Assistant Secretary for Health Admiral Rachel Levine – Photo: Chris Sean Smith/ U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps.
During the recent federal shutdown, the Trump administration changed the name on Rachel Levine’s portrait at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, replacing her legal name with her pre-transition one.
Levine made history in 2021 as the first out transgender person confirmed by the U.S. Senate for a sub-cabinet role, serving nearly four years as Assistant Secretary of Health in the Biden administration and later becoming a four-star admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps.
Levine’s portrait hangs on the seventh floor of the Humphrey Building in Washington, D.C., alongside those of others who have led the U.S. Public Health Service. She has offered little commentary on the deadnaming, telling NPR it was an honor to serve as Assistant Secretary of Health. “I’m not going to comment on this type of petty action,” she said.
Adrian Shanker, a former deputy assistant secretary for health policy who worked with Levine and now serves as her spokesperson, called the name change an “act of bigotry against her.”
Shanker said the change to Levine’s portrait is unprecedented and criticized current HHS leadership, arguing they should focus on pressing public health challenges instead of “scoring political points or virtue-signaling to conservatives by deadnaming and acting vindictively toward Levine.”
Asked why the department altered Levine’s name, HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon told NPR in an email: “Our priority is ensuring that the information presented internally and externally by HHS reflects gold standard science. We remain committed to reversing harmful policies enacted by Levine and ensuring that biological reality guides our approach to public health.”
An HHS staff member, speaking to NPR on condition of anonymity to avoid professional retribution, called the incident “disrespectful” and emblematic of “the erasure of transgender individuals by this administration.”
Throughout the Biden administration — especially heading into the 2024 election — Trump and his allies used Levine as a political foil, casting her as a diversity hire and attacking her appointment as evidence of left-wing “ideology” and “wokeness.” Memes mocking her circulated widely online, and her image appeared in several anti-transgender ads.
Since taking office, President Donald Trump has moved to curb transgender rights and visibility, starting with an executive order declaring that the United States will not recognize transgender identity as valid. He has also banned transgender people from serving in the military and directed Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to begin forcibly discharging active-duty transgender service members.
A video shows a Burger King manager -- who also owns the franchise -- ordering an irate female customer to leave after she tried to get an employee disciplined for allegedly misgendering her, despite the fact that she had repeatedly misgendered the worker first.
It’s unclear when the video was recorded, but it has been circulating widely in recent days.
The video, filmed from the customer’s point of view, opens with her at a Kansas Burger King demanding to speak with the manager. A male employee goes to get the manager, prompting the customer to demand the manager’s full name. The employee tells her he doesn’t know the manager’s last name.
The U.S. Supreme Court has cleared the way for the Trump administration to enforce a policy mandating that U.S. passports list a traveler’s sex as assigned at birth, based on biological characteristics.
On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring that the U.S. government would recognize only two sexes, effectively erasing transgender identity. The order, which pledged to uphold "the biological reality of sex," directed the State Department to revise its passport policies to "accurately reflect the holder's sex."
Sian Radaskiewicz-King, of Baltimore, has pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors for spray-painting a transgender symbol near Saints Peter & Paul Elementary School in Easton -- conduct that prompted a hate-crime charge and kept her jailed without bond for more than two months.
Under a plea deal with the Talbot County State's Attorney's Office, the 32-year-old admitted to one count of defacing religious property and one count of malicious destruction of property, with prosecutors dropping 24 additional charges.
Prosecutors say Radaskiewicz-King spray-painted a transgender symbol -- a circle with male and female glyphs and a third combined spoke -- around Saints Peter & Paul Elementary School in Easton on the night of September 4. They allege she tagged the same symbol at several other spots in town, including a liquor store fence, the sidewalk outside an Ulta Beauty, and a brick archway at a nearby shopping center.
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