BROOKLYN, N.Y. — Erika Qwerk was introduced to her roaring crowd of fans by an explosion of Americana.
Screens lit up with fireworks, American flags, Fox News clips and close-up footage of Qwerk’s iconic and piercing blue stare. An announcement came over the loudspeakers as the words flashed on screen:
“Cis-gender and heterosexual ladies and gentlemen ONLY. Are you ready … TO GRIEVE?”
Qwerk took the stage in a glittering red suit jacket, waving a lighter and squeezing a bottle of fake tears into her eyes, as the viral AI-slop song “We Are Charlie Kirk” swelled to its dramatic chorus.
All the pomp and circumstance was an outlandish — if at times accurate — lampoon of the flashy Turning Point USA events held in the aftermath of Kirk’s death, at which Qwerk’s real-life counterpart, Erika Kirk, was introduced by a similarly over-the-top display of sequins and pyrotechnics. Kirk’s appearances became a cultural flash point of their own, with memes and satirical videos flooding the internet, including a series of video performances that made Erika Qwerk go viral.
“I was getting all of this attention and I was like, well, what good can come of this? What would Erika do?” said West Coast drag queen Lauren Banall, who plays Erika Qwerk, in an interview with MS NOW. “She would monetize this opportunity.”
But while Turning Point’s events were a sounding board for hateful GOP rhetoric aimed at LGBTQ and immigrant communities (at one, Vice President JD Vance quipped onstage that Democrats were “transing their kids” and that Minnesota state Sen. Omar Fateh was running for “mayor of Mogadishu … I mean Minneapolis”), this drag event, billed as Turning Point U.S. GAY, was a celebration of drag and queer culture, and a rebuke of the Trump administration, which has spent the past 10 years vilifying this community.
“It’s just gotten to a point of unbelievable audacity,” Banall said. “The best way I can personally fight back is to meet that audacity and hold a mirror up to it.”
To Banall, Turning Point U.S. GAY is a protest of sorts, featuring a slew of parodied right-wing characters in Trump’s orbit, including Melania Trump, played by Banall’s co-host Kiki Ball-Change. Onstage, Ball-Change wore an all-black getup and “Babadook”-esque hat as she lipsynced the very real words of the first lady, who in 2018 scoffed at anti-ICE protests and the woes of separated immigrant families in leaked audio:
“I’m working on Christmas and planning for the Christmas and they said, ‘oh, what about the children that they were separated?’ Give me a f—ing break.”
Many of the performances were raunchy affairs aimed at adults, including a drag JD Vance getting intimate with sentient couches, and a drag Donald Trump, clad in a bright orange bodysuit, dancing suggestively with his daughter Ivanka. The queens told MS NOW that they wanted to capture the absurdity of the Trump administration and its cast of characters, while drawing attention to the sobering reality of hatred, violence and harassment facing queer communities in the Trump era.
The performers interviewed by MS NOW asked to be identified by their stage names.
“If Melania Trump saw my performance, I’m sure she wouldn’t like it,” Ball-Change told MS NOW. “No one likes to be made fun of. But no one likes to not have healthcare. We are making fun of these people that are actively causing real harm.”
The GOP’s culture war
During his first campaign, Trump broke away from some of his more conservative opponents with public-facing messages of support for LGBTQ communities. In April 2016, Trump publicly disagreed with Ted Cruz and a host of other Republicans in their brewing culture war over transgender people using public restrooms, and said trans people should use “whatever bathroom they feel is appropriate.” At a campaign rally that year, he was photographed holding an “LGBT for Trump” rainbow flag. And after the Pulse nightclub shooting — and notably, in his Republican National Convention speech — Trump vowed he would do “everything in my power to protect LGBTQ people from hateful ideology.”
Offstage and in more conservative company, Trump did the opposite — signaling that he and his administration would work to relinquish gay rights and protections wherever they could.
In an interview with Fox News in February 2016, Trump said he would “strongly consider” appointing a Supreme Court judge to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges (which legalized same-sex marriage), an effort carried on today by Republican lawmakers and Christian conservative groups across the country. In 2017, Trump openly called for the removal of transgender service members from the military; nine years later, in August, his administration asked the Supreme Court to allow it to implement its ban on transgender service members.
For many drag queens who have performed through two Trump administrations, the writing was always on the wall.
New York State Democratic Party official Marti Gould Cummings is one of those performers. At the Turning Point U.S. GAY event, Cummings portrayed South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace in drag, lipsyncing to a medley of Mace’s anti-trans rhetoric.
“Legislation that is targeted against trans people and queer people, it costs lives,” Cummings told MS NOW. “Whether in terms of self-harming, bullies in school … you know, there’s an epidemic of trans people being murdered. You add in a government saying it’s OK to discriminate, then people will take that into the real world. It’s just a domino effect.”
Trump’s anti-LGBTQ policy work led to a dramatic shift in the public perception of gay marriage among his supporters. A 2025 Gallup poll showed that Republican support for gay marriage has dropped 14 points since 2022.
The GOP also spearheaded a culture war campaign against drag queens, which began in earnest in 2022 as Republican lawmakers and pundits crafted a baseless narrative that drag queens were “grooming” children across the country.
Lawmakers proposed bans on drag events, parents protested at drag queen story hours, and far-right groups like the Proud Boys appeared at events to threaten and attack performers. Hundreds of protesters, some of them armed, showed up to a drag queen story time event in Oregon in 2022. A similar event at a Nevada library was targeted by the Proud Boys, one of whom brought a gun. Just this week, a restaurant in New Jersey had to cancel a drag show fundraiser, saying its employees were targeted by a group of strangers hurling negative remarks about the event and feared for their safety. All of this has led to a negative financial impact for queer-owned business, drag queens and working trans people. Laverne Cox, who was the first trans person on the cover of Time magazine, told Attitude that bookings have essentially “dried up.”
The normalization of hate speech and derogatory comments has moved from the lips of a few Republican members of Congress to Trump’s inner circle. Speaking in front of enlisted troops at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia in September, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth delivered his now-infamous line, “no fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals.”
Drag queens say they have since seen a rise in hateful comments on their social media. Accounts with large conservative followings have made posts dedicated to their performances, calling them out by name, labeling them groomers, and encouraging others to send them hateful messages.
This week, New York drag queen Sherry Poppins went viral after she joked onstage that she didn’t want to lipsync to a Taylor Swift song. Backlash grew online from Swift fans, and Ball-Change shared a now-deleted post from an angry Swiftie that urged fans to “call the police, call 911, call ICE … waste Donald Trump’s money and ruin the shows.” The post also named the bar hosting Poppins, which is located in Astoria, a neighborhood in Queens with a massive immigrant population.
“It just feels like … the wheels have come off, and that’s really, really scary. And you’re seeing things ramped up, and also, especially closer we get to the midterms … things are really bleak, you know?” Cummings said.
Cummings played a song by Chaka Khan as she danced in peach formal wear, eventually revealing an American flag bodysuit underneath. Mace’s commentary eventually faded away from the soundscape as Cummings repeated the song’s final mantra to the cheering crowd of hundreds: “I’m every woman.” No longer was she Nancy Mace, but Marti Gould Cummings. She eventually crowd-surfed, held by hundreds of hands in support.
“There’s been a shift towards community and the importance of coming together,” said Ball-Change. “I think it’s so brave. To literally go against the United States government and say, ‘you aren’t that powerful. We are powerful. The people are powerful.’”
Trump’s allies, such as Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, have taken the assault on gender expression and drag to court. Although Paxton’s attempt to ban drag was recently defeated in court — after drag queen Brigitte Bandit challenged it — the ban continues to sow confusion among everyday Texans. Recently, a local Texas high school canceled its school play after a female student was cast in a male role. School officials said they feared legal backlash.
The pressure is coming from all directions. Drag queen Blacc Cherry, who performed as Omarosa Newman on Saturday, has felt it out of drag and in the corporate workplace. Offstage, she’s a lawyer at a large corporate firm who also does pro bono work for LGBTQ+ individuals looking for legal representation who otherwise can’t afford it. She told MS NOW that she had seen “a lot of red tape” put in place for transgender and queer individuals seeking legal recourse over the past decade. This year, the State Department reissued passports to transgender people who had previously changed their assigned sex, due to an executive order signed by Trump.
It’s led to a culture shift in the corporate world.
“So many law firms especially, and other huge corporations, have been receiving a lot of pressure to eliminate their diversity, equity and inclusion offices,” Cherry said, adding that large companies are also feeling pressure and scrutiny on a legal level should they choose to host a Pride event.
This has led to Pride being ignored entirely. The president currently has “no plans” to recognize June as Pride month, and queens say they are being not only attacked, but erased.
Cummings pointed out a lack of LGBTQ+ characters in media compared with just a few years ago. GLAAD’s 2025 report on television trends found that a “concerning number of LGBTQ-inclusive series” would no longer continue — with nearly half of all current onscreen LGBTQ+ characters getting axed.
“People have left us stranded on an island where the Trump administration is constantly attacking us,” Ball-Change said. “So all we have is each other.”
‘I don’t want your f—ing email’
As these performers look to the midterms — and eventually the potential end of the Trump era — they aren’t settling on the hope that Democrats will win and solve all of their problems. The queens want action.
Some pointed out that Democrats appear too comfortable, quiet and complicit amid suggestions that the GOP will take heavy losses in November. Cummings stressed that Democrats need to keep their hand on the throttle should they take back control of the legislative branch.
“I don’t want your f—ing email. I don’t want your strongly worded tweet. I want you to actually do something,” Cummings said. “Immediately, they need to codify Roe v. Wade, push through the Equality Act and strengthen trans protections in it … because this is what the voters want.”
Turning Point U.S. GAY events have raised more than $100,000, with this weekend’s proceeds of over $15,000 going to PFLAG and the Ali Forney Center. It’s a strong show of support from these drag queens’ fan bases — but the drag community at large is still struggling. Making ends meet in a political environment when corporations won’t hire you and politicians won’t defend your rights has been difficult, Ball-Change said.
“Maybe in the old days we could have had a sponsor with Target — one of the examples that got rid of DEI,” Ball-Change said. “Or any other company would have easily been like, we’ll match whatever you raise. We could have raised double what we raised. We could have raised maybe $100,000 in another time.”
The fight for rights has taken a step back in the Trump era, the queens said. But the support they have received since taking on the GOP in drag has given them hope that they can win.
“I think it’s just incredibly brave for anyone to look at the beast that is the American government and say, ‘you’re not that tough,’” Ball-Change said. “We can take you down by just wearing a dress and pretending to be you. We can show everyone here that we can laugh at you and you’re not that strong and you’re not that powerful.”
She went on:
“The most powerful weapon against fear is joy.”
The post The GOP has been a drag. Along came the queens. appeared first on MS NOW.