National
Pelosi wants ‘Don’t Ask’ vote this year
Announcement comes as activists plan Sunday protest at White House
U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to hold a House vote this year on ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ (DC Agenda photo by Michael Key)
U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is planning to hold a vote this year on repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” according to her office.
“It is the Speaker’s intention that a vote will be taken this year on [‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’] in the House,” Drew Hammill, a Pelosi spokesperson, told the Washington Blade in a statement this week.
The announcement is welcome news for repeal advocates because Pelosi has yet to send legislation to the floor that lacked sufficient support for passage.
Michael Cole, a Human Rights Campaign spokesperson, praised Pelosi for planning the vote.
“As we’ve been saying for a long time now, the time to repeal the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ law is this year, and it’s a positive sign to hear congressional leaders affirm that,” Cole said.
Still, he noted that further work is necessary to make repeal happen.
“We need pressure on the Congress, we need pressure on the White House, we need pressure across the board, and as we get into this critical period, signs like that are promising,” he said.
Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, said he learned last week in a meeting with House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer that the House was planning the vote.
“I’m delighted that [Pelosi] reaffirmed to hold the vote this year,” he said.
Sarvis said the planned vote is helpful because it “underscores to the White House the seriousness of purpose” and the importance of moving key votes in the House and Senate during upcoming weeks.
“The hour for the president as well as for the leadership to become engaged is now,” he said. “The reality is — particularly in the Senate Armed Services Committee — we are still short of some critical votes. We don’t have the votes today. We’re on the brink of getting them, and we need help from leadership on the Hill and from the president himself.”
As plans for the House vote emerged, pressure continued to build on President Obama to make a greater effort to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” this year. Activists were planning a White House protest Sunday to draw more attention to the issue.
Heading the event are the grassroots groups Queer Rising and GetEqual. The latter organization was responsible for civil disobedience protests in recent months, including arrests on two occasions of LGBT former service members who chained themselves to the White House gates in protest of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
Alan Bounville, a member of Queer Rising and East Coast organizer for GetEqual, said the focus of Sunday’s protest would be to press Obama to send to Congress language repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” as part of his budget recommendations for the defense authorization bill.
“We want the president to transmit to the Senate Armed Services Committee the language that’s put into the [Department of Defense] budget to repeal this ridiculous law immediately,” he said. “We want that to happen right now; we want him to do that this moment.”
Activists are urging Obama to send such language to Congress soon because the defense committees are expected to hold markups next month for defense authorization legislation. The Senate Armed Services Committee, which advocates have been pushing to take up the issue of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is scheduled to hold its markup on May 26.
“So [the protest is] really just part of the growing swell of grassroots pressure that’s being placed on the president to take leadership on this issue because we know this window is closing for this to happen this year,” Bounville said.
The protest is set to take place Sunday from noon to 3 p.m. at Lafayette Park. Bounville noted that the number of people who participate could be in the hundreds or more. Organizers are still working on the messaging for the protest, Bounville said, including what he called a “visual component” that “may or may not happen that would also provide a stark visual image at the actual rally.”
The list of speakers planning to take part in the protest is still being finalized, but Bounville said among those taking part would be U.S. Army Lt. Dan Choi, an Iraq war veteran who was among those who chained himself to the White House fence in protest of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
“There’s a list of speakers that are taking the stage and just really sharing their stories, repeating this demand over and over and over,” Bounville said. “We’ll be doing a lot of chanting and just really connecting the people not just to this issue, but also to the fact we’re really fighting for full federal equality.”
Bounville was non-committal about whether civil disobedience would be a component of Sunday’s protest. He said he had “no idea” whether anyone would break the law at the event.
“I have no idea and usually those types of things would be kept under wraps anyway,” he said. “So that’s definitely something we wouldn’t know until we’re actually out there.”
But at least one lawmaker was skeptical about the impact of the Sunday protest. Gay Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), when asked about the effectiveness of the White House protest, replied, “You think President Obama is going to cave because people are demonstrating in front of the White House? No.”
“If presidents were going to change because people demonstrate, then what happens when people demonstrate in the opposite direction?” he said. “Do you count the number of demonstrators? I continue to be frustrated by people trying to take the easy way out — the way that gives them an emotional release — instead of calling senators and calling representatives.”
Frank said he was willing to bet most of those participating in the protest have not lobbied their lawmakers “in a significant way.”
“By which, I mean, call them and getting other people to call them,” he said.
In response, Bounville said Frank and others shouldn’t disparage acts of civil disobedience because people are putting themselves on the line for these efforts.
“That’s disgusting,” he said. “When they say things that really condemn non-violent direct action, they’re completely out of touch, not just with this movement, but with the social movement in general.”
Bounville said he didn’t think “letter writing and phone calling and $2,500 a plate dinners” have influenced lawmakers to move toward repeal, and what’s working “is the groundswell of grassroots support.”
“So if there were any civil disobedience at this rally, if it’s well executed, I think that would be a wonderful thing for the movement,” he said.
While skeptical about the impact of Sunday’s protest, Frank said the White House isn’t being “supportive the way they should be” in moving forward with repeal this year.
Still, Frank said the recent regulatory changes limiting third-party outings and raising the rank of officers conducting and initiating reviews “made a tremendous difference.”
“I give them a lot of credit for moving as they did, but I can’t give them full credit and I’m disappointed,” he said.
Bounville is also urging national LGBT organizations to take part in the Sunday protest and said a lack of participation would mean those groups aren’t serious about the urgency of repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
“If these organizations really feel a sense of urgency of these issues, they will support rallies like this that the community is planning,” he said. “It’s a rally that has competent speakers eloquently speaking on this issue, and if they’re not going to support that, then they’re really not supporting the movement, period.”
Bounville said SLDN and the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force would be among the organizations “looking at what they can do right now to help promote this event,” but the situation with HRC is different.
“HRC has been to this point unresponsive, which is interesting because the other organizations have responded,” he said Monday. “Joe Solmonese and HRC have not responded, which is not surprising. He’s forcing HRC to become irrelevant very fast.”
Cole denied that HRC hadn’t responded to the organizers’ request to participate. He said HRC started talks Monday about getting Jarrod Chlapowksi, HRC’s military consultant, involved in the event.
“He is interested in doing so and HRC is interested in having him appear,” Cole said. “Right now, Jarrod is in direct communication with the event organizers to work out the details and find out more about the event, but we look forward to his participation.”
Sarvis said SLDN is supportive of the protest, but was waiting to hear more details. He said he had a meeting scheduled April 23 with Kip Williams, a co-chair of GetEqual, but the discussion didn’t take place because Williams left town before the scheduled time.
“We’re having conversations about what it’s going to look like and who’s participating and what’s the scope of the protest,” Sarvis said. “But, yes, it’s certainly something that we’re going to be supporting … and we’ll be helping to get out information on it and other means.”
Noting Obama called for “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal as part of his State of the Union address, Sarvis said the challenge before repeal advocates is ensuring the president is following through and engaged with Congress to eliminate the statute this year.
“Clearly, if he gets on the phone and asks for votes in the two committees, that’s going to make a difference,” Sarvis said. “He’s working the phones on financial services reform. He did that on health care. We need that same kind of engagement in repealing that statute.”
Sarvis said protests such as the one occurring Sunday are effective in influencing President Obama to move forward with repeal this year, but noted that there are different approaches to petitioning the president.
“We have clients who are sending letters to the president this week individually; we’re up on Capitol Hill face-to-face with members and their staffs,” Sarvis said. “There’s a place for others to do their thing, whether it’s at the White House or Lafayette Park.”
Recalling a similar protest before the White House that SLDN organized in June to mark the then-265 service members who were discharged during Obama’s term, Sarvis said his organization has taken part in grassroots activism before.
“Petitioning the president at the White House is not a new thing for SLDN,” Sarvis said. “That’s something that SLDN organized almost 11 months ago, so obviously I think it’s helpful.”
In addition to the White House protest, Bounville noted that activists were planning actions targeting members of Congress regarding “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” He said his organization sent fliers to senators with differing positions on the issue — Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.), ranking Republican Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) — with the message, “You’re next!”
Accordingly, five activists held a sit-in protest Monday at McCain’s district office in Phoenix, Ariz., to protest the senator’s opposition to repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” The fallout of the protest wasn’t immediately clear and McCain’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.
“From a non-violent direct action standpoint, yeah, we have reached out to those targets,” Bounville said.
Still, Bounville said the No. 1 focal point for the upcoming protest is Obama because he’s failed to follow through on his promise to be a “fierce advocate” for the LGBT community.
“I’m going to continue to pressure him,” Bounville said. “I’m going to continue to exhaust myself because I’m not exhausted on this. He will continue to lose political capital at an accelerated rate, probably faster than he would have if we weren’t engaged at this end of the movement.”
The White House
White House ends protections for trans students in multiple school districts
Cape Henlopen School District in Delaware among administration’s targets
The Department of Education has terminated agreements with five school districts and a college aimed at protecting the rights of transgender students, backtracking requirements made in prior administrations, according to the Associated Press.
Allowing the reversal of these federal obligations removes formerly mandatory measures, including faculty training on responding to a student’s preferred name and pronouns, and policies allowing trans children to use bathrooms that align with their gender identity.
This policy change is a major shift from past democratic-led administrations, and will impact Delaware Valley School District in Pennsylvania, Sacramento City Unified School District in California, Cape Henlopen School District in Delaware, Fife School District in Washington, and La Mesa-Spring Valley School District, as well as Taft College in California.
Delaware Valley School District received notice from the Trump-Vance administration in February and has since voted to roll back anti-discrimination protections. Other schools, like Sacramento City Unified School District, said the change in minimum protections a district must offer will not affect their policies because it “remains committed to the support of our LGBTQ+ students and staff.”
This is part of a wider wave of anti-trans actions taken by the Trump-Vance administration. This White House has penalized schools attempting to accommodate students’ gender identity, filed lawsuits in California and Minnesota over state policies allowing trans students to participate in interscholastic sports, and opened civil rights investigations into multiple schools and universities over their policies on trans students.
Kimberly Richey, the Department of Education’s Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, said the action underscored the administration’s efforts to prevent trans students from participating in girls’ and women’s sports teams and accessing shared locker rooms.
“Today, the Trump administration is removing the unnecessary and unlawful burdens that prior administrations imposed on schools in its relentless pursuit of a radical transgender agenda,” she said in a written statement.
According to the AP, this is just one instance of the administration rescinding civil rights protections in education. Last year, the Department of Education terminated two agreements: one involving the removal of books from a school library in Georgia, and another addressing harsh discipline and unequal education opportunities for Native students in the Rapid City Area School District in South Dakota.
Shiwali Patel, the senior director of education justice at the National Women’s Law Center, issued a statement in response to the removal of protections for trans students, saying the rollback will negatively impact all students — not just trans ones.
“There is absolutely no basis for what the Department of Education is doing, and it is unimaginably cruel. Title IX exists to ensure that students are protected from discrimination and treated with dignity so that they can learn and thrive in our schools,” Patel said. “It’s what students, families, lawmakers, and advocates fought for when Title IX was passed decades ago. But the Trump administration’s Department of Education has spent its limited resources to strip Title IX of that very purpose.”
She continued, highlighting the issues that will arise from the agreement removals in schools.
“Real complaints of discrimination and sexual assault are going unanswered by the Department of Education while conservative lawmakers continue to escalate their attacks on a small minority of students,” the nationally recognized Title IX expert and advocacy leader for gender-based harassment added. “Parents, teachers, and students need the Department to focus on addressing real harms on campuses instead of rolling back policies that keep all students safe.”
The schools that had their agreements terminated vary, but stem from the same issue: treating trans students with the same protections from harassment as their cisgender peers.
In 2023, Taft College, a community college in California’s Central Valley, became one of the few schools to settle a case with the Department of Education’s Civil Rights Office after a student accused faculty of discrimination, including refusing to use the student’s preferred pronouns. The college agreed to faculty training on Title IX protections and revised its policies to clarify that refusing to use a person’s preferred name and pronoun can constitute harassment.
The now-canceled agreement with Sacramento City Unified School District stemmed from a 2022 complaint brought by a student after a teacher refused to use the student’s preferred pronouns and/or refused to allow the male-identifying student to work in a boys’ group for a class activity. The 2024 resolution agreement had mandated training for employees on civil rights law, sexual harassment, and how to handle formal complaints.
Under a settlement the Delaware Valley School District reached with the Obama-Biden administration, the district was required to permit students to use bathrooms aligned with their gender identity. In February, the Trump-Vance administration sent the district a letter rescinding the settlement and requiring the rollback of antidiscrimination protections for trans students. The school board voted in late March to change its policies accordingly.
This move is part of a broader pattern of anti-trans actions from the White House since Trump returned to office.
In addition to restricting protections in federally funded education spaces, the administration has attempted to end trans girls’ and women’s participation in sports competitions and has sued states that have not complied. It has also blocked trans and nonbinary people from choosing sex markers on passports and attempted to stop those under 19 from receiving gender-affirming medical care.
South Carolina
Man faces first S.C. ‘hate intimidation’ charge
Timothy Truett allegedly shot at gay club in Myrtle Beach on April 1
A South Carolina man remains in custody on a more than $300,000 bond after he allegedly opened fire at a Myrtle Beach nightclub on April 1, according to WMBF.
Reports say 37-year-old Timothy James Truett Jr., of Clover, S.C., was detained by the Myrtle Beach Police Department after the April 1 incident outside Pulse Ultra Club. He was later arrested and charged with possession of a weapon during a violent crime, discharging a firearm into a dwelling, discharging a firearm within city limits, malicious injury to real property valued over $5,000, and assault or intimidation due to political opinions or the exercise of civil rights.
At 10:57 a.m. on April 1, officers responded to a call about a possible shooting at Pulse Ultra Club, located in the 2700 block of South Kings Highway.
In an affidavit released later, the club’s owner, Ken Phillips, said he was doing paperwork that morning when he heard “five or six” gunshots. He went outside and found a window and the windshield of his SUV shattered by bullets. An SUV with blue plastic covering one window was left at the scene.
Police later reviewed footage that showed a silver vehicle stopping in the middle of the road. The video appeared to capture muzzle flashes coming from the passenger-side window.
According to the affidavit, an officer later pulled over a vehicle driven by Truett and found spent shell casings in the back seat, along with a gun.
Documents do not detail why Truett was ultimately charged under the state law covering assault or intimidation tied to political opinions or the exercise of civil rights.
As of April 1, records show Truett is being held in Horry County on a combined bond of more than $312,000.
WMBF spoke with Phillips after the incident and asked whether there was any prior conflict that might have led to the shooting.
“I don’t know if it’s personal, I don’t know if it’s related to being gay, I don’t know if it’s related to the bar issues,” Phillips told WMBF. “Anybody with a mindset of pulling out a weapon in broad daylight is not right.”
“My primary concern has and always will be the safety of my community and my customers,” he added. “It’s given me great concern … as to how far people will go.”
WMBF also spoke with Adam Hayes, vice chair of Myrtle Beach’s Human Rights Coalition, who was involved in pushing for the ordinance. He said that while the incident itself is troubling, it shows the policy is being put to use.
The ordinance is intended to deter “crimes that are motivated by bias or hate towards any person or persons, in whole or in part, because of the actual or perceived” identity, in the absence of a statewide hate crime law.
“It’s nice to see that something we put into policy is not just a piece of paper, that it’s actually being used,” said Hayes.
He said the shooting underscores the need for a statewide hate crime law in South Carolina and added that the incident has left the local LGBTQ community shaken.
South Carolina and Wyoming are the only two states in the U.S. without a comprehensive statewide hate crime law.
Truett remains in jail as of publication.
The White House
Trump budget would codify expanded global gag rule
Funding for LGBTQ health programs around the world would also be cut
The Trump-Vance administration’s fiscal year 2027 budget would codify the expanded global gag rule and eliminate funding for LGBTQ-specific programs in global health initiatives.
“The budget would ensure no funding supports abortion, unfettered access to birth control, and also eliminates funding for circumcision and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer services to better focus funds on life-saving assistance,” reads the proposed budget the White House released on April 3. “The United States should not pay for the world’s birth control and therapy.”
The proposed budget includes four examples of “eliminated activities.”
- In the last administration, PEPFAR funded health workers who performed over 21 abortions in Mozambique
- Promoting reproductive health education and access to birth control and other harmful programs couched under ‘family planning’ in Ghana
- A supply chain “control tower” to provide a “holistic commercial of the shelf solution” on the Office of Population and Reproductive Health (PRH)
- Promoting health equity and providing condoms and contraception in Kenya.
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 Biden-Harris administration shortly after it took office in January 2021 rescinded it.
The Trump-Vance White House earlier this year expanded the global gag rule to ban U.S. foreign aid for groups that promote “gender ideology.” The expansion took effect on Feb. 26.
US funding cuts have devastated global LGBTQ rights movement
The Trump-Vance administration after it took office in January 2025 moved to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, which funded LGBTQ and intersex rights groups around the world. USAID officially shut down on July 1, 2025.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio in March 2025 announced the State Department would administer the 17 percent of USAID contracts that had not been cancelled. Rubio issued a waiver that allowed PEPFAR and other “life-saving humanitarian assistance” programs to continue to operate during the U.S. foreign aid freeze the White House announced shortly after it took office.
The global LGBTQ and intersex rights movement has lost more than an estimated $50 million in funding because of these cuts. 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.
The Trump-Vance administration has signed healthcare-specific agreements with Kenya, Uganda, and other African countries through its American First Global Health Strategy. Advocacy groups with whom the Blade has spoken have expressed concern these partnerships will result in further exclusion and government-sanctioned discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
The proposed fiscal year 2027 budget includes $5.1 billion for “global health to end the previous administration’s abuse of these programs and to execute (the State Department’s) newly released America First Global Health Strategy.” This figure represents a $4.3 billion cut from the previous year.
“The president’s new vision of bilateral health assistance eliminates bloated Beltway Bandit contracts, does more with fewer dollars, and transitions recipient countries to self-reliance,” reads the proposed budget. “The budget would also eliminate disease-specific accounts and provide the department crucial agility to address the actual needs of each recipient country — across HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, and polio — to strengthen global health security and protect Americans from disease.”
“The budget would focus on new compacts that unify funding, achieving economies of scale in both implementation and oversight,” it adds. “Under the prior administration, only about 40 percent of PEPFAR funds supported actual service delivery, including medications, testing, commodities, and health workers, with the remaining 60 percent wasted on duplicative administrative costs, unwieldy supply chains, and layers of endless bureaucracy. The new AFGHS (America First Global Health Strategy) compacts would improve efficiency, cut red tape, and dismantle the bloated ecosystem of foreign assistance profiteers.”
The Council for Global Equality on April 3 reiterated its criticism of the expanded global gag rule, and urged Congress to reject the proposed budget.
“We won’t mince words: people are dying because of this policy,” said the Council for Global Equality in a statement. “Making this policy permanent will only ensure that U.S. foreign assistance discriminates against those who need services the most, all while forcing people around the world to adhere to the Trump administration’s extremist, ideological agenda that denies the very existence of transgender, nonbinary, and intersex persons.”
“We will not be silent as Trump threatens to upend decades of bipartisan foreign assistance programs to appease his extremist base,” added the group. “We call on Congress to immediately reject this budget and block implementation of the expanded global gag rules.”
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