NPR reports that the U.S. Public Health Service has altered the official portrait of Admiral Rachel Levine who served for four years as deputy assistant secretary for health policy in the Biden administration. Her portrait is one in the photo display of individuals who have led the Public Health Corps at the Department of Health and Human Services. Levine was the first transgender person to serve in a position that required Senate confirmation. According to NPR, during the recent federal government shut down, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health removed Levine's legal name (under which she served in office) from her portrait and substituted her prior name. In response to an NPR inquiry, HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon wrote:
Our priority is ensuring that the information presented internally and externally by HHS reflects gold standard science. We remain committed to reversing harmful policies enacted by Levine and ensuring that biological reality guides our approach to public health.
As previously reported, President Trump on his first day in office issued an Executive Order providing in part:
It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality....
Agencies shall remove all statements, policies, regulations, forms, communications, or other internal and external messages that promote or otherwise inculcate gender ideology, and shall cease issuing such statements, policies, regulations, forms, communications or other messages....
[Thanks to Scott Mange for the lead.]
[CORRECTION: A prior version of this post inaccurately referred to an archived version of the HHS website as its current version.]