National
Service chiefs back Pentagon’s ‘Don’t Ask’ review
The top Navy and Marine Corps officials expressed support Wednesday for the Pentagon’s review on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” without outright backing repeal — and voiced opposition to any legislative moratorium on discharges that Congress may enact before the study is complete.
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead and Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Conway offered support for the Defense Department review during a House Armed Services Committee hearing geared toward the president’s budget request for the Navy Department.
Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), who’s said Congress should hear from military leaders before proceeding with repeal, questioned Roughead and Conway on whether they support overturning “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
Roughead replied that his “personal view” is “to go forward with [the] assessment that has been called for by the Secretary of Defense.”
“There are a lot of bits of information, and surveys that have taken place, but there has never really been an assessment of the force that serves — and equally important to that force is the opinions of the families who support that force,” he said.
Conway said he thinks Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ plan would examine the issue “in a way that’s never been done,” an effort he supports. But Conway cautioned against enacting any change that would impair the military effectiveness of the armed forces.
“I would encourage your work, mine and that of the working group to be focused on a central issue — and that is the readiness of the armed forces of the United States to fight this nation’s wars,” he said. “That’s what our armed forces are intended to do.”
Even though Conway emphasized maintaining military readiness, his endorsement of the Pentagon review is noteworthy in part because media sources have reported he’s emerged in internal deliberations as a leading opponent of allowing gays to serve openly in the armed forces.
Both Roughead and Conway voiced opposition to enacting a legislative moratorium on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” discharges until the Pentagon completes its review. Senate Armed Services Committee Carl Levin (D-Mich.) has recently floated the possibility of addressing the law this year with a temporary halt to discharges.
“In regard to a moratorium, I believe that it would be extremely confusing to the force, and I do not recommend that,” Roughead said.
Conway agreed, echoing the notion that instituting a moratorium would be confusing.
“There’s an expression we have: Keep it simple,” Conway said. “I would encourage you either to change the law or not — but in the process, half measures, I think, will only be confusing in the end.”
By supporting the Pentagon’s review process and opposing a moratorium, Roughead and Conway echoed comments previously made by top leaders in the Army and Air Force. The new endorsements from Roughead and Conway means all the service chiefs are in alignment in backing the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” review process.
Kevin Nix, spokesperson for the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, said in a statement that the testimony from Roughead and Conway was encouraging.
“We also found ourselves agreeing with Gen. Conway, both that military readiness must always be paramount and that this debate must be about full legislative repeal of the 1993 ban, not about confusing interim measures like a moratorium on discharges,” Nix said. “Congress should get [“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”] repeal done in this year’s defense authorization budget bill.”
Also during Wednesday’s hearing, Rep. Vic Snyder (D-Ark.) asked how gays currently serving in the armed forces would be able to give their input for the Pentagon’s study without being outed and discharged under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said people behind the working group would have “mechanisms for anonymous input” so gays in the military wouldn’t be in jeopardy of of violating “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” by simply responding to a survey.
Snyder also asked how the military was handling the recent decision rendered in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals for Witt v. Air Force. The ruling, which was construed only to apply to the plaintiff’s case, concluded the military had to prove lesbian Maj. Margaret Witt’s presence in the Air Force was a detriment to the military before discharging her.
Mabus said he wasn’t familiar with the details of the case. Snyder noted that having certain rules in some areas and others for the rest of the country is creating confusion, even without a moratorium.
“There is already legal confusion that you all didn’t bring on yourselves,” Snyder said. “It’s being laid on you, but I think you’re going to need to figure that out fairly quickly because it is currently the law in the Ninth Circuit.”
Nix said SLDN agrees that the standard in the Witt case is “not being followed by the Navy and the other services.”
“Indeed, in the case of Air Force Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach, the Witt standard was not considered or followed at his board hearing,” Nix said. “The Defense Department has yet provided the services with any guidance whatsoever on Witt. This shortcoming further underscores that repeal needs to take place this year.”
New York
Men convicted of murdering two men in NYC gay bar drugging scheme sentenced
One of the victims, John Umberger, was D.C. political consultant
A New York judge on Wednesday sentenced three men convicted of killing a D.C. political consultant and another man who they targeted at gay bars in Manhattan.
NBC New York notes a jury in February convicted Jayqwan Hamilton, Jacob Barroso, and Robert DeMaio of murder, robbery, and conspiracy in relation to druggings and robberies that targeted gay bars in Manhattan from March 2021 to June 2022.
John Umberger, a 33-year-old political consultant from D.C., and Julio Ramirez, a 25-year-old social worker, died. Prosecutors said Hamilton, Barroso, and DeMaio targeted three other men at gay bars.
The jury convicted Hamilton and DeMaio of murdering Umberger. State Supreme Court Judge Felicia Mennin sentenced Hamilton and DeMaio to 40 years to life in prison.
Barroso, who was convicted of killing Ramirez, received a 20 years to life sentence.
National
Medical groups file lawsuit over Trump deletion of health information
Crucial datasets included LGBTQ, HIV resources
Nine private medical and public health advocacy organizations, including two from D.C., filed a lawsuit on May 20 in federal court in Seattle challenging what it calls the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’s illegal deletion of dozens or more of its webpages containing health related information, including HIV information.
The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington, names as defendants Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and HHS itself, and several agencies operating under HHS and its directors, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration.
“This action challenges the widespread deletion of public health resources from federal agencies,” the lawsuit states. “Dozens (if not more) of taxpayer-funded webpages, databases, and other crucial resources have vanished since January 20, 2025, leaving doctors, nurses, researchers, and the public scrambling for information,” it says.
“These actions have undermined the longstanding, congressionally mandated regime; irreparably harmed Plaintiffs and others who rely on these federal resources; and put the nation’s public health infrastructure in unnecessary jeopardy,” the lawsuit continues.
It adds, “The removal of public health resources was apparently prompted by two recent executive orders – one focused on ‘gender ideology’ and the other targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion (‘DEI’) programs. Defendants implemented these executive orders in a haphazard manner that resulted in the deletion (inadvertent or otherwise) of health-related websites and databases, including information related to pregnancy risks, public health datasets, information about opioid-use disorder, and many other valuable resources.”
The lawsuit does not mention that it was President Donald Trump who issued the two executive orders in question.
A White House spokesperson couldn’t immediately be reached for comment on the lawsuit.
While not mentioning Trump by name, the lawsuit names as defendants in addition to HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., Matthew Buzzelli, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health; Martin Makary, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration; Thomas Engels, administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration; and Charles Ezell, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management.
The 44-page lawsuit complaint includes an addendum with a chart showing the titles or descriptions of 49 “affected resource” website pages that it says were deleted because of the executive orders. The chart shows that just four of the sites were restored after initially being deleted.
Of the 49 sites, 15 addressed LGBTQ-related health issues and six others addressed HIV issues, according to the chart.
“The unannounced and unprecedented deletion of these federal webpages and datasets came as a shock to the medical and scientific communities, which had come to rely on them to monitor and respond to disease outbreaks, assist physicians and other clinicians in daily care, and inform the public about a wide range of healthcare issues,” the lawsuit states.
“Health professionals, nonprofit organizations, and state and local authorities used the websites and datasets daily in care for their patients, to provide resources to their communities, and promote public health,” it says.
Jose Zuniga, president and CEO of the International Association of Providers of AIDS Care (IAPAC), one of the organizations that signed on as a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in a statement that the deleted information from the HHS websites “includes essential information about LGBTQ+ health, gender and reproductive rights, clinical trial data, Mpox and other vaccine guidance and HIV prevention resources.”
Zuniga added, “IAPAC champions evidence-based, data-informed HIV responses and we reject ideologically driven efforts that undermine public health and erase marginalized communities.”
Lisa Amore, a spokesperson for Whitman-Walker Health, D.C.’s largest LGBTQ supportive health services provider, also expressed concern about the potential impact of the HHS website deletions.
“As the region’s leader in HIV care and prevention, Whitman-Walker Health relies on scientific data to help us drive our resources and measure our successes,” Amore said in response to a request for comment from the Washington Blade.
“The District of Columbia has made great strides in the fight against HIV,” Amore said. “But the removal of public facing information from the HHS website makes our collective work much harder and will set HIV care and prevention backward,” she said.
The lawsuit calls on the court to issue a declaratory judgement that the “deletion of public health webpages and resources is unlawful and invalid” and to issue a preliminary or permanent injunction ordering government officials named as defendants in the lawsuit “to restore the public health webpages and resources that have been deleted and to maintain their web domains in accordance with their statutory duties.”
It also calls on the court to require defendant government officials to “file a status report with the Court within twenty-four hours of entry of a preliminary injunction, and at regular intervals, thereafter, confirming compliance with these orders.”
The health organizations that joined the lawsuit as plaintiffs include the Washington State Medical Association, Washington State Nurses Association, Washington Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Academy Health, Association of Nurses in AIDS Care, Fast-Track Cities Institute, International Association of Providers of AIDS Care, National LGBT Cancer Network, and Vermont Medical Society.
The Fast-Track Cities Institute and International Association of Providers of AIDS Care are based in D.C.
U.S. Federal Courts
Federal judge scraps trans-inclusive workplace discrimination protections
Ruling appears to contradict US Supreme Court precedent
Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas has struck down guidelines by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission designed to protect against workplace harassment based on gender identity and sexual orientation.
The EEOC in April 2024 updated its guidelines to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), which determined that discrimination against transgender people constituted sex-based discrimination as proscribed under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
To ensure compliance with the law, the agency recommended that employers honor their employees’ preferred pronouns while granting them access to bathrooms and allowing them to wear dress code-compliant clothing that aligns with their gender identities.
While the the guidelines are not legally binding, Kacsmaryk ruled that their issuance created “mandatory standards” exceeding the EEOC’s statutory authority that were “inconsistent with the text, history, and tradition of Title VII and recent Supreme Court precedent.”
“Title VII does not require employers or courts to blind themselves to the biological differences between men and women,” he wrote in the opinion.
The case, which was brought by the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation, presents the greatest setback for LGBTQ inclusive workplace protections since President Donald Trump’s issuance of an executive order on the first day of his second term directing U.S. federal agencies to recognize only two genders as determined by birth sex.
Last month, top Democrats from both chambers of Congress reintroduced the Equality Act, which would codify LGBTQ-inclusive protections against discrimination into federal law, covering employment as well as areas like housing and jury service.
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