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
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.”
The White House
A full year of Trump and LGBTQ rights: all that’s been lost
White House since Inauguration Day has relentlessly attacked LGBTQ community
Uncloseted Media published this story on Jan. 20.
By NICO DiALESANDRO | One year ago today, Donald Trump was inaugurated as president of the United States for the second time. Since then, he and his administration have waged an all-out attack on the LGBTQ community by slashing crucial health and support programs, pressuring states to exclude transgender people from most aspects of life and erasing information about the community’s history. Here are all the biggest moves Trump has made against LGBTQ rights over the last 365 days.
Jan. 20, 2025 – Trump’s second first day
During his inaugural address, Trump says, “As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders: male and female.” Later that day, Trump signs “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” an executive order that defines “sex” in federal law to mean biological sex at conception. It also eliminates federal recognition of trans identities, blocks gender self-identification on federal documents, ceases federal funding for gender-affirming care and restricts trans people’s access to bathrooms, prisons, shelters, and other government facilities that match their gender identity.
Trump also signs “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” an executive order that orders federal agencies to terminate diversity, equity and inclusion mandates, policies and programs. This order repeals a policy put in place by the Biden administration that created initiatives for the federal government to combat systemic barriers related to hiring on the basis of race, religion, income, gender identity, sexual orientation, and disability.
“We’re the party of common sense, you know, we don’t want to have men playing in women’s sports. We don’t want to have transgender operations for everyone,” Trump says at the Liberty Ball party that evening. Trump would go on to repeat the sentiment countless times throughout the year, including at press conferences with world leaders, in an interview with “60 Minutes” and even while deploying the National Guard in Washington.
Jan. 21, 2025 – The flurry of executive orders continues
Trump signs “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” another executive order that revokes a 1965 order which mandated affirmative action for federal contractors and required that they take steps to comply with nondiscrimination laws. The order violates the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, which extended Title VII sex-based protections to trans people.
Nearly all LGBTQ- and HIV-focused content and resources are deleted from the White House’s website including the White House’s equity report, information about LGBTQ Pride Month and a fact sheet on expanding access to HIV prevention and treatment. In addition, the State Department removes its LGBTQ rights page, and the Department of Labor removes its LGBTQ workers page.
Jan. 28, 2025 – funding cuts
Trump signs “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” an executive order that bars federal funding for gender-affirming care for minors and directs the Department of Health and Human Services to restrict insurance coverage for such treatments under Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. Hours after Trump signs the order, Uncloseted Media speaks with six LGBTQ kids to get their thoughts.
“For me, it’s definitely very frightening. Especially because right now I’m 16, and so, I’m going to become an adult over the course of his presidency. … And it’s really difficult, especially to plan for the future and have that lack of surety that I thought that I would,” Crow, who lives in Virginia, told Uncloseted Media.
Feb. 3, 2025
Mentions of LGBTQ people are erased or minimized across federal government websites, with a particular focus on trans and intersex people. The State Department first removes trans people in its travel safety guidelines, only mentioning the “LGB” community. As of publication, the web page has no mention of bisexual travelers either.
Feb. 5, 2025
Trump signs “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” an executive order that prohibits trans women and girls from competing on collegiate female sports teams.
Feb. 13, 2025
Under the direction of Trump’s executive order, the National Park Service removes references to trans and queer rights and history, including from the Stonewall National Monument pages. The “TQ” from “LGBTQ” is dropped in instances where the acronym is present. Protesters gather at the Stonewall National Monument in New York the next day to voice their outrage.
In an interview with Uncloseted Media, Stacy Lentz, co-owner of the Stonewall Inn, calls the removal a blatant attempt to rewrite history and exclude the very people who led the fight for equality.
Feb. 14, 2025
The U.S. withdraws from the United Nations LGBTI Core Group, which formed in 2008 and pledges to support LGBTQ and intersex rights by “work[ing] within the United Nations framework on ensuring universal respect for the human rights and fundamental freedoms for all, specifically lesbian, gay bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) persons, with a particular focus on protection from violence and discrimination.”
March 15, 2025 – illegal deportations
The Trump-Vance administration deports 238 Venezuelan migrants to CECOT, a maximum-security prison in El Salvador. The administration claims these individuals are affiliated with the Tren de Aragua gang. Andry Hernández Romero, a gay makeup artist seeking asylum, is one of the migrants with no criminal record. Hernández vanished from U.S. custody before his asylum hearing, and his lawyer asserts he was deported without due process.
On July 18, Hernández is returned to Venezuela along with 249 other migrants. The Department of Homeland Security dismisses abuse allegations of torture, sexual assault and other inhumane treatment.
April 2, 2025
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services updates its policy to recognize only two biological sexes, male and female, for immigration benefit requests and official documentation. This policy shift reverses previous efforts to accommodate nonbinary and trans individuals, as it removes the “X” gender marker option from immigration forms.
“By denying trans people the right to self-select their gender, the government is making it harder for them to exist safely and with dignity. This is not about ‘common sense’ — it is about erasing an entire community from the legal landscape,” says Bridget Crawford, director of law and policy at Immigration Equality.
April 3, 2025
In his first few months in office, Trump and his administration cancel over 270 National Institutes of Health grants focused on LGBTQ health, totaling at least $125 million in unspent funds. The cancellations disrupt research on HIV testing and prevention, AIDS, cancer, mental health and more.
The cuts scrap more than $800 million worth of research into the health of LGBTQ people. The cuts abandon studies of cancers and viruses and set back efforts to defeat a resurgence of sexually transmitted infections. They also eliminate swaths of medical research on diseases that disproportionately afflict LGBTQ people, including HIV/AIDs, various sexually transmitted infections and cancers.
June 2, 2025
Stanford begins suspending gender-affirming care for people younger than 19 in response to Trump’s executive order. Other major health networks and many regional centers across the country begin following suit.
Children’s Hospital Los Angeles announces they will be cutting off care for patients as old as 25 beginning in July, stating that they were left with “no viable alternative” because they could not risk any cuts to their federal funding.
June 6, 2025
Trump’s military ban begins, disallowing trans people from serving in all branches of the armed forces and removing those currently in the service. Those who do not identify themselves will have their medical records surveyed and be involuntarily separated if it is discovered that they are trans.
July 1, 2025
Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” is passed by Congress. The sweeping package of tax breaks that largely benefit the wealthy include major funding cuts to LGBTQ health care as well as a number of support programs that disproportionately serve queer people.
July 17, 2025
The Trump-Vance administration officially shuts down the LGBTQ-specific option on the 988 youth suicide hotline. This comes a year after data finds that 41 percent of LGBTQ youth seriously considered suicide. Notably, there are no plans to shut down the other targeted hotline options. Arden, who called when they were 16, told Uncloseted Media, “If it weren’t for the hotline, I would have killed myself.”
Aug. 4, 2025
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests 40-year-old asylum seeker Rickardo Anthony Kelly during a routine immigration appointment. Kelly, who survived being shot 10 times in Jamaica by attackers who targeted him for being gay, is released two weeks later and describes the conditions of the ICE facility as “unconscionable,” “inhumane,” and “horrific.”
Aug. 12, 2025
The State Department releases a revised 2024 human rights report that omits references to LGBTQ people and erases mentions of discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. The report also removes critiques of governments for mistreating LGBTQ communities.
It excludes information about Hungary’s anti-LGBTQ laws that encourage citizens to report their LGBTQ neighbors and that ban depictions of homosexuality or gender transition in schools or the media.
Aug. 15, 2025
The Trump-Vance administration announces plans to eliminate gender-affirming care from the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program starting in 2026. The policy would also block access to hormones and surgeries for federal workers and their families.
Aug. 20, 2025
The media reports on court filings that reveal that the Justice Department issued subpoenas to hospitals for private medical records of LGBTQ patients 18 and younger. The DOJ requests billing data, communication with drug manufacturers, Social Security numbers and recordings from providers who treat gender nonconforming minors. Doctors across the country report threats and fear government retaliation.
“The subpoena is a breathtakingly invasive government overreach. … It’s specifically and strategically designed to intimidate health care providers and health care institutions into abandoning their patients,” says Jennifer L. Levi, senior director of transgender and queer rights at GLAD law, an LGBTQ legal group and civil rights organization.
Sept. 4, 2025
In response to a mass shooting in Minneapolis that was carried out by a trans woman, CNN reports that the DOJ is considering restricting trans Americans’ Second Amendment rights. The department aims to justify a firearm ban by declaring trans people mentally “defective,” building off of Trump’s trans military ban. The proposal sparks backlash from the National Rifle Association, who says in a statement that they will not “support … gun bans that arbitrarily strip law-abiding citizens of their Second Amendment rights.”
Sept. 12, 2025
The DOJ removes a study from its website showing that far-right extremists have killed more Americans than any other domestic terrorist group. The archived report disappears two days after anti-LGBTQ conservative activist Charlie Kirk is assassinated.
Sept. 22, 2025
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt claims the administration is investigating why trans people are turning to “domestic terrorism,” despite no evidence of this. She calls anyone denying the false link “willfully ignorant,” despite the most recent data available from 2018 showing that trans people are four times more likely to be victims of violent crime when compared to cisgender people.
Sept. 23, 2025
Trump cancels a budget meeting and blames a potential government shutdown on Democrats’ support for trans-inclusive policies.
Oct. 1, 2025
FBI Director Kash Patel fires a trainee for displaying a Pride flag on his desk, labeling it an improper “political” message. The dismissal follows reports that pro-Trump appointees are combing internal FBI files to identify LGBTQ employees.
Oct. 3, 2025
Education Secretary Linda McMahon sends a nine-page proposal to nine universities that asks for a commitment to ban trans-inclusive facilities, define sex by “reproductive function” and limit race, gender or identity factors in admissions. The proposal calls for schools to revise their governance structures by “abolishing institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas.”
Oct. 10, 2025
The White House lays off more than 1,100 HHS employees. The Office of Population Affairs, which administered Title X family-planning networks, teen pregnancy prevention and LGBTQ health initiatives, is eliminated.
Nov. 6, 2025
The Supreme Court grants the Trump-Vance administration’s request to put a hold on federal rulings in Massachusetts, affecting trans and nonbinary people by preventing them from self-identifying correctly on their IDs, claiming to be in line with Trump’s “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” executive order. In her dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson writes, “This court has once again paved the way for the immediate infliction of injury without adequate (or, really, any) justification. Because I cannot acquiesce to this pointless but painful perversion of our equitable discretion, I respectfully dissent.”
Dec. 4, 2025
According to a memo obtained by NPR, the DOJ instructs inspectors to stop evaluating prisons and jails using standards designed to protect trans, intersex, and gender nonconforming people from sexual violence. This is in direct violation of the Prison Rape Elimination Act.
Dec. 18, 2025
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Mehmet Oz, who leads Medicaid and Medicare, announce that HHS is heavily restricting trans health care; prohibiting Medicaid reimbursement for gender-affirming care for people under 18; and blocking all Medicare and Medicaid funding for hospitals that provide the care to minors.
Jan. 1, 2026
The Office of Personnel Management institutes policy changes that exclude coverage for “chemical and surgical” gender-affirming care in the FEHB and Postal Service Health Benefits plans for 2026, with narrow exceptions.
Jan. 7, 2026
Renee Good is shot and killed by ICE agent Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis. Good leaves behind a wife, Becca, and three children. In a statement, Becca remembers her wife:
“Renee lived by an overarching belief: there is kindness in the world and we need to do everything we can to find it where it resides and nurture it where it needs to grow. Renee was a Christian who knew that all religions teach the same essential truth: we are here to love each other, care for each other, and keep each other safe and whole.”
Days later, Trump tells reporters, “At a very minimum, that woman was very, very disrespectful to law enforcement. … It was highly disrespectful of law enforcement. The woman and her friend were highly disrespectful of law enforcement.”
Additional reporting by Hope Pisoni. Washington Blade photos by Michael Key and Michael K. Lavers.
The White House
Hundreds protest ICE killing of Renee Nicole Good in D.C.
Married queer woman shot in Minneapolis on Wednesday
Hundreds of people took to the streets of D. C. on Thursday night to protest the killing of a U.S. citizen by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent.
Protests began at the busy — and increasingly queer — intersection of 14th and U Streets, N.W. There, hundreds of people held signs, shouted, and made their way to the White House to voice their dissent over the Trump-Vance administration’s choice to increase law enforcement presence across the country.
The protest, which also occurred simultaneously in cities large and small across the country, comes in the wake of the death of Minneapolis resident Renne Nicole Good at the hands of ICE Agent Jonathan Ross. Good left behind two children and a wife, Rebecca Good.
Records obtained by the Associated Press found that Ross was an Iraq War veteran and nearly two decades into his career with U.S. Border Patrol and ICE.
Good was gunned down just blocks away from where George Floyd was killed by police in 2020, sparking weeks of national protests. Minnesota officials say the FBI has blocked their access to an investigation into the fatal shooting, according to a BBC story published on Friday.
In the nation’s capital, protesters marched from the intersection of 14th and U Street to Lafayette Square, right outside the White House. Multiple D.C. organizations led the protest, most notably Free DC, a nonprofit that works to ensure the right of “self-determination” for District residents, as many local laws can be reviewed, modified, or overturned by Congress. Free DC had organized multiple protests since the Trump-Vance administration was elected.
The Washington Blade spoke to multiple protesters towards the tail end of the protest about why they came out.
Franco Molinari, from Woodbridge, Va., crossed the Potomac to partake in his first-ever protest.
“I don’t appreciate ICE and the use of federal agents being pretty much militarized against America,” Molinari said while holding a “Justice for Renee” sign. “The video of Renee being executed cartel style in her car was enough for me to want to come out, to at least do something.”
Molinari, like many others the Blade spoke with, found out about the protest on Instagram.
“It was my friend there, Sarah … had sent a link regarding the protest to a group chat. I saw it in the morning, and I thought, ‘You know what, after work, I’m head out.’”
He also shared why protesting at the White House was important.
“I already saw the response that the president gave towards the murder of Renee, and it was largely very antagonizing,” Molinari said.
President Donald Trump, along with federal leaders under him, claimed that Good “violently, willfully and viciously ran over the ICE officer.” The president’s claims have been widely discredited through multiple videos of the incident, which show Good was attempting to leave the scene rather than attacking the officer.
“I hope that anybody would be able to see that and see the response and see for themselves that it just is not correct,” Molinari said.
The Blade also spoke with leftist influencer Dave the Viking, who has more than 52,000 followers on TikTok, where he posts anti-fascist and anti-Trump videos.
“We’re out here to make sure that this regime can’t rewrite history in real time, because we all know what we saw … we’re not going to allow them to run with this narrative that they [ICE agents] were stuck in the snow and that that poor woman tried to weaponize her car, because we all saw video footage that proves otherwise,” he told the Blade. “We’re not going to let this regime, the media, or right-wing influencers try to rewrite history in real time and try to convince us we didn’t all see what we know we saw.”
Dave the Viking continued, saying he believes the perceived power of ICE and other law enforcement to act — oftentimes in deadly and unjustifiable ways — is a product of the Trump-Vance administration.
“There’s a line between fascism and anti-fascism. These motherfuckers have been pushing that envelope, trying to label an idea a terrorist organization, to the point of yesterday, crossing that line hardcore. You face the point of looking at history and saying there was this 1989, 2003 America, where we’re just going in, raiding resources. Where is this fucking 1930s Germany, where we’re going in and we’re about to just start clearing shit and pulling knots? Yeah, nope. We proved that shit yesterday.”
Two people were injured in another shooting involving federal agents, this time Border Patrol in Portland, Ore., on Thursday afternoon.
KC Lynch, who lives near American University, also spoke about her choice to protest with a group.
“I came out today because everything that ICE has done is absolutely unacceptable, not only killing this one woman, but also the fact that they’ve been imprisoning people in places that are literally, that have been literally on record by international organizations shown to be human rights violating. It’s unbelievably evil.”
Lynch also echoed Dave’s opinion about parallels between the Trump-Vance administration and the rise of Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany.
“It’s literally what happened before the Holocaust. We should all be scared. We should all be angry. I’m so angry about it … even talking about it — I’m sorry,” she said before getting choked up.
Lynch emphasized that despite the circumstances in which people were protesting together, the sense of community was strong and powerful.
“I feel like it’s important for people to know that we’re angry, even if no policy changes come out of it, and it’s just nice to yell and be angry about it, because I feel like we’ve probably all been feeling this way, and it’s nice to be around people that are like minded and to like have a sense of community.”
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