Trump deadnames history-making transgender admiral on her official government portrait

Donald Trump ends LGBTQ+ health programs under the cover of the shutdown

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.”

Some reports have suggested that some laid-off employees have been contacted and told that their reduction-in-force notices are being rescinded. This happened with federal layoffs from DOGE in the past, with some employees being rehired after DOGE cut their jobs. However, reports are unclear on how many RIFs have been rescinded.

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.

October 13, 2025 0

The president was sued for deleting “radical” LGBTQ+ webpages. He just lost.

Read more at LGBTQ Nation.

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.

September 9, 2025 0

HHS Plans to Cut the National Suicide Hotline’s Program for LGBTQ Youth

*This is reported by Mother Jones.

The federal government plans to eliminate services for LGBTQ youth who call 988, the national suicide and crisis hotline, according to a Health and Human Services budget draft leaked last week. The budget, first reported by the Washington Post, would go into effect in October if approved by Congress.

Since the hotline’s launch in 2022, callers have been able to speak with counselors trained to work with specific at-risk populations, including LGBTQ youth, who are four times more likely to attempt suicide than their peers.

The service for LGBTQ youth has received 1.3 million calls, texts, or chats since 2022. In February, the program received an average of 2,100 contacts per day.

“Here we are cutting off the nation’s lifeline to those in crisis,” says Paolo del Vecchio, former director of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration’s Office of Recovery. “Due to the discriminatory practices of the Trump administration, they’re pulling that life preserver away from thousands and thousands of people.”

Mental health experts say that trained counselors provide key cultural competency to LGBTQ youth, understanding the stress caused by recent political attacks, the importance of using appropriate pronouns, and the ways in which the youth often face lack of family support and harassment.

“I worry deeply that we will see more LGBTQ young people reach a crisis state and not have anyone there to help them through that,” says Janson Wu, director of advocacy and government affairs at the Trevor Project, a LGBTQ suicide prevention organization. “I worry that LGBTQ young people will reach out to 988 and not receive a compassionate and welcoming voice on the other end—and that will only deepen their crisis.”

The Trevor Project, one of the handful of organizations that make up the LGBTQ+ Youth Subnetwork, responds to about half of 988’s calls and texts from LGBTQ youth. This year, the subnetwork received an estimated $50 million in federal funding.

Trump’s first months in office have been particularly harrowing for transgender youth. The president has signed executive orders restricting access to gender-affirming care for young people, barring transgender people from serving in the military, and threatening to prosecute teachers who support nonbinary students.

Under the leadership of health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., HHS has already cut about a quarter of its workforce. SAMHSA has been eliminated, and mental health initiatives have been consolidated with disparate programs in a newly-created Administration for a Healthy America. The leaked budget proposes further sweeping cuts to HHS, including a 40 percent budget cut to the National Institutes of Health; elimination of funding for Head Start, the early childhood education program for low-income families; and a 44 percent funding cut to the Centers for Disease Control, including all the agency’s chronic disease programs.

April 23, 2025 0