Thank goodness Pam Bondi’s abhorrent tenure as AG is over

To say that I’ve been looking forward to writing a column about Pam Bondi being fired would be an understatement. God, was she atrocious, and in so many ways that I’d have to write this column as part of a series. She did for law what a wrecking ball did to the East Wing of the White House.

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Donald Trump finally fired her as Attorney General. Her tenure was filled with catastrophe from the bungling of the Epstein files - correction, hiding, shielding, obfuscating Trump’s name in the Epstein files - to the criminal politicization of the Department of Justice, and her failed attempt to act as Trump’s personal retribution attorney.

Remember, former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz was originally nominated by Trump to be AG. Can you imagine Gaetz, Pete Hegseth, Kash Patel, and Markwayne Mullin out for a night on the town in D.C.? Talk about hiding the key to the liquor “cabinet,” but I digress.

Related: Top Oversight Democrat says fired AG Pam Bondi ‘must answer’ for Epstein files

Many were relieved that Trump chose Bondi because she had prior AG experience, but not those of us who knew her pathetic record on LGBTQ+ issues while she was Florida’s Attorney General.

As Florida’s AG from 2011 to 2019, Bondi ferociously fought marriage equality. She filed multiple briefs and appeals defending Florida’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. When federal courts kept ruling the ban unconstitutional, she kept appealing. .

Her office argued in a 2014 court filing that recognizing same-sex marriages from other states would impose “significant public harm” on Florida. She promised to vigorously defend Florida’s ban on gay adoption. She spent eight years using Florida’s top law enforcement office as a weapon against LGBTQ+ relationships, our families, and our kids.

You could say that Pam Bondi was Florida’s 21st-century Anita Bryant. It’s hard to see any gray area between these two homophobic and transphobic zealots.

Related: For Anita Bryant, there will be no orange juice in hell

So, she came in as Trump’s AG with a background of loathing queer people, which almost certainly endeared her to Donald Trump.

Once confirmed as his AG, she didn’t waste any time. She dismantled the Civil Rights Division. She gutted the Community Relations Service, which is the DOJ’s peacebuilding unit - mandated under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act - reducing it to a single employee, rendering it unable to perform its legally required functions.

As an aside, I think you could stop right there with how abominable her actions have been to our community. Imagine, the agency named in part to honor a gay man beaten to death for who he was, coldheartedly and viciously eliminated, nary a thought.

But then again, her most sustained and even more vicious assault was against the transgender community. In April 2025, she issued a memo titled “Preventing the Mutilation of American Children,” directing DOJ investigators to treat gender-affirming surgery as female genital mutilation and putting medical practitioners, hospitals, and clinics on notice that they faced federal prosecution for providing care.

She abjectly and completely ignored the recommendations of the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Psychiatric Association, who all identified gender-affirming care as medically necessary.

She sent more than 20 federal subpoenas to doctors and clinics, demanding not just records but patient names, Social Security numbers, and diagnoses. She ordered the DOJ’s Fraud Section to pursue False Claims Act investigations and encouraged whistleblowers to report providers.

Without mincing any words, she tried to turn trans kids and their doctors into federal criminals.

It got worse. In December 2025, Bondi reportedly instructed the FBI to identify and target transgender activists, classifying organizations that support gender-affirming care as domestic terrorist groups.

She sent threatening letters to officials in California, Maine, and Minnesota, warning of legal action over policies allowing transgender athletes to compete consistent with their gender identity.

She directed the DOJ to investigate schools for teaching LGBTQ+-inclusive curriculum, warning that any school burdening parents’ religious objections would face “scrutiny and action from the Department of Justice.”

There’s more, so much more, but the point is that besides acting like Trump’s personal attorney, she also acted like the pseudo general counsel for the virulent anti-LGBTQ+ Family Research Council

Regardless, Trump ate her for lunch, flirting with her in a Cabinet meeting and bossing her around on Truth Social. His every wish was her command, and she failed miserably on all fronts, except one - and that is doing her best to erase and erode the strides made by years of LGBTQ+ hard work and sacrifice.

So, if Trump was impressed by one thing, it was probably her zeal for queer people. And that’s why, though I looked forward to writing about her ultimate demise, I also know that the old saying, if you cut off one head, two will grow back, applies here.

Because the name already circulating as Bondi’s replacement won’t provide any comfort or improvement. Lee Zeldin, Trump’s EPA chief and former Long Island congressman, is reportedly being floated for the AG job. You can be certain that Zeldin will carry out Bondi’s queer hate agenda if Trump tells him to.

Zeldin voted against the Equality Act twice, co-sponsored the First Amendment Defense Act, which would have given federal cover to anyone who wanted to discriminate against same-sex couples, and voted against the Global Respect Act that would have sanctioned foreign governments for brutalizing LGBTQ+ people.

And during his 2022 New York gubernatorial run, he suggested importing Florida’s Don’t Say Gay law to New York.

Now, to his credit, he was one of 47 House Republicans who voted for the Respect for Marriage Act in 2022. But one decent vote in a decade of opposition to LGBTQ+ civil rights isn’t a reason to gloat.

If Trump installs him at the DOJ and demands he continue the war on queer America, Zeldin will run, not walk.

In the end, Bondi traded everything, her record, her credibility, whatever was left of her integrity, for the approval of Trump, who trashed her as she trashed us.

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