LGBTQ Federal Workers Brace for a McCarthyist Purge

[Jessica_Rose]

LGBTQ Federal Workers Brace for a McCarthyist Purge

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/lgbtq-federal-workers-brace-for-a-mccarthyist-purge/ar-AA1zHxRt?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=d9e91eef742c4674ab4c8759d080f566&ei=5

Story by Madison Pauly, Mother Jones (24 Feb 2025)

The new administration's anti-LGBTQ hostility doesn't stop at the transgender community. On his second day in office, Trump rescinded a nearly 60-year-old order prohibiting discrimination by federal contractors. His appointees at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission have halted that agency's investigations of anti-LGBTQ discrimination. Last week, the Department of Homeland Security said it will now allow its agents to conduct surveillance based solely on a target's gender identity or sexual orientation.

In the US Department of Agriculture, multiple people have been asked to report the names of LGBTQ employee resource group leaders to higher-ranking officials, according to interviews with workers and a document reviewed by Mother Jones.

"They're not coming out and saying, 'We want to fire the queers,'". "They're not asking people, 'Are you gay? Are you lesbian?' They're asking, 'Who is participating in DEI?' But in the end it's going to have the same effect."

Transgender workers, in particular, tell Mother Jones they're afraid of being fired every day simply for being who they are. "I don't feel safe in my job," says a trans woman who has spent more than a decade working as a civilian in the Department of Defense. Trump has already issued an executive order declaring her trans counterparts in the military unfit to serve, claiming that being trans "conflicts with a soldier's commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle."

"It's a persecution," the DOD employee says.