National
Supporters bullish about repealing ‘Don’t Ask’
But GOP aide warns ‘minefields’ await
Capitol Hill observers are optimistic that sufficient support now exists to pass standalone “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal legislation amid questions about when the Senate will take on the legislation.
A Senate Democratic aide, who spoke to the Blade on condition of anonymity, said the chances of passing the new standalone repeal legislation are “looking better and better each day.”
“Based on what I’m hearing, I think there is a very keen interest by Democratic leaders in the Senate and the House to make a standalone bill a big priority,” the aide said. “I think that they are taking steps to ensure that chances are good for passage.”
Winnie Stachelberg, vice president for external affairs at the Center for American Progress, also said she believes there’s a chance the bill will pass before Congress is out of session.
“Having a chance is all that you need,” she said. “And you need the pieces to fall into place and the commitment of those on the Hill and the White House to get it done. People really need to lean into this to get it done.”
But a Senate Republican aide, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, was more cautious and said passage depends “on so many variables.”
“I think if the omnibus, the continuing resolution, all that stuff stretches past Thursday night, Friday, then it gets real difficult,” the aide said. “Those things are already set in motion. It could happen, but there’s just a lot of minefields.”
Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) introduced the new repeal legislation last week after the Senate on Thursday failed to meet the 60-vote threshold necessary to move major defense budget legislation to the floor containing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal.
Lieberman’s legislation is identical to the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” provision in the fiscal year 2011 defense authorization bill. Even if the standalone is signed into law, repeal wouldn’t take effect until the president, the defense secretary and the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff certify the U.S. military is ready to implement open service.
Support for the legislation in the Senate has grown rapidly as Lieberman — and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), an original co-sponsor for the bill — have worked to gather co-sponsors for the legislation. According to the Human Rights Campaign, the measure as of Monday had 40 co-sponsors.
Joe Solmonese, president of HRC, said the growing number of co-sponsors for the legislation “adds momentum” to the effort to legislatively repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” this year.
“Now the question is whether the Senate and House will take up this measure quickly and get it to the president’s desk,” Solmonese said. “There should be no excuses for inaction.”
When the bill comes to the floor, eyes will be on senators who say they support repeal, but didn’t vote in favor of bringing the defense legislation to the floor last week, such as Sens. Scott Brown (R-Mass.), Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) and Lisa Murkowksi (R-Alaska).
Last week, many Republicans said they were voting “no” because they didn’t believe the amendment process was fair enough for Republicans. The defense authorization bill typically takes several days of debate and both parties offer amendments to the legislation.
This year, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) had proposed 10 Republican amendments and 5 Democratic amendments as part of the agreement to proceed to the legislation.
But the Republican aide noted that passing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” as standalone legislation as opposed as passing it as part of the defense authorization bill eliminates arguments to vote “no” on procedural grounds.
“You take away everything that people had problems with — procedure, tax cuts and everything else,” the aide said. “It’s a ‘Hail Mary’ pass, but could it work? Yes.”
Stachelberg also said the standalone bill would have a better chance because Republicans wouldn’t be able to say they were being offered an unfair deal for amendments on the larger defense bill.
“We can argue they got that or not with the deal that was offered, but they didn’t feel like they got that,” Stachelberg said. “The process arguments with respect to repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ fall away when you strip out the context of the defense authorization bill.”
As attention remains focused on whether sufficient support exists in the Senate to pass the bill, action is underway in the House to act first to make repeal efforts less complicated in the upper chamber.
On Tuesday, Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Pa.) introduced companion legislation in the U.S. House. Drew Hammill, spokesperson for U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), said a vote on the bill will take place on Wednesday.
The plan was to have a vote in the House and to send the legislation to the Senate as a “privileged” bill, which would allow the Senate to take up the measure without having a cloture vote on the motion to proceed.
The maneuver would skip the 60 votes needed for the motion to proceed with the legislation and shave off the 30 hours of time that is normally needed after cloture is filed to vote on whether to end debate.
Still, even with this plan, the Senate would need 60 votes to proceed to final passage of the legislation.
But the timing for when the Senate would bring up the vote after the House acts remains in question.
Asked if he could offer an estimate for when the Senate would take up repeal legislation, Fred Sainz, HRC’s vice president of communications, replied, “No, my friend, nobody knows that.”
Sources have said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) intends to bring the legislation to the floor before year’s end, but when the bill would come up amid other priorities — such as the START Treaty, a nuclear arms reduction agreement — remains in question.
Jim Manley, a Reid spokesperson, said Monday there’s “nothing to announce yet” on when the bill would come to the floor and said Senate leadership is “still working on next steps for everything we have left to do.”
Some sources say the new repeal legislation could come to the floor as early as this week after the Senate resolves the extension the Bush-era tax cuts, but others say “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” would come next week to the floor after additional measures are addressed.
On Monday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said he believes the START Treaty would come up “soon after” the Senate has finished work on the tax extension plan.
“Obviously it’s unclear yet the number of hours of debate after the procedural vote today before the Senate takes up for final passage of the tax agreement,” he said. “But I think fairly soon after, the Senate will move to the debate on START ratification.”
Still, Gibbs said he thinks “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is part of the “basket of issues” that the Senate will take up before adjourning for the year.
“I think there’s no doubt that based on the votes last week, it’s clear that a majority of the Senate supports the President’s position of doing away with ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” — repealing that,” Gibbs said. “Certainly our hope is that the Senate will take this up again and it will see this done by the time the year ends.”
The Senate Democratic aide said another attempt to bring up the defense authorization bill — this time with the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” language and other provisions stripped — could come up first for a vote before the standalone repeal bill.
“My strong guess is that the defense bill will have ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ and some other sensitive provisions stricken out so that the defense bill could pass fairly easily, and then we could move on to ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ which I think has 60 votes,” the aide said.
National
LGBTQ Catholic groups slam Trump over pope criticism
‘Moral truth and compassion always overcome ignorant hate’
LGBTQ Catholic groups have sharply criticized President Donald Trump over his criticisms of Pope Leo XIV.
Leo on April 13 told reporters while traveling to Algeria that he had “no fear of the Trump administration” after the president described him as “weak on crime” and “terrible for foreign policy” in response to his opposition to the Iran war. (Trump on the same day posted to Truth Social an image that appeared to show him as Jesus Christ. He removed it on April 13 amid backlash from religious leaders.)
Vice President JD Vance, who is Catholic, during a Fox News Channel interview on the same day said “in some cases, it would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality, to stick to matters of what’s going on with the Catholic church, and let the president of the United States stick to dictating American public policy.” Vance on April 14 once again discussed Leo during an appearance at a Turning Point USA event in Athens, Ga., saying he should “be careful when he talks about matters of theology.”
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni; former U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican Miguel Díaz; and Oklahoma City Archbishop Paul Coakley, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, are among those who have criticized Trump over his comments. The president, for his part, has said he will not apologize to Leo.
“The world is being ravaged by a handful of tyrants,” said Leo on Thursday at a cathedral in Bamenda, Cameroon.
Francis DeBernardo is the executive director of New Ways Ministry, a Maryland-based LGBTQ Catholic organization. He told the Washington Blade on Thursday that Trump’s comments about Leo “are one more example of the ridiculous hubris of this leader (Trump) whose entire record shows that he is nothing more than a middle-school bully.”
“LGBTQ+ adults were often bullied as children, and they have learned the lesson that bullies act when they feel frightened or threatened,” said DeBernardo. “But secular power does not threaten the Vicar of Christ, and Pope Leo’s response illustrates this truth perfectly.”
DeBernardo added Trump “is obviously frightened that Pope Leo, an American, has more power and influence than the president on the world stage.”
“Like most Trumpian bullying, this strategy will backfire,” DeBernardo told the Blade. “Moral truth and compassion always overcome ignorant hate. Trump’s actions are not an example of his power, but of his impotence.”
Marianne Duddy-Burke, executive director of DignityUSA, an LGBTQ Catholic organization, echoed DeBernardo.
“He [Trump] has demonstrated throughout both presidencies that he doesn’t understand the basic concepts of any faith system that is founded on the dignity of human beings, the importance of common good,” Duddy-Burke told the Blade on Thursday during a telephone interview. “It’s just appalling.”
Duddy-Burke praised Leo and the American cardinals who have publicly criticized Trump.
“The pope’s popularity — given how much more respect Pope Leo has than the man sitting in the White House — is a blow to his ego,” Duddy-Burke told the Blade. “That seems to be a sore sport for him.”
“It’s such an imperialistic world view,” she added.
Leo ‘is the real peacemaker’
The College of Cardinals last May elected Leo to succeed Pope Francis after his death.
Leo, who was born in Chicago, is the first American pope. He was the bishop of the Diocese of Chiclayo in Peru from 2015-2023.
Francis made him a cardinal in 2023.
Juan Carlos Cruz — a gay Chilean man and clergy sex abuse survivor who Francis appointed to the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors — has traveled to Ukraine several times with Dominican Sister Lucía Caram since Russia launched its war against the country in 2022. Cruz on Thursday responded to Trump’s criticism of Leo in a text message he sent to the Blade from Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital.
“I am in Ukraine under many attacks,” said Cruz. “Trump is an asshole and has zero right to criticize the Pope who is the real peacemaker.”
Tennessee
Charlie Kirk Act advances in Tenn.
Bill would limit protests, protects speakers opposing ‘transgender’ identities
The Tennessee legislature has passed Senate Bill 1741 / House Bill 1476, dubbed the “Charlie Kirk Act,” which, if signed by Republican Gov. Bill Lee, would reshape how public colleges and universities regulate speech on campus.
The measure targets all public higher education institutions and requires them to adopt a “free expression” policy modeled on the University of Chicago’s framework. That framework emphasizes that universities should not shield students from controversial or offensive ideas and requires state schools to formally embrace institutional neutrality — meaning they do not publicly take a stance on political or social issues.
Under the legislation, publicly funded schools cannot disinvite or cancel invited speakers based on their viewpoints or in response to protests from students or faculty. Student organizations, however — like Turning Point USA, an American nonprofit that advocates for conservative politics on high school, college, and university campuses, founded by Charlie Kirk, and often lack widely represented liberal counterparts — would retain broad authority to bring speakers to campus regardless of controversy.
The law includes broad protections for individuals and organizations expressing religious or ideological beliefs, including opposition to abortion, homosexuality, or transgender identity, regardless of whether those views are rooted in religious or secular beliefs. It further prohibits public institutions from retaliating against faculty for protected speech or scholarly work.
The bill, which has been hailed by supporters as an effort to “preserve campus free speech,” ironically also limits protest activity. Shouting down speakers, blocking sightlines, staging disruptive walkouts, or physically preventing entry to events are now considered “substantial interference” under the legislation, making those who engage in such actions subject to discipline.
Some of those disciplinary consequences include probation, suspension, and even expulsion for students, while faculty who protest in ways deemed to violate the policy could face unpaid suspensions and termination after repeated violations.
Supporters of the bill argue it strengthens free expression on campus. State Rep. Gino Bulso (R-Brentwood), the bill’s sponsor, said it reinforces a commitment to “civil and robust” debate at public universities.
“The Charlie Kirk Act creates critical safeguards for students and faculty and renews the idea that our higher education institutions should be centers of intellectual debate,” Bulso told Fox 17. “This legislation honors the legacy of Charlie Kirk by promoting thoughtful engagement and defending religious freedom.”
Critics, including Democratic lawmakers, have raised concerns that the legislation effectively elevates certain ideological viewpoints — particularly those tied to religious objections to LGBTQ identities — while exposing students and faculty to punishment for protest or dissent.
“It’s ironic that this body is talking about free speech when we had professors in Tennessee schools expelled and suspended when they did not mourn the death of Charlie Kirk — when they said that his statements were problematic and that the way he died did not redeem the way he lived,” state Rep. Justin Jones (D-Nashville) told WKRN.
Kirk, the right-wing activist and founder of Turning Point USA, for whom the bill is named, was assassinated in September 2025 at a public event at Utah Valley University. His legacy and rhetoric remain deeply polarizing, particularly among LGBTQ advocates, who have cited his history of anti-LGBTQ statements in opposing his campus appearances.
The bill now heads to Lee’s desk for his signature.
National
Demonstrators disrupt OMB director hearing over PEPFAR
Capitol Police arrested five protesters
A group of protesters interrupted Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought during his testimony before Congress on Wednesday.
Vought was at the Cannon House Office Building to give testimony to the House Budget Committee.
Committee Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) began the hearing by touting what he described as economic accomplishments of the Trump-Vance administration’s economic accomplishments. Ranking Member Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) disputed those claims in his opening statement.
Boyle went on to admonish Vought for not attending a committee hearing in the previous year.
Vought, the “Project 2025” architect, was invited to speak after Arrington and Boyle made their statements.
Shortly after Vought began reading his statement, Housing Works CEO Charles King stood up in the gallery and began shouting, “PEPFAR saves lives: spend the money!”
The U.S. Capitol Police moved quickly to escort King from the room. Other activists began chanting with King as they unfolded signs bearing a picture of Vought’s face and statements such as, “Vought’s cuts kill people with AIDS,” and “Protect PEPFAR from Vought.”
The group of HIV/AIDS activists included independent activists, former U.S. Agency for International Development and PEPFAR staff, members of Health GAP, Housing Works, and the Treatment Action Group. Six activists were escorted from the hearing and the U.S. Capitol Police detained five of them.
The HIV/AIDS treatment activists protested at the hearing in response to the dismantling of global health programs, including PEPFAR, a federally-funded program credited with saving millions of lives from HIV/AIDS, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.
“Russell Vought is directly responsible for illegally withholding Congressionally appropriated funds for PEPFAR and related global health initiative,” King said in a statement provided to the Washington Blade. “These funding disruptions have already contributed to preventable deaths and threaten to reverse decades of progress in the fight against HIV worldwide. Enough is enough. Congress must ensure Vought stops this deadly sabotage.”
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