The Dictatorship
How RFK Jr.’s ‘medical freedom’ initiatives leave LGBTQ people behind
This article is part of “Finding Pride in a Divided America,” a special series from BLN Daily.
In early June, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced his decision to purge 17 members from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a panel of public health and medical experts who advise the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccines. In the following weeks he replaced them with anti-vaccine activists and leading suppliers of misinformation. We saw the consequences many feared from this action on Thursday when new HHS hire Lyn Redwood, a nurse practitioner and president of an anti-vaccine group founded by Kennedy, presented data to ACIP on flu vaccines based on a widely debunked theory.
Kennedy’s reconfiguring of ACIP comes as part of his larger promise to, in his words, extend so-called “medical freedom” and “health choice” to all Americans.
Coming during Pride Month, the act of imposing his views under the guise of freedom and autonomy hits especially hard.
This touting of freedom, choice and independence has a particularly hypocritical ring this time of year.
This June marks the 56th commemoration of the Stonewall Riots, a week of uprisings in the early summer of 1969 when queer and trans patrons of the Greenwich Village bar revolted in response to police raids. While this year the month has been marked by the usual marches and celebrations, it’s also marked by a period when LGBTQ civil rights and cultural acceptance are facing an accelerated retraction, with an intense focus on rescinding health care access.
Kennedy and his Make America Healthy Again movement claim that his policy moves will give Americans the power to make personal health choices free from government overreach. But this MAHA agenda so far focuses on “informed choices” like whether to get routine vaccines, seeking “radical transparency” by dismantling agencies responsible for the oversight of food safety, and focusing on individual responsibility for one’s health — rather than tackling systemic issues like poverty, racism and sexism that lead to worse health outcomes.
This touting of freedom, choice and independence has a particularly hypocritical ring this time of year. Not only are they a veneer for policies that will leave Americans with fewer safety protections and diminished access to health care, but they propel support for the Trump administration’s ferocious efforts to deprive queer and trans Americans of the very same decision-making power over our own bodies and lives.
The movement has placed groups like “crunchy” teenagersmomfluencersand Gen Z and millennial women who’ve historically leaned toward the Democratic Party in a coalition with MAGA’s most far-right proponents. Using rhetoric about bodily autonomy co-opted from the reproductive justice movement, Kennedy’s movement and its (largely white) influencers have exploited real fears about fertility, food additives and pollution to generate support for another Trump election that paved the way for his administration to advance an anti-LGBTQ and anti-DEI agenda. And has it ever.
Since entering office, President Donald Trump has issued a flurry of executive orders targeting LGBTQ rights and DEI programs that impact the health and acceptance of LGBTQ people, including directing Kennedy in his capacity as HHS secretary to end access to gender-affirming care for trans youth and separately pausing funding for the PEPFAR program, which provides HIV medication and support abroad.
Under Kennedy’s leadership, HHS has placed LGBTQ people at the center of the bull’s-eye by stripping away access to health care and resources. The agency was reported in March to be weighing preliminary plans that would gut the CDC’s Division of HIV Prevention, which promotes testing, tracks HIV infections and conducts research.
In early May, HHS released a report by unnamed authors condemning gender-affirming care that the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics said “misrepresents the current medical consensus and fails to reflect the realities of pediatric care.” “The Many Report” focusing on children’s health, released in May and laden with errors, echoes the earlier document, referring to gender-affirming care for youth as an unresearched “harm.” Meanwhile, the report makes no mention of intersex children, who are often forced to undergo medically unnecessary surgeries for atypical genitalia.
Beyond the federal government, two dozen states have passed bills targeting trans people in 2025 alone, according to the Trans Legislation Trackerand lawmakers in nine states have introduced measures to weaken same-sex marriage, which has conferred the right for same-sex spouses to access each other’s health insurance and make medical decisions for their families. All this as the Supreme Court ruled to uphold a state-level ban on access to gender-affirming care for youth and has taken up a case challenging a ban on conversion therapy.
While Kennedy sets HHS’ sights on destroying access to gender-affirming care and HIV/AIDS support and research, the MAHA movement has taken up its own mantle on forms of gender-affirming care and disease prevention.
These efforts amount to an attack on the physical and mental well-being of LGBTQ Americans and seek to eradicate transgender people from existing altogether — an effort that Kennedy was complicit in long before entering government. On his own podcast and in other interviewsKennedy has falsely claimed that pollutants cause gender dysphoria, comparing trans youth to lab frogs that can be “chemically castrated” by being exposed to hormones in one discussion with the alt-right podcaster Jordan Peterson, which was removed from YouTube in 2023 for what the platform said violated its vaccine misinformation policy. In step with this disinformation, Kennedy has claimed that AIDS is caused by poppers and a “gay lifestyle,” rather than HIV.
While Kennedy sets HHS’ sights on destroying access to gender-affirming care and HIV/AIDS support and research, the MAHA movement has taken up its own mantle on forms of gender-affirming care and disease prevention. Women leaders in the movement decry a “reproductive crisis,” not by calling out diminished access to abortion care or IVF, but by focusing their criticism on hormonal birth control and mammograms. Others peddle supplements like methylene blue, which is used to treat a blood disorder but is otherwise a textile dye that followers claim provides protection from Alzheimer’s and other illnesses (there is no evidence for this, but it does turn their tongues blue).
The basis for these concerns may come from legitimate questions about birth control and a sincere desire to protect oneself against devastating illnesses. Yet there is a deeply sinister irony to MAHA’s fear that grave medical injustices are being committed against them and their families. The movement seldom, if ever, acknowledges America’s history of medical experimentation performed on Black people, forced sterilization of disabled people, and “treatments” like lobotomies and exorcisms given to “cure” LGBTQ people in the past — all part of a craven legacy that the Trump administration seeks to censor by cutting DEI programs and criminalizing the teaching of racism, slavery and inequality. But for the very groups its leaders now target, MAHA’s greatest fears have already come true.
Half a year into the Trump administration, it’s clear that Kennedy and his MAHA movement are fortifying a pipeline from wellness culture to the anti-LGBTQ far right through policy, reports and the gutting of panels vital to supporting Americans’ health, while plying supporters with debunked wellness talk and empty promises of independence.
It’s the same tired homophobia and transphobia rebranded as health freedom, and LGBTQ people — especially trans youth — are being stripped of our choices until we’ll have none at all.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Republican senator who had effectively blocked confirmation of President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Reserve said Sunday he was dropping his opposition after the Department of Justice ended its investigation of the current central bank chair.
The announcement by Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina removes a big hurdle to Trump’s effort to install Kevin Warsha former high-ranking Fed official, in the job in place of Jerome Powell, long under White House pressure to lower interest rates. Tillis’ opposition was enough to stall the nomination in the GOP-controlled Senate Banking Committee as Powell neared the scheduled end of his term on May 15.
“I am prepared to move on with the confirmation of Mr. Warsh. I think he’s going to be a great Fed chair,” Tillis told NBC’s “Meet the Press,” two days after the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia said her office’s investigation of the Fed’s multibillion-dollar building renovations was over. Powell’s brief congressional testimony last summer about that work was also under review.
The Fed’s internal watchdog is scrutinizing a project, now at $2.5 billion after earlier estimates had put it at $1.9 billion, that the Republican president has criticized for cost overruns. Powell had asked in July for the inspector general’s review.
“I believe that there will not be any wrongdoing. Maybe we find a little stupid here in terms of somebody responsible for the project making a decision they shouldn’t? Maybe. But it doesn’t rise to a criminal prosecution. That was my problem to begin with because I feel like there were prosecutors in D.C. that thought this was going to be a lever to have Mr. Powell leave early,” he said.
Tillis, who infuriated Trump in June for opposing his big tax and spending cuts bill over Medicaid reductions and then announced he would not seek reelection in 2026, added that he had received assurances from the Justice Department that “the case is completely and fully settled … and that the only way an investigation would be opened would be a criminal referral from one of the most respect inspector generals.”
Important week for Fed leadership
The committee on Saturday said it planned to vote Wednesday on Warsh’s nomination. The ranking Democrat, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, responded with a statement that “no Republican claiming to care about Fed independence should support moving forward the nomination of Kevin Warsh, who proved in his nomination hearing to be nothing more than President Trump’s sock puppet.”
Also Wednesday, Fed policymakers will meet and are expected to keep their key interest rate unchanged for the third straight meeting, shrugging off Trump’s demands for a cut. At a news conference, Powell could indicate whether he will remain on the Fed’s board of governors after his term as chair ends, an unusual but not completely unprecedented step that would deny Trump the opportunity to fill another seat on the seven-member board. Powell’s term as a governor lasts until January 2028.
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At a hearing last week, Warsh told senators he never promised the White House that he would cut interest rates and pledged to be “an independent actor” if confirmed as chair. Hours before that, Trump had been asked in a CNBC interview whether he would be disappointed if Warsh did not immediately cut rates. “I would,” the president said.
Without the constraints of a political campaign, Tillis has spoken out forcefully about Powell, decrying the inquiry by U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, a longtime Trump ally, as a “vindictive prosecution” and suggested it threatened the Fed’s longtime independence from day-to-day politics. Tillis told NBC that he had gotten assurances from the Justice Department that he needed “to feel like they were not using DOJ as a weapon to threaten the independence of the Fed. So this will allow Mr. Warsh to move on with his confirmation.”
On Saturday, Trump was asked by reporters whether there was now smooth sailing for Warsh with the end of the Justice Department’s investigation. “I imagine it’s smooth,” Trump said, adding that his nominee “is going to be fantastic.” The president said he still wanted to find out “how can a building of that size cost … whatever it’s going to be.”
Trump visited the Fed building in July and, in front of television cameras, said the renovations would run $3.1 billion. Powell, standing next to him, said after looking at a paper presented to him by Trump, that the president’s latest price tag was incorrect.
Justice Department pursues Trump adversaries
The investigation was among several undertaken by the Justice Department into Trump’s perceived adversaries. For months it had failed to gain traction as prosecutors struggled to articulate a basis to suspect criminal conduct. Other efforts by the department to prosecute Trump’s adversaries, including New York state Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, and former FBI Director James Comey, have also been unsuccessful.
Last month, a federal judge quashed Justice Department subpoenas issued to the Fed in the investigation, describing their purpose as “to harass and pressure Powell to resign” and open the path for a new chair. A prosecutor handling the Powell case had acknowledged at a closed-door court hearing that the government had not found any evidence of a crime.
Pirro said Friday on X that she “will not hesitate to restart a criminal investigation should the facts warrant doing so.” The acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, told NBC on Sunday that ”there is no doubt that we will investigate” if the inspector general finds evidence of criminal conduct.
Warsh is a financier and former member of the Fed’s board of governors. Trump nominated him in January.
The Dictatorship
Blanche says administration officials were apparent targets at correspondents’ dinner
Trump administration officials — “likely including the president” — were the apparent targets of the shooting at the annual White House correspondents’ dinner, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said Sunday.
In an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” the morning after President Donald Trump was rushed off stage by Secret Service agents as guests ducked under dining tables while shots rang out at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, Blanche said of the gunman: “We believe that he was targeting administration officials.”
Blanche cautioned that the belief is “quite preliminary” as law-enforcement officials sift through evidence. The acting attorney general said investigators had recovered the suspect’s “electronic devices” and that “there were some writings, and we’ve already spoken with several witnesses who knew him.”
He did not elaborate on the writings. But the New York Post obtained what it called a 1,052-word missive from the gunman, sent to his family members moments before he carried out the foiled attack, in which he said he intended to target administration officials.
The suspect referred to himself as the “Friendly Federal Assassin” in closing his letter. Law enforcement sources described the writings to MS NOW as anti-Trump in nature but not aligned to one specific ideology.
In an interview on Sunday with CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” Trump said he read the alleged gunman’s manifesto. “He’s radicalized,” Trump said. “He was probably a pretty sick guy.”
U.S. Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said Sunday that the suspect’s brother in New London, Connecticut, contacted local police, who then alerted the Secret Service. Guglielmi said the Secret Service learned of the suspect’s writings sometime between 9 and 11 p.m. ET Saturday night.
Blanche said investigators believe that the suspect, which a former senior law enforcement official identified to MS NOW as 31-year old California resident Cole Tomas Allen, acted alone. He said the man traveled by train from Los Angeles to Chicago and then from Chicago to Washington. The suspect had two firearms on him that were purchased legally in past couple of years, Blanche said.
The armed suspect was tackled near a security checkpoint at the Washington Hilton hotel, where the event has been held annually for decades, before he could enter the ballroom. He was taken into custody, hospitalized and remains under observation, according to D.C. interim Police Chief Jeff Carroll. The gunman shot a Secret Service agent in his protective vest and that agent was injured but in good condition, Trump told reporters Saturday night.
Trump, Vice President JD Vance and several top administration officials — including Blanche — were in attendance.
“Obviously, President Trump is a member of the administration, the head of it,” Blanche noted on Sunday. But he said any “exacting threat that may have been communicated beforehand” are still under investigation and not yet known.
Blanche said he expected formal charges, which he said would likely include assault of a federal officer and discharging a firearm during the assault of a federal officer, would be filed on Monday.
CBS News reporter Weijia Jiang, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, called the shooting a “harrowing moment,” and thanked Secret Service and law enforcement personnel.
“Our dinner exists to celebrate the First Amendment and the hard daily work of the journalists who defend it. Last night, those journalists showed exactly the kind of calm and courage that work demands, jumping into reporting immediately after the incident unfolded,” Jiang said in a statement Sunday.
Jiang said late Saturday night that Trump “insists” the dinner be rescheduled within 30 days, but details of a new event have not been announced.
Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW, with a focus on how global events and foreign policy shape U.S. politics. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.
WASHINGTON — As hundreds of journalists exchanged hugs, handshakes and laughter, while they and other attendees took their seats, White House Correspondents’ Association President Weijia Jiang welcomed everyone to this year’s dinner — Donald Trump’s first as president.
A military color guard played the national anthem. Like most events involving a U.S. president, every action was carefully choreographed. The atmosphere felt both routine and yet still historic. The sound of forks hitting plates clattered as Jiang gave her brief remarks, and people returned to conversation.
Suddenly, multiple loud bangs rang out from behind the closed doors of the oval underground ballroom in the Hilton Hotel. Journalists, friends, lawmakers, congressional staffers, and members of Trump’s Cabinet and other administration officials — dropped to the ground. Plates shattered, and chairs toppled over as people took cover under tablecloth-covered tables.
MS NOW reporter Julia Jester, who had reported on air from the red carpet leading up to the event, had briefly gone to an upper level of the hotel and returned to see her fellow journalists crouched on the floor.
“Just as someone said there was a shooter, an officer shouted to ‘get down and stay down,’” Jester recalled. “Not long after, a Secret Service agent ran into the area shouting, ‘Everyone out, this is now an active crime scene.’ Anyone who tried to run back to grab belongings was warned to leave or face arrest. They were not playing around.”
The evening is an annual celebration of the freedom of the press, one that typically includes a comedian’s performance and a joke-filled speech from the president along with the presentation of awards to journalists. Trump broke with tradition in his first term by not attending; his presence Saturday was a lightning rod for debate in the wake of his lawsuits against and threats to sue several media outlets over the past year.
Tension was expected to center on First Amendment speech protections. Instead, the night was derailed by gun violence, another growing threat to America’s democracy.
Outside the ballroom, a man — later identified as Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of Torrance, California — had attempted to run through a security checkpoint with two guns, along with multiple knives, according to Jeffery Carroll, D.C. interim police chief. Several MS NOW reporters, producers and executives were seated in the ballroom, a below-ground space with notoriously poor cellphone service.
“It wasn’t until we were all outside that I remembered how odd, and mildly concerning, I thought it was when no one screened me — or my bags — when I arrived on the terrace-level hours before [most attendees] to cover the red carpet,” Jester said. “The reality sunk in: as jarring as tonight was, it could have been far worse.”
Inside the room, Republican Rep. Marlin Stutzman of Indiana was seated near the center aisle. He estimated he was 50 to 75 feet from the back doors, when “all of a sudden,” he said, “we hear these large gunshots.”
MS NOW “Way Too Early” anchor and senior congressional reporter Ali Vitali heard shouts of “shots fired.”
“Someone behind me shouted ‘get down’ and I hit the floor, grabbing Symone Sanders next to me and telling her to get under the table,” she said. “I worried we couldn’t find cover because of how tightly packed the chairs and tables were. One of the servers also dropped down near us.”
“After a minute, I put my phone in the air and starting filming the dais, trying to understand where the president was,” Vitali said. Then she realized the server on the ground next to her was sobbing. “So, I used one hand in the air with my phone and the other to hold hers, and tell her it was going to be OK.”
Multiple Secret Service agents sprinted to the stage, where Trump, first lady Melania Trump, Vice President JD Vance and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt were seated along with the board members of the White House Correspondents’ Association. As the guests on the dais crouched down and then were evacuated from their table, heavily-armed officers stood guard on the stage.
Quiet fell across the room, as uncertainty and fear spread among the guests. “I don’t recall any screaming. How much of the silence in that room was learned behavior?” Jonathan Capehart, co-anchor of “The Weekend,” reflected about the experience after years of mass shootings in America.
“It felt like a long moment,” said Stutzman.
In an interview with MS NOW’s Mychael Schnell shortly after the incident, Stutzman and Rep. Abe Hamadeh, R-Ariz., recounted following Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, and other officials down the center aisle as they were ushered out of the ballroom.
Hamadeh spotted Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. among those being rushed to safety. “When everybody was down there [on the floor]I’m just hearing people praying,” the Arizona congressman said. “People were obviously scared.”
White House reporter Jake Traylor, who covered the assassination attempt against Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, during the 2024 campaign, also began filming on his cellphone. “We were a few feet away from FBI Director Kash Patel. I saw agents covering and protecting him moments after the commotion began,” he said.
“We actually left the exit where Ronald Reagan was shot just over 40 years ago,” MS NOW’s senior White House reporter Vaughn Hillyard told viewers on air as law enforcement officials asked him to move further back from the scene.
Hillyard recalled seeing House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth being escorted out by their security details.
Kari Lake, who has overseen a gutting of the government-funding international news agency Voice of America into a pro-Trump media organization, expressed disdain for journalists in the room as she exited in an interview with Newsmax, a conservative streaming service, moments after the shooting.
“I saw so many people from all of these news outlets,” Lake said, accusing journalists of spreading falsehoods. “They’re part to blame of this,” she claimed moments after the shooting occurred and only as an investigation was just underway.
Back inside the ballroom, MS NOW’s Traylor reported that the president was safe and that he still intended to deliver a speech from the dinner, citing a White House official.
The president posted on social media that he wanted to “LET THE SHOW GO ON.” He praised law enforcement’s swift response and announced a press conference at the White House after it was determined that, following security guidance, he would leave the premises. Attendees were soon asked to leave the hotel as law enforcement investigated what had become a crime scene.
Trump posted a photo of a man handcuffed on the carpeted floor of the hotel and then shared video of a person charging through a security checkpoint. Shortly after, he addressed journalists — many still dressed in gowns and tuxedos — from the White House briefing room, saying the posts were part of an effort to create transparency as law enforcement worked to learn more about the suspect and possible motives.
“It’s always shocking when something like this happens,” Trump told reporters. “Melania was very cognizant, I think, of what happened. I think she knew immediately what happened. She was saying, ‘That’s a bad noise,’ and we were whisked away.”
MS NOW “The Weeknight” anchor Symone Sanders recalled on air riding a scooter up to the driveway of the Hilton, describing her ability to arrive that close to the entrance as “unusual” compared to previous dinners. She questioned the hotel’s overall security after attending numerous events where presidents and vice presidents were present.
“I have been with a protectee, then the vice president of the United States of America, when they have had to be evacuated. What happened tonight, in terms of protocol, from what I know, having experienced it myself, was not protocol,” Sanders said late Saturday, referring to her time as a senior adviser to former Vice President Kamala Harris.
Before the dinner began, MS NOW White House associate producer Emily Hung witnessed a handful of protestors enter the hotel, holding their signs against a WHCD-branded backdrop, before they were escorted out.
It is unclear whether Trump was the intended target, but, if so, this would be the third time a gunman has targeted Trump since 2024. In the Washington Hilton Saturday night were two officials in the presidential line of succession: the vice president and House Speaker Mike Johnson.
Unlike Lake, Trump praised the reaction of journalists in the room and what he saw of the event before it was derailed. “I told the representatives of the evening, and they did such a beautiful job with such a beautiful evening,” the president said. “They’re talking about free speech in our Constitution. That’s what it’s all about.”
As he addressed the reporters in the briefing room who sprang into action to tell the world what had happened, he also took questions and shared that he has “studied assassinations.”
“The people that make the biggest impact, they’re the ones that they go after,” Trump said. “I hate to say I’m honored by that, but I’ve done a lot. We’ve done a lot.”
Contributed Jake Traylor, Ali Vitali, Symone Sanders, Mychael Schnell, Ken Dilianian, Carol Leonnig.
Akayla Gardner is a White House correspondent for MS NOW.
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