Trump and his goons are wrong about almost everything, but not about Admiral Levine.

As you walk down a particular hallway on the seventh floor of the Humphrey Building in Washington, D.C., you’ll find a line of photographic portraits of all the people from years past who have led the Public Health Corps at the federal Department of Health and Human Services.

Only one of those portraits is of a transgender person: Adm. Rachel Levine, who served for four years as President Biden’s assistant secretary for health. She was the first transgender person to win Senate confirmation, and her portrait has been displayed in the hallway since soon after she was confirmed in 2021. 

They say “the first transgender person” as one might say “the first working class person” or “the first neglected orphan” – as if this Levine fella were some kind of persecuted minority.

Levine’s official portrait was recently altered, a spokesperson for HHS confirmed to NPR. A digital photograph of the portrait in the hallway obtained by NPR shows that Levine’s previous name is now typed below the portrait, under the glass of the frame.

“During the federal shutdown, the current leadership of the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health changed Admiral Levine’s photo to remove her current legal name and use a prior name,” says Adrian Shanker, former deputy assistant secretary for health policy in the Biden administration who worked with Levine and is now her spokesperson. He called the move an act “of bigotry against her.”

Hey, you know what? Pretending that men are women is an act of bigotry against women. Pretending that a man is the first woman to [whatever] is a rank insult.

An HHS staff member who asked not be identified for fear of professional retribution called the change “disrespectful” and added that it exemplifies “the erasure of transgender individuals by this administration.”

But trans ideology is a massive erasure of women. Not just one greedy man, but all women.

Since taking office, Trump has moved aggressively to curtail the rights of transgender and intersex people through many federal agencies, including the Departments of Health, Justice, Education, and others.

Yes but what rights? There is no “right” to pretend to be the opposite sex, let alone a right to force everyone else to agree that pretender really is the opposite sex.