Trying to figure out where you really stand on LGBT issues, or any issue for that matter, is a vexing process.
You say on 60 Minutes, for example, that marriage equality is settled law, yet every name you have mentioned as a possible nominee to the Supreme Court views our community as perverted and deserving of no rights to anything except perhaps to conversion therapy paid for with funds diverted from HIV treatment programs.
David von Storch — File photo
Your Cabinet choices almost to a man (there are a few women — Senator Mitch McConnell’s wife was a smarmy homage to that shining example of cooperation and character that now presides over the U.S. Senate) abhor according any rights to our community or respecting those rights we have fought for far too long to achieve. So while you’re busy tweeting the nonsense that has earned you the distinction as the most unpopular incoming President in modern U.S. history, your Cabinet will no doubt be creating and implementing policies that are likely at every corner to attack us, marginalize us and and demean who we are as human beings. As such I don’t believe anything you say, except for some reason I can’t quite explain, I do believe that your 3 a.m. tweets reflect the inner-workings of your third-grade bully’s soul.
So, while I could go on and on pleading for you to stand up for what you’ve said about those LGBT rights you believe are fair and just, I won’t bother. You’ve shown us who you are by the company that you keep. You are no friend of ours, Mr. Trump, and anyone who says otherwise is buying the orange fool’s gold that you are peddling in the form of $26 cocktails at your new Trump Hotel in my hometown.
Every single day when I get out of bed, I will do my best not to get distracted by your childish prattling and insidious gas lighting. At times my better angels will try to find something positive in the words you read from the TelePrompTer that Kellyanne Conway so artfully crafts. Yet while you and the Republicans in control of Congress drink from that false cup of mandate that makes you drunk with power and hubris, the seeds of our discontent have been firmly sown.
I do have just one request. Please don’t come to Adams Morgan, Dupont Circle, Logan Circle, Shaw, NE, SW, SE or anywhere adjacent. We will try to be civil but it’s a really big ask. When you go out, I’d recommend Georgetown. It’s not Mar a Largo, but it’s the best we can offer.
Enjoy your stay in our town. We are ever-hopeful that in no time you will return full-time to your gilded tower of excess in New York in whose escalators you descended from the heavens to burnish your brand and somehow, through no fault of your own, landed in the most powerful seat in the land.
Welcome to D.C.!
David von Storch
President, UA Companies
VIDA Fitness, Bang Salon, Capitol City Brewing Co. @davidvons
The opinions expressed in these letters are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of their organizations and this magazine, its staff and contributors.
Gun rights groups are blasting the Trump administration after CNN reported that senior Justice Department officials have been discussing the possibility of restricting transgender U.S. citizens from owning firearms, following the recent mass shooting at a Catholic church in Minneapolis. Although officials described the talks as "preliminary," critics warn that even floating such a proposal scapegoats transgender people and threatens their constitutional rights.
The internal talks appeared to draw on a theory promoted by conservative influencers and media outlets: that transgender people are mentally ill, and that transition-related hormones negatively affect mental health, making them more prone to violence.
Justice Department had demanded Boston Children's Hospital hand over patients' and employees' personal information under the guise of combating medical "fraud."
A federal judge has quashed a subpoena from the U.S. Department of Justice demanding that Boston Children’s Hospital turn over private medical information on youth receiving gender-affirming care, blasting the request as a “fishing expedition” aimed at prosecuting doctors under the guise of investigating health care fraud.
In his ruling, Judge Myong Joun, a Biden appointee, said the Justice Department sought an “astonishingly broad array of documents and information that are virtually unlimited in scope,” including patients’ Social Security numbers, home addresses, and personal details, as well as the complete personnel files of all 2,000 Boston Children’s Hospital employees, regardless of whether they had any involvement in providing gender-affirming care to minors.
Down in the polls and seeking to drag down rival Zohran Mamdani's favorables, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said he will push the Department of Education to roll back the city's policy allowing transgender students to use bathrooms aligned with their gender identity.
At a campaign stop in Harlem on September 17, standing outside a mosque, Adams launched into a rambling broadside against Mamdani, his Democratic Socialist allies, and left-leaning voters -- whom Adams, echoing House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries, derided as gentrifiers and transplants.
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