As disgusting as the Trump administration’s destruction of democracy is, what makes the pain that much worse is the sheer fecklessness of the response by the so-called opposition. Perhaps it was always too much to expect the elite mainstream media, which has always been as much amused as appalled by Trump, to call out the damage that he is doing (The New York Times has long been particularly disastrous on this account).
But you would think that at least the Democrats would take Trump’s attacks on government, civil rights, and human health as the crises that they are. Instead, the party has been acting as if the main problem is figuring out what the right focus-group message is to win next year’s midterm elections.
Consider Sen. Elissa Slotkin’s (D-MI) response to Trump’s address to Congress – the one where he threatened to annex Canada and Greenland, jail parents of trans children, and sell citizenship to the highest bidders. Slotkin’s speech was positively decorous by comparison. She said that Ronald Reagan would be rolling over in his grave, but only people in their 50s remember the Reagan presidency. She said that democracy is “at risk,” as if it isn’t already under direct assault.
“You want to cut waste? I’ll help you do it,” she said about Elon Musk and his chainsaw attacks on government. “But change doesn’t need to be chaotic or make us less safe.”
The speech underscores the fact that Democrats are stuck in the same mindset as before Trump was elected. The mistake that Democrats keep making is that they adopt Republicans’ framing but not Republicans’ tactics.
Republicans would never acknowledge that the government needs cutting. Instead, they would cry that veterans are on the verge of being made homeless by a heartless billionaire. They would say that it is only a matter of time before RFK’s crackpot beliefs kill us. They would insist that Trump only cares about fat cats and tax cheats. And they would use that language, not the kind of language that is oh-so-respectful of Republicans’ feelings.
And that message would be a lot easier to hear, not just among disheartened Democrats but among the independent Trump voters who have buyer’s remorse.
Perhaps the worst example of this false belief that Democrats can engage politely with the other side was the shameful performance of Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Newsom trashed the trans community while appearing on the Charlie Kirk podcast.
The fact that Newsom even appeared on Kirk’s podcast is itself reprehensible. In doing so, Newsom legitimized a fringe figure who should be, at a minimum, shunned when he’s not being condemned. As a reminder, Kirk regularly engages in hateful anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and has even discussed stoning gay people.
And there’s the governor of the largest Democratic state, a would-be Democratic presidential candidate, nodding in agreement to an attack on a minority group. Clearly, Newsom thinks this is good politics, but it’s not. (It’s also bad morals). He’s just ceding ground to extremism.
The point now is to dig in at every possible moment. Democrats can’t pretend that it’s business as usual. For every inch that they give, Republicans will take a mile. As a case in point, ten Democrats agreed with Republicans to censure Rep. Al Green (D-TX) for his willingness to shout out his support for Medicaid during Trump’s speech. So, while Republicans are burning down the government, some Democrats are upset at Green’s table manners. Meanwhile, having gotten that victory, Republicans now want to strip him of his committee assignments.
This is what happens when you try to appear reasonable with unreasonable people. The Republican party is now a cult, and you can’t bargain with a cult. It will only keep coming at you for more, eroding protections, rights, and democracy itself until there is nothing left to defend.
The idea that Democrats can wait until the 2026 midterms to fix the problem is flat-out wrong. The problem isn’t getting Democrats back in power. The problem is preserving the nation now. By the time the midterms roll around, the damage will already have been done. Democrats need to stop acting as if it’s politics as usual and start acting as if it’s war. We’re in a fight to save democracy, not Congressional seats.
It’s a Thursday night or a Sunday afternoon, and you’re sitting on your couch with your phone in your hand.
What are you going to do?
That’s the question at the heart of a loneliness crisis that’s overwhelmed the LGBTQ+ community.
The rise of social media and “the apps,” a wave of bar closings during the COVID pandemic, and a hostile political environment have conspired to produce a sense of dread for gay Americans that still has a lot of us sheltering in place — alone together.
But the obstacles keeping us apart in real life are giving way to a connection revival.
Three years after the pandemic, more bars are opening. Movie theater attendance is up. Restaurants are bustling, and people are reassessing the value of living their lives online.
And politics are galvanizing the LGBTQ+ community.
“Look, just being gay, or lesbian, or trans, or in drag is in and of itself a political act, because they have made it that way,” says Daniel Narcicio, owner of Red Eye bar in New York and a longtime promoter. “Being yourself is inherently political when people in power are telling you that what you are is wrong. Being out, literally in a club or figuratively out of the closet, is a political act.”
Buffeted by an onslaught of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, Grindr, gentrification, and pandemic lockdowns, the gay bar is reemerging as a center of LGBTQ+ community, reimagined as a more inclusive space and primed for protest.
Mario Diaz at his Sunday party Hot Dog at El Cid in Silver Lake | Mario Diaz Presents
“They are and have always been our homes away from home,” says Mario Diaz, a club king in Los Angeles who hosts Hot Dog Sundays at El Cid in Silver Lake. “And to those of us that have been disowned by our blood families, simply our home. So they are essential. Community is crucial. And spaces for celebration are indispensable. This is what life is all about: connection and love.”
And Diaz adds, “If history has taught us anything, it’s that no one parties like the oppressed.”
Part of hooking up is the eye contact and that excruciating second between when you look down and look away and then look back to see if he’s looking back at you. But if you’re looking at your phone, you miss out on that.Sociology Professor Greggor Mattson
Gay bars took a hit
History can also teach us something about the gay bar business, and the political context they operate in.
“It is certainly the case that in 2017, gay bar owners said they saw a surge of patrons who had become complacent during the Obama years and rediscovered their need to find a place to gather together,” says Greggor Mattson, professor and chair of Sociology at Oberlin College in Ohio, who chronicled the state of gay bars across the United States in his 2023 book, Who Needs Gay Bars?
“I would never say that Trump is good for gay bar business because he’s so bad for members of our community,” Mattson adds, but history looks like it’s repeating itself.
By Mattson’s count, there are just over 800 gay bars operating across the United States (he visited several hundred in his cross-country research), and 2023 was the first year there had been an increase since 1997.
Many closed during the pandemic lockdowns and never recovered. Others fell victim to gentrification and redevelopment — the scrappy dive bars in low-rent neighborhoods that appealed to low-income regulars, slumming tourists, and real estate speculators alike.
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One example of pandemic resilience is Troop 429 in Norwalk, Connecticut, which managed to weather the COVID lockdowns by gaming the system.
“They were quite creative,” Mattson says. “Bars were closed, but retail was an essential business that was allowed to stay open. So they partnered with a record store and turned the bar into a record store where you could buy cocktails. That kept them open and allowed them to survive through COVID.”
Other bars partnered with food trucks, and some jurisdictions loosened rules around outdoor drinking, turning parking lots into open-air beer gardens.
At The Raven in Anchorage, Alaska, staff took it upon themselves to keep a voluntary log of everyone who came to the bar.
“When one of their patrons reported that they had tested positive for COVID, they called everyone to let them know. They were using skills they had honed during the AIDS crisis for community care. And in that way, I think gay bars may have had an advantage over other communities’ bars because this was not our first pandemic.”
The problem with phones
While lockdowns disappeared with the pandemic, Grindr still haunts the gay bar.
“Everything is different in bars because of phones,” says Mattson.
“One of the questions I was always asking owners who had been in the business for a while was, ‘What’s changed?’ And they all said people are worse conversationalists, and they don’t know how to be fun at the bar because we are all so used to when we feel borderline-uncomfortable whipping out our phone and looking down. And as you know, part of hooking up is the eye contact and that excruciating second between when you look down and look away and then look back to see if he’s looking back at you. But if you’re looking at your phone, you miss out on that.”
To be queer in my lifetime has consistently been a life on the fringe in a society full of judgment and shame. This is why our spaces are so important. LA promoter Mario Diaz
Worse than that, phones wielded in community spaces like gay bars are a sign of the addictive quality of the apps that users are glued to.
“To the extent that social media apps are driven by algorithms that are meant to get people to spend more time on them, I don’t think that we can trust they would be good for mental health,” says John Pachankis, the David R Kessler professor of Public Health and Psychiatry at Yale University.
“They keep people, straight or gay, out of the real world and into a world that’s built to be addictive, and addictive in ways that rely on self/other comparisons, self-evaluation, and ultimately feeling inferior,” Pachankis says.
Those symptoms can plague anyone who spends time on social media, but it might be particularly damaging to the mental health of LGBTQ+ people — because they’re set up for it.
“Probably the two biggest drivers of the mental health disparity affecting LGBT people happen at an early age,” Pachankis says.
“LGBTQ people are disproportionately exposed to parental non-acceptance and to peer rejection or bullying, and we know that those two types of stressors are targeted to an important aspect of who one is. They are evaluative and shame-inducing and are about the most stressful events and experiences that people can have. That sets people up for later mental health risk.”
Even in crowded places, our phones can keep us apart | Shutterstock
Ironically enough, there’s a good chance that the guy at the bar who’s looking away during a “borderline-uncomfortable” moment is on Grindr, simultaneously widening his selection of potential dates, shutting down the ones in front of him, and sparking a stressor unique to queer men.
“Research does show that to the extent that gay and bisexual men, for example, experience stressors from within the gay community, their mental health is particularly likely to suffer with outcomes like depressed mood, body image disturbance, and even sexual risk-taking,” Pachankis says.
“All is not lost,” though, says Mattson.
“As a teacher of young people, young people are vaguely aware of what they’re missing. And I think it’s incumbent on queer elders, particularly people older than 32, who now count as queer elders, to keep the art of witty bar side banter alive and to help people put their phones away,” he says.
“Some of the bar owners and some of the bartenders are really skilled at this like they are at the front lines of holding on to our humor,” Mattson explains. “There was one bar owner who said he instructed his bartenders to take people’s phones and that they could only have them back after they had introduced themselves to a stranger, and that sometimes they would get so involved that they would forget to get their phones back.”
Club impresario Nardicio has a different strategy for keeping his customers offline.
“Just last week, I threw my infamous Nardi Gras party and had a 15-person marching band come through at midnight,” he says. “And I can tell you, no one at the club was on Grindr. They were living for it.”
I will say that with everything that has happened since Trump’s come into office, I have seen even more support for what we are doing and more excitement for what we are doing.Rikki’s Women’s Sports Bar co-creator Sara Yergovich
Broadening gay bars’ appeal
Smaller gay bars, though, have had to come up with other strategies to bring customers in, despite the lure of the apps — by broadening their appeal.
“Owners of bear bars or leather bars would ask me, you know, ‘What should we be doing?’” says Mattson. “I directed them to lesbian bars because lesbian bars have been doing this now for almost 30 years. Every lesbian bar that I interviewed was open to everybody.”
Lesbian bars experienced decades of decline before a bounce back following the pandemic. There were over 200 women’s bars in the 1980s, and fewer than 20 by the start of the pandemic. Since then, the Lesbian Bar Project counts 34 lesbian bars up and running across the U.S.
That number will bump up to 35 with the May opening of Rikki’s Women’s Sports Bar in San Francisco’s Castro District.
“Our definition of women’s sports is broad and all-encompassing,” says Danielle Thoe, one of Rikki’s co-owners. “It’s hard to fit that in just a couple sentences when you’re describing the space and what we’re building, but I think that welcoming aspect is really important,” she says.
To live a free and joyful life as a queer person is the ultimate act of resistance.LA promoter Mario Diaz
“Sports have a different connection,” says Sara Yergovich, Thoe’s business partner. “They’re a different way to connect with people. We’re very community-based, and as long as they want to support women’s sports, everyone is welcome.”
The pair say politics have worked their way into Rikki’s even before the bar’s opening.
“I will say that with everything that has happened since Trump’s come into office, I have seen even more support for what we are doing and more excitement for what we are doing,” Yergovich says. “It feels like people have kind of latched onto this as, you know, maybe bad things are happening, but there are some good things that are happening, too, and trying to really hold on to that.”
“Trans athletes belong in sports,” says Thoe. “They are some of our investors, our backers, our community members, and so that’s something that we’ll really look to highlight and make clear as we continue to get up and running.”
The resistance is alive and well at the gay bar
Nardicio’s New York bar is highlighting its resistance, as well, in gestures subtler than a marching band.
“Take for instance, at Red Eye, we recently got an ‘A’ from the health department ’cause we keep it clean behind the bar. We took that ‘A,’ put it in the window and proudly put a ‘G’ and a ‘Y’ next to it, so it says ‘GAY’ boldly in our window. We aren’t backing down. It’s in your face. We’re here, we’re queer, and we keep a spotless bar!”
Daniel Nardicio at his Red Eye nightclub in New York | Daniel Nardicio
“I think many of us learned a few lessons in lockdown,” says LA promoter Diaz. “Lessons about what’s really important in life. About the importance of human connection. Lessons on how short and unpredictable life can be.”
“To be queer in my lifetime has consistently been a life on the fringe in a society full of judgment and shame,” Diaz says. “This is why our spaces are so important. We need these places to survive and hold onto our joy. To live a free and joyful life as a queer person is the ultimate act of resistance. The moment we lose that, we lose the fight.”
“When people tell me, ‘We don’t need gay bars anymore,’ I ask them how they felt when they first went back to a restaurant after the COVID lockdowns, and they rhapsodize about how amazing it was to be out in public and to see people,” says Mattson.
“And I said, for queer people, we still need that. Even if we lived in a perfect world that was perfectly accepting, we are still a minority. We are still often raised by very lovely straight people, but who can’t be there for us in all the ways that we need. So we’re always going to need places where we can gather together. And there’s something deeply human about our need to be around other humans.”
The United States has withdrawn from the United Nations LGBTI Core Group, a collection of countries actively supporting the rights of LGBTQ+ and intersex people globally.
The U.S. withdrew from the organization on February 14, according to reporting by the Washington Blade, with no public announcement. A State Department spokesperson on Saturday confirmed the withdrawal but did not specify the specific date.
“In line with the president’s recent executive orders, we have withdrawn from the U.N. LGBTI Core Group,” the spokesperson said.
During Trump’s first term in office, his administration said it established a mission to decriminalize homosexuality worldwide. The administration was called out for its “sham” campaign that allegedly didn’t actually do anything to support the decriminalization of homosexuality, but the promise to promote decriminalization was a point of pride for the administration, often used to combat claims that the administration was proceeding with anti-LGBTQ+ actions.
The U.N. group, dedicated to “ensuring universal respect for the human rights” of LGBTI people, was formed in 2008, and includes more than 40 countries.
Chile and the Netherlands are the current co-chairs. The EU, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, and Outright International are observers.
“The overarching goal of the UN LGBTI Core Group in New York is to work within the United Nations framework on ensuring universal respect for the human rights and fundamental freedoms for all, specifically lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) persons, with a particular focus on protection from violence and discrimination,” the Core Group’s website details.
Member nations include Albania, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Cabo Verde, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Finland, France, Germany, Honduras, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, Montenegro, Nepal, the Netherlands, Peru, New Zealand, North Macedonia, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Timor Leste, the U.K., and Uruguay.
The Core Group counts three specific objectives in its mission: raising awareness about LGBTI issues; contributing to multilateral work and negotiations at the United Nations; and seeking common ground and engaging in “a spirit of open, respectful and constructive dialogue and cooperation with UN member states and other stakeholders outside the Core Group.”
The U.S. joined the group in the final year of the George W. Bush administration. The promotion of LGBTQ+ and intersex rights were a cornerstone of the Biden-Harris administration’s foreign policy.
In September, former First Lady Jill Biden spoke at a Core Group event on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly. As vice president, Joe Biden spoke to the group at an event that coincided with the U.N. General Assembly in 2016.
Since President Trump took office in January, departments and agencies across the federal government have been subject to executive orders stripping recognition of transgender people from U.S. government policy and purging “anti-American propaganda” like drag from the public square.
Based on Trump’s “gender Ideology” order issued on his first day in office and an order banning diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in the federal government, the State Department alone has banned changes to sex markers on U.S. passports based and threatened arts organizations receiving U.S. government funds, leading to canceled exhibitions featuring LGBTQ+ and Black artists.
The shutdown of USAID, the United States Agency for International Development, has resulted in the loss of billions of dollars in aid to bipartisan programs like PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief. Advocates have called the cuts “catastrophic” for the global LGBTQ+ and intersex rights movement.
Out Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent allowed Donald Trump donor Elon Musk and his team access to the payment system used by the federal government. Musk is threatening to illegally stop spending mandated by Congress and has ordered the shutdown of USAID, which delivers humanitarian aid on behalf of the United States, claiming that Donald Trump wants him to. Trump does not have the authority to end USAID.
According to reporting from several media outlets, including CNN, The Washington Post, and the New York Times, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury David Lebryk has been put on leave because he tried to stop Musk and his team from getting access to the payment system and the data it uses this past Friday. Lebryk has been in charge of the system that issues payments on behalf of the federal government for the last 15 years and is known for his “unparalleled” understanding of the system, according to Rolling Stone.
“To put it bluntly, these payment systems simply cannot fail, and any politically motivated meddling in them risks severe damage to our country and the economy,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee. “I am concerned that mismanagement of these payment systems could threaten the full faith and credit of the United States.”
Reuters reported that Musk and his team had locked out the civil servants whose jobs were to actually run the payment system and gave his unvetted team called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) access to the personal data of millions of federal employees. DOGE is not a real federal executive department, and its unvetted team includes young college graduates between the ages of 19 and 24 who have little to no governmental experience and no security clearances.
The billionaire said that he intends to cut $4 billion in federal spending per dayuntil September 30. The system that he accessed handles payments for Social Security, government salaries, tax refunds, and contractors hired by the government.
Neither Musk nor Trump have the authority to stop payments for spending ordered by Congress. It’s unclear what will happen if Musk gets the Trump adminsitration to stop payments illegally, but people could challenge his decisions in court. It’s unclear if the Trump administration would respect court decisions if they’re willing to ignore Congress’ spending decisions, and the takeover of the payment system could prevent career government employees from following court orders in defiance of Trump’s unilateral spending decisions.
This is a massive power grab, and Bessent has been key in creating this constitutional crisis. The New York Times reports that he gave Musk access to the payment system on Friday as part of an agreement, the same day that Lebryk was put on leave and then announced his sudden retirement. Bessent, an anonymous official told Politico, agreed to a plan that would give Cloud Software Group CEO Tom Krause access to the payment system to act as a liaison between Musk’s DOGE and the Treasury.
“The secretary’s approval was contingent on it being essentially a read-only operation,” the source said, referring to the code of the system that processes payments.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Musk “won’t have direct authority to stop individual payments or make other changes” under the agreement. But Musk getting access to the code of the payment system suggests that he is considering rewriting that code, and Bessent could be a willing accomplice in implementing those changes.
The payment system, run by the Bureau of Fiscal Service, is “studiously apolitical,” according to Lily Batchelder, Treasury secretary for tax policy under former President Joe Biden. This runs counter to Musk’s and Trump’s belief, according to the Wall Street Journal, that the system should be run by political appointees. Politicizing the payment system could allow Trump to bypass court decisions forcing the government to spend money authorized by Congress, removing a safeguard to Trump unilaterally — and illegally — cutting federal programs.
Musk said over the weekend on social media that the payment system had been sending money to “known fraudulent or terrorist groups,” but he didn’t provide any evidence. The Bureau of Fiscal Service has safeguards in place to prevent improper payments and it seems unlikely that Musk would have been able to spot such payments in mere hours that the Bureau hadn’t noticed in years.
He also complained that the Bureau hasn’t refused to send a payment that it was ordered to in its history, even though it does not have the legal authority to veto spending authorized by Congress.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has called for a congressional investigation into the events.
A San Francisco address that was once the site of a pre-Stonewall transgender uprising has been added to the National Register of Historic Places, the official list of historic sites, buildings, and objects in the United States.
The National Park Service added the building at 101-102 Taylor St. in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood to its official list of historic U.S. places worthy of preservation on January 27, without any public statement or press release, The Bay Area Reporter first reported.
The address was the location of Compton’s Cafeteria in the 1960s. One night in August 1966, a riot broke out at the 24-hour eatery between its trans and queer patrons and police officers after a drag queen threw a cup of coffee at a cop who was trying to arrest her. The café’s windows were shattered and a police car destroyed amid the protest against police harassment, according to The San Francisco Chronicle.
The site is likely the first landmark to be registered specifically for its connection to the history of the transgender community, trans scholar and historian Susan Stryker, whose 2005 documentary Screaming Queen details the riot, told The Bay Area Reporter.
“There is Stonewall and sites connected to individual people like Pauli Murray, who was nonbinary,” Stryker noted. “But this is the first thing put on the register specifically because of its connection to the history of the transgender movement.”
Madison Levesque, an architectural historian with the Washington State Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation, first submitted a request for the site to be added to the national registry in 2022 as part of their master’s thesis in public history.
“Today, the Compton’s Cafeteria riot is remembered as a turning point towards militant resistance in the LGBTQ, and particularly transgender, community,” Levesque wrote in their 2022 application. “The property is significant at the national level because of its influence on the future political and social representation of transgender and gender-variant people within the United States.”
Stryker, whose work informed Levesque’s initial application and a revised version submitted late last year, credited Levesque with making the registration happen.
Historian and historic preservation planner Shayne Watson said that the news was “something to celebrate” amid the Trump administration’s ongoing attacks on transgender rights. In just his first two weeks in office, President Donald Trump has signed a flurry of executive orders intended to further marginalize transgender Americans.
Earlier this week, the National Parks Service removed the letters T and Q from the “LGBTQ+” initials on its website for New York City’s Stonewall National Monument, effectively erasing trans, queer, and gender-nonconforming people’s leading role in the 1969 uprising that is widely recognized as the beginning of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement. The move appears to be an effort to comply with Trump’s executive orders prohibiting any federal recognition of trans people in any aspect of civic life.
The first large-scale study on the experiences of autistic transgender people finds that they are more likely to have long-term mental and physical health conditions, including alarmingly high rates of self-harm, data from the Autism Research Center at Cambridge University shows.
Researchers found that these individuals also report experiencing lower quality health care than both autistic and non-autistic people whose gender identity matches their sex assigned at birth.
“These findings add to the growing body of evidence that many autistic people experience unacceptably poor mental health and are at a very high risk of suicide-related behaviors. We need to consider how other aspects of identity, including gender, influence these risks,” said Dr. Elizabeth Weir, a postdoctoral scientist at the Autism Research Center, and one of the lead researchers of the study.
The report is a follow-up to 2020 research from Cambridge that found transgender people are more likely to be autistic and have higher levels of autistic traits than other people. Several studies have corroborated that finding in the interim and show autistic people are more likely to experience gender dysphoria than the general population.
Results from the 2020 study were based on responses from over 640,000 people. The new research, published in Molecular Autism, compared the experiences of 174 autistic transgender individuals, 1,094 autistic cisgender individuals, and 1,295 non-autistic cisgender individuals.
Compared to non-autistic cisgender individuals, autistic transgender people were three to 11 times more likely to report anxiety, “shutdowns” and “meltdowns” related to common healthcare experiences.
Transgender/gender-diverse autistic adults were 2.3 times more likely to report a physical health condition and 10.9 times more likely to report a mental health condition compared to cisgender non-autistic adults.
Only one in ten autistic transgender adults agreed with the statements: 1) They understood what their health care professional meant when discussing their health; 2) They knew what was expected of them when seeing a health care professional; and 3) They were able to describe how bad their pain felt.
The study also confirmed the reasoning behind the recognition of autistic people as a priority group in the U.K. Department of Health and Social Care’s “Suicide prevention strategy for England: 2023 to 2028”: compared to people who are non-autistic and cisgender, autistic transgender people are 5.8 times more likely to report self-harm, just above the equally alarming rate of 4.6 times for autistic cisgender individuals.
“We need to consider how to adapt health care systems and individual care to meet the needs of autistic transgender/gender diverse people,” said Prof. Sir Simon Baron-Cohen, Director of the Autism Research Center and a member of the research team. “Policymakers, clinicians, and researchers should work collaboratively with autistic people to improve existing systems and reduce barriers to health care.”
“Greater recognition of challenges and reasonable adjustments are essential for people with marginalized, intersectional identities in clinical practice,” the study concluded.
The Google Calendar app has stopped mentioning various cultural observances, like LGBTQ+ Pride Month, Black History Month, Women’s History Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, and Indigenous Peoples Month.
The company said that it wasn’t “sustainable” to keep mentioning these observances, but commenters accused Google of removing them in response to the recent right-wing pressure campaign against “diversity” efforts.
“Some years ago, the Calendar team started manually adding a broader set of cultural moments in a wide number of countries around the world,” Google spokesperson Madison Cushman Veld wrote in a statement to The Verge. “We got feedback that some other events and countries were missing — and maintaining hundreds of moments manually and consistently globally wasn’t scalable or sustainable.”
Veld said that, in mid-2024, Google returned to showing only public holidays and national observances from timeanddate.com globally, while allowing users to manually add other important observances to their own personal calendars.
Commenters on a Google support forum accused the tech giant of “kissing [President Donald Trump’s] butt,” and another called the removals an “embarrassing … example of the fast descent into fascism.”
“They are trying to erase anyone who isn’t a cis white male,” another commenter added.
The commenters were likely referring to Trump’s recent crusade against all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts. Attorney General Pam Bondi recently issued a memo instructing the Department of Justice to investigate companies with DEI initiatives “to end illegal discrimination and preferences.”
Labor law attorney Mark S. Spring noted that Bondi stated that “educational, cultural, or historical observances such as Black History Month … or similar events that celebrate diversity, recognize historical contributions, and promote awareness without engaging in exclusion or discrimination are permissible” under Bondi’s order.
Google recently removed mentions of its past DEI commitments from its annual report to the Securities and Exchange Commission and will end its goal of hiring applicants from historically underrepresented backgrounds, MSNBC reported.
The prominent LGBTQ+ rights organization Egale Canada will boycott events in the U.S. in protest of the Trump administration’s continued assault on the transgender community.
“After deep consideration, we have decided not to engage in-person in this year’s Commission on the Status of Women or any other UN, OAS (Organization of American States) or global convergings, including WorldPride, taking place in the United States in the foreseeable future,” a statement from the group reads.
WorldPride, which drew five million attendees to its biannual gathering in New York in 2023, is slated to take place in Washington DC at the end of May.
Egale Canada also withdrew from in-person participation at a meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women at United Nations headquarters in New York in March, where it planned to discuss LGBTQ+-related issues.
The group pointed to threats at the border as the primary reason for their action.
“This decision is foremost based on the need to safeguard our trans and nonbinary staff who would face questionable treatment at land and aviation borders to attend such convenings, and to stand in solidarity with global colleagues who are experiencing similar fear around entry to the U.S.,” the statement continues.
The U.S. State Department will no longer allow gender marker changes on U.S. passports and has halted issuing travel documents with the “X” gender marker preferred by many nonbinary people.
On the department’s website, references to transgender people have been scrubbed, with information for “LGBTQI+” travelers replaced with the acronym “LGB”, cleaving transgender and intersex people from the larger LGBTQ+ community.
The erasure follows Trump’s “gender ideology” executive order, which directed the Departments of State and Homeland Security “to require that government-issued identification documents, including passports, visas, and Global Entry cards” reflect people’s sex “at conception.”
Last Friday, the ACLU filed a lawsuit on behalf of seven people unable to obtain passports that match their gender identity following Trump’s directive.
How that directive and Trump’s “gender ideology” order will affect trans and nonbinary people seeking entry to the U.S. remains so far unclear. If a traveler’s federally-issued identity documents do not match their state-issued documents (such as a driver’s license), the mismatch could result in harassment or discrimination by travel security agents or airline workers, the LGBTQ+ advocacy organization Immigration Equality has said.
Egale Canada also cited other threats Trump has made targeting Canada for their boycott decision, including his proposed 25% tariff on Canadian goods entering the U.S. The threats have encouraged some Canadians to consider boycotting U.S. goods, services and travel plans in retaliation.
“It is also founded in the unique situation that has been thrust on Canadians (and citizens of other countries) regarding economic warfare and threats to our national sovereignty,” the group said. “We cannot in good conscience engage in a process of disentangling our organization from the U.S. goods and services… and then proceed to travel to the U.S.”
Trump has trolled Canada about annexing the country as America’s fifty-first state, an idea he reiterated in a Super Bowl interview with Fox News on Sunday.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Friday called Trump’s threat “a real thing.”
Two major LGBTQ+ organizations – GLSEN and the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) – both recently announced major layoffs, with HRC planning to lose 20 percent of its workforce and GLSEN losing a whopping 60 percent of its staff. Both organizations claim the layoffs will not affect their strong resistance to the Trump administration.
GLSEN executive director Melanie Willingham-Jaggers said the organization has experienced a sharp revenue loss and the layoffs are part of plans to “right-size” the educational advocacy organization.
“We are not an injured version of the GLSEN we were before Monday. We are a new organization,” they told Advocate, confirming 18 employees had been laid off. “Right-sizing is bringing attention to the conditions, responding to the conditions, and being humble enough to do what is possible for us to survive, for us to be impactful, and for us to be sustainable.”
“We’re not doing the work of 42 people with 17 people,” they added. “We’re doing the critical work of 17 people in a way that is most humane, most sustainable, and most impactful.”
In a statement to LGBTQ Nation, Willingham-Jaggers said the smaller staff will not render the organization less effective and that the work “will be more focused and directed to areas that will have more impact.”
“This is a clarifying moment,” they said. “GLSEN’s north star and mission will continue to advocate for inclusive and equitable policies, shape the national conversation on systemic change and education justice, strengthen our national movement by working locally, across the country, via our chapter network and equip youth, families and educators with the necessary support, training, tools, strategy and community-building networks to create change in their local communities.”
They told Advocate relentless right-wing attacks over the past several years contributed to the funding dip.
“In the desire to grow our way out of problems of scale, we hit a ceiling—and then our revenue hit a cliff because of right-wing attacks. They saw Target back off, and then they came for us even harder.” Here, they are referring to Target’s decision to remove certain Pride merchandise from its shelves after conservatives launched a boycott of the stores.
Additionally, they said the overall right-wing crusade against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) has led to waning engagement from corporate donors.
But they also told LGBTQ Nation that GLSEN had already been considering ways to “streamline, right-size, and transform in order to meet the moment.”
“In addition to funding, the political landscape and the hostile Trump administration is also requiring GLSEN, and all LGBTQ+ organizations, to rethink their approaches and be smarter and to not do ‘business as usual.’ This transformation is to ensure that our work is effective and transformational on all levels.”
Willingham-Jaggers also expanded on GLSEN’s future in an op-ed.
HRC expressed similar sentiments. “Given the threats ahead of us, any LGBTQ organization or progressive organization that’s not seriously evaluating their strategies and structures is missing the reality of the threats in front of us,” a spokesperson told Advocate.
The organization will reportedly lay off about 50 employees by February 12, citing the need to “operate differently” as a result of the political and legislative climate. HRC representatives told Advocate it exceeded its funding goal over the past several years, which led the organization to expand programming and operating costs. But the expansion has now become unsustainable.
Like Willingham-Jaggers, HRC president Kelley Robinson assured the community that the mission remains the same: “Our success has never been determined by the number of staff we have but by the impact that we make in the world. We need to stay laser-focused on how we can create change… We’re sharpening our focus on where we can make the most impact. This is about ensuring that we are agile and strategic in this moment.”
HRC employees are members of the Services Employees Union, which Robinson said they notified about the upcoming layoffs.
Robinson is also currently pregnant but said her maternity leave in the spring will not get in the way of the organization’s success.
“A movement is bigger than any single person,” she said. “I am proud to have a great chief of staff, a great chief operating officer, and an incredible team here at the Human Rights Campaign that, even while I’m on maternity leave, will be helping to move things forward.”
Robinson also said she doesn’t believe the layoffs mean HRC is any weaker.
“If it’s our opposition asking that question, I think they do that at their own peril,” she said. “The best thing about being a queer person is that we have a history and a legacy of confronting impossible challenges and coming out the other side.”
“We aren’t going anywhere,” another official said. “This is about responsible leadership and positioning ourselves to be in a place of strength for our people—not just today, but in the years ahead.”
Another official said one big focus is rethinking communication how to talk about LGBTQ+ issues in the age of misinformation: “We need to make sure that the American people understand that trans people aren’t a thought exercise — that we are in every zip code, every family, every race and region, and we are not going anywhere. But we also need to be strategic about how we amplify these voices in a way that shifts the national conversation.”
Willingham-Jaggers emphasized to LGBTQ Nation: “In these difficult times, one truth stands unshaken: our work has never been more essential. GLSEN sees this volatile reality as an opportunity to amplify the voices of grassroots movements, strengthen local communities, and champion the resilience of the underserved. Queer and trans people have always existed and will continue to thrive—together, we will press forward, overcome, and succeed.”
The Department of Education (DOE) has directed its workers to end all transgender-inclusive programs and policies in accordance with President Donald Trump’s anti-transgender executive orders. Trump has pledged to eliminate the DOE, Elon Musk, a Trump campaign donor who has been acting as if he were co-president, has given his underlings access to the DOE and its data, and LGBTQ+ congresspeople were denied entry into the DOE last Friday.
In an unsigned email sent last Friday from “ED Internal Communications,” DOE employees were told to end all programs, contracts, policies, outward-facing media, regulations, and internal practices that “fail to affirm the reality of biological sex,” ProPublica reported.
The email also said that DOE employees cannot use government property or work time to coordinate “employee resource groups that promote gender ideology and do not affirm the reality of biological sex,” though it’s unclear if any such groups currently operate within the DOE.
Last week, members of Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — which isn’t a real executive department — gained administrative access over DOE email accounts, allowing them to potentially access sensitive information, NBC News reported. The watchdog group Public Citizen sued to stop DOGE’s access to DOE data, including that of Americans who have applied for federal student aid.
“The scale of the intrusion into individuals’ privacy is enormous and unprecedented,” the suit states. “The personal data of over 42 million people lives in these systems.”
Last Wednesday, 95 Democratic Congress members signed an open letter to acting DOE Secretary Denise Carter asking to discuss Trump’s plans to eliminate the DOE. Trump has said he wants to dismantle the DOE in order to leave school oversight up to individual states, part of his larger plan to direct funds from public education to private, for-profit schools.
Last Friday morning, out Reps. Becca Balint (D-VT) and Mark Takano (D-CA) joined a group of Congress members who were denied entry into the department.
A man who identified himself as a federal employee refused to let them enter, stating that the congress members had no scheduled appointment with any DOE officials.
“Did Elon Musk hire you?” Balint asked the man.
“This is an outrage,” Takano shouted, adding, “We have oversight responsibilities.”
It’s unclear whether Congress members are allowed free access to federal departments as congressional oversight usually occurs through hearings or policy channels.
Trump is reportedly drafting an executive order to eliminate the DOE, even though it can only be eliminated by an act of Congress, the federal lawmaking body that created it in 1979. Though the department doesn’t dictate what schools can teach, it oversees educational loans and grants, enforcement of federal anti-discrimination policies (including for disabled and non-white students), and assists schools in rural and low-income areas. Many of its functions have wide bipartisan support.
In January, anti-LGBTQ+ Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) re-introduced a bill to eliminate the DOE. It has 30 Republican co-sponsors.
