This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox. 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. 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.)
