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WorldPride faces calls for boycott because the U.S. “is no longer a free democratic country”

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The African Human Rights Campaign (AHRC) called for a boycott of WorldPride – an international Pride celebration held in a different city every few years, with this year’s festivities to be held in D.C. – citing concerns about travel safety because of the Trump administration’s hostility towards the LGBTQ+ community. The statement echoes a similar statement put out by Germany.

WorldPride will take place in Washington, D.C., between May 17 and June 8. It is meant to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community’s resilience and history. However, recent attacks on the community by the federal government have made this year’s event a dangerous protest. 

This is especially true for foreign visitors to the United States. It has become the center of international debate over the safety and visibility of LGBTQ+ people under the Trump administration’s attack on their rights. The president has violated court orders to halt deportations, which has made LGBTQ+ travelers even more weary of whether the laws against false imprisonment will protect them.

“The United States is no longer a free democratic country that WorldPride signed up for,” wrote AHRC Executive Director Melanie Nathan in her statement.

The AHRC advocates for LGBTQ+ Africans and asylum seekers and is now comparing attending WorldPride in the U.S. to legitimizing Apartheid in South Africa. Pointing to recent policies such as the gutting of asylum protections and increased hostility for trans and nonbinary people, the group says that visibility in a hostile environment will not guarantee safety.

“African Human Rights Coalition calls on WorldPride to come out and make the strongest of condemnation and solidarity statements, to cite all the antagonism that this current United States presents to its LGBTQI+ citizens,” said a spokesperson for the AHRC.

WorldPride organizers are facing increasing attacks on their funding in the wake of the administration’s attempts to end diversity initiatives. Booz Allen Hamilton, a firm with federal contracts, withdrew its sponsorship in February following Trump’s executive order to erase DEI efforts.

Despite concerns raised by organizations outside the U.S., WorldPride organizers are resisting the boycott call, emphasizing that participation is an act of resistance. They say that canceling or relocating the event outside the United States is not an option and see it as an opportunity to resist the government’s discrimination and demonstrate collective strength.

“A boycott of WorldPride sends the wrong message,” Ryan Boss, Capital Pride Alliance executive director, told The Advocate in a statement. “We need to show up together, show resilience and resistance to ensure we remain visible and heard.”

People are still concerned about travel restrictions. Capital Pride Alliance has stated they will make efforts to ensure the safety of those who plan to attend by working with law enforcement and federal agencies. The AHRC, however, argues that those agencies can not be trusted.

“To the transgender and nonbinary people who are considering joining us in D.C. for WorldPride, I want you to know that we are working tirelessly with agencies and advocates to ensure that you are able to safely and securely travel to and from the U.S.,” Boss said. “Our local community is vibrant and diverse, and we are excited to welcome everyone. For those that choose not to, or are unable to, join us in D.C., know that we need you to remain a part of this movement. Please stay active where you are and join us virtually if you are able.”

Though times remain uncertain, WorldPride is moving forward with preparations. WorldPride is planning the largest LGBTQ+ music festival in history. The event will run from June 6 to 8 and feature performances from Doechii, Kim Petras, Jennifer Lopez, Troy Sivan, and RuPaul, along with other performers.

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Gay Venezuelan asylum-seeker ‘disappeared’ to Salvadoran mega-prison under Trump order, Maddow reveals

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Rachel Maddow reported Thursday night that a young gay Venezuelan man, deported without due processunder a Trump administration directive, has been identified publicly for the first time. His name is Andrys. He is 23 years old. He is a makeup artist. And he has vanished into a Salvadoran mega-prison.

Lindsay Toczylowski, who identified the man only by his first name, shared photos of the 23-year-old on The Rachel Maddow Show. The Advocate is not using Andrys’s last name due to concerns over his safety. Toczylowski said the Trump administration forcibly removed her client from the United States without a court hearing or deportation order.

She explained that her team decided to share his identity because the government had already disclosed it in an internal document. “Names and identities of people have been shared today via a list,” she said. “And so we know that it is inevitable that our client will be identified, and we feel it’s important to let the world know who Andrys, our client, is because he is a human being. He is a young professional from Venezuela. He’s a makeup artist. He is a gay man.”.

Andrys had arrived in the U.S. seeking asylum, his lawyer said. He was detained after immigration officials flagged his tattoos as possible signs of gang affiliation—a claim his attorney says is unfounded. “These are not the tattoos of somebody who is involved with gangs,” Toczylowski said. “These are normal tattoos that you would see on anybody at a coffee shop anywhere in the United States or Venezuela.”

According to Venezuelan independent news outlet Crónica Uno, which interviewed the young man’s mother, Andrys last spoke to his family shortly before his disappearance. They believed he would be deported to Venezuela. He never arrived.

Instead, he is now being held in El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, known as Cecot—a sprawling, 40,000-capacity mega-prison used to detain suspected gang members. The Trump administration deported 238 Venezuelan men to Cecot despite a federal judge’s emergency order to stop the flights on March 15.

“Today, we have confirmation from the government—one of the few groups or attorneys that have confirmation—that our client is indeed in El Salvador,” Toczylowski said.

International human rights groups have condemned the prison for extreme overcrowding, systemic abuse, denial of medical care, and a communications blackout. “There’s no phone, mail or visits,” political scientist Mneesha Gellman toldThe Guardian. LGBTQ+ individuals are at heightened risk inside the facility, where detainees are often identified—and sometimes targeted—based on tattoos alone.

Andrys was scheduled to appear in U.S. immigration court to challenge the government’s allegations last week. He never appeared. “ICE never presented him,” Toczylowski said. “The immigration judge said, ‘How is it possible that he’s been removed if there’s no removal order?’ And the ICE attorney that was in the courtroom said, ‘I don’t know.’”

Lindsay Toczylowski on MSNBC

Toczylowski said ICE has since told her team it will not facilitate communication with Andrys or make him available for his next immigration hearing. “They will not facilitate communication with our client, because he has, in their words, been removed,” she said. “And they will not make him available for that hearing in two weeks.”

Maddow described the case as part of “one of the most dramatic crises of this new presidency,” and said the administration’s legal argument amounts to claiming unchecked executive authority. “Just on Trump’s say-so, you’re gone out of the country, disappeared indefinitely,” she said.

The Advocate contacted U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for comment on Friday. The agency did not immediately respond.

Toczylowski warned that her client’s case reflects a broader assault on due process and the right to seek asylum. “We’re pursuing all avenues,” she said. “Because our client’s life is at risk. We’re concerned for his safety. And the fact that he was forcibly taken from the United States with no due process—it’s just—it’s something that really shocks the conscience in a way that we haven’t seen since family separation happened in 2018.”

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For Newark LGBTQ Leaders, Linking Environmental Justice and Queer Liberation Movements is the Key to Healthy Communities – Here’s Why

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Newark, New Jersey LGBTQ activists are organizing to heal their city from redlining – the systematic denial of services, like mortgages, insurance, and other financial services, often based on race or ethnicity – and environmental discrimination to build a healthy, clean, and affordable place where bodily autonomy is never in question. 

These local leaders understand the convergence between environmental justice and queer liberation and seek to educate others on how queer-centered action unlocks freedoms and possibilities for all.

The City of Newark, home to state schools Rutgers University and a State University of New Jersey campus, has a majority Black, Brown, immigrant, LGBTQ and low-income population. 

This population has experienced escalation in raids (some deemed illegal by residents and the city’s mayor) by U.S. Immigration and Enforcement (ICE), but also bears the ongoing burden of neighboring toxic waste facilities including three power plants, with a fourth power plant looming over residents of the 26 sq mi city. 

Local activists are scheduled to host a protest against the backup power plant March 13 at the Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission at 10:30 a.m.

From a national perspective, The Trump Administration has slashed well-established environmental justice policies. The Administration also instructed agencies to eliminate environmental justice-related roles in tandem with the reversal of diversity, equity and inclusion policy, AP News reported. 

The GLAAD Media Institute – GLAAD’s training, research, and consulting division of the organization – traveled to Newark to discuss with local leaders their top community priorities for year.

Right now, the environment and its impact on quality of life is their main concern. 

1939 redlining map of Newark (outlined in white) from the organization “Mapping Inequality”; Red means “hazardous,” while yellow means in “decline.”

“Fighting for LGBTQ rights in Newark in terms of environmental justice, in terms of housing justice, it makes a lot of sense to me because we are the communities that have been segregated to one of the last affordable places to live in the country.” JV Valladolid, environmental justice organizer for Ironbound Community Corporation said.

“Unfortunately we are also communities that are living in the historical lines of redlining, which means a lot of toxic sites have been placed right in our neighborhoods,” Valladolid continued. 

Historically, redlining has resulted the divesting of neighborhoods often populated by low-income communities by coloring out “dangerous-to-invest-in” areas in red. While the practice is outlawed today, redlining’s effects linger in major cities throughout the country. Newark is one of those cities, and holds the great burden of holding the entire state on its shoulders. 

Valladolid aims to relieve that tension with a variety of coalition partners.

Next to Valladolid stood Ironbound Community Corporation’s Environmental Policy Analyst Chloe Desir who says she fights for LGBTQ people because she and Valladolid are LGBTQ people, but also because LGBTQ people among Brown, Black, disabled, and low income communities “are the same people that have been fighting [these] same fights for decades.”

Desir calls Newark a melting pot where people from all over the world come together to find ways to support themselves, their at-large community, and families. 

“Newark is definitely a microcosm of this country,” Desir said as a result. “Newark and especially in the Ironbound, we are predominantly a foreign born city and community, so that means we have so many different people coming in from different walks of life and different identities that contribute to the community.”

The governor’s seat is up for election in the Garden State in a highly contested election that will mark the future policy of Newark and the state as a whole. In fact, Newark’s Mayor Ras Baraka will be running up against Trumpist Jack Ciattarelli, among other candidates.

Desir said these contributions to Newark, and the Ironbound, look like building art scenes, culture, and coalition. For example, Newark LGBTQ Film Festival spoke to GLAAD about their work in the community. Going to public school GSA’s (Gender and Sexuality Alliance) to talk to youth about screenings, and opportunities to work in expanding Black, Brown, and LGBTQ representation in film. 

Director of the Newark LGBTQ Film Festival Denise Hinds says joy is imperative to the justice she and people like Valladolid and Desir are fighting for. She says that is why representation in the media is also important. The film festival materialized during the COVID-19 pandemic, and has flourished ever since. 

“LGBTQ folks in Newark really needed something that spoke to them about who they were, and what they were about,” Hinds said. “We don’t see a lot of representation in films on a regular basis, especially films that focus on queer BIPOC folks. That was our dream, to be able to bring these films to Newark, and really throughout New Jersey, but really focusing on the folks in Newark and really focusing on something they can see themselves in.” 

Hinds says it means so much to bring joy to LGBTQ youth in Newark. Additionally, the director is excited to continue building community among Newark’s LGBTQ youth with their annual film festival starting in the first week of May. 

Like Valladolid, and many of the youth Hinds works with, LGBTQ Activist and history-making journalist Steven McCoy was born and raised in Newark, and like the Newark LGBTQ Film Festival, he works as a change agent through his nonprofit Spoken Heroes. His organization has a mission to “empower and support disabled grade school and college students by providing them with essential resources” throughout Newark and the country. 

McCoy, presumably the world’s first deaf and blind Black journalist, founded Spoken Heroes after years of discrimination and ableism as a result of Usher Syndrome, a retinal eye disease which led McCoy to experience blindness and hearing loss, McCoy told GLAAD. 

He still lives in Newark, and he wouldn’t move anywhere else, even when he felt the city didn’t support him. 

“I love where Newark is headed because there’s so much growth than where it was before. I used to feel that Newark did not support me,” McCoy said. But once he left and returned, he found it his mission to stay and keep investing in the city that raised him. 

“But what pushed me to now, at this point, to get involved more when it comes to the LGBT community, it’s because now I have students who are queer or trans,” McCoy continued. “It’s my responsibility to make sure that I’m educating myself and that I’m able to communicate with them efficiently, and make them feel absolutely included.”

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Human Rights and Sexuality Education Protects Schools

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A legal change could help make schools safer for children in 2025. In December, the National Council of the Public Prosecutor’s Office (CNMP) issued a groundbreaking recommendation that highlights the fundamental role of human rights education and comprehensive sexuality education in promoting safer schools in Brazil.

In it, the CNMP, the national body that oversees the country’s prosecutors in Brazil, offers detailed guidelines for tackling school violence and emphasizes the importance of combating structural racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and other forms of discrimination. Crucially, it also defends teachers’ freedom to educate students about these topics.

The recommendation comes at a crucial moment, as human rights and sexuality education have faced continuous attacks for over a decade in Brazil. Lawmakers, officials, and anti-rights groups have weaponized education for political gain, claiming that discussions of racism, gender, sexuality, diversity, and other important topics constitute “indoctrination” or “gender ideology.”

The fallacious discourse of so-called “gender ideology” emerged in the 1990s, created by ultraconservative Catholic movements to attack advances for the rights of women and LGBT people at UN. In recent years, the far-right has adopted this language to promote moral panic and discredit public policies to tackle inequality.

The CNMP’s recommendation also comes in the context of a wider crisis of school violence in Brazil. In 2023, a series of brutal killings in schools led the government to characterize the phenomenon as an “epidemic” and to adopt measures to tackle it. Experts have highlighted that, in addition to factors such as harmful online content and isolation during the pandemic, harassment of teachers and attacks on inclusive education exacerbate the problem.

Suppressing discussions on human rights and sexuality undermines efforts to create an anti-discriminatory culture that can overcome violent practices and promote mutual understanding in schools and beyond.

The recommendation is not binding but offers normative guidance on how prosecutors should act when faced with attacks on human rights and sexuality education by urging them to develop rules, processes, and structures to support teachers and students. The recommendation can also help weaken efforts by some prosecutors who may act against this protected educational material for ideological reasons.

In a 2022 report, Human Rights Watch analyzed more than 200 bills and laws passed at the federal, state, and municipal levels that aim to ban discussions on gender and sexuality in schools, based on research conducted by Fernanda Moura and Renata Aquino. Teachers we interviewed have faced harassment from elected officials and community members, as well as lawsuits for addressing these topics, with some summoned to provide statements to police or other authorities.

For years, Brazilian education experts and advocacy groups, such as the Coalition against Ultraconservatism in Education, Educational Action, and Teachers Against School Without Party have also been warning about these heinous attacks.

In 2018 and 2022, 80 education and human rights organizations in Brazil published and updated a manual to protect teachers in response to attempts to ban discussions in schools about gender, race, sexuality, and critical perspectives on Brazilian history and inequality, as well as in response to the increase in the harassment, threats, censorship, and harassment via the courts, of education professionals.

Despite these challenges, progress has been made, much of it due to the actions of organized sectors of civil society. In 2020 and 2024, the Federal Supreme Court ruled that laws aimed at banning or silencing human rights and sexuality education were unconstitutional, ordering the Brazilian state to promote these topics as a way of combating the sexual abuse of children and adolescents and violence against girls, women and LGBT people.

In October 2023, the Chamber of Deputies held the first public hearing on harassment against teachers for topics covered in the classroom. In 2023, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Human Rights supported the launch of the National Observatory on Violence against Educators to study the harassment and censorship of teachers.

In response to the wave of school violence, the government also announced a series of measures to support schools, including the provision of additional funding for security training, infrastructure and equipment. The government also created a Technical Working Group to Combat Bullying, Prejudice and Discrimination in Education. The group aims to give effect to a Supreme Court decision that ordered the creation of policies to prevent and combat discrimination based on gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation in schools.

The new CNMP recommendation is another step in the right direction and responds to the desire expressed by the Brazilian population in the Education, Values ​​and Rights survey (2022): 73% of people said they were in favor of sexual education in schools and more than 90% understand that it is essential to prevent sexual abuse of children and adolescents.

State and municipal legislatures should repeal or reject any laws or bills that aim to ban education on human rights and sexuality. In addition, education departments should offer robust support to education professionals, ensuring that they feel confident and protected when teaching this essential content. Only in this way will Brazil be able to effectively combat the structural causes that fuel school violence and create an environment where students and educators can develop a critical and creative education, free from prejudice, discrimination and violence.

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Kentucky Republicans Overturn Ex-Gay Torture Ban

The Associated Press reports:

Kentucky’s Republican lawmakers have passed a measure to protect conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ youths as part of a bill that also would outlaw the use of Medicaid funds to pay for gender-affirming health care for transgender Kentucky residents. Conversion therapy is the scientifically discredited practice of using therapy to “convert” LGBTQ+ people to heterosexuality or traditional gender expectations.

GOP lawmakers voted to remove restrictions that Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear placed on the practice last year. He banned spending tax dollars to pay for the practice on minors, saying his executive order was needed to protect children. Its lead sponsor, GOP Rep. David Hale, has said families should have access to the mental health care of their choice, and said his bill would protect mental health care professionals, institutions and ordained ministries from discrimination.

Read the full article. The bill passed in both chambers with veto-proof majorities.

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ICE uses 227-year old law to ‘disappear’ LGBTQ+ asylum-seeker because of his tattoos

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An LGBTQ+ asylum-seeker has reportedly been deported from the US because of his tattoos.

Lindsay Toczylowski, the founder and president of Immigrant Defenders Law Centre (ImmDef), claimed that one of her clients, a Venezuelan tattoo artist, had been deported to El Salvador because of misconceptions regarding their body art, reports The Pride LA.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials reportedly used the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, a measure instigated to deport people threatening the country’s safety. It was last invoked to intern people of Japanese descent during World War II.

Immigration officers reportedly said the tattoos were related to Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan criminal organisation. Toczylowski says they were mistaken.

“Our client’s tattoos are not gang-related,” she said. “They are benign and reflect his work in the arts. ICE submitted photos of his tattoos as ‘evidence,’ despite there being no other proof of any criminal affiliation.”

The client reportedly fled Venezuela last year to escape persecution and made it to the US “seeking protection,” but was held in ICE prisons for months before being deported.

Toczylowski was “horrified” by the development, and worried about what “might happen to him now”.

ImmDef grew concerned after ICE did not bring the man to a court hearing. The government lawyer had no idea why he wasn’t there, it is claimed.

After contacting the Texas facility where her client had been held, Toczylowski was told that he was “no longer there” and had “disappeared from [the] online detainee locator”.

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What is the Alien Enemies Act? 

The act grants the president full authority to detain or remove individuals from the U.S. based solely on their nationality or suspected ties to enemy organisations. The law does not require concrete evidence before deportation, raising concerns among legal experts and human rights organisations.

The Trump administration was ordered to stop using the 227-year-old law when district judge James Boasberg issued an emergency order.

Trump has claimed that Tren de Aragua was “perpetrating, attempting and threatening an invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States.”

However, the judge ruled that the law did not offer a good basis for deportations, saying the terms “invasion” and “predatory incursion” relate to “hostile acts perpetrated by enemy nations”.

The matter is set to reach the Supreme Court, according to the BBC.

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Lesotho LGBTQ+ organization says it has not received $8 million from US as claimed by Trump

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A Lesotho LGBTQ+ rights organisation says that it did not receive eight million dollars in funding from the US, despite Donald Trump’s recent claim. 

During his presidential address to Congress on Tuesday (4 March) Trump made a claim about Lesotho’s main LGBTQ+ rights organisation, the People’s Matrix. 

“Eight million dollars to promote LGBTQI+ in the African nation of Lesotho”, he said of the organisation, adding that “nobody has ever heard” of the country in Southern Africa. 

‘We do not have such moneys’ 

In response, People’s Matrix spokesperson Tampose Mothopeng alleged that Trump’s claim was baseless. They told AFP: “We are literally not receiving grants from the US. 

“We have no idea of the allocation of eight million dollars. We do not know who received or is going to receive that money.

“We do not have such moneys or a contract that would even reach a quarter of half of that money.” 

As reported by the Daily Mail, the US government’s foreign assistance websiteindicated that around $120 million had been spent on “health and population” programmes in the country last year, including $43.5 million to tackle HIV/AIDS. The site does not list any financial support for LGBTQ+ rights in Lesotho.

Lesotho’s Foreign Affairs Minister Lejone Mpotjoane also weighed in on the president’s comments, saying it was “shocking” to hear the president “refer to another sovereign state in that manner.”

“To my surprise, ‘the country that nobody has heard of’ is the country where the U.S. has a permanent mission,” Mpotjoane told AFP. “Lesotho is a member of the UN and of a number of other international bodies. And the U.S. has an embassy here and [there are] a number of U.S. organizations we’ve accommodated here in Maseru.”

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Trump’s Lesotho claim follows White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt falsely stating that international development agency USAID had spent $47,000 funding a trans opera in Colombia, stoking further outrage.

USAID has been under heavy attack since Trump’s inauguration. In February, Trump attacked the aid agency’s leadership saying they were a “bunch of radical lunatics.” Elon Musk also took to X to describe the agency as “evil” and a “viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America.”

Musk also tweeted a baseless claim that USAID “funded bioweapon research, including COVID-19, that killed millions of people.”

During his two hour Congress address on Tuesday, Trump also stood by a series of anti-trans executive orders, ranted about “transgender mice,” and faced a protest staged by Democrats, who waved “Musk Steals” and “Save Medicaid” signs as he spoke before walking out mid-speech in a bid to protest his actions.

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Landmark Ruling on Trans Rights in Poland

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In a significant step toward affirming the rights of transgender people in Poland, the country’s Supreme Court has issued a landmark ruling that eliminates the requirement for trans people to involve their parents in gender recognition proceedings.

Until now, transgender individuals – whether child or adult – seeking to change their gender marker on official documents were required to sue their parents. This was due to a convoluted legal claim that there needs to be two opposing parties in any civil action, which seeking to change a gender marker is classified as. This added unnecessary distress and legal complexities, including for trans people whose parents have died.

The ruling, welcomed by Polish civil society organizations including Campaign against Homophobiaand Trans-Fuzja Foundation, underscores the need for Poland to streamline gender recognition procedures, aligning them more closely with international human rights standards. Indeed, uncertainties remain, including whether married transgender people must divorce in order to obtain legal gender recognition, since Polish law, despite human rights obligations otherwise, does not recognize same-sex marriages.

This ruling comes at a time when trans rights in Poland remain a contentious issue. Far-right rhetoricdenigrates gender identity recognition and broader lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights in Poland, rejecting international and European standards, as well as evolving medical consensus. The World Professional Association for Transgender Health has long advocated for simplified gender recognition procedures, warning that onerous barriers can “harm physical and mental health.”

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Poland is a party, guarantees the rights to privacy and to equal recognition before the law, which incorporate the right to legal gender recognition, free from harmful or disproportionate obstacles.

The European Court of Human Rights, has in multiple judgements stated that states have “a positive obligation to provide quick, transparent and accessible procedures” for changing registered sex markers and failure to do so violates the right to private life. The European Union’s LGBTIQ Equality Strategy (2020-2025) similarly promotes “accessible legal gender recognition based on self-determination and without age restriction.”

While Poland’s progress is commendable, the battle for trans rights is far from over. Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who promisedduring his campaign to introduce a simplified gender recognition process, now has an opportunity to follow through in consultation with Polish trans people. His government should act swiftly to introduce legislation upholding trans people’s full right to self-identification, free from onerous requirements.

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Gay bar defends decision to eject Trump supporters despite their cries of “discrimination”

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On Friday night, a gay bar in Indianapolis was the scene of a heated exchange between Donald Trump supporters wearing MAGA hats and bar staff who say they abused them.

The bar staff threw them out.

“A group of individuals visited Chatterbox and intentionally misgendered and harassed a Chatterbox employee, resulting in them being asked to leave by our staff,” bar management posted to Instagram over the weekend. “They then continued verbally assaulting patrons and staff, threatened our establishment, and returned to record a video which has now been posted on multiple social media platforms.”

The video was recorded and posted to Facebook by Indianapolis resident Elise Hensley, who told News 8 that she’d visited the popular jazz bar several times, but this time, she and her friends wore MAGA hats.

In Hensley’s telling, “We went up to the bar and before we could even get a word out or order a drink, he just looked at me and said, ‘No,’” Hensley said. “I said, ‘Excuse me?’ He said, ‘Absolutely not.’ He said, ‘Your hat. You need to leave right now.’”

After getting ejected, Hensley returned, phone in hand, to confront the bar’s employees.

“I have a question,” Hensley told a bartender in the video. 

“No, no, we’re not answering questions,” they responded. “Get out of the bar.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re a Trump supporter.”

“I know, but don’t you guys want our money?”

“No. Actually, we don’t. Get out of my bar right now.”

A patron interjected: “You’re not welcome!”

“I’m not f**king around,” the bartender continued. “Get out of my bar.”

“Are you serious?” asked Hensley.

“I’m dead serious. Out.”

“Because I’m wearing a Trump hat.”

“Yes.”

“That’s wild.”

“I don’t care. Get out,” the bartender demanded again.

“We can call the police or you can just leave,” a colleague added.

“You know this is discrimination, right?” said Hensley.

Laughter erupted.

“Boo hoo! Boo-f**king-hoo” the bartender exclaimed. “Get out of my bar.”

A patron still laughing at Hensley’s claim added, “That’s funny.”

Hensley’s post earned tens of thousands of likes and was shared across right-wing media, including by Indiana Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith (R).

Beckwith, a pastor and self-described Christian nationalist, has said public school students in Indiana are taught “gay” and “oral sex” and are “indoctrinated with Marxist ideology.”

Bar management was unrepentant about throwing the MAGA fans out.

“The Chatterbox is home to a diverse group of staff and patrons,” their post read. “We do not tolerate dehumanizing or disrespectful language or symbolism in our establishment. We have a right by law to refuse service to anyone who disrupts our business. We look forward to continue being a home for people who love music and appreciate our community.”

“I wore that hat because I do love our President of the United States,” Hensley said Sunday, oblivious — intentionally or not — to Trump’s views about the people she was confronting.

“He is our president. I do appreciate that and I don’t think I find anything wrong with me wanting to wear a Trump hat because he is our president.”

Hensley also attempted to defend herself by saying one of her friends with her at the bar that night was Black: “They probably have every right to kick me out,” she told News 8. “If you don’t want me at your bar, that is what it is. But also, the man that was with me was an African American male. He was wearing a Trump hat.”

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Judge approves Pentagon’s settlement with LGBTQ veterans over discharge status

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A federal judge gave final approval Wednesday to a class-action settlement between the Defense Department and LGBTQ veterans who were discharged because of their sexual orientation under “don’t ask, don’t tell” and similar earlier policies. 

The settlement could affect the more than 35,000 veterans discharged between 1980 and 2011,  “because of real or perceived homosexuality, homosexual conduct, sexual perversion, or any other related reason,” according to court documents. 

A group of veterans filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in August 2023, alleging that the effects of “don’t ask, don’t tell” — which was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1993 and was in effect from 1994 to 2011 — violated their constitutional rights. 

A veteran visits the grave of Leonard Matlovich in the Congressional Cemetery, in Washington D.C., on the 10th anniversary of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", in 2021.
A veteran visits the grave of Leonard Matlovich in the Congressional Cemetery in Washington on the 10th anniversary of the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” in 2021. Patsy Lynch / AP file

Service members who received less than honorable discharges from the military are disqualified from accessing certain benefits, such as medical care through the Veterans Health Administration and a pension. Those who were honorably discharged but whose discharge form says they separated from the military due to homosexuality could be outed when they are required to present the form to receive benefits or during background checks.

The agreement, which was reached in January, will allow veterans who received a less than honorable discharge because of their sexual orientation to be eligible for an immediate review and an upgrade to an honorable discharge. Veterans who received an honorable discharge, but whose discharge form states that they separated from the armed services because of their sexual orientation, will be able to have that characterization removed from the form within months. 

As part of the settlement, the Defense Department has to create a streamlined process for veterans to request a review of their discharge paperwork. The department now has until mid-August to post information on its website and mail letters to class members telling them how to apply for a new military discharge form. Once the new process is in place, class members will have three years to submit requests for new discharge forms. 

In response to a request for comment on the settlement, a Pentagon press officer referred NBC News to the Department of Justice. The DOJ and the plaintiffs’ lawyers did not immediately return a request for comment. 

This week’s class-action settlement comes as another federal judge weighs whether to block President Donald Trump’s administration from banning transgender people from military service. The ban stems from an executive ordersigned by the president on Jan. 27 that reinstates a policy from his first term and rescinds an order from former President Joe Biden that allowed trans people to enlist and serve openly.

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