with their gender identity rather than their sex assigned at birth.
In addition to changing voter registration requirements, the bill would limit acceptable forms of identification to documents such as a birth certificate or passport — records that the Brennan Center for Justice estimates more than 21 million Americans do not have — effectively restricting access to the ballot. It would also ban online voter registration, DMV voter registration efforts, and mail-in voter registration.
A 2021 investigation by the Associated Press found that fewer than 475 people voted illegally or improperly, a tiny fraction of the estimated 160 million Americans who voted in the 2020 election.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) spoke at the event.
“It will kick millions of American citizens off the rolls. And they don’t even require you to be told,” the highest-ranking Democrat in the Senate told protesters and reporters outside the Capitol. “If this law passes — and it won’t — you’re gonna show up in November … and they’ll say… sorry, you’re no longer on the voting rolls.”
He, like many other speakers, emphasized the bill in the context of American history, pointing to what he described as its racist roots and its impact on Black and brown Americans.
“I have called this act, over and over again, Jim Crow 2.0 … because they know it’s the truth.”
U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) was one of the lawmakers leading opposition to the legislation and spoke at the rally.
“It’s not just voting rights that are on the line — our democracy is on the line,” the California lawmaker said. “It’s not a voter I.D. bill. It’s a bait and switch bill.”
He added historical context, noting the significance of voting rights legislation passed more than 60 years ago. In 1965, Alabama civil rights activists marched to protest barriers to voter registration. Alabama state troopers violently attacked peaceful demonstrators at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, using tear gas, clubs, and whips against more than 500 — mostly Black — protesters.
“61 years ago — not to the day — but this week, President Lyndon Johnson came to the Capitol and addressed a joint session of Congress in the wake of Bloody Sunday and pushed Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act,” Padilla said. “61 years later, Donald Trump and this Republican majority wants to take us backwards. We’re not gonna let that happen.”
U.S. Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) also spoke, emphasizing that he views the effort as a Republican-led and Trump-backed attempt to restrict voting access, particularly among Black, brown, and predominantly Democratic communities.
“President Trump told Republicans when they were meeting behind closed doors that ‘The SAVE Act will guarantee Republicans win the midterms and ensure they do not lose an election for 50 years,’” Luján said. “The first time I think Donald Trump’s been honest … This voter suppression bill is only that. Taking away vote by mail? I hope my Republican colleagues from states that voted for Donald Trump or where vote by mail is popular have the courage and the backbone to stand up and say no to this nonsense, because their constituents are going to push back.”
U.S. Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.) also spoke.
“Our Republican colleagues have already cut Medicaid, Medicare, people don’t know how they’re gonna be able to afford energy,” she said, providing context for the broader political moment. “We’re in the middle of a war that they can’t even get straight while we’re in it and don’t have a way to get out of it. And we are now faced with defending our democracy?”
She then showed the crowd something that she said has been with her throughout her political journey in Washington.
“I brought with me something that I carried on the day that I was sworn into the House of Representatives when I was elected in 2016, and I carried it with me on the day that I was sworn in as United States senator. And I also carried it with me when I was trapped up in the gallery on Jan. 6 and all I could think to do was pray … This document allowed my great great great grandfather, who had been enslaved in Georgia, to have the right to vote. We took this and turned it into a scarf. It is the returns of qualified voters and reconstruction code from 1867. This is my proof of what we’ve been through. This is also our inspiration.”
“I got to travel between the Edmund Pettus Bridge two times. And even as I thought about this moment, I recognized that while we wish we weren’t in it, while we don’t know why we’re in it, I do know we were made for it … So I came today to tell you that, um, just like the leader said, that he calls it Jim Crow 2.0. I call it Jim Crow 2.NO.”
Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ advocacy organization in the U.S., also spoke, highlighting the impact of the bill’s proposed provisions affecting trans people.
“This bill is not about saving America. This bill is about stealing an election. This bill is about suppressing voters,” Robinson said. “This bill not only tries to disenfranchise voters that deserve their right to vote, it also tries to criminalize trans kids and their families … It tries to criminalize doctors providing medically necessary care for our trans youth.”
The SAVE Act passed the U.S. House of Representatives on Feb. 11 but has not yet been considered in the U.S. Senate.
Federal Government
Gay Venezuelan man ‘forcibly disappeared’ to El Salvador files claim against White House
Andry Hernández Romero had asked for asylum in US
A gay Venezuelan asylum seeker who the U.S. “forcibly disappeared” to El Salvador has filed a claim against the federal government.
Immigrant Defenders Law Center, who represents Andry Hernández Romero, on Friday announced their client and five other Venezuelans who the Trump-Vance administration “forcibly removed” to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, filed “administrative claims” under the Federal Tort Claims Act.
The White House on Feb. 20, 2025, designated Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang, as an “international terrorist organization.”
President Donald Trump less than a month later invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which the Associated Press notes allows the U.S. to deport “noncitizens without any legal recourse.” The White House then “forcibly removed” Hernández, who had been pursuing his asylum case in the U.S., and more than 250 other Venezuelans to El Salvador.
Immigrant Defenders Law Center disputed claims that Hernández is a Tren de Aragua member.
Hernández was held at El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, a maximum-security prison known by the Spanish acronym CECOT, until his release on July 18, 2025. Hernández, who is back in Venezuela, claims he suffered physical and sexual abuse while at CECOT.
“As a Venezuelan citizen with no criminal record anywhere in the world, I would like to tell not only the government of the United States but governments everywhere that no human being is illegal,” said Hernández in the Immigrant Defenders Law Center press release. “The practice of judging whole communities for the wrongdoing of a single individual must end. Governments should use their power to help every person in the nation become more aware and informed, to strengthen our cultures and build a stronger generation with principles and values — one that multiplies the positive instead of destroying unfulfilled dreams and opportunities.”
Immigrant Defenders Law Center filed claims on behalf of Hernández and the five other Venezuelans less than three months after American forces seized then-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, at their home in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital.
Maduro and Flores have pleaded not guilty to federal drug charges. Delcy Rodríguez, who was Maduro’s vice president, is Venezuela’s acting president.
‘Due process and accountability cannot be optional’
Immigrant Defenders Law Center on Friday also made the following demands:
- The Trump administration must officially release the names of all people the United States sent to CECOT to ensure that everyone has been or will be released.
- The federal government must clear the names of the 252 men wrongfully labeled as criminal gang members of Tren de Aragua.
- DHS (Department of Homeland Security) must end the practice of outsourcing torture through third‑country removals, restore humanitarian parole, and rebuild a functioning, humane asylum system.
- DHS must reinstate Temporary Protected Status for all individuals who cannot safely return to their home countries, halt mass deportations and unlawful raids and arrests, and guarantee due process for everyone navigating the immigration system.
- Congress must pass the Neighbors Not Enemies Act, which would repeal the Alien Enemies Act.
“In all my years as an immigration attorney, I have never seen a client simply vanish in the middle of their case with no explanation,” said Immigration Defenders Legal Fund Legal Services Director Melissa Shepard. “In court, the government couldn’t even explain where he was — he had been disappeared.”
“When the government detains and transfers people in secrecy, without transparency or access to the courts, it tears at the basic protections a democracy is supposed to guarantee,” added Shepard. “What this experience makes painfully clear is that due process and accountability cannot be optional. They are the only safeguards standing between people and the kind of lawlessness our clients suffered. We must end third country transfers, restore the asylum system, and humanitarian parole, and reinstate temporary protective status so this nightmare never happens again.”
Federal Government
Two very different views of the State of the Union
As Trump delivered his SOTU address inside the Capitol, Democratic lawmakers gathered outside in protest, condemning the administration’s harmful policies.
As President Donald Trump delivered his State of the Union address inside the U.S. Capitol — touting his achievements and targeting political enemies — progressive members of Congress gathered just outside in protest.
Their message was blunt: For many Americans, particularly LGBTQ people, the country is not better off.
Each year, as required by Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution, the president must “give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union.” The annual address is meant to outline accomplishments and preview the year ahead. This year, Trump delivered the longest State of the Union in U.S. history, clocking in at one hour and 48 minutes. He spoke about immigration, his “law and order” domestic agenda, his “peace through strength” foreign policy doctrine, and what he framed as the left’s ‘culture wars’ — especially those involving transgender youth and Christian values.
But one year into what he has called the “Trump 2.0” era, the picture painted outside the Capitol stood in stark contrast to the one described inside.
Transgender youth
In one of the most pointed moments of his speech, Trump spotlighted Sage Blair, using her story to portray gender-affirming care as coercive and dangerous. Framing the issue as one of parental rights and government overreach, he told lawmakers and viewers:
“In the gallery tonight are Sage Blair and her mother, Michelle. In 2021, Sage was 14 when school officials in Virginia sought to socially transition her to a new gender, treating her as a boy and hiding it from her parents. Hard to believe, isn’t it? Before long, a confused Sage ran away from home.
“After she was found in a horrific situation in Maryland, a left-wing judge refused to return Sage to her parents because they did not immediately state that their daughter was their son. Sage was thrown into an all-boys state home and suffered terribly for a long time. But today, all of that is behind them because Sage is a proud and wonderful young woman with a full ride scholarship to Liberty University.
“Sage and Michelle, please stand up. And thank you for your great bravery and who can believe that we’re even speaking about things like this. Fifteen years ago, if somebody was up here and said that, they’d say, what’s wrong with him? But now we have to say it because it’s going on all over, numerous states, without even telling the parents.
“But surely, we can all agree no state can be allowed to rip children from their parents’ arms and transition them to a new gender against the parents’ will. Who would believe that we’ve been talking about that? We must ban it and we must ban it immediately. Look, nobody stands up. These people are crazy. I’m telling you, they’re crazy.”
The story, presented as encapsulation of a national crisis, became the foundation for Trump’s renewed call to ban gender-affirming care. LGBTQ advocates — and those familiar with Blair’s story — argue that the situation was far more complex than described and that using a single anecdote to justify sweeping federal restrictions places transgender people, particularly youth, at greater risk.
Equality Virginia said the president’s remarks were part of a broader effort to strip transgender Americans of access to care. In a statement to the Blade, the group said:
“Tonight, the president is choosing to double down on efforts to disrupt access to evidence-based, lifesaving care.
“Rather than allowing families and doctors to navigate deeply personal medical decisions free from federal interference — or allowing schools to respond with nuance and compassion without putting marginalized children at risk — the president is instead advocating for reckless, one-size-fits-all political control.
“At a time when Virginians are worried about rising costs, economic uncertainty, and aggressive immigration enforcement actions disrupting communities and families, attacking transgender young people is a blatant political distraction from the real challenges facing our nation. Virginia families and health care providers do not need Donald Trump telling them what care they do or do not need.”
For many in the LGBTQ community, the rhetoric inside the chamber echoed actions already taken by the administration.
Earlier this month, the Pride flag was removed from the Stonewall National Monument under a National Park Service directive that came from the top. Community members returned to the site, raised the flag again, and filed suit, arguing the removal violated federal law. To advocates, the move was symbolic — a signal that even the legacy of LGBTQ resistance was not immune.
Immigration and fear
Immigration dominated both events as well.
Inside the chamber, Trump boasted about the hundreds of thousands of immigrants detained in makeshift facilities. Outside, Democratic lawmakers described those same facilities as concentration camps and detailed what they characterized as the human toll of the administration’s enforcement policies.
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), speaking to the crowd, painted a grim picture of communities living in fear:
“People are vanishing into thin air. Quiet mornings are punctuated by jarring violence. Students are assaulted by ICE agents sitting outside the high school, hard working residents are torn from their vehicles in front of their children. Families, hopelessly search for signs of their loved ones who have stopped answering their phones, stop replying to text… This is un-American, it is illegal, it is unconstitutional, and the people are going to rise up and fight for Gladys Vega and all of those poor people who today need to know that the people’s State of the Union is the beginning of a long fight that is going to result in the end of Republican control of the House of Representatives and the Senate in the United States of America in 2026.”
Speakers emphasized that LGBTQ immigrants are often especially vulnerable — fleeing persecution abroad only to face detention and uncertainty in the United States. For them, the immigration crackdown and the attacks on transgender health care are not separate battles but intertwined fronts in a broader cultural and political war.
Queer leadership
After delivering remarks alongside Robert Garcia, Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, took the stage and transformed the freezing crowd’s anger into resolve.
Garcia later told the Blade that visibility matters in moments like this — especially when LGBTQ rights are under direct attack.
“We should be crystal clear about right now what is happening in our country,” Garcia said. “We have a president who is leading the single largest government cover up in modern history, we have the single largest sex trafficking ring in modern history right now being covered up by Donald Trump and Pam Bondi In the Department of Justice. Why are we protecting powerful, wealthy men who have abused and raped women and children in this country? Why is our government protecting these men at this very moment? In my place at the Capitol is a woman named Annie farmer. Annie and her sister Maria, both endured horrific abuse by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. As we move forward in this investigation, always center the survivors; we are going to get justice for the survivors. And Donald Trump may call this investigation a hoax. He may try to deflect our work, but our message to him is very clear that our investigation is just getting started, and we will we will get justice for these survivors.”
He told the Blade afterwards that having queer leaders front and center is itself an act of resistance.
“I obviously was very honored to speak with Kelley,” the California representative said. Kelley is doing a great job…it’s important that there are queer voices, trans voices, gay voices, in protest, and I think she’s a great example of that. It’s important to remind the country that the rights of our community continue to be attacked, and then we’ve got to stand up. Got to stand up for this as well.”
Robinson echoed that call, urging LGBTQ Americans — especially young people — not to lose hope despite the administration’s escalating rhetoric.
“There are hundreds of thousands of people that are standing up for you every single day that will not relent and will not give an inch until every member of our community is protected, especially our kids, especially our trans and queer kids. I just hope that the power of millions of voices drowns out that one loud one, because that’s really what I want folks to see at HRC. We’ve got 3.6 million members that are mobilizing to support our community every single day, 75 million equality voters, people that decide who they’re going to vote for based on issues related to our community. Our job is to make sure that all those people stand up so that those kids can see us and hear our voices, because we’re going to be what stands in the way.”
A boycott — and a warning
The list of Democratic lawmakers who boycotted the State of the Union included Sens. Ruben Gallego, Ed Markey, Jeff Merkley, Chris Murphy, Adam Schiff, Tina Smith, and Chris Van Hollen, along with dozens of House members.
For those gathered outside — and for viewers watching the livestream hosted by MoveOn — the counter-programming was not merely symbolic. It was a warning.
While the president spoke of strength and success inside the chamber, LGBTQ Americans — particularly transgender youth — were once again cast as political targets. And outside the Capitol, lawmakers and advocates made clear that the fight over their rights is far from over.
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