Molly Sprayregen

A gay Obama-appointed judge will preside over Donald Trump’s libel lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch and the Wall Street Journal over claims the president once sent an NSFW birthday card and doodle to the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. 

Trump is suing for $10 billion after denying he ever wrote the letter, and now Judge Darrin Gayles, who became the first out gay Black man appointed as a federal judge, has been assigned to the case. 

The Senate unanimously confirmed Gayles after he was appointed by former President Barack Obama in 2014. Politico pointed out he earned such widespread support for being relatively bipartisan. Two Republican governors – Jeb Bush and Charlie Crist — appointed him to Florida state judgeships before Obama appointed him to the federal bench.

The lawsuit stems from a July 17 article in The Wall Street Journal, which allegedthat Trump contributed to a book of racy letters for Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003. The article described Trump’s letter as containing “several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker.”

“A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts,” the description adds, “and the future president’s signature is a squiggly ‘Donald’ below her waist, mimicking pubic hair.”

The Journal also reported that the letter said, “We have certain things in common, Jeffrey… A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.” 

Trump has ardently denied he wrote the letter, calling the story “fake” and claiming, “I don’t draw pictures of women.”

The president has found himself in hot water over his connections to Epstein and his administration’s recent refusal to release case files that it has long promised to share. MAGA conspiracy theorists have been chomping at the bit for the Epstein files, and many are turning on Trump as he doubles down on his administration’s decision.

Epstein died in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of sex trafficking minors. While the medical examiner determined that his death was a suicide, many people, especially on the right, do not believe that it was, instead asserting that he was killed to keep him silent about the clients for whom he found children to sexually abuse.

Many officials associated with Trump had spent years repeating the same rumors, and Trump himself said repeatedly in 2024 that the “Epstein list” needed to be released.

In February, Attorney General Bondi said that she was reviewing “a lot of names” related to the Epstein investigation and said that the Epstein list is “sitting on my desk right now to review.”

But last week, the Department of Justice released a memo that said there was no “secret client list” and reaffirmed the 2019 finding that Epstein died by suicide. Many Trump supporters were outraged that the rumored client list wouldn’t be released, while many on the left speculated that the reason Bondi wasn’t releasing it is because Trump himself – or at least high-ranking members of his administration – is on it.

Trump had a decades-long friendship with Epstein and joked about how his friend was “fun” and “terrific” and liked women “on the younger side.” Trump has also been found liable for sexual abuse by a jury, has admitted to sexually assaulting women in the past, and has admitted to walking in on underage girls as they changed clothes. He has been accused of sexual assault or other forms of sexual impropriety by at least 27 women.

When customers book hair appointments at Chicago’s Logan Parlor, owner Jamie DiGrazia asks only two questions: How long is your hair, and how long do you want it to be? These questions may seem simple and even quite logical, but in fact, they are quietly revolutionary. 

While it’s quite common for a person’s hair length and style to deviate from gender norms, it remains standard practice in the beauty industry for pricing menus to offer women’s cuts and men’s cuts. DiGrazia says the model is both inefficient for salons as well as unfair and unaffirming for customers. 

“Everyone has the right to a safe and positive affirming hair service,” DiGrazia told LGBTQ Nation. At Logan Parlor and other affirming salons scattered across the country, pricing and time slots are based on desired length and style, not gender. DiGrazia’s nonprofit, Hair Has No Gender, aims to spread the concept of gender-free pricing throughout the industry. 

It’s no easy feat, though. Gender norms have been embedded into every nook and cranny of the industry for decades, and DiGrazia has found that some of the institutions in charge are profoundly resistant to change.

“Why wouldn’t we want to move towards this pricing structure that’s gonna support queer people, have women pay a fair price and allow the business owners to charge for their time, talent, and product instead of someone’s perceived or assumed gender identity?” they said. “Charging based on gender is jamming more traditional gender roles down everybody’s throat.”

But of course, that’s exactly what some social conservatives want. 

Making change on our own

As trans people have become more visible, a vicious conservative backlash seeks to erase anyone who deviates from the gender norms governed by sex assigned at birth. Laws targeting everything from gender-affirming care and anti-trans discrimination protections to pronoun use in schools have grown exponentially — both in number and cruelty — since the GOP began waging its war on this small and vulnerable community. 

Recently, Republican lawmakers took their battle to a new level, pushing for the right to police even the way kids dress and wear their hair. 

When DiGrazia caught wind of Arkansas’s “Vulnerable Youth Protection Act,” they began campaigning against it immediately. H.B. 1668 sought to punish adults who supported a young person’s social transition, meaning their decision to present as a gender they were not assigned at birth through changing their name, clothes, hair, or other physical attributes, but not through any medical care.

The bill defined social transitioning as “any act by which a minor adopts or espouses a gender identity that differs from the minor’s biological sex… including without limitation changes in clothing, pronouns, hairstyle, and name.”

DiGrazia watched the entire hearing in which the bill was introduced. “It was disgusting,” they said. In one clip, state Rep. Mary Bentley (R), the bill’s author, confirmed that the text says adults who support a child’s social transition, even when that child has consent from their parents, could be found civilly liable for up to 20 years for providing that support. 

Bentley called supporting trans youth “a horrible social experiment that is just devastating the lives of people.” 

“It was disgusting,” DiGrazia said. “I couldn’t believe my eyes and ears.” 

Perhaps even more shocking, they added, was the silence from major beauty associations, despite DiGrazia’s efforts to mobilize them.

“They basically took a ‘let’s wait and see approach,’” they said, declining to name the specific group they tried to work with. “I wrote them a pretty stern email about how that was a harmful choice… They have a responsibility to our industry.”

DiGrazia felt that even if the legislation was likely to die on its own due to unconstitutional language, it was important to come out hard against it, to send a message to lawmakers that the industry would not tolerate even the possibility of legislation so hateful and wouldn’t support a debate over trans kids’ dignity.

“They didn’t do anything about it, so I had to do it. I had to get my volunteers, get the graphic designer.” The Hair Has No Gender Instagram post on the bill was the organization’s most shared to date. “Hundreds of people shared it,” DiGrazia said. “I hope they called as well.”

Bentley did withdraw the bill after the hearing, as it was criticized by the Attorney General’s office for chilling free speech. However, she will work on amendments and language with the Attorney General’s office to bring it into a form that could pass. 

DiGrazia is ready to fight again, and they hope others will be too, whether against this particular bill or any similar ones that arise nationwide. 

“Make the calls, make the emails, tell [your] friends and family, and make [your] own campaign around it about how it’s harmful… I think people think that somebody else is going to do it, like I did,” he said. “No one else is going to do it.”

We need people that are willing to advocate and who are active allies to stand up against terrible things… It’s really important that we have this grassroots community,” he continued. “I just want to mobilize all these salons that are in the community that serve queer people… We’ve got to come together and make change on our own.”

Love your hair, love yourself

DiGrazia isn’t only trying to fight these bad bills and industry trends — they’re also trying to implement some good. 

In Illinois, they have been working with lawmakers to pass legislation that would enshrine gender-free pricing into law. The Gender-Based Discrimination in Service Industries Act would ban service businesses from charging different prices based on gender. It’s something that theoretically seems easy to get behind, but H.B. 5523 died in the state house in January. 

Some folks didn’t see a need for it, DiGrazia said, since gender-based pricing is technically already illegal through sex-discrimination law (though it remains common practice). Others thought it would be a burden to salons, who would have to change their pricing structures. 

DiGrazia said one beauty association even hired a lobbyist to advocate against the bill, which played a major role in its failure. The lobbyist argued the bill was vague and made untrained business owners vulnerable to the consequences of a law they wouldn’t know how to implement. 

Through their work with Hair Has No Gender, DiGrazia has heard from several brands that believe they should emphasize the business benefits of inclusion rather than the importance of queer and trans rights if they want to succeed in shifting hearts and minds on this issue. DiGrazia disagrees with this approach.

“I’m never going to do that,” they said, emphasizing that they’re dealing with a human rights issue. “The conversation is trans and queer rights. If it also benefits someone’s business, great…. [but] I’m not going to lead with that. That advice makes me sick.”

They said these kinds of changes are about keeping clients and coworkers safe and comfortable. “This is about being a good person and a good human and being an active ally and standing up for people who are being attacked,” DiGrazia said.

Stylists who are not trained to be inclusive could end up disappointing their clients at best and, at worst, making them feel profoundly unsafe or dysphoric. DiGrazia said they’ve worked with people who have not been given the haircut they asked for because their stylist perceived them as more feminine or masculine than the style they requested.

“I didn’t realize how important my hair was to me as my image until I had the cut that made me feel like me,” Logan Parlor client Emma Marzullo said in a video.

“Hair is an extension of yourself,” added Qadir Muhammad. “If you love your hair, you in turn love yourself a little bit more.”

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.”