Even before Washington was formally chosen as this year’s host city for one of the largest L.G.B.T.Q. pride events in the world, “the election was the biggest question,” said Ryan Bos, the executive director of Capital Pride Alliance.
At the time, the 2024 election was still two years away, but international Pride groups were nervously asking: What would it be like to hold the event, WorldPride, in the U.S. capital if there were an administration in the White House that sought to limit the rights of L.G.B.T.Q. communities?
In many ways, WorldPride has unfolded as the global celebration it is meant to be. D.C. is festooned with rainbow flags, and scores of music performances, art shows, sports events, conferences and house parties have been taking place across the city, with concerts and a music festival this weekend as well as a big parade scheduled on Saturday and a rally and march on Sunday.
But since he returned to the White House, President Trump has loomed over it all.
He issued executive orders that bar transgender people from serving in the military and that restrict gender identities on travel documents. Private companies scaled back or shut down diversity programs. State lawmakers introduced and, in some places, passed resolutions calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the ruling allowing same-sex marriage, reflecting the views of a growing majority of Republicans.
Just this week, Mr. Trump’s secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, ordered the Navy to review the 2021 decision to name a ship after Harvey Milk, a Navy veteran and champion of gay rights.
“I knew that there was going to be a shift,” said Ashley Smith, the president of the board of Capital Pride Alliance. “I don’t think most of us probably thought it was going to happen so quickly, and that it would appear to be OK with so many people.”
President Trump has not spoken publicly in recent days about the Pride events unfolding in Washington. Asked about the president’s position on World Pride, Harrison Fields, a spokesman for the White House, said that President Trump was “fostering a sense of national pride that should be celebrated daily” and that he was “honored to serve all Americans.”
Some longtime corporate sponsors of D.C. Pride steered clear this year, as companies have from Pride events nationwide. Booz Allen Hamilton, a leading contractor for the federal government, pulled its financial support for the D.C. event, saying in a statement at the time that the decision did “not reflect any pullback of support to this community.” Some other large companies, simply did not renew past funding commitments.
Mr. Bos said that corporate fund-raising for WorldPride reached about half of the goal organizers had set. Some of the companies that continued to fund the festival, he said, asked that their logos not be prominently displayed.
The international momentum to show up for WorldPride began to wobble almost immediately after the inauguration. Some international L.G.B.T.Q. groups said they would not attend, while individual travelers grew concerned about possible trouble entering or leaving the United States. Mr. Smith said he had also heard more worry than in the past from people locally, who fear repercussions at their jobs if they are seen at Pride events.
Early estimates that as many as three million visitors would come to D.C. for WorldPride began looking out of reach as the event approached. While an imperfect measurement of attendance, hotel bookings for this weekend are about 4 percent below the same weekend last year.
“We’re disappointed the numbers aren’t where we anticipated they would be,” said Elliott Ferguson, the president of Destination DC, the city’s marketing organization. Still, he emphasized that the actual attendance numbers would not be known until after WorldPride ends on June 8.
Organizers have adjusted. They raised more money than initially planned from individual donors; moved events from the Kennedy Center — which Mr. Trump has taken over, promising “NO MORE DRAG SHOWS” — to other local venues; and supported a “March For All” initiative that encourages people to march in the name of others who cannot participate.
Even changes that officials said were made for reasons of safety and order have been freighted with symbolism. An outcry erupted on Monday when the National Park Service, with the backing of the D.C. police chief, announced a plan to fence off Dupont Circle Park an in an effort to prevent vandalism and disorderly behavior that have occurred during Pride events in past years. Some residents and local politicians pushed back, emphasizing that the park is in the heart of the city’s gay community. But the National Park Service, which administers the site, is fencing off the park for the weekend anyway.
While the developments of the past four months have presented one challenge after another, some L.G.B.T.Q. people said that Pride this year was in some ways returning to its roots: as a gathering in defiance of official hostility.
“Pride started as a protest,” said Zach Renovátes, a co-owner of Bunker, an L.G.B.T.Q. night club in D.C.
Pride marches arose out of the riots after the police raided the Stonewall Inn in New York City in June 1969. In the decades since, the gay rights movement had come so far that some began to question the necessity of Pride celebrations, Mr. Bos said. “There were people actually saying, ‘We’ve won — what’s the need?’” he said.
But things changed quickly.
The hasty retreat of companies that had long expressed support for gay rights suggested to some that perhaps the support of mainstream corporate America never ran that deep.
“We should never have just turned over the market share of the L.G.B.T.Q. community to a bunch of people that really don’t care about us and are willing to sell us out for a higher stock price,” said Pia Carusone, a political media consultant and the owner of D.C.-based Republic Restoratives, which calls itself “the most outspoken queer-owned distillery in America.”
Others said that the sense of safety or anything close to widespread acceptance was always more limited than many had perhaps wanted to believe.
In the run-up to Election Day, Republicans spent tens of millions of dollars on ads attacking Democrats on transgender issues. So many restrictions on transgender people have been enacted at the state level that conservative organizations say they are running out of states to lobby.
“Make no error: Trans and nonbinary people, we’ve been on the menu for the last 15 years,” said Marissa Miller, a transgender advocate in Chicago who in 2019 helped organize and lead the first National Trans Visibility March.
Now, she said, people are starting to understand that everyone in L.G.B.T.Q. communities is vulnerable — transgender, gay, lesbian, Black, brown or white.
She was discussing plans for this year’s Pride events with a friend, Dr. Elijah Nicholas, a trans man and a retired U.S. Air Force officer. He insisted that times were different now and that a more deliberate approach was needed. On Thursday he hosted a summit on trans policy and safety, and on Sunday he will be speaking at a trans rally before the march.
There was some anxiety about the safety of such a rally this year, to the point where some wondered if it should happen at all. But Dr. Nicholas insisted that it go forward, albeit with extensive security planning. This instinct comes from his military experience, Dr. Nicholas said, adding that this background is all too relevant with his community increasingly under threat.
“It’s never going to be business as usual again,” he said. “It is what it is. Now: How do we move from here with what we have so we can get out of this?”
Adam Bednar contributed reporting.
Campbell Robertson reports for The Times on Delaware, the District of Columbia, Kentucky, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia.
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