National
Reid’s office gives activists non-answers on ‘Don’t Ask’
Staffers won’t commit to bring defense bill to vote
Robin McGehee, co-founder and director of GetEQUAL, at Sen. Reid's office today. (Blade photo by Michael Key)
The staff for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) offered non-answers on Monday to LGBT activists and veterans pressing for a commitment from the senator to bring “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal to a vote in the lame duck session of Congress.
A group of about 20 activists affiliated with GetEQUAL — including nine LGBT veterans led by Army Lt. Dan Choi, a gay Iraq veteran discharged under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” — came to Reid’s Senate office in the Hart Office Building to demand answers on when the Nevada senator would move forward with major defense budget legislation containing repeal of the military’s gay ban.
“We’re here to essentially ask a very important question,” Choi said. “When is Sen. Harry Reid going to put the [fiscal year 2011 defense authorization bill] to vote that’s inclusive of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell'”?
But the staffers offered no definitive answers to the inquiries on the defense bill, which is currently pending before the Senate, and said Reid is planning to meet with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) later this week to discuss which legislative items would come up before lawmakers’ adjourn for the year.
A deputy chief of staff for Reid, who didn’t offer his name during the meeting, referred activists to a congressional military fellow and member of the U.S. Army in Reid’s office, who took activists’ questions and said he’d obtain responses for them. Reid’s office didn’t respond to Blade’s request to identify the staffers on short notice.
The fellow said he couldn’t give a date for when Reid intends to the schedule the defense authorization bill for a vote.
“If I told you it’s Tuesday and it doesn’t come up until Wednesday — they’ve got three other cloture votes that they’ve got to get through this week,” the fellow said. “There are other things that are going on this week.”
The fellow maintained that passage of the defense authorization bill is “one of the bills that has to be done this year” because the legislation provides funding for the Pentagon and operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Still, activists insisted that Senate passage of the defense authorization bill with “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal be done before the end of the year and pressed staffers on whether that would happen before Thanksgiving recess.
Most repeal supporters anticipate that the Senate would need two weeks to debate and vote on the defense authorization bill and that scheduling the vote early in lame duck is important.
Asked whether he could say whether the vote would come up before Thanksgiving, the fellow replied, “I cannot.”
In a statement to the Blade, Jim Manley, a Reid spokesperson, said there’s “nothing new yet” with any scheduling decisions on Monday with regard to the defense authorization bill.
In addition to questions about scheduling, the LGBT advocates also sought assurances that Reid wouldn’t strip the defense authorization bill pending of its “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal provision before bringing it to the floor.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Carl Levin (D-Mich) has reportedly been in talks with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) about moving forward with the defense authorization bill without the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal language.
The fellow said he “couldn’t tell you one way or another” whether the option of passing the defense authorization bill without the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal language is on the table.
“I honestly don’t know,” he said. “Because I am a fellow that’s one of the things that — I can look into it.”
Additionally, activists inquired about what Reid had done with Choi’s West Point graduate ring, which the Iraq veteran had given to the senator at the Netroots Nation conference in the summer to remind Reid of his commitment to repeal the 1993 law.
Robin McGehee, co-founder and director of GetEQUAL, asked whether Reid was keeping the ring in a shoebox or in his desk and whether he has “forgotten that he made a promise in July.”
The fellow said he could look into the whereabouts of Choi’s ring.
At one point, McGehee called the fellow a “the token military person” that Reid’s staff brought out to “act like” he knows LGBT issues.
“In my opinion, Sen. Reid has had the time to show the leadership, my parents are constituents of his state, and I feel like he’s failed not only them as constituents, but Lt. Choi, as a promise that he made in July,” McGehee said.
McGehee’s remarks riled the deputy chief of staff, who insisted the fellow wasn’t a token and that he was brought out because staffers thought he was the most appropriate person to answer questions.
In response, McGehee maintained activists weren’t shooting the messenger, but said if Reid wouldn’t give a commitment that “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” would come up before the Senate by the end of the year, activists would be back.
“It’s in his hands now,” she said.
New York
Men convicted of murdering two men in NYC gay bar drugging scheme sentenced
One of the victims, John Umberger, was D.C. political consultant
A New York judge on Wednesday sentenced three men convicted of killing a D.C. political consultant and another man who they targeted at gay bars in Manhattan.
NBC New York notes a jury in February convicted Jayqwan Hamilton, Jacob Barroso, and Robert DeMaio of murder, robbery, and conspiracy in relation to druggings and robberies that targeted gay bars in Manhattan from March 2021 to June 2022.
John Umberger, a 33-year-old political consultant from D.C., and Julio Ramirez, a 25-year-old social worker, died. Prosecutors said Hamilton, Barroso, and DeMaio targeted three other men at gay bars.
The jury convicted Hamilton and DeMaio of murdering Umberger. State Supreme Court Judge Felicia Mennin sentenced Hamilton and DeMaio to 40 years to life in prison.
Barroso, who was convicted of killing Ramirez, received a 20 years to life sentence.
National
Medical groups file lawsuit over Trump deletion of health information
Crucial datasets included LGBTQ, HIV resources
Nine private medical and public health advocacy organizations, including two from D.C., filed a lawsuit on May 20 in federal court in Seattle challenging what it calls the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’s illegal deletion of dozens or more of its webpages containing health related information, including HIV information.
The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington, names as defendants Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and HHS itself, and several agencies operating under HHS and its directors, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration.
“This action challenges the widespread deletion of public health resources from federal agencies,” the lawsuit states. “Dozens (if not more) of taxpayer-funded webpages, databases, and other crucial resources have vanished since January 20, 2025, leaving doctors, nurses, researchers, and the public scrambling for information,” it says.
“These actions have undermined the longstanding, congressionally mandated regime; irreparably harmed Plaintiffs and others who rely on these federal resources; and put the nation’s public health infrastructure in unnecessary jeopardy,” the lawsuit continues.
It adds, “The removal of public health resources was apparently prompted by two recent executive orders – one focused on ‘gender ideology’ and the other targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion (‘DEI’) programs. Defendants implemented these executive orders in a haphazard manner that resulted in the deletion (inadvertent or otherwise) of health-related websites and databases, including information related to pregnancy risks, public health datasets, information about opioid-use disorder, and many other valuable resources.”
The lawsuit does not mention that it was President Donald Trump who issued the two executive orders in question.
A White House spokesperson couldn’t immediately be reached for comment on the lawsuit.
While not mentioning Trump by name, the lawsuit names as defendants in addition to HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., Matthew Buzzelli, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health; Martin Makary, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration; Thomas Engels, administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration; and Charles Ezell, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management.
The 44-page lawsuit complaint includes an addendum with a chart showing the titles or descriptions of 49 “affected resource” website pages that it says were deleted because of the executive orders. The chart shows that just four of the sites were restored after initially being deleted.
Of the 49 sites, 15 addressed LGBTQ-related health issues and six others addressed HIV issues, according to the chart.
“The unannounced and unprecedented deletion of these federal webpages and datasets came as a shock to the medical and scientific communities, which had come to rely on them to monitor and respond to disease outbreaks, assist physicians and other clinicians in daily care, and inform the public about a wide range of healthcare issues,” the lawsuit states.
“Health professionals, nonprofit organizations, and state and local authorities used the websites and datasets daily in care for their patients, to provide resources to their communities, and promote public health,” it says.
Jose Zuniga, president and CEO of the International Association of Providers of AIDS Care (IAPAC), one of the organizations that signed on as a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in a statement that the deleted information from the HHS websites “includes essential information about LGBTQ+ health, gender and reproductive rights, clinical trial data, Mpox and other vaccine guidance and HIV prevention resources.”
Zuniga added, “IAPAC champions evidence-based, data-informed HIV responses and we reject ideologically driven efforts that undermine public health and erase marginalized communities.”
Lisa Amore, a spokesperson for Whitman-Walker Health, D.C.’s largest LGBTQ supportive health services provider, also expressed concern about the potential impact of the HHS website deletions.
“As the region’s leader in HIV care and prevention, Whitman-Walker Health relies on scientific data to help us drive our resources and measure our successes,” Amore said in response to a request for comment from the Washington Blade.
“The District of Columbia has made great strides in the fight against HIV,” Amore said. “But the removal of public facing information from the HHS website makes our collective work much harder and will set HIV care and prevention backward,” she said.
The lawsuit calls on the court to issue a declaratory judgement that the “deletion of public health webpages and resources is unlawful and invalid” and to issue a preliminary or permanent injunction ordering government officials named as defendants in the lawsuit “to restore the public health webpages and resources that have been deleted and to maintain their web domains in accordance with their statutory duties.”
It also calls on the court to require defendant government officials to “file a status report with the Court within twenty-four hours of entry of a preliminary injunction, and at regular intervals, thereafter, confirming compliance with these orders.”
The health organizations that joined the lawsuit as plaintiffs include the Washington State Medical Association, Washington State Nurses Association, Washington Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Academy Health, Association of Nurses in AIDS Care, Fast-Track Cities Institute, International Association of Providers of AIDS Care, National LGBT Cancer Network, and Vermont Medical Society.
The Fast-Track Cities Institute and International Association of Providers of AIDS Care are based in D.C.
U.S. Federal Courts
Federal judge scraps trans-inclusive workplace discrimination protections
Ruling appears to contradict US Supreme Court precedent
Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas has struck down guidelines by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission designed to protect against workplace harassment based on gender identity and sexual orientation.
The EEOC in April 2024 updated its guidelines to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), which determined that discrimination against transgender people constituted sex-based discrimination as proscribed under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
To ensure compliance with the law, the agency recommended that employers honor their employees’ preferred pronouns while granting them access to bathrooms and allowing them to wear dress code-compliant clothing that aligns with their gender identities.
While the the guidelines are not legally binding, Kacsmaryk ruled that their issuance created “mandatory standards” exceeding the EEOC’s statutory authority that were “inconsistent with the text, history, and tradition of Title VII and recent Supreme Court precedent.”
“Title VII does not require employers or courts to blind themselves to the biological differences between men and women,” he wrote in the opinion.
The case, which was brought by the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation, presents the greatest setback for LGBTQ inclusive workplace protections since President Donald Trump’s issuance of an executive order on the first day of his second term directing U.S. federal agencies to recognize only two genders as determined by birth sex.
Last month, top Democrats from both chambers of Congress reintroduced the Equality Act, which would codify LGBTQ-inclusive protections against discrimination into federal law, covering employment as well as areas like housing and jury service.
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