We have not forgotten how Donald Trump began his second presidency with a string of anti-trans executive orders in January 2025. The shock runs deep, and looking at the advances of the far right here at home, the stakes are all too clear about how much more serious the situation could become in Germany as well. Already during Trump’s second campaign, it was clear that the trans community and queer people more broadly were being treated as threats and as enemies.
The issue sat at the top of the political agenda, and one could only stand in astonishment at how far he reached into the mainstream. And the cheers he elicited from his supporters with the message that there are only the “biological” genders of man and woman were telling. Since then the horror headlines from the United States about trans- and queer-phobia have not stopped.
Trans people should no longer hold positions in the civil service. And the Trump administration has since acted on dismissals. Apparently, however, expertise remained a factor for a time, at least for some trans people to stay employed, even if covertly and not officially. Julia Curlee was and is one such case.
A Trans Woman on the National Security Council
Curlee had worked for the CIA since 2007. In 2013 she came out as a transgender woman. She is married to a woman. During Trump’s first term, this was not a problem, she says. On the contrary: she was responsible for briefing the U.S. Vice President Mike Pence. In 2023 she eventually became a member of the National Security Council. Her specialty as an analyst was the Middle East.
But then there was a post on X by the right-wing social-media activist Laura Loomer: “Exclusive: A transgender person, a relic from the Biden era, who hates President Trump, is still working in the intelligence office [of the National Security Council].” And with that, in March 2025 Curlee lost her senior position, albeit with the odd request from her boss: “Please still come to work on Monday, but be discreet.”
‘Suicide of a Superpower’
Curlee made her story public in August this year. She wrote about it in The Atlantic under the headline “The Wrong Kind of America. The Trump White House needed me — until the fact that I am trans became public,” which the LGBTQ+ magazine Advocate picked up, and in September The Guardian published a detailed report based on an interview. Now Berlin-based daily Tagesspiegel has also run an interview with Curlee under the title “This incompetence is unbelievable.” What has been happening in Washington, D.C. for nearly two years, she calls “the suicide of a superpower”—it is pure chaos. With regard to U.S. foreign policy, nothing has changed in that regard.
From fear of rocking the White House, experts in the agencies hold back legitimate warnings and pass on only what is politically opportunistic due to fears of personal consequences. Compliance is demanded. And that has meant that even the CIA has, at times, been asked to contribute to Trump’s conspiracy theories.
Banished from the Women’s Restroom
Curlee rightly notes: “For many years transgender people have served in the military, openly or in the shadows. No one had a problem with that. But the moment someone puts us to work for their own political agenda on this issue, they drop us.” With Trump’s second term, Curlee could no longer use the women’s restroom in her agency, and her passport with the gender marker “female” was taken away. Still, she remained: “Let them fire me if they want to get rid of me”—that’s her defiant motto.
Asked whether she had moral reservations about working for a transphobic president, Curlee replied: “Every day was hard. I don’t want to lie. I thought a lot about it. But back then I still felt it was my duty to serve and try to prevent the worst [..].”
A Distraction from Trump’s Failures
In May 2026, it was time: Curlee left the CIA. She received a new passport with the gender marker “male.” These days she has a new job: she works as a Public-Service Fellow at Lawfare, a nonprofit online platform with a focus on national security.
Two motives likely drove Curlee to go public: first, to highlight the precarious situation of trans people in the United States under an authoritarian government, and second, so that the public could see what she had achieved as a trans person: “When I think back to my childhood — what a huge difference it would have made to know there was someone like me who could live a wonderful life with a family and advise presidents.”
But for now, that appears to be the end of it, because someone like her is being targeted as an “internal enemy” to distract from Trump’s failures. That’s precisely why she spoke out — to expose the lie behind Trump’s assertions.
