National
Solmonese to step down as head of HRC
Source denies reports of sweeping shakeup
Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
Joe Solmonese, who has served for more than six years as president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBT civil rights advocacy group, will step down from his job when his current contract ends on March 30, 2012, HRC officials announced last week. The news of Solmonese’s departure was first reported by Pam’s House Blend.
In a statement released Aug. 27, co-chairs of the board of directors of HRC and its sister organization, the HRC Foundation, said Solmonese will remain as head of both organizations “until the completion of his contract to ensure a smooth leadership transition.”
They also announced the formation of a search committee for Solmonese’s replacement to be co-chaired by board members Joni Madison of North Carolina and Dana Perlman of Los Angeles.
“Joe Solmonese is an outstanding leader,” said Anne Fay, who co-chairs the HRC Foundation board. “While we will miss his extraordinary leadership, we enter this next phase, thanks to Joe, in the best place the organization has ever been. Not only has our community secured historic victories, but our membership is larger and more active than any time in our history, and our financial health is secure even in these difficult economic times.”
HRC spokesperson Michael Cole-Schwartz said the combined revenue for HRC and the HRC Foundation for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2011 was $39.8 million. He said the two groups have about 150 employees.
Sources familiar with HRC have speculated that several LGBT movement leaders would likely emerge as candidates for Solmonese’s replacement, including Chuck Wolfe, executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund; Brian Ellner, an HRC consultant who coordinated HRC’s efforts to help pass New York’s same-sex marriage law; Chad Griffin, head of the California-based organization that initiated the lawsuit to overturn Proposition 8; and Sean Maloney, one of former President Bill Clinton’s openly gay White House aides who later worked for former New York Gov. David Paterson.
Solmonese has received mixed reviews by LGBT activists during his tenure as head of HRC, which began in 2005. Disagreements over his and HRC’s policies and activities appear to reflect divisions within the LGBT movement.
Supporters and others familiar with the group say Solmonese has worked well in navigating HRC and its LGBT rights agenda during a hostile Bush administration and during a supportive Obama administration, using behind-the-scenes political skills to prod allies in Congress and the White House to move its agenda forward.
Critics say he and HRC have been too closely aligned with the Democratic Party and Democratic congressional leaders, which they say have failed to adequately advance LGBT legislation, such as the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) and LGBT-supportive immigration legislation while Democrats controlled the House of Representatives.
The statement released by the HRC board co-chairs says that under Solmonese’s leadership, HRC expanded its public outreach programs, including the start of its Healthcare Equality Index, which, among other things, assesses the sensitivity of hospitals in caring for LGBT people.
HRC and the HRC foundation launched or expanded other important programs during Solmonese’s tenure, the board statement says, in the area of outreach to religion and faith communities, schools programs promoting fair treatment of LGBT youth, and a family and children initiative to open adoption agencies to LGBT parents.
In the area of legislation, the board statement said Solmonese played a key role in steering HRC’s opposition to the Federal Marriage Amendment, a proposed constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. They also note that under his tenure, Congress passed a hate crimes law with protections for LGBT people and repealed the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law barring gays from serving openly in the military.
The statement notes that during his tenure, the Obama administration put in place a number of administrative directives and policy changes favorable to LGBT people, including a policy banning discrimination against federal government workers based on gender identity.
Dana Beyer, executive director of the transgender advocacy group Gender Rights Maryland and a former HRC board member, said Solmonese alienated many in the transgender community and in the LGBT community in general in 2007 when he declined to oppose a decision by House Democratic leaders to remove protections for transgender people from ENDA.
Then Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), a longtime supporter of LGBT rights, and Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who’s gay, said they determined at the time that ENDA couldn’t pass in the House if a transgender provision remained in the bill. The House passed a so-called “gay only” version of the bill that year over strong objections from a coalition of dozens of LGBT groups from across the country. Pelosi and Frank said they would introduce a separate bill with transgender protections at a later date, when support for such a bill could be lined up.
Solmonese said it would have put HRC in an untenable position to oppose a major gay rights bill backed by longtime LGBT rights supporters in the House. The bill died when the Senate did not bring it up for a vote.
Solmonese and HRC changed their position on the bill the following year, saying the organization would no longer support ENDA without a provision protecting transgender people from job discrimination.
But Beyer and other LGBT activists said HRC’s earlier position left deep scars within the transgender community, which felt abandoned by HRC.
Others have said the LGBT movement as a whole was divided over HRC’s position, with many in the movement – including D.C.’s Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance and the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club – supporting an incremental approach of passing a sexual orientation-only version of ENDA while continuing to push hard for adding a transgender provision as soon as possible.
Those holding that view said they favored a fully inclusive ENDA but recognized such a bill could not pass at the time.
Beyer said that in addition to the ENDA flap, many LGBT activists believe HRC is devoting too much of its resources to marriage equality, including the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act, at the expense of other legislation, such as a trans-inclusive ENDA. Beyer argues that ENDA would help many more LGBT people than those interested in getting married.
“Many of us are hoping HRC will change its direction on some of these issues under a new president,” she said. “But the president is really nothing more than a reflection of the board of directors,” she said. “If the board of directors doesn’t want to change the direction of the organization, it doesn’t matter who the next president is.”
Richard Socarides, president of the national LGBT advocacy group Equality Matters, said Solmonese has performed well in advancing the LGBT agenda.
“He has been there when some very important gains took place,” he said. “And I think he did a tremendous job building the organization.”
Socarides said he disagrees with some critics who say HRC failed to do enough to push ENDA or is placing too much emphasis on marriage equality.
“I don’t think they can be blamed for the failure to pass any particular piece of legislation just as they can’t take all the credit for the legislation that has passed,” he said.
“But what I have said before is that as an organization, they have not sufficiently leveraged their power to bring about change more quickly,” Socarides said. “They are a key part of the Washington establishment but they seem to seek change within existing structures. They are very reluctant to rock the boat.”
Rick Rosendall, vice president of D.C.’s Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance, and Bob Summersgill, GLAA’s former president, each said HRC under Solmonese’s leadership has provided strong support for the efforts by D.C. activists in passing a same-sex marriage law. The two said Solmonese also arranged for HRC to devote considerable resources to fight efforts by members of Congress to attach anti-gay riders to the city’s annual appropriations bill. Congress must approve the city’s annual budget under the city’s limited home rule charter.
Summersgill and Rosendall noted that HRC, among other things, helped to line up support to defeat proposals by Republican lawmakers to ban same-sex couples from adopting children in the city.
Lateefah Williams, president of the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, said she, too, appreciated Solmonese’s support for D.C.’s marriage equality campaign, noting that he directed HRC to provide a full-time field organizer to help local activists build support in the community for the same-sex marriage bill.
Williams said she also shares the views of some that HRC should broaden its support for transgender rights initiatives as well as efforts to support programs aimed at minorities within the LGBT community, such as blacks and Latinos, and youth.
“I wish Joe well,” she said.
News of Solmonese’s departure was first reported by the blog Pam’s House Blend last week. The blog cited unnamed sources as saying his departure may be part of a sweeping staff shakeup initiated by the HRC board and that news of his leaving came about under less than amicable circumstances.
Other sources familiar with HRC told the Blade that account was inaccurate. One source familiar with the group characterized as “complete fiction” claims of a staff shakeup as well as claims by some that HRC may already have lined up a successor for Solmonese.
“This is about as normal and straight forward as it gets,” said the source. “He’s giving them six months advance notice. They’re going to launch a replacement process. The organization will go through that and come out with a successor.”
In a letter to HRC volunteers across the country, Solmonese discussed the timing of his decision to leave the group.
“While there may never be an ideal time, this moment seems right for me and my family,” he said. “In addition to our unprecedented victories, the health and future of the Human Rights Campaign has never been more robust,” he said. “My successor will lead a thriving organization despite the recent economic challenges.”
Federal Government
Trump-appointed EEOC leadership rescinds LGBTQ worker guidance
The EEOC voted to rescind its 2024 guidance, minimizing formally expanded protections for LGBTQ workers.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission voted 2–1 to repeal its 2024 guidance, rolling back formally expanded protections for LGBTQ workers.
The EEOC, which is composed of five commissioners, is tasked with enforcing federal laws that make workplace discrimination illegal. Since President Donald Trump appointed two Republican commissioners last year — Andrea R. Lucas as chair in January and Brittany Panuccio in October — the commission’s majority has increasingly aligned its work with conservative priorities.
The commission updated its guidance in 2024 under then-President Joe Biden to expand protections to LGBTQ workers, particularly transgender workers — the most significant change to the agency’s harassment guidance in 25 years.
The directive, which spanned nearly 200 pages, outlined how employers may not discriminate against workers based on protected characteristics, including race, sex, religion, age, and disability as defined under federal law.
One issue of particular focus for Republicans was the guidance’s new section on gender identity and sexual orientation. Citing the 2020 U.S. Supreme Court’s Bostock v. Clayton County decision and other cases, the guidance included examples of prohibited conduct, such as the repeated and intentional use of a name or pronoun an individual no longer uses, and the denial of access to bathrooms consistent with a person’s gender identity.
Last year a federal judge in Texas had blocked that portion of the guidance, saying that finding was novel and was beyond the scope of the EEOC’s powers in issuing guidance.
The dissenting vote came from the commission’s sole Democratic member, Commissioner Kalpana Kotagal.
“There’s no reason to rescind the harassment guidance in its entirety,” Kotagal said Thursday. “Instead of adopting a thoughtful and surgical approach to excise the sections the majority disagrees with or suggest an alternative, the commission is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Worse, it is doing so without public input.”
While this now rescinded EEOC guidance is not legally binding, it is widely considered a blueprint for how the commission will enforce anti-discrimination laws and is often cited by judges deciding novel legal issues.
Multiple members of Congress released a joint statement condemning the agency’s decision to minimize worker protections, including U.S. Reps. Teresa Leger Fernández (D-N.M.), Grace Meng (D-N.Y.), Mark Takano (D-Calif.), Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.), and Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) The rescission follows the EEOC’s failure to respond to or engage with a November letter from Democratic Caucus leaders urging the agency to retain the guidance and protect women and vulnerable workers.
“The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is supposed to protect vulnerable workers, including women, people of color, and LGBTQI+ workers, from discrimination on the job. Yet, since the start of her tenure, the EEOC chair has consistently undermined protections for women, people of color, and LGBTQI+ workers. Now, she is taking away guidance intended to protect workers from harassment on the job, including instructions on anti-harassment policies, training, and complaint processes — and doing so outside of the established rule-making process. When workers are sexually harassed, called racist slurs, or discriminated against at work, it harms our workforce and ultimately our economy. Workers can’t afford this — especially at a time of high costs, chaotic tariffs, and economic uncertainty. Women and vulnerable workers deserve so much better.”
Minnesota
Lawyer representing Renee Good’s family speaks out
Antonio Romanucci condemned White House comments over Jan. 7 shooting
A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis on Jan. 7 as she attempted to drive away from law enforcement during a protest.
Since Good’s killing, ICE has faced national backlash over the excessive use of deadly force, prompting the Trump-Vance administration to double down on escalating enforcement measures in cities across the country.
The Washington Blade spoke with Antonio Romanucci, the attorney representing Good’s family following her death.
Romanucci said that Jonathan Ross — the ICE agent seen on video shooting Good — acted in an antagonizing manner, escalated the encounter in violation of ICE directives, and has not been held accountable as ICE and other federal agents continue to “ramp up” operations in Minnesota.
A day before the fatal shooting, the Department of Homeland Security began what it described as the largest immigration enforcement operation ever carried out by the agency, according to DHS’s own X post.
That escalation, Romanucci said, is critical context in understanding how Good was shot and why, so far, the agent who killed her has faced no consequences for killing a queer mother as she attempted to disengage from a confrontation.
“You have to look at this in the totality of the circumstances … One of the first things we need to look at is what was the mission here to begin with — with ICE coming into Minneapolis,” Romanucci told the Blade. “We knew the mission was to get the worst of the worst, and that was defined as finding illegal immigrants who had felony convictions. When you look at what happened on Jan. 7 with Renee and Rebecca [Good, Renee’s wife], certainly that was far from their mission, wasn’t it? What they really did was they killed a good woman — someone who was a mother, a daughter, a sister, a committed companion, an animal lover.”
Romanucci said finding and charging those responsible for Good’s death is now the focus of his work with her family.
“What our mission is now is to ensure that we achieve transparency, accountability, and justice … We aim to get it in front of, hopefully, a judge or a jury one day to make that determination.”
Those are three things Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and DHS has outright rejected while smearing Good in the official record — including accusing her of being a “domestic terrorist” without evidence and standing by Ross, who Noem said acted in self-defense.
The version of events advanced by Noem and ICE has been widely contradicted by the volume of video footage of the shooting circulating online. Multiple angles show Good’s Honda Pilot parked diagonally in the street alongside other protesters attempting to block ICE agents from entering Richard E. Green Central Park Elementary School.
The videos show ICE officers approaching Good’s vehicle and ordering her to “get out of the car.” She then puts the car in reverse, backs up briefly, shifts into drive, and steers to the right — away from the officers.
The abundance of video evidence directly contradicts statements made by President Donald Trump, Noem, and other administration officials in interviews following Good’s death.
“The video shows that Renee told Jonathan Ross that ‘I’m not mad at you,’ so we know that her state of mind was one of peace,” Romanucci said. “She steered the car away from where he was standing, and we know that he was standing in front of the car. Reasonable police practices say that you do not stand in front of the car when there’s a driver behind the wheel. When you leave yourself with only the ability to use deadly force as an option to escape, that is not a reasonable police practice.”
An autopsy commissioned by Good’s family further supports that account, finding that her injuries were consistent with being shot from the direction of someone driving away.
The autopsy found three gunshot wounds: one to Good’s left forearm, one that struck her right breast without piercing major organs, and a third that entered the left side of her head near the temple and exited on the right side.
Romanucci said Ross not only placed himself directly in harm’s way, but then used deadly force after creating the conditions he claimed justified it — a move that violates DHS and ICE policy, according to former Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Juliette Kayyem.
“As a general rule, police officers and law enforcement do not shoot into moving cars, do not put themselves in front of cars, because those are things that are easily de-escalated,” Kayyem told PBS in a Jan. 8 interview.
“When he put himself in a situation of danger, the only way that he could get out of danger is by shooting her, because he felt himself in peril,” Romanucci said. “That is not a reasonable police practice when you leave yourself with only the ability to use deadly force as an option. That’s what happened here. That’s why we believe, based on what we’ve seen, that this case is unlawful and unconstitutional.”
Romanucci said he was appalled by how Trump and Noem described Good following her death.
“I will never use those words in describing our client and a loved one,” he said. “Those words, in my opinion, certainly do not apply to her, and they never should apply to her. I think the words, when they were used to describe her, were nearly slanderous … Renee Good driving her SUV at two miles per hour away from an ICE agent to move down the street is not an act of domestic terrorism at all.”
He added that his office has taken steps to preserve evidence in anticipation of potential civil litigation, even as the Justice Department has declined to open an investigation.
“We did issue a letter of preservation to the Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, and other agencies to ensure that any evidence that’s in their possession be not destroyed or altered or modified,” Romanucci said. “We’ve heard Todd Blanche say just in the last couple of days that they don’t believe that they need to investigate at all. So we’re going to be demanding that the car be returned to its rightful owner, because if there’s no investigation, then we want our property back.”
The lack of accountability for Ross — and the continued expansion of ICE operations — has fueled nationwide protests against federal law enforcement under the Trump-Vance administration.
“The response we’ve seen since Renee’s killing has been that ICE has ramped up its efforts even more,” Romanucci said. “There are now over 3,000 ICE agents in a city where there are only 600 police officers, which, in my opinion, is defined as an invasion of federal law enforcement officers into a city … When you see the government ramping up its efforts in the face of constitutional assembly, I think we need to be concerned.”
As of now, Romanucci said, there appears to be no meaningful accountability mechanism preventing ICE agents from continuing to patrol — and, in some cases, terrorize — the Minneapolis community.
“What we know is that none of these officers are getting disciplined for any of their wrongdoings,” he said. “The government is saying that none of their officers have acted in a wrongful manner, but that’s not what the courts are saying … Until they get disciplined for their wrongdoings, they will continue to act with impunity.”
When asked what the public should remember about Good, Romanucci emphasized that she was a real person — a mother, a wife, and a community member whose life was cut short. Her wife lost her partner, and three children lost a parent.
“I’d like the public to remember Renee about is the stories that Rebecca has to tell — how the two of them would share road trips together, how they loved to share home-cooked meals together, what a good mother she was, and what a community member she was trying to make herself into,” Romanucci said. “They were new to Minneapolis and were really trying to make themselves a home there because they thought they could have a better life. Given all of that, along with her personality of being one of peace and one of love and care, I think that’s what needs to be remembered about Renee.”
The White House
Trump-Vance administration ‘has dismantled’ US foreign policy infrastructure
Current White House took office on Jan. 20, 2025
Jessica Stern, the former special U.S. envoy for the promotion of LGBTQ and intersex rights, on the eve of the first anniversary of the Trump-Vance administration said its foreign policy has “hurt people” around the world.
“The changes that they are making will take a long time to overturn and recover from,” she said on Jan. 14 during a virtual press conference the Alliance for Diplomacy and Justice, a group she co-founded, co-organized.
Amnesty International USA National Director of Government Relations and Advocacy Amanda Klasing, Human Rights Watch Deputy Washington Director Nicole Widdersheim, Human Rights First President Uzra Zeya, PEN America’s Jonathan Friedman, and Center for Reproductive Rights Senior Federal Policy Council Liz McCaman Taylor also participated in the press conference.
The Trump-Vance administration took office on Jan. 20, 2025.
The White House proceeded to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, which funded LGBTQ and intersex rights organizations around the world.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio last March 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 the 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.
Stern noted the State Department “has dismantled key parts of foreign policy infrastructure that enabled the United States to support democracy and human rights abroad” and its Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor “has effectively been dismantled.” She also pointed out her former position and others — the Special Representative for Racial Equity and Justice, the Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues, and the Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice — “have all been eliminated.”
President Donald Trump on Jan. 7 issued a memorandum that said the U.S. will withdraw from the U.N. Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women and more than 60 other U.N. and international entities.
Rubio in a Jan. 10 Substack post said UN Women failed “to define what a woman is.”
“At a time when we desperately need to support women — all women — this is yet another example of the weaponization of transgender people by the Trump administration,” said Stern.
US ‘conducting enforced disappearances’
The Jan. 14 press conference took place a week after a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent killed Renee Good, a 37-year-old woman who left behind her wife and three children, in Minneapolis. American forces on Jan. 3 seized now former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, at their home in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, during an overnight operation. Trump also continues to insist the U.S. needs to gain control of Greenland.
Widdersheim during the press conference noted the Trump-Vance administration last March sent 252 Venezuelans to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, a maximum-security prison known by the Spanish acronym CECOT.
One of them, Andry Hernández Romero, is a gay asylum seeker who the White House claimed was a member of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang the Trump-Vance administration has designated as an “international terrorist organization.” Hernández upon his return to Venezuela last July said he suffered physical, sexual, and psychological abuse while at CECOT.
“In 2025 … the United States is conducting enforced disappearances,” said Widdersheim.
Zeya, who was Under Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights from 2021-2025, in response to the Blade’s question during the press conference said her group and other advocacy organizations have “got to keep doubling down in defense of the rule of law, to hold this administration to account.”
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