Local
FBI investigating ‘robocall’ attacks against Graham
Abortion money loan, alleged adultery cited in the two anonymous messages
Openly gay Councilmember Jim Graham (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
Federal authorities are investigating at least two separate computer generated phone messages initiated by an anonymous person or group that denounced gay D.C. Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1) as being “immoral” and “wretched.”
The phone messages, known as “robocalls,” were placed to homes of Ward 1 residents on Saturday. They urged the residents not to vote for Graham in his re-election bid because, among other things, he helped pay for an abortion for the girlfriend of a former member of his staff.
“Paying to take a life is evil, especially when you weren’t even the parent,” one of the phone messages said. “Jim Grahamn is wretched, immoral and doesn’t deserve to represent us. Let’s get a decent human being to fight for our children — not kill them.”
The allegation apparently was based on a Washington City Paper story last year reporting that Graham loaned his former aide, Ted Loza, money to help pay for an abortion for his girlfriend. The City Paper said Graham confirmed the report and said Loza repaid him. Graham later dismissed Loza after a grand jury indicted him on bribery charges related to the city’s taxicab industry. Graham has not been implicated in the taxicab bribery matter, which has been the subject of a federal investigation.
“We have turned over information about the calls to local and federal authorities, including the FBI and the Federal Communications Commission,” said Chuck Theis, a spokesperson for Graham’s election committee.
Theis said the calls appear to be aimed at the sender’s opposition to abortion. The automated phone messages did not refer to Graham’s status as one of two openly gay members of Council. The second of the two robocalls accuses Graham of having committed adultery with a woman, a claim that Theis calls “ridiculous” as well as “outrageous.”
Federal law prohibits robocalls that don’t identify the individual or organization initiating the calls. Theis said phone companies routinely cooperate with local and federal authorities to help trace the calls and identify the vendor that the initiator retains to transmit the calls. The vendor is required by law to reveal the call’s initiator to the authorities.
Graham’s two opponents in the Sept. 14 Democratic primary and his Republican opponent in the November general election have each said they had nothing to do with the attack calls. GOP opponent Marc Morgan, who is gay, issued a statement calling the phone messages “a horrible political stunt” that’s unethical.
“I have personally reached out to Councilmember Graham and assured him that neither I nor anyone associated with my campaign was involved,” Morgan said. “Furthermore, I will work with the Council member to identity the responsible parties and assure they are due swift and necessary punishment.”
District of Columbia
Mayor Bowser signs bill requiring insurers to cover PrEP
‘This is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS’
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on March 20 signed a bill approved by the D.C. Council that requires health insurance companies to cover the costs of HIV prevention or PrEP drugs for D.C. residents at risk for HIV infection.
Like all legislation approved by the Council and signed by the mayor, the bill, called the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act, was sent to Capitol Hill for a required 30-day congressional review period before it takes effect as D.C. law.
Gay D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5) last year introduced the bill.
Insurance coverage for PrEP drugs has been provided through coverage standards included in the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. But AIDS advocacy organizations have called on states and D.C. to pass their own legislation requiring insurance coverage of PrEP as a safeguard in case federal policies are weakened or removed by the Trump administration, which has already reduced federal funding for HIV/AIDS-related programs.
Like legislation passed by other states, the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act requires insurers to cover all PrEP drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Studies have shown that PrEP drugs, which can be taken as pills or by injection just twice a year, are highly effective in preventing HIV infection.
“I think this is a win for our community,” Parker said after the D.C. Council voted unanimously to approve the bill on its first vote on the measure in February. “And this is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS.”
District of Columbia
Blade editor to be inducted into D.C. Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame
Kevin Naff marks 24 years with publication this year
Longtime Washington Blade Editor Kevin Naff will be inducted into D.C.’s Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame in June, the group announced this week.
Hall of Fame honorees are chosen by the Society of Professional Journalists’ Washington, D.C., Pro Chapter. Naff and two other inductees — Seth Borenstein, a Washington-based national science writer for the AP and Cheryl W. Thompson, an award-winning correspondent for National Public Radio — will be celebrated at the chapter’s Dateline Awards dinner on Tuesday, June 9, at the National Press Club. The dinner’s emcee will be Kojo Nnamdi, host of WAMU radio’s weekly “Politics Hour.”
“I am tremendously honored by this recognition,” Naff said. “I have spent a lifetime in the D.C. area learning from so many talented journalists and am humbled to be considered in their company. Thank you to SPJ and to all the LGBTQ pioneers who came before me who made this possible.”
Naff joined the Blade in 2002 after years in print and digital journalism. He worked as a financial reporter for Reuters in New York before moving to Baltimore in 1996 to launch the Baltimore Sun’s website. He spent four years at the Sun before leaving for an internet startup and later joining the mobile data group at Verizon Wireless working on the first generation of mobile apps.
He then moved to the Blade and has served as the publication’s longest-tenured editor. In 2023, Naff published his first book, “How We Won the War for LGBTQ Equality — And How Our Enemies Could Take It All Away.”
Previous Hall of Fame inductees include luminaries in journalism like Wolf Blitzer, Benjamin Bradlee, Bob Woodward, Andrea Mitchell, and Edgar Allen Poe. The Blade’s senior news reporter Lou Chibbaro Jr. was inducted in 2015.
Maryland
Supreme Court ruling against conversion therapy bans could affect Md. law
Then-Gov. Larry Hogan signed statute in 2018
By PAMELA WOOD, JOHN-JOHN WILLIAMS IV, and MADELEINE O’NEILL | The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled against a law banning “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ kids in Colorado, a ruling that also could apply to Maryland’s ban on the discredited practice.
An 8-1 high court majority sided with a Christian counselor who argues the law banning talk therapy violates the First Amendment. The justices agreed that the law raises free speech concerns and sent it back to a lower court to decide whether it meets a legal standard that few laws pass.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the court’s majority, said the law “censors speech based on viewpoint.” The First Amendment, he wrote, “stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.”
The rest of this article can be read on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
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