National
Trans advocate testifies before Senate on ENDA
‘I still sit here today with almost tears in my eyes’
Kylar Broadus, founder of the Trans People of Color Coalition (Blade photo by Michael Key)
The Senate heard for the first time ever testimony from a transgender witness in a hearing dedicated to highlighting workplace discrimination experienced by LGBT people.
Kylar Broadus, founder of the Columbia, Mo.-based Trans People of Color Coalition, discussed job discrimination he faced as a transgender man before the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee on Tuesday as he called for passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.
In the early 1990s, Broadus worked for a major financial institution, although he didn’t disclose its name during the hearing. After announcing in 1995 he would undergo gender transitioning, Broadus said he was forced out of his role.
“At work, when I decided to actually transition, I had been there for a number of years, and I’m a workaholic, and it was disheartening to me that all this could be pulled out from under me because people weren’t comfortable with the person that I am,” Broadus said.
His written testimony details receiving harassing phone calls, receiving assignments after hours that were due early the next morning and being forbidden from talking to certain people.
“I still sit here today with almost tears in my eyes,” Broadus said. “It’s devastating, it’s demoralizing and dehumanizing to be put in that position.”
Broadus said his treatment at work and being forced out impacted him emotionally, causing him post-traumatic stress disorder, and led to a period of unemployment for about a year from which he still hasn’t financially recovered.
Noting other transgender workers who face discrimination and lose their jobs are unable to regain employment, Broadus called on Congress to pass ENDA to put into place workplace non-discrimination protections.
“I think it’s extremely important that this bill be passed to protect workers like me,” Broadus said. “There are many cases that I hear everyday, and people call me everyday with these cases around the country because I’m also an attorney that practices and deals with people that suffer employment discrimination.”
Chairman Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) confirmed during the hearing that Broadus was the first openly transgender person to testify before the Senate and commended him for his courage in speaking before the committee, saying he’s going to “give courage to a lot of other people.”
ENDA, sponsored by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) in the House and Jeff Merkley in the Senate (D-Ore.), would bar job bias against LGBT people in most situations in the public and private workforce. Firing someone for being gay is legal is 29 states; firing someone for being transgender is legal in 34 states.
Others who testified in favor of ENDA were M.V. Lee Badgett, research director of the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles; Samuel Bagenstos, a law professor at the University of Michigan; and Ken Charles, vice president of diversity and inclusion at the breakfast foods company General Mills.
The Republican witness who testified against ENDA was Craig Parshall, senior vice president and general counsel for the Manassas, Va.-based National Religious Broadcasters Association. Parshall previously testified against ENDA before the Senate in 2009.
Harkin called ENDA “important civil rights legislation” that would build off strides already made against workplace discrimination in the past 45 years.
“Many states and businesses are already leading the way toward ensuring full equality for all our fellow citizens,” Harkin said. “However, the harsh reality is that employers in most states can still fire, refuse to hire, or otherwise discriminate against individuals because of their sexual orientation or gender identity — and, shockingly, they can do so within the law.”
Merkley expressed the need for passing ENDA, saying without it on the books, LGBT workers would continue to face workplace discrimination.
“Let us not lose sight that each and every day, American citizens are discriminated against in their employment or their potential employment in ways that have a profound impact on their opportunity fully live their lives, to fully contribute, to fully pursue happiness, to be all that they can be, all that they are — which is a benefit to them and a benefit to our nation,” Merkley said. “This discrimination is absolutely wrong. It is morally wrong and we must end it.”
The hearing takes places after the White House announced in April it won’t issue at this time an executive order requiring federal contractors to have their own non-discrimination policies based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The directive didn’t come up during the hearing.
No Republican committee members attended the hearing. The only GOP co-sponsor who serves on the committee is Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.). He’s been recovering from a stroke he suffered in late January. A minority committee spokesperson didn’t immediate respond to a request to comment on why all Republican committee members were absent.
Democrats who attended the hearing in addition to Harkin and Merkley were Sens. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Al Franken (D-Minn.) and, briefly, Michael Bennet (D-Colo.).
LGBT advocates commended Harkin for bringing more attention to the lack of federal non-discrimination protections for LGBT people by holding an ENDA hearing.
Rea Carey, executive director of the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, said ENDA reflects core American values of “giving everyone a fair shake and allowing them to fully and freely contribute their skills and talents” in the workforce.
“Many people think these protections already exist, but that’s not the case,” Carey said. “There is no clear federal law, and there are no such laws in over half the states. This jeopardizes our ability to have or keep employment, housing and feed our families. ENDA will level the playing field once and for all.”
LGBT advocates have been calling on the committee to markup the legislation to send it to the Senate floor. All 12 Democrats on the panel — in addition to Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) — are co-sponsors of the bill, so it should have no problem getting out of committee.
Murray was explicit in calling for a markup of the bill during her committee remarks, saying she wants to see ENDA pass out of committee “expeditiously.” In response, Harkin said, “I hope so.”
Senate HELP Committee Chair Tom Harkin (Blade photo by Michael Key)
But speaking with the Washington Blade after the hearing, Harkin was more hesitant about the idea of holding a markup, saying, “I’m going to poll my committee and see. Right now, I’m kind of up to here in getting [Food & Drug Administration] bill through, as you know. We got it through the Senate; we’ve got to work with the House on that trying to get that put to bed, and then I’m going to poll the committee and see what we want to do.”
Another organization is taking the call to advance ENDA a step further. On the same day of the hearing, Tico Almeida, president of Freedom to Work, sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), calling on him to schedule a floor vote on the legislation.
“[W]e respectfully urge you to bring ENDA to a vote on the floor of the U.S. Senate this summer so that LGBT Americans do not have to wait any longer to know which of their Senators support their freedom to work without harassment or discrimination on the job, and which Senators still find it acceptable for Americans to be unjustly fired simply because of whom they love or their gender identity,” Almeida writes.
Reid’s office didn’t respond to a request to comment on the letter. The writing cites the Washington Blade’s questioning of White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs in January 2011 in which the spokesperson acknowledged that “there’s no doubt that whenever you get something done in one [chamber], you’re closer to certainly seeing it come to fruition.”
Harkin told the Blade he’d like to see a floor vote on ENDA, although he acknowledged he doesn’t control the schedule for the Senate.
“I wish we could have a floor vote, yes,” Harkin said. “I would like to see a floor vote on this because I think it’s something the American people ought to where we stand on this issue. This is not an issue that bothers me. As I said, it’s not difficult for me. It might be difficult for some people; it’s not difficult for me.”
The most significant point of contention during the hearing between supporters of ENDA and Parshall, who alone expressed opposition to the legislation. Section 6 of ENDA, titled “Exemption for religious organizations,” says the bill won’t apply to institutions that are exempt from the religious discrimination provisions of Title VII of Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Parshall targeted the religious exemption as his reasons for his opposition to the legislation, saying ENDA “would impose a substantial unconstitutional burden on religious organizations” and “interfere with their ability to effectively pursue their missions.”
“It creates huge problems for future courts to iron out which organizations and under what conditions would be exempted, and which ones would not. I think that kind of uncertainty, obviously, raises constitutional problems,” Parshall said.
Bagenstos took Parshall’s objections to ENDA head on during the later question-and-answer portion of the hearing, saying Parshall’s assertions are without merit because the legislation clearly states which religious organizations are exempt from ENDA.
“Like any legal tests, there are sometimes cases at the edges, but employers have over 40 years of case law to enable them to understand what is covered and what is not covered here,” Bagenstos said. “There is no particular reason to believe that under ENDA, there would be any difficulty in understanding what the scope of the application of that exemption would be.”
But social conservatives aren’t the only ones unhappy with ENDA’s religious exemption. The American Civil Liberties Union says the exemption is too broad and should be narrowed to be more similar to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Ian Thompson, the ACLU’s legislative representative, said the current exemption “would provide a license for a religious organization to discriminate” against LGBT people for any reason and not just based on the organization’s religious teachings.
“We believe that the existing Title VII exemption — which allows religious organizations the ability to restrict their hiring based on religion, but not to engage in race, sex, or national origin discrimination, for example, offers sufficient protection to religious organizations,” Thompson said. “As we argue, there is no reason to adopt a different exemption for LGBT discrimination by those organizations.”
Thompson also called for the elimination of Section 8(c) of ENDA, which he said would allow employers in states where same-sex couples can legally marry to treat married gay and lesbian employees as unmarried for purposes of employee benefits.
“As more states continue to move in the direction of extending the freedom to marry to gay and lesbian couples and the ongoing legal challenges to DOMA work their way through the judicial process, Congress should not, in our view, pass legislation that expands the reach of a discriminatory and unconstitutional law,” Thompson said.
The committee didn’t immediately respond to a request to comment on the proposed changes, but Merkley expressed awareness of the proposed change during the hearing.
No Obama administration official testified at the hearing. A White House official had earlier said the administration wasn’t invited to testify, and committee spokesperson Justine Sessions said the panel had already heard from the administration in testimony from earlier hearings.
New York
Pride flag raised at Stonewall after National Park Service took it down
‘Our flag represents dignity and human rights’
A Pride flag was raised at the site of the Stonewall National Monument days after a National Park Service directive banned flying the flag at the birthplace of the LGBTQ rights movement in the U.S.
The flag-raising was led by Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal and supported by other elected officials.
“The community should rejoice. We have prevailed,” Hoylman-Sigal said shortly after the flag was hoisted. “Our flag represents dignity and human rights.”
The flag now sits in Christopher Street Park, feet away from the Stonewall Inn, where in 1969 a police raid of the gay bar sparked outrage and led to a rising of LGBTQ people pushing back on NYPD brutality and unjust treatment.
Elected officials brought a new flagpole with them, using plastic zip ties to attach it to the existing pole.
In 2016, President Barack Obama declared the site a national monument.
One day before the planned re-raising of the Pride flag, the National Park Service installed only an American flag on the flagpole, which days prior had flown a rainbow flag bearing the NPS logo.
The directive removing the flag was put forward by Trump-appointed National Park Service Acting Director Jessica Bowron.
This comes one day after more than 20 LGBTQ organizations from across the country co-signed a letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and General Services Administrator Ed Forst, demanding the flag be restored to the monument.
“It is our understanding that the policy provides limited exceptions for non-agency flags that provide historical context or play a role in historic reenactments. Simply put, we urge you to grant this flag an exception and raise it once again, immediately,” the letter read. “It also serves as an important reminder to the 30+ million LGBTQ+ Americans, who continue to face disproportionate threats to our lives and our liberty, that the sites and symbols that tell our stories are worth honoring … However, given recent removals of the site’s references to transgender and bisexual people — people who irrefutably played a pivotal role in this history — it is clear that this is not about the preservation of the historical record.”
The letter finished with a message of resilience the LGBTQ community is known for: “The history and the legacy of Stonewall must live on. Our community cannot simply be erased with the removal of a flag. We will continue to stand up and fight to ensure that LGBTQ+ history should not only be protected — it should be celebrated as a milestone in American resilience and progress.”
When asked about the directive, the NPS responded with this statement:
“Current Department of the Interior policy provides that the National Park Service may only fly the U.S. flag, Department of the Interior flags, and the Prisoner of War/Missing in Action flag on flagpoles and public display points. The policy allows limited exceptions, permitting non-agency flags when they serve an official purpose. These include historical context or reenactments, current military branch flags, flags of federally recognized tribal nations affiliated with a park, flags at sites co-managed with other federal, state, or municipal partners, flags required for international park designations, and flags displayed under agreements with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for Naturalization ceremonies.”
An Interior Department spokesperson on Thursday called the move to return the flag to the monument a “political stunt.”
“Today’s political pageantry shows how utterly incompetent and misaligned the New York City officials are with the problems their city is facing,” a department spokesperson said when reached for comment.
The clash comes amid broader efforts by the Trump-Vance administration to minimize LGBTQ history and political power. The White House has spent much of President Donald Trump’s second presidency restricting transgender rights — stopping gender-affirming care for transgender youth, issuing an executive order stating the federal government will recognize only two sexes, male and female, and blocking Medicaid and Medicare from being used for gender-affirming care.
State Department
FOIA lawsuit filed against State Department for PEPFAR records
Council for Global Equality, Physicians for Human Rights seeking data, documents
The Council for Global Equality and Physicians for Human Rights have filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the State Department for PEPFAR-related data and documents.
The groups, which Democracy Forward represents, filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on Wednesday.
Then-President George W. Bush in 2003 signed legislation that created PEPFAR. UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima last March said PEPFAR has saved 26 million lives around the world.
The Trump-Vance administration in January 2025 froze nearly all U.S. foreign aid spending for at least 90 days. Secretary of State Marco Rubio later issued a waiver that allowed PEPFAR and other “life-saving humanitarian assistance” programs to continue to operate during the freeze.
The Washington Blade has previously reported PEPFAR-funded programs in Kenya and other African countries have been forced to suspend services and even shut down because of gaps in U.S. funding. HIV/AIDS activists have also sharply criticized the Trump-Vance administration over reported plans it will not fully fund PEPFAR in the current fiscal year.
The lawsuit notes the Council for Global Equality and Physicians for Human Rights have “filed several FOIA requests” with the State Department for PEPFAR-related data and documents. The groups filed their most recent request on Jan. 30.
“On Jan. 30, 2026, plaintiffs, through counsel, sent State a letter asking it to commit to prompt production of the requested records,” reads the lawsuit. “State responded that the request was being processed but did not commit to any timeline for production.”
“Plaintiffs have received no subsequent communication from State regarding this FOIA request,” it notes.
“Transparency and inclusion have been hallmarks of PEPFAR’s success in the last decade,” said Beirne Roose-Snyder, a senior policy fellow at the Council for Global Equality, in a press release that announced the lawsuit. “This unprecedented withholding of data, and concurrent ideological misdirection of foreign assistance to exclude LGBTQI+ people and others who need inclusive programming, has potentially devastating and asymmetrical impacts on already marginalized communities.”
“This data is vital to understanding who’s getting access to care and who’s being left behind,” added Roose-Snyder.
“We filed this lawsuit to seek transparency: the administration’s PEPFAR data blackout withholds information the public, health providers, and affected communities need to track the HIV epidemic and prevent avoidable illness and death, obscuring the true human cost of these policy decisions,” said Physicians for Human Rights Research, Legal, and Advocacy Director Payal Shah.
The State Department has yet to respond to the Blade’s request for comment on the lawsuit.
New York
N.Y. lawmaker vows ‘Pride flag will fly again’ at Stonewall Monument
After a Jan. 21 policy shift, Pride flags were banned at national parks, prompting backlash from Bottcher and LGBTQ advocates.
Hours after news broke that the National Park Service would no longer allow Pride flags to fly at the Stonewall National Monument — the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ rights movement in the United States — the Washington Blade spoke with New York State Sen. Erik Bottcher, who represents the area surrounding the Stonewall Inn and the national monument.
During the interview, Bottcher, who is gay, spoke about the policy change and outlined steps he plans to take in the coming days to push for its reversal.
“This is another act of erasure,” Bottcher told the Blade. “It’s a cowardly attempt to rewrite history and to intimidate our community. This is Stonewall — it’s where we fought back, where we ignited a global movement for equality — and we refuse to go back. We’re not going to accept these acts of erasure.”
The Stonewall Inn became a flashpoint in 1969 after NYPD officers raided the bar, part of a longstanding pattern of police harassment of LGBTQ spaces. The raid sparked days of protest and resistance along Christopher Street, now widely recognized as the catalyst for the modern LGBTQ rights movement.
While the events are often referred to as the “Stonewall Riots,” many activists and historians prefer the term “Stonewall Uprising,” emphasizing that the resistance was a response to systemic oppression rather than senseless violence. LGBTQ patrons and community members fought back — shouting “Gay Power!” and “Liberate Christopher Street!” — as crowds grew and frustration with police abuse boiled over.
Since the uprising, LGBTQ people and allies have gathered annually in June to commemorate Stonewall and to celebrate Pride, honoring the movement that placed LGBTQ voices at the center of the fight for equality.
In June 2016, then President Barack Obama officially designated the space as the Stonewall National Monument, making it the United States’s first national monument designated for an LGBTQ historic site.
Now, nearly 10 years later, President Trump’s appointed NPS acting director Jessica Bowron changed policy on Jan. 21 regarding which flags are allowed to be flown in national parks. Many, including Bottcher, say this is part of a larger targeted and deliberate attempt by the administration to erase LGBTQ history.
“It’s clear they’re making a conscious decision to erase the symbols of our community from a monument to our community’s struggle,” he said. “This is a calculated and premeditated decision, and it could be — and should be — reversed.”
“Let’s be clear,” Bottcher added, “they wish we didn’t exist … But we’re not going anywhere. We refuse to go back into the shadows.”
When asked why it is critical to challenge the policy, Bottcher emphasized the importance of visibility in preserving LGBTQ history.
“This is why it’s so important that we not let this stand,” he said. “Visibility is critical. When people see us, learn about us, and get to know us, that’s how we break down prejudice and stereotypes. We cannot allow them to push us back into the shadows.”
Other LGBTQ leaders and elected officials were quick to condemn the removal of the Pride flag, which had flown since the site’s official designation as a national monument.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani called the decision “outrageous.”
“I am outraged by the removal of the Rainbow Pride Flag from Stonewall National Monument,” Mamdani said in a statement. “New York is the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement, and no act of erasure will ever change or silence that history.”
“Our city has a duty not just to honor this legacy, but to live up to it,” he added. “I will always fight for a New York City that invests in our LGBTQ+ community, defends their dignity, and protects every one of our neighbors — without exception.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer also condemned the move.
“The removal of the Pride Rainbow Flag from the Stonewall National Monument is a deeply outrageous action that must be reversed immediately,” Schumer said in a statement to The Advocate. “Stonewall is a landmark because it is the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ rights movement, and symbols of that legacy belong there by both history and principle.”
Cathy Renna, communications director for the National LGBTQ Task Force, said the flag’s removal will not erase the movement it represents.
“They can take down a flag, but they can’t take down our history,” Renna said. “Stonewall is sacred ground rooted in resistance, liberation, and the legacy of trans and queer trailblazers who changed the course of history.”
Human Rights Campaign National Press Secretary Brandon Wolf echoed that sentiment.
“Bad news for the Trump administration: these colors don’t run,” Wolf said. “The Stonewall Inn and Visitors Center are privately owned, their flags are still flying high, and that community is just as queer today as it was yesterday.”
Tyler Hack, executive director of the Christopher Street Project, said the removal was aimed squarely at LGBTQ visibility.
“The Pride flag was removed from Stonewall for one reason: to further erase queer and trans people from public life,” Hack said. “Stonewall marks the moment when queer and trans people fought back and demanded dignity. Our history is not theirs to erase.”
Bottcher closed with a promise to his constituents — and to the broader LGBTQ community — that the Pride flag’s removal would not be permanent.
“We will not be erased. We will not be silenced,” he said. “And the Pride flag will fly again at the birthplace of our movement.”
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