Fired From the White House for Being Trans - The Atlantic

At the CIA, they’d started an office pool on when I’d be fired.<br>President Trump would be sworn in for his second term at noon; the smart money had me gone by 12:15. But the smart money hadn’t counted on Trump’s first pick to run intelligence for the National Security Council being shredded by an online mob on suspicion of disloyalty. There wasn’t yet anyone in place to fire me.<br>Explore the Special Preview: October 2026 Issue<br>Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.

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After taking the oath, Trump spoke at the Capitol. “As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders: male and female.”<br>“Did he … ?” an NSA colleague asked. She glanced at me and looked away.<br>“Yeah,” I muttered. The good news: I was one of those two genders. The bad news: The administration would have views as to which one.<br>I gripped my badge. I could take it off, leave the White House complex, walk out the north gate, and never look back. I imagined the story they would tell: See? Even she knew she didn’t belong.<br>I didn’t move. I’d wanted this badge since I was a kid. I’d chosen to be here.<br>“I know you all heard what the president said,” I told my team after Trump’s speech. “There’s a rumor of an executive order on bathrooms. If anyone asks, I’m using the coffee shops across the street.”<br>My whole team spoke up: Julia, we’ve got your back.<br>“Me being trans is not a secret,” I reminded them. “Promise me: Nobody covers for me.”<br>Back in my office, I closed the door. I cried quickly, efficiently, no sound—­the way you do when the walls have ears, and everyone thinks you’re fearless.<br>Joe Biden’s political appointees had left the week before, and I was now the senior intelligence official in the White House. For the incoming Trump administration, the trans woman would man the gates.<br>For as long as I can remember, I’ve carried two dreams. The first came true in 2007, when I raised my hand, standing on the agency’s marble seal, and became a CIA officer. The second dream, I didn’t dare speak aloud; it came from ­an unexplainable conviction that I should have been born a woman. The longing, like homesickness, grew into an unbearable darkness.<br>On a sweltering June morning in 2013, I sat in the CIA parking lot, hands clamped on the wheel, preparing myself to live out my second dream. Terrified of my first day at work as Julia, I’d chosen a blue button-down and pants, hoping no one would notice I’d changed genders. At the turnstile, the guard smiled. “Morning, ma’am,” he said, and the badge reader flashed green. To use the lexicon of my trade, the after-action review would have read: “Nothing significant to report.”<br>In the years ahead—­traveling to 35 countries, briefing former President George W. Bush, becoming a mom—­being trans would sometimes seem like the most ordinary part of my life. But as much as I wanted to disappear into normal womanhood and the work, I knew there were others who needed to see that a life like mine was possible. So, in 2017, I wrote in these pages under the pseudonym Jenny Hall about how being openly trans at the CIA made me a better officer. CIA recruiters used the essay on college campuses, and new officers—­not realizing they were talking with the author—told me that it had inspired them to apply.<br>Read: Coming out as transgender made me a more effective CIA officer<br>Soon after the essay ran, a call went out for volunteers to join the President’s Daily Brief staff and serve the new Trump administration. Working the PDB meant staying up all night to distill the most sensitive intelligence we possessed into a book that the president and our senior leaders read at dawn. It was one of the CIA’s most coveted assignments—a proving ground for our best analysts.<br>But the new administration was led by a president who had praised Vladimir Putin and compared the intelligence community to the Nazis. Almost nobody volunteered. I did.<br>Growing up in Hawaii, I dreamed of seeing the world. My grandfather gave me a simple promise: “Work hard, don’t complain; the country will take care of you. We came to America for small things. No pogroms. No leaky roof. Paradise was a bonus.”<br>Service before politics. Country before self.<br>I clung to this promise as I became a man, a husband, a father, a CIA officer, a wife, a mother.<br>For two years I served the Trump White House, arriving at work around midnight, six days a week, roaming the West Wing before dawn. My wife learned to live with the silence at the dinner table.<br>Sometimes I filled in on the road—­summers in Bedminster, winters in Palm Beach. On my first trip, I boarded at Joint Base Andrews and a card waited at my seat: Ms. Curlee, Welcome Aboard Air Force One.<br>Grateful for the welcome, I was less grateful to whoever had sat me in the middle of the White House press pool. So I stuffed my face with the best waffles of my life and kept small...