Human rights groups, including LGBTQ advocates, accuse the U.S. State Department of politicizing its annual report on global abuses by erasing references to anti-LGBTQ discrimination. According to Al Jazeera, the 2024 Human Rights Report was released months late after Trump appointees rewrote an earlier draft to align with the administration’s “America First” agenda.
The revised report, released last Tuesday, adds new categories like “Life,” “Liberty,” and “Security of the Person.” The State Department called the report “streamlined” and said it was designed to stay “aligned to the administration’s executive orders.”
Typically drafted by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, the report was reshaped after a major State Department overhaul. In an April op-ed, Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused the bureau of serving “left-wing activists” and vowed to reorient it around “Western values.”
Al Jazeera reports the 2024 document is far slimmer than the 2023 edition, with country analyses averaging just one-third the length. Last year’s report included a detailed introduction with appendices and citations; this year’s opens with a single page stressing a desire to “minimize the amount of statistical data.”
The starkest change is how the report handles alleged abuses. Unlike the 2023 version, it makes no mention of discrimination against women, LGBTQ people, or racial minorities, and omits past criticism of governments over their treatment of LGBTQ communities.
Notably, the report downplays and omits abuses in nations aligned with the Trump administration while targeting countries less sympathetic to it.
For example, the section on Israel omits any mention of the humanitarian crisis and mounting death toll in Gaza from Israeli military actions. The report also claims there are “no credible reports of significant human rights abuses” in El Salvador, presided over by Trump ally Nayib Bukele. It ignores that the U.S. is sending $6 million to house migrant deportees in CECOT, a notorious maximum-security prison long condemned for inhumane conditions.
In Hungary, the report likewise claims there were “no credible reports of significant human rights abuses,” despite Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s well-documentedcrackdowns on LGBTQ visibility, including a law letting police surveil and prosecute Pride marchers.
The report omits the Russian Supreme Court’s decision declaring the “international LGBT movement” an “extremist organization.” That ruling has led to raids on LGBTQ spaces and prosecutions of people for displaying symbols like the Pride flag or advocating for LGBTQ rights.
The 2024 Russia report omits several issues flagged in 2023, including restrictions on gender-affirming care, arrests of suspected gay men, violence by non-state actors against LGBTQ individuals, and Chechnya’s continuing persecution of LGBTQ people.
The report omits Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Law and its impact on the country’s LGBTQ community. It only notes that officials “reportedly committed acts of sexual violence,” citing allegations that prisoners were forced to undergo anal examinations to “prove” same-sex activity, an assumption based on pseudoscience.
The report singles out Brazil and South Africa, where the Trump administration has clashed with leaders, along with Western European nations less loyal to Trump.
In Brazil, the report ignores that the country leads the world in reported murders of transgender people. Instead, it accuses President Inácio Lula da Silva of “undermining democratic debate” by restricting online disinformation, which the Trump administration claims unfairly silenced supporters of former president and Trump ally Jair Bolsonaro.
The report also omits the positive development surrounding Thailand’s legalization of same-sex marriage in 2024.
“We denounce the Trump administration’s efforts to politicize the State Department’s annual human rights reports by stripping longstanding references to abuses targeting LGBTQI+ and other marginalized groups,” said Mark Bromley, co-chair of the Council for Global Equality.
The group has sued the State Department, alleging manipulation of this year’s report and demanding the release of internal documents. The council condemned “the drastic restructuring and glaring omission of violence and abuse targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI+) persons in the U.S.”
U.S. Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, blasted the omission of LGBTQ-specific information, noting that LGBTQ people still face abuse, violence, and criminalization worldwide.
“Erasing our community from these reports makes it that much harder for human rights advocates, the press, and the American people to be aware of the abuses LGBTQI+ people are facing worldwide,” Takano said in a statement. “Failing to rectify this censorship will have real — and potentially deadly — consequences for LGBTQI+ people, including both for those who travel abroad from the U.S. and for LGBTQI+ people in countries whose leadership no longer need to worry about consequences for their human rights abuses.”
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The United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee has changed its eligibility rules to bar transgender women from competing in female-designated sporting events, aligning with an executive order issued by President Donald Trump in February.
The new rule, outlined in the committee's "Athlete Safety Policy," offers few details about how the transgender ban will be enforced. It does not use the word "transgender," and refers to Trump's executive order only by its number, not by its title, "Keeping Men Out of Women's Sports."
"I was really into politics at a very young age," says Tim Miller, host of The Bulwark Podcast and an MSNBC political analyst. "I can't remember what they were called, but you'd get those kid magazines about politics that would come to your school, and I remember always really being drawn to them, and reading them and wanting to know more. I always knew lots of weird facts about politics and geography as a little middle school nerd."
Raised in St. Louis until fourth grade, when his family relocated to Littleton, Colorado, Miller became enmeshed in conservative politics at a young age, taking various campaign jobs throughout his career as a former Republican strategist. He jokes that his success at handicapping political races dates back to the 1992 election, when he won a $1 wager after betting his grandmother that then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton would unseat sitting president George H.W. Bush.
The U.S. Air Force says it will separate all transgender personnel with 15 to 18 years of service without retirement benefits. The move denies them early retirement under a policy that normally allows some members with more than 15 -- but fewer than 20 -- years of service to retire with prorated benefits instead of completing the standard 20 years.
Under the Temporary Early Retirement Authority (TERA), service members approved for early retirement receive prorated benefits -- including insurance coverage, disability pay, and access to housing on military bases.
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