The next Presidential election will be Tuesday, November 5, 2024.  Media covering the campaign should note the candidates’ LGBTQ records and ask the candidates about them. The records include:

The Republican Candidates

Donald Trump, former U.S. President

Numerous post-presidency anti-trans statements including (in part):

• Vowed to crack down on “transgender insanity” and pledged to “revoke every Biden policy promoting the disfigurement of our youth” at the first rally of his 2024 presidential campaign
• Accused Democrats of “pushing the transgender cult” on children
• Proudly stated, “I was able to kill Roe v. Wade,” taking credit for the Supreme Court overturning the national right to an abortion in the Dobbs decision.
• Announced on social media, “On Day One [of a second term if he were reelected President], I will sign a new executive order to cut federal funding for any school pushing Critical Race Theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children…”
• Said, “We’re going to defeat the cult of gender ideology and reaffirm that God created two genders: men and women. We’re not going to allow men to play women’s sports.”
• Recommitted to his 2017 tweeted ban against transgender Americans serving in the military: “As commander-in-chief, I will get Biden’s radical left ideology out of our military.”

GLAAD documented more than 200 attacks against LGBTQ Americans during Donald Trump’s one-term presidency. During his presidency, Trump’s administration (in part):

• Allowed federal contractors to discriminate against LGBTQ workers via religious exemption
• Banned transgender people from serving in the military
• Issued a rule allowing doctors and physicians the opportunity to deny LGBTQ Americans health care services, including life-saving care based on religious beliefs
• Urged Supreme Court Associate Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito “take a legal baseball bat” to the court’s 2015 decision legalizing marriage equality
• Nominations to the U.S. Supreme Court include marriage equality opponents Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, and Brett Kavanaugh, opponent of abortion rights
• Allowed single-sex homeless shelters to turn away transgender people
• Erased ​​any mention of the LGBTQ community from White House, Department of State, and Department of Labor websites
• Rescinded Title IX protections for transgender students
• Appointed anti-LGBTQ Cabinet members including Secretary of Commerce Wilbur L. Ross, Jr.; Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos; Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; Secretary of Transportation Elaine L. Chao; Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue; and others
• Opposed workplace nondiscrimination protections for the LGBTQ community under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
• And dozens more incidents, statements, and actions

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GOP Campaigns Ended/Suspended

• Nikki Haley, former Ambassador to the United Nations, former Governor of South Carolina
• Ron DeSantis, Governor of Florida
• Vivek Ramaswamy, Entrepreneur
• Asa Hutchinson, former Governor of Arkansas
• Chris Christie, former Governor of New Jersey 
• Doug Burgum, Governor of North Dakota
• Mike Pence, former U.S. Vice President
• Tim Scott, U.S. Senator from South Carolina
• Francis Suarez, Mayor of Miami
• Larry Elder, Talk Show Host
• Perry Johnson, Businessman and Author

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The Democratic Candidates

Currently there are no plans to hold a Democratic primary contest to challenge incumbent President Joe Biden, although at least two Democrats have announced their run for President.

Joe Biden, U.S. President (incumbent)

• GLAAD is monitoring the Biden-Harris administration’s executive orders, legislative support, speeches and nominations that affect LGBTQ people and rights at the Biden Accountability Tracker. GLAAD has documented more than 200 policies, statements, and appointments to include and protect LGBTQ people in Biden’s administration’s first two years.

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Marianne Williamson, Author

• Presidential campaign site features pro-LGBTQ equality platform that includes support for the The Equality Act, the Equal Rights Amendment, LGBTQ equity in public accommodations, opposition to anti-LGBTQ discrimination in healthcare settings, and other positions. It reads in part, “In a Williamson administration, no person, no matter their sexual orientation or gender identity, will feel unsupported by their government. They will live with the absolute knowledge that they and their rights are both honored and protected by the highest authorities in the land.”
• Said that policies requiring children to get life-saving vaccines is “Orwellian” and “draconian” and that the issue is “no different than the abortion debate.”
• Said to a group of HIV positive disciples, “The AIDS virus is not more powerful than God,” according to a 1992 Los Angeles Times expose. The same year Williamson published the book A Return to Love in which she claimed that “cancer and AIDS and other physical illnesses are physical manifestations of a psychic scream… “We’re not punished for our sins, but by our sins. Sickness is not a sign of God’s judgment on us, but of our judgment on ourselves… sickness is an illusion and does not actually exist.”
• Founded Project Angel Food, which in 1989 started delivering meals to homebound people living with HIV. She says it was LGBTQ folks and people living with HIV who helped “establish my career.” She left in 1992.

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Third Party Candidates

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Attorney

• Made false claims that COVID-19 was “ethnically targeted” to attack certain ethnic groups while sparing Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people, a conspiracy theory that drew accusations of antisemitism and racism.
• Told Joe Rogan that Wi-Fi causes cancer and “leaky brain.”
• Falsely linked vaccines to various medical conditions, including the scientifically discredited belief that vaccines for children cause autism. Kennedy advertised misleading information about vaccine ingredients and circulated retracted studies linking vaccines to various medical conditions.
• At an anti-vaccine rally in Washington, D.C., compared vaccination records to the persecution of Jews by the Nazis. He said, “Even in Hitler Germany [sic], you could, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland. You could hide in an attic, like Anne Frank did… I visited, in 1962, East Germany with my father and met people who had climbed the wall and escaped, so it was possible. Many died, true, but it was possible.” In fact, Frank and some 6 million other Jews were murdered by Nazis. Frank and her family hid in an attic in the Netherlands, not Germany, before she was caught and was sent to a concentration camp, where she died.
• Falsely told Louisiana lawmakers in 2021 that the coronavirus vaccine was the “deadliest vaccine ever made.”
• His nonprofit organization Children’s Health Defense was removed from Facebook and Instagram for repeatedly violating guidelines by spreading medical misinformation.
• Claimed that chemicals in our water are causing kids to be transgender. He told anti-trans conspiracy theorist Jordan Peterson that kids are “swimming through a soup of toxic chemicals,” including atrazine, a common herbicide, and that, “A lot of the problems we see in kids, and particularly boys, it’s probably underappreciated that how much of that is coming from chemical exposures, including a lot of the sexual dysphoria that we’re seeing.” There is no evidence to indicate that the herbicide causes gender dysphoria in humans. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says, “Most people are not exposed to atrazine on a regular basis.”
• Suggested that poppers, not HIV, causes AIDS and that, “But for [Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony] Fauci, it was really important to call it a virus because that made it an infectious disease, and it allowed him to take control of it.”
• Falsely and repeatedly endorsed the idea that mass shootings have increased because of heightened use of antidepressants.
• Said that Republicans stole the 2004 presidential election.

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More candidate records will be added as candidates declare.

GLAAD urges the media to include LGBTQ people and issues in their coverage of the primary and general election campaign, and ask the candidates about their public statements, policies and proposals, including in debates.

For more resources and information on elections, visit GLAAD.org/vote.

About GLAAD: GLAAD rewrites the script for LGBTQ acceptance. As a dynamic media force, GLAAD tackles tough issues to shape the narrative and provoke dialogue that leads to cultural change. GLAAD protects all that has been accomplished and creates a world where everyone can live the life they love.