Donald Trump‘s Department of Education has unveiled a new policy that will make workers of LGBTQ+ nonprofits ineligible for student loan forgiveness.
The department will publish a rule tomorrow in the Federal Register that would allow the Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, to disqualify government and nonprofit employers that do not align the Trump administration’s agenda from participating in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program.
While no specific organizations have yet been named publicly as ineligible for PSLF under the rule, LGBTQ+ organizations operating as 501(c)(3) nonprofits are likely to be targeted. Even large legal groups like the American Civil Liberties Union or Lambda Legal working to legally protect gender-affirming care could be misconstrued as the “subsidization of illegal activities.”
“This is a direct and unlawful attack on nurses, teachers, first responders, and public service workers across the country,” Democracy Forward and Protect Borrowers said in a joint statement. “Congress created the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program because it is important for our democracy that we support the people who do the hard work to serve our communities.”
“This new rule is a craven attempt to usurp the legislature’s authority in an unconstitutional power grab aimed at punishing people with political views different than the administration’s,” it continued. “In our democracy, the president does not have the authority to overrule Congress. That’s why we will soon see the Trump-Vance administration in court.”
The Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program forgives the student loans of those who work for federal, state, tribal, or local government, or for non-profit organizations, after they’ve made payments for ten years (120 payments). The program was created as part of the 2007 College Cost Reduction and Access Act and signed into law by President George W. Bush as a way to encourage students to pursue careers in public service.
Trump signed an executive order in March that drastically limits who qualifies for PSLF, preventing forgiveness for people who work at organizations that engage in the supposed “subsidization of illegal activities, including illegal immigration, human smuggling, child trafficking, pervasive damage to public property, and disruption of the public order.”
The order directly singled out organizations that assist trans people, including with gender-affirming care, which it falsely refers to as “child abuse, including the chemical and surgical castration or mutilation of children.”
More than one-third (35 percent) of LGBTQ+ adults ages 18 to 40 — an estimated 2.9 million — held more than $93.2 billion in federal student loans at the beginning of the Biden Administration, according to a March report from the Williams Institute and the Point Foundation, including over half (51 percent) of trans adults, 36 percent of cisgender LBQ women, and 28 percent of cisgender GBQ men.
Luis Vasquez, Senior Legal Writer for the Human Rights Campaign, told The Advocate that “this rule is simply about bullying LGBTQ+ people and nonprofits and other progressive groups and making life more difficult for those who Donald Trump dislikes.”
“The result is that it would keep talented people from pursuing careers in public service, fearing that they may suddenly lose eligibility for this program on a whim,” Vasquez said. “The administration is once again going beyond what Congress has authorized, pursuing a discriminatory policy without legal basis. This hurts innocent people and should be rescinded immediately.”
“Hey hey, ho ho, Donald Trump has got to go,” protestors chanted in the middle of Times Square, among a sea of signs that read “love reigns not kings,” “gays against faux-king Trump,” “we stand with … our trans family,” and “the future is coming.”
On Saturday, independent analysts estimated that the No Kings March drew between 5 and 8 million people, and organizers say over 7 million people attended 2,700 events across all 50 states. The event, which was organized to push against the rise of authoritarianism in the U.S., was the largest single-day protest in America since 1970.
Among the crowd were countless LGBTQ people, fighting back against an administration that has introduced a litany of anti-LGBTQ executive orders and used vile rhetoric to denigrate queer people. This backsliding of LGBTQ rights, according to experts, has a deep connection to authoritarianism, with research showing that when governments weaken protections for queer and trans people, they often turn to broader democratic institutions next.
“Threats to democratic institutions and threats to LGBTQ rights are mutually reinforcing, generating a vicious cycle that strengthens authoritarian control,” Ari Shaw, director of International Programs at the Williams Institute, told Uncloseted Media. “Increased persecution of minority groups, including LGBTI people, is itself evidence of democratic backsliding by indicating the erosion of liberal democratic norms [meant to protect] minority rights.”
Legal Abuse of Power
One of the ways the Trump administration’s abuse of power has been most evident is through its legal actions.
He’s also slashed HIV funding at a staggering rate. Uncloseted Media estimates that the National Institutes of Health has terminated more than $1 billion worth of grants to HIV-related research, including 71% of all global HIV grants.
It was these cuts that prompted Brooklynite Jeffrey Cipriano to turn out to protest. “The specific reason that I’m protesting is actually on the shirt I’m wearing,” says Cipriano, referring to his red “This is what an HIV advocate looks like” t-shirt.
“My best friend works for an organization called AIDS United. … His job is to travel the country and help people get AIDS medication, specifically trans and unhoused community members. But his job is at risk,” he says. “The end outcome of his work is that people who have issues in their lives have the issues resolved, and that’s going away under the current administration.”
Executive orders are based on powers granted to the president by the U.S. Constitution or by Congressional statutes. The president cannot use an executive order to create new laws or spend money unless Congress has authorized it. They are meant to direct how existing laws are implemented. But Trump has ignored democratic norms, often filling agencies with loyal supporters, using orders to go after political opponents, and pushing the limits of what the law allows.
In some cases, he has moved illegally. “The President is directing various executive branch officials to adopt policy that has either not yet been adopted by Congress or is in violation of existing statutory law,” says Jodi Short, professor of law at UC Law San Francisco. “The analogy to a king and what has troubled many about this presidency is the sheer consolidation of executive branch power in one individual.”
Short’s colleague, Dave Owen, agrees. “Illegality has been rampant,” he told Uncloseted Media in an email. “People are often cynical about the government, and they might think what Trump’s doing is nothing new. But most of the time, the executive branch takes the law seriously, and both legal constraints and norms of good governance matter,” he wrote. He says that through history, there’s been “a lot more integrity and a lot less lawlessness than most people realize.”
“This administration has broken with those traditions,” he adds.
Revolt Against Executive Orders
Many Americans have recognized this. A survey from April found that 85% of Americans agreed or strongly agreed that the president should obey federal court rulings even if he doesn’t like them.
In response to Trump’s overreach, more than 460 legal challenges have been filed across the country challenging his executive actions. One of these is a federal lawsuit by Lambda Legal and the Human Rights Campaign Foundation that challenges the constitutionality of the Trump administration’s ban on military service by transgender people. Another lawsuit challenges Trump’s order directing federal agencies to withhold funds from medical providers and institutions that provide gender-affirming medical treatments for people under 19.
Both of those lawsuits are one reason 17-year-old Zoe Boik came out to protest with her friends and her dad. “Obviously, I’m disappointed and kind of helpless because there’s nothing I can directly do to change or impact anything that’s going on,” says Boik, who identifies as pansexual and gender fluid and is not legally allowed to vote.
Boik—who was seven years old when Trump announced his run for presidency in 2015—says she’s doing a research paper on Trump’s trans military ban and is frustrated because she sees it as inexplicable discrimination. “They’re not letting trans people serve… which doesn’t make any sense.”
LGBTQ Rights and Democratic Backsliding
This type of blatant discrimination is often a key sign of a country moving closer to authoritarianism and away from democracy. According to a 2023 research paper by Shaw and his colleagues, anti-LGBTQ stigma may contribute “to the erosion of democratic norms and institutions.”
The paper found that when a country with relatively high acceptance of LGBTQ rights introduces anti-LGBTQ legislation, it clashes with what most people believe and can weaken public trust in democracy, deepen political divides, and make it easier for populist or extremist movements to gain power.
“The level of acceptance of LGBTQ people is closely associated with the strength of democracy in a country,” Shaw says. “In some cases, we even saw that rising anti-LGBTQ rhetoric or policies preceded a broader decline in democracy.”
In Brazil, for example, early democratic gains coincided with rising LGBTQ acceptance, including legal recognition of same-sex unions and workplace protections. But as populist President Jair Bolsonaro came into power in 2019, he began questioning—without evidence—the security of Brazil’s voting systems, saying he would only lose his re-election campaign if there were fraud. He was also accused of trying to intervene in operations held by the Federal Police about the alleged criminal conduct of his sons, and he told his ministers that he had the power and he would interfere—without exception—in all cabinet ministries. At the same time, LGBTQ protections were rolled back, and schools and civil society faced censorship, suggesting that falling LGBTQ acceptance may have “preceded Brazil’s democratic erosion,” according to Shaw’s paper. In September of this year, Bolsonaro was sentenced to 27 years in prison for plotting a military coup.
Another example is Poland’s democracy weakening since 2015 under the Law and Justice Party, which consolidated power by undermining the Constitutional Tribunal, installing loyal judges, and restricting independent media. Anti-LGBTQ rhetoric became central to the party’s nationalist platform, fueling the creation of nearly 100 “LGBT ideology-free zones,” inciting violence against LGBTQ individuals, and stymying legal recourse through politicized courts.
When it comes to LGBTQ rights, Trump has mimicked the moves of these leaders even though most of his constituents don’t want it: A 2022 survey from the Public Religion Research Institute found that 80% of Americans favor laws that would protect LGBTQ people against discrimination.
“The definition of an authoritarian system is a system where power is consolidated in one individual whose power is unchecked by any other institution. And I fear that in certain domains, that’s the direction in which this administration is trying to move us,” says Short. “I think it’s incredibly dangerous.”
Attacks on Higher Education
Another common tool in the authoritarian playbook is attacking higher education.
While many universities are rejecting Trump’s demands, others are experiencing a chilling effect, changing their policies before the administration tries to hold up funds.
“I’m here because I’m angry and I feel that we aren’t angry enough,” Maddy Everlith, a sophomore gender studies major at Pace University, told Uncloseted Media as she marched with her friends. “Being a woman of color in America and having so many intersectional identities is also what affects me.… I want to stand up and advocate for other people.”
Everlith’s university responded to Trump’s threats in September by renaming its DEI office to the “Division of Opportunity and Institutional Excellence.”
“I am beyond horrified how quickly our university was willing to bend the knee on this decision,” Austin Chappelle, a senior at Pace, told the student newspaper. This change comes in the midst of uncertainty under the Trump administration, which has already caused many LGBTQ students to feel uneasy on campus.
“It’s part of an electoral strategy to try to mobilize right-wing voters to distract from other sorts of political or economic scandals,” Shaw says, adding that this tactic is another way to gain power.
The pain of this rhetoric has affected millions of trans Americans and allies alike, including Lars Kindem, a 64-year-old retired pilot from Minnesota who was marching to support his transgender sister.
“What Trump has done is he’s taken people that haven’t done anything wrong and has turned them into scapegoats,” he says, adding that Trump’s language is “hateful, petty, mean, and hurtful.”
He says his sister and her partner are having issues getting the correct gender markers issued on their passports. Because of the Trump administration’s treatment of the community, they are making plans to move to Denmark, where “there’s a lot more acceptance.”
Christian Nationalism
This scapegoating has played into the hands of Trump’s voter base of white evangelical Protestants, the only major Christian denomination in the U.S. in which a majority believes society has gone too far in accepting transgender people.
Since 2020, Trump has increasingly embraced Christian nationalism in his rhetoric and imagery. He’s sold Bibles, created a federal task force on anti-Christian bias, and been intrinsically linked to Project 2025, the 920-page plan calling for the establishment of a government imbued with “biblical principles” and run by a president who holds sweeping executive powers.
Experts say that “a strong authoritarian streak” runs through conservative Christianity. A 2023 study found that supporters of Christian nationalism tend to support obedience to authority and the idea of authoritarian leaders who are willing to break the rules. Nearly half of Christian nationalists support the notion of an authoritarian leader.
“They are trying to use the language of Christianity, but they are abusing it and misusing it constantly,” Rev. Chris Shelton, a gay pastor at the protest, told Uncloseted Media. “Our faith is all about reaching out to the marginalized, reaching out to the people who are ostracized by society and embracing them and offering love and welcome and a sense of dignity and worth. And to see any human being’s worth being denied is just a mockery of our faith.”
Heidi Beirich, the vice president and co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, says that “the LGBTQ community is the prime target of modern authoritarian regimes.”
“For Christian nationalists, attacking LGBTQ rights is the first pillar in destroying civil rights for all. This has happened in countries like Hungary and Poland as authoritarianism consolidated, and now it’s happening here,” Beirich told Uncloseted Media.
Moving Forward
As the country bleeds toward authoritarianism, LGBTQ protestors are encouraging people to use their voice, something the queer community is familiar with doing: One 2012 survey found that queer folks are 20 times more likely to be active in liberal social movements than their straight, cis counterparts.
“It is imperative that people continue to pay attention,” Short says. “There is so much going on, a lot of it is disturbing and intense, and there’s such a strong impulse to look away. But we have to engage in political action and resist inappropriate assertions of authority and continue to show up and vote for our democracy.”
17-year-old Zoe Boik is ready. She remembers being in second grade and crying the day after Trump won his first election in 2016. She couldn’t believe how he could lead the country despite “all the bad things he said.”
Boik can’t wait until the midterm elections, when she will be 18 and finally able to vote. “If we don’t vote, then our voices won’t be heard,” she says.
Despite this, she’s also concerned about her freedom to exercise that right being jeopardized.
“My fears about Trump don’t stem specifically from me being queer, but from his authoritarianism as a whole,” she says. “I am scared about how far he will move into dictatorship, [and] my biggest fear is that our right to vote will be compromised, leaving us no recourse.”
Throughout Ali’s childhood in Iraq, he was repeatedly bullied by students and teachers for what he described as his feminine behavior. During his pre-teen and teenage years, men sexually assaulted him, but he couldn’t report it to the police for fear that he’d be thrown into jail for years since Iraq has criminalized homosexuality.
Ali was afraid to come out or talk about these assaults to his family. Although he wasn’t sure if his father knew he was gay, his dad knew other LGBTQ+ people from his travels abroad for work. His father used to tell him, “One day, we’re gonna go to travel to Europe or America and have a good life,” adding, “You’re gonna be safe and you’re gonna be happy.” But then his father died of a heart attack in 2014, and Ali’s abusive older brother (10 years his senior) assumed control of the family, making Ali terrified for his future.
In November 2023, Ali went out with another man for ice cream. While they were out in the rain, five Iraqi police officers suddenly surrounded and arrested them, believing they were romantically involved. Though Ali lied and told the officers they were just cousins, the officers accused them of being prostitutes and slapped, kicked, and hit them in the streets, eventually taking them to the police station.
At the police station, they took Ali’s phone and found images of male models and some men kissing. Police said that the images confirmed Ali’s intent to conduct sex work. They forced him to sign a confession that he had had sex with another man; one officer tried to coerce Ali into performing oral sex; and the police eventually threw him in jail, leaving his family with no clue as to his whereabouts.
In the remote jail, far from the city where Ali lived, he shared a cold, small, crowded cell with about 15 other people, ranging in age from 15 to 60. The police took Ali’s clothes and gave him dirty ones to wear, along with a small blanket.
“Everyone’s sleeping next to each other [on the floor] so close, and it was just so scary,” he told LGBTQ Nation. “Like, I was thinking an animal can’t even live there.” One guard suggested that he tell other inmates that he was arrested for using counterfeit money, because if he admitted he was gay, they might mistreat him.
“I was ultimately released, but I was terrified for my safety because the police had my home address and personal information and had accused me of being gay. I believed I could be imprisoned at any time,” Ali said in a court document explaining his situation. “After my arrest, I knew I had to leave the country to survive. I did not feel that I could trust anyone.”
Ali’s experiences mirror that of other LGBTQ+ Middle Easterners who are entrapped, harassed, detained, and tortured under suspicion of being queer. Ali considered taking his own life to escape the persecution, but he couldn’t go through with it.
A second chance, but with the U.S. government working against him
Ali eventually applied for aid under the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), a 1980 federal program that has helped millions of refugees fleeing persecution in their home countries to relocate safely in the United States and build lives, families, and businesses.
Refugee processing and resettlement are lengthy processes requiring participation from numerous governmental and nongovernmental entities. Ali, like thousands of refugees, first underwent extensive security checks and referrals before being approved under USRAP and resettling into a single apartment in the United States.
“When I learned I would be resettled in Dallas, I was so excited that I began screaming with happiness and jumping and dancing,” Ali said.
It’s hard to know exactly how many LGBTQ+ people seek asylum in the U.S., but a 2021 study by the Williams Institute estimated that 11,400 LGBTQ+ individuals did so between 2012 and 2017. Approximately 4,385 of them made asylum claims specifically related to their LGBTQ+ status.
I am very concerned that if people back in Iraq learned about my sexual orientation and my interactions with the police, my family would be in danger.Ali, a gay Iraqi refugee currently living in Dallas, Texas
He came to the U.S. with only $120 to his name. Upon arrival, Catholic Charities provided him with a case manager and financial assistance for his first three months, as well as help in finding other programs to assist him in getting a job and obtaining basic necessities. Ali soon applied for a matching grant program that would cover one year of rent and utilities and provide him a monthly allowance, as well as a Refugee Cash Assistance program to provide a monthly stipend for six months and potentially longer.
However, by early February, he was notified that both programs had shut down due to an executive order signed by Donald Trump on January 20, entitled “Realigning the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program.” The order claimed that federally funded programs for admitting refugees aren’t in the country’s best interests because they “compromise the availability” of “taxpayer resources” for American citizens.
Trump’s order effectively halted refugee admissions indefinitely, ending USRAP and freezing millions in congressionally appropriated USRAP funding. Trump’s order threw Ali’s life into disarray, stranded thousands of other refugees and separated families who had already been approved under USRAP, and ended the funding of various groups and charities that used federal funding to provide vital survival benefits to refugees.
Ali learned that the case manager helping him secure benefits had been laid off after Trump’s order, and his apartment managers told him he might be evicted if he couldn’t pay the rent. Running out of food, he subsisted on peanut butter.
In response to the chaos, the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) filed Pacito v. Trump on February 10 in the Western District of Washington. The case is a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of the individuals and major resettlement agencies harmed by Trump’s order. It asserts that, by indefinitely ending USRAP, Trump and federal agencies exceeded their lawful authority and violated both federal law – and rulemaking procedures required under the Administrative Procedure Act – as well as the Constitution. The lawsuit seeks to block the order, restore funding, and enforce long-established protections for refugees.
In March, a district court agreed with IRAP’s lawsuit and granted a preliminary injunction against Trump’s order, writing, “The results have been harrowing.” The court noted that refugees have few (if any) rights – they have no right to work; limited access to healthcare, housing, or education; and often face discrimination.
Luckily, a charity helped Ali find a job at a local coffee shop, and he also secured a second job at a local mall. He had learned English, he said, by watching old episodes of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, a reality TV show about an ethnically Armenian celebrity family living in the United States. Now, he has made several good friends and has started building a community by attending a local church.
But other individual refugees who had been approved to come to the U.S. under USRAP after years of processing have either been stranded in the U.S. without homes or work or else trapped in their home or host countries as their scheduled flights to the U.S. were abruptly canceled, the district court wrote in its May decision. This has left the refugees vulnerable to physical danger and financial hardship without stable housing, income, basic necessities, alternative paths to refuge, or access to integration services that would help them become self-sufficient.
Furthermore, Trump’s order effectively defunded congressionally mandated resettlement-support services, making them unable to pay their employees and keep their offices open and undermining decades of work building up infrastructures, relationships, and the associated goodwill to facilitate refugee integration in local communities. The order required these services to furlough or lay off hundreds of staff all over the United States, threatening their continued existence.
The courts are trying to restrain Trump, but he has other plans
In April, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals granted the federal government a partial emergency stay of the district court’s injunction. While the appeals court has required the government to reinstate resettlement and placement services to refugees for 90 days after their admission into the United States, the court also appointed a magistrate judge to help review individual cases of refugees harmed by Trump’s order, while IRAP’s class action suit continues to be heard by the courts.
“Iraq is a very unsafe place for LGBTQ+ people,” Ali said in his court filing. “When I speak to people back in Iraq, I hide the fact that I’m gay and that the police arrested and abused me for being gay… I am very concerned that if people back in Iraq learned about my sexual orientation and my interactions with the police, my family would be in danger.”
I want to help everyone in my situation because it is difficult for me now, and I know there are other refugees who recently arrived and are struggling even more than me.Ali, a gay Iraqi refugee currently living in Dallas, Texas
Ali also worries that, if he criticizes the Trump Administration for ending USRAP, conservative organizations could somehow locate his name and personal information for harassment or violent retaliation. If his name is made public, it could make it even more difficult for him to find employment or could lead to other kinds of anti-immigrant and anti-gay discrimination.
Ali understands that, in this case, he’s not only representing himself, but thousands of other refugees nationwide and across the world. “I want to help everyone in my situation because it is difficult for me now, and I know there are other refugees who recently arrived and are struggling even more than me.”
The Trump Administration is considering a radical overhaul of USRAP that would continue to largely defund the program and reduce the number of refugees allowed annually into the U.S. from 125,000 (the number established by former President Joe Biden) to 7,500. Trump’s plan would give preferred relocation assistance to English speakers, white South Africans, and Europeans who have left their countries after making anti-immigrant statements or supporting anti-immigrant political parties, The New York Times reported on October 15.
“[Trump’s plan reflects] a preexisting notion… as to who are the true Americans,” said Barbara L. Strack, a former chief of the refugee affairs division at Citizenship and Immigration Services during the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations. “And they think it’s white people and they think it’s Christians.”
In a statement, IRAP wrote, “These actions reflect a broader pattern of President Trump attempting to strong-arm other branches of government into rubber-stamping his political agenda, sidestepping the checks and balances Congress established to ensure refugee policy serves humanitarian – not partisan- ends. Such departures from established process and principle undermine the United States’ legal obligations and moral leadership, sending a dangerous message that access to refuge may depend on identity rather than need.”
Hate crimes against LGBTQ+ people are rising around the world as politicians target them through legislation and rhetoric.
Anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes have increased in the past five years across the United States, the United Kingdom, and Europe, according to a new report by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, with transgender and gender nonconforming people particularly affected. The spike may in part be attributed to world governments passing anti-LGBTQ+ policies, which has “escalated internationally in tandem with political rhetoric.”
Some of the high profile incidents cited in the report include the mass shooting at the LGBTQ+ bar Club Q in Colorado that left five dead, the 2023 murder of a woman in California who was not LGBTQ+ because she flew a rainbow flag in her store, and the arrests of 20 members of the white supremacist group Patriot Front in 2023 who intended to riot at a Pride event in Idaho.
“These threats come from across the spectrum of ideological extremism, but frequently from groups that also pose a threat to the state and are openly opposed to democratic norms,” the report notes.
In the U.S., hate crimes against LGBTQ+ people remained high despite an overall decrease in violent crime. Out of 11,323 single-bias incidents the FBI reported in 2024, 2,278 (17.2 percent) were based on sexual orientation and 527 (4.1 percent) were based on gender identity. Hate crimes based on sexual orientation were the third-largest category, with crimes based on race, ethnicity, or ancestry being first and religiously motivated crimes second. Gender identity bias was the fourth-largest category.
Threats and harassment against school board officials in the U.S. also increased by 170 percent from the previous year in November, 2024 to April, 2025, the ISD report notes. Many of these threats were explicitly motivated by an anti-LGBTQ+ bias, with the perpetrators objecting to age appropriate queer books or content in public schools.
“LGBTQ+ individuals, who gained unprecedented civil rights in previous decades, are now increasingly targeted by online and offline hate, political rhetoric, censorship and legislation,” the report states. “A series of actions have sought to exclude LGBTQ+ people and culture from public life, ranging from book bans to a spread of legislation restricting trans people. In tandem, terror attacks (or the threat of terror attacks), violent extremist activity, and hate crimes targeting LGBTQ+ individuals have increased or remained consistently high since 2020.”
The presidential administration has quietly ended federal employees’ insurance coverage for gender-affirming care. An LGBTQ+ legal advocacy organization called the policy “not only cruel, [but] illegal.”
A letter sent last Friday from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management Healthcare and Insurance to insurance companies said that the Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) and Postal Service Health Benefits (PSHB) Programs will no longer cover “gender transition” services for people of all ages starting in 2026. The letter says that insurance companies can develop an exemption process for patients currently receiving gender-affirming care “on a case-by-case basis,” though it doesn’t specify how.
However, the programs will still cover “counseling services for possible or diagnosed gender dysphoria,” including “faith-based counseling,” which might be a euphemism for conversion therapy, a widely debunked pseudoscientific practice that purports to change a person’s gender identity or sexual orientation.
The letter also directs insurance companies not to “list or otherwise recognize” providers of gender-affirming care in directories of medical professionals and clinics covered by insurance, Them reported.
In a statement condemning the letter, the LGBTQ+ legal advocacy group Lambda Legal wrote that the “policy violates constitutional protections and multiple federal anti-discrimination laws.”
“This discriminatory policy… is not only cruel—it is illegal,” wrote Lambda Legal Counsel and Health Care Strategist Omar Gonzalez-Pagan.
“The federal government cannot simply strip away essential healthcare coverage from transgender employees while providing comprehensive medical care to all other federal workers,” Gonzalez-Pagan added. “Beyond the fundamental equal protection guarantees enshrined in our Constitution, which prohibit such animus-laden actions, multiple federal laws also prohibit this type of discrimination.”
Lambda Legal pledged to explore all options to respond to the discriminatory policy and asked federal employees harmed by the policy to contact their organization.
While the current presidential administration has sought to eradicate gender-affirming care for trans youth, something the administration calls “chemical or surgical mutilation,” this policy change is one of many that show the administration’s interest in ending gender-affirming care for trans people of all ages.
In January, the president issued an executive order (that has since been blocked by several courts) instructing the Department of Justice to use laws against false advertising to prosecute any entity that may be misleading the public about the long-term effects of gender-affirming care.
On February 7, the Department of Defense issued a memo halting gender-affirming medical procedures for adult military service members. In June, the administration finalized a rule modifying the Affordable Care Act to remove requirements that insurance providers cover gender-affirming care as an essential health benefit.
Gender-affirming care is supported by all major medical associations in the U.S., including the American Medical Association, the Endocrine Society, and the American Academy of Pediatrics, as safe and life-saving for young people with gender dysphoria.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) has issued subpoenas to medical providers who offer gender-affirming care to transgender youth, demanding that they provide private information on their young patients. The subpoenas demand “billing documents, communication with drug manufacturers, patient’s Social Security numbers, addresses, emails, Zoom recordings, voicemails, encrypted text messages, as well as every writing or record of whatever type” doctors have made from January 2020 to the current day, The Washington Post reported.
While Attorney General Pam Bondi admitted last month to sending 20 subpoenas to hold “medical professionals and organizations that mutilated children in the service of a warped ideology” accountable, she didn’t specify which organizations and individuals received the subpoenas. Anonymous informants told the aforementioned publication that some of the subpoena recipients (who got the subpoenas in June) operate in states with laws protecting gender-affirming care for youth. One trans civil rights activist called the incident an “unprecedented and disgusting violation of medical privacy.”
“[The government] is using its investigative powers to target medical providers based on a disagreement about medical treatment rather than violations of the law,” Jacob T. Elberg, a former federal prosecutor specializing in health care fraud, told The Washington Post. He added that the DOJ must show that the information it demanded is “relevant to a legitimate law enforcement probe.”
The publication contacted numerous clinics and professionals offering gender-affirming care for youth, but none would say whether they had received a subpoena, citing fears of violent threats or government retaliation. Other hospitals have been closing their trans youth clinics and erasing any mention of gender-affirming care from their web pages to avoid federal threats to cut funding or pursue prosecutorial charges.
“The subpoena is a breathtakingly invasive government overreach,” said Jennifer L. Levi, senior director of transgender and queer rights at the LGBTQ+ legal advocacy group GLAD Law. “It’s specifically and strategically designed to intimidate health care providers and health care institutions into abandoning their patients.”
Fewer than 3,000 teens nationwide receive puberty blockers or hormone replacement therapy, according to a 2025 JAMA analysis of private insurance data, The Post noted.
Responding to the news, transgender civil rights lawyer Alejandra Caraballo wrote via Bluesky, “This is an unprecedented and disgusting violation of medical privacy,” adding, “The fact that no lawsuit has been commenced challenging these subpoenas in court is ominous. My best guess is that many of the providers have complied and now DOJ is potentially sitting on the records of thousands of trans youth covering everything from therapy notes to pre- and post-op photos.”
Though there is no federal law banning gender-affirming care, the current presidential administration has sought to eradicate the practice through a January executive order (that has since been blocked by several courts). The order instructed the DOJ to extend the time that patients and parents can sue gender-affirming doctors and to use laws against false advertising to prosecute any entity that may be misleading the public about the long-term effects of gender-affirming care.
In April, Bondi issued a memo to DOJ employees, telling them to investigate and prosecute cases of minors accessing gender-affirming care as female genital mutilation (FGM); even though hospitals don’t conduct such female genital surgeries. The memo threatened to jail doctors for 10 years if they provide gender-affirming care to young people.
Gender-affirming care is supported by all major medical associations in the U.S., including the American Medical Association, the Endocrine Society, and the American Academy of Pediatrics, as safe and life-saving for young people with gender dysphoria.
One doctor interviewed by The Washington Post called the federal government’s crusade against gender-affirming care a “toxic plan” that will force some patients to detransition, potentially forcing them into adverse psychological and physical effects, including increased anxiety, depression, and the development of unwanted physical changes.
“This goes way beyond any degree of moral or ethical dilemma that any of us have ever experienced,” the doctor said. “It is completely scientifically and medically unfounded.”
Republican attorneys general in Texas and Tennessee have demanded similar patient information from providers of youth-centered gender-affirming care outside of their states, but they dropped their demands after courts blocked their efforts.
The Air Force says in a new memo that transgender airmen ousted under a recent Trump administration directive will no longer have the chance to argue before a board of their peers for the right to continue serving their country.
The memo dated Tuesday says military separation boards cannot independently decide whether to keep or discharge transgender airmen and instead “must recommend separation of the member” if the airman has a diagnosis of gender dysphoria — when a person’s biological sex does not match up with their gender identity.
Military legal experts who have been advising transgender troops told The Associated Press that the new policy is unlawful, and while they were not aware of the other services releasing similar memos, they fear it could serve as a blueprint across the military. Advocacy groups say the change threatens to weaken trust in the military’s leadership.
It is the second policy change the Air Force has taken in recent weeks to crack down on transgender service members. The Associated Press reported last week that the Air Force would deny transgender troops early retirement benefits and was moving to revoke requests already approved.
The Air Force declined to answer questions about the policy and its legal implications.
The service provided a statement saying the new guidance “is consistent with and responsive to Department of Defense policy regarding Service members with a diagnosis of, or history of, or exhibiting symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria.”
How the boards usually work
The boards traditionally offer a quasi-legal hearing to determine if a service member set to depart is still of value to the military and should stay on. Fellow service members hear evidence of whatever wrongdoing occurred and about the person’s character, fitness and performance.
The hearings are not a formal court, but they have much the same structure. Service members are often represented by lawyers, they can present evidence in their defense and they can appeal the board’s findings to federal court.
The Pentagon’s policy on separating officers notes that they are entitled to “fair and impartial” hearings that should be “a forum for the officer concerned to present reasons the contemplated action should not be taken.”
This impartial nature means that the boards can sometimes reach surprising conclusions.
For example, the three active-duty Marines who were part of the mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, were retained.
The commanding officer of the USS McCain, a destroyer that collided with an oil tanker in the Pacific in 2017, killing 10, was not recommended for separation in 2019.
Military lawyers decry the Air Force change
Priya Rashid, a military lawyer who has represented service members before hundreds of separation boards, said she “has never seen an order like this.”
“I’ve seen people with three DUIs retained, I’ve seen people that beat their wives retained, I’ve seen all kinds of people retained because the board is empowered to retain anyone for any reason if they feel it’s in the best interest of the service,” she said.
Rashid said she and other lawyers working with transgender troops view the guidance as telling the boards to automatically order separation based solely on a diagnosis or symptoms of gender dysphoria.
She said that constitutes an unlawful command by the Air Force and upends impartiality.
“This instruction is essentially saying you will not make a determination of whether somebody has future potential in the service,” Rashid said.
The new Air Force guidance also prohibits recording the proceedings.
Rashid said the lack of an independent transcript would not only prevent Air Force leaders from reviewing the hearings to ensure they were conducted appropriately but would undercut any meaningful chance to appeal.
Stepped-up efforts to oust transgender troops
Pentagon officials say 4,240 troops have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, which the military is using as an identifier of being transgender.
The Pentagon got the green light from Supreme Court in May to move forward with a ban on all transgender troops. It offered two options: volunteer to leave and take a one-time separation payout or be discharged at a later date without pay.
Some transgender troops decided to fight to stay by turning to the boards.
Senior Master Sgt. Jamie Hash, who has served in the Air Force since 2011, said she “wanted to face an objective board to be evaluated on my years of proven capability.”
“I wanted the board to see the assignments overseas and at the Pentagon, the deployments to different Combatant Commands, the service medals and the sustained operational and mission effectiveness,” she said in an interview.
But now, she said, that “the path ahead feels more uncertain than it ever has.”
Logan Ireland, a master sergeant in the Air Force with 15 years of service that includes a deployment to Afghanistan, was planning to retire early until his request was denied last week.
After that, he decided he would take a stand at the separation board.
“I chose the involuntary route because I believed in the promise of a fair hearing — judged on my service, my record and the facts,” he said.
“Now that promise is being ripped away, replaced with a process designed to decide my fate before I even walk in the room,” he said, adding that “all I’m asking for is the same fairness and justice every service member deserves.”
Both Ireland and Hash said they have yet to hear from their immediate superiors on what the new policy will mean for them.
Lawyers are worried it will set a precedent that will spread throughout the military.
Rashid said both the Army and Navy are “going to look at what the Air Force is doing as a standard of law … is this the minimum standard of law that we will afford our service members.”
Transgender troops warn the policy could have wider implications
Col. Bree Fram, a transgender officer in the Space Force who has long been seen as a leader among transgender troops, argued that the policy is a threat to other service members.
”Today it’s gender dysphoria; tomorrow it can be any condition or class the politics of the moment calls for,” she argued.
If the new policy is allowed to sideline “evidence of fitness, deployment history, awards, and commander input — the very material boards were built to evaluate,” Fram said, it sends a message that performance is no longer relevant to staying in the military.
Cathy Marcello, interim director for Modern Military Association of America, said the change adds to a “growing loss of trust” because outcomes are determined by politics, not performance. The organization advocates for LGBTQ+ service members, military spouses, veterans, their families and allies.
“It’s a signal that identity, not ability or achievement, determines who stays in uniform and who gets a fair shot,” she said.
Ten years after the Supreme Court extended marriage rights to same-sex couples nationwide, the justices this fall will consider for the first time whether to take up a case that explicitly asks them to overturn that decision.
Kim Davis, the former Kentucky county clerk who was jailed for six days in 2015 after refusing to issue marriage licenses to a gay couple on religious grounds, is appealing a $100,000 jury verdict for emotional damages plus $260,000 for attorneys fees.
In a petition for writ of certiorari filed last month, Davis argues First Amendment protection for free exercise of religion immunizes her from personal liability for the denial of marriage licenses.
More fundamentally, she claims the high court’s decision in Obergefell v Hodges — extending marriage rights for same-sex couples under the 14th Amendment’s due process protections — was “egregiously wrong.”
“The mistake must be corrected,” wrote Davis’ attorney Mathew Staver in the petition. He calls Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion in Obergefell “legal fiction.”
The petition appears to mark the first time since 2015 that the court has been formally asked to overturn the landmark marriage decision. Davis is seen as one of the only Americans currently with legal standing to bring a challenge to the precedent.
“If there ever was a case of exceptional importance,” Staver wrote, “the first individual in the Republic’s history who was jailed for following her religious convictions regarding the historic definition of marriage, this should be it.”
Lower courts have dismissed Davis’ claims and most legal experts consider her bid a long shot. A federal appeals court panel concluded earlier this year that the former clerk “cannot raise the First Amendment as a defense because she is being held liable for state action, which the First Amendment does not protect.”
Davis, as the Rowan County Clerk in 2015, was the sole authority tasked with issuing marriage licenses on behalf of the government under state law.
“Not a single judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals showed any interest in Davis’s rehearing petition, and we are confident the Supreme Court will likewise agree that Davis’s arguments do not merit further attention,” said William Powell, attorney for David Ermold and David Moore, the now-married Kentucky couple that sued Davis for damages, in a statement to ABC News.
A renewed campaign to reverse legal precedent
Davis’ appeal to the Supreme Court comes as conservative opponents of marriage rights for same-sex couples pursue a renewed campaign to reverse legal precedent and allow each state to set its own policy.
At the time Obergefell was decided in 2015, 35 states had statutory or constitutional bans on same-sex marriages, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Only eight states had enacted laws explicitly allowing the unions.
So far in 2025, at least nine states have either introduced legislation aimed at blocking new marriage licenses for LGBTQ people or passed resolutions urging the Supreme Court to reverse Obergefell at the earliest opportunity, according to the advocacy group Lambda Legal.
In June, the Southern Baptist Convention — the nation’s largest Protestant Christian denomination — overwhelmingly voted to make “overturning of laws and court rulings, including Obergefell v. Hodges, that defy God’s design for marriage and family” a top priority.
Support for equal marriage rights softening
While a strong majority of Americans favor equal marriage rights, support appears to have softened in recent years, according to Gallup — 60% of Americans supported same-sex marriages in 2015, rising to 70% support in 2025, but that level has plateaued since 2020.
Among Republicans, support has notably dipped over the past decade, down from 55% in 2021 to 41% this year, Gallup found.
Davis’ petition argues the issue of marriage should be treated the same way the court handled the issue of abortion in its 2022 decision to overturn Roe v Wade. She zeroes in on Justice Clarence Thomas’ concurrence in that case, in which he explicitly called for revisiting Obergefell.
The justices “should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell,” Thomas wrote at the time, referring to the landmark decisions dealing with a fundamental right to privacy, due process and equal protection rights.
“It is hard to say where things will go, but this will be a long slog considering how popular same-sex marriage is now,” said Josh Blackman, a prominent conservative constitutional scholar and professor at South Texas College of Law.
Blackman predicts many members of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority would want prospective challenges to Obergefell to percolate in lower courts before revisiting the debate.
The court is expected to formally consider Davis’ petition this fall during a private conference when the justices discuss which cases to add to their docket. If the case is accepted, it would likely be scheduled for oral argument next spring and decided by the end of June 2026. The court could also decline the case, allowing a lower court ruling to stand and avoid entirely the request to revisit Obergefell.
“Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett seem wildly uninterested. Maybe Justice Neil Gorsuch, too,” said Sarah Isgur, an ABC News legal analyst and host of the legal podcast Advisory Opinions.
“There is no world in which the court takes the case as a straight gay marriage case,” Isgur added. “It would have to come up as a lower court holding that Obergefell binds judges to accept some other kind of non-traditional marital arrangement.”
Ruling wouldn’t invalidate existing marriages
If the ruling were to be overturned at some point in the future, it would not invalidate marriages already performed, legal experts have pointed out. The 2022 Respect for Marriage Act requires the federal government and all states to recognize legal marriages of same-sex and interracial couples performed in any state — even if there is a future change in the law.
Davis first appealed the Supreme Court in 2019 seeking to have the damages suit against her tossed out, but her petition was rejected. Conservative Justices Thomas and Samuel Alito concurred with the decision at the time.
“This petition implicates important questions about the scope of our decision in Obergefell, but it does not cleanly present them,” Thomas wrote in a statement.
Many LGBTQ advocates say they are apprehensive about the shifting legal and political landscape around marriage rights.
There are an estimated 823,000 married same-sex couples in the U.S., including 591,000 that wed after the Supreme Court decision in June 2015, according to the Williams Institute at UCLA Law School. Nearly one in five of those married couples is parenting a child under 18.
Since the Obergefell decision, the makeup of the Supreme Court has shifted rightward, now including three appointees of President Donald Trump and a 6-justice conservative supermajority.
Chief Justice John Roberts, among the current members of the court who dissented in Obergefell a decade ago, sharply criticized the ruling at the time as “an act of will, not legal judgment” with “no basis in the Constitution.” He also warned then that it “creates serious questions about religious liberty.”
Davis invoked Roberts’ words in her petition to the high court, hopeful that at least four justices will vote to accept her case and hear arguments next year.
resident Donald Trump has already achieved 69% of the anti-LGBTQ+ policy goals recommended by Project 2025, the blueprint for his second term created by the Christian Nationalist think-tank The Heritage Foundation, according to the website Project 2025 Tracker.
The website, which describes itself as a “comprehensive, community-driven initiative to track the implementation of Project 2025’s policy proposals,” lists 18 LGBTQ+-related goals. Of them, the tracker categorizes 11 of the blueprint’s goals as “completed,” three as “in progress,” and four as “not started.”
Many of the “completed” goals have dealt with eradicating any funding for gender-affirming healthcare, erasing any mentions of LGBTQ+-inclusive language from federally funded groups, and reinterpreting federal anti-discrimination laws to exclude any protections for trans and nonbinary individuals.
But it’s worth noting that many of the goals that the tracker marked as “completed” were actually policy changes sought in Trump‘s executive orders. Though some of his orders have been pursued by various government agencies and upheld by court decisions, others remain partially blocked in court challenges.
Very few of the “completed” policy goals were accomplished through actual laws passed by Congress. As such, many of Trump’s orders could potentially be overturned by a future president who issues opposing executive orders upon taking office.
The three “in progress” goals involve continuing to deny federal funds to “woke” groups and prioritizing heterosexual families and children in government policies.
The four “not started” goals include protecting religious-based anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination, prosecuting any pro-trans educators and librarians as sex offenders, and ending any Medicare coverage for gender-affirming surgeries (even though most major medical associations recommend such care).
Overall, Trump has “completed” 47% of Project 2025’s goals, the tracker states, barely seven months into his second presidential term. Their completion has largely been aided by a Republican-led Congress that has not objected to his unconstitutional and illegal actions that supersede his constitutional authority, as well as by Republican-appointed judges, namely the six-member Supreme Court majority, which has largely allowed his policies to remain in effect without offering much (if any) legal reasoning.
Trump has also achieved some of his goals by illegally denying congressionally authorized federal funding to numerous groups and organizations (both domestically and internationally) or by threatening investigations and prosecutions of groups that defy his orders. Many universities, law firms, broadcasters, and other companies have complied with his orders, even though they likely violate constitutional rights to free speech.
Trump feigned ignorance about Project 2025 and its goals during his 2024 re-election campaign, commenting, “Some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal,” and “Anything they do, I wish them luck, but have nothing to do with them.”
But as the then-vice presidential nominee Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) said during the Democratic National Convention, “I coached high school football long enough to know, and trust me on this: When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re going to use it.”
Completed
Department of Labor – Provide robust accommodations for religious employees. (Completed July 27)
Department of Labor – Rescind Biden-era Title VII and Title IX rules that strengthened the ability to prosecute sexual assault and discrimination cases. (Completed January 30)
Department of Defense – End all use of public monies for transgender surgeries. (Completed May 12)
Department of Defense – Reverse policies that allow transgender individuals to serve in the military. (Completed May 7)
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – End all data collection on gender identity. (Completed February 25)
White House – Remove the words “sexual orientation and gender identity,” “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” “abortion,” “reproductive health,” and “gender equality” from every federal rule. (Completed January 30)
Department of Health and Human Services – Reverse prohibitions on healthcare discrimination based on gender identity. (Completed January 27)
Department of Education – Issue rules and guidance that “sex” is properly understood as a fixed biological fact. (Completed January 19)
Department of Education – Rescind Biden-era guidance that added a “non-binary” option in civil rights data collected from schools. (Completed January 19)
Department of Education – Abandon the redefinition of “sex” to “sexual orientation and gender identity” in Title IX. (Completed on January 19, but blocked by a court order)
White House – Revoke Biden’s executive order 14020, which established the Gender Policy Council. (Completed January 19)
In progress
Department of Health and Human Services – Revoke guidance that prohibited adoption/foster agencies from discriminating based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Department of Health and Human Services – Prioritize traditional (heterosexual) marriage in its messaging, health, and welfare policies.
White House – Cut off government contracts to entities that enforce a “woke agenda.”
Not started
Department of Health and Human Services – Rescind Medicare coverage for gender reassignment surgery.
Department of Justice – “Classify educators and public librarians” who discuss “transgender ideology” with minors as “sex offenders”.
Department of Labor – Prohibit employee retirement plans from investing based on ESG (environmental, social, and governance) factors.
Department of Labor – Issue an order “protecting religious employers and employees,” clarify they may make employment decisions based on religion.
The U.S. Air Force said Thursday it would deny all transgender service members who have served between 15 and 18 years the option to retire early and would instead separate them without retirement benefits. One Air Force sergeant said he was “betrayed and devastated” by the move.
The move means that transgender service members will now be faced with the choice of either taking a lump-sum separation payment offered to junior troops or be removed from the service.
An Air Force spokesperson told The Associated Press that “although service members with 15 to 18 years of honorable service were permitted to apply for an exception to policy, none of the exceptions to policy were approved.” About a dozen service members had been “prematurely notified” that they would be able to retire before that decision was reversed, according to the spokesperson who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal Air Force policy.
A memo issued Monday announcing the new policy, which was reviewed by the AP, said that the choice to deny retirement benefits was made “after careful consideration of the individual applications.”
All transgender members of the Air Force are being separated from the service under the Trump administration’s policies.
Separation process has hit some bumps
The move comes after the Pentagon was given permission in early May by the Supreme Court to move forward with a ban on all transgender troops serving in the military. Days later, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced a policy that would offer currently openly serving transgender troops the option to either volunteer to leave and take a large, one-time separation payout or be involuntarily separated at later date.
A Pentagon official told reporters in May that they viewed the policy as treating “anyone impacted by it with dignity and respect.”
However, in late July, transgender troops told Military.com that they were finding the entire separation process, which has included reverting their service records back to their birth gender, “dehumanizing” or “open cruelty.”
Shannon Leary, a lawyer who represents LGBTQ+ people in employment discrimination cases, says she expects lawsuits to challenge Thursday’s decision. “It seems quite arbitrary on its face and cruel,” she said. “These military members have dedicated their lives to serving our country.”
Normally, Leary said, when early retirement is offered in the military, it’s available to all members who have served over 15 years. She said she expects other service branches to follow the Air Force’s path.
One Air Force service member says he’s ‘devastated’
Logan Ireland, a master sergeant in the U.S. Air Force who has 15 years of service, including a deployment to Afghanistan, is one of the airmen impacted by the policy. “I feel betrayed and devastated by the news,” he said.
Ireland said he was told that his retirement was being denied on Wednesday when his chain of command, “with tears in their eyes,” told him the news.
Officials have said that as of Dec. 9, 2024, there were 4,240 troops diagnosed with “gender dysphoria” on active duty, National Guard and Reserve. Pentagon officials have decided to use the condition and its diagnosis as the main way to identify troops who are trans.
However, the two are not an exact match — not every transgender person has the condition. As a result, there is an understanding that the actual number of transgender people within the military’s roughly 2 million troops may be higher.
Under the latest policy, active duty troops had until June 6 to voluntarily identify themselves and receive a payout while troops in the National Guard and Reserve had until July 7. Pentagon officials previously told reporters that they plan to lean on commanders and existing annual medical screenings to find any transgender service members who do not come forward.
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