National
Tension mounts as Senate prepares ‘Don’t Ask’ debate
Reid intends to file cloture petition for Tuesday vote
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has announced plans to proceed with major defense budget legislation containing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal language as questions linger about whether sufficient votes are present to move forward.
Reid officially announced plans to proceed with the fiscal year 2011 defense authorization bill and “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” on Tuesday during his press conference in the U.S. Capitol.
The majority leader said the defense authorization bill is “especially important” this year because the legislation will be a vehicle to address issues that he called “long overdue,” including “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
“I think we should choose common sense over discrimination,” Reid said. “We’re going to match our policy with our principles and finally say that in our country, everyone who steps up to serve our country should be welcome.”
Still, Reid acknowledged opposition in moving forward with the legislation and said he thinks he would have to file cloture to proceed with the bill.
“I would hope we can move to it without having to file cloture on a motion to proceed, but the way things have been going, having had to file cloture on filibuster to more than 100 different pieces of legislation, I probably will have to file cloture on that,” Reid said.
Jim Manley, a Reid spokesperson, told the Blade the senator intends to file cloture on the defense authorization bill this week for a vote on Tuesday.
Reid would file cloture after a senator objects to moving forward with the defense authorization bill with unanimous consent. After 30 hours of discussion, votes will be cast to determine whether 60 senators approve of ending the filibuster and officially moving to debate and amendments.
Asked at the conference whether he has 60 votes to proceed with the legislation, Reid replied, “We’ll sure find out.”
Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, said he’s “reasonably confident” that “60 firm votes” are in the Senate to end a filibuster.
“I think we’ll actually probably end up with a couple more if needed,” Sarvis said. “I don’t think there are 40 senators who want to go on record as [being] opposed to calling up the defense authorization bill.”
Still, key Republicans in the Senate have expressed concern about the defense authorization bill and the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal language as well as other provisions in the legislation.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called the repeal language a “controversial item” in response to an Blade inquiry on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” during his press conference.
“The provision in the bill involves eliminating ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ without the study, and that has also made it pretty controversial,” McConnell said.
The language in the defense authorization bill provides for repeal only after the Pentagon working group developing a plan for implemention an end to law finishes its work on Dec. 1.
An objction to proceeding would most likely come from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who has been the most vocal opponent of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal in the Senate. He has previoiusly objected to unanimous consent on bringing the defense authorization bill to the Senate floor.
Brooke Buchanan, a McCain spokesperson, said in a statement the senator “strongly believes” that Pentagon review should be complete before taking legislative action on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
“As all four service chiefs have stated, we should not short circuit the ongoing Pentagon review and thereby deny our men and women in uniform a chance to have their voices heard on an important issue that affects them and their service,” she said.
Buchanan was referring to a letter from the four service chiefs made public this spring expressing their discontent with moving forward with “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal before the Pentagon review is complete.
But Sarvis called the notion that Congress must wait for the Pentagon working group to finish its work a “tired talking point from the ‘no’ crowd.”
“Ironically, Congress, in all likelihood, will have that report before the vote is taken on the conference report in the lame duck session,” Sarvis said.
Reid said opponents of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal can have a vote when the legislation comes to the Senate floor on whether to strip out the language from the bill.
“They want a vote on it; they can have a vote on it,” Reid said.
Sarvis said repeal proponents have been anticipating this amendment to come to the Senate floor and are prepared to beat back such a measure.
“I think if Sen. McCain or another senator moves to strike the repeal provisions, we will prevail by a comfortable margin,” Sarvis said.
But finishing the bill before the lawmakers before lawmaker break before Election Day is seen as a major concern by repeal proponents.
Sarvis identified “time” as his biggest concern heading into Senate debate on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” while emphasizing the importance of a Senate vote on the defense authorization bill in September before lawmakers adjourn for the break.
“As long as there are strong opponents in the Senate, they will try to tie this up and ensure that we don’t finish in September or early October,” Sarvis said. “We can’t allow that to happen.”
Sarvis said the lame duck session after Election Day is limited and bills that haven’t already made it through both chambers of Congress are less likely to meet approval.
DREAM Act comes into play
Also during the conference, Reid said he wants to amend the defense authorization bill so that it would include the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, or DREAM Act, an immigration-related bill.
The legislation would provide a path to citizenship for young, undocumented immigrants pursuing a college education or position in the U.S. armed forces.
“Kids who grew up as Americans should be able to get their green card if they go to college or serve in the military,” Reid said.
The majority leader noted a number of U.S. service members are Hispanic and said “it’s really important that we move forward on this legislation that we tried to work on.”
Reid said moving forward on the DREAM Act as part of the defense authorization bill is partially in response what he called his inability to pass comprehensive immigration reform legislation this Congress.
“I know we can’t do comprehensive immigration reform,” Reid said. “I’ve tried so very, very hard. I’ve tried different iterations of this, but those Republicans we had in the last Congress have left us.”
McConnell cited the inclusion of the DREAM Act as a potentially “extraneous” amendment to the defense authorization bill.
The minority leader also was critical of Reid said he wants to address the issue of “secret holds” on presidential nominees as part of the defense authorization bill.
“It’s made it needlessly controversial,” McConnell said. “I can’t tell you right now how easy it will be to go forward with that bill, but it’s certainly created an element of controversy that would not have been otherwise there.”
Steve Ralls, a spokesperson for Immigration Equality, an LGBT immigration group, said his organzation was not part of discussion of including the DREAM Act as part of the defense authorization bill, but supports its passage.
“I can’t predict what the impact is going to be, but we certainly support the DREAM Act and I would say that we believe that the Senate majority leader is the right person to make the decision on how best to move forward,” Ralls said.
Sarvis said he doesn’t know whether this measure would complicate efforts for “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal.
“I don’t think it has to,” Sarvis said. “I think they are two separate issues and, at the end of the day, I think each one of these amendments are going to have to stand or fall on their own.”
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.
The White House
Trump travels to Middle East countries with death penalty for homosexuality
President traveled to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and United Arab Emirates
Homosexuality remains punishable by death in two of the three Middle East countries that President Donald Trump visited last week.
Saudi Arabia and Qatar are among the handful of countries in which anyone found guilty of engaging in consensual same-sex sexual relations could face the death penalty.
Trump was in Saudi Arabia from May 13-14. He traveled to Qatar on May 14.
“The law prohibited consensual same-sex sexual conduct between men but did not explicitly prohibit same-sex sexual relations between women,” notes the State Department’s 2023 human rights report, referring specifically to Qatar’s criminalization law. “The law was not systematically enforced. A man convicted of having consensual same-sex sexual relations could receive a sentence of seven years in prison. Under sharia, homosexuality was punishable by death; there were no reports of executions for this reason.”
Trump on May 15 arrived in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.
The State Department’s 2023 human rights report notes the “penalty for individuals who engaged in ‘consensual sodomy with a man'” in the country “was a minimum prison sentence of six months if the individual’s partner or guardian filed a complaint.”
“There were no known reports of arrests or prosecutions for consensual same-sex sexual conduct. LGBTQI+ identity, real or perceived, could be deemed an act against ‘decency or public morality,’ but there were no reports during the year of persons prosecuted under these provisions,” reads the report.
The report notes Emirati law also criminalizes “men who dressed as women or entered a place designated for women while ‘disguised’ as a woman.” Anyone found guilty could face up to a year in prison and a fine of up to 10,000 dirhams ($2,722.60.)
Trump returned to the U.S. on May 16.
The White House notes Trump during the trip secured more than $2 trillion “in investment agreements with Middle Eastern nations ($200 billion with the United Arab Emirates, $600 billion with Saudi Arabia, and $1.2 trillion with Qatar) for a more safe and prosperous future.”
Former President Joe Biden traveled to Saudi Arabia in 2022.
Saudi Arabia is scheduled to host the 2034 World Cup. The 2022 World Cup took place in Qatar.
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