The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has altered the official portrait of former Adm. Rachel Levine, the Biden administration’s transgender federal health official, replacing Levine’s current name with his original birth name. It is the right thing to do.
Levine is a biological male who identifies as a transgender female. The former Biden official previously stated that, for decades, he lived with the distress of gender dysphoria while building a career and raising a family. Once his children were older and more independent, Levine felt he “could finally live authentically.” He eventually began transitioning in his early 50s.
Levine’s portrait, which hangs in a seventh-floor corridor of the Hubert H. Humphrey Building alongside those of previous leaders of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, originally read “Adm. Rachel L. Levine.” However, sometime recently — presumably during the recent government shutdown that furloughed non-essential employees — HHS staff removed the frame’s glass, swapped the printed nameplate for one reading “Richard L. Levine,” the former Biden official’s “deadname,” and resealed it.
HHS changed Richard Levine’s name back to Richard after the Biden admin referred to him as “Rachel.” This is a dude! If the truth hurts, seek help. According to LGBTQ terminology, a deadname is the birth name or former legal name that a transgender, non-binary, or gender-nonconforming person used before they transitioned and adopted a new name. Adrian Shanker, another former Biden administration health official, upheld that the change occurred during the government shutdown this fall.
“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,” Shanker said, describing the change as “small acts of pettiness and bigotry.” NPR first reported the change on December 5th after receiving a photograph from an “anonymous HHS employee” who described the alteration as “disrespectful.”
Levine, a pediatrician, served as HHS Assistant Secretary for Health from March 2021 until the end of the Biden administration. He played a prominent role in the disastrous federal COVID-19 response under Biden and strongly supported access to hormone blockers and sex change operations, describing both as being “medically necessary and life-saving.”