California state Sen. Scott Wiener says he was harassed, threatened, and physically intimidated at San Francisco’s Trans March on Friday, forcing the out gay Jewish lawmaker to leave one of the country’s most important transgender Pride gatherings in a city that has long imagined itself as a refuge.
Wiener, a Democrat who represents San Francisco and is running for the congressional seat…
Keith Edwards is taking his audience to the largest Pride celebration in the United States.
On Sunday, the progressive digital commentator will step out from behind the format that made him one of YouTube's most-watched political voices and into the streets of Manhattan to host a live broadcast from the 57th annual New York City Pride March, in partnership with GLAAD.
The livestream,…
For U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the fight over transgender rights has become a test of whether Democrats understand the stakes of this political moment.
The Washington Democrat believes the attacks on transgender people are following a familiar pattern. She sees a powerful political movement targeting a vulnerable community to distract from the failures of those already in power. Before…
Days after marching in the Portland Pride Parade, Graham Platner, Maine’s Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, is promising to fight federal attacks on transgender Americans as he heads into a nationally watched general election against Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins.
In an exclusive interview with _The Advocate on Wednesday_ , Platner welcomed the endorsement from the Christopher Street…
U.S. Rep. Sarah McBride didn't have much to say about Rep. Nancy Mace's humiliating defeat in South Carolina's Republican gubernatorial primary.
Three words, in fact. "Happy Pride, Nancy."
The line brought hundreds of LGBTQ+ activists, elected officials, donors, and allies to their feet Tuesday evening at Equality PAC's National Pride Gala in Washington, D.C., where McBride appeared to…
George Santos built a political career on fabrications about himself. Now federal investigators are examining whether the disgraced former congressman and convicted felon may have profited from misleading people about what he planned to do.
The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating Santos over trades placed on the prediction-market platform Kalshi regarding whether he would attend…
As we begin Pride Month in the year of our lord 2026, I’m not going to mince words: it’s hard out here for our community.
Everywhere we turn, from state legislatures to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, we face an endless stream of lies and vitriol and, even worse, dangerous policies. Our healthcare, our history, and our families are all under attack. Trans kids are used as scapegoats for the failures…
For years, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has built his political brand around grievance, confrontation, and attacks on LGBTQ+ people. On Tuesday night, moments after toppling Sen. John Cornyn in one of the most consequential Republican primary upsets of the Trump era, he returned to one of the movement’s favorite targets, transgender children.
Standing before supporters during his Senate…
A growing roster of convicted political operatives, January 6 rioters, and disgraced Trump allies are reportedly preparing to seek taxpayer-funded payouts from President Donald Trump’s controversial new $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” a program critics say increasingly resembles a federally backed MAGA slush fund.
Among the names now publicly tied to the fund are former congressman…
Barney Frank, the trailblazing Massachusetts congressman whose razor-sharp political instincts and unapologetic visibility helped reshape both American liberalism and LGBTQ+ representation in public life, has died at 86, according to The Boston Globe.
Frank died Tuesday night after recently entering hospice care at his home in Ogunquit, Maine, where he had been battling congestive heart…
As Democrats met in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday for the Center for American Progress (CAP) Ideas Conference — a center-left gathering of pundits and politicians — the mood inside the ballroom oscillated between campaign-year optimism and constitutional alarm.
The party’s rising figures spoke repeatedly about affordability, health care costs, and economic anxiety. But threaded through nearly…
As the Trump administration intensifies its legal campaign against healthcare providers, New Jersey Democrats are moving to fortify the state as a refuge for transgender patients and doctors caught in the widening political fight.
On Thursday, the New Jersey General Assembly Health Committee passed legislation designed to shield providers of reproductive and gender-affirming care from…
The Trump administration’s investigation into Smith College, the prestigious women’s college in western Massachusetts, may have begun with something as symbolically potent and legally tenuous as an honorary degree awarded to Dr. Rachel Levine, one of the nation’s highest-ranking transgender public officials and a pediatrician who previously served as Pennsylvania’s physician general and…
A transgender teaching assistant at the University of Oklahoma says she was thrust into a national debate after a routine grading dispute spiraled into death threats, media frenzy, and an outpouring of community support she never expected. She also says that the university made her the face of a national culture war and left much of the public with the false impression that she had been…
Virginia Democrats’ chaotic redistricting battle has claimed one of the party’s most closely watched congressional campaigns. Retired Space Force Colonel Bree Fram, the highest-ranking out transgender officer in the U.S. military, announced Wednesday that she is ending her bid for Congress after the state’s Supreme Court threw out newly drawn congressional maps weeks before early…
For years, conservatives have framed attacks on transgender youth as a defense of “family values.” This Mother’s Day, Lambda Legal is reclaiming the phrase by showcasing a mother’s unconditional love for her child.
The organization’s new digital campaign, “Letters of Love,” centers on Sonu, a 17-year-old transgender teenager from New York, and his mother, Avni Gupta-Kagan. In the short film,…
President Donald Trump delivered a meandering, campaign-style speech on Friday in The Villages, a popular retirement community in central Florida, blending economic promises aimed at seniors with sharp attacks on transgender Americans and a renewed embrace of the disco hit “Y.M.C.A.”
The event, held before a largely retired audience, was billed as a push to eliminate taxes on Social Security…
It’s hard to find good news in the United States right now, and even harder to notice it when it happens somewhere else. But some of the American evangelical right’s most hatefully aggressive anti-LGBTQ+ campaigns abroad are beginning to come undone. As their influence seems to increase here at home, they are losing ground elsewhere. Botswana has officially removed its anti-sodomy law from…
Before a would-be assassin and the resulting security scare forced the cancellation of Saturday night’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner itself and dominated headlines for days afterward, the main conversation in Washington was not about attending the dinner. It was about Grindr.
On Friday night, as the city’s political operatives, journalists, lawmakers, business leaders, and…
As residents of a historically LGBTQ+-friendly part of Manhattan head to the polls this week, they will vote not just on who takes a vacant seat on the New York City Council, but also on how integral LGBTQ+ political representation is to advancing their community’s needs.
Tuesday marks a special election for Manhattan’s 3rd District in the City Council, encompassing lower Manhattan…
As Washington's political and media class descends on the capital for White House Correspondents’ Dinner weekend, the Human Rights Campaign has a message for some of them on Grindr: "F*** Around and Find Out."
The LGBTQ+ advocacy group launched a geofenced ad campaign Friday and Saturday around the Correspondents’ Dinner and a Grindr-hosted party in Georgetown, targeting users who open the…
At Baylor University, a private Baptist institution in Waco, Texas, where questions of faith and identity have long been tightly policed, students gathered Wednesday for something that, until recently, would have been difficult to imagine.
They called it “All Are Neighbors.”
The event, organized by a coalition of student groups, brought LGBTQ+-affirming Christian voices to campus in a…
For the first time in his presidency, Donald Trump is set to attend the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, an event meant to celebrate the First Amendment and the role of a free press. The symbolism would be notable under any circumstances. At this moment, it is something closer to jarring.
“Look at the results so far: PBS defunded. NPR defunded… CBS is under new leadership, and soon…
A whistleblower is accusing President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Ric Grenell, of presiding over a period of upheaval at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, describing an institution reshaped by political loyalty, donor access, and beset by cronyism.
Josef Palermo, the center’s former visual arts curator, told MS NOW that the dysfunction followed the 2025 takeover by Trump…
The Southern Poverty Law Center said Tuesday that it is under criminal investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice tied to its past use of paid informants. Civil rights advocates warn that it could have devastating implications for organizations that monitor extremism.
The Montgomery, Alabama-based group disclosed the probe itself, saying federal authorities are examining how it used…
The way players cheese games reveals how markets, networks, and other systems are exploited.
FBI Director Kash Patel filed a defamation lawsuit Monday against _The Atlantic_ and staff writer Sarah Fitzpatrick, demanding $250 million over an article alleging he had alarmed colleagues with episodes of excessive drinking and unexplained absences from the office.
The article, published Friday, drew on interviews with more than two dozen anonymous sources — current and former FBI…
As LGBTQ+ rights face sustained political attack across the country, the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund used its annual National Champagne Brunch in Washington, D.C., on Sunday to celebrate both rising queer leadership and the allies who have stood with them on difficult ground.
One of the afternoon’s most prominent honorees was Andy Beshear, Kentucky’s Democratic governor and a potential 2028…
As Ohio lawmakers advance a bill that could reshape where and whether drag can be performed, __The Advocate__ spoke this week with a performer who has spent more than a quarter century bringing the art form into local living rooms.
Darryl Bohannon, known as Ms. Demure, has built something both hyperlocal and quietly historic: a public-access show that has aired for decades, weaving together…
Peppermint, the trailblazing performer and transgender advocate, will serve as a grand marshal for the 2026 New York City Pride March, organizers announced Wednesday. The role puts the RuPaul’s Drag Race alum at the forefront of one of the world's largest LGBTQ+ demonstrations amid escalating political attacks.
Her selection comes as Pride events across the country happen amid mounting…