Connect with us

National

Will arrests at White House usher new era of activism?

Gay soldier becomes face of civil disobedience

Published

16 years ago

on

Lt. Dan Choi, a gay West Point graduate and Arabic linguist who served as an infantry officer in Iraq, was arrested last week after handcuffing himself to the White House fence in protest of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ (DC Agenda photo by Michael Key)

A gay solider who handcuffed himself to the White House fence last week in protest of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” has emerged as a national figure who is challenging LGBT rights groups to take a more militant posture in the fight for anti-discrimination bills stalled in Congress.

Lt. Dan Choi, a West Point graduate and Arabic linguist who served as an infantry officer in Iraq, was one of three protesters arrested outside the White House on March 18. Many people see the action as a challenge to gay groups aligned with the Obama administration and Democratic Party leaders in Congress.

“I want to explain why these actions are exactly what we need to be doing as American citizens,” Choi told DC Agenda upon his release from jail March 19. “When there’s a time when our leaders are unable, unwilling to do the right thing, somebody has to step up to the responsibility.”

His arrest — and comments in a Newsweek interview this week criticizing gay rights leaders for being too closely aligned with the Washington political establishment — comes at a time when some activists and donors are complaining that President Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress have not pushed hard enough to advance several LGBT rights bills, including the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

Choi, who is in the process of being discharged from the Army under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” was joined in the White House protest by Jim Pietrangelo, a former Army captain discharged in 2004 for being gay, and Robin McGehee, co-founder of the new LGBT direct action group GetEqual.org.

Pietrangelo also handcuffed himself to the fence while McGehee assisted the two. Police charged all three with refusing to obey a lawful order to disperse, a misdemeanor that carries a maximum penalty of a $1,000 fine.

McGehee agreed to pay a $35 fine to end the case against her in a process known as post and forfeit. But Choi and Pietrangelo pleaded not guilty at an arraignment the following day in D.C. Superior Court after being held overnight in jail. A judge set an April 26 trial date for the two.

Shortly after U.S. Park Police officers arrested Choi and Pietrangelo and uniformed Secret Service officers arrested McGehee, four other protesters affiliated with GetEqual.org were arrested by U.S. Capitol police for staging a sit-in at the Capitol Hill office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

Other people were arrested around the same time in Pelosi’s district office in San Francisco. The Washington and San Francisco protesters said they were targeting Pelosi for not moving fast enough to schedule a House vote on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA. The long-stalled legislation calls for banning employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

“We had three simultaneous actions happening at the same time on the same day — with the simple demand that we wanted “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repealed immediately and ENDA to be brought to the floor immediately,” McGehee said.

“And we’ll be back in April,” said McGehee, who lives in Fresno, Calif. “I can’t tell you what we’re going to do, but we’ll be back.”

Asked if future actions would involve LGBT protesters getting arrested, McGehee said, “Yes, absolutely.”

“Some of these will include non-violent civil disobedience that will lead to arrests and some of them will be moments that you’re going to highlight injustice through a creative action idea that doesn’t include an arrest,” she said.

“But what we’re trying to do is create the lunch-counter moment that highlights the injustice and gives the visual imagery that shows we really are in a civil rights battle,” she said.

McGehee said the “lunch-counter moment” was a reference to the famous sit-ins staged by blacks at segregated restaurants and lunch counters in the South during the late the 1950s and early 1960s, when civil rights activists were arrested and jailed.

The non-violent civil disobedience actions organized then by Martin Luther King Jr. and his supporters have been credited with laying the groundwork for Congress to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The act ended segregation by banning discrimination based on race and color in employment, housing and public accommodations.

Gay activists have engaged in civil disobedience actions since the Stonewall riots in New York City ushered in the modern gay rights movement in 1969. Gay and AIDS activists involved with the AIDS protest groups ACT UP engaged in widely publicized civil disobedience actions in the 1980s to challenge inaction on the part of the government to fighting AIDS.

But since the early 1990s, when President Bill Clinton emerged as the first U.S. president to openly support gay rights and gay-supportive Democrats won control of Congress, most of the nation’s LGBT groups chose a path of more traditional lobbying and electioneering to build support for gay rights causes.

McGehee’s reference to the arrest actions by black civil rights activists in the South, where police often treated arrested demonstrators harshly, paralleled Choi’s arrest outside the White House.

According to D.C. gay Democratic activist Paul Yandura, who has served as a spokesperson for Choi and Pietrangelo, Choi recounted a harrowing encounter with a police officer at the city’s Central Cellblock, where the two were taken after their arrest.

Yandura noted that Choi and Pietrangelo wore their military uniforms to the protest and remained dressed in their uniforms during their overnight stay at the cellblock. He said Choi told him an officer at the cellblock ordered him to stand before him at attention and “violently” ripped several cloth insignias, including an American flag insignia, from Choi’s uniform.

One by one, the officer ripped off the flag insignia, cloth stripes indicating Choi’s rank and a cloth U.S. Army insignia, so as “to humiliate him,” Yandura said.

Shortly after being asked about the incident by DC Agenda, Assistant D.C. Police Chief Diane Groomes said she looked into the matter and confirmed that a Park Police officer removed the insignias from both Choi and Pietrangelo’s uniforms at a Park Police holding facility.

She said the incident occurred before the two men were taken to the Central Cellblock, which is operated by D.C. police.

“[D.C. police] were not involved in said matter,” Groomes told DC Agenda in an e-mail. She said Park Police Lt. Phil Beck confirmed to her that an officer with the Park Police removed the two gay men’s uniform insignias, but she did not know why.

A Park Police spokesperson could not immediately be reached for comment.

Choi challenges HRC

Choi appeared to take a swipe at established LGBT rights groups, including the Human Rights Campaign, in an interview this week with Newsweek, which raised eyebrows among some activists.

“Within the gay community, so many leaders want acceptance from polite society,” he said in the interview. “I think there’s been a betrayal of what is down inside of us in order to achieve what looks popular, what look enviable.

“The movement seems to be centered around how to become an elite,” he said. “I would say to them: You do not represent us if all you are looking for is a ladder in to elite society.”

He also told Newsweek he believes a “deep schism” exists within the LGBT rights movement, with many gay and transgender youth becoming alienated from the more establishment-oriented groups.

Choi’s own plans for the White House protest last week were announced about a half hour before it began during a noon rally in Freedom Plaza that HRC organized jointly with comedienne Kathy Griffin in support of efforts to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

Choi was not a scheduled speaker at the rally. In a statement, HRC spokesperson Trevor Thomas said Choi first asked HRC President Joe Solmonese if the soldier could have a speaking role at the event.

“Joe explained that it wasn’t his sole decision to make on the spot given that there was already an established program that included Kathy Griffin, other organizations and veterans,” Thomas said.

But Thomas and others familiar with the rally said Griffin later invited Choi to speak during her allotted time period on the rally stage.

Once on stage, Choi urged rally attendees to march with him to the White House to send a message to “repeal ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ — not next year, not tomorrow, but now. Now is the time.”

He made no mention of his plans to handcuff himself to the White House fence, saying only, “I’m going to the White House right now. I want you all to take out your cell phones and any recording devices and document this moment right now as we together make history.”

He then turned to Griffin and Solmonese and asked if they would join him in a march to the White House. Griffin said, “Of course,” and Solmonese gave him a thumbs-up signal. But the two later said that they chose to remain at the rally to continue to push for lobbying efforts to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

About 200 people followed Choi and Pietrangelo for the four-block walk from Freedom Plaza to the White House. HRC said more than 1,000 people attended the Freedom Plaza rally.

Phil Attey, a gay D.C. activist and volunteer coordinator for the Obama for president campaign was among those who attended the Freedom Plaza rally. He expressed distaste over Choi’s march to the White House, calling it “politically unsophisticated beyond belief.”

“It’s a shame that our community needs to be educated about the political process and they don’t get it,” he said. “They don’t understand that Congress needs to be moved on this issue and that people across the country have the power to do that. And if they’re going to get them to yell and scream at the president, we’re going to fail, we’re going to lose.”

But Choi and McGehee said later that Obama isn’t pushing hard enough to prod Congress to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” The two said their arrest action was aimed, in part, at pushing the president into including language to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in his 2010 Department of Defense authorization bill, which could enable the repeal to take place this year.

While saying he has great respect for Griffin, a popular comedienne with a large gay following, Choi said he questioned HRC’s decision to team up with a comedienne for a rally addressing discrimination against gays in the military.

“’Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ is not a laughing matter,” he said in the Newsweek interview.

HRC says differing
tactics no ‘schism’

Solmonese and two local activists involved in lobbying for D.C.’s same-sex marriage law took exception to some of Choi’s comments.

“Any healthy and diverse social movement will have a diversity of voices and opinions,” Solmonese told DC Agenda. “Individuals and groups will take different approaches based on their ideology, life experience and other sincerely and deeply held beliefs about the political process. This is not indicative of a schism, but rather a sign of vibrant engagement.”

And D.C. gay activist Bob Summersgill, who coordinated strategy for lobbying the City Council for approval of a same-sex marriage law, called Choi’s criticism of HRC off base.

“Direct action is a very good tactic,” he said. “But it’s most effective when you do it in conjunction with standard lobbying. This past week, Dan Choi had a dual message to pass ENDA and repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” but also to attack HRC at the same time.”

Summersgill disputed Choi’s assertion that national lobbying groups like HRC are more interested in seeking an elitist status than in passing laws.

“HRC is a federal lobbying organization,” he said. “To pass laws, you have to talk to and build relationships with members of Congress.”

Jose Zuniga, who was among the first to challenge “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in 1993 as a sergeant in the Army, noted that civil disobedience has an important place in civil rights endeavors, including in the LGBT community.

“I respect Dan Choi’s passion and, although I wish he had not engaged in civil disobedience while dressed in an Army uniform, I personally understand, as someone who was discharged from the U.S. Army … because I am a gay man, the frustration he and our community rightly feel,” Zuniga said.

Like Summersgill and Solmonese, Zuniga said civil disobedience should be carefully coordinated with legislative advocacy efforts.

Related Topics:
Advertisement
FUND LGBTQ JOURNALISM
SIGN UP FOR E-BLAST

Florida

AIDS Healthcare Foundation sues Fla. over ‘illegal’ HIV drug program cuts

Tens of thousands could lose access to medications

Published

23 hours ago

on

January 30, 2026

By

(Photo by Catella via Bigstock)

Following the slashing of hundreds of thousands of dollars from Florida’s AIDS Drug Assistance Program, AIDS Healthcare Foundation filed a lawsuit against the Florida Department of Health over what it says was an illegal change to income eligibility thresholds for the lifesaving program.

The Florida Department of Health announced two weeks ago that it would make sweeping cuts to ADAP, dramatically changing how many Floridians qualify for the state-funded medical coverage — without using the formal process required to change eligibility rules. As a result, AHF filed a petition Tuesday in Tallahassee with the state’s Division of Administrative Hearings, seeking to prevent more than 16,000 Floridians from losing coverage.

The medications covered by ADAP work by suppressing HIV-positive people’s viral load — making the virus undetectable in blood tests and unable to be transmitted to others.

Prior to the eligibility change, the Florida Department of Health covered Floridians earning up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level — or $62,600 annually for an individual. Under the new policy, eligibility would be limited to those making no more than 130 percent of the federal poverty level, or $20,345 per year.

The National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors estimates that more than 16,000 patients in Florida will lose coverage under the state’s ADAP because of this illegal change in department policy. Florida’s eligibility changes would also eliminate access to biktarvy, a widely used once-daily medication for people living with HIV/AIDS.

Under Florida law, when a state agency seeks to make a major policy change, it must either follow a formal rule-making process under the Florida Administrative Procedure Act or obtain direct legislative authorization.

AHF alleges the Florida Department of Health did neither.

Typically, altering eligibility for a statewide program requires either legislative action or adherence to a multistep rule-making process, including: publishing a Notice of Proposed Rule; providing a statement of estimated regulatory costs; allowing public comment; holding hearings if requested; responding to challenges; and formally adopting the rule. According to AHF, none of these steps occurred.

“Rule-making is not a matter of agency discretion. Each statement that an agency like the Department of Health issues that meets the statutory definition of a rule must be adopted through legally mandated rule-making procedures. Florida has simply not done so here,” said Tom Myers, AHF’s chief of public affairs and general counsel. “The whole point of having to follow procedures and rules is to make sure any decisions made are deliberate, thought through, and minimize harm. Floridians living with HIV and the general public’s health are at stake here and jeopardized by these arbitrary and unlawful DOH rule changes.”

AHF has multiple Ryan White CARE Act contracts in Florida, including four under Part B, which covers ADAP. More than 50 percent of people diagnosed with HIV receive assistance from Ryan White programs annually.

According to an AHF advocacy leader who spoke with the Washington Blade, the move appears to have originated at the state level rather than being driven by the federal government — a claim that has circulated among some Democratic officials.

“As far as we can tell, Congress flat-funded the Ryan White and ADAP programs, and the proposed federal cuts were ignored,” the advocacy leader told the Blade on the condition of anonymity. “None of this appears to be coming from Washington — this was initiated in Florida. What we’re trying to understand is why the state is claiming a $120 million shortfall when the program already receives significant federal funding. That lack of transparency is deeply concerning.”

Florida had the third-highest rate of new HIV infections in the nation in 2022, accounting for 11 percent of new diagnoses nationwide, according to KFF, a nonprofit health policy research organization.

During a press conference on Wednesday, multiple AHF officials commented on the situation, and emphasized the need to use proper methods to change something as important as HIV/AIDS coverage availability in the sunshine state. 

“We are receiving dozens, hundreds of calls from patients who are terrified, who are confused, who are full of anxiety and fear,” said Esteban Wood, director of advocacy, legislative affairs, and community engagement at AHF. “These are working Floridians — 16,000 people — receiving letters saying they have weeks left of medication that keeps them alive and costs upwards of $45,000 a year. Patients are asking us, ‘What are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to survive?’ And right now, we don’t have a good answer.”

“This decision was not done in the correct manner. County health programs, community-based organizations, providers across the state — none of them were consulted,” Wood added. “Today is Jan. 28, and we have just 32 days until these proposed changes take effect. Nearly half of the 36,000 people currently on ADAP could be disenrolled in just over a month.”

“Without this medication, people with HIV get sicker,” Myers said during the conference. “They end up in emergency rooms, they lose time at work, and they’re unable to take care of their families. Treatment adherence is also the best way to prevent new HIV infections — people who are consistently on these medications are non-infectious. If these cuts go through, you will have sicker people, more HIV infections, and ultimately much higher costs for the state.”

“Patients receiving care through Ryan White and ADAP have a 91 percent viral suppression rate, compared to about 60 percent nationally,” the advocacy leader added. “That’s as close to a functional cure as we can get, and it allows people to live healthy lives, work, and contribute to their communities. Blowing a hole in a program this successful puts lives at risk and sets a dangerous precedent. If Florida gets away with this, other states facing budget pressure could follow.”

The lawsuit comes days after the Save HIV Funding campaign pressed Congress to build bipartisan support for critical funding for people living with or vulnerable to HIV. In May of last year, President Donald Trump appeared to walk back his 2019 pledge to end HIV as an epidemic, instead proposing the elimination of HIV prevention programs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and housing services in his budget request to Congress.

House appropriators, led by the Republican majority, went further, calling for an additional $2 billion in cuts — including $525 million for medical care and support services for people living with HIV. 

While Senate appropriators ultimately chose to maintain level funding in their version of the spending bills, advocates feared final negotiations could result in steep cuts that would reduce services, increase new HIV infections, and lead to more AIDS-related deaths. The final spending package reflected a best-case outcome, with funding levels largely mirroring the Senate’s proposed FY26 allocations.

“What the state has done in unilaterally announcing these changes is not following its own rules,” Myers added. “There is a required process — rule-making, notice and comment, taking evidence — and none of that happened here. Before you cut 16,000 people off from lifesaving medication, you have to study the harms, ask whether you even have the authority to do it, and explore other solutions. That’s what this lawsuit is about.”

Continue Reading

National

Federal authorities arrest Don Lemon

Former CNN anchor taken into custody two weeks after Minn. church protest

Published

1 day ago

on

January 30, 2026

By

Don Lemon (Screenshot via YouTube)

Federal authorities on Thursday arrested former CNN anchor Don Lemon in Los Angeles.

CNN reported authorities arrested Lemon after 11 p.m. PT while in the lobby of a hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., while he “was leaving for an event.” Lemon’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, in a statement said his client was in Los Angeles to cover the Grammy Awards.

Authorities arrested Lemon less than two weeks after he entered Cities Church in St. Paul, Minn., with a group of protesters who confronted a pastor who works for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. (An ICE agent on Jan. 7 shot and killed Renee Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis woman who left behind her wife and three children. U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents on Jan. 24 shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse who worked for the Department of Veterans Affairs, in Minneapolis.)

Lemon insists he was simply covering the Cities Church protest that interrupted the service. A federal magistrate last week declined to charge the openly gay journalist in connection with the demonstration.

“Don Lemon was taken into custody by federal agents last night in Los Angeles, where he was covering the Grammy awards,” said Lowell in his statement. “Don has been a journalist for 30 years, and his constitutionally protected work in Minneapolis was no different than what he has always done. The First Amendment exists to protect journalists whose role it is to shine light on the truth and hold those in power accountable.”

“Instead of investigating the federal agents who killed two peaceful Minnesota protesters, the Trump Justice Department is devoting its time, attention and resources to this arrest, and that is the real indictment of wrongdoing in this case,” Lowell added. “This unprecedented attack on the First Amendment and transparent attempt to distract attention from the many crises facing this administration will not stand. Don will fight these charges vigorously and thoroughly in court.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi on X confirmed federal agents “at my direction” arrested Lemon and three others — Trahern Jeen Crews, Georgia Fort, and Jamael Lydell Lundy — “in connection with the coordinated attack on Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota.”

Fort is also a journalist.

Lemon, who CNN fired in 2023, is expected to appear in court in Los Angeles on Friday.

“Freedom of the press is a cornerstone of a free society; it is the tool by which Americans access the truth and hold power to account. But Donald Trump and Pam Bondi are at war with that freedom — and are threatening the fundamentals of our democracy,” said Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson on Friday in a statement. “Don Lemon and Georgia Fort were doing their jobs as reporters. Arresting them is not law enforcement it is an attack on the Constitution at a moment when truthful reporting on government power has never been more important. These are the actions of a despot, the tactics of a dictator in an authoritarian regime.”

Continue Reading

The White House

Expanded global gag rule to ban US foreign aid to groups that promote ‘gender ideology’

Activists, officials say new regulation will limit access to gender-affirming care

Published

2 days ago

on

January 29, 2026

By

President Donald Trump speaks at the 2025 U.N. General Assembly. The Trump-Vance administration has expanded the global gag rule to ban U.S. foreign aid to groups that promote "gender ideology." (Screenshot via YouTube)

The Trump-Vance administration has announced it will expand the global gag rule to ban U.S. foreign aid for groups that promote “gender ideology.”

Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau in a memo, titled Combating Gender Ideology in Foreign Assistance, the Federal Register published on Jan. 27 notes  “previous administrations … used” U.S. foreign assistance “to fund the denial of the biological reality of sex, promoting a radical ideology that permits men to self-identify as women, indoctrinate children with radical gender ideology, and allow men to gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women.”

“Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. It also threatens the wellbeing of children by encouraging them to undergo life-altering surgical and chemical interventions that carry serious risks of lifelong harms like infertility,” reads the memo. “The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women and children but, as an attack on truth and human nature, it harms every nation. It is the purpose of this rule to prohibit the use of foreign assistance to support radical gender ideology, including by ending support for international organizations and multilateral organizations that pressure nations to embrace radical gender ideology, or otherwise promote gender ideology.”

President Donald Trump on Jan. 28, 2025, issued an executive order — Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation — that banned federal funding for gender-affirming care for minors.

President Ronald Reagan in 1985 implemented the global gag rule, also known as the “Mexico City” policy, which bans U.S. foreign aid for groups that support abortion and/or offer abortion-related services.

Trump reinstated the rule during his first administration. The White House this week expanded the ban to include groups that support gender-affirming care and diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.

The expanded global gag rule will take effect on Feb. 26.

“None of the funds made available by this act or any other Act may be made available in contravention of Executive Order 14187, relating to Protecting Children From Chemical and Surgical Mutilation, or shall be used or transferred to another federal agency, board, or commission to fund any domestic or international non-governmental organization or any other program, organization, or association coordinated or operated by such non-governmental organization that either offers counseling regarding sex change surgeries, promotes sex change surgeries for any reason as an option, conducts or subsidizes sex change surgeries, promotes the use of medications or other substances to halt the onset of puberty or sexual development of minors, or otherwise promotes transgenderism,” wrote Landau in his memo.

Landau wrote the State Department “does not believe taxpayer dollars should support sex-rejecting procedures, directly or indirectly for individuals of any age.”

“A person’s body (including its organs, organ systems, and processes natural to human development like puberty) are either healthy or unhealthy based on whether they are operating according to their biological functions,” reads his memo. “Organs or organ systems do not become unhealthy simply because the individual may experience psychological distress relating to his or her sexed body. For this reason, removing a patient’s breasts as a treatment for breast cancer is fundamentally different from performing the same procedure solely to alleviate mental distress arising from gender dysphoria. The former procedure aims to restore bodily health and to remove cancerous tissue. In contrast, removing healthy breasts or interrupting normally occurring puberty to ‘affirm’ one’s ‘gender identity’ involves the intentional destruction of healthy biological functions.”

Landau added there “is also lack of clarity about what sex-rejecting procedures’ fundamental aims are, unlike the broad consensus about the purpose of medical treatments for conditions like appendicitis, diabetes, or severe depression.”

“These procedures lack strong evidentiary foundations, and our understanding of long-term health impacts is limited and needs to be better understood,” he wrote. “Imposing restrictions, as this rule proposes, on sex-rejecting procedures for individuals of any age is necessary for the (State) Department to protect taxpayer dollars from abuse in support of radical ideological aims.”

Landau added the State Department “has determined that applying this rule to non-military foreign assistance broadly is necessary to ensure that its foreign assistance programs do not support foreign NGOs and IOs (international organizations) that promote gender ideology, and U.S. NGOs that provide sex-rejecting procedures, and to ensure the integrity of programs such as humanitarian assistance, gender-related programs, and more, do not promote gender ideology.”

“This rule will also allow for more foreign assistance funds to support organizations that promote biological truth in their foreign assistance programs and help the (State) Department to establish new partnerships,” he wrote.

The full memo can be found here.

Council for Global Equality Senior Policy Fellow Beirne Roose-Snyder on Wednesday said the expansion of the so-called global gag rule will “absolutely impact HIV services where we know we need to target services, to that there are non-stigmatizing, safe spaces for people to talk through all of their medical needs, and being trans is really important to be able to disclose to your health care provider so that you can get ARVs, so you can get PrEP in the right ways.” Roose-Snyder added the expanded ban will also impact access to gender-affirming health care, food assistance programs and humanitarian aid around the world.

“This rule is not about gender-affirming care at all,” she said during a virtual press conference the Universal Access Project organized.

“It is about really saying that if you want to take U.S. funds —   and it’s certainly not about gender-affirming care for children — it is if you want to take U.S. funds, you cannot have programs or materials or offer counseling or referrals to people who may be struggling with their gender identity,” added Roose-Snyder. “You cannot advocate to maintain your country’s own nondiscrimination laws around gender identity. It is the first place that we’ve ever seen the U.S. government define gender-affirming care, except they call it something a lot different than that.”

The Congressional Equality Caucus, the Democratic Women’s Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the Congressional Asian and Pacific American Caucus, and the Congressional Black Caucus also condemned the global gag rule’s expansion.

“We strongly condemn this weaponization of U.S. foreign assistance to undermine human rights and global health,” said the caucuses in a statement. “We will not rest until we ensure that our foreign aid dollars can never be used as a weapon against women, people of color, or LGBTQI+ people ever again.”

Continue Reading

Popular