Secretary of Education Linda McMahon got to the heart of the moral panic over trans kids in a statement earlier this week, where she attacked California for protecting trans kids from getting forcibly outed to their parents: “Children do not belong to the State—they belong to families. We will use every available mechanism to hold California accountable for these practices and restore parental rights.”
That is, the right sees children as property, and, to them, the only debate is whose property they are. The possibility that they’re actually human beings who belong to no one is simply unthinkable.
Liberals, on the other hand, see children as human beings: Human beings who need extra help and care, who need boundaries and education, but they’re still people; people with their own identities, thoughts, and interests that their parents can’t control, who will eventually become adults who are not who their parents may have wanted them to be.
This attitude is what’s boiling underneath the right’s anxiety about trans kids, but they rarely come out and say it because many people who haven’t thought too much about this issue would reject the idea that parents can force their kids to become the kind of adults they want them to be.
But it’s definitely the foundation of the anti-trans backlash. It’s what’s underneath those urban legends conservatives tell each other about teachers turning their kids transgender: someone is going to force my kid to be like them; they couldn’t possibly be their own person.
It’s why right-wingers like to believe that things like social media, television, or “social contagion” turn kids trans; their kid isn’t really trans, so it’s not really so bad if they withhold love and support or even kick their kid out for being trans because they’re just protecting their kid from an outside force.
It’s why they stop talking to their trans or queer kids when they come out or kick them out of their homes. They’re supposed to be what their parents want them to be, and it’s so deeply ingrained that they sometimes can’t even understand how their kids could be their own people.
Most people wouldn’t agree that kids don’t have any rights to be the people that they are, and even conservatives realize that saying this explicitly would make their position seem unsympathetic.
It’s also why they can say with a straight face that they still love their LGBTQ+ kids even after they kick them out, and they get mad at anyone who calls them a bad parent. They confuse loving themselves — or at least their idea of their child — with actually loving their child.
It’s implied every time conservatives bring up “parents’ rights” without ever mentioning children’s rights. To them, kids have no rights that are distinct from their parents’. They don’t have the right to an education that prepares them to be independent adults or the right to any private space — physical or even mental — to learn who they are. They are empty vessels to be moulded into and filled with whatever their parents want them to be. They’re like domesticated animals who need to be trained to perform a certain way.
This is why so much of the anti-LGBTQ+ movement focuses on schools. If a kid isn’t at home, there’s a good chance they’re at school, and teachers, librarians, and coaches are the other adults in a kid’s life who can act as role models. Church is another place where kids interact with adults who aren’t in their families, but parents can pick a church from an array of choices. Most parents don’t have that luxury when it comes to school, and some of them really don’t like that fact.
So it’s no surprise that McMahon, the administration official charged with education, is the one saying the quiet parts loud here. Trans kids playing sports with their friends, students learning about LGBTQ+ people so that they’re more tolerant, teens having access to books with LGBTQ+ characters, all these education issues are seen as assaults on conservative parents’ rights because they can’t keep their kids from learning about fairness and civility to people who are different from them.
And conservative parents aren’t just offended that their kids are being exposed to the fact that LGBTQ+ people exist; they’re offended that their propertyrightsare being violated.
Conservatives have to think that trans identity comes from teachers so that they don’t have to live with the idea that their own kid is not who they want them to be.
Conservative parents don’t see it that way, of course. To them, it’s just natural that a child will be a replica of their parents, and any aberration from that is the result of outside influence. They spent yesterday arguing on social media that the guy who attacked Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) was actually on the left because his kids look queer and leftish — they literally believe that political views are hereditary.
Spelled out like this, it sounds pretty bad. Most people wouldn’t agree that kids don’t have any rights to be the people that they are, and even conservatives realize that saying this explicitly would make their position seem unsympathetic.
So they develop narratives to justify their control over their kids, positioning parents as always being right and as the only people who can protect their children from one bogeyman or another who wants to lead them astray. They spread rumors about teachers transing kids behind their parents’ backs, when, in reality, the issue is that a trans or nonbinary kid is exploring their identity at school — the place where their parents have less surveillance over them — and they’re not ready to talk to their parents while they’re still figuring it out.
That is, conservatives have to think that trans identity comes from teachers so that they don’t have to live with the idea that their own kid is not who they want them to be. Then they say teachers are telling kids to keep quiet about this, when in reality it’s students who don’t want teachers to tell their unsupportive parents about them.
This extends outside of LGBTQ+ issues, too. If kids are property, then parents have a right to deny them vaccines, while the child has no right to evidence-based health care. If kids are property, then parents have a right to turn a profit on them, which child labor laws infringe on, while the child doesn’t have a right to be protected from the exploitation of the labor market. If kids are property, parents should be allowed to force them to carry babies, while kids don’t have the right to control their own bodies.
It’s a battle of narratives, and the “blue-haired liberal teacher is forcing kids to be trans” is a narrative that works for the conservative worldview. It allows them to exert control over their kids because they’re not forcing their kids to be someone they’re not; they’re just protecting them from a scary outside force that wants to harm kids for no reason. Their egos won’t let them face the reality that their kid is just queer or trans, and they’re the ones who are trying to force the kid to be something they’re not.
In the end, they make up these stories because they’re too ashamed to face the reality of their own actions and beliefs: they’re making their own kids sadder, more afraid, and more alone.
Michigan state Sen. Jeremy Moss faced two traumatic incidents last fall, just months into his run for U.S. House of Representatives. But the 11-year veteran of the Michigan Legislature remains undeterred in the face of adversity, just as the queer and trans community continues to push forward and resist the scourge of Trumpism.
Moss spoke with LGBTQ Nation three months after sustaining a severely broken arm (“shattered”) when his Jeep ran into a minivan that was driving through a red light as he entered an intersection.
“I didn’t lose consciousness,” Moss told LGBTQ Nation. “I didn’t hit my head. I remember the whole thing. I tried to slam on my brakes, and I was honking my horn, and I think having my arm there on impact, both the impact of the crash and the airbag going off, is what broke my arm.”
With time and physical therapy, Moss’s arm is expected to make a full recovery. And while Moss can chalk up that bad experience to random bad luck, being the target of a bomb threat surely was no accident.
It occurred the day after Charlie Kirk’s assassination and at a time when Moss was receiving a lot of hate on social media and in messages to his office for refusing to take up a House-passed bathroom bill in the state’s Senate. The threat came by email to the municipal government office, and the police immediately alerted Moss. The bomb squad came, along with the fire department and EMT.
“The bomb was allegedly in the mailbox,” Moss said, “so they X-rayed the mailbox; they brought a bomb sniffing dog to kind of go through areas of my property. It was definitely an out-of-body experience, and it certainly was the alarm that a bomb could go off. It was also the alarm that somebody wanted to let me know that they could come after me, that they chose me, chose my name, looked up my address, and went to the effort to alarm me, my neighbors, and my community. I’ve never talked about this, so I’m really glad you’re asking.”
No motive was stated by the perpetrator of what turned out to be a false alarm.
“The sad reality is that because I’m in so many of these consequential fights, I didn’t even know what the motive was. It could have been a whole list of things that I’ve been passionate about and out front on.”
While Moss said it made him increase his personal protection and be more aware of his surroundings, the incident did not deter him.
“I obviously have risen to the level that somebody or some people want to diminish the things that I’m doing and using violent threats to do so, but also that I’m on the right track, that I’m making a difference, that I’m provoking in the right way, to push forward on freedom and rights.”
Referring to this period in history as an era of chaos, Moss reflected on the harrowing scene. “I really want to figure out, how do we get to the other side of this? And what can we do to restore some of the normal functions of our political system rather than this abnormality of hot, heated, violent rhetoric and actions?”
A lifelong resident of Oakland County, Moss attended a Jewish day school followed by public high school, before studying journalism and political science at Michigan State University. He graduated in 2008 and three years later was elected to the Southfield City Council, where he was its youngest member.
Ten months after Moss announced his run for Congress, he is outpacing his Democratic primary opponents when it comes to endorsements and dollars. While end-of-year figures aren’t yet available, at the end of last quarter Moss’s campaign had $471,912 cash on hand, comfortably leading his closest Democratic opponent. Moss is an LGBTQ Victory Fund Endorsed Candidate, and has the backing of Michigan’s top Democratic executives: Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, and lesbian Attorney General Dana Nessel.
When Democratic Congresswoman Haley Stevens vacated the seat to run for the U.S. Senate, Moss was the first to enter the race. He faces five Democratic primary opponents in this reliably blue district.
“I think I’ve been able to build the biggest coalition here from the grassroots to the governor,” Moss told LGBTQ Nation, “and I think that has a lot to do with trust that constituents have already placed in me to to wage these big battles from our economy to our democracy in the state legislature that I would bring with me to Congress.”
At 39, Moss also emphasized his “energy and youth.” He would be the youngest member of Michigan’s congressional delegation. Moss would also be the first out member of Congress from the state.
CD11 is located within southeast Michigan’s Oakland County, a racially diverse area with a significant white majority (67.9 percent). The district is also socioeconomically and ethnically diverse and is home to adherents of numerous faiths.
“This is a strong district that is multicultural,” Moss said. “People benefit from it in this district.”
Moss has long been an advocate for LGBTQ+ causes in and out of the Legislature. As senator, he introduced the amendment to Michigan’s civil rights law that would include queer people, a momentous occasion for LGBTQ+ Michiganders. It was the culmination of a 40+ year battle in this purple state, as activists and legislators passed the baton year after year. Moss said he felt like the final runner who crossed the tape and that he felt “the weight of that history.”
“I very much felt the weight of all of the people from Ruth Ellis to Jeff Montgomery—all of these people who have made such a huge mark on the advancement of LGBTQ rights, I carried all of them with me.”
Defending marriage equality is a high priority for Moss. In November, he introduced a resolution in the Senate to put a proposal on the ballot to remove Michigan’s constitutional ban on same sex marriage.
Prior to that, after Republicans took back the majority in the state House at the beginning of last year, one of the first actions taken by the far-right coalition was to introduce a nonbinding resolution to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges and re-ban equal marriage.
One particularly ignoble Republican representative took the additional step of holding a press conference where he spoke for five minutes, refused questions, “and then, when he scurried away from the podium,” Moss said, “I took over the podium to give an immediate rebuttal to the bulls**t that he spewed.”
“Buffoonish” is how Moss described the Republican’s performance at the time.
LGBTQ+ policy is just one area of focus for the state senator, who has also been a champion for voting rights, government transparency, and ending gun violence throughout his tenure in the state legislature.
Chair of the Elections and Ethics Committee, Moss called voting rights “a driver for me.”
“I really believe you have to make sure the foundation is strong before you can build anything on it, specifically with voting rights,” Moss said. “Voting rights secure all other rights.”
“I was tasked with implementing the voter-passed proposal from 2022,” Moss said. “We wrote the law that implemented nine days of early voting that expanded access to absentee ballots, and many pro-voter initiatives. And in the face of MAGA extremism trying to sow doubt in our election systems, we have made our election systems even stronger and debunked all of these conspiracy theories.”
The piece of legislation Moss is most eager to champion in Congress is the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. “I want to take this experience that I’ve accumulated as a voting rights champion in the [state] legislature and bring it federally as well.”
Moss, who is active in Jewish life in Michigan’s 11th Congressional District, recalled the point at which he became aware that even today, many people in this country still hate and scapegoat Jews.
“For the first 30 years of my life, antisemitism was in history books and black and white pictures and old film reels,” Moss said. “It was something that my grandparents and parents told me about.”
“I think starting with Charlottesville, it really took life in real color in real time. And obviously, it started as things we can tangibly understand: neo-Nazis, far right activism, tiki torches at Charlottesville, and now it has uncomfortably crept into the far left as well. And so, extremism is never good for the Jews.”
Violent incidents like those in Charlottesville and at a recent Hanukkah celebration in Sydney are becoming increasingly common, and “the worst part of it is the lack of surprise that these incidents are becoming more and more frequent,” Moss said.
“We need to all gather together to snuff out this horrible, untenable rise in antisemitism,” Moss said, “and there’s a robust Jewish community here in this district that is looking for that representation as well.”
Moss said he often talks with Nessel about hate and violence here and abroad. “We’ve applied all of the fighting spirit that we’ve accrued through LGBTQ activism, and we’ve put that into our fight against antisemitism,” Moss said. “Taking on hate doesn’t require rewriting the playbook.”
While the war in Gaza has been playing out thousands of miles away, Moss pointed out that it’s impacted Jews locally. “We saw the Jewish Federation building be vandalized on the anniversary of October 7th. We’ve seen other public Jewish officials be targeted at their work and at their home with vandalism and graffiti. It’s been very, very challenging here to navigate through that.”
At a time when elected officials are increasingly scrutinized over their ties to Israel, Moss says he is well aware of the heightened rhetoric.
“I think that my views are right in the mainstream of this district,” Moss said. The district has been represented by Stevens, a moderate, since 2022.
“I think that the framework of this, the ceasefire, right now is incredibly important. The hostages have been released. The Israeli military campaign has receded back. The rush of humanitarian aid has to go where it’s needed, to Palestinian civilians, and I support all of those negotiated items.”
“In this time of a five-alarm fire,” Moss said he thought it was important that the Jewish community “has a voice in the places where it matters.”
While Moss is balancing his time between campaigning and finishing his term as Senate President pro tem, he still finds time for his favorite pursuits: travel and live music. And that often involves Patti LaBelle in concert.
“I think when you’re gay you get assigned one diva at birth, and then you have to roll with that person, ride or die for the rest of your life,” Moss said. “Mine just happens to be Patti LaBelle.”
Moss explained that he grew up listening to Motown and R&B, and was already a fan of LaBelle when he and a friend were on vacation in Chicago and saw that she was headlining a Pride festival in Milwaukee, about an hour north. “Years and years before marriage equality,” Moss noted. So they headed for Wisconsin.
“At the end of her concert as she’s walking off to this big acclaim and this rousing ovation,” Moss began, “she points to the audience, and she says, ‘Stay gay.’ And it was kind of that first moment where it’s like, OK, being gay isn’t something to run away from or deal with or endure or overcome. This is somebody telling the audience, no you stay gay. You are in the right place, at the right time, and you should keep doing it.”
Tim Cook, the gay CEO of Apple, made an obsequious appearance at the White House on Saturday night to join Trump loyalists for a screening of the First Lady’s new feature-length documentary, Melania.
The black-tie event saw Cook, champagne in hand, celebrating the moment with the movie’s disgraced director, one-time box-office draw Brett Ratner, who was ostracized by Hollywood following multiple allegations of sexual misconduct in 2017.
Cook’s appearance at the premiere was a particularly disappointing sight for the LGBTQ+ Apple users who are appalled by recent events in Minneapolis.
The screening took place the same day that intensive care nurse Alex Pretti was shot and killed by ICE agents in Minneapolis while protesting Trump’s immigration crackdown there. Pretti’s death follows the shooting of gay protester Renee Good at point-blank range by ICE agent Jonathan Ross on January 7.
Cook’s appearance at the screening followed his gift to Trump in August of a custom glass and 24-karat gold “award” bearing Cook’s signature, with an eye to Apple’s bottom line; the company was exempted from tariffs affecting the company in the aftermath.
Cook told Trump as he shook his hand and presented the gift to him, “Congratulations, Mr. President.”
The Apple CEOs bootlicking is particularly galling given his own publicly acknowledged liberal values. Cook was the first out gay CEO of a Fortune 500 company, and he has labelled Don’t Say Gay legislation and anti-trans bathroom bills as a “license to discriminate.”
Guests at the screening included Mike Tyson, self-help guru Tony Robbins, and Queen Rania of Jordan.
Cook was among several tech and entertainment company toppers celebrating the First Lady, among them CEOs Eric Yuan of Zoom and Linsa Su of AMD. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and Studios chief Mike Hopkins, the producers of the film, were also in attendance. The company spent $40 million on the First Lady glow-up.
Mrs. Trump called the screening “A Historic Moment.”
“Our personal stories endure time and serve as a reminder of our mutual obligation to one another,” Melania Trump said apropos of nothing in her record as First Lady.
Guests were welcomed to the Saturday screening by a full military band playing famous movie tunes and “Melania’s Waltz,” a song commissioned for the film by Hollywood composer Tony Neiman, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
One guest shared that Cook and fellow moviegoers were treated to commemorative black and white popcorn boxes; framed, collectible screening tickets; and “take home cookies” bearing the First Lady’s name.
A limited-edition version of her memoir, Melania, was also gifted to attendees.
The official premiere of the documentary takes place on Thursday night at the recently renamed Trump-Kennedy Center.
Political expert Robert Reich believes the tide may finally be turning against Donald Trump.
“The slumbering giant of America is awakening,” wrote Reich – who served as President Bill Clinton’s secretary of labor and is now a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley – in a recent op-ed.
He was referring to what he called an “extraordinary week” during which irate Americans “forced Disney to put Jimmy Kimmel back on the air” and during which Trump’s “dictatorial narcissism revealed itself nearly as dramatically in the criminal indictment of former FBI director James Comey.”
“Over 6 million people watched Kimmel’s Tuesday monologue assailing Trump’s attempt to censor him,” Reich said. “Another 26 million watched it on social media, including YouTube. (Kimmel’s usual television audience is about 1.42 million.)”
In the same week, Reich pointed out that Trump directed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to invade “war ravaged Portland” and “ICE facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists.”
“There was also his bonkers speech to the United Nations telling delegates that their nations are ‘going to hell,’” Reich continued. “His attribution of autism to Tylenol, even though doctors say it is safe for pregnant women in moderation. His unilateral imposition of tariffs as high as 100 percent on imports of pharmaceuticals and kitchen cabinets.”
All of this, Reich concluded, indicates that “his neofascism and his dementia are both in plain sight.”
Trump’s approval ratings are plummeting, Reich said. Voters are increasingly turning against him, as evidenced by the several recent Democratic wins in special elections.
Recently, CNN’s chief data analyst, Harry Enten, detailed the president’s plummeting approval ratings regarding his anti-immigration crusade and his deployment of the National Guard into U.S. cities. Enten said 42% of Americans support Trump’s deployment of the National Guard, while 58% oppose it. He added that 64% of independents also oppose the move, which indicates it is not a winning strategy.
He also showed how approval ratings on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) have nosedived in Trump’s second term, dropping from zero points in his first term to negative 14 points today.
“Bottom line is the president may think this is a politically winning issue for him, but the numbers tell a very different story,” Enten said. “It’s, in fact, a political loser.”
Reich also pointed out that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) “is struggling to hold House Republicans together, facing rebellion on issues” like the release of the Epstein files.
He also praised Democrats in Congress for resisting budget approval without Republican agreement to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies.
He said he doesn’t know exactly when the “tipping point” will take place or what it will be, but he also assured Americans that “we’re getting closer.”
“I’ve been in and around politics for 60 years and have developed a sixth sense about the slumbering giant of America,” he said. “That giant is now stirring. He about to stand. He’s angry. Soon he will roar.”
He told Americans to continue fighting, assuring them, “Your activism is working.”
Reich has long been outspoken against Donald Trump. In May, he called the GOP’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill the “ugliest thing ever seen” and wrote a short and to-the-point op-ed on how only a “tiny minority” of Americans actually understand the content of the bill due to right-wing efforts to confuse and overwhelm them.
South Carolina state Rep. RJ May (R) — an anti-LGBTQ+ politician who has accused drag queens and transgender people of harming kids — was sentenced to 17.5 years in federal prison on Wednesday after pleading guilty to five counts of distributing child sex abuse material (CSAM).
May — who was honored by the anti-LGBTQ+ “parents’ rights” group Moms for Liberty in 2023 as its Legislator of the Year — first denied the charges after investigators found evidence that he had shared hundreds of images of kids, including pictures of adults raping seven-year-olds. Judge Cameron McGowan Currie, who sentenced May, said the CSAM he shared was “more severe” than any other she had ever seen before, WIS-TV reported.
After being arrested and indicted in June, May was suspended from his state congressional office and then resigned in disgrace. He originally planned to represent himself in court despite not having a law degree and asked the judge to throw out the warrant used to search his home, laptop, and mobile devices (which contained no CSAM, investigators said), as well as evidence that he had flown to Colombia to film himself having sex with three underage girls.
Then, his lawyer claimed that May had been framed by his political enemies. However, May eventually pleaded guilty in an agreement to drop five of the other charges against him. Though the federal government sought a 20-year prison sentence, May requested a shorter sentence followed by house arrest at his family’s Virginia farm.
Investigators found that May sent nearly 500 explicit videos over five days in late March and early April of 2024, including 265 different files of toddlers and young children involved in sex acts on the Kik social media network under the screen name “joebidennnn69.” He reportedly shared CSAM with other internet users in 18 states and six countries.
A forensic analysis of his phone showed he deleted the messaging apps Kik, Telegram, Mega, and Loki Messenger, within seconds of each other in April 2024. He used the alias “Eric Rentling” on Mega and in a related Facebook account whose profile image was a picture of the back of his head.
Prosecutors said that May showed sexual interest in incest between young children and their parents, as well as an interest in children the same age as his own kids. Because some of the images featured children the same age as his own child — a seven-year-old — the 39-year-old was held without bail until his trial.
May was a founding member of the hardline conservative South Carolina Freedom Caucus, which pushed his state’s Republican party further to the right. During his time in the state legislature, May made anti-LGBTQ+ statements.
In a January 2024 House speech on transgender issues and kids, he said, “We as legislators have an obligation to ensure that our children have no harm done to them.” In a November 24, 2022, post on social media, he said that “exposing children to drag shows and pushing sex changes on toddlers” were forms of “child exploitation.”
He also compared Medicaid funding for gender-affirming care to the state paying for “lifestyles” like drug addiction, adding, “We as legislators have an obligation to ensure that our children have no harm done to them.”
Oak Lawn United Methodist Church in Dallas received formal approval from the city’s Landmark Commission last week after officials, members, and volunteers painted the Late Gothic Revival building’s staircase the colors of the rainbow in October.
The building has local landmark status, and it’s listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The dramatic gesture reimagining the church steps was executed as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) carried out the Trump administration’s order to tear up rainbow crosswalks across the state, including one in front of the church’s historic building, home to a large and welcoming Methodist congregation.
Church officials and members at Oak Lawn called painting the stairs an act of faith.
“Silence in the face of harm always sides with the oppressor,” Oak Lawn Senior Pastor Rachel Griffin-Allison said at the time.
“Painting our steps in the colors of the rainbow is a visible witness to the gospel we preach: that every person is created in the image of God and worthy of safety, dignity, and belonging,” she said.
At a packed meeting last Monday, members of the Landmark Commission agreed, granting a three-year approval to the “temporary art installation.”
All of the speakers at the public forum spoke in favor of keeping the rainbow steps.
“This is religious expression,” said former Landmark Commissioner Cindy Steiner.
One speaker after another used the word “safe” to describe how the rainbow steps to the church made them feel, including at least one straight congregant, the Dallas Voice reports. They asked the commission to “respect the wishes of the congregation.”
A gay congregant from Denton, north of Dallas, said he was speaking because he was shunned at his former church after he came out. He knew he was welcome at Oak Lawn.
“Keeping the rainbow steps is Christlike,” he said.
The church’s petition originally requested a one-year approval for the rainbow-painted staircase. Asked by a commission member if the church would reapply again after the year was up, Senior Pastor Griffin-Allison replied yes, and the member asked for an amendment extending the certification to three years.
The approval was granted unanimously.
Following the meeting, Griffin-Allison said the turnout and the commission’s action “filled my heart.”
The first time Donald Trump took the oath of office, I felt an overwhelming sense of doom. My whole body somehow felt both impossibly heavy and utterly empty at the same time, like it couldn’t decide whether it’d be safer to sink into the ground or float away into the clouds.
I’ll forever remember when Sean Spicer – Trump’s first in what became a revolving door of White House press secretaries – stormed up to the podium, red-faced and fuming, to declare in his first-ever meeting with the American people that no inauguration crowd had ever been as large as Trump’s.
I already knew the country was in trouble, but that was the first time I really, deeply felt it, the first time it was clear Trump would not be rising to the occasion.
This time around, it felt different. In January 2025, when Trump laid his hand on the Bible to begin his second term, it wasn’t heaviness or emptiness or darkness or doom that consumed me. It was resignation. None of this was unbelievable anymore. In fact, what made it so hard was just how believable it had become.
One term could have been a fluke, a voting bloc gone off the rails by a professional con artist promising roads paved with gold. But two terms? That’s a movement. Maybe this really is just who we are, I thought. Maybe it’s time to accept that.
I didn’t watch Trump’s second inauguration. I was too deflated, too beaten down, too exhausted by years of clinging to a childlike optimism that America would right itself in the future.
Despite decades of oppression, the queer community has always had an enduring dedication to joy. Take the moment police raided a Pittsburgh queer bar in the middle of a drag event last May. The crowd was forced to wait outside as authorities inspected the premises, but the performers and patrons refused to let the cops quash their spirit.
Video captured during the wait shows the crowd belting Chappell Roan’s Pink Pony Club while the drag queen Indica dances up and down the sidewalk, collecting tips.
Every day, as more stories like this one found their way to us, I was reminded how much inherent good exists in the world, and how determined people are to drown out hate. Slowly, I allowed hope to creep back in.
The January Issue of LGBTQ Nation isn’t about hope, per se, but it is meant to inspire it. It is meant to remind us that no matter how dire things seem, there are always good people trying to make it right.
The stories in this issue examine what LGBTQ+ activism has looked like during the first year of the second Trump administration, what needs to change moving forward, and how our leaders can do better. It will also cover that enduring joy, in itself a form of resistance.
I hope the pieces in this issue inspire you, as they’ve inspired me, to rise above that resignation that can seem so hard to resist at times. I don’t know what will happen to this country or to democracy or to the world as a result of the second Trump presidency, but I do know that as much as it has revealed the worst of humanity, it has also revealed the best.
Mr. Rogers once told us that in scary times, “look for the helpers.” I am choosing to not only look for them, but also to look to them, for guidance on how to stay engaged in this endless fight.
The queer resistance lives on, and now’s the time to give it all we’ve got.
The fallout from Donald Trump’s decision to illegally rename the Kennedy Center to give himself top billing continues to grow, creating an embarrassing situation for the president. As it turns out, artists don’t want their work associated with Trump, despite legal threats from Ric Grenell, the president’s openly gay factotum who heads the center.
On Monday, just days before their scheduled New Year’s Eve concerts, the Cookers, a highly regarded jazz group, announced that they were cancelling their appearance at the Kennedy Center.
“With deep regret, we must share that we are unable to perform as planned on New Year’s Eve,” the group said in a statement, explaining that the decision came together very quickly. “We remain committed to playing music that reaches across divisions rather than deepening them.” The Cookers said that their decision was in line with what jazz is about.
“Jazz was born from struggle and from a relentless insistence on freedom: freedom of thought, of expression, and of the full human voice,” their statement said.
As it turns out, the Cookers are hardly alone in that decision. Last week’s Christmas Eve concert was canceled at the last minute for the same reason. Long-time host Chuck Redd, another giant in the world of jazz, said that Trump renaming the Center was the last straw.
“When I saw the name change on the Kennedy Center website and then hours later on the building, I chose to cancel our concert,” Redd told the Associated Press.
Kristy Lee, a folk singer from Alabama, announced last week that she was cancelling her January concert because of the Center renaming.
“When American history starts getting treated like something you can ban, erase, rename, or rebrand for somebody else’s ego, I can’t stand on that stage and sleep right at night,” she wrote on Instagram. “America didn’t get built by branding. It got built by people showing up and doing the work. And the folks who carry it don’t need their name on it, they just show up. That’s all I’m doing here. I’m showing up.”
Other artists are piling on as well. Doug Varone and Dancers, who were scheduled to appear at the Kennedy Center next April, announced Monday that they were cancelling their appearance as well. “We can no longer permit ourselves nor ask our audiences to step inside this once great institution,” Varone said.
The holiday cancellations in particular hit the Kennedy Center hard, because the season is “highly lucrative.” The bottom line already took a hit when Grenell signed off on a deal to let FIFA, the governing body for international soccer, use the Center free of charge over the holidays for its World Cup planning. That decision led to multiple holiday performances being cancelled or rescheduled.
In response to the cancellation of the Christmas Eve concert, Grenell threatened to sue Redd for $1 million, calling that Redd’s decision “classic intolerance” while lauding “President Trump’s extraordinary efforts to save this national treasure.”
The newest cancellations led Grenell to resort to trashing the artists.
“The artists who are now canceling shows were booked by the previous far left leadership,” Grenell said on X. “Their actions prove that the previous team was more concerned about booking far left political activists rather than artists willing to perform for everyone regardless of their political beliefs.”
When Amaka Agwu’s little brother was three years old, he turned to his darker-skinned father one night and warned that his lighter-skinned grandmother was coming to get him. “That’s what white people do to Black people,” the little boy said.
“It was a very funny thing to hear a three-year-old say,” Agwu reflected, “and very interesting to tell him, ‘That’s not how that works.’”
Agwu, an 18-year-old gay student activist at George Washington University in D.C., laughed at the recollection, but who could blame a young person today for thinking that white people are coming after people of color? Or, perhaps, that the so-called “normal gays” are targeting trans folks? It’s on screens everywhere – from the couches and kitchens where three-year-olds roam, to the college campuses targeted by the likes of Turning Point USA and the young conservatives enchanted by its mission.
Dinner conversations like the one her brother sparked are what spurred Agwu to activism. “My parents were always very cognizant about teaching us about different political systems and inequalities that exist in the United States,” she said.
Nowadays, Agwu feels disappointed that her fellow students aren’t rising to the moment that Donald Trump has forced upon them.
“We just need to do better,” she said.
Since the Civil Rights Movement, young people have been at the vanguard of political protest in the U.S., from North Carolina college students launching nationwide lunch counter sit-ins, to the death of four Kent State undergraduates who were shot by National Guard troops while demonstrating against the Vietnam War, to encampments on college campuses across the country protesting Israel’s invasion of Gaza. In all of these, students came to symbolize not just the causes they were fighting for but a generational struggle for change.
But those and other iconic protest movements, like nuclear disarmament, the invasion of Iraq, apartheid in South Africa, and Occupy Wall Street, involved single issues or ideas to rally around. This time, it’s been harder for students to focus amid Trump’s flood-the-zone strategy.
Add to that attacks on higher education (including student visa restrictions) explicitly designed by Trump advisors like Stephen Miller to undermine a liberal worldview on college campuses, and you have a successful effort to divide and conquer dissent.
Agwu saw the writing on the wall during the Biden administration, with the slew of anti-trans state legislative attacks and the passage of Florida’s notorious Don’t Say Gay law that inspired copycat legislation around the country. “I was seeing all that, and I was like, ‘Wait, there’s now a president in office who actually isn’t going to fight against it, but on all that will actively support those types of things?’”
She describes Trump’s inauguration one year ago as “scary.”
“I just felt like this deep-seated fear entangled with how the country would go.”
“He’s kind of exposing underlying currents of conservatism that have already existed in the United States that just haven’t been fully addressed,” she said. “Now we have a president who’s willing to exploit those to get power.”
“I think he’s just making us fully aware — and the people who weren’t aware of it to begin with — that these deep-seated, hateful notions still exist, and that we just need to do better to fight back against them.”
Agwu is fighting back as the head of logistics for the “startup” activist group Revs Rise Up, a play on the school’s revolutionary school mascot.
“Basically, we’re trying to fight against authoritarianism with the Trump administration,” she said.
Their latest action was a banner signing and letter drop demanding that GW refuse to join Trump’s so-called university “compact” dictating anti-diversity initiatives and assaulting academic freedom.
“No one’s really gone out and rejected it, right? And we’re saying our school should preemptively reject it before you start requiring that all schools start to accept it.”
For Agwu, Trump’s requirement for sex assigned at birth on passports ranked as his most egregious attack on the LGBTQ+ community, a literal manifestation of his effort to erase trans identity from American society.
“In a very legal sense, it delegitimizes someone’s transition journey, and it’s inherently harmful to thousands upon thousands of trans people who have gone through the process of medically and/or legally transitioning,” she said.
It’s one example, Agwu explained, of Trump’s thirst for power.
Asked if change can be effected on screens, Agwu, who’s studying international affairs and English, replied, “Not entirely.”
Social media is “a very easy and very powerful tool to help people learn more about issues,” and to “see themselves as though they’re being involved,” Agwu said.
But she cautioned against “hashtag activism.”
“If people only engage in that, it doesn’t enact effective change,” she said.
“You still need to get people who are going out onto the streets, or who are lobbying to their Congress members and going and saying, ‘We need this to change, because this matters to me, and this is hurting thousands of people.’ So I do think it’s a great tool, but it’s not entirely what will generate change.”
Cailey Chin, a freshman studying economics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, says Trump has dominated her history and politics education since elementary school.
“My first memory, I guess, was my library elective, and they made us debate the Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump race, and we had a fake election about it, which I think was a little bit too advanced for third graders, but nonetheless, it was still a debated topic within my school.”
Chin’s activism started several years later, in high school, with a failed effort to expand sex education in her Pennsylvania school district. By that time, a previously bipartisan issue had become contentious in her swing state county.
The growing red-blue divide “definitely affected” her efforts, Chin said. “I was pushed back. I was ignored oftentimes.”
At Penn, she works with a group called Our Space, which connects Philadelphia-area high schoolers and her school’s LGBT center through educational sessions focused on comprehensive sex ed, “like healthy boundaries, communication, and things targeted specifically at queer youth.”
That’s a segment of the population under direct attack by the Trump administration and its allies, with executive orders attacking gender beyond the binary, bans on queer content in school libraries, and federal funding slashed for gender-affirming care.
“Just being able to connect and having a safe space to talk about these topics and educate our youth” ensures they’ll be “well-equipped to fight back,” she said.
Chin called Trump’s first year back in office “harrowing” and cited cuts to HIV funding and his failure to acknowledge World AIDS Day as two of his most grievous actions.
“HIV is a very bipartisan issue that obviously does not just affect the LGBTQ community, but disproportionately affects it,” she said. “Cutting these funds only harms the entirety of our nation and really hurts the health of not just queer people, but people in marginalized communities, people of color, people in poor communities.”
Chin said there’s a clear understanding among students at Penn of the harm caused by the Trump administration, but thinks the Ivy League’s competitive culture is holding students (including herself) back from public protest, both IRL and online.
“UPenn’s pre-professional culture, alongside just like fear in general, makes people very quiet in terms of political issues,” she said, “and I can relate to that. Sometimes I’m hesitant to talk about my activism or just do simple things like this interview, because of my digital footprint.”
“If employers see that I’m outspoken and that I’m passionate about the things that I am passionate about, it might lead to me losing a job.”
Ironically, though, Chin has a large online presence focused on another cause that’s been caught in the Trump administration’s crosshairs: equity in education.
She counts over 34,000 followers on Instagram and hundreds of thousands of likes on TikTok for her content advising high schoolers on how to ace college admissions applications.
Chin said her work online is a matter of accessibility.
“Social media, obviously, is accessible to a large amount of people with their phones. Via my content creation, I’m able to provide information at no cost to anybody following me, and those people following me and viewing my content come from a very diverse set of backgrounds. So that really helps in spreading information and getting things out there, whether it be advocacy or not.”
Trans student-activist Amber Va describes Trump’s worst actions as legion, and defined by the tragic flaw in his “Make America Great Again” slogan.
“Truth be told, it was never that great in the first place,” Va said.
“And now you have this great big bill that’s enacted, along with attacks on trans people and the trans community, and the passport recognition, and right now, especially, with the ICE raids — you know, it’s just really insane.”
For Va, a 24-year-old sidelined from school by the pandemic and now a freshman at Valley College in Los Angeles, “The [anti-trans] stigma that’s been going on in the media that we’re forced to believe” is personal. She was already facing it among her Cambodian family.
“It’s all intertwined,” she said. “The intergenerational trauma and now the political climate.”
Her own experience living as a trans woman and queer person of color inspired her advocacy work. She serves on the queer youth advisory committee for the Foundation for California Community Colleges and partners with nonprofit organizations to get resources to young people in her work as a grassroots community activist.
She wants to parlay a communications degree into a queer-focused public relations specialty.
Regarding the attention economy, Va agreed that young adults and teenagers are focused on social media but need to exercise discretion in who they listen to.
“There’s a bunch of social influencers who will do it just for clout, you know, just for attention,” she said of some influencers’ advocacy. “It depends on who you talk to and who’s a credible source.”
But community is where you find it, she said.
“There’s a lot of people throughout the nation who can’t attend protests because of the era we’re in, or where they are. We’ll take as much support as we can for the rallies, the marches, for protests, for sit-ins and all of that, you know? I mean, that’s what I count as community. There’s only so much you can do within your power and for your safety.”
Va likened the choice to resist Trump’s onslaught to Neo’s in The Matrix, before the right-wing manosphere co-opted that movie’s message.
“You have the red pill, or you have the blue pill, take your pick.” Either way, “You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into.”
Then Va turned to a more definitive movie analogy.
“Like, in Star Wars terms, I’ll join the resistance, right?”
However young people may choose to resist, Va advises them, “Everything takes time.”
“Something I learned from my activism is that patience is a virtue,” she said.
Students may be in some kind of interregnum right now, caught between the rise of the #metoo, Black Lives Matter, and trans rights movements and Trump’s broad assault on everything “woke,” along with the overall radicalization that historically follows similar illiberal backlash.
If young people like Va are looking to movies for their cultural cues, One Battle After Another is another more contemporary example, drawing on militant groups of the 1960s and 70s, like the Black Panthers, the Weather Underground and the Symbionese Liberation Army — all armed in deed or simply rhetoric — to depict a level of resistance equal to the assault they’re confronted with; orthodoxy on both sides of the political spectrum comes in for a critical beating.
The message, like Va’s, is that the struggle is never-ending.
Despite a portion of Agwu’s student body “who seem a bit jaded, like there’s nothing we can do,” she does see fresh evidence of young people stirred to action. An appearance by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on campus in December inspired a “huge protest” against Trump administration policies, even during finals.
“We are the closest school to the White House. I can see it from my dorm,” she said. “Because there’s such a large population of students who came here specifically because they want to study political science or international affairs in the capital of the U.S., it’s a very politically charged environment.”
While “there hasn’t been enough protest and action,” fellow students are “willing to fight for or against whatever they personally believe,” she said. It’s her role as an activist “to empower and inspire other people to enact change and participate in their own way.”
“So many students are very energized to fight back.”
Chin considered whether the Trump era is a “blip” in history or an enduring turn to authoritarianism.
“In the face of resistance, you still have the ability to make change in your local community, in your state, at the national level. It’s not impossible,” she said after cataloguing her own efforts and disappointments. “I think that it’s important to remember that this is just a temporary wave.”
“You might feel discouraged, and you might feel like you’re helpless, but there are still people that want to connect with you. They want to fight back with you, and they want to unite to make change.”
Va reached back to words spoken by Black Panther Party member Assata Shakur from prison in 1973, a call to action for those ready for a reckoning.
“It is our duty to fight for freedom,” Va said, quoting Shakur. “It is our duty to win. We must love and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.”
A far-right political action committee says it has collected enough signatures to potentially get a trans sports ban onto Washington state’s ballot in November, and that ban would require girls to undergo physical examinations to participate in school sports.
As the Washington State Standard reports, Let’s Go Washington collected 445,187 signatures in support of Initiative Measure No. IL26-638, exceeding the 386,000 needed to advance the measure. The initiative would ban transgender girls from competing in girls’ school sports statewide.
IL26-638 interprets existing state law as requiring students “to undergo a routine physical examination prior to participation in interscholastic sports, which includes documentation of the student’s sex assigned at birth.” It would require school districts and nonprofit entities to “prohibit biologically male students from competing with and against female students in athletic activities with separate classifications for male and female students.”
Under the proposed measure, students who want to participate in girls’ sports would be required to provide “a health examination and consent form or other statement signed by the student’s personal health care provider that verifies the student’s biological sex, relying only on one or more of the following: The student’s reproductive anatomy, genetic makeup, or normal endogenously produced testosterone levels.”
As journalist Erin Reed notes in her newsletter Erin in the Morning, trans sports bans with similar requirements have been highly controversial, as they could potentially result in minors being subjected to invasive physical exams simply to participate in school sports.
Reed cites the failure last March of the so-called Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, which would have amended Title IX — the federal civil rights law prohibiting sex discrimination in government-funded schools and education programs — to prohibit schools from allowing trans female athletes to participate in athletic programs or activities “designated for women or girls.” The Congressional Equality Caucus noted that the bill could have forced “any student to answer invasive personal questions about their bodies & face humiliating physical inspections to ‘prove’ that they’re a girl.”
Along with the signatures in support of IL26-638, Let’s Go Washington also submitted 416,201 signatures in support of a measure repealing changes to another of the PAC’s recent initiatives. The Let’s Go Washington-backed Initiative 2081, approved in 2024, codified the rights of the parents of public school students into law. As Reed notes, however, state lawmakers watered down provisions that would have reportedly mandated that schools out trans students to their parents.
According to Reed, Let’s Go Washington’s IL26-001 would restore language to the 2024 parental rights law that would effectively require the forced outing of trans students to their parents.
As the Washington State Standard reports, Let’s Go Washington submitted signatures in support of both measures to the Washington Secretary of State’s office on Friday. The Secretary of State’s office told the outlet that it may take up to four weeks to verify the signatures for the initiatives. Once verified, the initiatives will go before the state legislature, which can either approve them or reject them. If the state legislature rejects them, they will either appear on the November ballot on their own or alongside alternatives proposed by lawmakers.
Brian Heywood, the millionaire hedge fund manager and Republican megadonor who leads Let’s Go Washington, claimed that roughly half of the signatures the PAC had collected in support of the initiatives were from independent voters and Democrats. “This is not a partisan issue, this is a common sense issue,” Heywood said, according to the Standard. “This has broad support.”
However, in a statement issued by WA Families for Freedom, Gender Justice League board member Sophia Lee accused Let’s Go Washington of “playing political games with the lives of vulnerable trans and queer kids.”
Reed, meanwhile, notes that the trans sports ban is likely to face constitutional challenges should it become law. But it’s unclear whether the measure would succeed on the ballot. Reed notes that anti-trans messaging from Republicans last year coincided with significant GOP losses across the country in November’s off-year elections.
