The White House
Trump’s shocking East Wing amputation—and the painful fallout Americans won’t ignore
Gay Social Secretary Jeremy Bernard talks about importance of civility
Since Jan. 20, 2025, life in Donald Trump’s divided America has been a series of jaw-dropping split-screen scenarios, flashing at an even faster pace since the resounding anti-Trump, pro-affordability Democratic electoral victories on Nov. 4. But while the weeks before Thanksgiving have injected hope that the No Kings marches, the rule of law, and the 2026 midterms will uphold democracy, Trump’s violently oriented MAGA and Christian National base and his committed Project 2025 backers continue remaking the federal government and fighting the culture wars.
Luxuriating in his own narcissism, Trump ordered the clandestine demolition of the East Wing on Oct. 23 to make way for his 90,000 square foot ballroom. He apparently didn’t care about the national shock at the brutal amputation of America’s beloved cultural arm that balanced the hard political arm of the People’s House.
“This isn’t a real estate deal. This is a living, breathing building. It actually hurts, as a citizen. It’s us. It’s our home. This doesn’t belong to anybody except the blood, the sweat and the tears of every president,” new D.C. resident Roseanne Siegel told NPR.
“For historians and for Americans who love their history, this is a big blow,” said ABC News presidential historian Mark Updegrove.
According to an Oct. 30 poll from the Washington Post, ABC News, and Ipsos, 56 percent of respondents disagreed with Trump’s move while 28 percent favored it. An earlier Yahoo/YouGov poll found 61 percent of respondents rejected Trump’s ballroom plan while 25 percent supported it.
Trump lied. “It won’t interfere with the current building,” Trump said last July about his ballroom plans. “It will be near it, but not touching it. And pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of. It’s my favorite He was dishonest about his intent in terms of we’re not going to touch anything, like it’s going to be close, but not touching,” Kevin Wade, a 52-year-old tech tourist from Texas, told Reuters. “And then now we’re completely demolishing it.”
The East Wing emptiness is now a tourist attraction, a PTSD imprint that — with the rapid developments leading up to Thanksgiving — may inspire a turning point in Trump’s presidency.
On Tuesday, Nov. 18, after a 43-day government shutdown to avoid this moment, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 471-1 to compel the Justice Department to release all files on convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Meanwhile at the White House, Trump gleefully hosted Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who US intelligence believes approved the gruesome 2018 murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. The president scolded ABC News journalist Mary Bruce for embarrassing “guest” MBS with “a horrible, insubordinate” question about Khashoggi’s murder. “Whether you like [Khashoggi] or didn’t like him, things happen.”
In Bob Woodward’s 2020 book, “Rage,” Trump reportedly bragged about shielding MBS: “I saved his ass,” getting Congress “to leave him alone.”
Meanwhile, after the House vote, Epstein survivors huddled at a news conference, holding up photos of themselves as teenagers and young women, asking if Trump is innocent, what is he hiding? Why won’t he release the files now? Suddenly, thrilled survivors learned that the U.S. Senate had unanimously passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act and sent it to Trump for his signature.
Cut to Trump hosting a black-tie dinner for MBS with lots of rich men who do business with the Saudis. The next morning, he announced that he had signed the Epstein bill, with a 30-day deadline.
“It was a remarkable turn of events for what was once a far-fetched effort,” AP reported. “Trump did a sharp U-turn on the files once it became clear that congressional action was inevitable.”
Trump needed a distraction.
Early Tuesday morning, Nov. 18, U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) posted a 90-second video on her X account calling on U.S. servicemembers to not obey unlawful orders.
“The American people need you to stand up for our laws and our Constitution,” said Slotkin with five other fellow military veterans — U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), and U.S. Reps. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.), Maggie Goodlander (D-N.H.), and Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.). “Don’t give up the ship.”
The Uniform Code of Military Justice says troops who disobey a direct order will be punished. But servicemembers and officers also have an obligation to reject any order they deem is unlawful, a reference to the “I was only following orders” Nazi defense during the Nuremberg trials.
There is cause for concern. In his first term, Trump asked about shooting unarmed civilians protesting the murder of George Floyd. In his second term, Trump has threatened to use the Insurrection Act to deploy troops, “unleashed” police, federalized National Guard, and masked and violent ICE and Border Patrol agents in American cities.
“The president was enraged,” Trump’s 1st term Defense Secretary Mark Esper told NPR. “We reached that point in the conversation where he looked frankly at [Joint Chiefs of Staff] Gen. [Mark] Milley and said, ‘Can’t you just shoot them, just shoot them in the legs or something?’ … It was a suggestion and a formal question. And we were just all taken aback at that moment as this issue just hung very heavily in the air.”
Trump found his distraction on Thursday, Nov. 20, reposting a Washington Examiner story about the Democratic lawmakers’ video, adding that it was “really bad, and Dangerous to our Country. Their words cannot be allowed to stand. SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS!!! LOCK THEM UP???” In another post he said it was “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH.”
Trump also reposted a @P78 comment: “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD !!” Bomb and death threats against the Democratic vets “surged.” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said Trump was ‘lighting a match in a country soaked with political gasoline.’”
Cut to Friday. 34-year-old New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani met with Trump, who had vilified the Democratic Socialist. But inexplicably, the meeting turned into an Oval Office lovefest, with an almost giddy Trump, 79, saying it was “OK” that Mamdani had called him a fascist. He promised to help the city.
That night, longtime Trump and MAGA loyalist U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) announced she’s resigning from Congress, effective Jan. 5, 2026.
Greene criticized Trump over “America First” and health insurance policies but a major split occurred when she sided with Epstein survivors over him. Trump called her a “traitor” and vowed to back a primary challenger.
“Loyalty should be a two-way street,” Greene said in her 10-minute video. “I refuse to be a battered wife hoping it all goes away and gets better.”
No one knows what’s coming next.
But for the LGBTQ community, there are other important split screens amid Project 2025 erasure – such as U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.)’s key role as ranking member of the House Oversight Committee focused on transparency and justice for Epstein survivors.
And while Trump was threatening Democratic lawmakers with death on Thursday, Pete Williams, a former NBC News correspondent and press secretary for Vice President Dick Cheney, spoke at Cheney’s funeral at the National Cathedral. Williams told the mostly old-fashioned Republicans how he offered to resign in 1991 when the Advocate was about to out him as gay. Cheney — who loved his semi-out lesbian daughter Mary — said no and checked on him after the story was published. During the horrific AIDS crisis in the early 1990s, ANGLE (Access Now for Lesbian and Gay Equality) fundraised and worked to elect pro-gay politicians. In 1991, longtime gay politico David Mixner introduced ANGLE to his friend, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, whom the group helped elect as president.
Gay people were not welcome at the White House until Clinton, other than one historic visit on March 26, 1977. Decades later, when ANGLE’s Jeremy Bernard was being interviewed by first lady Michelle Obama for the job of Social Secretary, he recalled how difficult it was to get through the East Wing visitors’ entrance during Clinton’s administration.
“I said to Mrs. Obama, ‘It takes a lot to get in these doors. And I think it’s very important for people to feel very welcomed,’” Jeremy says during a recent conversation.
The first lady agreed and “wanted to make sure as many people that never had been to the White House and never thought they would be, got the experience to do it.”
Bernard worked for Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008, then as White House Liaison to the National Endowment for the Humanities before serving as Senior Advisor to the US Ambassador to France. On Feb. 25, 2011, he became the first male and first openly gay person to serve as Social Secretary.
“Jeremy shares our vision for the White House as the People’s House, one that celebrates our history and culture in dynamic and inclusive ways. We look forward to Jeremy continuing to showcase America’s arts and culture to our nation and the world through the many events at the White House,” Obama said in a press release.
“My office was in the East Wing, and I had what I thought was the best office. I looked over toward the South Lawn, but I also had the roof of the East Colonnade below me. I had a window that actually would open like a door, and you could walk out onto the roof as if it was a patio,” Bernard recalls, noting that he was warned to call the Secret Service before going out to avoid getting shot.
“I was so shocked,” Bernard says about the East Wing being demolished. “When I first heard there were bulldozers, I was like, well, what is it they’re knocking down from it?” — finding out later, “the whole thing” was gone.
He felt “some self-sorrow” and “numb” remembering his office. “It really is a part of history, not just for those of us that worked there, but for virtually everyone – whether you were there for a state dinner, a holiday party, or a reception for St. Patrick’s Day, LGBT celebration — whatever it was, everyone came through the East Wing.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom said it well, Bernard says. “Compared to what ICE is doing and all that, it may not rank up there, but it’s symbolic of what’s happened in our country.”
Michelle Obama said it well, too. “We always felt it was the people’s house,” she told CBS “The Late Show” host Stephen Colbert. “I am confused by what are our norms? What are our standards? What are our traditions? I just feel like, what is important to us as a nation anymore? Because I’m lost.”
And, Michelle Obama continued, “I hope that more Americans feel lost in a way that they want to be found again, because it’s up to us to find what we’re losing.”
“The West Wing was work — sometimes it was sadness, it was problems. It was the guts of the White House,” she said. “The East Wing was where you felt light.”
Bernard and Lea Berman, social secretary in the George W. Bush White House, have some suggestions in their book “Treating People Well,” subtitled “How to Master Social Skills and Thrive in Everything You Do.”
“It was important to us to see that despite our differences in how we viewed policy, Lea and I and Lea’s husband — who is an operative in the Republican Party — were very close,” Bernard says.
“I think about what this must be like for kids,” Bernard says. “We always looked at these presidents as a certain type of person.”
But now people hear Trump say, “’I hate my enemies. I want revenge.’ What is that teaching kids?” Bernard asks. “The president of the United States is saying that. I think it’s really frightening. We can’t let that stand.”
“I think we’ve got to go back to the way we were brought up about how you treat other people,” Bernard says. “It’s really important that we focus on the more positive characteristics of human beings … Most communities are very different and we celebrate that. But you can only celebrate it with civility.”
Karen Ocamb is a veteran LGBTQ journalist and former news editor for the Los Angeles Blade. This article was originally posted on her Substack LGBTQ+ Freedom Fighters. Her extended conversation with Jeremy Bernard, who talks more about the East Wing, ANGLE and the Obamas, is embedded in the post.
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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