As you walk down a hallway on the seventh floor of the Humphrey Building in Washington, D.C., a row of portraits shows people who have led the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. Only one portrait in that line is of a transgender person: Adm. Rachel L. Levine, who served four years as the Biden administration’s assistant secretary for health. Levine was the first openly transgender person to be confirmed by the Senate; her portrait has hung there since shortly after her 2021 confirmation. The position is a four-star admiral role overseeing the Commissioned Corps.
HHS recently altered Levine’s official portrait, a department spokesperson confirmed to NPR. A digital photo of the framed portrait obtained by NPR shows that a previous name is now typed below the picture, placed under the frame’s glass.
“During the federal shutdown, the current leadership of the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health changed Admiral Levine’s photo to remove her current legal name and use a prior name,” said Adrian Shanker, Levine’s spokesperson and a former deputy assistant secretary for health policy in the Biden administration. He described the change as an act “of bigotry against her.”
Levine told NPR she was honored to serve as assistant secretary for health and declined to comment further on what she called a “petty action.”
When NPR asked who made the change and why, HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon responded: “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.”
The current assistant secretary for health is Adm. Brian Christine, a urologist from Alabama who was confirmed by the Senate in October.
An HHS staff member who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation called the name change “disrespectful,” saying it exemplifies “the erasure of transgender individuals by this administration.”
During the 2024 campaign, President Trump and other Republicans spent millions on ads opposing transgender rights, some of which featured Levine’s image. Since returning to office, Trump has moved to curtail the rights of transgender and intersex people across federal agencies, including at the Departments of Health, Justice and Education. At the Pentagon, transgender service members were forced out without benefits. At the State Department, prior passport policies were reversed. The president has also described transgender people as a danger to society.
Shanker called the alteration of Levine’s portrait unprecedented. He praised her public health work on COVID-19, syphilis, HIV/AIDS and the opioid crisis, and said current HHS leaders should focus on pressing public health issues rather than taking vindictive actions.