Federal Government
EXCLUSIVE: Trump admin blocks $1.25 million in LGBTQ, DEI grants, which may violate federal law
‘A separation of powers issue,’ that raises questions about Impoundment Control Act
The Trump administration has withheld $1.25 million in congressionally appropriated funds from 20 organizations focused on projects related to LGBTQ and other underrepresented groups in a move that may violate federal law, according to multiple sources.
The National Park Service in January publicly announced the grants, noting that Congress created the Underrepresented Communities Grant Program in 2014 and that it “has provided $8.25 million to State and Tribal Historic Preservation Offices, Certified Local Governments, and nonprofit organizations to expand the National Register of Historic Places through historic surveys and nominations.”
The 2025 grants included three for LGBTQ-related projects.
But within days of that NPS announcement, President Trump took office and signed executive orders halting all federal grants for review by a newly created agency, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Its mission: to root out diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and purge what Trump has called “woke” programs from the federal government.
Among the funding now frozen is money for the National Park Service. Established more than a century ago by President Woodrow Wilson, the NPS was tasked with preserving the nation’s natural and cultural resources “for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations.”
The Recognizing Historic Underrepresented Communities initiative was meant to provide long-overdue support for projects highlighting marginalized communities whose histories had often been ignored. Funding was approved for 20 projects across 17 states and D.C.
Officials from the three organizations focused on LGBTQ-related work confirmed to the Blade that they have not received a penny of their grants — or even heard from NPS about when, or if, the money will arrive. In Washington, D.C., the Preservation League was awarded $75,000 to document LGBTQ+ historic resources in the city. In Providence, R.I., the Preservation Society was slated for $74,692 to conduct an LGBTQ+ survey and prepare a National Register nomination. And in New York, the Fund for the City of New York, Inc., was awarded $32,000 to nominate the residence of Bayard Rustin — the iconic civil rights and LGBTQ activist — as a National Historic Landmark.
If these congressionally appropriated funds are not dispersed by Sept. 30 — the end of the fiscal year — the move would appear to violate the Impoundment Control Act of 1974. One expert on the issue told the Blade that the deadline has already passed because it takes time for the government to distribute funds.
Rebecca Miller, executive director of the D.C. Preservation League, saw funds withheld for LGBTQ-related historical recognition — $75,000 that she called a “tremendous grant.”
“A number of years ago, around 2017, the DC Historic Preservation Office received a grant to do a historic context study, which basically documents the history of the gay movement in D.C.,” Miller told the Blade. “[The historic context study] lays out the groundwork for further identification of spaces that are significant under that particular historic context.”
Some of the landmarks mentioned in that $1.25 million grant included well-known institutions that have supported the D.C. LGBTQ community for decades.
“Specific designated landmarks in D.C. that came out of the context study [include] the Furies collective, the Kameny house, the Slowe-Burrill House, and Annie’s Steakhouse is also designated,” she added.
Those significant locations are integral to understanding LGBTQ history not only in the city but the nation as well, Miller said.
“You can’t tell the nation’s history without telling everyone’s history, and I think in Washington in particular, our grant was supported by Capital Pride and SMYAL, two of the foremost LGBTQ organizations in the city, and it would really be a disappointment to all of us if we can’t continue on with these types of projects.”
“I think D.C. is an inclusive environment, and our goal is to tell the full story of the history of the city of Washington, and you can’t do that without this particular group that’s been so important to its history,” Miller added.
Dr. Marisa Angell Brown, executive director of the Providence Preservation Society, told the Blade the organization received notice that it was chosen for a grant — and then nothing.
“We had a notification of an award, but there was no fund transfer,” Brown said. “With the NPS, that email just never came. And as we were emailing the contact people to ask for more information … it was just silence.”
Brown explained that the funding was going to be used to gain a better understanding of the robust queer history of Providence.
“Basically, what we were going to be able to do was hire a consulting historian to, for the very first time, produce a survey of sites that are associated with LGBTQ+ history in the broadest sense in the city of Providence.”
She added that by withholding the funding specifically for LGBTQ-related projects, the Trump administration is attempting to selectively choose the history it wants to be remembered and preserved.
“What preservation really is is a kind of decision making about whose history deserves space and resources, and so a lot of the history of preservation has been preserving sites that are associated mostly with white men,” Brown said. “I absolutely think that these kinds of moves are direct attempts to curtail civil rights. … Good history contributes to the expansion of civil rights, and that is what we were hoping to do with this project.”
Other groups also confirmed they had not received the funding, including the Diocese of Georgia and the City of Denton, Texas.
Ken Lustbader, co-founder of the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project, said it also has not heard anything from the National Park Service.
“I know that we were awarded on paper, but I don’t have a contract,” Lustbader told the Blade. “The fund doesn’t have a contract at this point.”
Walter Naegle, Bayard Rustin’s longtime partner, told the Blade he was not aware of the grant application and that his emails to the organization about the status of the grant have not been returned.
Robert L. Glicksman, a law professor at George Washington University, said without notifying Congress of a recommendation to change the grants — and a subsequent passage of legislation to reappropriate the funding — this might constitute a violation of the Constitution.
“The president has no inherent authority to refuse to spend funds appropriated by Congress,” Glicksman said. “Congress has the control of the purse under Article I of the Constitution. Any attempt by the president to ignore congressional instructions to spend funds presents a separation of powers issue.”
He added that if the Trump administration is doing this without complying with the law, the implications are serious.
“If he is just doing this without complying with the procedures of the Impoundment Control Act, it seems to me it’s an exercise of authority that’s outside his powers in Article II of the Constitution, and it’s infringing on Congress’s Article I power of the purse.”
“If the president is unilaterally refusing to spend money that a statute requires the executive branch to use, that’s a separation of powers problem,” Glicksman said. “It’s the president usurping power that the Constitution delegates to the legislative branch and not the executive branch.”
He also pointed to the broader stakes of Trump’s move.
“What seems to be going on here is the president’s determination that he knows better about what federal money should be spent on than Congress does. He just doesn’t have the prerogative to make that determination.”
And on why these particular grants matter: “The fact that these properties are all supposed to be dedicated to historical acknowledgments of past improper treatment of minorities and underserved communities seems to me to at least arguably indicate this ideological cast to the decision to not spend these particular funds.”
The Blade reached out to the National Park Service for comment on the status of the grant funds. The agency responded with a short email: “Pending financial assistance obligations are under review for compliance with recent executive orders and memoranda.”
Trump’s second violation of Impoundment law?
The concept of checks and balances has been central to the United States federal government since the Constitution’s creation — born out of the founders’ determination to guard against a king, or an oligarchy, taking hold. But the Trump administration is chipping away at the institutions designed to uphold those checks, as the Blade uncovered, by withholding payments to agencies that support ideas it doesn’t like.
In Federalist No. 51, written by James Madison in 1788, he laid out the system clearly: the legislative branch creates laws, the executive executes them, and the judiciary interprets them. To prevent tyranny, the founders layered in limits on each branch’s powers, hoping to make it impossible for any one leader to impose their will unchecked.
Anyone who sat through civics class might recall one of Congress’s most important roles: the power of the purse. Raising money through taxes and deciding how it gets spent falls squarely on lawmakers — with occasional oversight from the Supreme Court when disputes arise.
That idea appeared again in Federalist No. 78, in which Alexander Hamilton described Congress as holding “the will,” the executive “force,” and the judiciary “merely judgment.” The “will,” Hamilton explained, meant not only making laws but financing them.
That balance was tested in the 20th century. President Richard Nixon, like Trump decades later, began impounding — or withholding — funds that had been explicitly allocated by Congress but clashed with his own views. In response, Congress passed the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, making it illegal for any president to block congressionally approved funding except under very narrow circumstances.
Trump ran into this law before. In 2019, he attempted to withhold congressionally approved military aid to Ukraine unless its government agreed to investigate his political rivals, most notably Hunter Biden, the son of then–Vice President Joe Biden. That decision triggered Trump’s first impeachment trial, which became less about the law and more about Republican loyalty to the president.
Fast forward to 2025 and Trump is at it again, this time targeting domestic programs.
Federal Government
Trump holds housing bill hostage to anti-trans SAVE Act
President’s SAVE Act failed in the Senate
President Donald Trump is refusing to sign a new bipartisan housing bill unless his SAVE Act is approved by the legislative branch.
The bill being prevented from being enacted into law is the “21st Century ROAD to Housing Act.” The legislation is an attempt by Congress to make buying a home in the U.S. Senate more affordable in response to various factors — including housing shortages and regulatory constraints — that have made homeownership increasingly difficult. The total number of homeowners has nearly stopped growing, with high interest rates and surging home prices pushing more Americans toward renting.
The housing bill was considered highly bipartisan, something that is rare in this Congress. The House voted to pass the bill 358-32 on Tuesday after the Senate approved the measure 85-5 a day earlier. The legislation was led by U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Tim Scott (R-S.C.) in the Senate and U.S. Reps. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and French Hill (R-Ark.) in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Some of the highlights of the legislation are aimed at increasing the supply of affordable housing while making homeownership more accessible. The bill would streamline environmental reviews and direct the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to provide guidance to communities on reforming zoning and land-use policies that can create barriers to housing development.
The legislation would also expand the definition of “manufactured housing,” making it cheaper and easier to mass-produce homes built in factories before being transported to their sites. To encourage additional development, the bill would provide grants and loans for the construction of new housing, the rehabilitation of aging properties, and the conversion of vacant buildings into residential units. It would also increase certain banks’ Public Welfare Investment cap, allowing them to direct more capital toward low-income and affordable housing projects.
In an effort to help more Americans purchase homes, the legislation would create a program to expand access to small-dollar mortgages, which are often used to finance lower-cost homes, while also seeking to improve housing opportunities for veterans. The bill would further promote homeownership by limiting the number of single-family homes that large institutional investors can own and requiring them to disclose how many such properties they control, a measure intended to prioritize American families over corporate buyers.
The bill the president wants enacted — the SAVE Act — is a restrictive and anti-transgender piece of proposed legislation.
The bill would impose a number of new limitations on voter registration across the country by amending the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 to require in-person proof of citizenship for anyone seeking to vote in U.S. elections. The bill would also limit acceptable forms of identification to documents such as a birth certificate or passport — records that the Brennan Center for Justice estimates more than 21 million Americans do not possess — effectively restricting access to the ballot. It would also ban online voter registration, DMV voter registration efforts, and mail-in voter registration.
Trump pushed for the SAVE Act to include a provision that would ban gender-affirming medical care for trans minors, even with parental consent, and prohibit trans people from participating in school or professional sports consistent with their gender identity rather than their sex assigned at birth.
Trump also pressed Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) to eliminate the filibuster so the Republican-controlled Congress could pass the SAVE Act, saying Republicans will never win another election without it.
It is expected that Congress will override the president’s veto and pass the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, as it requires a two-thirds supermajority vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate — a threshold the legislation currently exceeds.
It is not expected that the SAVE Act will pass the Senate in its current form. It passed the House, but every Democrat and four Republicans voted against it in the Senate.
Federal Government
Advocates push back on proposed FCC warning labels
New rating system public notice seeking comments issued on April 22
The Federal Communications Commission is considering a new rating system that would require a warning label to appear before any television content that includes LGBTQ characters.
On April 22, the FCC issued a public notice asking Americans to submit comments on whether the TV Oversight Management Board should create new TV ratings to alert viewers to “transgender and gender nonbinary programming” and “the discussion or promotion of gender identity themes.”
This proposed warning would appear before content, similar to warnings that explain a program contains sexual content, drug use, or violence — categories that Congress explicitly included in the Telecommunications Act of 1996 on the grounds of obscenity and violence that some parents “believe is harmful to their children.”
The public notice says that “recently, parents have raised concerns that controversial gender identity issues are being included or promoted in children’s programs without providing any disclosure or transparency to parents.”
It goes on to say that not having a warning for trans and nonbinary people is “undermining the ability of parents to make informed choices for their families.”
LGBT Tech is an organization that works to provide LGBTQ representation in mainstream media or entertainment. The group notes 81 percent of trans respondents it surveyed said these representations had a positive impact on them discovering or learning about their identity.
“These numbers reflect a basic truth: for many people, and especially young people, seeing LGBTQ+ lives represented in ordinary media is not harmful. It is formative, affirming, and often lifesaving.”
Since the public notice’s publication, more than 40 organizations have come out against the proposed alert.
GLAAD President Sarah Kate Ellis issued a statement in May on the proposal, highlighting what she described as a concerted effort by the Trump-Vance administration to other trans and nonbinary people.
“The FCC does not set TV ratings, but under this administration the FCC has repeatedly tried to control what Americans can see on their own televisions. This government overreach is dangerous and a threat to our community and our democracy,” Ellis said.
“LGBTQ+ people and their families deserve to see their lives represented in the media they watch. And media companies must have the freedom to create programming that appeals to their viewers and subscribers without interference from a government pursuing its own anti-LGBTQ+ political agenda.”
Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson pointed out that this is an act of politically motivated policy, not one based on any rhyme or reason.
“LGBTQ+ stories matter and deserve to be told, seen, and heard,” Robinson said. “The Trump administration does not get to use the FCC to try and erase us simply because they want to pretend to live in a world where we don’t exist. This is a brazen form of political interference that will hurt the ability of all people to appreciate, understand, and learn about the world and people around them.”
Brian Dittmeier, director of LGBTQI+ equality at the National Women’s Law Center Action Fund, echoed Robinson’s concerns that this is attempted censorship for the sake of political gain.
“The FCC is cloaking itself in purported concern for parents in an attempt to censor content, intimidate industry, and silence depictions of our trans siblings and neighbors,” Dittmeier wrote. “The FCC is overstepping its authority to undermine the existing ratings system, which is well understood by parents and enjoys broad public support. The FCC’s presumption that it knows better does not reflect parents’ priorities and reeks of government overreach.”
PFLAG National Vice President of Policy and Government Affairs Diego Sanchez said this is federal government overreach into censorship — something the First Amendment protects against.
“The FCC has given us yet another example of what ‘small government’ means: small enough to fit in your living room; to interrupt family movie night; small enough to make home feel unsafe,” Sanchez said. “Parents and families with transgender loved ones in particular know too well how big government actions impact their families directly, because they feel those impacts before everyone else.”
This proposed warning follows a slew of other federal actions targeting trans people in America, including Executive Order 14168, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” which mandated that only sex assigned at birth be used on federal government documents regardless of gender identity, as well as broad-based restrictions on gender-affirming care, particularly for trans minors.
Federal Government
Texas Children’s Hospital reaches $10 million settlement with DOJ over gender-affirming care
Clinic specializing in detransition care will be established
The Justice Department announced May 15 that it has reached a settlement with Texas Children’s Hospital, one of the nation’s top pediatric hospitals.
Under the agreement, the hospital will pay more than $10 million in damages and civil penalties related to its provision of gender-affirming care and will establish a clinic specializing in detransition care.
The DOJ partnered with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office to resolve allegations that the hospital submitted false billings to public and private insurers to secure coverage for pediatric gender-affirming procedures. The department alleges the conduct violated the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, the False Claims Act, and federal fraud and conspiracy laws.
The settlement was reached out of court, meaning neither party formally admitted wrongdoing. Both the DOJ and Texas Children’s Hospital denied liability.
“The Justice Department will use every weapon at its disposal to end the destructive and discredited practice of so-called ‘gender-affirming care’ for children,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a DOJ press release. “Today’s resolution protects vulnerable children, holds providers accountable, and ensures those harmed receive the care they need.”
The DOJ’s hardline stance on gender-affirming care sharply contrasts with the positions of major medical organizations, transgender healthcare advocates, and human rights groups, which broadly support gender-affirming care as an evidence-based treatment for gender dysphoria.
Adrian Shanker, former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health Policy and Senior Advisor on LGBTQI+ Health Equity at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under during the Biden-Harris administration, told the Washington Blade the settlement could have sweeping consequences for trans youth and healthcare providers nationwide.
“The Trump administration’s framing of gender-affirming care is wildly inaccurate, scientifically implausible, and frankly, just mean-spirited,” Shanker told the Blade. “What’s really clear is that the science hasn’t changed, the evidence hasn’t changed — it’s only the politics that have changed. Unfortunately, the people that lose out the most with a settlement like this one are the patients that are denied access to care where they live.”
According to Shanker, the agreement also requires Texas Children’s Hospital to revoke privileges for physicians involved in providing gender-affirming care, potentially limiting their ability to practice elsewhere.
“This is a weaponized Department of Justice doing absurd investigations against providers that are providing care within the established standard of care,” he said. “They’ve come up with an absurd remedy in their settlement to require a so-called ‘detransition clinic’ to open at Texas Children’s. It’s harmful to science, it’s harmful to trans people, and it’s harmful to the medical profession.”
Shanker argued the case reflects a broader politicization of trans healthcare.
“Every American should be concerned about the weaponized Department of Justice and their obsession with trans people and their access to care,” he said. “These hospitals that provide gender-affirming care, the providers of gender-affirming care, have done nothing wrong. They followed the standards of care that are well established and followed the mountain of evidence.”
Karen Loewy, senior counsel and director of constitutional law practice at Lambda Legal, echoed those concerns.
“For Texas Children’s to capitulate to this pressure campaign of both Paxton and the Trump administration and end this care, and go after physicians who had been lawfully and faithfully taking care of their patients, it’s hard to see that as anything other than bending the knee in the face of political pressure,” Loewy told the Blade. “That’s not putting your mission above politics. Your mission is to provide health care for kids that need it.”
Loewy said the settlement reflects years of efforts by Paxton and the Trump-Vance administration to target gender-affirming care providers. Paxton has pursued investigations into providers across Texas since 2022 and supported a 2023 law banning gender-transition-related medical care for minors. Meanwhile, the Trump-Vance administration moved quickly in its second term to restrict trans healthcare access, including through Executive Order 14187, titled “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation.”
“This is a perfect storm of Ken Paxton’s own mission to stigmatize and target trans young people and their healthcare in Texas with the Trump administration’s targeting of trans people and gender-affirming medical care,” Loewy said. “It is the two of them together. Without that, you wouldn’t have had this settlement.”
Loewy also emphasized that the settlement is part of a broader legal strategy targeting providers nationwide.
“You can’t view this one in isolation from all of the other administrative subpoenas that have been sent to hospitals or other kinds of medical providers that have provided gender-affirming medical care to trans adolescents,” she said. “It is all part and parcel of the same direct line from the executive orders that were issued in the first days of this Trump administration.”
“Every court that has considered those subpoenas has found them illegitimate and issued for an improper purpose, or at least narrowed them really dramatically,” she added. “Courts agree these hospitals didn’t do anything wrong. It’s the DOJ that has the problem here.”
Shanker also criticized the settlement’s requirement that the hospital establish a detransition clinic, arguing the move contradicts existing medical evidence.
“The irony shouldn’t be lost on anyone that the Trump administration is claiming that gender-affirming care lacks a scientific basis, and then is requiring the opening of a so-called detransition clinic, which certainly lacks a scientific basis,” Shanker said. “There’s less than a 1% regret rate when it comes to gender-affirming care. That’s lower than knee surgery, lower than bariatric surgery, lower than childbirth, lower than breast reconstruction, and lower than tattoos.”
Loewy was similarly blunt in her criticism.
“This is the most craven, political, ridiculous elevation of ideology over evidence,” she said. “They are creating a program built on an outcome that almost never happens. It is unprecedented and politically mandated rather than healthcare mandated.”
She said the settlement’s broader effect will be to intimidate providers and further marginalize trans people.
“The real effect here is to further stigmatize trans people and intimidate healthcare providers,” she said. “This is about sending a message nationwide that the DOJ is coming after the doctors. These are committed, faithful, law-abiding physicians and healthcare providers who just want to provide the healthcare their patients actually need.”
Both Loewy and Shanker warned that restricting access to gender-affirming care could deepen health disparities for trans people.
“We know that when transgender Americans lack the care that they need, we end up with higher rates of depression, higher rates of anxiety, higher rates of self-harm and suicidal ideation,” Shanker said. “We know that gender-affirming care is a medically appropriate, scientifically grounded form of care that resolves these challenges and leads us toward health equity. It’s unfortunate that the Trump administration has politicized not only transgender medicine, but the very basis of public health.”
Shanker said the restrictions are already prompting some trans people to relocate in search of care.
“We’re already seeing medical refugees leave states that have restricted access to care to move to states where it’s still available,” he said. “Frankly, we’ve already seen some trans people go to other countries to receive care or maintain access to care.”
Loewy said the DOJ’s recent subpoenas targeting hospitals, including those issued to NYU Langone Health in New York, suggest the administration is escalating its legal strategy.
“We’ve seen the DOJ escalate this by convening a grand jury and issuing grand jury subpoenas to hospitals,” she said. “That is going to be the next front in this fight.”
In addition to , there has been as large increase in anti-trans legislation in the past few years — with 126 federal pieces of legislation introduced this year and 26 state level policies passed across the country.
Still, Loewy pointed to recent court victories as evidence that challenges to these policies can succeed.
“Just yesterday, a state court in Kansas struck down that state’s ban on gender-affirming medical care in one of the most meticulous recognitions of the medical consensus and the harm of denying care to trans young people,” she said. “When courts actually look at the science and the impacts on trans people, they still can rule the right way.”
Asked whether there is any optimism to be found amid the ongoing legal battles, Loewy said she continues to draw hope from advocates, families, and community organizers fighting back.
“The solidarity of the community is really what brings hope,” she said. “There are incredible lawyers, advocates, families, and organizations fighting every day to protect these kids and their privacy and safety. It is that community strength and collaborative effort that continues to give me hope.”
Vote to enshrine same-sex marriage in state constitution fails in Delaware
Judge blocks DOJ from obtaining transgender patients’ medical records
Trump holds housing bill hostage to anti-trans SAVE Act
Religion, spirituality, and humanity: finding meaning in a complex world
Queer candidates, allies win Md. primary races
PHOTOS: Baltimore Pride Festival
‘Feeling Afraid’ explores life of a neurotic stand-up comic
PHOTOS: 2026 Capital Pride Parade
Union leader files assault complaint against gay Md. delegate after fight at early-voting site
