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Trump administration sued over gender affirming care ban

Plaintiffs represented by Lambda Legal, ACLU, PFLAG National, others

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President Donald Trump (Photo via White House/X)

Lambda Legal, the ACLU, and the ACLU of Maryland, joined by the law firms Hogan Lovells and Jenner & Block, have sued the Trump-Vance administration over its issuance of an executive order banning gender affirming care nationwide for patients younger than 19.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, seeks “preliminary and permanent injunction preventing the Agency Defendants, including any subagencies of Defendant HHS, from enforcing or implementing the Denial of Care and the Gender Identity Orders.”

PFLAG National and GMLA are also representing the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, seven families with transgender or nonbinary children.

Trump’s executive order last week prohibits health insurers run by the federal government, including Medicaid and TRICARE, from funding medical care for trans and gender diverse youth that is recommended by mainstream scientific and medical organizations like the American Medical Association.

Hospitals throughout the country subsequently suspended or shut down their gender affirming care programs. Those that have acknowledged the move publicly cited the administration’s order, which threatens federal funding and grants for noncompliance.

New York Attorney General Letitia James issued a letter on Monday, signed by a coalition of 22 state AGs, informing hundreds of recipients of federal funding, including healthcare providers, “who were informed that funding cannot be frozen or withdrawn on the basis of providing gender affirming care to minors.”

Likewise, the lawsuit filed by Lambda Legal and the ACLU argues the executive orders are ā€œunlawful and unconstitutional,ā€ first because they seek to withhold federal funds previously authorized by Congress and second because they violate anti-discrimination laws.

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Congress

Five HIV/AIDS activists arrested during USAID hearing

Protesters demanded full restoration of PEPFAR funding

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(Public domain photo)

Capitol Police on Thursday arrested five HIV/AIDS activists who disrupted a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing that focused on the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The activists ā€” including Health GAP Executive Director Asia Russell, Housing Works CEO Charles King, and ACT UP NY co-founder Eric Sawyer ā€” started chanting “PEPFAR (the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) saves lives. Restore AIDS funding now” shortly after Max Primorac, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, began to testify. They also held posters that read “Trump kills people with AIDS worldwide.”

The Trump-Vance administration last month froze nearly all U.S. foreign aid spending for at least 90 days. Secretary of State Marco Rubio later issued a waiver that allows PEPFAR and other “life-saving humanitarian assistance” programs to continue to operate during the freeze.

The Washington Blade last week reportedĀ PEPFAR-funded programs in Kenya and other African countries have been forced to suspend services and even shut down because of a lack of U.S. funding. The Trump-Vance administration’s efforts to dismantle USAID, along with the suspension of nearly all U.S. foreign aid, has been “a catastrophe” for the global LGBTQ rights movement.

“I guess these guys don’t watch the news. They didn’t realize that PEPFAR was one of the many programs that did prove to be lifesaving, so the funding was restored,” said U.S. Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.), who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, after Capitol Police removed the activists from the room. “Somebody better give ’em a link to … I don’t know, maybe Fox News or something like that.”

Russell and King are two of the dozens of HIV/AIDS activists who protested outside the State Department on Feb. 6 and demanded U.S. officials fully restore PEPFAR funding.

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Politics

Trump picks Richard Grenell as interim Kennedy Center executive director

President proclaimed “no more drag shows” at D.C. institution

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Richard Grenell speaks at the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

President Donald Trump on Monday picked Richard Grenell to serve as interim executive director of the Kennedy Center, just days after appointing himself chair the national cultural center and removing several members of the institution’s board of trustees.

Grenell is an openly gay diplomat and fierce ally to the president who served in high profile roles, including as acting director of national intelligence, during his first administration.

“Ric shares my vision for a GOLDEN AGE of American arts and culture, and will be overseeing the daily operations of the Center,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “NO MORE DRAG SHOWS, OR OTHER ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA ā€” ONLY THE BEST. RIC, WELCOME TO SHOW BUSINESS!”

In a previous post announcing his takeover of the center and purging of Democratic board members including appointees of former President Joe Biden , Trump wrote “Just last year, the Kennedy Center featured drag shows specifically targeting our youth ā€” THIS WILL STOP.”

Board members oversee the administration of federally appropriated funds for the ā€œoperation, maintenance, and capital repair of the presidential memorial as well as its trust-funded artistic programming,ā€ per the 2025 fiscal year budget justification to Congress. Together with previous honorees, they are responsible for selecting new Kennedy Center Honors recipients each year.

The federal government provided about $45 million in funding to the center last year, roughly a fifth of its $268 million operating budget in 2024.

On Wednesday, Grenell said on X that he was briefed by the center’s CFO and learned there is “ZERO cash on hand. And ZERO in reserves. And the deferred maintenance is a crisis.”

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Congress

House Dems urge OPM not to implement anti-trans executive order

Authors were Dem. U.S. Reps. Mark Takano (Calif.), Jamie Raskin (Md.), and Gerald Connolly (Va.)

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Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

Three House Democrats including Congressional Equality Caucus Chair Mark Takano (Calif.) issued a letter on Wednesday urging the Office of Personnel Management to not implement President Donald Trump’s anti-trans executive order, “Defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government.”

Also signing the letter were U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (Md.), ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, and U.S. Rep. Gerald Connolly (Va.), ranking member of the House Oversight Committee.

The lawmakers wrote the order “unlawfully attacks the civil rights of transgender Americans” while the White House’s corresponding memo and guidance “implements unlawful discrimination by the federal government against transgender people in the civil service and the provision of federal services.”

Specifically, they call unconstitutional the directive for agencies to “end all programs, contracts, grants, positions, documents, directives, orders, regulations, materials, forms,
communications, statements, plans, and training that ‘inculcate’ or ‘promote’ ‘gender
ideology’ā€”which the Executive Order defines broadly to encompass acknowledging the simple
existence of transgender people and gender identity.”

ā€œWe are deeply alarmed by these and other actions the Trump Administration has taken in its first few weeks to eliminate all government support for the transgender community, including efforts designed to enforcing the rights and support the health of transgender individuals,” the congressmen wrote.

They added, “We are also appalled by the Administrationā€™s attempts to weaponize federal agencies to target the transgender community for discrimination and exclusion. These actions contradict federal law, Supreme Court precedent, and most importantly the Constitutionā€™s guarantee of equal protection under the law.ā€

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