“My presence at the inauguration will be my way of saying ‘I see you and I know what you’re about. And I won’t be intimidated by you,’” Balint wrote a Friday commentary piece for Courier, a news service. “It will be a way to show Americans and viewers across the world that I respect the vote of the people, unlike Trump himself. Four years on, he’s still lying about the 2020 Election. And Republican leaders in both the House and the Senate are not just complicit in these lies; they facilitated them, and they are now trapped by them.”
“I will be sitting with other members of Congress to watch as Donald Trump is sworn in as the 47th President of the United States,” she wrote. “I won’t enjoy it. In fact, I fully expect the taste of bile to linger in my mouth. But I feel I need to be there.” But, she said, her presence and that of other Democrats will be an embodiment of these words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.: “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
Trump didn’t attend President Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021 because he refused to acknowledge that Biden won the election, she noted. “I will be there as a reminder that in our democracy we don’t only attend the peaceful transfer of power when our candidate wins,” she said.
She is aware of the threat Trump poses to democracy, and she will oppose Trump-backed policies that are bad for Americans, such as “massive tax giveaways to billionaires,” she continued. “I will face the next four years with clarity, a clear conscience, and a deep commitment to doing whatever I can, whenever and wherever I can, to shore up our delicate, ailing democracy,” she concluded. “And to do meaningful, consequential work on behalf of my constituents to make life better for them and for Americans across the nation.”
Several people living with HIV told NBC News they have been turned away from military service or have faced roadblocks to enlistment, despite a federal judge’s ruling in August that found prohibiting healthy HIV-positive recruits is unconstitutional.
Now, as Joe Biden’s presidency reaches its final days, advocates for people with HIV are increasingly concerned that his administration will not fully implement the judge’s ruling, punting it to the incoming Trump administration.
The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 has barred employment discrimination based on HIV status for decades. The Defense Department, which employs nearly 3 million people, has remained the one exception, given the military does not fall under the purview of the ADA.
Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., told NBC News he found the White House’s lack of initiative in the matter “very disappointing. The opportunity was handed to this administration on a silver platter.”
On Aug. 20, a federal district court judge struck down the military’s prohibition on letting people with HIV enlist, ruling that it violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution. The judge found that excluding those who maintain undetectable HIV viral loads and are asymptomatic thanks to effective treatment was “irrational, arbitrary and capricious.”
The Defense Department on Oct. 18 instructed its branches in an internal memo, which NBC News has reviewed, to adhere to the legal decision, imposing a “temporary” yet open-ended “exception” to the long-standing enlistment prohibition. The same day, the Justice Department filed initial paperwork to appeal the August ruling with the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, though the judge’s ruling remains in effect.
Multiple sources said military recruiters have, at least in several cases, not followed the Defense Department’s directive.
NBC News spoke with three men with HIV who described their recent experiences trying to enlist. One said the military told him he was permanently disqualified, and two others said they remained in bureaucratic limbo because of their HIV statuses.
One of the latter two men said a recruiter told him as recently as Tuesday that his HIV status prompted a medical disqualification in his application that would have to be removed before he could move forward. Each of the men spoke under the condition that their names would not be published to protect their medical privacy.
Scott Schoettes is one of the attorneys representing the three HIV-positive plaintiffs who successfully sued to overturn the military enlistment policy. He said he and his colleagues are concerned that, with only days left in the Biden administration and the matter unresolved, Donald Trump’s Justice Department will wind up inheriting the legal baton and will carry out the appeal of the judge’s decision.
Army Lt. Nick Harrison — the plaintiff in a previous federal lawsuit about the potential roles of currently serving HIV-positive service members — is a first lieutenant in the Washington, D.C., Army National Guard who works as a defense attorney for service members. Harrison said he has been in direct contact with two of the HIV-positive men who spoke with NBC News, and he said at least eight other people with HIV have recently reported encountering obstacles to enlistment in a private Facebook group about HIV-related matters in the military (Harrison declined to provide screenshots of the posts, citing the posters’ medical privacy).
Army Lt. Nick Harrison was a plaintiff in a previous federal lawsuit about the potential roles of currently serving HIV-positive service members. Lambda Legal
Harrison, who noted that he was not speaking on behalf of the National Guard, said that based on what he has heard from HIV-positive recruits, both directly and through the private Facebook group, it appears there is a lack of clear guidance about the HIV enlistment policy making its way to at least some military recruiters. He described that as a “failure of the higher command, because they should be pushing it down” the chain of command. He said he had raised the issue with an assistant secretary in the Defense Department and urged this person to act to resolve the bureaucratic quagmire.
“The assistant secretary didn’t do anything,” Harrison said.
He noted that the Biden Justice Department could have closed the door on Trump’s opportunity to appeal the August ruling. First it would have had to alert Congress at least 30 days before the end of Biden’s term that it intended to withdraw the appeal. Without unlikely intervention by Congress, that would have meant he department could have completed the withdrawal process before Biden left office.
“It’s a little too late for that now,” Harrison said.
Dallas Ducar, an executive overseeing policy at Fenway Health, a leading LGBTQ health center in Boston, said the Biden administration’s “inaction contradicts the administration’s stated commitment to equity and public health.”
The White House did not reply to requests for comment. The Defense Department said it could not comment on ongoing litigation, and the Justice Department declined to comment. The Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment, including a question regarding whether the forthcoming administration intended to carry through with the appeal.
‘Permanently disqualified’
An HIV-positive man told NBC News that after he heard about the August ruling, he sought in September to enlist in the National Guard through a recruitment office in South Carolina. The man said he disclosed upfront to the recruiters that he had HIV and said they assured him that it would be no impediment.
But when he then attended an informational slideshow presentation at a Military Entrance Processing Station, he said, the text on one slide stood out: “Absolutely no HIV.” Ultimately, he said, a recruiter who had looked into the matter told him that having the virus did, in fact, preclude him from enlisting, writing in an email reviewed by NBC News that he was “permanently disqualified.”
“There was some communications that led me to believe HIV positive still might have a chance to join so I am sorry I got your hopes up,” the recruiter wrote.
The HIV-positive man, who was not a part of the lawsuit that prompted the injunction against the ban, told NBC News: “I just want the opportunity to give back and serve my country. It’s just the values that were instilled in me by my parents and grandparents.”
Asked about the reported experience of the HIV-positive man, Maj. Karla Evans, a public affairs representative for the South Carolina National Guard, confirmed that the “information you were given by the person you spoke with is correct.” She said, “In September 2024, he would not have met the standards of medical fitness.”
Despite having been told that the HIV-positive man received his final rejection email from the recruiter the first week of December, Evans pointed to the bureaucratic process that, under the October memorandum, would hear requests for entry by people with HIV.
Schoettes said that because the district court’s permanent injunction against the exclusionary HIV enlistment policy has been in effect since August, the military would be violating the injunction if it forbade the South Carolina man from enlistment based on his HIV status.
Fit to serve with HIV
For nearly three decades, HIV has been treatable with antiretroviral medications. Today, most people with the virus require only a single daily pill. People on effective HIV treatment are considered essentially healthy and have a life expectancy approaching normal. Robust research has indicated that when HIV is well suppressed by treatment, it is essentially impossible to transmit.
On Sept. 13, Quigley and 22 other Democratic House members sent a letter urging Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to direct the Defense Department to update its enlistment policy to allow entry to people with HIV.
Calling the ruling “long overdue,” the letter echoes the judge’s words by saying the enlistment ban is “not grounded in modern science, and it perpetuates unjust stigma against people with HIV.” It says thousands of people with HIV serve in the U.S. armed forces without incident.
“There is no evidence that these service members have faced complications from their disease, nor that there is any risk of battlefield transmission,” it says. It further asserts that rejecting HIV-positive recruits “diminishes the strength of the U.S. military.”
While enlistment across the armed services branches increased by 12.5% from 2023 to 2024, from 200,000 to 225,000, the military still failed to meet its recruitment goals for the past two years.
In April 2022, a federal judge struck down a Defense Department policy that forbade people who had contracted HIV after they entered the military from deployment or being commissioned as officers. Austin then directed the military to comply with the ruling, and, in contrast to the current scenario, the Justice Department withdrew its appeal.
HIV advocates had hoped the Biden administration would observe a similar pattern following the August judgment about enlistments. That, however, has not been the case. The Justice Department requested an extension for its first brief in the appeal, which moved the deadline back from Dec. 23 to Feb. 21, a month after Trump’s inauguration.
Asked how she believed the Trump administration might handle the appeal, Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., who signed the letter to Austin, said: “We know that Donald Trump is going to take aim at the LGBTQ+ community, and in fact, has even said part of his day one agenda was a trans military ban.”
The ban on HIV-positive recruits affects gay and bisexual men in particular, given they are about two-thirds of the approximately 1.24 million people in the United States living with HIV.
“Hopefully, in the closing days and hours, the administration can get this done,” said Quigley, referring to his hope for more exacting guidance on how military recruiters should implement a policy permitting enlistment by people with HIV and the withdrawal of the appeal. “But obviously, it’s not looking good at this point in time,” Quigley said. “To those who want to serve, my message to them is: Thank you. Don’t give up. We’re not going to give up.”
The Trevor Project, a national LGBTQ youth suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization, announced Friday that it will undergo a “transformation” that will include layoffs and restructuring. The timing of the announcement, just days before the start of the second Trump administration, has staffers particularly concerned.
Jaymes Black, who became the nonprofit’s CEO last July, said the organization, which has around 600 employees, is in the midst of a “perfect storm” — soaring crisis calls and messages from LGBTQ youths, an increasingly hostile political climate for LGBTQ rights and a drop in individual donations.
The California-based Trevor Project, like many LGBTQ advocacy groups, is expecting the next four years to be challenging. President-elect Donald Trump leaned into anti-transgender rhetoric during his campaign and has promised to institute a number of policies targeting the community, including restrictions on transition-related care for minors and a ban on trans girls participating in women’s sports.
The project’s financials, which are publicly available, show a mixed picture. In its last reported fiscal year, which ended in July 2023, the nonprofit reported $87 million in revenue and $105 million in expenses, up from $67 million in revenue and $60 million in expenses the prior fiscal year.
When asked about the 57% jump in year-over-year expenses, which outpaced the nonprofit’s revenue growth, Black cited several reasons: investments in research, advocacy, public education and TrevorSpace, its online community for LGBTQ young people; increased pay for direct services and crisis intervention staff; and the launch of its crisis services for LGBTQ youths in Mexico, which required hiring new staffers.
But Black added that the top-line numbers in the nonprofit’s latest financial reports do not tell the full story. Aside from one large government grant, which can be used only to fund its work related to the government’s 988 suicide and crisis lifeline, every other fundraising category “came in under the budgeted revenue” and has continued to decrease (the financials for the fiscal year ending in July 2024 are not yet publicly available).
“To be able to consistently meet the needs of our community, it is imperative that we adapt accordingly,” Black wrote in a letter shared on the organization’s website Friday. “This entails a number of solutions that will reinforce our services within the context of constrained resources.”
The organization, founded in 1998, will eliminate some existing roles and create new ones. While it hasn’t yet disclosed how many roles will be cut or how many will be added, the net result will be a smaller total staff. The restructuring, Black said, will focus on moving resources to the project’s 24-7 crisis lines, with more staff providing direct support to LGBTQ young people in crisis.
The percentage of union positions that make up the organization’s total staff will remain the same, at about 75%, Black said, and the organization plans to limit newly created jobs to existing employees.
Black, who uses they, she and he pronouns, described the changes as “difficult but necessary” ahead of the incoming administration.
“This is the time now to fortify the frontlines and to ensure that our youth know that we hear them, we see them,” they told NBC News. “The fact that we are increasing the number of day-to-day interactors, the frontline who are going to support our youth, to me, is a signal of evolution, versus that we don’t have the resources.”
More than 500,000 emergency calls and messages were made to The Trevor Project through its crisis hotlines during its 2022-23 fiscal year, according to its annual report, with more than 3,700 crisis counselors supporting LGBTQ youth.
The Trevor Project’s union, which the nonprofit voluntarily recognized in 2023, was caught off guard by the news of layoffs and restructuring, according to Luis Benítez-Burgos, a representative with the Communications Workers of America, which represents the project’s union members. The nonprofit’s management team announced the changes during a meeting Tuesday where there were no members of The Trevor Project union present, according to Benítez-Burgos, who was one of two CWA employees in the meeting.
Benítez-Burgos said staff were informed of the changes the same day, though management did not share when layoffs would happen or how many positions would be affected, so “our union was not prepared to deal with the influx of calls of stress, of anxiety, of frustration,” he said. “Like I told Trevor [management], this should have been addressed in a different way.”
Black said this type of news is difficult to receive no matter how it’s shared.
“The timing for this transformation is challenging for all of us — I recognize that,” Black said in an interview. “But the reality is that this needs to be set in motion now. We informed the union when we had the appropriate level of detail to share with them.”
One Trevor Project employee, d saulsbury, a shift supervisor on the organization’s crisis phone line who does not capitalize her name, said that the crisis support staff’s job has been more difficult recently and that the news of the transformation “isn’t making things any easier.”
Rather, saulsbury said, management has “a continued interest in making unit members suffer and bear the brunt of hardship when it comes to a financial crisis that is informed in part by the incoming Trump administration, but also has in part to do with mismanagement of our organization’s funds.”
Black denied that there has been a mismanagement of funds and said the organization has strategically invested in programs, such as its crisis services in Mexico, to address LGBTQ youth suicide.
“These investments positively impact LGBTQ+ youth across many aspects of their lives,” Black said. “In order to fund these investments, we relied heavily on fewer large gifts, which is not sustainable in the current fundraising environment.”
saulsbury expressed disappointment in how the transformation was announced and fears it will make the organization’s work even more difficult during an already challenging time.
“I hope when we go into bargaining around these layoffs, that they will make choices now that serve as a way to rebuild trust together,” saulsbury said.
The Supreme Court on Friday took up a new dispute on the tensions between LGBT rights and religious rights by agreeing to hear a claim by parents of elementary school students in Maryland who objected to books available in classrooms concerning gender transition and same-sex relationships.
The case concerns a policy enacted by the Montgomery County Board of Education in November 2022 requiring new story books covering LGBT issues that could potentially be read in class.
One book titled “Pride Puppy!” concerns a puppy that gets lost during a gay rights parade.
Initially, the board indicated parents could opt their children out of the curriculum, but the following March it changed course.
Parents in the demographically diverse county, including Muslims and Eastern Orthodox Christians, objected, and some ultimately sued, saying their right to exercise their religious beliefs under the Constitution’s First Amendment were being violated.
The lead plaintiffs in the case are Tamer Mahmoud and Enas Barakat, Muslims who have a son in elementary school. Other plaintiffs are members of the Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox churches.
They are not challenging the curriculum itself, just the lack of an opt-out.
A federal judge and the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals both ruled in favor of the school board.
The appeals court ruling effectively finding that “parents essentially surrender their right to direct the religious upbringing of their children by sending them to public schools — contradicts centuries of our history and traditions,” lawyers for the parents wrote in court papers.
The Supreme Court agreed Friday to hear a case about whether public schools must give parents of elementary schoolchildren a chance to opt out of instruction on gender and sexuality that they say goes against their religious convictions.
The case stems from a challenge by a group of parents in Maryland’s largest school system, who objected to Montgomery County education officials prohibiting parents from taking their children out of lessons that used storybooks with LGBTQ+ characters and themes.
The parents said the policy violates their First Amendment rights to freedom of religion and sued in 2023. The policy put the school district at the center of a contentious national debate over how to teach gender and sexuality in schools.
The case was filed by the Catholic anti-LGBTQ hate group, the Becket Fund, whose senior counsel celebrates below.
The Becket Fund last appeared here in July 2024 when they sued to overturn Michigan’s ban on ex-gay torture.
In 2014, the Becket Fund joined with NOM, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, and Alliance Defending Freedom to form an anti-LGBTQ “supergroup” to battle same-sex marriage.
In 2013, the Becket Fund joined with major Catholic groups in sponsoring the so-called Manhattan Declaration, signers of which avow that they will “civilly disobey” laws that protect LGBTQ people from discrimination.
The Becket Fund was founded in 1994 by a former Reagan administration Justice Department lawyer who worked under future Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.
The group is named for Saint Thomas Becket, who was Archbishop of Canterbury under King Henry II until he was murdered by followers of the King in the year 1170.
Outside of LGBTQ issues, the Becket Fund is best known for winning cases on behalf of the Little Sisters of the Poor and Hobby Lobby.
President Donald Trump on Monday plans to sign executive orders proclaiming that the U.S. government will recognize only two sexes, male and female, and ending “radical and wasteful” diversity, equity and inclusion programs inside federal agencies, according to senior White House officials.
The officials grouped both orders under the Trump administration’s wider “restoring sanity” agenda. The orders were detailed by an incoming official on a phone call Monday ahead of Trump’s swearing-in.
The official presented the gender order as part of a policy “defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government.”
The order aims to require that the federal government use the term “sex” instead of “gender,” and directs the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security to “ensure that official government documents, including passports and visas, reflect sex accurately.”
In 2022, the Biden administration allowed U.S. citizens to be able to select the gender-neutral “X” as a marker on their passports.
The order will also prevent taxpayer funds from being used for gender-transition health care and add “privacy in intimate spaces” in facilities such as prisons, migrant shelters and rape shelters.
Trump campaigned on rolling back protections for transgender and nonbinary people and emphasized the issue in television advertisements, including a commercial that aired frequently in key swing states such as Pennsylvania. “Kamala is for them/them. President Trump is for you,” the most notable ad said.
The second order detailed by the White House official aims to end “radical and wasteful government DEI programs and preferencing” inside the federal government.
The official said the new administration will hold monthly meetings with the deputy secretaries of key agencies to “assess what type of DEI programs are still discriminating against Americans and figure out ways to end them.”
The official said the new administration intended to “dismantle the DEI bureaucracy,” singling out environmental justice programs and equity-related grants.
The official said it was “very fitting” that the order was announced on Martin Luther King Jr. Day because “this is order is meant to return to the promise and the hope, captured by civil rights champions, that one day all Americans can be treated on the basis of their character, not by the color of their skin.”
In recent years, Trump and conservatives have assailed DEI initiatives across American society, characterizing them as discriminatory.
Trump referenced the orders in his inaugural address Monday afternoon, saying in part that his administration would resist what he described as efforts to “socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life.” He added that his administration would “forge a society that is color-blind and merit-based.”
The proponents of DEI in American society have argued that such initiatives are essential to make companies, schools, government agencies and other institutions more racially and socially inclusive.
In the weeks leading up to Trump’s return to power, major corporations such as Meta, McDonald’s and Walmart have announced they are ending some or all of their diversity practices.
Jin Hee Lee, director of strategic initiatives for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said there are big questions on what exact DEI programs will be ended on the basis of Trump’s order. But she said the group is ready to take any action to prevent discrimination, including challenging the order in court.
Lee said that a push to prohibit “anything dealing with efforts to address inequality” would be a “real setback in terms of racial justice advancement.”
She added that “any incoming president can set the policies for the federal administration” but that it would be disconcerting if it becomes permissible for employers or the government to “discriminate on the basis of race or sex.”
LGBTQ legal advocates react
Jennifer C. Pizer, the chief legal officer at Lambda Legal, a civil rights organization that litigates on behalf of LGBTQ Americans, said she expects her organization and others to file lawsuits against the administration over the executive actions.
“The president can’t, with a wave of a pen, change the reality of who people are and the fact that we as a community of people exist,” Pizer said. “We have equal protection rights, just like anybody else does.”
Another lawyer and legal expert in the LGBTQ community said that even though Trump’s executive order on gender identity will surely be challenged in court, the administration can implement the order and, in some cases, make immediate changes.
The expert, who asked that their name not be published so they could speak candidly about the executive order, noted that prisons, migrant shelters and rape shelters could immediately begin moving transgender people into spaces that align with their birth sex as opposed to their gender identity. That means, for example, trans women serving time in women’s prisons could in short order be moved to male prisons.
The lawyer also said transgender Americans — especially those who have X as their gender marker on federal documents like passports — should exercise caution when leaving the country, as they could have challenges re-entering the United States and could even be held in detention by border agents.
If a Customs and Border agent can’t enter a person’s X gender marker into their system to allow the person back into the U.S., that could mean the person would remain in Custom and Border Protection custody “until they can work with the Department of State to get an alternate ID issued,” the lawyer said.
Still, some changes — such as the way agencies handle health care for transgender Americans or the way the Department of Housing and Urban Development protects trans tenants from being evicted by landlords — could take longer to implement because agencies will have to go through a process that takes months or even years to change the rules governing the agencies.
In some cases, the legal expert said, “it’ll take time for the agencies to issue Notices of Proposed Rulemaking, go through the comments, which is part of what they’re legally obligated to do, and respond to any deficiencies, and then publish a final rule.”
Once the anticipated legal challenges to the executive order are filed, courts could seek to block the implementation of the order by issuing injunctions. But courts could also decide to allow the order to be implemented as challenges work their way through the courts, including to the Supreme Court, which could side with the Trump administration.
In the week after Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election, Isla Lima submitted paperwork to change her gender from male to female in official documents, as some LGBTQ people worry their rights could be cut back.
Trump, who won the Nov. 5 vote and will be inaugurated on Monday, has stated his intention to rescind some LGBTQ rights during his second term in office.
In December, Trump said he will sign an executive order to end “child sexual mutilation,” an apparent reference to gender-affirming care, and “get transgender out of the military and out of our elementary schools and middle schools and high schools.”
Trump wants the law to recognize a person’s gender only at birth, as male or female. As for transgender athletes, he has told supporters that he will “keep men out of women’s sports.”
While the Biden administration advanced or protected LGBTQ rights at the federal level, several Republican-run states have curtailed access to gender-affirming care.
Many transgender people say their gender dysphoria began at an early age. The sense of discrepancy between their gender identity and assigned sex at birth can be so intense that it leads to depression, anxiety and for some, suicide.
Following Trump’s win, Lima, 26, a transgender woman in Los Angeles, decided to speed up submitting court papers to allow her to formally change her gender on documents.
“Even though it might be safe in California, going across state lines, I don’t know the safety net for that. I definitely feel safer knowing that I’m going to have my ID … and it will say my chosen name and gender marker,” she said.
“After Trump, it was like, OK, this is super urgent.”
As polls pointed to a close election, 76% of transgender and nonbinary people took, or planned to take, at least one protective measure, according to the findings of a survey of over 1,500 people published in August by FOLX, a health and wellness platform that has served over 50,000 LGBTQ people.
Respondents cited measures such as speeding up gender-affirming care, which can include medical, surgical and mental health services; stockpiling medication; updating gender markers on documents; and bringing forward marriage plans.
Lima said she interns at ProjectQ, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit, because she feels aligned with its goals of providing resources to queer youth, such as a safe space and haircuts.
ProjectQ founder and Executive Director Madin Lopez, 38, in an interview, cited LGBTQ friends who were speeding up formal adoption of children they had already been raising.
In 2023, ProjectQ Associate Director Manny Muñoz, who identifies as nonbinary, changed their gender marker from male to X. President Joe Biden’s administration introduced that option on a federal level.
That change was “really, really exciting because it was a long-time coming,” Muñoz, 36, said. “And there’s also just, you know, fear that it gets taken away, right?”
However, Lopez, who is also nonbinary, has not legally changed their gender.
“I’m not at a place yet where I’ve decided whether I’m going to make that legal change or not. I think that a lot of it has to do with what will come next.”
Culture wars
Transgender and nonbinary rights are a major flashpoint in U.S. culture wars.
On Tuesday, the House of Representatives passed a bill to essentially ban transgender girls and women from competing in school sports by withholding federal funds from schools that do not comply.
“Republicans have promised to protect women’s sports, and under President Trump’s leadership, we will fulfill this promise,” the bill’s author, Representative Greg Steube, has said.
Major pediatric, endocrinology and mental health associations endorse gender-affirming care such as puberty blockers and hormone therapy when appropriate, some calling it life-saving for many transgender youths.
However, some conservatives characterize the treatments as dangerous and experimental, calling certain measures chemical castration or child abuse.
Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement that Trump campaigned on promises to end discussions about gender and sex in classrooms and stop taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries for inmates in federal prisons.
“Clearly, the American people agree with President Trump and that’s why they voted for him,” she said.
In 2024, YouGov survey data showed 36% of Americans believed societal acceptance of transgender people had gone too far while 34% said it had not gone far enough.
One in three said it was morally wrong to identify with a gender different from one’s sex assigned at birth, 13% believe it is morally acceptable, and 41% say it is not a moral issue.
Elektra Aida, 24, who manages frontline services at ProjectQ, faced harassment in Utah, which restricts the bathrooms transgender people can use, before moving to California.
After Trump won, “I had a lot more people reaching out to me, being like, ‘I might move out there,’” Aida said.
“I think it just solidified to people, you know, that unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like it’s going to get better anytime soon.”
With the holiday break over, a number of state legislatures are reconvening starting this week to hold their 2025 sessions, and LGBTQ-related bills and policies are already on the docket in many states.
Massachusetts, Montana, Ohio, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Minnesota, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont, Virginia, and West Virginia are all states where legislators have already started meeting again to consider legislation for the new year. According to the Trans Legislation Tracker, there have been 115 trans-specific bills prefiled in 2025 as of early this week. The state-level bills are especially heavily concentrated in places like South Carolina, Texas, and Missouri and would affect transgender people in various aspects of their lives such as in health care, education, and access to restrooms. Should the trend of bills follow like those introduced last year, other attacks may affect censorship in schools around LGBTQ issues and our community’s freedom of speech and expression more broadly.
Ricardo Martinez of Equality Texas speaks out at the Texas statehouse against anti-LGBTQ legislation in the previous legislative session (Courtesy GLAAD)
In Texas, anti-equality lawmakers proposed 32 anti-transgender bills on the very first day of pre-filing for 2025. It’s important to remember that the influx of bills can be partly attributed to Texas’ legislative session only taking place once every other year. Lawmakers are hurrying to make up for lost time, but advocates are continuing the work to limit the pathway forward for harm.
In Georgia, where the legislature returns to session on Jan. 13, lawmakers are expected to again consider anti-LGBTQ legislation that failed to become law last year, including codifying in the legislature a ban on allowing transgender youth to participate in school sports. Opponents of transgender inclusion claim to support the legislation to protect cisgender girls – yet studies show that when transgender students play sports, levels of participation go up for all students, including cisgender girls.
In Indiana, some lawmakers are seeking to expand existing restrictions on transgender participation in sports. HB 1041 would ban transgender students from participating in college sports and require notification by any team outside of the state engaged in competition about inclusion of a transgender participant. The measure will likely be brought to its first committee next week.
Despite what seems like a distressing landscape on the state level, there’s a lot of promise for wins in the courts in ways that are wider ranging in scope and magnitude than before, and which can slow down or negate the impact of state-level restrictions that are already in place. Most recently in mid-December, the Montana Supreme Court affirmed a lower court ruling that blocked a state law prohibiting certain types of health care for transgender youth; and a state district court blocked enforcement of a ban on allowing transgender and nonbinary people to update their gender markets on drivers’ licenses and birth certificates.
These lower court decisions follow a pattern: In almost every case on transgender health care that has considered the benefits of health care for transgender people, federal courts have affirmed the importance of health care for transgender people — even among Republican- and Trump-appointed judges in conservative states.
ACLU attorney Chase Strangio with Peppermint outside the U.S. Supreme Court, December 4, 2024/Courtesy Getty Images
In just early December, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in U.S. v. Skrmetti, which challenges the constitutionality of a ban on health care for transgender youth in Tennessee while cisgender youth continue to enjoy access to the same care. According to Media Matters, the day of the oral argument led to a slew of major TV networks featuring transgender Americans that haven’t previously done so, increasing visibility and understanding about the community. The justices are expected to issue a ruling in June 2025 which could affect the status of bans in almost half the country.
In other good news, out LGBTQ state lawmakers who made history this past election are also beginning their terms in the upcoming weeks. These include Molly Cook, the first out LGBTQ member of the Texas State Senate; Kristin Alfheim, the first LGBTQ+ person to represent the Fox Valley in the Wisconsin State Senate; Rashaun Kemp, the first out gay Black man elected to the Georgia state legislature; and others who will proudly represent and build visibility for our community.
GLAAD is monitoring and will be raising awareness and actions in response to high-priority bill movement that affects our community. To keep track of when your state goes into session, check out the full calendar from the National Council of State Legislatures here; and sign up for GLAAD’s email list and social media channels to ensure you don’t miss any important updates.
Police in Kannapolis, North Carolina, killed 36-year-old Edgar Maddison Welch, the so-called “Pizzagate” conspiracy theorist who carried a gun into a gay-owned Washington, D.C., pizzeria in 2016 under the belief that the business’ nonexistent basement was a venue for a child-molestation ring that involved high-ranking Democrats.
On January 4, two Kannapolis police officers lethally shot Welch during a traffic stop. One officer pulled Welch over to arrest him for an outstanding warrant for a probation violation. But when the officer opened Welch’s car door to apprehend him, Welch allegedly pulled out a handgun from his jacket and pointed it at the officer. When a second officer told Welch to drop his weapon, Welch reportedly didn’t comply and was fired upon by both officers. He was hospitalized and died from his wounds two days later, The Guardian reported.
The officers — Brooks Jones and Caleb Tate — have been placed on administrative leave while the state’s bureau of investigation looks into the incident.
Welch gained infamy on December 4, 2016, when the then 28-year-old conspiracy theorist entered the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria, a D.C. restaurant owned by gay entrepreneur James Alefantis, to “self-investigate” unfounded rumors that the pizzeria was part of a ring of U.S. restaurants involved in alleged human trafficking and a child sex ring that involved high-ranking Democrats like former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Welch entered the restaurant with an assault rifle and customers fled, terrified for their lives. Welch then fired at least one shot to break into a storage closet, looking for a basement where the child sex abuse allegedly took place — the restaurant has no basement.
After finding no evidence of the child sex trafficking ring, he exited the restaurant and surrendered himself to police waiting outside. He was subsequently sentenced to four years in prison for a federal charge of interstate transport of firearms and was required to pay $5,744.33 for damages to the restaurant.
Three days before the attack, Welch had tried to convince some of his friends to join in his escapade and break up the “pedo ring,” showing them a video about the conspiracy theory on YouTube.
He reportedly texted one of the friends, “I’m sorry bro, but I’m tired of turning the channel and hoping someone does something and being thankful it’s not my family. One day it will be our families. The world is too afraid to act and I’m too stubborn not to.”
During his trial, Welch told the court he had acted in a “foolish and reckless” way, but he maintained that he still believed in other aspects of Pizzagate.
Pizzagate, which is a precursor to the QAnon conspiracy theory and other right-wing theories of LGBTQ+ people and their allies “grooming” and “sexualizing” children through abuse, began on X (then-Twitter) and right-wing fake news websites, alleging that emails from former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) and Clinton’s then-campaign chair John Podesta. The conspiracy theorists claimed the emails used code words referring to pedophilia and human trafficking.
In November 2016, a now-deleted post on Reddit claimed that “everyone” associated with Comet Ping Pong “[was] making semi-overt, semi-tongue-in-cheek, and semi-sarcastic inferences towards sex with minors,” adding, “The artists that work for and with the business also generate nothing but cultish [and Satanic] imagery of disembodiment, blood, beheadings, sex, and of course pizza.”
The story circulated on anti-LGBTQ+ right-wing websites like Alex Jones’ InfoWars and was promoted by anti-LGBTQ+ alt-right influencers like Mike Cernovich and Jack Posobiec. It has since been promoted by transphobic billionaire and X-owner Elon Musk.
In November 2016, Alefantis told The New York Times that his pizzeria and its associated employees had come “under constant assault” due to the conspiracy theory. Its owners, employees, mural painters, and musicians who had previously played at the restaurant received threats of violence and death. Other conspiracy theorists claimed that children who had been photographed eating at Comet Ping Pong were themselves child sex trafficking victims. Several other nearby pizzerias and businesses also received threats. Pictures of Comet Ping Pong’s non-existent basement were, in actuality, just images of other business’ basements.
The business was attacked again on January 25, 2019, when a white man deliberately set a fire in one of its backrooms. However, employees quickly put out the fire, ensuring that no one sustained any injuries. Police arrested the arsonist days later.
Pizzagate has been disproven and debunked by numerous fact-checking and news organizations including Snopes, Fox News, and CNN, as well as investigators at the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia.
Alefantis called Pizzagate “an insanely complicated, made-up, fictional lie-based story” and a “coordinated political attack.” Days after Welch’s shooting at the business, Clinton told NPR, “The epidemic of malicious fake news and fake propaganda that flooded social media … can have real-world consequences.”
Decades after investigators unearthed thousands of human bones and bone fragments on a suspected Indiana serial killer’s property, a renewed quest is playing out in laboratories to solve a long-running mystery: Who were they?
A new team working to identify the unknown dead says the key to their success will be getting relatives of men who vanished between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s to provide samples of their own DNA.
Those samples can then be screened against DNA profiles scientists are extracting from the remains, which were found starting in 1996 on Herbert Baumeister’s sprawling suburban Indianapolis property.
The original investigators believed that at least 25 people were buried at Baumeister’s 18-acre Fox Hollow Farm estate in Westfield, based on evidence that included 10,000 bones and bone fragments, as well as handcuffs and shotgun shells.
Baumeister, a 49-year-old thrift store owner and married father of three, killed himself in Canada in July 1996 before police could question him, taking with him many secrets, including the names of his presumed victims.
Investigators believed that while his family was away on trips, Baumeister, who frequented gay bars in Indianapolis, lured men to his home, where he killed and buried them.
By the late 1990s, authorities had identified eight men using dental records and available DNA technologies. But then those efforts stopped, although the remains of at least 17 people may have still been unidentified.
Hamilton County Coroner Jeff Jellison said the renewed identification effort revealed that county officials at the time decided not to fund additional DNA testing, which “essentially halted further efforts to identify the victims and placed the cost of a homicide investigation on family members of missing people.”
“I can’t speak for those investigators, but it was just game over,” Jellison said.
An unfinished job
As decades slipped by, the bones and fragments sat in boxes at the University of Indianapolis’ Human Identification Center, whose staff helped excavate the remains.
That changed after Eric Pranger sent Jellison a Facebook message in late 2022. The Indianapolis man’s family had long believed his older cousin, Allen Livingston, was among Baumeister’s victims.
Livingston was 27 when he vanished in August 1993 after getting into someone else’s car in downtown Indianapolis. After hearing about Baumeister three years later, his mother, Sharon Livingston, and other relatives began suspecting that Allen, who was bisexual, was among the dead.
Jellison was about to take office when Pranger asked if he could help get some answers for his aunt, who had serious health problems.
“How do you say to no to that? That’s our job as coroners by statute, to identify the deceased,” Jellison said.
In late 2022, police took DNA samples from Sharon Livingston and one of her daughters. Jellison began working with a team that includes the Indiana State Police, the FBI, the Human Identification Center, local law enforcement and a private company that specializes in forensic genetic genealogy.
A family finds some closure
Staff at the Human Identification Center, where the remains are stored in a temperature- and humidity-controlled space, selected some of the most promising bones for DNA analysis.
At the Indiana State Police Laboratory, scientists cut out sections of bone, froze them with liquid nitrogen and pulverized them into a fine powder. They then used heat and chemicals to break open bone cells in the first step toward extracting a full DNA profile.
Nearly a year after hearing from Pranger, Jellison announced in October 2023 that a ninth Baumeister victim had been identified: Allen Livingston.
Sharon Livingston finally received some form of closure. She died in November 2024.
“It made me happy to be able to do this for my aunt,” Pranger, 34, said. “I’m the one who got the ball rolling to bring her son home after 30 years and I felt privileged.”
“After Allen was identified I was so excited and then after the fact I asked myself, `Now what? I got answers, but what about all the other families?’” Pranger added.
The other victims
Jellison said about 40 DNA samples have been submitted by people who believe a missing male relative may have been killed by Baumeister. He said those are entered into the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, but are used solely for identifying missing people.
The coroner and his partners hope to get more DNA samples from relatives of men from across the U.S. who vanished between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s. They noted the men may have been traveling and stopped in Indianapolis to visit friends or sample its nightlife.
Dr. Krista Latham in Indianapolis on Aug. 1. Rick Callahan / AP file
To date, scientists have extracted eight unique DNA profiles — all male — from more than 70 of the 100 bones that were sent to the Indiana State Police Laboratory by Dr. Krista Latham, the Human Identification Center’s director.
One matched DNA samples provided by Livingston’s mother and sister. Four matched four of the eight men first identified in the 1990s: Jeffrey Jones, Manuel Resendez, Johnny Bayer and Richard Hamilton.
The three other DNA profiles remain unidentified and two are still undergoing testing. Those three have boosted Baumeister’s presumed victims to 12.
What’s next?
Jellison and his partners say their identification effort could take several more years to complete.
Most of the bones were crushed and burned, reducing their potential to yield usable DNA. Latham, a professor of biology and anthropology, said bone fragments deemed in poor shape are being held back from the destructive testing process in hope that future DNA technologies can unlock their secrets.
Jeff Jellison in his office in Noblesville, Ind., on July 11.Rick Callahan / AP file
She noted some of the men may have been estranged from relatives or ostracized because of their sexuality. No one may have noticed when they vanished.
“These are individuals who were marginalized in life. And we just need to make sure that that’s not continuing in death as well,” Latham said.
For the ongoing work, Jellison has obtained DNA reference samples from relatives of seven of the eight men originally identified in the 1990s. The eighth man, Steven Hale, was adopted and efforts to locate biological relatives have thus far failed, the coroner said.
Relatives of missing men who want to provide family DNA reference samples for the effort to identify remains can contact the Indiana State Police missing persons hotline at 833-466-2653 or the Hamilton County Coroner’s Office at 317-770-4415.
Honoring the victims
As remains are identified, piece by piece, families can opt to have them cremated and interred at a memorial dedicated in August in Westfield. It includes a plaque with the names of the nine identified victims, with room for more names.
Linda Znachko, whose nonprofit Indianapolis-based ministry He Knows Your Name, paid for the monument, said at the memorial’s dedication that the identification campaign “will bring honor to those who lost their lives at the Fox Hollow tragedy.” Remains belonging to Livingston and Jeffrey Jones were added to the memorial’s ossuary and white doves were released during the dedication.
Livingston’s younger sister, Shannon Doughty, attended with several relatives, including Pranger. She said it was a relief finally knowing what happened to her brother, despite his tragic end.
“At least you know,” said Doughty, 46. “The fear of the unknown is the worst right? So just knowing, it’s a multitude of emotions. You wanted to know but you didn’t want to know. But you needed to know.”
