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Levin uncertain about ‘Don’t Ask’ vote count

Senate prepares for critical Tuesday vote

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Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee. (Blade photo by Michael Key)

The chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Monday expressed uncertainty over whether the Senate would have sufficient votes to move forward with major defense budget legislation containing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal.

During a news conference, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said he doesn’t know whether there are 60 votes to end a filibuster and move forward with the fiscal year 2011 defense authorization bill.

The vote for cloture on the legislation, which has language that would lead to the end of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” is set for Tuesday at 2:15 p.m.

“I hope we can get to cloture,” Levin said. “I know a number of you will ask the question, ‘Do we have the votes?’ My answer is, ‘I don’t know whether we have the votes or not.’ I haven’t done a whip check.”

Levin said he hopes the votes are present to move forward with the defense authorization bill because of “critically important” provisions in the legislation related to military pay and weapons systems.

Provided all 59 Democrats in the Senate vote in favor of cloture, at least one Republican vote is needed to move forward with the defense authorization bill, but GOP leadership is reportedly withholding support for the bill because of a limit imposed on the number of amendments that can be offered on the floor.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has said three amendments would be allowed for consideration of the defense authorization bill: an amendment to strip out the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal language; a measure to attach the DREAM Act, an immigration-related bill, to the legislation; and a measure addressing the “secret holds” senators can place on presidential nominees.

Sources have told the Blade that moderate Republicans, including Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), are seeking concessions from Democratic leadership in exchange for breaking with the Republican caucus and voting for cloture.

Levin said he’s unaware of any concessions that Collins or other Republicans are seeking over the defense authorization bill. Still, he said he’s spoken with the Maine senator about a previous version of the unanimous consent agreement.

“She and I talked about the consent agreement,” Levin said. “She had some difficulty with it. It wasn’t that she would vote for it if it were changed. That’s not what we talked about. It was she had some difficulty with an earlier draft, and, frankly, I thought she was right.”

Levin said he didn’t ask Collins during this conversation about how the Maine senator intended to vote on the cloture measure on Tuesday.

Asked by the Blade what would happen if cloture isn’t invoked on Tuesday, Levin said an unsuccessful vote would be a “real setback” and said he couldn’t predict what would happen if the bill came up again after Election Day.

“Anyone who tries to predict what will happen in lame duck has got a lot more courage than I do,” Levin said.

A failure to pass the defense authorization bill would almost be unprecedented. A Democratic aide said during the news conference that Congress has passed defense authorization legislation every year for the past 48 years.

If cloture is invoked on Tuesday, opponents of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal would have the opportunity to strip out the repeal language through an amendment on the Senate floor.

Levin said he doesn’t know what opponents of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal are planning when the Senate proceeds tomorrow with the legislation.

“I don’t know what we’re going to see on ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,'” Levin said. “It’s going to be up to people — if we can get to cloture — who will offer the amendment.”

A Democratic aide said the votes needed to strip the repeal language from the legislation would be either 51 or 60, depending on the agreement reached between majority and minority leadership.

But the main focus of Levin’s news conference was to address arguments from McCain, who has objected to advancing the defense authorization bill on the basis that non-germane amendments are planned for the legislation.

“For many, many years, we never put any extraneous items on the [defense authorization] bill, because it was so important to defense and we just didn’t allow it,” McCain said, according to a Levin statement. “Starting last year, Carl Levin and Harry Reid put hate crimes on it.”

McCain on the floor last week lamented that hate crimes protections legislation was signed into law last year as an amendment to FY 2010 Defense Authorization Act.

During today’s news conference, Levin noted that hate crimes legislation had been attached to defense authorization legislation three additional times prior to 2009, although the measure never made it to the president’s desk before last year.

“Sen. McCain is incorrect on at least two accounts in the one statement,” Levin said. “Last year was not the first time that hate crimes legislation was added to the defense authorization bill … and it was approved by an overwhelming bi-partisan majority each of those three previous times.”

Levin also said other non-germane amendments had been considered as part of the defense authorization bill, including measures on concealed weapons, indecency standards as well as a previous amendment on “secret holds.”

An amendment for campaign finance reform that McCain sponsored in 2000 was also considered as part of the defense authorization bill, according to Levin.

“If we want to give these men and women in the military confidence in their government, we should have fully disclosed who it is that contributes to the political campaigns,” McCain said in 2000, according to a Levin statement.

Levin said he defended McCain’s right to offer this amendment in 2000 as he plans to defend the right of anyone who introduces the DREAM Act this year.

“People have a right to use the rules here and to suggest anything to the contrary is just simply inaccurate and I think has no place in the debate,” Levin said.

McCain’s office didn’t immediately respond to the Blade’s request for comment on Levin’s remarks.

Also during the presser, Levin disputed an account that the DREAM Act would be attached to the defense authorization bill as part of a manager’s amendment that would be inclusive of defense-related items.

A Republican source had earlier told the Blade that Democratic leadership was planning consideration of the DREAM Act and a manager’s amendment as one measure.

“That’s news to me,” Levin said. “I would love to know where you heard it. I’d like to check your source.”

Still, Levin said he expects the DREAM Act to be the first amendment offered to the defense authorization bill on Tuesday following a successful cloture vote.

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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

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(Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)

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.

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Medical groups file lawsuit over Trump deletion of health information

Crucial datasets included LGBTQ, HIV resources

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HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is named as a defendant in the lawsuit. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

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.

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U.S. Federal Courts

Federal judge scraps trans-inclusive workplace discrimination protections

Ruling appears to contradict US Supreme Court precedent

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Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas (Screen capture: YouTube)

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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