Adore Delano, Transgender ‘Drag Race’ Alum, Seethes at Trump Admin: ‘My Passport Will Remain Male’

Adore Delano, a former competitor on RuPaul’s Drag Race, posted a video to social media complaining that the Trump administration will not recognize his proclaimed transgender identity on his passport and other federal documents.

Delano, born Danny Noriega, appeared on two seasons of Drag Race in the 2010s and declared himself to be transgender in 2023 and received facial feminization surgery in 2024. This week, Delano recorded a video for TikTok announcing he had changed his legal name to his drag persona’s stage name, but he was not able to make all the changes he wanted on his identity documentation.

“It’s true, you guys. They are not changing my gender federally. So my passport will remain male,” Delano whined, filming himself while walking down the street. “Fucking wild, ’cause I travel outside of the country for a living. I’m filming my first movie outside of the country this week. So all my documentations that are federal will remain male.”

Delano’s complaint echoes Hunter Schafer, an actor known for HBO’s Euphoria and a prequel in the Hunger Games series, this February. “It’s gonna come along with having to out myself to border patrol agents and that whole gig much more often than I would like to or is necessary,” Schafer said of his passport, which had been updated to reflect his male sex, in a TikTok where he cursed the Trump administration for not validating his preferred identity.

Despite all the attention that Schafer’s video received, Delano appeared shocked by his passport dilemma and warned his nearly 700,000 followers that it is now “too late” to receive transgender-affirming documents.

“Just a heads up, girls. They told me that we’re a month and a half, two months too late,” he said. “That they completely took the option off the Social Security website for you to even check the gender marker out. So, yeah. They’re really out here calling us men, girls!”

President Donald Trump campaigned on rejecting transgender ideology in the 2024 election and won a decisive victory in the Electoral College. During his inauguration speech this January, Trump proclaimed: “As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders: male and female.”

Within a day, Trump signed an executive order to do just that, titled “DEFENDING WOMEN FROM GENDER IDEOLOGY EXTREMISM AND RESTORING BIOLOGICAL TRUTH TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT”:

“The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system. Basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself,” Trump’s order reads, blasting the left for replacing the “immutable biological reality of sex with an internal, fluid, and subjective sense of self unmoored from biological facts.”

“Accordingly, my Administration will defend women’s rights and protect freedom of conscience by using clear and accurate language and policies that recognize women are biologically female, and men are biologically male,” the order reads, making it very clear that it is now the policy of the U.S. to “recognize two sexes, male and female.”

Various Hollywood celebrities have feebly protested the administration’s science-based policy. “It breaks my heart to witness the pain of trans-people who are not accepted by a society that fears them because they are different,” pop singer Madonna wrote on Instagram. Pedro Pascal, star of the Disney-Star Wars series The Mandalorian and the upcoming Disney-marvel film Fantastic Four: First Steps, shared an image of a sign reading: “A WORLD WITHOUT TRANS PEOPLE HAS NEVER EXSISTED [sic] AND NEVER WILL.” Paul Feig, director of Ghostbusters (2016), donated $300,000 to groups such as the Trevor Project, stating, “I can’t sit idly by and watch as my friends, colleagues and the LGBTQ+ community as a whole — our fellow citizens — are stripped of their rights.”