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Washington is about to host a global festival for the LGBTQ community and its allies—all while President Donald Trump is in the White House overseeing a government that is wholly hostile to the visitors’ goals.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]WorldPride, which last came to the United States in 2019 and drew 5 million visitors to New York, is expected to bring as many as 3 million people to the capital region starting Saturday and going through June 8, with more general Pride Month events continuing beyond that. But the events are opening under the cloud of Trumpism that is waging a campaign against LGBTQ protections, a Congress where lawmakers are policing their own bathrooms against transgender individuals and misgendering colleagues, and a Supreme Court that recently held that the Pentagon could ban some service members based on their gender identities.
Recent WorldPrides in cities like Sydney, Copenhagen, and Madrid were awash in corporate logos. Now that it’s D.C.’s turn, multiple corporate sponsors—including Booz Allen Hamilton, Deloitte, and Comcast—pulled out for fear of triggering the White House’s retaliation.
For those outside of the U.S., attending this year’s WorldPride requires unusual considerations. Several countries—Denmark, Germany, and Ireland among them—have issued travel advisories warning trans and non-binary individuals that a U.S. jaunt might be undertaken at their own risk. Egale Canada—think the Human Rights Campaign of our neighbors to the north—are sitting out the entire affair. And the African Human Rights Coalition is boycotting.
Even organizers with DC WorldPride, the umbrella group coordinating dozens of organizations like the long-standing local Capital Pride Alliance, are warning that they cannot guarantee a smooth run of show. In a first, the two-day street fair downtown will be fenced in with security checkpoints, reflecting not just the attention around this marquee event but also the troubling reality that anti-LGBTQ incidents are rising around the country. And never far from mind at these events is the memory of the 2016 Pulse shooting that left 49 dead and 53 wounded at an Orlando hub of LGBTQ nightlife.
Put in the plainest terms possible, Washington, D.C. under Donald Trump is not providing the warmest of welcomes for an event that cities around the world compete to land. Attendance is expected to sag below original expectations, which may, in fact, be viewed as a win for a regime that is constantly stoking its base with culture-war rot that exploits division for political gain. Even so, organizers still expect an influx of $787 million in Pride spending.
Taking part in any Pride is inherently a political act, but that’s especially true in Washington, which has the largest concentration of LGBTQ individuals in the country. Lobbyists march in the parade which ends with the backdrop of the U.S. Capitol, the signage always with a whiff of campaigns. The nation’s capital is always ripe with virtue signaling—even holiday celebrations in December can’t escape that trend.
But since Trump returned to power, things have been a little less surefooted. In his first hours back in office, Trump ended federal recognition of transgender or non-binary identities. The White House says it will not issue a proclamation that June is Pride Month or host any events. Its top spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, used her first on-camera meeting with her press corps to decry “transgenderism and wokeness.” The Kennedy Center, which Trump took over and appointed his loyalists to handle programming, canceled all of its contracts for Pride events. (These were in addition to a joint Gay Men’s Chorus-National Symphony Orchestra program this month that got canned at the Kennedy Center.)
Federal agencies are scrubbing any mention of affinity events, following an initial burst of purges in January of panels or advisory groups pushing anything linked to identities. And the ongoing hollowing-out of the federal workforce only stands to cull the number of LGBTQ folks at the table.
Read more: The Fight for Same-Sex Marriage Isn’t Over. Far From It.
The ripple effects have spread far beyond Washington, as cities see Pride funding dry up as corporate America fears retribution or consumer backlash for supporting anything that might not pass Trump’s DEI smell test. In one national survey, roughly two in five corporate execs said they were at least scaling back their sponsorship of Pride events.
So against this backdrop, millions of people from all corners of the globe are about to arrive in a D.C. with a very different vibe than organizers had been expecting when they awarded the city a coveted WorldPride slot in 2022. Shakira gets things started with a welcome concert at Nationals Park on May 31. A glitzy two-day music festival is planned for RFK Stadium’s grounds with the likes of Jennifer Lopez and Troy Sivan and starts June 6. The parade—usually hours long in the humid Washington sun—is slated to launch on June 7. A free concert is scheduled for Pennsylvania Avenue with guests like Cynthia Erivo that evening. Doechii will headline a closing concert there the evening after.
But talk to D.C.’s political pros who work in this space and there already is a sense of scale back. Delegations are smaller. Sidebar conferences are being reduced. Receptions are being canceled. Heck, even fear of long lines at bars and clubs have been downgraded from panic to the typical annoyance.
What typically is a gathering rooted in collective pride has now taken on a timbre of resistance. A June 8 march to and rally at the Lincoln Memorial is expected to be nakedly political. Organizers have started putting yard signs through the Gayborhood with rainbow “Welcome” greetings, but they do not cancel the clear anxiety laced throughout this build-up. For the millions of visitors—and countless others who have decided otherwise—the mere threat poised by Trumpism is enough to sour WorldPride before it even starts.
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