National
New push for 2012 Senate hearing on ENDA
Committee has votes to move pro-LGBT bill to floor
Republican ENDA co-sponsor, Sen. Mark Kirk is currently recovering from a stroke he suffered in January. (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)
LGBT rights supporters are calling for a Senate hearing and committee vote to draw attention to one of the longest sought pieces of pro-LGBT legislation in Congress: the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.
While the Republican takeover of the House in 2010 makes any movement of the legislation in that chamber unlikely, Democrats remain in control of the Senate and Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), a longtime supporter of ENDA, remains chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee, which has jurisdiction over the bill.
Tico Almeida, president of Freedom to Work, called Harkin a “strong champion for workplace fairness for all Americans” and said ENDA supporters are fortunate the Iowa Democrat heads the panel responsible for the legislation.
“I hope he will use his chairmanship to organize an ENDA hearing this spring or summer,” Almeida said. “Given that 70 or 80 percent of Americans are in favor of ENDA, and that support crosses party lines, this is a winning wedge issue for Democrats to use in an election year.”
Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, said ENDA supporters have been asking the committee for a hearing “for a long time” throughout the course of the 112th Congress.
“When there’s nothing else going on, it’s always good to try to get a hearing,” Keisling said. “It keeps the ball moving. It keeps reminding everybody that there are some issues that we all know we have to cover eventually.”
ENDA has been a high priority for the LGBT community for decades. It would prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in most situations in the public and private workforce. Even when Democrats controlled both the House and Senate in the 111th Congress, no committee or floor vote was taken on the legislation.
A hearing in the Senate presents a historic opportunity because no transgender witness has testified before the upper chamber on the importance of ENDA or told a story about being discriminated against on the basis of gender identity.
According to “Injustice at Every Turn,” a report published last year by the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force and the National Center for Transgender Equality, transgender people face significantly high rates of workplace discrimination. The study says transgender people have double the rate of unemployment compared to non-trans people. Ninety percent of those who participated in the survey reported experiencing discrimination on the job or took actions like hiding their gender identity to avoid it.
In 2009, the House Education & Labor Committee held a hearing that featured testimony from Vandy Beth Glenn, a former legislative editor at the Georgia General Assembly who was fired in 2007 after she announced she was undergoing gender transition. While no federal law prohibits discrimination against transgender people, the 11th Circuit of Court of Appeals issued a sweeping decision in December that Glenn’s employer unlawfully discriminated against her on the basis of gender because she wasn’t conforming to gender stereotypes.
A similar hearing in the Senate in the same year had no transgender witness, although there was testimony from a high-ranking Obama administration official, Thomas Perez, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
Almeida said the inclusion of at least one — and preferably several — transgender witness at any hearing by the Senate HELP Committee on ENDA would be “absolutely critical.”
“I vividly remember sitting in the counsel’s chair on the House Labor Committee dais as Vandy Beth Glenn testified somberly about being fired on the same day she told her employer that she planned to transition from male to female,” Almeida said. “There’s a lot of important education that happens when transgender Americans get to share their stories and talk about their lives.”
While Almeida served as ENDA’s lead counsel in the U.S. House from 2007 to 2010, the House Education & Labor Committee held three separate ENDA hearings and called five transgender witnesses to testify. Almeida said one of the three hearings was “historic” because it exclusively focused on workplace discrimination against transgender people.
“That was the first time any congressional committee had ever held any hearing specifically about discrimination against transgender Americans,” Almeida said. “By comparison, the U.S. Senate is way behind.”
Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)
Keisling said “a lot of people” could be qualified to testify as a transgender witness for a hearing on ENDA. Without naming anyone in particular, she said the candidate should be “as fresh as possible.”
“A six-month-old case is better than a 20-year-old,” Keisling said. “It’s a really tough thing. It’s has to deal with what members of the Senate on the committee, who you’re trying to reach out to, how you balance it geographically and demographically.”
In addition to holding a hearing on ENDA, the committee could easily report out the legislation to the Senate floor. Besides Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), the chief sponsor of the bill, all 12 Democrats on the panel are co-sponsors as well as Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), who’s one of three Republicans in the Senate who’ve signed on in support of the bill along with Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and retiring Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine).
Moving the bill out of committee could draw media attention to the legislation similar to what happened in November, when the Senate Judiciary Committee along party lines reported out the Respect for Marriage Act — legislation that would repeal the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act.
Almeida said Harkin could take a cue from Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who decided to move forward with the DOMA repeal markup, by applying the same standard to ENDA.
“I imagine Sen. Leahy realized that [the Respect for Marriage Act] was not going to pass the full Senate this session, but he held the hearing and mark-up anyway because those events are good ways to tell compelling stories, create good media attention in favor of equality, and build momentum for eventual passage,” Almeida said. “We need the same push and momentum for ENDA.”
But a committee vote on ENDA would likely be the most extensive action that could take place on the legislation in the current Congress.
The bill has 41 co-sponsors, which is short of the 60 votes necessary to overcome a filibuster on the Senate floor. Last year, advocates said a floor vote in the Senate could be successful — but that was largely contingent on pressure from President Obama, who has been quiet on ENDA during the 112th Congress. Any movement on ENDA in the Republican-controlled House is unlikely.
Moreover, the offices of lawmakers who would be responsible for moving forward with ENDA in committee were reluctant to say much about the prospects of having either a hearing or a markup on the bill.
Justine Sessions, a HELP Committee spokesperson, said the panel hasn’t planned any hearing beyond the month of April.
Previous hearings have emphasized topics such as maintaining America’s global competitiveness, but nothing related to ENDA.
Julie Edwards, a Merkley spokesperson, said she’s unable to comment on the discussions her boss may have had with Harkin on the issue.
“Sen. Merkley continues to explore every avenue to make legal discrimination a relic of the past,” Edwards said. “We cannot discuss private conversations with colleagues, but he will explore every option.”
Nonetheless, LGBT groups insist they’ve been pushing for Senate action on ENDA. Freedom to Work, the Human Rights Campaign, the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force have each said they have been in contact with the committee to urge them to take action.
Michael Cole-Schwartz, an HRC spokesperson, said HRC has “worked with” the committee for action on ENDA.
“As with all of our priority bills, we constantly work with our allies to find every opportunity to move the ball down the field,” Cole-Schwartz said. “A Senate hearing and markup on an inclusive ENDA would represent tremendous progress and we’ve worked with Senators Harkin, Merkley, Kirk and others toward that end.”
Stacey Long, the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force’s director of public policy and government affairs, said her group “has been advocating this position to Sen. Harkin and other lawmakers on the Hill.”
“The Task Force staunchly supports a trans-inclusive hearing and markup of ENDA this year,” Long said. “Political leaders need to hear the stories, see the startling data, and most importantly, pass an inclusive ENDA.”
But Keisling said one of the challenges with having either a hearing or markup on ENDA is Kirk “being out of the picture temporarily.” He’s been recovering from a stroke that he suffered in January.
“He’s by far the best Republican supporter on the HELP committee,” Keisling said. “Having him not there right now complicates the picture. … It would be great to have Sen. Kirk when there was a hearing, and I don’t have the slightest idea when he’s coming back.”
A Senate hearing on ENDA could represent an opportunity for renewed focus on another ask of the Obama administration: an executive order from Obama requiring companies doing business with the federal government to have LGBT-inclusive non-discrimination policies.
Harkin has already expressed support for the executive order, telling the Washington Blade last year he “would strongly support an executive order from President Obama that makes clear government contractors cannot discriminate based on sexual orientation and gender identity.” As far as other members of the committee go, Merkley has said he’d support the directive, while Kirk has said the statute is the right way because a future president could rescind the order.
Almeida said discussion about the executive order during a committee hearing may come up, but he doesn’t think “anybody would make a big deal about it” — mostly because Republican senators opposed to ENDA and the executive order would likely skip the hearing as they’ve done in years past.
“I don’t think the topic of the executive order needs any more study given that the lawyers at President Obama’s Justice Department and Labor Department have already done more than a year’s worth of research and then recommended that the president sign the executive order,” Almeida said. “It’s now time for President Obama to sign the order.”
Multiple sources have told the Blade the Labor and Justice Departments have cleared such a measure, but the White House hasn’t said whether Obama will issue the directive.
Keisling also said she doesn’t think devoting any portion of the hearing to the executive order will be necessary.
“I think the president knows who in Congress would support it and who wouldn’t,” Keisling said. “I don’t see that would be helpful in moving it along at all. It would probably make us all feel good if there were more noise about it, but I don’t think it’ll help move along the issue.”
National
LGBTQ Catholic groups slam Trump over pope criticism
‘Moral truth and compassion always overcome ignorant hate’
LGBTQ Catholic groups have sharply criticized President Donald Trump over his criticisms of Pope Leo XIV.
Leo on April 13 told reporters while traveling to Algeria that he had “no fear of the Trump administration” after the president described him as “weak on crime” and “terrible for foreign policy” in response to his opposition to the Iran war. (Trump on the same day posted to Truth Social an image that appeared to show him as Jesus Christ. He removed it on April 13 amid backlash from religious leaders.)
Vice President JD Vance, who is Catholic, during a Fox News Channel interview on the same day said “in some cases, it would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality, to stick to matters of what’s going on with the Catholic church, and let the president of the United States stick to dictating American public policy.” Vance on April 14 once again discussed Leo during an appearance at a Turning Point USA event in Athens, Ga., saying he should “be careful when he talks about matters of theology.”
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni; former U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican Miguel Díaz; and Oklahoma City Archbishop Paul Coakley, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, are among those who have criticized Trump over his comments. The president, for his part, has said he will not apologize to Leo.
“The world is being ravaged by a handful of tyrants,” said Leo on Thursday at a cathedral in Bamenda, Cameroon.
Francis DeBernardo is the executive director of New Ways Ministry, a Maryland-based LGBTQ Catholic organization. He told the Washington Blade on Thursday that Trump’s comments about Leo “are one more example of the ridiculous hubris of this leader (Trump) whose entire record shows that he is nothing more than a middle-school bully.”
“LGBTQ+ adults were often bullied as children, and they have learned the lesson that bullies act when they feel frightened or threatened,” said DeBernardo. “But secular power does not threaten the Vicar of Christ, and Pope Leo’s response illustrates this truth perfectly.”
DeBernardo added Trump “is obviously frightened that Pope Leo, an American, has more power and influence than the president on the world stage.”
“Like most Trumpian bullying, this strategy will backfire,” DeBernardo told the Blade. “Moral truth and compassion always overcome ignorant hate. Trump’s actions are not an example of his power, but of his impotence.”
Marianne Duddy-Burke, executive director of DignityUSA, an LGBTQ Catholic organization, echoed DeBernardo.
“He [Trump] has demonstrated throughout both presidencies that he doesn’t understand the basic concepts of any faith system that is founded on the dignity of human beings, the importance of common good,” Duddy-Burke told the Blade on Thursday during a telephone interview. “It’s just appalling.”
Duddy-Burke praised Leo and the American cardinals who have publicly criticized Trump.
“The pope’s popularity — given how much more respect Pope Leo has than the man sitting in the White House — is a blow to his ego,” Duddy-Burke told the Blade. “That seems to be a sore sport for him.”
“It’s such an imperialistic world view,” she added.
Leo ‘is the real peacemaker’
The College of Cardinals last May elected Leo to succeed Pope Francis after his death.
Leo, who was born in Chicago, is the first American pope. He was the bishop of the Diocese of Chiclayo in Peru from 2015-2023.
Francis made him a cardinal in 2023.
Juan Carlos Cruz — a gay Chilean man and clergy sex abuse survivor who Francis appointed to the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors — has traveled to Ukraine several times with Dominican Sister Lucía Caram since Russia launched its war against the country in 2022. Cruz on Thursday responded to Trump’s criticism of Leo in a text message he sent to the Blade from Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital.
“I am in Ukraine under many attacks,” said Cruz. “Trump is an asshole and has zero right to criticize the Pope who is the real peacemaker.”
Tennessee
Charlie Kirk Act advances in Tenn.
Bill would limit protests, protects speakers opposing ‘transgender’ identities
The Tennessee legislature has passed Senate Bill 1741 / House Bill 1476, dubbed the “Charlie Kirk Act,” which, if signed by Republican Gov. Bill Lee, would reshape how public colleges and universities regulate speech on campus.
The measure targets all public higher education institutions and requires them to adopt a “free expression” policy modeled on the University of Chicago’s framework. That framework emphasizes that universities should not shield students from controversial or offensive ideas and requires state schools to formally embrace institutional neutrality — meaning they do not publicly take a stance on political or social issues.
Under the legislation, publicly funded schools cannot disinvite or cancel invited speakers based on their viewpoints or in response to protests from students or faculty. Student organizations, however — like Turning Point USA, an American nonprofit that advocates for conservative politics on high school, college, and university campuses, founded by Charlie Kirk, and often lack widely represented liberal counterparts — would retain broad authority to bring speakers to campus regardless of controversy.
The law includes broad protections for individuals and organizations expressing religious or ideological beliefs, including opposition to abortion, homosexuality, or transgender identity, regardless of whether those views are rooted in religious or secular beliefs. It further prohibits public institutions from retaliating against faculty for protected speech or scholarly work.
The bill, which has been hailed by supporters as an effort to “preserve campus free speech,” ironically also limits protest activity. Shouting down speakers, blocking sightlines, staging disruptive walkouts, or physically preventing entry to events are now considered “substantial interference” under the legislation, making those who engage in such actions subject to discipline.
Some of those disciplinary consequences include probation, suspension, and even expulsion for students, while faculty who protest in ways deemed to violate the policy could face unpaid suspensions and termination after repeated violations.
Supporters of the bill argue it strengthens free expression on campus. State Rep. Gino Bulso (R-Brentwood), the bill’s sponsor, said it reinforces a commitment to “civil and robust” debate at public universities.
“The Charlie Kirk Act creates critical safeguards for students and faculty and renews the idea that our higher education institutions should be centers of intellectual debate,” Bulso told Fox 17. “This legislation honors the legacy of Charlie Kirk by promoting thoughtful engagement and defending religious freedom.”
Critics, including Democratic lawmakers, have raised concerns that the legislation effectively elevates certain ideological viewpoints — particularly those tied to religious objections to LGBTQ identities — while exposing students and faculty to punishment for protest or dissent.
“It’s ironic that this body is talking about free speech when we had professors in Tennessee schools expelled and suspended when they did not mourn the death of Charlie Kirk — when they said that his statements were problematic and that the way he died did not redeem the way he lived,” state Rep. Justin Jones (D-Nashville) told WKRN.
Kirk, the right-wing activist and founder of Turning Point USA, for whom the bill is named, was assassinated in September 2025 at a public event at Utah Valley University. His legacy and rhetoric remain deeply polarizing, particularly among LGBTQ advocates, who have cited his history of anti-LGBTQ statements in opposing his campus appearances.
The bill now heads to Lee’s desk for his signature.
National
Demonstrators disrupt OMB director hearing over PEPFAR
Capitol Police arrested five protesters
A group of protesters interrupted Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought during his testimony before Congress on Wednesday.
Vought was at the Cannon House Office Building to give testimony to the House Budget Committee.
Committee Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) began the hearing by touting what he described as economic accomplishments of the Trump-Vance administration’s economic accomplishments. Ranking Member Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) disputed those claims in his opening statement.
Boyle went on to admonish Vought for not attending a committee hearing in the previous year.
Vought, the “Project 2025” architect, was invited to speak after Arrington and Boyle made their statements.
Shortly after Vought began reading his statement, Housing Works CEO Charles King stood up in the gallery and began shouting, “PEPFAR saves lives: spend the money!”
The U.S. Capitol Police moved quickly to escort King from the room. Other activists began chanting with King as they unfolded signs bearing a picture of Vought’s face and statements such as, “Vought’s cuts kill people with AIDS,” and “Protect PEPFAR from Vought.”
The group of HIV/AIDS activists included independent activists, former U.S. Agency for International Development and PEPFAR staff, members of Health GAP, Housing Works, and the Treatment Action Group. Six activists were escorted from the hearing and the U.S. Capitol Police detained five of them.
The HIV/AIDS treatment activists protested at the hearing in response to the dismantling of global health programs, including PEPFAR, a federally-funded program credited with saving millions of lives from HIV/AIDS, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.
“Russell Vought is directly responsible for illegally withholding Congressionally appropriated funds for PEPFAR and related global health initiative,” King said in a statement provided to the Washington Blade. “These funding disruptions have already contributed to preventable deaths and threaten to reverse decades of progress in the fight against HIV worldwide. Enough is enough. Congress must ensure Vought stops this deadly sabotage.”
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Charlie Kirk Act advances in Tenn.
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