The Senate on Monday confirmed billionaire hedge fund manager and investor Scott Bessent as President Trump’s Treasury secretary, making him the highest-ranking LGBTQ official in the nation’s history.
The Senate voted 68-29 Monday evening to confirm Bessent, 62, to lead the Department of the Treasury. He is the first openly LGBTQ person to hold the position, fifth in line to the presidency.
Bessent’s confirmation comes after former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg made history as the first openly LGBTQ Cabinet official to win Senate confirmation in 2021. In 2020, during Trump’s first term, Richard Grenell became the first gay Cabinet member when he was appointed acting director of national intelligence.
In being confirmed as Treasury secretary, Bessent is taking on the nation’s highest administrative economic office, and one of the biggest Cabinet positions.
Bessent’s husband, former New York City prosecutor John Freeman, attended his confirmation hearing this month with their two children. “The ultimate civics lesson,” Bessent quipped in his opening remarks.
A graduate of Yale University, Bessent marveled to the school’s alumni magazine in 2015 how far gay rights had progressed over his lifetime.
“If you had told me in 1984, when we graduated, and people were dying of AIDS, that 30 years later I’d be legally married and we would have two children via surrogacy, I wouldn’t have believed you,” he said.
Charles Moran, president of the Log Cabin Republicans, a conservative LGBTQ rights group, said Bessent’s nomination and subsequent Senate confirmation reflect Trump’s intent to fill his administration with individuals who share his vision for the nation, regardless of their demographics.
He referenced State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce, a radio host and conservative political commentator, who is gay, and Grenell, whom Trump selected in December as an envoy for special missions.
Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff, is the first woman to hold the position, and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, at 27, is the youngest in U.S. history.
“He just wants the best, most qualified people to serve in these positions, regardless of their sex, their gender, their sexual orientation, their religion,” said Moran, who recently announced his departure from the organization. “We’ve got record levels of diversity, not for the sake of diversity, but because these are some of the best-qualified people.”
In a post on the social platform X, Trump’s White House said Bessent’s confirmation Monday reflects Trump’s “dedication to restoring economic strength and stability.”
“We need pro-equality LGBTQ+ nominees and LGBTQ+ people at all levels of government,” said Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy group. LGBTQ Americans, she said, are counting on “nominees like Scott Bessent to step up for the community.”
Bessent’s confirmation, she said, could be an opportunity for the Human Rights Campaign, which endorsed former Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential run and publicly denounced Trump’s 2022 announcement that he would seek a second term, to work “across the aisle to advance equality.”
Still, “it will be a tough road,” said Robinson, who has led the organization since 2022.
“As was proven during Donald Trump’s previous administration and in his Project 2025 agenda, Donald Trump and his White House are a threat to the rights, freedoms, and lives of LGBTQ+ people,” Robinson said. “That will be our focus in the upcoming days, months and years ahead.”
Trump on Jan. 20, during his first hours in office, signed an executive order recognizing only two sexes, male and female, and rolled back others signed by former President Biden that expanded nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people and allowed transgender Americans to serve openly in the military.
A separate executive order suspending foreign assistance could have far-reaching consequences for programs like the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, an effort to combat HIV worldwide that is credited with saving more than 25 million lives.
Trump is expected to sign an executive order on Monday that bans transgender troops from the armed forces, reinstating a policy he began implementing in 2017.
