The Justice Department has instructed the Federal Bureau of Investigation to crack down on supposed “domestic terrorist” organizations, the definition of which includes those who promote “radical gender ideology.” Part of that crackdown involves the establishment of a cash reward system for providing information on leaders of so-called “domestic terrorist organizations.”
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a memorandum to federal prosecutors and law enforcement agencies on December 4, in accordance with NSPM-7, President Donald Trump’s September directive ordering the investigation of “domestic terrorist” organizations. At the time, NSPM-7 did not come with any enforcement mechanisms; Bondi’s memo provides specific instructions to prosecutors and law enforcement agencies.
The Bondi memo was leaked on December 8, and on Tuesday, LGBTQ Nation first reported on the fact that the memo includes “radical gender ideology” as part of its definition of “domestic terrorism.” In additional to “radical gender ideology,” the memo also defines potential domestic terrorist ideologies as “extreme views in favor of mass migration and open borders… anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, or anti-Christianity… hostility towards traditional views on family, religion, and morality,” and more. Under the Trump administration, “radical gender ideology” has been used as a catchall phrase to encompass issues related to trans and nonbinary communities.
The memo encourages prosecutors to “be particularly mindful of the potential applicability” of charges such as “picketing or parading with intent to obstruct the administration of justice,” “obstruction during civil disorders,” and “providing material support for terrorist activity.” In other words, the memo encourages prosecutors to press charges against certain forms of protest, or for providing supposed aid to organizations that promote what the government is now defining as “terrorist activity.”
The material support statute, in particular, has been used to significantly hinder the work of humanitarian groups, and has been widely criticized for prohibiting free speech. According to the ACLU, material support is defined as any “service,” “training,” “expert advice or assistance,” or “personnel” — an incredibly vague definition that has been used to surveil people and groups without basis since the implementation of the Patriot Act in 2001. Contemporarily, Hina Shamsi, the director of the ACLU’s national security project, wrote about the worrying implications of NSPM-7 on the ACLU’s website in October, stating, “If anyone needed proof that ‘terrorism’ and ‘political violence’ are slippery and fraught categories subject to political, ideological, and racial manipulation and bias — well, this is it.”
The Bondi memo also specifically instructs federal law enforcement agencies to “review their files and holdings for Antifa and Antifa-related intelligence,” and deliver those materials to the FBI within 14 days of its issuance. The FBI is also set to “compile a list of groups of entities engaged in acts that may constitute domestic terrorism” within 30 days of issuance. The FBI will also “disseminate an intelligence bulletin on Antifa and Antifa-aligned anarchist violent extremist groups,” including information on “structures, funding sources, and tactics.” Lastly, the memo directs the FBI to better publicize its domestic terrorism tip line, and will “establish a cash reward system for information that leads to the successful identification and arrest of individuals in the leadership of domestic terrorist organizations.”
The language contained in the Bondi memo is reminiscent of that found in a September report from independent journalist Ken Klippenstein. In the report, two anonymous national security experts claimed that the FBI intended to categorize trans people as “Nihilistic Violent Extremists,” a threat category that was created earlier this year. The FBI defines “Nihilistic Violent Extremism” as “criminal conduct… in furtherance of political, social, or religious goals that derive primarily from a hatred of society at large and a desire to bring about its collapse by sowing indiscriminate chaos.” This also ties neatly into the ongoing right-wing attempts to scapegoat trans people for mass shootings and other forms of gun violence, including the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
Notably, all of the federal government’s messaging about “domestic terrorism” ignores the fact that the vast majority of research points to the fact that the bulk of domestic terrorists in the U.S. are aligned with the right-wing.
In the midst of the Trump administration’s attacks on both the LGBTQ community and immigrants, the non-profit organization Immigration Equality is working to ensure that queer asylum seekers and refugees have access to legal services.
Immigration Equality, which has represented LGBTQ immigrants since it was founded in 1994, has been a haven for individuals who come from countries where they are persecuted for their identity. They offer both direct representation and a program where asylum seekers’ cases are vetted and matched with pro-bono lawyers.
But since the Trump administration’s recent attacks on immigrants, the process of filing these individuals’ cases and fighting for their safety has become significantly more difficult. Immigration Equality’s director of law and policy, Bridget Crawford, noted in an interview with Gay City News that Trump has been attacking all cases, not just a certain few.
“A lot of what the Trump administration seems to be focused on is not efficient, fair adjudication of claims,” she said. “It seems to be focused on eliminating the claims altogether and preventing people from making them, or quickly dispensing with them without due process.”
Alongside blocking initial claims from being made and removing more than one-third of immigration judges, the appellate courts are also shifting their decisions to move less favorably toward immigrants, despite many of these cases having overwhelming evidence that they meet the requirements for refugee status and protection.
All of these obstacles have resulted in an uptick in Immigration Equality’s cases being denied, and these issues are being further inflamed after Trump recently announced the pause of many immigrant cases, following the shooting of two West Virginia National Guard members.
But Crawford made sure to note that despite these hardships, Immigration Equality is still winning cases.
“We still have many people, both trans and LGB, who are successful in their claims,” she said. “The reality is that under the law, as it is written, and the precedent as it’s been established for decades, these are very strong claims — people continue to win because they meet the definition of asylum under our law.”
These policies have invoked fear in immigrants pursuing a case, as they are scared of not having their case heard and fear showing up for their case and being put into detention centers, despite following all the correct procedures. Being LGBTQ amplifies this fear.
“As an LGBTQ+ advocacy organization, we have long witnessed mistreatment of our population in the immigration detention system,” Crawford said. A 2024 report published by Immigration Equality revealed that under both Democratic and Republican administrations, there were consistent reports of “sexual harassment, verbal and sexual abuse, physical abuse, prolonged solitary confinement, and inadequate medical care.”
The few protections that were in place to prevent this abuse have gradually been gutted, according to Crawford. These included internal watchdog agencies like the Civil Rights Civil Liberties (CRCL). In the past, if someone filed a complaint of mistreatment, it would be investigated by these internal agencies. Recently, though, these complaints have not been looked into.
Against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s restrictive immigration policies, the work of Immigration Equality is their clients find hope in them, Immigration Equality finds hope in its clients.
“They are the reason we all went into this work in the first place,” said Crawford. “We have these incredible stories of bravery and perseverance that serve as a source of inspiration for all of us. So many of our clients have survived so much worse, and we look to them for a sense of perspective.”
The State Department quietly updated its website this week to signal that the Trump administration may move to invalidate passports held by transgender Americans, following a Supreme Court emergency ruling that overturned earlier protections on gender-marker updates. The change was first spotted by journalist Aleksandra, who writes as Transitics on Substack. Until recently, the website assured transgender passport holders that their documents would “remain valid until [their] expiration date.” As of Thursday morning, that language had been replaced with: “A passport is valid for travel until its date of expiration, until you replace it, or until we invalidate it under federal regulations.” The new phrasing has sparked alarm across the transgender community, with one government source telling Erin in the Morning that there is growing interest within the administration in exploring some level of revocations.
The change comes one week after the Supreme Court issued an emergency ruling allowing the Trump administration’s passport restrictions on transgender people to take effect. In that decision, the Court concluded that the administration is likely to prevail in ongoing litigation, and rejected the argument that the policy was driven by “a bare desire to harm a politically unpopular group.” This conclusion stands in stark contrast to the administration’s own executive orders enabling the passport crackdown, which describe transgender people as inherently “wrong,”“dishonorable,” and “socially coercive.”
“The Court ignores these critical limits on its equitable discretion today. The Government seeks to enforce a questionably legal new policy immediately, but it offers no evidence that it will suffer any harm if it is temporarily enjoined from doing so, while the plaintiffs will be subject to imminent, concrete injury if the policy goes into effect,” responded Justice Jackson in her dissent.
Previously, there were signs that a Trump administration victory in court could trigger efforts to invalidate transgender people’s passports. As first reported by Erin in the Morning, a single paragraph in a government filing stated that “if the government prevails in this case and the Department proceeds to revoke and replace passports issued pursuant to the preliminary injunction, the Department will incur additional administrative costs.” At the time, some observers dismissed this as routine legal positioning. But the State Department’s latest website change suggests the administration may, in fact, be preparing to take exactly that step.
One government source familiar with internal discussions said such conversations are indeed underway, though any revocation effort would be difficult to carry out and would almost certainly ensnare some cisgender people by mistake. According to the source, the most likely targets would be passport holders with X markers and those who updated their documents through the affidavit process—a temporary pathway created under lower-court rulings that allowed transgender people to obtain corrected passports if they signed a sworn statement attesting to their gender identity. At the time, EITM reported that the State Department was collecting data on every person who signed the affidavit in case a ruling like this arrived, enabling the government to potentially invalidate those passports. Now, that appears to be one of the avenues the administration is actively considering.
For those who updated their passports before this administration, any attempt to revoke those documents would be far more complicated. The process would be costly, the relevant information is not easily accessible, and such actions would almost certainly run into additional legal hurdles and face separate court challenges. And for anyone whose passport the government does seek to change, the law guarantees an appeal with a hearing on request—an extraordinarily expensive and resource-intensive process for an agency that is not equipped to handle a surge of such cases.
When asked what the process would look like for transgender people traveling overseas if their passports were revoked, the source told EITM that those individuals would likely be contacted and instructed to report to the nearest U.S. embassy or consulate to replace their passport or receive special guidance. Such a requirement could severely disrupt international travel for transgender people. For now, however, any move in this direction appears to be weeks or even months away—if the administration chooses to pursue it at all.
Meanwhile, the case will continue in the lower courts, a process that could drag on for years. And while those courts could, in theory, rule in favor of transgender plaintiffs, recent Supreme Court actions suggest the justices are prepared to side with the administration on virtually any policy targeting trans people. The Court is already set to hear a case in January that will determine whether transgender Americans receive equal protection under the law at all, and the memory of the Skrmetti decision—upholding bans on trans youth care—still hangs heavily over the legal landscape. In the meantime, transgender people in the United States are left to navigate shifting rules in nearly every aspect of daily life under an administration and a Republican Party intent on making that life as difficult as possible.
The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled President Trump’s State Department can prohibit transgender Americans from listing their gender identity on their passports, for now.
It hands another legal victory for Trump in his efforts to eviscerate what his administration calls “gender ideology.” The Justice Department brought the emergency appeal after lower courts blocked the passport policy for being rooted in “irrational prejudice.”
“Displaying passport holders’ sex at birth no more offends equal protection principles than displaying their country of birth—in both cases, the Government is merely attesting to a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential treatment,” the majority wrote in its unsigned ruling.
The ruling appeared to be along the court’s 6-3 ideological lines, though the justices do not have to publicly disclose their votes.
In dissent, the court’s liberals called the ruling “pointless but painful perversion.”
“Such senseless sidestepping of the obvious equitable outcome has become an unfortunate pattern,” wrote Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor.
“So, too, has my own refusal to look the other way when basic principles are selectively discarded,” the dissent continued.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer called lower rulings blocking the administration’s policy “untenable,” casting them as infringing on Trump’s constitutional authority over foreign affairs.
“The President’s choice to revert to prior policy and rely on biological sex—a choice that bound the State Department—should be the last place for novel equal-protection claims or Administrative Procedure Act objections,” Sauer wrote in court filings.
The State Department policy requires passport holders to use their sex assigned at birth as their sex designation, prohibiting transgender people from matching it with their gender identity. The policy also removed the option for people to select “X,” leaving male and female as the only two options.
“This new policy puts transgender, nonbinary, and intersex people in potential danger whenever they use a passport,” American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) attorney Chase Strangio warned in court filings.
Strangio and the ACLU represent transgender and nonbinary Americans who are suing over the State Department’s changes.
They argue it violates federal law and constitutional equal protection rights, convincing a federal district judge appointed by former President Biden and later the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to halt the policy.
It marked the latest case implicating Trump’s Day 1 executive order that cracks down on what he calls “gender ideology” to reach the Supreme Court. Previously, the justices issued emergency orders allowing the administration to enforce its transgender troops ban and cancel diversity-linked health grants.
President Donald Trump’s administration has warned Vermont that its policies meant to support LGBTQ foster youth may violate federal law, potentially threatening federal funding.
The Oct. 16 letter, written by Alex Adams, assistant secretary of the federal Administration for Children and Families, directed Vermont Secretary of Human Services Jenney Samuelson to provide a written response explaining how the state would address Adams’ concerns.
“It has been brought to my attention that certain policies and procedures in Vermont deny qualified foster and adoptive parents the opportunity to provide children a loving home solely because they cannot, in good conscience, commit to affirming a hypothetical child’s gender identity,” Adams wrote. “Such policies are contrary to the purpose of child welfare programs and inconsistent with our interpretation of federal diligent recruitment plans and constitutional protections, including the First Amendment.”
Other states, including Massachusetts, New York and California, have received similar letters. Vermont’s involvement was first reported by The Imprint, a nonprofit news publication focused on vulnerable children and families. About a third of foster youth identify as LGBTQ, according to multiple studies.
While Adams’ letter does not reference specific Vermont policies, in 2024, two Vermont couples sued the Department for Children and Families, arguing that policies requiring foster parents to affirm a foster child’s sexual orientation or gender identity are unconstitutional and discriminate against Christians. A second lawsuit related to foster parent policies was later brought by a separate family that year.
The prominent conservative legal firm Alliance Defending Freedom represented the couples in the first suit. Similar lawsuits have cropped up across the country, including in Oregon, where a federal appeals court eventually ruled the state’s policies intended to protect LGBTQ foster youth violated free speech. The Vermont lawsuits now sit with the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals after the families appealed a lower court’s ruling against them.
Per Vermont’s Department for Children and Families policy, “discrimination and bias based on a child or youth’s real or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression” is prohibited.
A department spokesperson said no one was available Tuesday for an interview regarding the letter from the federal government and instead requested questions in writing.
In a statement, Aryka Radke, a Department for Children and Families deputy commissioner, wrote that the department “is committed to ensuring that young people in our custody are safe and supported. We are currently reviewing the letter with our legal team.”
Radke did not respond to questions about what funding could be at risk.
While Adams, in the letter, did not explicitly threaten to withhold federal funding from Vermont, he did allude to the possibility.
“Please provide a written response outlining how you will review and, where necessary, amend policies to bring them into alignment with these values and applicable law,” he wrote. “As you know, my responsibilities include monitoring the use of relevant federal funds and ensuring compliance with federal law.”
The Administration for Children and Families did not respond to a request for comment.
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.”
On Friday, the Trump administration began massive layoffs throughout the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). As part of that, they completely removed the Office of Population Affairs, which was responsible for a wealth of public health programs, including specific initiatives for the LGBTQ+ community.
“This wasn’t a budget decision — it was ideological,” a former member of the Biden administration told The Advocate. “These are the programs that centered reproductive and queer health, and now they’re gone.”
Donald Trump has welcomed the government shutdown as an opportunity to cut what he has called “Democrat Agencies” to shrink the government. The process is being led by Russ Vought, the head of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and key author of Project 2025, which advocated for such cuts. However, he has also tried to blame those government cuts on the Democrats.
Vought took to X/Twitter on Friday to announce the start of the “Reduction in Force,” or RIF. His office confirmed via Politico that federal employees were being permanently fired, not temporarily furloughed for the duration of the shutdown: “Can confirm RIFs have begun and they are substantial. These are RIFs, not furloughs.”
Adrian Shanker, who served as deputy assistant secretary for Health Policy during the Biden administration, told The Advocate that while the Office of Population Affairs often had its programs politicized, this is “the first time that the office itself is being cut.”
The Office of Population Affairs manages a huge range of public health initiatives. Those include Title X family planning services and grants; programs for adolescents that cover issues such as pregnancy prevention, mental health, and substance abuse; the Embryo Adoption Awareness and Services program; screenings and treatment for sexually transmitted infections and information on preventing the spread of HIV; and LGBTQ+ health initiatives, including information on gender-affirming care.
As well as restricting programming targeted specifically at the LGBTQ+ community, these cuts will restrict access to family planning programs that LGBTQ+ people are more likely to make use of to grow their families.
The cuts to the Office of Population Affairs will leave us lacking when it comes to sex education and with less support for LGBTQ+ youth, Shanker noted, saying it “leaves us more vulnerable to health inequities and worsened health outcomes.”
Wider cuts to the HHS will have broader effects as the CDC is losing over a thousand employees, including the elimination of entire departments. “CDC is over. It was killed,” said Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, the out gay former director of the CDC’s National Center on Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, after 1000 scientists, doctors, and public health officials were fired from HHS on Friday. Daskalakis, an infectious diseases expert, resigned in protest of the administration’s war on science-based public health earlier this year.
“This administration only knows how to break things. They have made America at risk for outbreaks and attacks by nefarious players. People should be scared.”
Previous federal layoffs have been litigated in court, with some resulting in court rulings that the people cannot be fired, while other courts have allowed the dismissals to proceed. That process, if it occurs here, will take time, during which public health will suffer a setback.
“Without these people in place, it’s unlikely that a lot of these programs will be able to continue even after the government reopens,” predicted Shanker.
As part of a legal settlement with medical associations and advocacy groups, the current presidential administration has agreed to restore more than 100 websites and online resources related to gender identity and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
“I am extremely proud of the health care community in Washington state and our partners in this case for pushing back on this egregious example of government overreach” said Dr. John Bramhall, president of the Washington State Medical Association (WSMA), the lead plaintiffs in the lawsuit. “This was not a partisan issue-open data benefits everyone and ensuring its availability should be a bipartisan priority.”
In January, the president issued an executive order directing federal agencies to eliminate references to “gender” and “gender identity” from federal policies, documents, and public-facing materials. In response, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) removed public health data from federal websites, including information on pregnancy risks, painkiller addiction, and the AIDS crisis. Hundreds of webpages addressing health concerns relevant to the LGBTQ+ community, including the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) HIV risk-reduction tool, were removed.
“This action proves the … administration’s goal of making it as difficult as possible for LGBTQ Americans to find federal resources or otherwise see ourselves reflected under his presidency,” GLAAD’s President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said in January.
Physicians, scientists, and other medical professionals who relied on these resources were left scrambling. The Washington State Medical Association (WSMA) and other groups filed suit, arguing that the removals were “arbitrary, capricious, and unreasoned,” and violated federal transparency laws.
“This was trusted health information that vanished in a blink of an eye-resources that, among other things, physicians rely on to manage patients’ health conditions and overall care,” said Dr. Bramhall. “Not only was our ability to provide care to our patients compromised, but our trust in our federal health institutions has also been badly shaken.”
As part of the agreed settlement finalized earlier this month, the government must restore these webpages and cease deleting other resources. Graham Short, a spokesperson for WSMA, told the Associated Press that the organization expects the websites to be fully restored in the coming weeks.
Despite the settlement, HHS stated that it “remains committed to its mission of removing radical gender and DEI ideology from federal programs, subject to applicable law, to ensure taxpayer dollars deliver meaningful results for the American people.”
Separately, in July, a judge overseeing a similar lawsuit brought by Doctors for America ordered the government to restore additional websites that were removed. The Associated Press reported that 167 of those sites had been reinstated, while 33 were still under review.
fleeredstates.blog 
You must be logged in to post a comment.