A group of Republican lawmakers have demanded the International Olympic Committee ban transgender athletes from women’s athletic competitions.

The lawmakers — U.S. Sens. Jim Risch (R-Idaho), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Jim Banks (R-Ind.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Steve Daines (R-Mont.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Jim Justice (R-W.Va.), James Lankford (R-Okla.), Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.), and Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) and U.S. Reps. Burgess Owens (R-Utah), Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.), Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas), Brad Finstad (R-Minn.), Craig Goldman (R-Texas), Mark Green (R-Tenn.), Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa), Mike Kennedy (R-Utah), Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.), Blake Moore (R-Utah), Riley Moore (R-W.Va.), Austin Pfluger (R-Texas), John Rose (R-Tenn.), and Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.) — made the demand in a letter they sent to IOC President Thomas Bach on Tuesday.

“In the United States, we honor our female Olympians. These athletes, and so many others, have inspired generations of young women around the world to compete and excel. Their legacy underscores the vital importance of fairness in women’s sports at every level of competition,” reads the letter. “Future Olympians are counting on the IOC to protect the opportunities of women and girls to contribute to this proud tradition.”

“To do so, the IOC must base eligibility for women’s athletic competitions on biological sex,” it adds. “Allowing biological males to compete in women’s categories undermines competitive opportunities, safety, and respect for female athletes.”

The IOC in 2021 adopted its “Framework on Fairness, Inclusion and Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity and Sex Variations” that includes the following provisions:

• 3.1 Eligibility criteria should be established and implemented fairly and in a manner that does not systematically exclude athletes from competition based upon their gender identity, physical appearance and/or sex variations.

• 3.2 Provided they meet eligibility criteria that are consistent with principle 4 (“Fairness”, athletes should be allowed to compete in the category that best aligns with their self-determined gender identity.

• 3.3 Criteria to determine disproportionate competitive advantage may, at times, require testing of an athlete’s performance and physical capacity. However, no athlete should be subject to targeted testing because of, or aimed at determining, their sex, gender identity and/or sex variations.

The 2028 Summer Olympics will take place in Los Angeles.

President Donald Trump on Feb. 5 issued an executive order that bans trans women and girls from female sports teams in the U.S. The Human Rights Campaign and other advocacy groups criticized Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom last week after he said it is “deeply unfair” to allow trans athletes to compete in women’s sports.

The Guardian on Feb. 25 reported the State Department has ordered consular officials “to deny visas to transgender athletes attempting to come to the U.S. for sports competitions, and to issue permanent visa bans against those who are deemed to misrepresent their birth sex on visa applications.” A travel advisory for trans and nonbinary people who are planning to visit the U.S. that the German government issued last week specifically notes the Trump-Vance administration has banned the State Department from issuing passports with “X” gender markers.

The letter notes Trump’s Feb. 5 executive order, and indicates the signatories “stand united with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and President Trump in calling on the IOC to amend its standards and safeguard the opportunities of female athletes on the Olympic stage.”

“We urge you to reaffirm the IOC’s commitment to upholding the integrity of women’s Olympic competitions and ensure that only biological women and girls are allowed to compete in female sports categories,” reads the letter. “The Olympic Games should be a model for integrity in sports, and the next IOC president must firmly defend the rights of dedicated female athletes.”

The Los Angeles Blade has reached out to the IOC for comment.

Job hunters by the thousands expressed disappointment, frustration, and anger Wednesday over the process to submit online applications for three lucrative but challenging positions as remote telephone operators for the nation’s only transgender-led crisis hotline, Trans Lifeline. One applicant complained on Instagram that their experience was akin to “The Hunger Games.” 

But it turns out, the odds were never in their favor. 

The CEO of the San Francisco-based nonprofit — kai alviar horton, who joined Trans Lifeline in July 2024 and does not capitalize any letters in his name — admitted on social media late Wednesday that their organization was not prepared for the sheer number of applications, which he said was anticipated to number 100, over 48 hours. 

“We know now that our impact has caused so many of you hurt and further distrust in us,” horton wrote in the letter posted on Instagram, acknowledging that Trans Lifeline had endured “many storms of instability and harm.” 

“The process we strived towards landed in ways that did not build accessibility,” they wrote. “This process hurt you, and we are genuinely sorry. We are committed to learning to do better.” 

The job posting still appears online at a portal called levels.fyi offering an annual salary of $63,000, “generous paid time-off benefits” and “100% employer-paid health care premiums” as well as retirement benefits and more. Given that studies by the Williams Institute have shown the significant challenges trans people face in the workplace, from discrimination to harassment, especially in comparison to cisgender employees and candidates, Trans Lifeline’s offer was a beacon in the darkness to many. 

“You know better than most how hard it is for trans people to get work, especially with decent pay,” wrote @terfhunter420. “I hope you’re reading the impact this application process has had on people here and consider making some big changes for your next batch of hiring. Something less like trying to score concert tickets on the radio.”

“To our surprise,” horton wrote, “we received over 2,500 applications before the submission window even opened,” which was at 1 p.m. EDT Wednesday. He said his team then “did our best to reach out to every single applicant to let them know to submit again within the window we outlined in the job posting.” 

But when that window opened at 10 o’clock in San Francisco Wednesday, horton said his team was suddenly flooded with more than 1,200 submissions, “in just the first five minutes.”

The instructions to apply noted that in addition to a resume, candidates had to also submit a five-minute long, detailed self-made video, in lieu of a cover letter. The site indicates this was intended to “simplify the process.” But many frustrated candidates noted in their comments online that this particular requirement added a significant extra burden of time and energy, “only to have it all go to waste due to technical failures,” wrote @astoldbyjae. 

Adding insult to injury is that untold thousands of potential candidates are left to wonder if their submissions were even received or would ever be seen, given that the portal was set up to be limited to accepting no more than 100 submissions on the first day; When hit with more than ten times that many applications, many job hunters reported getting error messages, and shared the pain of that experience in the comments on horton’s post. 

“I’m heartsick myself right now,” wrote @zorro_nova. “I tried in that first minute only to get my own error message.” Another wrote: “I won’t lie I was definitely surprised to see how the hiring process was handled, it was almost like watching a Ticketmaster sale of a Taylor Swift concert more than a job listing.” @mistersister2024 added: “As someone who made the 5-minute video, carefully edited it, and then didn’t even get to submit it, this process was very frustrating.”

“We were devastated,” wrote @jennakjirsten. “I think it was hard not even being able to submit the form, even if it had been one of a thousand. We also worry that by only accepting the quickest to apply, you may have missed out on some very qualified applicants.”

As of press time, horton has not responded to an inquiry by the Blade about what if anything they will do for candidates who received error messages, or exactly how many applications they have on hand. 

But in his online letter, horton did announce that so many submissions were received that to process them all, Trans Lifeline has postponed selection of candidates to be invited to interview for the three open positions until April 7, instead of March 24. 

He also revealed the org has just two employees dedicated to reviewing all the applications received on Wednesday.

“Shout out to the two trans people in hiring who have to read 3,000 applications individually or else they get canceled,” wrote @jaki_riot. “Y’all some MVPs because the response to this situation feels a bit unreasonable.”

Several commenters praised horton for his apology and for their transparency. 

“Imo, Trans lifeline has done SO much to earn that benefit of the doubt,” wrote @kingofyarn. “And seeing the backlash made me sad, because it’s as if y’all haven’t worked incredibly hard to earn that trust. I love this heartfelt apology and of course, transparency with a strong moral code.”

As horton acknowledged in his letter, Trans Lifeline has survived crises before now. Founded in 2014, the nonprofit’s two founders left the organization two years later amid accusations of corruption. An internal investigation found “there had been significant spending of Trans Lifeline funds outside the scope of the current budget” that “ran afoul of Trans Lifeline’s obligations to the 501(c)(3) tax laws.” A report in December 2023 by PBS indicated a downturn in donations forced the nonprofit to reduce the number of hours the hotline was available and slash its budget. 

At that time, PBS reported the organization employed as many as 45 people, with around 200 volunteers who help, according to Adam Callahan, director for the hotline program. Every hotline operator identifies as either trans or nonbinary. 

As of press time, the careers page on the Trans Lifeline site indicated “Staff Hotline Operator applications are closed.” 

“We are so grateful for the overwhelming interest in our Hotline Operator positions—1,000 applications within the first two minutes! Thank you to each person who took the time to apply. We’ve received a fantastic pool of candidates and have now closed the application process. We are working diligently to review the first 100 complete applications received and aim to notify everyone of their status by Friday, March 21st. If you have not heard from us, be assured we are still actively considering your application. Please keep an eye on your inbox for our email. We will respond to everyone who has applied. We appreciate your understanding and enthusiasm.”

President Donald Trump delivered a divisive and partisan address before a joint session of Congress on Tuesday that also included multiple references to his administration’s anti-transgender executive actions.

“We’ve ended the tyranny of so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion policies all across the entire federal government and indeed the private sector and our military,” Trump said, promising, “our country will be woke no longer.”

Later, he said “We have removed the poison of critical race theory from our public schools, and they signed an order making it the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female.”

“I also signed an executive order to ban men from playing in women’s sports,” Trump said.

At that point, the president introduced one of his special guests, Payton McNabb—who, he said, was seriously injured three years ago when her girls’ volleyball game was “invaded by a male” who spiked the ball “so hard in Peyton’s face, causing traumatic brain injury.”

GLAAD, in a press release before Trump’s speech, noted that “McNabb has since been hired by opponents of trans people to use her injury to argue that all trans youth should be denied the chance to play sports as their authentic selves.”

She is “a paid spokesperson for an anti-transgender group that also advocates to ban health care and to force schools to dangerously out LGBTQ youth without their consent,” the group wrote.

Trump continued, “Take a look at what happened in the women’s boxing, weight lifting, track and field, swimming, or cycling, where a male recently finished a long distance race five hours and 14 minutes ahead of a woman for a new record by five hours.”

“It’s demeaning for women, and it’s very bad for our country. We’re not going to put up with it any longer.”

During this section of the speech, news cameras turned to Riley Gaines, a former NCAA swimmer turned anti-trans activist, who was a guest of Republican U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (Iowa) and has worked with the same group as McNabb.

GLAAD wrote that Gaines “parlayed her fifth place finish into a career of testifying in states she does not live in to support full bans on transgender youth as young as kindergarten from playing sports.”

Later, when decrying government spending, Trump noted $8 million was used “to promote LGBTQI+ in the African nation of Lesotho, which nobody has ever heard of” and $8 million “for making mice transgender.”

About an hour into his speech, the president said, “My administration is also working to protect our children from toxic ideologies in our schools. A few years ago, January Littlejohn and her husband discovered that their daughter’s school had secretly socially transitioned their 13 year old little girl.”

“Teachers and administrators conspired to deceive January and her husband while encouraging their daughter to use a new name and pronouns,” he said. “‘They-them’ pronoun, actually, all without telling January, who is here tonight and is now a courageous advocate against this form of child abuse.”

GLAAD notes that “records show January Littlejohn of Tallahassee, Fla., worked with the school district to support her nonbinary child, before Littlejohn sued the district with lawyers from a national anti-LGBTQ+ group.”

According to GLAAD, the family’s complaint accused school of discussing “restrooms and name change requests with their child without their consent” but “a public records request showed that the family had ongoing communications with the school and gave approval to let their child and their teachers lead on appropriate school protocols.” 

“The Trump White House is using the address to Congress to continue its baseless and unhinged disinformation campaign against transgender Americans,” GLAAD said. “The invited guests being deployed to smear transgender people are paid spokespeople for anti-LGBTQ groups that demand schools dangerously out LGBTQ students without their consent, who go against every major medical association supporting medically-necessary health care, and do nothing to promote women and girls in sports or protect everyone’s safety and wellbeing.” 

U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) is pushing back after President Donald Trump’s interim U.S. attorney for D.C., Ed Martin, disclosed his office’s inquiry into whether the congressman’s remarks about Elon Musk earlier this month constituted a threat against a public official.

“This is completely ridiculous, to essentially threaten me with possible prosecution [and] investigations through the U.S. Department of Justice because I used a metaphor to criticize Elon Musk,” Garcia told The Bulwark’s Tim Miller during an interview on Feb. 20.

At issue is a Feb. 12 appearance on CNN during which, as Martin said in a letter to the congressman’s office, “When asked how Democrats can stop Elon Musk, you spoke clearly: ‘What the American public wants is for us to bring actual weapons to this bar fight. This is an actual fight for democracy.’”

He continued, “This sounds to some like a threat to Mr. Musk—an appointed representative of President Donald Trump who you call a ‘dick’—and government staff who work for him. Their concerns have led to this inquiry.”

Garcia’s comments came just after he participated in the first House subcommittee hearing on Musk’s DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, which was established by an executive order issued on the first day Trump took office.

In a statement to the Los Angeles Blade, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) said “Rep. Robert Garcia is a thoughtful, hardworking, and law-abiding legislator who serves his constituents and the nation with distinction. House Democrats will not be intimidated by far-right extremists who are determined to weaponize the criminal justice system against Congress.”

Garcia serves on the powerful House Oversight Committee as well as in the Congressional Equality Caucus, as one of its 11 LGBTQ+ co-chairs. In November, he was elected the Democratic Caucus Leadership Representative.

“I’ve talked to a lot of folks, members of the House and others, who have been very supportive.” he said on Feb. 20. “I said, ‘Look, we can’t allow this singling out of me. It’s not really about me, right? This is about silencing critics and critics in Congress.’”

Later in the interview, he added “we’re talking to the appropriate folks, and of course, talking to folks in the Democratic leadership” who understand the broader stakes in terms of “our job” as House Democrats to “be the loyal opposition.”

U.S. Rep. Gerald Connolly (Va.), the Oversight Committee’s top Democrat, also issued a statement condemning Martin’s letter:

“This is a shameful attempt to silence and stifle congressional oversight. Mr. Martin—an organizer, financier, and legal representative for the January 6th insurrection—is weaponizing the Justice Department to carry out the president’s retribution tour.

“This ‘Operation Whirlwind’ is a smokescreen meant to distract from the true intentions of the Trump administration: Silencing criticism and snuffing out any attempt to exercise oversight of their misdeeds and perversion of the law. I can assure you that Congressman Garcia and our fellow Oversight Democrats will not be deterred by these threats, and we will continue to fight to safeguard our democracy and protect the rights of the American people we serve.”

Martin on Feb. 19 announced “Operation Whirlwind,” a new initiative to prosecute threats against public officials at all levels of government, which some critics and legal experts believe is primarily intended as a means of silencing criticism.

In addition to Garcia, Martin has sent letters to the Senate’s Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) on Jan. 21, Feb. 3, and Feb. 11, indicating plans to review remarks he made in 2020 to see if they constituted unlawful threats against two of Trump’s U.S. Supreme Court nominees, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch.

“I want to tell you, Gorsuch,” Schumer said, “I want to tell you, Kavanaugh—you have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.” 

The top Senate Democrat was speaking during a rally about the conservative jurists’ potential revocation of decades-old constitutional protections for abortion, which they ultimately did in 2022 with their 5-4 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

As detailed by aide to the senator in his response to Martin, “on March 5, 2020, the day after the comments referenced in your letter, Senator Schumer made the following remarks” from the Senate floor:

“Now, I should not have used the words I used yesterday. They didn’t come out the way I intended to. My point was that there would be political consequences—political consequences—for President Trump and Senate Republicans if the Supreme Court, with the newly confirmed Justices, stripped away a woman’s right to choose.

“Of course, I didn’t intend to suggest anything other than political and public opinion consequences for the Supreme Court, and it is a gross distortion to imply otherwise. I am from Brooklyn. We speak in strong language.

“I shouldn’t have used the words I did, but in no way was I making a threat. I never—never—would do such a thing. Leader McConnell knows that, and Republicans who are busy manufacturing outrage over these comments know that too.”

The aide concluded, “As Senator Schumer’s statement on the Senate floor confirmed, the comments were not a threat to physically harm any person. I hope that this clarifying information is helpful.”

Shortly after Trump’s appointment of Martin, the conservative lawyer and activist dismissed pending cases against rioters who sacked the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, fired the prosecutors who were involved, and began investigations into those who brought obstruction charges that were ultimately invalidated by a U.S. Supreme Court decision in June.

Barbara McQuade, a former federal prosecutor who teaches law at the University of Michigan and serves as a legal analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, told the Washington Post she had “never seen anything like these letters from a U.S. attorney,” who would typically assign agents to lead such a probe while abiding the Justice Department’s policy of not confirming or denying the existence of any investigation.

“It seems like a fair inference that these letters are designed more to chill free speech than to seek clarification, as they purport to do,” McQuade added.

Garcia agreed, telling Miller that the effort “could have a chilling effect on other folks that actually want to come out and criticize and oppose” Trump, Musk, the administration, or their allies.

Looking ahead, Martin has “given me, by the way, till Tuesday to respond to this letter,” Garcia noted. When asked about what he planned to do, the congressman said “we’re having some conversations about that” but “what we’re not going to do is stay silent.”

“The lesson here is not to retreat,” he said. “The lesson here is to push harder and continue to let people know they are literally trying to limit free speech.”

Discussing his remarks about Musk during an appearance on CNN on Feb. 20, Garcia said “what’s really critical at this moment, I think, for all of us to understand, is that we should be allowed to speak freely, and we certainly should be allowed to use figures of speech, and anyone that watches that can see that as a figure of speech or a metaphor in the way we’re describing this fight.”

The congressman added, “And it is a fight. This is a fight for democracy.”

A landmark 2016 theme study that highlighted the history of the LGBTQ community was pulled from the National Park Service website on Thursday. 

Last week, NPS received instructions to remove the “T” and “Q” from “LGBTQ” from all internal and external communications, triggering an uproar when trans people were removed from the website of the Stonewall National Monument. 

At that time, an internal debate ensued over what to do with the LGBTQ Theme Study, with Trump political appointees calling for removal of all transgender references and some NPS staffers pushing back, suggesting instead that the entire study be removed. Editing the document to remove one community’s contributions violates the academic intent of the project, the source told the Blade.

In 2014, the Gill Foundation recognized an omission of historic LGBTQ sites in the nation’s records, and the organization made a grant to the National Park Service to commission a first-of-its-kind LGBTQ Theme Study, which was published in 2016. It was a landmark project that represented major progress for the LGBTQ community in having our contributions included in the broader American story. 

The Blade took screen shots of the Theme Study site last week. This is how the study was described on the site: “LGBTQ America: A Theme Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer History is a publication of the National Park Foundation for the National Park Service and funded by the Gill Foundation. Each chapter is written and peer-reviewed by experts in LGBTQ Studies. … During Pride Month in 2016, President Obama designated the Stonewall National Monument as the country’s first LGBTQ national monument. Today there are 10 LGBTQ sites designated as a National Historic Landmark or listed on the National Register of Historic Places.”

Removal of the theme study has raised concerns that future LGBTQ monuments and project work are dead in the water. The Blade reached out to the National Park Service last week for comment and received a curt response that the agency is implementing Trump’s executive order “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” as well as agency directives to end all DEI initiatives.

Marc Stein, director of OutHistory, a public history website that generates evidence-based LGBTQ research, issued a lengthy statement in response to the removal of the theme study.

“Our histories have been appropriated, censored, commodified, distorted, erased, falsified, marginalized, pathologized, rejected, silenced, and simplified,” Stein wrote. “… They think they can erase trans and queer people from history, remove trans women of color from the history of Stonewall, pretend that LGBTQ+ people did not exist, did not struggle, did not fight, did not suffer, did not survive, did not thrive. If they think any of this, they have never experienced or witnessed our perseverance, our rage, our resilience, our joy.”

When faced with questions of diversity, equity, and inclusion, detractors often respond with demands for evidence or complaints about cost. 

Husbands Chad Topaz and Jude Higdon spend their time trying to find answers to those questions — on top of their other jobs as math professor, university administrator, and parents to a son and two dogs.

It started when Topaz, a mathematician, found himself as one of the only people in justice spaces able to quantify some of the issues facing marginalized communities. When community members pointed out that all the artists in the new wing of a local museum were white, Topaz then researched the diversity of artists at major museums. The study found that in 18 major U.S. museums, artists are 85% white and 87% male. On top of that research, Topaz determined more diversity existed in regions, time periods, and even museum permanent collections than was being displayed. “You’re taking a bad problem and making it worse through your curatorial decisions and practice,” says Topaz.

As it turned out, it also meant that Topaz was sometimes one of a few mathematicians with a concern for justice. When a colleague pointed out that there was only one woman on a 50-person mathematics editorial board—one of the highest professional achievements for an academic—Topaz set out to figure out if that was the exception or the trend. He looked at 435 journals, and it was indeed the trend.

These experiences were transformative. “My activism and sense of justice and my quantitative skills could be brought together,” said Topaz.

But finding projects was another story. Higdon, the administrator who Topaz praises as an “organizational genius,” was able to channel some of Topaz’s math-justice energy into collaborations with community partners. “I’m not afraid of tech nerds [and] mathematicians,” said Higdon, looking affectionately at his husband, “I know how to speak their language enough, but I also know how to build an organization and how to connect that work with other folks.”

So, following the success of early projects, the two co-founded the non-profit research institute QSIDE in 2017, which “uses data science to promote justice.” Citing Ida B. Wells’s famous quote, “the way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them,” Topaz says they believe that “data science can be a potent form of that light of truth.”

Since then, the team—which has grown beyond Higdon and Topaz—has published more than 15 peer-reviewed research articles, in addition to writing white papers and creating data tools.

One of their biggest projects bucks up against some of the biggest arguments against any work concerned with diversity, equity, and inclusion: that it’s too expensive. At least in one case, they have the numbers to prove otherwise.

QSIDE works with community partners who make programs to lower incarceration rates. People of color are more likely to be incarcerated. Community partners make programs for youth to “disrupt these cycles of incarceration and poverty,” says Higdon.

Regardless of how effective the programs are, state governments often opt not to fund them because of their cost. That cost analysis fails to acknowledge broader economic benefits from the programs—and losses from incarceration.

“We’ve built this econometric model that models out what’s the true cost of incarceration versus the cost of a program that can be used by community-based organizations,” says Higdon.

Topaz is also the author of a forthcoming book on the intersection of data and criminal justice, titled Counting on Justice. It explores the numbers behind inequality in the U.S. criminal justice system.

In the recent weeks, Higdon, Topaz, and QSIDE have been hit by the wave of anti-science and anti-DEI actions washing over the nation.

Higdon said that QSIDE lost a major corporate funder out of the blue, despite being assured they were set for renewal two days prior. “Is this because we have DEI in our name?” Higdon asked the grant manager, “and he kind of hemmed and hawed about it,” before saying no, but Higdon was not convinced.

Topaz, a career academic, has been watching the cuts to scientific agencies with horror. As a member of an advisory subcommittee at the National Science Foundation, Topaz had a mechanism to lodge an official complaint against the cuts, but the rest of the group balked, citing unspecific rules. When the group didn’t budge, Topaz publicly resigned.

“The director of the NSF is complying with illegal executive orders and not complying with stays that judges have put on those illegal actions,” Topaz said, “It seems to me like now is exactly the time we should be speaking out about these cuts.” 

Topaz said the idea that any of these actions will promote better science or a meritocracy is a lie. “[It] is essentially segregation and keeping a vast pool of talent away from opportunities so that those opportunities can belong to white men. I won’t even use the word meritocracy to describe what they’re doing because that is a lie.”

With the widespread cuts to science funding, especially science concerned with DEI, the team is dedicated to doing the work. “We can weather this storm in a way that organizations that have a bigger infrastructure are not,” Higdon said. “We can stick to our principles despite the headwinds that we’re facing right now.”

At every point in the interview, Topaz and Higdon emphasized that while they are excited about the power of math and data, they don’t view their contributions as more important than others. Each project has partners from “boots on the ground, community members or community-based organizations that can represent the voices of affected people,” alongside any other subject-matter experts they may need.

“We don’t think our technical skills are better in any way,” said Higdon. “They have superpowers. We have superpowers. Together, we have a Justice League.”

(This story is part of the Digital Equity Local Voices Fellowship lab through News is Out. The lab initiative is made possible with support from Comcast NBCUniversal.)

Since President Trump signed a series of executive orders rolling back federal worker protections, advocacy groups are ringing alarm bells signaling this could disproportionately impact more than 300,000 LGBTQ federal workers. 

Trump has so far signed 65 executive orders, most of which attempt to shrink the size of the federal government and restructure how it works to better suit his interests. Of those 65 executive orders passed, at least six directly target LGBTQ people, one outright bans transgender people from serving in the military, and another ends all government efforts at promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

A study conducted in January by the Williams Institute, a research center that focuses on sexual orientation and gender identity law and public policy, showed that “one in ten LGBTQ adults are employed by the public sector,” with higher numbers of LGBTQ people working in federal government bureaus, the USPS, and as government contractors. This means that Trump’s orders could be particularly dangerous for LGBTQ Americans, potentially displacing hundreds of thousands of queer federal workers. 

The Blade spoke with an LGBTQ executive branch employee who works directly with one of the resource groups targeted by the Trump administration to understand how these orders are being implemented internally. The source, fearing retaliation, requested anonymity.

“We had established lots of different things that were positive for LGBTQI+ employees to make sure that our identities were respected,” the source said. “What some folks may see as a simple thing like the allowance for pronouns in email signatures and the use of inclusive language, all those kinds of things are kind of in limbo right now. It’s fully expected to be said [by the Trump administration] that these things can’t be utilized anymore.”  

The source noted that the public often misunderstands the role of these resource groups, making it harder to justify the need for such positions. A common misconception is that groups promoting DEI exist solely to hire minorities. Although part of their mission involves reaching historically underrepresented communities, their work extends far beyond recruitment, playing a crucial role in fostering inclusive workplace cultures and supporting employees.

“It’s just about creating that level playing field environment to make sure that you are doing the best for your organization to attract the best talent, and then the knowledge that it’s not just any one demographic that is best suited for a certain role,” they said. “Let me be very clear: It’s not about quotas, it’s not about checking boxes. It’s not about hiring one person on anything other than qualification over another. It’s about making sure that we’re looking at places where we may be missing opportunities for not just qualified candidates, but the best and brightest. And sometimes that means adjusting your recruitment style.”

This ongoing attack on DEI, as well as other efforts to promote inclusivity and fairness within the government by the twice-impeached president is a borrowed tactic from another infamous Republican who weaponized demagoguery to consolidate power — Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

“We could very easily be entering a Lavender Scare 2.0,” the source continued. “I mean, when you’re asking employees to rat on each other, basically, for anybody who might be involved in anything surrounding this work, it’s not unknown that a majority of folks who do diversity, equity, and inclusion work are members of minority, marginalized communities. It just painted a big target on the back of all those people.”

When asked to speculate on what they think this could mean for the roughly three million federal workers, the source said it could lead to a chilling effect where LGBTQ employees either face direct removal or feel compelled to leave due to a hostile work environment.

“I see an exodus coming — whether it is forced or voluntary,” said the source. “I don’t see with all the progress that’s been made over the last two decades people willing to stay working for an organization where they don’t feel like they’re safe. If you feel like you don’t have the psychological safety to do your job, and you’re worried about whether you’re gonna get fired, it kind of kills your psychological availability to do your job. People are not engaged.”

Colonel Bree Fram, the highest-ranking out transgender officer in the Department of Defense, who spoke to the Blade in her personal capacity and does not speak on behalf of the U.S. government or military, agreed with the source’s thoughts on inclusive spaces being critical for the success of government work and safety.   

“Any policy that excludes a class of individuals is inherently damaging to national security, because if those individuals can meet the standards of the service, if they can accomplish the mission that they’ve been given, they are participating in a way that makes us stronger,” Fram said. “We create better solutions from a diverse set of perspectives that allows us to accomplish the mission in ways that support national security objectives. So if there is a transgender service member out there excluded merely for who they are, rather than their ability to complete their mission it’s an issue for our national security today and far into the future, because we have thousands of transgender service members actively accomplishing the mission today. They are doing so in a way that meets, or, in most cases, exceeds the standards, because they are highly capable, competent warriors that have learned their skill set and mastered their craft over decades, they are crushing it on behalf of the United States and in upholding their oath to the Constitution.”

The executive branch source echoed that sentiment. Both sources agree that the removal of these policies has the real potential to harm the government’s ability to function as a resource for its people. 

“It takes a special type of person to work for the government,” the source said. “You’re not going to get rich. You’re not going to make as much money, generally. In the private sector you would, especially for folks who work in some of these specialized areas. Why would you want to work somewhere that you’re going to go nowhere, and no matter how hard you work, you’re not going to get anything?”

Not only do government employees feel they can’t perform at a professional level with these executive orders, some have expressed that they fear for the personal lives of LGBTQ staff members now too. 

“People are concerned,” Fram said. “People are worried about what will happen to people that they work with. When any leader sees someone in their organization having a difficult time or having something outside of what they need to focus on to accomplish their duties, it is our responsibility as a leader to help that person through those issues. That is what leaders within the military, I believe, are seeing right now. They see members of their military family hurting and concerned about what their future may be. As a leader, we want to take care of people so that they can take care of the mission and having to spend resources to take care of people when they are hurt is very important, but it is also time consuming, and takes us away from things that we do need to be focused on.”

To find “things that we need to focus on,” is easier said than done. Fram said that for LGBTQ members of the federal workforce, specifically trans members of the military, it’s not only the fight against unjust actions and rhetoric from Trump, but also internally within the service members themselves.  

“The challenge all of us face is, how do we determine and know our own self worth?” Fram asked. “Do we let an outside source define who we are? For transgender people, that is a deep strength of ours. … We know what to focus on. We know that we are who we are. We exist, and it is our deep duty and responsibility to care about future generations and protecting and defending our freedoms.”

When asked how to support people in these groups as workplace inclusion shifts away from being a standard part of their professional environment, Fram had a simple answer: listen to those who are being excluded.

“I believe the most powerful thing any of us have is our story,” Fram said. “Our story of courage and commitment and development and capability, how we serve, how we accomplish the missions that we’ve been given. So the best thing people can possibly do right now is share our stories, connect with our humanity, understand who we are in reality, not the rhetoric being used to demonize us. Trans people are a small portion of the population, so it’s easy to hate who you don’t know or don’t understand or have never met. So meet a trans person, read their story, share their story, and your perceptions may change.”

The Blade reached out to the Trump-Vance administration for comment but did not receive a response. 

In the long run, Fram explained, vilifying and marginalizing people for who they are ultimately harms the cohesive team dynamics essential to achieving a common goal — whether on the battlefield or in the boardroom.

“What we’ve learned from countless examples through history, for trans people, for lesbians, gays, and bisexuals, and for other groups, anyone really who had to hide a piece of their identity in order to serve,” Fram said. “You cannot be as effective as you can be when you are spending energy hiding who you are. That’s a concern I have as more people pull back and have to hide a portion of who they are. We lose some of that cohesion within teams, because that energy that you have to spend on protecting yourself could be dedicated to building the cohesive relationships around you that foster teams that become incredibly successful. That’s one of the things where people being authentic serves the purposes of the military. It builds those strong bonds that allow teams to function effectively and accomplish their wartime mission.”

President Trump’s efforts at erasing trans identity intensified this week as employees at the National Park Service were instructed to remove the “T” and “Q” from “LGBTQ” from all internal and external communications.

The change was first noticed on the website of the Stonewall National Monument; trans people of color were integral to the events at Stonewall, which is widely viewed as the kickoff of the modern LGBTQ rights movement. The Stonewall National Monument is the first U.S. national monument dedicated to LGBTQ rights and history.

Reaction to that move was swift. New York City Council member Erik Bottcher wrote, “The Trump administration has erased transgender people from the Stonewall National Monument website. We will not allow them to erase the very existence of our siblings. We are one community!!”

But what most didn’t realize is that the removal of the “T” and “Q” (for transgender and queer) extends to all National Park Service and Interior Department communications, raising concerns that the move could jeopardize future LGBTQ monuments and project work.

The Blade reached out to the National Park Service for comment on the trans erasure and received a curt response that the agency is implementing Trump’s executive order “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” as well as agency directives to end all DEI initiatives.

The question being debated internally now, according to a knowledgable source, is what to do with a massive LGBTQ Theme Study, which as of Feb. 14 was still available on the NPS website. In 2014, the Gill Foundation recognized an omission of historic LGBTQ sites in the nation’s records, and the organization made a grant to the National Park Service to commission a first-of-its-kind LGBTQ Theme Study, which was published in 2016. It was a landmark project that represented major progress for the LGBTQ community in having our contributions included in the broader American story, something that is becoming increasingly difficult given efforts like “Don’t Say Gay” laws that ban the teaching of LGBTQ topics in schools.

A source told the Blade that National Park Service communications staff suggested that removing chapters of the 2016 Theme Study that pertain to transgender people might placate anti-trans political appointees. But one employee pushed back on that, suggesting instead that the entire Theme Study be removed. Editing the document to remove one community’s contributions and perspective violates the academic intent of the project, according to the source. A final decision on how to proceed is expected soon. 

Meanwhile, a protest is planned for Friday, Feb. 14 at noon at Christopher Park in New York City (7th Ave. S. and Christopher Street). The protest is being planned by staff at the Stonewall Inn. 

“The Stonewall Inn and The Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative are outraged and appalled by the recent removal of the word ‘transgender’ from the Stonewall National Monument page on the National Park Service website,” the groups said in a statement. “Let us be clear: Stonewall is transgender history. Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and countless other trans and gender-nonconforming individuals fought bravely, and often at great personal risk, to push back against oppressive systems. Their courage, sacrifice, and leadership were central to the resistance we now celebrate as the foundation of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement.”

An email sent to employees at the U.S. Department of Education on Friday explains that “programs, contracts, policies, outward-facing media, regulations, and internal practices” will be reviewed and cut in cases where they “fail to affirm the reality of biological sex.”

The move, which is of a piece with President Donald Trump’s executive orders restricting transgender rights, jeopardizes the future of initiatives at the agency like mental health services and support for students experiencing homelessness.

Along with external-facing work at the agency, the directive targets employee programs such as those administered by LGBTQ+ resource groups, in keeping with the Trump-Vance administration’s rollback of diversity, equity, and inclusion within the federal government.

In recent weeks, federal agencies had begun changing their documents, policies, and websites for purposes of compliance with the new administration’s first executive action targeting the trans community, “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.”

For instance, the Education Department had removed a webpage offering tips for schools to better support homeless LGBTQ+ youth, noted ProPublica, which broke the news of the “sweeping” changes announced in the email to DOE staff.

According to the news service, the directive further explains the administration’s position that “The deliberate subjugation of women and girls by means of gender ideology — whether in intimate spaces, weaponized language, or American classrooms — negated the civil rights of biological females and fostered distrust of our federal institutions.”

A U.S. Senate committee hearing will be held Thursday for Linda McMahon, Trump’s nominee for education secretary, who has been criticized by LGBTQ+ advocacy groups. GLAAD, for instance, notes that she helped to launch and currently chairs the board of a conservative think tank that “has campaigned against policies that support transgender rights in education.”

NBC News reported on Tuesday that Trump planned to issue an executive order this week to abolish the Education Department altogether.

While the president and his conservative allies in and outside the administration have repeatedly expressed plans to disband the agency, doing so would require approval from Congress.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday issued another executive order taking aim at the transgender community, this time focusing on eligibility for sports participation.

In a signing ceremony for “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” in the East Room of the White House, the president proclaimed “With this executive order, the war on women’s sports is over.”

Despite the insistence by Trump and Republicans that trans women and girls have a biological advantage in sports over cisgender women and girls, the research has been inconclusive, at best.

A study in the peer reviewed Sports Medicine journal found “no direct or consistent research” pointing to this conclusion. A different review in 2023 found that post-pubertal differences are “reduced, if not erased, over time by gender affirming hormone therapy.”

Other critics of efforts to exclude trans student athletes have pointed to the small number of people who are impacted. Charlie Baker, president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, testified last year that fewer than 10 of the NCAA’s 522,000+ student athletes identify as trans.

The Trump-Vance administration has reversed course from the Biden-Harris administration’s policy on Title IX rules barring sex-based discrimination.

“If you’re going to have women’s sports, if you’re going to provide opportunities for women, then they have to be equally safe, equally fair, and equally private opportunities, and so that means that you’re going to preserve women’s sports for women,” a White House official said prior to the issuance of the order.

Former President Joe Biden’s Title IX rules, which went into effect last year, clarified that pursuant to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), sex-based discrimination includes that which is based on the victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

The White House official indicated that the administration will consider additional guidance, regulations, and interpretations of Title IX, as well as exploring options to handle noncompliance by threatening federal funding for schools and education programs.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that Trump “does expect the Olympic Committee and the NCAA to no longer allow men to compete in women’s sports.”

One of the first legislative moves by the new Congress last month was House Republicans’ passage of the “Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act,” which would ban trans women and girls from participating in competitive athletics.

The bill is now before the U.S. Senate, where Republicans have a three-seat majority but would need 60 votes to overcome the filibuster.