The White House has hired a transgender woman of color to serve as an outreach and recruitment director, marking what officials are calling the first time the White House has hired an openly transgender staffer. Raffi Freedman-Gurspan is a former policy adviser on racial and economic justice for the National Center for Transgender Equality. She has advocated for transgender migrants to be released from immigrant detention centers and for the federal government to do more to protect transgender women from violence. At least 17 transgender women have been murdered so far this year.