PBS producer WNET quietly erased episodes containing a drag queen and a trans character from its platforms. DOGE Subcommittee Chair Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene speaks in front of a photo of drag queen Lil Miss Hot Mess during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing at the U.S.

PBS producer WNET quietly erased episodes containing a drag queen and a trans character from its platforms.

WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 26: Subcommittee Chairwoman U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-SC) speaks in front of a photo of drag queen Lil Miss Hot Mess during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing at the U.S. Capitol on March 26, 2025 in Washington, DC. The heads of NPR and PBS appeared before the House Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency to address allegations of bias in their programming against conservatives. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

DOGE Subcommittee Chair Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene speaks in front of a photo of drag queen Lil Miss Hot Mess during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing at the U.S. Capitol on March 26, 2025, in Washington, D.C. Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

The New York-area PBS station WNET has scrubbed its archives of at least three educational TV episodes that discuss transgender identity and drag expression, The Intercept has learned, as Congress and the Trump administration target public broadcasters with attempts to strip their funding.

The station’s educational program “Let’s Learn” became an object of ire for the House Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency this spring over the 2021 episode “The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish,” in which the drag queen and children’s author

.

Aside from removing “The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish,” WNET has additionally removed at least two more “Let’s Learn” episodes, The Intercept has found. 

In the November 2020 episode “Max and the Talent Show,” author Kyle Lukoff reads his book of the same name. The story concerns a white transgender boy named Max who helps his Black male friend Steven prepare for a talent show and “find the perfect gown, shoes, cape, and tiara,” according to the School Library Journal. The journal calls the book “an excellent choice as an early reader with an LGBTQIA+ theme.” 

WNET removed that episode and another, called “Brain and Same Both Have Long ‘A.’” That hourlong episode also features “Max and the Talent Show,” which students read in order to “practice sounds with the long ‘a.’” 

Although it has been erased from PBS and WNET platforms, “The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish” can still be viewed via the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.