National
Rachel Levine in ‘rewarding’ visit speaks with trans youth at D.C. health clinic
Hospital an oasis of support amid attacks from states
It’s not unusual for Rachel Levine as assistant secretary for health to visit medical facilities on behalf of the Department of Health & Human Services. But her visit last week to the LGBTQ youth clinic at the Children’s National Hospital was special because she was able to meet with transgender youth as an openly transgender presidential appointee.
The visit on Thursday by Levine at the D.C.-based hospital comes not long after the U.S. Senate approved her appointment, making her the first openly transgender presidential appointee to win a Senate-confirmed position. As such, her visit to the LGBTQ youth clinic, where transgender kids come for transition-related care and health services, held particular significance for the patients.
Levine, speaking with the Washington Blade at the end of her visit, said having the opportunity to speak with both transgender youth and medical professionals testing them was “tremendously, tremendously rewarding”
“It’s tremendously gratifying to be able to speak to the medical professionals and the clinic personnel, but particularly to the youth and their families from my experience,” Levine added. “So I have two aspects of that. One is that I’m a pediatrician and adolescent medicine specialist. So I’ve been teaching to children and their families my entire career, but the other is coming from my lived experience as an openly transgender woman, and so I find it tremendously rewarding.”
The warm environment of the hospital for children is readily apparent upon entering the main atrium of the building. Lights dressed up as hot air balloons fill the tall ceiling while a nearby TV shows music videos consisting of squares of kids’ faces singing, followed by easy-listening country music and Asian K-pop. Children and their parents await their appointments seated in comfy plush red chairs before white blocks meant for use as tables.
Key to Levine’s visit was taking part in a discussion at the hospital auditorium with three transgender youth and their families who obtain services at the clinic. During the question-and-answer period, Levine shared her experience as a transgender person who underwent transition later in life and went on to tremendous success as a high-ranking presidential appointee.
For the transgender youth, Levine’s presence at the hospital — at a time when state legislatures are busy enacting bills to restrict their access to medical care and school activities — serves as a reminder that barriers based on gender identity are breaking down and the sky’s the limit for their future.
After the question-and-answer session, Levine told the Blade she “learned a lot” about Children’s National, which she called “a world-renowned children’s hospital and academic medical center.”
“I’ve known about it before,” Levine added. “I’m a pediatrician, adolescent medicine specialist, but I learned more about what they’re doing. And I learned specifically about their gender clinic, where they take care of transgender and gender non-conforming youth and got to meet some of the staff as well as the kids and their families.”
The Youth Pride Clinic, which opened in 2015, is one of the few clinics in the nation to provide primary care and mental health services to LGBTQ youth from ages 12 to 22. Among the services offered are hormone replacement therapy, STP/STI treatment and PrEP services as well as individual and family therapy for transgender youth.
Among the transgender youth patients at the clinic who spoke to the Washington Blade was Amir, a 15-year-old Georgia native whose last name as a minor is being withheld for confidentiality purposes.
“I started out in fifth grade coming out as lesbian,” Amir said. “I didn’t even really know, but when I came out to my grandma in Georgia, where I’m from, I still didn’t feel like myself. So then, later on, me and my friend researched, and next thing you know we came across the term transgender, and I was like, ‘This is who I am. This is me.’”
Amir said he began taking shots as part of care regimen in January. Being able to receive care from the Youth Pride Clinic, Amir said, means a lot because he has an opportunity not available to other transgender youths, who face challenges and even hostility as they make the journey to transition. The staffers at the Youth Pride Clinic, Amir said, are “like a second family” who work hard to provide the services they offer.
Sonia Murphy, Amir’s aunt who became his legal guardian, said when she began reaching out for medical help for Amir she found a two- or three-year wait list to get access to treatment, which she said makes her “saddened” such care isn’t widely available.
“There’s a population of kids and parents out there who need the services and just can’t access it because there’s not enough bandwidth, not enough manpower,” Murphy said.
Amir said he’s getting other avenues of support from his two cousins, one who is older at age 18 and one who is younger at age 12. “They’re like sisters to me, so I call them my sisters,” Amir said. Amir also identified two other male cousins as well as his uncles and his aunt.
“They’re all very supportive of me,” Amir said. “My auntie Tonya, for example, Pride month came up, first day, she sent me a paragraph, saying, ‘I’m glad you’re yourself and you’re open to who you are and things like that,” and that I’m not afraid to be who I am around anybody. It’s just things like that. And for my birthday, I had tons of Pride shirts, and I got a rainbow shirt with the fist in the middle for Black Lives Matter, and it was a ton of different things.”
Lawrence D’Angelo, director of the Youth Pride Clinic and an occupational health adolescent medicine specialist, told the Blade being able to start the facility in 2015 in and of itself was one of the key victories for the initiative, although he said the Children’s National has been providing transition-related care since 1998.
“When we started it…we thought that we were going to be running a PrEP clinic, that we were going to be providing preventive services to LGBTQ kids,” D’Angelo said. “The first day, the first patient actually came in and asked for PrEP, and the other six patients that were scheduled that day all wanted transgender services. So, suddenly, it became obvious what we were going to be spending 90 percent of our time doing, which is exactly what we think we should be doing, because that’s where the need is the greatest.”
Despite the advantages of having access to the Youth Pride Clinic, transgender youth have clear challenges and face hostility based simply on their gender identity, especially in a year when state legislatures have in an unprecedented manner enacted legislation against them. The Youth Pride Clinic, in many ways, is an oasis of support.
Arkansas, for example, enacted a measure that would make criminal the kind of services provided at the clinic. Other states have enacted measures prohibiting “biological boys” from participating in sports, which essentially bars transgender girls from participating in sporting events.
While anti-trans measures aren’t being enacted in D.C. or any nearby states, the advancement of anti-trans legislation in states has had a negative effect on transgender patients at the Youth Pride Clinic.
D’Angelo, based on conversations he’s had with the patients, said they’re aware of the wave of legislation, which he said has led to fear, anger and being “unable to understand what is happening and why it’s happening.”
Amir said watching states enact legislation against transgender youth “makes me feel some type of weight,” pointing specifically to the anti-trans sports measures because he said he’d welcome the opportunity to participate in athletics.
“I’m athletic,” Amir said. “I do all types of sports. I play basketball, soccer, I’m going to do boxing…With sports and stuff, I just feel like I want to be able to do everything, just as a regular cisgender person will be able to do,”
Amir, despite the enactment of anti-trans laws, has an optimistic outlook and said the enactment of state measures against transgender youth demonstrates they’re now “on the radar” of the social conservative movement.
“I feel like if everybody who’s a part of LGBTQ and trans together, we can stand up and we can overcome this because the thing is, there are so many people out there who don’t understand what we do, and the thing is that they’re noticing us, so that’s a start to something big.”
With many states hostile to transgender youth, others are looking to the federal government for support under the Biden administration. On his first day in office, Biden signed an executive order directing federal agencies to implement the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision against anti-LGBTQ discrimination to the fullest extent possible.
Levine cited an announcement from HHS that resulted from this order on implementing regulations prohibiting anti-LGBTQ discrimination in medical care, reversing a policy under the Trump administration that green lighted discrimination, as one of the ways it has answered that call and helped families like the Youth Pride Clinic.
“So the Affordable Care Act says that you cannot discriminate based upon sex,” Levine said. “The Department Health & Human Services and the Office of Civil Rights has interpreted sex to include sexual and gender minorities, to include sexual orientation and gender identity, which means LGBTQ individuals under that. So we need to look at all aspects of the Affordable Care Act, and to work to implement that interpretation of the statute. That was only done a month or so ago, so we’re going to be working on that now.”
Is there anything more the federal government can do to support the clinic? D’Angelo cited a number of key things already secured, including the hospital being able to offer insurance to patients and the affirmation from HHS against anti-LGBTQ discrimination. More research dollars and greater focus from the National Institutes of Health on gender diverse and sexual minority individuals, D’Angelo said, would also be welcome.
“There are things out there that the federal government can do, but I think…there are limitations of what they can do,” D’Angelo said. “They can’t, unfortunately, effect what’s going on in individual states, which is, in some cases draconian. That’s an awful thought if we were practicing medicine in Arkansas, we could be in jail.”
Meanwhile, Levine said the Biden administration, including Secretary of Health & Human Services Xavier Becerra, is working on both internal and external policies to facilities like the Youth Pride Clinic to help them secure their place in the health system and reach transgender youth.
“The secretary and I will be doing everything we can to advocate for the LGBTQ community,” Levine said. “So I think we’re going to be working externally, in terms of advocacy, and then we’re going to be working internally in terms of policy.”
Vice President JD Vance and his wife, second lady Usha Vance, will visit Hungary next week.
An announcement the White House released on Thursday said the Vances will be in Budapest, the Hungarian capital, from April 7-8.
JD Vance “will hold bilateral meetings with” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. The announcement further indicates the vice president “will also deliver remarks on the rich partnership between the United States and Hungary.”
The Vances will travel to Hungary less than a week before the country’s parliamentary elections take place on April 12.
Orbán, who has been in office since 2010, and his Fidesz-KDNP coalition government have faced widespread criticism over its anti-LGBTQ crackdown.
The Associated Press notes polls indicate Orbán is trailing Péter Magyar and his center-right Tisza party.
President Donald Trump removed Attorney General Pam Bondi from her post Thursday, following growing criticism over how she and the Department of Justice handled a range of issues, including matters related to sex offender and Trump ally Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump announced Bondi’s removal on Truth Social, where he also said Todd Blanche will serve as acting head of the Justice Department.
“Pam Bondi is a great American patriot and a loyal friend, who faithfully served as my attorney general over the past year,” Trump wrote on the platform. “Pam did a tremendous job overseeing a massive crackdown on crime across our country, with murders plummeting to their lowest level since 1900.”
Trump was seen as recently as Wednesday with the now-former attorney general at a Supreme Court hearing on citizenship.
The decision contrasts with Trump’s previous public praise of Bondi, the 87th U.S. attorney general and former 37th attorney general of Florida, who served in that role from 2011-2019 before joining the Trump-Vance administration. He has frequently lauded her loyalty and said he speaks with her often. Bondi was also one of president’s defense lawyers during his first impeachment trial.
Privately, however, Trump had grown frustrated that Bondi was not “moving quickly enough” to prosecute critics and political adversaries he wanted to face criminal charges, according to multiple sources. The New York Times reported that her inability to charge former FBI Director James B. Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James with any crimes is a large factor in the president’s choice to fire her from the government’s primary law enforcement agency.
The move comes as Trump has sought to minimize public turmoil within his administration, avoiding the perception of a revolving-door Cabinet that defined his first term.
Lee Zeldin, a former Republican congressman from New York who unsuccessfully ran for governor, has emerged as a leading contender to lead the Justice Department. He has been one of Trump’s most reliable allies.
“He’s our secret weapon,” Trump said of Zeldin in February during a White House event promoting the coal industry, adding, “He’s getting those approvals done in record-setting time.”
Bondi has also growing faced scrutiny from Congress.
The House Oversight Committee recently subpoenaed her to testify about the department’s handling of certain files, where she declined to answer key questions during a contentious House Judiciary Committee hearing in February.
The Tampa native has a long history of opposing LGBTQ rights through her roles in government. As Florida attorney general, she fought against the legalization of same-sex marriage, arguing it would cause “serious public harm,” pushing forward a legal battle that cost taxpayers nearly half a million dollars. She also asked the Florida Supreme Court to overturn a lower court ruling that found the state’s same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional.
More recently, Bondi established a “Title IX Special Investigations Team” within the Justice Department focused on restricting transgender women and girls from participating in women’s and girls’ sports teams and accessing facilities aligned with their gender identity. She also told Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia to turn over the medical records of anyone under 19 who received gender-affirming care.
Her removal follows Trump’s decision last month to oust another controversial female Cabinet figure, Kristi Noem.
The White House
VIDEO: Gay journalist detained for booing Trumps at ‘Chicago’ opening night
Eugene Ramirez booed first family at Kennedy Center
President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump attended the opening night of “Chicago” at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Tuesday. They were greeted by a mix of cheers, applause, and some audible boos.
Among them was Eugene Ramirez, a gay Washington resident, who later shared his account of the night after being briefly detained by security for booing the president and giving a thumbs-down gesture — an expression of what many would call a textbook definition of constitutionally protected speech to criticize the government.
Ramirez attended the opening night performance with a group of friends, hoping to catch a final show before the center undergoes two years of major changes under Trump oversight. The musical, based on a 1926 play of the same name, has become synonymous with Broadway success.
With music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, and a book by Ebb and Bob Fosse, “Chicago” has cemented itself as a cultural staple — known for its signature Fosse choreography, stripped-down staging, and sleek, campy aesthetic. The story follows Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly, women who murder their husbands but — with the help of the manipulative, charismatic, and narcissistic attorney Billy Flynn — walk away scot-free.
It remains the longest-running American musical in Broadway history, and its 2002 film adaptation famously won the Academy Award for Best Picture. On this night, however, the production also became the backdrop for a very modern moment of political protest.
“I accompanied five friends to opening night of ‘Chicago’, as a way to enjoy a final performance in the Kennedy Center as we know it,” Ramirez began to recount to the Washington Blade, describing the moment his group settled into their seats inside the ornate Opera House theater.
Just before the performance began, the twice impeached president and first lady appeared in the balcony box, drawing immediate attention from the audience below. Theatergoers stood, cheered, clapped, and waved, while Ramirez made a different choice.
While accounts of the crowd’s reaction have varied, Ramirez said his response was intentional, immediate, and within his rights. Moments after booing and giving a thumbs-down while recording on his iPhone, security intervened.
The video of Ramirez booing the Trump’s is here:
“Within moments, the director [of security] and another guard approached and escorted me to a side area where several other security guards were waiting,” he said. “I was detained until everyone was seated and the lights dimmed.”
As he was escorted away, Ramirez said his instincts as a journalist kicked in. A former lead anchor for Sinclair’s national evening news broadcast, he said the situation immediately felt off — or more aptly put — as if he could see the strings being pulled from someone attempting to control the narrative.
“Journalism is a vocation, not just a job. I immediately knew there wasn’t just an uncomfortable interaction with security,” he said. “The Kennedy Center is a federally funded cultural institution, and being questioned about speech related to the president in that setting felt like something the public should know about.”
Ramirez explained the difference between a standard visit by a public official and this performance: the president’s appearance wasn’t just ceremonial; it was very clearly a media moment.
“The White House press pool was there, and it was clear this was an effort to manage the president’s image in the media,” Ramirez continued. “The irony was not lost on me that this was happening on opening night of ‘Chicago’, a musical about manipulating the press to shape public perception.”
According to Ramirez, the explanation he received from Kennedy Center Director of Safety and Security Karles C. Jackson Sr., was brief, but illuminating.
“He said, ‘they don’t want booing,’ and even called out my thumbs-down gesture. He never clarified who ‘they’ were, but whether it was the administration or the Kennedy Center, the distinction felt meaningless,” he explained. “Mr. Jackson ultimately told me he was just trying to do his job, shook my hand, and allowed me to return to my seat once the lights dimmed and the overture started playing.”
Ramirez said he didn’t blame the guard individually, noting the broader context of the Kennedy Center’s uncertain future and the pressures staff were under.
“With the center closing in the coming months, some of these security guards being pressured to restrict our freedom of speech may only have a few weeks of work left.”
He believes the decision to remove him was driven less by disruption than optics, particularly given the presence of the press.
“It was very clearly about protection — whether protecting the president from visible dissent, or his image before the media present. There was no disruption as almost everyone was standing and reacting loudly to the arrival of the president and first lady, with cheers, applause, and hand gestures. The difference was that my reaction, unlike most, was negative.”
Drawing on his experience covering public officials, Ramirez said the incident felt more about controlling perception than security.
“Usually, law enforcement may monitor or intervene if there’s a disruption, but here there was no disruption at all. Simply expressing dissent in a public, cultural space drew the attention of security. It made it feel less like a matter of decorum and more like an effort to control the narrative around the president,” he said. “It’s about what happens when dissent is treated as disruption rather than a right.”
“The show hadn’t started. I threatened no one. Billy Flynn would have approved of the optics. The rest of us should be paying attention.”
Ramirez framed the incident as part of a broader constitutional concern, one that is plaguing the Trump-Vance administration as they continue to reject rules and normalcy set forth by other reserved presidents.
“Being singled out by security at a federally funded institution for expressing dissent shouldn’t be brushed off; it undermines the First Amendment,” he said, looking at it slightly distanced from it now. “Being of Cuban heritage, and a journalist, it’s a right I’m not willing to give up readily.”
“Publicly funded cultural institutions should allow visible dissent, even in politically charged moments,” he added. “Of course, I understand the need to manage disruptions during a performance, but that was not the case here.”
The themes of “Chicago”, a long-running satire about media manipulation and public perception, added another layer of irony to the experience, Ramirez explained.
“The satire truly leapt off the stage! A show about controlling the narrative, manipulating the press, and covering up truths by leaning on showmanship and distractions. The show is decades old, but could’ve been written today. We’re being razzle-dazzled daily and it’s getting harder to tell fact from fiction, no matter where you get your news.”
He, being gay, also acknowledged how hard it must have been for the performers on stage, assuming that at least some in the cast were also members of the LGBTQ community — and artists — two things Trump doesn’t always get along with.
“It was not lost on me that many of the actors on that stage, that the president and first lady presumably applauded, are members of the LGBTQ community which this administration has rolled back protections for under the guise of religious liberty and free speech, resulting in blatant discrimination.”
He pointed to a particular number that felt surreal given the circumstances.
“Its ‘Razzle Dazzle’ number celebrates keeping audiences off balance; at its climax, a massive American flag descends as the song celebrates blinding audiences to what is real. Watching that scene after being detained for a thumbs-down was surreal.”
Ramirez said the show’s closing lines were especially sharp given the presidential audience and what he just experienced.
“At the end of the show,
Velma says: ‘You know, a lot of people have lost faith in America.’
Roxie replies: ‘And for what America stands for.’
Velma: ‘But we are the living examples of what a wonderful country this is.’
Roxie: ‘So we’d just like to say thank you and God bless you.’
They had both just gotten away with murder!”
His closing lines, however, were a bit more pointed than “scintillating sinners” Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly’s were in the show.
“Democracy only works when citizens are allowed to boo,” he said. “Tuesday night at the Kennedy Center, ‘Chicago’ made that point better than I ever could.”
The Blade reached out to the Kennedy Center but did not receive a comment back.
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