Christopher Wiggins

The Trump administration is quietly advancing immigration policies that attorneys and LGBTQ+ advocates say could send asylum seekers to their deaths, including by transferring queer and transgender people to countries such as Uganda and Iran, where same-sex relationships and gender nonconformity are criminalized and can be punished by imprisonment, torture, or execution. Sign me up! See what’s new and hot in queer entertainment, in your inbox three times a week. Through third-country transfer agreements and aggressive deportation tactics, the administration is placing LGBTQ+ asylum seekers, many with what lawyers describe as strong, well-documented claims, at risk. Advocates tell The Advocate the policies mark a dangerous shift away from the United […]

Journalist Don Lemon walked toward the microphones Friday afternoon with his husband, Tim Malone, by his side, the two holding hands as Lemon prepared to address reporters outside a federal courthouse in Los Angeles. Speaking around 3:30 p.m. Pacific, Lemon thanked supporters and described his arrest as a defining moment for press freedom. A federal judge released him without bail. “I have spent my entire career covering the news,” Lemon said. “I will not stop now. There is no more important time than right now, this very moment, for a free and independent media that shines a light on the truth and holds […]

In Washington, D.C., just blocks from the White House, where President Donald Trump is directing what civil rights advocates describe as an accelerating authoritarian overhaul of federal power, the Human Rights Campaign on Thursday released a new political playbook and a stark assessment of what the first year of Trump’s second term has meant for LGBTQ+ Americans. The organization’s twin reports, One Year Out: LGBTQ+ Messaging Playbook for the Midterms and One Year In: LGBTQ+ Americans Under the Trump Administration, sketch both a campaign strategy and a warning flare. Together, they argue that LGBTQ+ Americans are becoming less visible, less safe, and less secure as federal protections shrink and culture war policies […]

On a cold, gray, and drizzly morning in Richmond, thousands of Virginiansgathered on the steps of the state capitol to witness a moment more than two centuries in the making: the inauguration of Abigail Spanberger as Virginia’s 75th governor and the first woman ever elected to the office. Shortly before noon, Spanberger arrived at the Virginia State Capitol in a motorcade, pulling in behind the building, out of view of the crowds that had gathered in Capitol Square. Joined by her husband, the Democrat wore a brilliant blue-purple pantsuit. Most supporters never saw her arrival. Moments later, she emerged onto the dais to sustained applause, […]

In the two days since Renee Nicole Good was fatally shot by a federal immigration agent on a Minneapolis street, grief has transformed into national solidarity. A wave of support has now lifted her family with more than $1.5 million in grassroots donations and turned a GoFundMe page into a digital monument to a life cut short. As of shortly after noon Eastern time Friday, more than 38,400 people had donated $1,503,383 to support Good’s wife and children, 3,001 percent of the campaign’s original $50,000 goal. GoFundMe confirmed to The Advocate that the fundraiser is legitimate. “We can now confirm this GoFundMe is verified,” Ese […]

A gay Minneapolis pastor says federal immigration agents handcuffed him, pointed a gun at his face, and taunted him while he stood among nonviolent protesters just blocks from where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer fatally shot Renee Nicole Good, a mother of three who also leaves behind a wife. The encounter has become a visceral symbol of fear, fury, and deepening mistrust between federal authorities and communities already scarred by violence. The Rev. Kenny Callaghan, a gay senior pastor at All God’s Children Metropolitan Community Church whose congregation sits near Portland Avenue and East 31st Street, told The Advocate in an interview Friday that […]

A Minnesota woman sitting in the snow with her dog told a person filming her that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had just shot and killed her wife — now identified as Renee Nicole Good, 37 — according to newly circulating video that has intensified scrutiny of a fatal federal shooting during a sweeping immigration enforcement operation in south Minneapolis on Wednesday. “They killed my wife. I don’t know what to do,” the woman says through sobs in the footage, with a damaged SUV visible in the distance behind her. “We stopped to videotape, and they shot her in the head,” the woman […]