National
U.S. health officials expand approach to monkeypox vaccines as cases crest
At the end of a summer when the number of cases in the monkeypox outbreak rose sharply, the increase in reported infections now appears to be cresting amid increased public messaging and access to vaccines, prompting U.S. health officials to expand their strategy with a new equity-based effort to combat the disease.
Although the reported number of cases, according to most data from the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, has reached 18,417 in the United States, the number of additional cases decreased from the high at the start of the month, suggesting a downward trajectory in the spread of the disease as vaccines become more readily available.
The numbers are also consistent with a new study finding a significant number of gay and bisexual men, as well as other men who have sex with men, have been limiting contact with casual sex partners, which has been the driving force in the spread of monkeypox. The report from the CDC last week found limiting one-time sexual encounters can significantly reduce the transmission of monkeypox virus, while about half of men who have sex with men are cutting down on sexual activity amid the outbreak, including one-night stands and app hookups.
With the trajectory of monkeypox on the decline, the Biden administration announced a new initiative with the goal of ensuring vaccine distribution is consistent with the value of equity, including on the basis of geographic, racial, and ethnic lines. A total of 10,000 doses of vaccines in the federal government’s supply will be earmarked for localities that have used 50 percent of their allocated supply to support equity interventions, such as outreach to Black and Latino communities, which have been disproportionately affected by the disease or a specific event and celebration for LGBTQ people, health officials announced Tuesday.
Demetre Daskalakis, the Biden administration’s face of LGBTQ outreach for monkeypox and deputy coordinator for the White House monkeypox task force, laid out the details for the new equity-based supplementary initiative in a conference call Tuesday with reporters.
“So what we mean by an equity intervention is what works in your state, county, or city to reach people who we may not be reaching, especially people of color and members of the LGBTQI+ population,” Daskalakis said. “What it means is: It can be working with a specific group or venue that reaches the right people for monkeypox prevention. Once these innovative strategies have been reviewed by CDC, vaccines will be supplied to jumpstart these ideas and accelerate reach deeper into communities.”
The additional equity-based approach to monkeypox vaccine distribution is consistent with the Biden administration’s efforts in recent weeks to distribute additional shots to localities hosting large-scale events for LGTBQ people at the end of the summer, such as Black Pride in Atlanta and Southern Decadence in New Orleans.
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards joined the conference call with reporters on Tuesday and had high praise for the Biden administration for making the additional 6,000 doses of monkeypox vaccine available in time for Southern Decadence, which takes place in the final week of August through Labor Day weekend.
“This is an example — I think a really solid example — of what a federal-state-local partnership and — and then the community providers as well,” Bel Edwards said. “Because the public health folks in New Orleans have been tremendous, but also the community providers.”
Bel Edwards said health officials in the Biden administration have, in addition to providing more vaccines, sent down multidisciplinary teams to New Orleans to help the state organize and prepare as well as set up testing and vaccination sites “that are going to be convenient for the at-risk population.”
A reporter from the New Orleans Advocate on the conference call, however, asked a pointed question on the recent distribution of vaccines to New Orleans in advance of Southern Decadence: The current approach to vaccine administration requires a series of shots, and even with new distribution most people won’t have even had their second shot by that time, so how can Southern Decadence think they will be protected, especially when vaccines take time to become fully effective?
Daskalakis, while promoting the equity-based approach to vaccine distribution, said the Biden administration has been “very clear” that first shot of the monkeypox vaccine “doesn’t mean that you’re protected for the event.”
“We’re going to talk to them about lots of other strategies that they can reduce risk of acquiring monkeypox, but also make it clear that that shot is not for today; it’s for four weeks from now, plus two weeks after that second dose when you get maximum protection,” Daskalakis said.
First death of monkeypox patient reported
Although the number of cases is cresting, concern about monkeypox continues as well as the potential danger of the disease. Case in point: The death of a hospital patient in Texas who had monkeypox, but may have to succumbed to other factors, has drawn attention amid a conventional understanding the skin disease isn’t fatal. The case represents the first time in the United States that a patient with monkeypox died while having the condition.
The patient, as confirmed by the Texas Department of State Health Services on Tuesday, was an adult resident of Harris County who was “severely immunocompromised” and state health officials reviewing the case said it is under investigation to determine what role monkeypox played in the death.
Jenny McQuiston, a CDC official who specializes in research on zoological diseases that spread from animals to people, said in response to a question on the casualty that health officials are also evaluating the death and the role monkeypox played.
“I think it’s important to emphasize that deaths due to monkeypox, while possible, remain very rare,” McQuiston said. “In most cases, people are experiencing infection that resolves over time. And there have been very few deaths even recorded globally. Out of over 40,000 cases around the world, only a handful of fatalities have been reported.”
Despite the cresting in the number of cases, many health experts aren’t sold on the new approach to vaccines announced earlier this month by the Biden administration, which sought to expand existing doses of vaccines fivefold as supply hasn’t met demand. The new vaccine approach calls for injecting the JYNNEOS vaccine from the subcutaneous route (delivery of the vaccine under the fat layer underneath the skin) to the intradermal route (delivery of the vaccine into the layer of skin just underneath the top layer).
Bob Fenton, a regional administrator for FEMA and the response coordinator for the White House task force, said about 75 percent of jurisdictions have already adopted the new approach to vaccine injection, while an additional 20 percent are working toward a “fully operational intradermal method.”
“We continue to be laser-focused on doing everything within our power to help jurisdictions and clinicians get shots in arms,” Fenton said. “We’re seeing more and more jurisdictions adopt the intradermal administration.”
Data of this new intradermal approach, critics have said, is insufficient to support the idea it will be as effective as subcutaneous injections, although the Biden administration continues to give assurances the new route for injections is tested and safe. According to a report earlier this month in the Washington Post, the manufacturer of the JYNNEOS vaccine in Denmark, Bavaria Nordic, privately threatened to cut off supply of the shots based on a conversation with health officials on objections the vaccine hasn’t been approved for intradermal use.
McQuiston, in response to a question on whether or not U.S. health officials are collecting newly available real-world information on the results of the new vaccine approach, said U.S. health officials continue to receive data on monkeypox and soon onboard information from additional states.
“CDC operates a system called VAERS — or the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System — and we’re actively looking at…different types of events that might be reported post-vaccination,” McQuiston said. ” And we are actively gathering information from the different jurisdictions and states and cities about which vaccines they’re administering — whether it’s subcutaneous or intradermal — and we are gathering those data now, as we speak.”
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.”
Federal Government
Top Democrats reintroduce bill to investigate discrimination against LGBTQ military members
Takano, Jacobs, and Blumenthal sponsored measure
Multiple high-ranking members of Congress reintroduced the Commission on Equity and Reconciliation in the Uniformed Services Act into the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, aiming to establish a commission to investigate discriminatory policies targeting LGBTQ military members.
Three leading Democratic members of Congress — U.S. Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), who is the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee’s ranking member and chairs the Congressional Equality Caucus; U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who is the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee’s ranking member; and U.S. Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) — introduced the bill on Tuesday.
The bill, they say, would establish a commission to investigate the historic and ongoing impacts of discriminatory military policies on LGBTQ servicemembers and veterans.
This comes on the one-year anniversary of the Trump-Vance administration’s 2025 Executive Order 14183, titled “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness,” which essentially banned transgender servicemembers from openly serving in the Armed Forces, leading to the forced separation of thousands of capable and dedicated servicemembers.
In a joint statement, Takano, Blumenthal, and Jacobs shared statistics on how many service members have had their ability to serve revoked due to their sexual orientation:
“Approximately 114,000 servicemembers were discharged on the basis of their sexual orientation between WWII and 2011, while an estimated 870,000 LGBTQ servicemembers have been impacted by hostility, harassment, assault, and law enforcement targeting due to the military policies in place,” the press release reads. “These separations are devastating and have long-reaching impacts. Veterans who were discharged on discriminatory grounds are unable to access their benefits, and under the Trump administration, LGBTQ+ veterans and servicemembers have been openly persecuted.”
The proposed commission is modeled after the Congressional commission that investigated and secured redress for Japanese Americans interned during World War II. Takano’s family was among the more than 82,000 Japanese Americans who received an official apology and redress payment under that commission.
The press release notes this is a major inspiration for the act.
“Qualified servicemembers were hunted down and forced to leave the military at the direction of our government,” said Takano. “These practices have continued, now with our government targeting transgender servicemembers. The forced separation and dishonorable discharges LGBTQ+ people received must be rectified, benefits fully granted, and dignity restored to those who have protected our freedoms.”
“LGBTQ+ servicemembers have long been the target of dangerous and discriminatory policies—resulting in harassment, involuntary discharge, and barriers to their earned benefits,” said Blumenthal. “Establishing this commission is an important step to understand the full scope of harm and address the damage caused by policies like ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ As LGBTQ+ servicemembers and veterans face repugnant and blatant bigotry under the Trump administration, we will keep fighting to secure a more equitable future for all who serve our country in uniform.”
“Instead of righting wrongs and making amends to our LGBTQ+ service members and veterans who’ve suffered injustices for decades, I’m ashamed that the Trump administration has doubled down: kicking trans folks out of the military and banning their enlistment,” said Jacobs. “We know that LGBTQ+ service members and veterans have faced so much ugliness — discrimination, harassment, professional setbacks, and even violence — that has led to unjust discharges and disparities in benefits, but we still don’t have a full picture of all the harm caused. That needs to change. That’s why I’m proud to co-lead this bill to investigate these harms, address the impacts of discriminatory official policies like ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ and the transgender military ban, and ensure equity and justice for our LGBTQ+ service members and veterans.”
Takano and Jacobs are leading the bill in the House, while Blumenthal is introducing companion legislation in the Senate.
Takano’s office has profiled and interviewed LGBTQ servicemembers who were harmed by discriminatory policies in the uniformed services.
The Commission on Equity and Reconciliation in the Uniformed Services Act is supported by Minority Veterans of America, Human Rights Campaign, Equality California, SPARTA, and the Transgender American Veterans Association.
In recent weeks, thousands of trans military members were forcibly put into retirement as a result of Trump’s executive order, including five honored by the Human Rights Campaign with a combined 100 years of service, all due to their gender identity: Col. Bree B. Fram (U.S. Space Force), Commander Blake Dremann (U.S. Navy), Lt. Col. (Ret.) Erin Krizek (U.S. Air Force), Chief Petty Officer (Ret.) Jaida McGuire (U.S. Coast Guard), and Sgt. First Class (Ret.) Catherine Schmid (U.S. Army).
Multiple career service members spoke at the ceremony, including Takano. Among the speakers was Frank Kendall III, the 26th U.S. Air Force secretary, who said:
“We are in a moment of crisis that will be worse before it is better. Members of my father’s and mother’s generation would ask each other a question: what did you do during the war? Someday we will all be asked what we did during this time. Please think about the answer that you will give.”
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