The White House
Title 42 to end Thursday
Activists sharply criticize new U.S. asylum rules
A rule that closed the Southern border to most asylum seekers and migrants because of the COVID-19 pandemic will expire on Thursday at 11:59 p.m. ET.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in March 2020 implemented Title 42.
The Biden-Harris administration in April 2022 announced it would terminate the previous White House’s policy, but Republican attorneys general from Texas and more than a dozen other states filed a federal lawsuit.
The U.S. Supreme Court last December ruled Title 42 must remain in place. The Biden-Harris administration a few weeks later announced the COVID-19 public health emergency — and Title 42 — would end on Thursday.
“Title 42 exacerbated already dangerous and often deadly situations for LGBTQI people seeking asylum,” San Diego Pride Executive Director Fernando Z. López told the Washington Blade on Tuesday. “It’s tenure caused additional strain on direct services, legal aid and community organizing resources that were felt on both sides of our cross-border region.”
Abdiel Echevarría-Caban, a South Texas-based immigration attorney who the LGBTQ+ Bar in 2021 recognized as one of its 40 best LGBTQ lawyers who are under 40, on Tuesday said Title 42 “needed to end a long time ago, given the country was open to accept travelers through all our airports.”
“It did not make sense to keep enforcing the policy when we have public health safety protocols in place already,” he said. “The use of a public health mechanism to deter asylum seekers at the Southwest border from seeking protection was barbaric, wrong and a misuse of public policy.”
Echevarría-Caban further detailed the impact Title 42 had on LGBTQ and intersex people and other asylum seekers from vulnerable groups that he and other lawyers represented.
“Here, at the Southwest border, we had to request exemptions for people, especially women, children and LGBTQIA people, who were sent back to Mexico, and were exposed to further danger at the streets in Mexico, exposed to cartel violence, extortions, kidnapping and rape,” he said. “Here, in the United States, we have obligations under the Convention Against Torture. The United States was an active party in the development of our current international human rights and refugees system.”
The Associated Press notes the U.S. on Thursday will begin to deny asylum to migrants who don’t seek protection in a country through which they traveled or apply online before they reach the Southern border.
The Department of Homeland Security last fall created a humanitarian parole program for Venezuelans that it expanded to Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans in January.
A senior administration official on Tuesday said the Biden-Harris administration plans to “expand the family reunification parole programs” to Central American countries that include Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras and to Colombia.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who was born in Cuba, on April 27 announced the U.S. will open more than 100 “regional processing centers” throughout the Americas. A senior administration official on Tuesday said they “will facilitate a broad range of legal pathways, lawful pathways to the United States and eventually Canada and Spain as well.”
“Again, our goal is to add these centers to the set of legal pathways that already exist and that the administration has rolled out over the last two years,” said the official.
Another senior administration official said the U.S. has “a robust set of consequences for noncitizens who, despite having these options available to them, continue to cross unlawfully at the border.”
They said the U.S. on Thursday will begin to return them to Mexico under Title 8 after it reached an agreement with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s government. (Mexican prosecutors have announced they will charge the director of the country’s National Immigration Institute after a fire at an immigration detention center in Ciudad Juárez, a border city that is across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, killed 40 migrants on March 27. The Associated Press reported a security camera inside the facility recorded two guards who did not try to help the migrants who were inside the cell in which the fire began. The guards, according to the Associated Press, eventually walked away.)
“It also includes the circumvention of lawful pathways rule that we will be posting for public inspection tomorrow (Thursday) morning, and that rule will place significant conditions on asylum eligibility for individuals who do not take advantage of these robust lawful pathways that we have established, who do not schedule their safe and orderly presentation at the border using our CBP One mobile application, and who do not claim asylum in one of the countries that they travel through,” said the official.
The official further noted the U.S. will begin “significantly expanding … our use of expedited removal at the border.”
“This is our traditional Title 8 consequence for individuals who are encountered between ports of entry,” said the official.
TransLatin@ Coalition President Bamby Salcedo on Wednesday told the Blade it is “unfortunate that instead of moving forward, we continue to go backwards.”
“The elimination of Title 42 will impact all of us, but specifically LGBTQ asylum seekers,” said Salcedo. “It is incomprehensible that this administration is taking this step. It’s about moving forward and bettering the lives of people, not taking away the gains that we have earned with hard work, blood and tears.”
Immigration Equality Legal Director Bridget Crawford in a statement also sharply criticized the Biden-Harris administration over its new rules for asylum seekers and migrants once Title 42 ends.
“We are astonished by the administration’s callous disregard of the dangers President Biden’s asylum ban imposes on LGBTQ refugees. In the final rule — scheduled to go into effect once the Title 42 policy is lifted — the administration doesn’t meaningfully address or fix problems with the ban we identified in the notice and comment process. Instead, using circular logic, the administration dismisses our concerns, and doubles down on the illegal implementation of the ban,” said Crawford.
“This ban is a travesty that will cause LGBTQ refugees (and others) with strong, meritorious asylum claims to be sent back to countries where they will be persecuted or killed,” added Crawford. “By implementing this ban, instead of humane solutions that would effectively and compassionately manage the border, President Biden has broken his promise to protect LGBTQ asylum seekers and refugees.”
The Organization for Refuge, Asylum and Migration works with Jardín de las Mariposas, a shelter for LGBTQ and intersex migrants in the Mexican border city of Tijuana.
ORAM Executive Director Steve Roth on Wednesday said even though his organization “is glad to see an end to Title 42, an unlawful, Trump-era policy, we are deeply concerned about the new barriers to asylum put forward by the Biden administration.”
“President Biden’s restrictions on asylum will have especially harmful and dangerous consequences for vulnerable LGBTIQ refugees and asylum seekers, leaving them in places where their safety will be at risk,” said Roth. “The administration’s new border policies will continue to deny many LGBTIQ refugees their legal right to seek asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border.”
Echevarría-Caban said the new policies will “pose more obstacles, and contrary to what is expected, it will increase the immigration court backlogs.”
“Our government needs to understand that we cannot use domestic law to weaponize immigration proceedings to avoid compliance with our international obligations or due process,” he told the Blade. “Due process is the core of our legal system, without it, who are we as a nation?”
Vice President Kamala Harris is among the administration officials who have publicly acknowledged violence based on gender identity and sexual orientation is among the factors that prompt LGBTQ and intersex people to leave Guatemala and other Central American countries.
Sources in Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez and other Mexican border cities this week have told the Blade that tens of thousands of migrants have arrived in their respective cities before Title 42 ends. It is not clear how many of them identify as LGBTQ or intersex, but violence in these cities remains commonplace. (The State Department currently advises U.S. citizens not to travel to the Mexico’s Tamaulipas state in which the border cities of Matamoros and Reynosa are located because of “crime and kidnapping.” The State Department also advises U.S. citizens to reconsider travel to Mexico’s Baja California, Sonora and Chihuahua states — which border California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas respectively — because of “crime and kidnapping.”)
Paloma de los Ángeles Villegas Pacheco, director of Trans Igualdad, a transgender rights organization in Ciudad Juárez, on Tuesday told the Blade there “is disinformation” among LGBTQ and intersex migrants who are in the city.
“They think that they are going to be able to access the legal asylum process,” said Villegas. “It will be more difficult for them to enter (the U.S.) once Article 42 ends. The impact will be worse for them.”
Altagracia Tamayo is president of Centro Comunitario de Bienestar Social (COBINA), a group that works with LGBTQ and intersex people and other vulnerable groups in Mexicali, a Mexican border city that borders Calexico, Calif., in California’s Imperial Valley.
Tamayo said roughly a quarter of the 600 migrants who are currently living in the two shelters that COBINA operates are LGBTQ. Tamayo, like Villegas, told the Blade there is “uncertainly” around the end of Title 42.
“The problem is that they think they are going to open the borders … they think they are going to receive them,” said Tamayo. “Article 8 is going to impose many, many restrictions.”
A fire destroyed a COBINA shelter in July 2021. Tamayo told the Blade her organization struggles to support the migrants who live in COBINA’s two remaining shelters.
“The heat is coming,” she said. (Summer temperatures in Mexicali frequently exceed 110°F) “We don’t have enough food to give them three meals a day. It is one of the problems of so much waiting, for so many months. It’s definitely very complicated.”
Mayorkas ‘clear-eyed’ about post-Title 42 challenges
Mayorkas on Wednesday during a press conference in D.C. said his agency is “clear-eyed about the challenges that we are likely to face in the days and weeks ahead, which have the potential to be very difficult.”
“Even after nearly two years of preparation, we expect to see large numbers of encounters at our Southern border in the days and weeks after May 11,” he said.
Mayorkas, nevertheless, stressed the end of Title 42 “does not mean our border is open.” He also reiterated the Biden-Harris administration’s immigration policy.
“We will once again process people at our Southern border using our immigration authorities under Title 8 of the United States code,” said Mayorkas. “Our overall approach is to build lawful pathways for people to come to the United States and to impose tougher consequences on those who chose not to use those pathways.”
“We are taking this approach within the constraints of a broken immigration system that Congress has not fixed for more than two decades and without the resources we need, personnel, facilities, transportation and others that we have requested of Congress and that we were not given,” he added.
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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Comings & Goings
Here’s where to watch ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ with fellow fans
‘Queer Eye’ watch party set for Friday
Calendar: January 23-29
Hot rod heaven: Chevy Corvette, Dodge Charger
Two gay candidates running in ‘firehouse’ Va. House of Delegates primary in Alexandria
PHOTOS: Mr. Mid-Atlantic Leather 2026
McBride, other US lawmakers travel to Denmark
