The White House
‘Lavender Scare 2.0’: inside the White House’s campaign against LGBTQ federal employees
LGBTQ federal workers organization sounding the alarm
Since the beginning of the modern LGBTQ civil rights movement, there have been small but meaningful shifts in policy and public attitudes over the past 55 years that have allowed many within the LGBTQ community to feel safe in their right to love. The Trump-Vance administration is dramatically eroding that sense of security by enacting policies that directly harm LGBTQ people.
The Lavender Scare 2.0 is here, LGBTQ advocates warn, with stark decisions regarding LGBTQ federal employees that harken back to a time when you could be arrested — or worse— for not being a straight, cis citizen.
The Washington Blade spoke with Lucas F. Schleusener, the co-founder and CEO of Out in National Security, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization that works to “empower queer national security professionals,” about the change in tone coming from the White House on LGBTQ government employees in national security and other federal circles.
There are almost 2.3 million federal government employees — not including uniformed military personnel, U.S. Postal Services employees, employees of federal contractors, and employees of federal grants — but only 7.3 percent of federal employees identified as LGBQ, and less than one percent identified as transgender, according to the 2023 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey. Despite these numbers showing that this population is a minority within federal government employees, the steps the Trump-Vance administration is taking to erode LGBTQ federal workers’ protections seem to be of grave importance — especially within the military.
There are many things that caused shifts in public opinion of LGBTQ people (and their rights). Small victories over time build up and can change how the public views a particular issue — from the beginning legal fights for LGBTQ rights, which started nearly a decade before Stonewall by Frank Kameny, to the assassination attempt of the first openly gay public official Harvey Milk, to even the widespread humanizing impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic on LGBTQ people who have suffered the most from the disease. All help make up the concept of American LGBTQ rights. Trump — laid out by Project 2025 and aided by other conservative politicians — is beginning to erode these rights.
One of the clearest ways the slow erosion of this protective space for LGBTQ federal employees can be seen, Schleusener explained, is through destabilization efforts within the bureaucratic system coming from the Oval Office — and with that is the return of 1980s–90s–style harassment.
“There’s an overwhelming bureaucratic trauma happening — a destabilization that feels intentional,” Schleusener said. “And underneath that, we’re seeing a return of different flavors of workplace harassment across national security agencies, from the CIA to the Import-Export Bank.”
gliffa, an employee resource group founded in 1992 that advocates for LGBTQ inclusion, equality, and workplace protections within U.S. foreign affairs agencies, was forced to have its entire board resign to comply with Trump’s “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” executive order the Blade covered in January, ultimately removing an important social and professional group that supported public servants. Since the executive order, the gliffa website has removed most of it’s content and contacts.
Schleusener continued, explaining that this policy will hurt LGBTQ federal workers.
“The administration has dissolved all minority employee resource groups, destroying networks of belonging and leaving queer federal employees in a state of psychological precarity,” he said.
Other organizations that have had to change their approach to supporting LGBTQ federal employee worker rights include the American Federation of Government Employees’ PRIDE program, a subsection of the largest federal employee union representing 820,000 federal and D.C. government workers. AFGE PRIDE was founded in 2015 to get more LGBTQ-inclusive contracts for federal workers and educate all members on LGBTQIA+ workplace and safety issues. AFGE has had numerous public disagreements with both Trump administrations’ anti-LGBTQ policy, notably when the federal employee union criticized the government’s multiple implementations of transgender military bans, and when it called out questionable budget-cutting techniques within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and multiple LGBTQ specific organizations by flagging — and subsequently removing — funding for anything with “transgender” in it.
Beyond minimizing the power of official structures created to specifically protect workers’ rights, the current administration and some members of the Republican Party have started to use “digital witch-hunts,” using social media to harass, dox, and lie about LGBTQ federal employees. While not as bad as denying a job to a deserving candidate for past homosexual “proclivities” like what happened with Frank Kameny, there are consequences to this shift in what is deemed acceptable for the online appearances of LGBTQ federal workers inside and outside of federal buildings.
“It’s not clearances being denied so much as it is targeted harassment. Laura Loomer has essentially declared herself the new Joe McCarthy, going through the Plum Book to identify anyone with ‘LGBT,’ ‘DEI,’ ‘equity,’ or ‘trans’ in their job titles and doxxing them.”
This intolerance promoted by the Trump-Vance administration and his party is not like whistleblowing on a State Department official for selling secrets to foreign governments, Schleusener explained, but rather attacking a part of LGBTQ federal workers’ human identity.
“These are ordinary federal workers — not public figures — whose home addresses end up on the internet simply for doing their jobs.”
Recently Laura Loomer, the far-right political activist, conspiracy theorist, internet personality, and Trump confidante, accused the trans community of playing some role in the assassination of right-wing political pundit Charlie Kirk, even going as far as to say that transgender people are “a national security threat” and constitute a terrorist movement, despite the shooter not being trans.
Trans federal employees have been facing a particularly difficult time under Trump’s second presidency. From bathroom bans restricting what gender bathrooms people can use to harassment on behalf of the federal government to remove them from military positions, there is a hyper-critical lens being placed on trans federal workers.
“There’s an organization called STARRS that combs through Instagram and LinkedIn looking for minority service members who show any pride in their identity. If you’re LGBTQ, a person of color, or even an ally who took your kids to Pride, they will tag and harass you — and they have a direct line into the Pentagon,” Schleusener pointed out. “People have been removed from their posts because of this, including the Navy’s top West Coast endocrinologist, whose only ‘offense’ was having a rainbow banner and pronouns on LinkedIn.”
Commander Janelle Marra was the medical director of Expeditionary Medical Facility 150 Bravo in San Diego until the TikTok account “Libs of TikTok” posted about her role as the Navy deputy medical director for trans healthcare, which was listed on her LinkedIn page, leading Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to publicly order her removal from the role.
In addition to formally using the government to be hostile — if not outright discriminatory — against LGBTQ federal employees, the Trump-Vance administration has also fostered more informal harassment directed toward LGBTQ federal employees.
“It’s a climate of fear without any logical pattern — people doing important, everyday work suddenly find themselves targeted. These are not public political actors; they’re regular federal employees who now have to manage LinkedIn as if they were cabinet officials,” the former Pentagon employee and Obama national security associate shared.
“Between the administration’s formal hostility and these informal digital witch-hunts, queer employees are being squeezed from every direction.”
While there are some very clear discriminatory policies being put out by the White House, there is clear pushback from LGBTQ, human rights, and democracy advocates to stop them within the courts. With such a high amount of discriminatory action being taken by the Trump-Vance administration, it leaves the possibility for “legal chaos” within an already unhelpful system and the risk of a bad U.S. Supreme Court precedent.
“A lot of what we’re dealing with legally is documenting enough harassment to file viable claims, but the system is stacked against us. Even when we find a legal path — like restoring pensions for trans service members whose retirement benefits were revoked — everything is designed to be slow, difficult, and demoralizing,” Schleusener said. “And the frightening question is always whether fighting back could result in a bad Supreme Court precedent that hurts queer workers nationally.”
These pointed actions taken to harm LGBTQ federal worker protections by Trump and his followers in the federal system warrant a declaration of a second Lavender Scare, Schleusener told the Blade.
“Yes — this absolutely constitutes a second Lavender Scare. The federal government is saying trans people don’t belong in the military, even after spending billions training them for an all-volunteer force, which is both dangerous and absurd. Combined with attacks on ERGs, human rights reporting, and attempts to purge queer employees, it mirrors the patterns of the Cold War era.”
But this isn’t your grandparents’ Lavender Scare with vice squad cops trying to catch federal employees cruising like in the 60s. This is a whole other beast, Schleusener said.
The escalation of offenses, particularly for trans women within the government, is a major concern. The distaste for the trans community within the White House and among the president’s supporters on Capitol Hill makes this worse than a fine or a night in jail. The attempts to expand laws and policy regarding gender identity — particularly related to the National Defense Authorization Act and passport approvals — could have lasting impacts on LGBTQ federal workers’ ability to live in the U.S.
“This Lavender Scare is escalating: the NDAA moving through Congress includes a ban on trans women at service academies, and the administration is using Cold War statutes like the Walter McCarran Act to bar trans foreign nationals from entering the country.
Every opportunity they’ve had to go further, they have taken — and there’s no indication they plan to stop at trans people.”
Schleusener explained that although they are different in implementation, this new Lavender Scare is taking just as much of a toll on LGBTQ federal workers as it did the first time around — most of whom just want to help make the U.S. a better place.
“Like the original Lavender Scare, this is a manufactured moral panic weaponized through bureaucracy. Back then, the State Department bragged about driving queer employees to suicide; now we’re seeing trans service members taking their lives under the pressure of these policies. The difference today is that social media makes the harassment instantaneous and far-reaching, even as queer visibility also makes it harder to shove an entire community back into the closet.”
He also pointed out the growing purges of women and people of color from federal roles alongside the targeting of queer federal employees. This is a time to be aware of how federal work policies could shift the culture — and the safety of some of the most disenfranchised citizens.
“This isn’t only about LGBTQ people — there’s a broader purge underway targeting women and people of color in the senior ranks of the military. The first woman to take command of the SEALs was pushed out purely because she was a woman.
It’s a coordinated effort to turn back the clock across multiple identities simultaneously,” Schleusener said.
This manufactured climate of fear for LGBTQ federal employees is causing some to hide, delete, or exit the federal workforce altogether.
“We’ve seen a huge uptick in people trying to scrub their names from websites, delete their public bios, or step back from leadership programs out of fear of being hunted by Laura Loomer or similar groups. Even something as basic as using the bathroom has become a fraught question because the Pentagon now requires people to use facilities based on sex assigned at birth,” Schleusener added. “It’s driving people out of public service early, especially those with skills that are highly valued in the private sector.”
The Blade attempted to speak to multiple LGBTQ federal workers on record about their experience in seeing an overall shift in policy and tone directed toward the LGBTQ community — either anonymously or with their name attached — but no one wanted to speak for fear of losing their job. The Blade also reached out to the White House Press Office but has not received a response to the request for a statement on these allegations.
The White House
Expanded global gag rule to ban US foreign aid to groups that promote ‘gender ideology’
Activists, officials say new regulation will limit access to gender-affirming care
The Trump-Vance administration has announced it will expand the global gag rule to ban U.S. foreign aid for groups that promote “gender ideology.”
Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau in a memo, titled Combating Gender Ideology in Foreign Assistance, the Federal Register published on Jan. 27 notes “previous administrations … used” U.S. foreign assistance “to fund the denial of the biological reality of sex, promoting a radical ideology that permits men to self-identify as women, indoctrinate children with radical gender ideology, and allow men to gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women.”
“Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. It also threatens the wellbeing of children by encouraging them to undergo life-altering surgical and chemical interventions that carry serious risks of lifelong harms like infertility,” reads the memo. “The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women and children but, as an attack on truth and human nature, it harms every nation. It is the purpose of this rule to prohibit the use of foreign assistance to support radical gender ideology, including by ending support for international organizations and multilateral organizations that pressure nations to embrace radical gender ideology, or otherwise promote gender ideology.”
President Donald Trump on Jan. 28, 2025, issued an executive order — Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation — that banned federal funding for gender-affirming care for minors.
President Ronald Reagan in 1985 implemented the global gag rule, also known as the “Mexico City” policy, which bans U.S. foreign aid for groups that support abortion and/or offer abortion-related services.
Trump reinstated the rule during his first administration. The White House this week expanded the ban to include groups that support gender-affirming care and diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
The expanded global gag rule will take effect on Feb. 26.
“None of the funds made available by this act or any other Act may be made available in contravention of Executive Order 14187, relating to Protecting Children From Chemical and Surgical Mutilation, or shall be used or transferred to another federal agency, board, or commission to fund any domestic or international non-governmental organization or any other program, organization, or association coordinated or operated by such non-governmental organization that either offers counseling regarding sex change surgeries, promotes sex change surgeries for any reason as an option, conducts or subsidizes sex change surgeries, promotes the use of medications or other substances to halt the onset of puberty or sexual development of minors, or otherwise promotes transgenderism,” wrote Landau in his memo.
Landau wrote the State Department “does not believe taxpayer dollars should support sex-rejecting procedures, directly or indirectly for individuals of any age.”
“A person’s body (including its organs, organ systems, and processes natural to human development like puberty) are either healthy or unhealthy based on whether they are operating according to their biological functions,” reads his memo. “Organs or organ systems do not become unhealthy simply because the individual may experience psychological distress relating to his or her sexed body. For this reason, removing a patient’s breasts as a treatment for breast cancer is fundamentally different from performing the same procedure solely to alleviate mental distress arising from gender dysphoria. The former procedure aims to restore bodily health and to remove cancerous tissue. In contrast, removing healthy breasts or interrupting normally occurring puberty to ‘affirm’ one’s ‘gender identity’ involves the intentional destruction of healthy biological functions.”
Landau added there “is also lack of clarity about what sex-rejecting procedures’ fundamental aims are, unlike the broad consensus about the purpose of medical treatments for conditions like appendicitis, diabetes, or severe depression.”
“These procedures lack strong evidentiary foundations, and our understanding of long-term health impacts is limited and needs to be better understood,” he wrote. “Imposing restrictions, as this rule proposes, on sex-rejecting procedures for individuals of any age is necessary for the (State) Department to protect taxpayer dollars from abuse in support of radical ideological aims.”
Landau added the State Department “has determined that applying this rule to non-military foreign assistance broadly is necessary to ensure that its foreign assistance programs do not support foreign NGOs and IOs (international organizations) that promote gender ideology, and U.S. NGOs that provide sex-rejecting procedures, and to ensure the integrity of programs such as humanitarian assistance, gender-related programs, and more, do not promote gender ideology.”
“This rule will also allow for more foreign assistance funds to support organizations that promote biological truth in their foreign assistance programs and help the (State) Department to establish new partnerships,” he wrote.
The full memo can be found here.
Council for Global Equality Senior Policy Fellow Beirne Roose-Snyder on Wednesday said the expansion of the so-called global gag rule will “absolutely impact HIV services where we know we need to target services, to that there are non-stigmatizing, safe spaces for people to talk through all of their medical needs, and being trans is really important to be able to disclose to your health care provider so that you can get ARVs, so you can get PrEP in the right ways.” Roose-Snyder added the expanded ban will also impact access to gender-affirming health care, food assistance programs and humanitarian aid around the world.
“This rule is not about gender-affirming care at all,” she said during a virtual press conference the Universal Access Project organized.
“It is about really saying that if you want to take U.S. funds — and it’s certainly not about gender-affirming care for children — it is if you want to take U.S. funds, you cannot have programs or materials or offer counseling or referrals to people who may be struggling with their gender identity,” added Roose-Snyder. “You cannot advocate to maintain your country’s own nondiscrimination laws around gender identity. It is the first place that we’ve ever seen the U.S. government define gender-affirming care, except they call it something a lot different than that.”
The Congressional Equality Caucus, the Democratic Women’s Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the Congressional Asian and Pacific American Caucus, and the Congressional Black Caucus also condemned the global gag rule’s expansion.
“We strongly condemn this weaponization of U.S. foreign assistance to undermine human rights and global health,” said the caucuses in a statement. “We will not rest until we ensure that our foreign aid dollars can never be used as a weapon against women, people of color, or LGBTQI+ people ever again.”
Advocacy groups are demanding the Trump-Vance administration not to deport two gay men to Iran.
MS Now on Jan. 23 reported the two men are among the 40 Iranian nationals who the White House plans to deport.
Iran is among the countries in which consensual same-sex sexual relations remain punishable by death.
The Washington Blade earlier this month reported LGBTQ Iranians have joined anti-government protests that broke out across the country on Dec. 28. Human rights groups say the Iranian government has killed thousands of people since the demonstrations began.
Rebekah Wolf of the American Immigration Council, which represents the two men, told MS Now her clients were scheduled to be on a deportation flight on Jan. 25. A Human Rights Campaign spokesperson on Tuesday told the Blade that one of the men “was able to obtain a temporary stay of removal from the” 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and the other “is facing delayed deportation as the result of a measles outbreak at the facility where they’re being held.”
“My (organization, the American Immigration Council) represents those two gay men,” said American Immigration Council Senior Fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick in a Jan. 23 post on his Bluesky account. “They had been arrested on charges of sodomy by Iranian moral police, and fled the country seeking asylum. They face the death penalty if returned, yet the Trump (administration) denied their asylum claims in a kangaroo court process.”
“They are terrified,” added Reichlin-Melnick.
My org @immcouncil.org represents those two gay men. They had been arrested on charges of sodomy by Iranian moral police, and fled the country seeking asylum. They face the death penalty if returned, yet the Trump admin denied their asylum claims in a kangaroo court process.
They are terrified.
— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social) January 23, 2026 at 8:26 AM
Reichlin-Melnick in a second Bluesky post said “deporting people to Iran right now, as body bags line the street, is an immoral, inhumane, and unjust act.”
“That ICE is still considering carrying out the flight this weekend is a sign of an agency and an administration totally divorced from basic human rights,” he added.
Deporting people to Iran right now, as body bags line the street, is an immoral, inhumane, and unjust act. That ICE is still considering carrying out the flight this weekend is a sign of an agency and an administration totally divorced from basic human rights. www.ms.now/news/trump-d…
— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social) January 23, 2026 at 8:27 AM
HRC Vice President of Government Affairs David Stacy in a statement to the Blade noted Iran “is one of 12 nations that still execute queer people, and we continue to fear for their safety.” Stacy also referenced Renee Good, a 37-year-old lesbian woman who a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed in Minneapolis on Jan. 7, and Andry Hernández Romero, a gay Venezuelan asylum seeker who the Trump-Vance administration “forcibly disappeared” to El Salvador last year.
“This out-of-control administration continues to target immigrants and terrorize our communities,” said Stacy. “That same cruelty murdered Renee Nicole Good and imprisoned Andry Hernández Romero. We stand with the American Immigration Council and demand that these men receive the due process they deserve. Congress must refuse to fund this outrage and stand against the administration’s shameless dismissal of our constitutional rights.”
The White House
Trump-Vance administration ‘has dismantled’ US foreign policy infrastructure
Current White House took office on Jan. 20, 2025
Jessica Stern, the former special U.S. envoy for the promotion of LGBTQ and intersex rights, on the eve of the first anniversary of the Trump-Vance administration said its foreign policy has “hurt people” around the world.
“The changes that they are making will take a long time to overturn and recover from,” she said on Jan. 14 during a virtual press conference the Alliance for Diplomacy and Justice, a group she co-founded, co-organized.
Amnesty International USA National Director of Government Relations and Advocacy Amanda Klasing, Human Rights Watch Deputy Washington Director Nicole Widdersheim, Human Rights First President Uzra Zeya, PEN America’s Jonathan Friedman, and Center for Reproductive Rights Senior Federal Policy Council Liz McCaman Taylor also participated in the press conference.
The Trump-Vance administration took office on Jan. 20, 2025.
The White House proceeded to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, which funded LGBTQ and intersex rights organizations around the world.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio last March announced the State Department would administer the 17 percent of USAID contracts that had not been cancelled. Rubio issued a waiver that allowed PEPFAR and other “life-saving humanitarian assistance” programs to continue to operate during the U.S. foreign aid freeze the White House announced shortly after it took office.
The global LGBTQ and intersex rights movement has lost more than an estimated $50 million in funding because of the cuts. The Washington Blade has previously reported PEPFAR-funded programs in Kenya and other African countries have been forced to suspend services and even shut down.
Stern noted the State Department “has dismantled key parts of foreign policy infrastructure that enabled the United States to support democracy and human rights abroad” and its Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor “has effectively been dismantled.” She also pointed out her former position and others — the Special Representative for Racial Equity and Justice, the Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues, and the Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice — “have all been eliminated.”
President Donald Trump on Jan. 7 issued a memorandum that said the U.S. will withdraw from the U.N. Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women and more than 60 other U.N. and international entities.
Rubio in a Jan. 10 Substack post said UN Women failed “to define what a woman is.”
“At a time when we desperately need to support women — all women — this is yet another example of the weaponization of transgender people by the Trump administration,” said Stern.
US ‘conducting enforced disappearances’
The Jan. 14 press conference took place a week after a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent killed Renee Good, a 37-year-old woman who left behind her wife and three children, in Minneapolis. American forces on Jan. 3 seized now former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, at their home in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, during an overnight operation. Trump also continues to insist the U.S. needs to gain control of Greenland.
Widdersheim during the press conference noted the Trump-Vance administration last March sent 252 Venezuelans to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, a maximum-security prison known by the Spanish acronym CECOT.
One of them, Andry Hernández Romero, is a gay asylum seeker who the White House claimed was a member of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang the Trump-Vance administration has designated as an “international terrorist organization.” Hernández upon his return to Venezuela last July said he suffered physical, sexual, and psychological abuse while at CECOT.
“In 2025 … the United States is conducting enforced disappearances,” said Widdersheim.
Zeya, who was Under Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights from 2021-2025, in response to the Blade’s question during the press conference said her group and other advocacy organizations have “got to keep doubling down in defense of the rule of law, to hold this administration to account.”
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