NYU Langone // Photos by Alexa B Wilkinson
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New York City Pride marshals are going for a retro look this year. The picket lines, the neon pink-and-green signs in the style of ACT UP, the confrontations with municipal, medical, and movement leaders—it’s evocative of Pride protests past, and provocative as Trumpian threats put institutional backbones to the test in the city widely regarded as the birthplace of the LGBTQ liberation movement as we know it today.
At the behest of the Trump regime, hospitals across the city, state, and country have been pausing or sunsetting back gender-affirming care for trans people—including, in some cases, legal adults. This is even true in Democratic strongholds like NYC, where, despite a mayor who ran a campaign on preserving trans health care rights, a governor who signed a trans “safe haven” bill package years ago, and a state Attorney General who said in no uncertain terms that dismantling trans youth’s access to care is against the law, major hospital systems are capitulating to threats of federal funding cuts and litigation by rolling back care.
So, ahead of the annual Pride Parade this year, many activists in the trans community were understandably put off to see the names and logos of those very same health care systems on the bill. The Gender Liberation Movement (GLM) decided to do something about it.
The direct action and advocacy group published an open letter earlier this week with 20 current and former parade marshals among the signatories, as well as other LGBTQ leaders, families of trans kids, and national organizations such as the Campaign for Southern Equality and the Genders & Sexualities Alliance Network. Then, on Wednesday, GLM rallied nearly 100 people across three hospitals to picket and protest restrictions on care.
“If one group of people’s healthcare can be targeted in this way, it opens the door for any group of people’s healthcare to be cut off due to federal government attacks,” Eliel Cruz, co-founder of Gender Liberation Movement, said after the picket.
Meanwhile, a flurry of headlines highlighted the big names that lent their support to GLM’s open letter. Heritage of Pride, the non-profit that produces the yearly parade, selects the marshals each year. Signatories from this year’s marshal cohort include Saturday Night Live alumni Bowen Yang, activist Miss Peppermint of RuPaul’s Drag Race fame, Pose actress Dominique Jackson, and Gays Against Guns president Jay Walker.
“While many institutions have courageously defended trans youth and continued providing medically necessary care despite political pressure, several New York City hospital systems, including NYU Langone, Mt. Sinai, and New York Presbyterian, have instead chosen to preemptively end gender-affirming care for young people, capitulating to the attacks by the Trump Administration,” the letter reads. (Presbyterian has not explicitly announced it halted care, but it did strip any references to youth gender care from its website, and continues to avoid questions as to the status of its GAC programs).
“We call on NYC Pride to prohibit any hospital system that has ended, restricted, or suspended gender-affirming care for transgender youth from marching in the 2026 NYC Pride March and festival, and any future prides, unless and until they restore that care and publicly commit to protecting trans youth and their families,” GLM’s letter continues. “While we understand that not everyone who marches with the hospitals supports these decisions, as institutions, they must be held accountable.”
Indeed, while these attacks have been happening across the country, many institutions have found ways to fight back; otherwise, some legal and elected officials have made bold moves to hold them to it. In May, Colorado’s top court ordered Children’s Hospital Colorado to resume suspended medical treatments for transgender patients under 18. A month before that, Minnesota Children’s lifted its suspension of gender-affirming pediatric care in the wake of a federal court ruling to protect such care. And Rady Children’s in San Diego was compelled to restore care after the state of California successfully argued Rady’s actions violated a 2024 merger agreement with another health care system.
“You can’t march in a Pride parade while you are damaging the lives of members of our community,” said 2026 marshal Jay Walker, who also co-founded the Heritage of Pride’s more progressive and grassroots counterpart, the Queer Liberation March.
“If they had any sense of responsibility or honor, the hospitals would withdraw from marching themselves,” he told Erin in the Morning.
At the same time, Walker and other GLM signatories acknowledged that the boots on the ground during the parade were likely not the same as the higher-ups deciding to withhold care.
“It’s the gay nurses and trans med techs—the people who have to work in that system,” said Alaina Daniels, executive director of Trans Formative Schools, an educational and advocacy non-profit serving gender diverse children and teens.
For context: Almost any community organization can pay a fee to secure a spot in the parade. NYC Pride’s lax approach to groups granted a contingent has drawn ire in the past, from queer cop groups to major banks and corporations.
Daniels further told Erin in the Morning that Trumpian threats—from funding freezes, to lawsuits, to retaliatory subpoenas—amounted to a multi-billion dollar gun “aimed at the heads of hospitals.”
Nonetheless, Daniels called on fellow activists and city officials to be brave. “We signed the letter because we wanted to support GLM and push local organizations—whether it’s the school board we fought for months, Mamdani not funding gender-affirming care for kids, or the hospitals cancelling care,” she said. (Mayor Zohran Mamdani recently came under fire over plans to open a publicly-funded gender-affirming care clinic in Queens—the first of its kind in the country, if it comes to fruition. It’s a meaningful “first step,” as Mamdani put it, but it drew backlash for only catering to those 19 and above. In other words, minors and some legal adults, at age 18, will be excluded. It’s the same age cut-off pushed by the Trump regime in early anti-trans executive orders.
In a statement Thursday afternoon, in response to *Erin in the Morning’*s queries about the pickets and open letter, NYC Pride said it will be “connecting local advocates with the leadership of these institutions to continue the dialogue.”
“NYC Pride works with over 100 partners each year, representing a wide range of communities, backgrounds and industries,” the organization said. “We do not stand behind every decision every partner of ours makes, but we remain committed to creating safe spaces for the LGBTQIA+ community: to gather, march, celebrate and be seen.”
In response, the Gender Liberation Movement, on its part, is continuing to push back. “We stand firm, and with the parents of trans kids, in our belief that these hospitals should not be allowed to march and receive pro-LGBTQ brandwashing until they restore care,” Cruz told Erin in the Morning.
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