J.K. Rowling is using her wealth attained from the Harry Potter series to create an organization dedicated to removing transgender people’s rights “in the workplace, in public life, and in protected female spaces.”
The author announced in a Saturday post to X, formerly Twitter, that she would be founding the J.K. Rowling Women’s Fund, using her personal fortune. The website for the group states that it “offers legal funding support to individuals and organisations fighting to retain women’s sex-based rights in the workplace, in public life, and in protected female spaces.”
“I looked into all options and a private fund is the most efficient, streamlined way for me to do this,” she said. “Lots of people are offering to contribute, which I truly appreciate, but there are many other women’s rights orgs that could do with the money, so donate away, just not to me!”
It is not the first time Rowling has used her over $1 billion net worth to influence legal cases involving so-called women’s sex-based rights — a dog whistle used by herself and other anti-trans activists to exclude trans people from public spaces and reduce women to their genitals.
Rowling donated £70,000 (roughly $88,200) to the anti-trans group For Women Scotland in 2024 after it lost its challenge to a 2018 Scottish law that legally recognized trans women as women. The group appealed its case to the U.K. Supreme Court, which ruled last month that trans women aren’t considered women under the nation’s Equality Act.
Rowling responded to the decision by posting a picture of her having a drink and smoking a cigar, with the text “I love it when a plan comes together.” The post was widely criticized, including by The Mandalorian and The Last of Us star Pedro Pascal, who called it serious “Voldemort villain s—” and referred to Rowling as a “heinous loser.”
Pascal, whose younger sister Lux is trans, urged his followers to not “buy a single Harry Potter thing ever,” including by boycotting the upcoming HBO series and attractions at Universal Studios theme parks.
“It’s time to tell these corporations that transphobia loses money,” he said.
Even before Donald Trump’s executive orders terminating all DEI positions in the federal government, dozens of major companies had already abandoned their practices. Many made their decisions after conservatives online specifically targeted them for their policies and threatened boycotts, with failed filmmaker turned failed congressional candidate Robby Starbuck taking credit for spearheading the movement.
This withdrawal didn’t just encompass inclusive work environments and hiring practices, or participation in the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index — in abandoning DEI, companies also ceased many of their community partnerships. This included small businesses, minority- and women-owned businesses, and organizations supporting underserved groups: veterans, people of color, and LGBTQ+ people.
As a result, many of the companies abandoning DEI have stopped sponsoring Pride Month events. Here are the companies that have walked back their support, some of them after decades of allyship.
Anheuser-Busch
The brewer behind brands such as Bud Light, Budweiser, Corona, and Stella Artois declined to sponsor Pride in its home city of St. Louis after a partnership of over 30 years. DEI and outreach director, Jordan Braxton, told NBC News that St. Louis Pride was left $150,000 short of its goal, until donations from the community made up the difference within days.
The company also withdrew from San Francisco Pride and Columbus Pride. Anheuser-Busch, which was the target of a conservative boycott after simply sending a free beer to a transgender influencer, has not yet commented publicly on its backing out of Pride events.
Booz Allen Hamilton
U.S. government defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corp. dropped its sponsorship of WorldPride, which is being hosted in Washington, D.C. from May 17 to June 8., shortly after it ended its DEI programs.
Chief People Officer Aimee George Leary said during a virtual company town hall first viewed by Bloomberg : “While our existing people programs comply with law, it is clear from [Trump’s] executive orders and other public statements, that the definition of what’s allowed is changing, so we must make changes. If we don’t, we could be ineligible for contracts with the federal government. This would put our ability to operate and our company at risk.”
Citi
Banking giant Citi was one of the low-level donors that withdrew or scaled back its sponsorship of NYC Pride. Spokesperson Kevin Kilbride told The New York Times that “the vast majority of what we have heard is that folks are treading carefully from an economic perspective.”
Comcast
Comcast was another major company that withdrew from San Francisco Pride, according to Ford. A spokesperson for the corporation would not comment on why it backed out, but noted to NBC that it is sponsoring other Pride celebrations in its home state of California, including Silicon Valley Pride, Oakland Pride, and some events at San Francisco Pride that are hosted by other nonprofits.
Diageo
Diageo, the company behind alcohol brands such as Baileys, Captain Morgan, Crown Royal, and Smirnoff among others also withdrew from San Francisco Pride. A spokesperson told NBC that the company backed out due to some changes in the sponsorships budget for California, but that it would still be active in the city during June, and would be involved in Pride events around the country through its Smirnoff vodka brand.
Garnier
Heritage of Pride, the organization that produces New York City’s annual Pride events, previously had five “Platinum” donors — those who had donated $175,000. This year, it has just one. Hair care company Garnier was one of the four “Platinum” donors that has withdrawn its support in 2025 after several years of sponsorship.
Lowe’s
Lowe’s Home Improvement withdrew its support for Pride Month events this year in Columbus, Ohio. Stonewall Columbus Executive Director Densil Porteous told The Columbus Dispatch that the $125,000 in lost donations was made up for by the community and their other partners.
“Those [companies] who probably only saw this opportunity as a marketing moment have backed down, and we are sorry to see them go,” Porteous said. “But we are thankful for those partners who continue to support us.”
Mastercard
Mastercard was another one of NYC Pride’s four “Platinum” donors that withdrew support after several years of sponsoring the celebration. However, the company will still be participating in the march and other events.
“Mastercard is a longstanding supporter of the many communities of which our employees are members, including the LGBTQIA+ community globally,” a spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal.
Nissan
Automaker Nissan was another one of the low-level donors that withdrew or scaled back its sponsorship of NYC Pride, while also withdrawing from San Francisco Pride and Columbus Pride.
A spokesperson told NBC that the company is “currently reviewing all marketing and sales spending, including auto shows, sports properties and other entertainment activations, to maximize both efficiency and breakthrough effectiveness,” adding, “Nissan remains committed to promoting an inclusive culture for employees, consumers, dealers and other key stakeholders.”
PepsiCo
PepsiCo — which makes Aquafina, Cap’n Crunch, Cheetos, Doritos, Frito’s, Gatorade, Lay’s, Life, cereal, Lipton, Mountain Dew, Tostitos, and Quaker Oats among other snacks and drinks — was another one of the low-level donors that withdrew or scaled back its sponsorship of NYC Pride.
PricewaterhouseCoopers
Consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers was another one of the low-level donors that withdrew or scaled back its sponsorship of NYC Pride, as first reported by WSJ.
Skyy Vodka
Skyy Vodka was another one of the four “Platinum” donors that either stopped or scaled back support, or asked for their involvement to go unpublicized, as first reported by The Times.
Target
Target is the fourth “Platinum” donor to alter its commitment to Heritage of Pride. While the company is still “sponsoring NYC Pride at a level consistent with last year,” according to spokesperson Joe Unger, Kilbride told The Times that it is contributing as a “silent partner” and requested not to be listed as a Platinum donor to avoid “the publicity.”
Conversely, after Target made the decision to drop DEI initiatives, the largest Pride festival in the company’s home state of Minnesota decided to drop them as a sponsor. Twin Cities Pride raised over twice the amount pledged by Target in less than 24 hours.
Walmart withdrew its sponsorship from Stonewall Columbus’ Pride Month Events. The company said that store employees in the Columbus area will still be volunteering with community organizations, including LGBTQ+ organizations.
Spokesperson Jimmy Carter told The Dispatch that the company is focused on “creating an environment where our associates and customers feel they belong.”
GLAAD has announced the findings of its fifth annual Social Media Safety Index (SMSI), an annual report on LGBTQ safety, privacy, and expression online.
The in-depth report analyzes six major social media platforms — TikTok, YouTube, X, and Meta’s Facebook, Instagram, and Threads — across 14 indicators that address a range of issues affecting LGBTQ people online including data privacy, content moderation, workforce diversity, and more. All companies are failing to meet basic standards across most safety metrics on the SMSI scorecard.
Offering a quantitative ranking and also highlighting LGBTQ safety policy rollbacks from major platforms, the report is a wake-up call for tech leaders and employees at major platforms and for all of Silicon Valley.
As the report shows, rollbacks from some companies eerily mirror recent changes to federal websites and communications that were implemented by the Trump administration from Project 2025 (notably, Project 2025 calls for “deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity.”)
In January, YouTube quietly removed “gender identity” from the list of protected characteristics in its hate speech policy, and Meta removed major components of its hate speech policy protections for LGBTQ people, including adding language expressly stating it is now allowed to refer to LGBTQ people as “abnormal” and “mentally ill.” In its policy revision, Meta also uses the terms “homosexuality” and “transgenderism” — a well-known, right-wing anti-trans trope — in reference to LGBTQ people.
Although YouTube claims that “our hate speech policies haven’t changed,” it is an objective fact that, sometime between January 29th and February 6th, the company removed “gender identity and expression” from its list of protected characteristics (the change is visible here in the current and archived policy page). The SMSI report calls out this unprecedented break from best practices in the field of trust and safety, stating that: “YouTube should reverse this dangerous policy change and update its Hate Speech policy to expressly include gender identity and expression as a protected characteristic.”
These shifts — among others — undermine the safety of LGBTQ people and other historically marginalized groups, who are uniquely vulnerable to hate, harassment, and discrimination online and off.
All companies are failing to meet basic standards across most safety metrics on the SMSI scorecard. Out of a possible 100, the platforms received the following scores:
“At a time when real-world violence and harassment against LGBTQ people is on the rise, social media companies are profiting from the flames of anti-LGBTQ hate instead of ensuring the basic safety of LGBTQ users,” said GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis. “These low scores should terrify anyone who cares about creating safer, more inclusive online spaces.”
The quantitative methodology of GLAAD’s Platform Scorecard was created in partnership with Ranking Digital Rights (RDR) and research consultant Andrea Hackl. This year, GLAAD introduced a new scoring methodology that generated numeric ratings for each platform with regard to LGBTQ safety, privacy, and expression. The Platform Scorecard focuses on the existence of policies, and does not measure the enforcement of those policies. The 2025 scores are not directly comparable to the 2024 scores due to extensive revising of the Scorecard methodology.
The Social Media Safety Index includes specific findings and recommendations for each company, and calls on companies to urgently and tangibly prioritize LGBTQ safety. The report also highlights the volume of online anti-trans hate, harassment, and disinformation that has skyrocketed in the past year, a trend that GLAAD has qualitatively examined in the SMSI report.
Alongside these rollbacks in LGBTQ protections online, GLAAD’s Anti-LGBTQ Extremism Reporting Tracker has shown a distinct upwards trend in offline anti-LGBTQ incidents in recent years. These include both criminal and non-criminal instances of harassment, vandalism, and assault motivated by anti-LGBTQ hate.
Social media platforms are vitally important for LGBTQ people, as spaces where we connect, learn, and find community. Although today’s social media landscape does indeed look dire, it is heartening that some platforms have implemented positive initiatives in the past year. For Pride month in 2024, TikTok created their LGBTQIA+ TikTok Visionary Voices List and YouTube offered the Celebrate Pride on YouTube LGBTQ creators spotlight. In this current moment, as LGBTQ people face unprecedented attacks on our civil and human rights, now is the time for all companies to stand up for inclusive values and provide LGBTQ communities with the safety protections we need, and the celebratory and affirming messages we deserve.
Key Findings of the 2025 SMSI include:
Recent hate speech policy rollbacks from Meta and YouTube present grave threats to safety and are harmful to LGBTQ people on these platforms.
Platforms are largely failing to mitigate harmful anti-LGBTQ hate and disinformation that violates their own policies.
Platforms disproportionately suppress LGBTQ content, via removal, demonetization, and forms of shadowbanning.
Anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and disinformation on social media has been shown to lead to offline harms.
Social media companies continue to withhold meaningful transparency about content moderation, algorithms, data protection, and data privacy practices.
GLAAD’s Key Recommendations:
Strengthen and enforce (or restore) existing policies and mitigationsthat protect LGBTQ people and others from hate, harassment, and misinformation; while also reducing suppression of legitimate LGBTQ expression.
Improve moderation by providing mandatory training for all content moderators (including those employed by contractors) focused on LGBTQ safety, privacy, and expression; and moderate across all languages, cultural contexts, and regions. AI systems should be used to flag for human review, not for automated removals.
Work with independent researchers to provide meaningful transparency about content moderation, community guidelines, development and use of AI and algorithms, and enforcement reports.
Respect data privacy. Platforms should reduce the amount of data they collect, infer, and retain, and cease the practice of targeted surveillance advertising, including the use of algorithmic content recommender systems, and other incursions on user privacy.
Promote and incentivize civil discourse including working with creators and proactively messaging expectations for user behavior, such as respecting platform hate and harassment policies.
GLAAD’s SMSI Platform Scorecard draws on RDR’s standard methodology to produce numeric ratings for each platform with regard to LGBTQ safety. This year, GLAAD added elements addressing emerging threats to LGBTQ people online as well as an indicator regarding content that promotes so-called “conversion therapy,” a practice that has been banned in 23 states and condemned by all major medical, psychiatric, and psychological organizations.
GLAAD and other monitoring organizations repeatedly encounter failures in enforcement of a company’s own guidelines for content moderation, including hate speech and harassment policies.
Specific LGBTQ safety, privacy, and expression issues identified in the SMSI include: Inadequate content moderation and problems with policy development and enforcement (including failure to mitigate anti-LGBTQ content and over-moderation of LGBTQ users); harmful algorithms and lack of algorithmic transparency; inadequate transparency and user controls around data privacy; an overall lack of transparency and accountability across the industry, among many other issues — all of which disproportionately impact LGBTQ people and other marginalized communities.
“We need to hold the line — as tech companies are taking unprecedented leaps backwards, we remain firm in advocating for basic best practices that protect the safety of LGBTQ people on these platforms,” said GLAAD’s Senior Director of Social Media Safety Jenni Olson. “This is not normal. Our communities deserve to live in a world that does not generate or profit off of hate.”
About the GLAAD Social Media Safety Program As the leading national LGBTQ media advocacy organization, GLAAD is working every day to hold tech companies and social media platforms accountable and to secure safe online spaces for LGBTQ people. The GLAAD Social Media Safety Program produces the highly-respected annual Social Media Safety Index (SMSI)and researches, monitors, and reports on a variety of issues facing LGBTQ social media users — with a focus on safety, privacy, and expression.
The average American spends over three hours on their phone every day, and nearly half of U.S. teens say they’re on the Internet almost “constantly.”
While most of us understand that not all of our data is private, the scope of how much U.S. government agencies can access is overwhelming: Internet history, private messages, health information, political affiliation and phone location data are all up for grabs.
“We are constantly shedding data as we go about our daily lives,” says Lisa Femia, staff attorney at Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digital rights advocacy group. She says with no comprehensive Federal data privacy law, there’s little legal protection surrounding our digital rights.
This lack of regulation has unique implications for LGBTQ people, especially under the current Trump administration. In March 2025, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis removed protections for LGBTQ identities from its restrictions on gathering intelligence. That means queer people are no longer a protected class when it comes to surveillance efforts.
This occurred off the back of Trump’s January Executive Order, “Protecting Children From Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” that attempts to ban trans kids’ access to healthcare. In addition, laws banning gender-affirming care have passed in at least 24 states across the country, creating a perfect storm for the government to use digital surveillance to capture folks trying to access what advocates describe as “lifesaving” treatment.
“When our identities are being criminalized or stigmatized, record keeping, if it’s not done well, can be a massive, massive tool for oppression,” says Shae Gardner, policy director at the LGBT Technology Institute.
So what capabilities do law enforcement agencies and the government have when it comes to monitoring LGBTQ folks looking for resources like gender-affirming care? What are the implications for trans youth who are seeking this care out of state? And what can you do to protect yourself?
Data Brokers
One alarming way third parties—including marketers, scammers, private investigators, tech companies, retailers and law enforcement—can access your digital footprint is through data brokers. These businesses exist solely to collect individuals’ online data to sell for profit. They have access to highly sensitive data from companies, apps and websites that collect information on people. They also indirectly gather data from public records such as voting registries. In the U.S., their work is virtually unregulated.
“Data brokers can access our home addresses, telephone numbers, political preferences, location data, online purchases and much more,” says Gardner. “Users don’t even know that their data is available to be sold.”
There may be up to 5,000 data brokers globally, and out of the top 23 data brokerage companies in the world, 17 are in the U.S. These brokers have profiles on millions of Americans.
Through third-party apps, they can even access our health data, putting our sensitive medical information at risk. For example, after the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, privacy experts were concerned that data collected by Flo, the period tracking app, could be misused, given its history of passing the health details of its users to third parties.
Because of this, Femia says it’s becoming “harder and harder for people to get the care they need, the support they need, or be who they are, without leaving a trail that a hostile law enforcement agency or state government or federal government could use to target them.”
In some cases, the government has used the “Data Broker Loophole”—a gap in the Electronics Communications Privacy Act—to bypass legal requirements of obtaining warrants and subpoenas for data and instead purchasing it directly from private brokers. In Trump’s first term, it was discovered that his Department of Homeland Security (DHS) bought cellphone location data to detect possible illegal border crossings.
One data broker, Babel Street, created a tool named Locate X—used by the Secret Service and DHS—which gathers smartphone location data to monitor people worldwide without a warrant. In practice, this is meant to help the government track serious criminal activities. But with increasing animus towards the trans community, it could potentially be used to track the movements of doctors working at gender-affirming care clinics or trans people seeking care.
“It’s not a federal agent following you home anymore. It’s someone tracking your location on your phone,” says Gardner.
While there are no documented instances of the government using this data surveillance to track folks looking for trans healthcare, that’s not the case when it comes to reproductive healthcare. In 2023, an Idaho woman and her son were charged with taking the son’s girlfriend to Oregon to get an abortion, using her cellphone location data as evidence.
And in 2024, one company used location data broker Near Intelligence to track people’s visits to nearly 600 Planned Parenthood locations across 48 states and sold the data to feed a massive anti-abortion ad campaign funded by Veritas Society, a pro-life activist group.
On a now-deleted page on the organization’s website, they proudly cite that they use Near Intelligence’s advanced digital technology known as “Polygonning” to “identify and capture the cell phone ID’s of women that are coming and going from Planned Parenthood and similar locations. We then reach these women on apps, social feeds and websites like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat with pro-life content and messaging.”
Education
In addition to data brokers, American kids are being monitored when they use computers provided by their schools. The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) reported an increase in surveillance software to monitor online activity on school-owned devices. In fact, 81% of teachers reported that their schools use some form of monitoring software and 71% reported it being used on school-issued devices, allowing schools to survey children outside of teaching hours.
“These tools provide teachers and schools with the ability to … view students’ email, messaging, and social media content, view the contents of their screens in real time, and other monitoring functionality,” CDT reports.
While companies like GoGuardian claim to use their surveillance tools to mitigate potential security threats and monitor students’ mental health, privacy experts warn that these tools put children in homo/transphobic states at risk of their data being weaponized by their educators and law enforcement.
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“Schools can specifically ask these programs to flag any LGBTQ content,” says Eleni Manis, research director at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project. “So school surveillance software is already in place to provide a dragnet for flagging kids who are LGBTQ, or just exploring their sexuality.”
In 2023, EFF found that GoGuardian software in the Lake Travis Independent School District in Texas flagged over 75 websites with the terms “transgender,” “LGBT,” “gay,” “homosexual,” “non-binary” or “queer” in the URL. Websites that were flagged included the Wikipedia pages for the Transgender Rights Movement and for the portrayal of transgender people in film; an article from The Guardian about transgender history; and a page about the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, D.C.
In addition to blocking kids from visiting LGBTQ-themed websites, states like Alabama have passed bills that require school personnel to inform parents if a minor expresses a gender identity that is inconsistent with their biological sex. School personnel can enforce these bills through the surveillance of school-owned devices.
“It’s going to disproportionately affect kids who are middle or low-income, kids who don’t have the resources to have their own private iPad or laptop,” says Manis. In states where gender-affirming care for kids is illegal, questions also arise surrounding what will be done with the data—will it be used to discipline the child or even shared with law enforcement?
Manis says this software turns schools into another branch of America’s invasive surveillance apparatus. “It’s very difficult for those programs to stop flagging LGBTQ students even if they want to. It’s the first place conservative, anti-trans or anti-LGBTQ districts can go to [for evidence],” she says.
Medical Records
Photo by Fotofrog.
Beyond the classroom, the medical information of child and adult patients is at risk of being compromised.
“Medical records give you a patient’s name, prescriptions, doctor’s name, practice name, everything that you need to launch an investigation or prosecution. Same thing for prescription records. Pharmacy’s prescription records will tell you who wrote a prescription, when it was filled, who filled it,” says Manis.
While patients speak frankly with their doctors based on confidentiality, there have been instances where local governments—and even doctors—have violated patients’ right to medical privacy in the name of criminal prosecutions.
In 2023, Dr. Eithan Haim, a Dallas surgeon, leaked sensitive data about children receiving transition-related care at Texas Children’s Hospital to a conservative activist who published the documents in a magazine.
Although what Dr. Haim did was illegal, the Department of Justice dropped their charges against him in January, the same week Trump passed the EO banning gender-affirming care for trans kids.
Additionally, in 2023, Vanderbilt University Medical Center handed over records for more than 100 current and former patients seeking transgender health care to Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti as part of an investigationinto possible violations of the Tennessee Medicaid False Claims Act.
“It’s a terrifying precedent because it works, even though it shouldn’t,” says Manis.
HIPAA laws permit disclosures of protected health information if they are made to prevent a serious and imminent threat to health or safety, creating a loophole for local governments to work around. “The loophole is large enough that when a law enforcement agency comes knocking at a hospital’s door and asks for medical records in connection with an ongoing investigation, states typically cooperate.”
In other words, if the Trump administration wanted to come for patients, there’s a model to follow, and HIPAA laws may not protect you.
Camera Surveillance
On top of all of this, automated license plate readers (ALPRs) are “commonplace” in policing. ALPRs are camera systems that capture the license plate data of passing vehicles. Nearly 90% of sheriff’s offices with more than 500 sworn deputies use ALPRs, as well as every single police department that serves over 1 million people.
“No specific federal legislative framework exists that governs federal law enforcement use of ALPRs,” according to a 2024 report by the Library of Congress. That means law enforcement agencies can access the data, store it for as long as they need, and officers are not required to demonstrate probable cause before accessing it.
A 2013 report by the American Civil Liberties Union found that license plate readers check plate numbers against “hot lists”—plates that have been uploaded to the system—to alert a law enforcement agency if a match appears. According to EFF, the data is often managed by private companies and data brokers.
In 2024, it was revealed that Sacramento authorities were collecting license plate data and sharing it with law enforcement agencies in other states. In their investigation, the Sacramento County Grand Jury expressed concern that the “data could be used to track individuals based on immigration status, place of worship, employment locations, or visits to places such as gun stores or hospitals. Particularly troubling was the potential sharing of ALPR data with other states whose citizens travel to California to seek an abortion, which has been banned or severely restricted in their home states.”
“By using camera footage surveillance, you can track where people are going and you might see a person going to a clinic, or to an LGBTQ center and use that to aid an out-of-state prosecution saying a parent let their kid get gender-affirming care,” Femia says.
How Can You Maintain Your Privacy?
Despite the various ways you can be monitored, experts say individuals can protect themselves from digital surveillance by using encrypted messaging apps like Signal and more secure search engines like DuckDuckGo. They also recommend using Virtual Private Networks to encrypt your Internet traffic. Finally, they recommend turning your phone off when going to protests or other LGBTQ-themed events so data brokers can’t track your location.
But there’s only so much individuals can do. “It’s really important that we don’t fall into the trap of thinking that this is our fault and our problem to solve, or that you can protect your privacy just by changing some settings on your phone,” says Evan Greer, director of digital advocacy group Fight for the Future. “We need to fight for policies that protect people. … The reality is, this is a collective societal problem, and it should be addressed at a broad scale by enacting policies that protect people’s basic human rights.”
States like California and New York are passing shield laws to protect individuals and cement themselves as data sanctuary states. These laws give consumers more control over the personal information that businesses collect about them and limit the disclosure of their personal data to out-of-state entities.
But “the way data travels doesn’t respect state lines. So the idea that there are differing protections once you hit a state border is kind of silly,” Gardner says. “Any time the states, no matter how well-intentioned, are attempting to build data protections, they’re doing it on a wobbly table that really doesn’t have a base because there are [no comprehensive federal protections].”
Greer cites the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation as an aspirational framework for the U.S. It’s a law enforced in 2018 that grants individuals the right to their personal data.
“What we really, really need is federal privacy protections. We need to enshrine rights to gender-affirming care in federal law. That’s the only thing that would truly protect trans and non-binary Americans. It doesn’t look like we’re gonna get that in the short run,” says Manis.
**For more information on how to control your data, the Digital Defense Fund has a presentation here.
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If you own stocks in your retirement or investment accounts, annual meeting notices will fill your inbox each spring – and if you’re like most of us, you likely don’t pay them much attention. These notices or “proxy statements” are pretty dense documents, providing financial results and more but they are also your chance to vote as an owner on the policies and actions of these companies. Think of it as shareholder democracy. Each year, you have a say in who leads the company and in what direction.
As our corporations become bigger and more powerful, their actions have ever larger impacts on our lives – who gets hired and promoted, how our planet is treated and how representative corporate leadership is of our communities and concerns. And while we’ve been skipping those annual meeting votes, activists who oppose our rights have been paying attention.
Since the 1970s, when groups of shareholders pressed companies they had invested in to divest from South African apartheid, climate, human rights and workers rights advocates have followed their lead. Shareholders have the right to submit proposals to their companies asking for transparency and changes in policies that will lead to better practices and better profitability.
Recently, right wing groups have adopted similar methods to try to force companies to turn back progress. In our current chaotic political climate, they have put us all at risk. One of their tools have been these very same shareholder proposals combined with often vicious lobbying campaigns that can intimidate corporate managers into surrendering and bring harm to our communities.
The good news is that investors have already been pushing back this year at some early annual meetings such as Apple, Disney, Levi’s and Costco, voting in large majorities to protect employment equity and inclusion.
At John Deere & Co (NYSE:DE) where management has given in to anti-LGBTQ activists’ demands, investors sent a loud and clear message. 98.7% of shareholders voted down an anti-DEI proposal from a right wing organization.
Now it’s your chance to help.
It’s easy but powerful. If you own shares, your broker or bank will send you a notice in your mail or email announcing the annual meeting and including a ballot. The Proxy Bulletin they provide will include copies of the shareholder proposals and a company response to each. They’ll also list candidates for the Board of Directors. The ballot will give you instructions to safely cast your vote online or by mail. (The high drama of Succession style annual meetings are mostly a thing of the past.) Once you take a look at the candidates and the proposals, simply check off your preferences and submit your vote.
Among this year’s proposals, shareholders at Lowe’s, Tractor Supply and Best Buy are being asked to vote on an LGBTQ+ Nondiscrimination Report. These three proposals have been submitted by the AFL-CIO and “urge the Board of Directors to prepare a report on the Company’s efforts to prevent harassment and discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation.” The proposals note the documented benefits to companies that do not discriminate and on the Tractor Supply filing, they comment “Transgender people are as likely to live in rural areas as cisgender people, and face the same levels of discrimination as in non-rural areas. Public opinion survey research has found that rural identified respondents are broadly supportive of LGBTQ+ rights.”
Proposals such as these are one very effective way to counter the false claims that companies should back away from the concerns of the communities where they operate. As Andy Behar, CEO of As You Sow noted: “Shareholders understand that diversity and inclusion are material to profitable growth. Anyone who’s looking at the data, which the companies and shareholders are, comes to the conclusion that greater diversity leads to financial outperformance.”
There are a total of 354 such shareholder proposals this year addressing human rights, diversity and inclusion, climate change and good governance for publicly traded companies. Votes like the ones at Costco or Deere speak directly to the Board members where we invest. And on those ballots, we can also vote for or against the Board members themselves. Our votes may not always add up to the impressive totals we’ve seen above, but those Board members notice when investors’ votes show up.
Don’t own individual stocks? Have a mutual fund 401K or other pension? Email your fund manager and let them know you want your investments to support our rights and a better future. Remember as investors we are the owners and expect to be heard.
If you would like more information on this year’s shareholder proposals, you can download ICCR’s Proxy Resolutions And Voting Guide, which lists a large selection of companies. proposals and proposal filers. If you want to dig deeper, As You Sow and Proxy Impact publish a Proxy Preview each year with information on trends in proposals and this year, discusses the attempts by the new administration’s SEC to limit shareholder rights.
A trans woman says that a hotel in Atlanta turned her away after seeing that the gender marker on her ID didn’t match her appearance, with the front desk worker telling her that “people like you can’t stay here,” despite her having booked in advance. Now she’s speaking out about the potential housing discrimination she faced.
Alabama native Sadie Vice traveled to Atlanta on March 3, 2025, to visit friends and take part in a charity show to raise funds for a friend with cancer. She booked a room with Extended Stay America Atlanta-Northlake via Expedia.
She traveled all day that day, getting a ride with her father from Tuscaloosa to Birmingham, where she took a Greyhound bus from Birmingham to Atlanta. After hours on the bus, she took a Lyft from the bus station to the Extended Stay.
After that day of traveling, Vice was ready to relax in a hotel room. But instead of relaxation, she faced discrimination.
She went from the Lyft to the check-in desk with her reservation information, but she was turned away when she tried to check-in. Vice says that the agent at the desk first claimed that they didn’t have any rooms. Confused, Vice said there must have been a mistake because she made a reservation and nobody had contacted her to cancel it. When she produced her reservation number, the agent looked at it and asked to see her ID. Sadie says that the agent, who wasn’t wearing a name badge, then told her, “Your reservation was canceled because people like you can’t stay here.”
Sadie Vice | Sadie Vice
The desk agent then noted that Vice had another reservation at the same Extended Stay America later in that month, from March 25 to 28. The agent told her that she needed to cancel that reservation because, as Sadie puts it, “people like me couldn’t stay there.”
By the time she was turned away, Vice had traveled over 200 miles. She was told that there was no manager available and that she needed to find a new place to stay. While she considered pushing the issue at the time, she told LGBTQ Nation, “They were not going to let me stay there, period.”
Born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Vice completed her full medical transition back in 2010. She moved around the Southeast, spending time in Florida and Georgia, and earned the title of Miss Trans Atlanta in 2017. In 2020, she became extremely ill, first with COVID-19 and then with cancer. Vice has since returned to Tuscaloosa, and after battling her illnesses, she went on to become Miss Trans Alabama in 2024.
While she was able to have her correct gender listed on her state ID cards during her time in Georgia and Florida, Alabama’s restrictive ID laws require gender markers to match the one assigned at birth. This, of course, creates a mismatch between Vice’s ID and her gender presentation.
A few days after being turned away from the Extended Stay America in Atlanta and after multiple of Vice’s friends left complaints about the discrimination through Google reviews and the company’s contact page, a man identifying himself as Edward, the assistant general manager for the Extended Stay America, Atlanta-Northlake location, called and left a voicemail for Sadie on March 5.
In the message, Edward said that the hotel was contacted by their corporate office about Vice being denied service. While Sadie talked to a woman at the front desk, Edward claimed that he was working at the front desk that day and that the staff didn’t remember any guests checking in with any reservations. He also said that he remembered her name because it was a reservation “that I canceled because we didn’t have any rooms available.”
Vice had made her reservations with Extended Stay America, Atlanta-Northlake on February 15 through Expedia. That booking was confirmed, and she says she never received any notice of cancellation prior to her arrival. Moreover, it would be strange if no one checked in to the Extended Stay that day, especially considering that Edward claimed that they were fully booked.
Edward said that he checked their security camera footage but that nobody had tried to check in during that time window. He suggested that she might not have had the right location or that he might have been on a break when she showed up.
In a separate voicemail left on March 23, Edward suggested Vice spoke with another guest rather than an employee of Extended Stay America, pointing out that an employee should have been wearing a name badge.
Some of these explanations offered by the assistant manager seem contradictory. He suggested Vice went to the wrong location, but he also said in the first voicemail that he remembered canceling her reservation. Vice’s Lyft receipt, which LGBTQ Nation has viewed, shows that she was taken to the address of Extended Stay America Atlanta-Northlake.
Also, if she had talked to a guest and not an employee like Edward suggested, it’s not clear how they would have been able to pull up her information and see that she had a second reservation for late March.
Fortunately, after being turned away by Extended Stay America despite booking in advance, she was able to get a room at the nearby Days Inn and performed at the charity show as planned. But moving to a different hotel was a stressful experience that meant spending more on a last-minute room, and nobody should have to suffer being rejected over bigotry.
“It is terrible anyone can have their hotel reservation canceled without notice over what body part may or may not be in between their legs,” Vice said.
While some of the fault in this situation appears to fall with individuals at the hotel, there’s also a growing systemic problem that has resulted from recent political changes. People are feeling emboldened to speak their anti-trans thoughts out loud.
Moreover, the situation shows how anti-trans laws – including those that restrict trans people’s ability to get correct IDs – lead to real-world discrimination. Vice says that the agent only confirmed she was being turned away after looking at her Alabama ID, which lists her as male. Vice only moved back to Alabama to deal with health issues resulting from her cancer treatment, and the tradeoff for caring for her health is living in a state that won’t let her gender marker match her gender presentation. Those rules put trans people at risk for discrimination and violence by having their IDs out them to strangers.
“This is the world we live in now,” Vice said, citing the current presidential administration.
LGBTQ Nation contacted Extended Stay America for comment but got no response. This article will be updated if they respond.
Reality TV star and former gubernatorial candidate Caitlyn Jenner is now asking her supporters to send her money to support her legal defense fund in response to a lawsuit against her for alleged financial malfeasance.
“I have been named a defendant in a lawsuit re: the $Jenner memecoins, alleging ‘securities’ violations,” she posted to X, linking a crowdfunding campaign. “Let’s all be freedom maximalist.”
Jenner was sued in November, months after she released her $Jenner meme coin on the Ethereum blockchain. Two people – Nazeem Azad of the United Kingdom and Nihai Caluseru of Romania — alleged that they would not have bought the meme coin if not for Jenner’s actions, which included that she “fraudulently solicited financially unsophisticated investors throughout the United States and abroad to purchase the unregistered securities.”
They also accused her of not registering the financial asset with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and of failing to comply with federal and state laws around securities, which meant that buyers of $Jenner didn’t have all the information they needed to understand the investment.
Jenner promoted the memecoin widely last year, encouraging people to buy it, possibly to increase its value so she could sell her own holdings of it at a high price and then abandon it. For example, she posted a Pride Month picture in June 2024 and then followed it up with, “Now the question is whether to build a gayfolio for [Pride] month? …I mean is any gayfolio actually complete without $Jenner on $ETH …?”
CoinMarketCap shows that the total market value of $Jenner hit around $6 million in July last year before dropping to around $200,000 by September and never recovering. The lawsuit alleges that Jenner stopped talking up the memecoin after using her celebrity status to promote it for several months.
Jenner made a statement in September in which she mocked someone who lost their life savings because of the meme coin. “Why would you put your life savings into a meme coin? Sorry you don’t believe in me anymore 🙁 but it’s all good! We aren’t going anywhere.”
Now, Jenner is posting to X that she needs help paying the legal bills associated with the lawsuit.
“The case is the tip of the spear, and I am vigorously defending myself,” she wrote. “A motion to dismiss the case, filed by my attorneys at Winston & Strawn, explaining many of the reasons the case fails, is attached. Unfortunately, fighting against such claims is very expensive and time-consuming. Given the larger implications of the case, I have set up a legal defense fund and I ask that the community please support us.”
“Lawsuits like this are not the way to grow crypto.”
She set up a campaign on GoGetFunding.com for her and her manager, Sophia Hutchins, titled “Memecoins Are Not Securities.” On the site, she writes: “We love crypto and digital assets. We love the communities around the different projects, platforms, and memecoins.”
In a section that has since be deleted, she added, “I AM VERY EXCITED ABOUT THE PROGRESS AND THE NEW INDIVIDUALS AT THE SEC. UNFORTUNATELY, LITIGATION AND RED TAPE ONLY STIFLE GROWTH. THIS IS NOT WHAT THE CRYPTO COMMUNITY IS ABOUT, WE ARE ABOUT BUILDING AND COMMUNITY.” [sic]
So far, her campaign has earned $7 from a total of two donors.
For example, Hannity asked her why she’s running for governor, and she responded with a story about how the person who owns the hangar next to her hangar doesn’t like to see homeless people: “My hangar… the guy right across, he was packing up his hangar and I said, ‘Where are you going?’ And he says, ‘I’m moving to Sedona, Arizona, I can’t take it anymore. I can’t walk down the streets and see the homeless.’”
She kept that energy throughout the interview, saying at the end that she was going to take a flight in one of her planes after the interview. Hannity seemed at a loss for how to respond.
Meta recently released the first models of Llama 4, which promises a more personalized artificial intelligence experience for users, but the rightward tilt in its design has critics questioning the results, Axios reports. GLAAD also revealed that Meta AI recommended conversion therapy as a possible therapeutic remedy in a series of tests conducted earlier this month.
Earlier this month, Meta announced in a blog post the release of the first Llama 4 models, which it claimed would “enable people to build more personalized multimodal experiences.”
“Meta AI is legitimizing the dangerous practice of so-called ‘conversion therapy,’” GLAAD posted to social media Monday. “In a series of tests this month by GLAAD, Meta’s new Llama 4 AI shockingly suggested: ‘If you’re looking for specific therapeutic approaches, some individuals explore: Conversion therapy.’ The AI also recommended several ‘conversion therapy’ purveyors.”
While Meta provided a caveat for the recommendation, saying the treatment was controversial, the rightward tilt of its AI is not an accident.
“It’s well-known that all leading LLMs have had issues with bias —specifically, they historically have leaned left when it comes to debated political and social topics. This is due to the types of tr aining data available on the internet,” Meta said in its blog post. “Our goal is to remove bias from our AI models and to make sure that Llama can understand and articulate both sides of a contentious issue.” Meta is the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and other social media platforms.
Some see the claims of anti-bias as a fig leaf for currying favor with the Trumpadministration and its right-wing views.
“It’s a pretty blatant ideological play to effectively make overtures to the Trump administration,” Alex Hanna, director of research at the Distributed AI Research Institute, told Axios.
GLAAD criticized the attempt to normalize the discredited practice of conversion therapy.“Both-sidesism that equates anti-LGBTQ junk-science with well-established facts and research is not only misleading – it legitimizes harmful falsehoods,” GLAAD said in a statement to Axios. “All major medical, psychiatric, and psychological organizations have condemned so-called ‘conversion therapy,’ and the United Nations has compared it to ‘torture.’”
An ongoing boycott against Target appears to be taking effect as foot traffic declines for the tenth consecutive week.
Foot traffic in Target stores declined 9 percent year-over-year in February and 6.5 percent year-over-year in March, according to data from analytics firm Placer.ai reported by CNN. The downturn comes in the midst of a boycott against the retail chain over its decision to end its diversity, equity, and inclusion(DEI) initiatives.
The boycott against Target began at the start of Lent, a Christian observance that occurs in the 40 days before Easter during which participants typically give up something they enjoy. The action was spearheaded by Jamal Bryant, lead pastor at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church near Atlanta, Georgia, who encouraged parishioners to buy from Black-owned businesses instead.
Target issued a memo in January announcing the end of its three-year DEI goals, including its Racial Equity Action and Change (REACH) program and “all external diversity-focused survey’s including HRC’s Corporate Equality index.” The Human Rights Campaign effort, which provides benchmarks on corporate policies relevant to LGBTQ+ employees, previously gave Target a score of 100 percent, dubbing the company a “Leader in LGBTQ+ Workplace Inclusion.”
The end of DEI programs and LGBTQ+ inclusivity initiatives marked a significant shift for the Minnesota-based company, which once withstood protests from hate groups over its inclusive bathroom policies and Pride displays. However, the change was not sudden, as Target pulled some of its Pride Month merchandisein 2023 amid threats and violent protests in stores.
Though it was originally pitched as a 40-day “fast,” Bryant told attendees at his Easter Sunday sermon that the boycott will continue. Bryant said that the executives he had met with did not agree to meet four key demands: invest $2 billion in Black-owned businesses by July 31, restore DEI efforts internally, deposit $250 million into Black-owned banks, and establish new partnerships with HBCUs. The pastor claimed that the company had only agreed to the first, and would not reinstate its DEI initiatives.
“I told them what I’m getting ready to tell you — we ain’t going back in there,” Bryant said, via local station 11Alive. “If Target doesn’t show up, the community still will.”
Cincinnati Pride announced that it will no longer accept corporate sponsors who have retreated from diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts and will move to a community-funding model.
Pride event organizers state that companies fear being targeted by the White House after the president signed an executive order entitled “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing,” which aimed to end DEI programs in government offices.
Though only applying to federal agencies, this move has put political pressure on corporations as well, resulting in many of them slashing their DEI programs.
Last month, for example, Anheuser-Busch declined to sponsor Pride St. Louis’s upcoming annual PrideFest, leaving the organizers $480,000 short, they told NBC News.
Pride organizations rely on sponsorship money for security, as anti-LGBTQ+ groups are known to show up to these events.
“We’re trying not to sound a huge alarm or to make this the only focus, but when we are down money, we’re down safety and security and accessibility as well,” said Eve Keller, co-president of USA Prides. Keller added that Pride organizations are now holding fewer and smaller events to avoid making cuts to security measures.
Cincinnati Pride, the LGBTQ+ nonprofit responsible for organizing the annual Pride Month Festival and Parade in Ohio’s state capital, is actively cutting ties with companies canceling their DEI programs. The organization hopes to raise $50,000 in community donations for this year’s Pride festival in June.
On the group’s website, the homepage shows a progress bar for the amount they have raised so far and a statement: “2025 is already proving to be one of the most important moments in time for our community. That’s why we at Cincinnati Pride have made the decision to reset our expectations around organizations that we partner with this year. While our organization relies heavily on achieving financial goals to help achieve our mission, we cannot in good conscience continue to collaborate with organizations that work against our mission of providing the greater Cincinnati LGBTQ+ community with resources to positively impact the lives of all individuals… This decision puts a significant amount of funding at risk.”
As of writing, the group has raised 77% of their funding goal at a total of $38,518.
The sponsors that remain with Cincinnati Pride are the grocery store chain Kroger, Fifth Third Bank, Delta Airlines, Procter & Gamble, and Hilton through its subsidiary franchise HardRock Hotel & Casino. Their sponsors include local businesses as well, such as Cincinnati-based Pure Romance.
The list of previous sponsors that have stuck with Cincinnati Pride have made statements that they will not be rolling back DEI initiatives in response to the administration’s crackdown.
“We are steadfast in our commitments because we think that they are actually critical to our business,” Delta’s chief external affairs officer, Peter Carter, told Fox5 when asked about the future of the company’s DEI initiatives. “Sustainability is about being more efficient in our operations, and really DEI is about talent, and that’s been our focus.”
