Politics
ENDA to be introduced on Thursday
Long-sought bill would ban anti-LGBT job discrimination


ENDA is set for reintroduction in both chambers of Congress on Thursday. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
The Employment Non-Discrimination Act is set to be introduced in both chambers of Congress on Thursday, according to multiple sources, but without major changes that were previously under consideration.
The bill will be reintroduced in the House by Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.), the most senior openly gay member of the chamber, who’s taking over the legislation now that former Rep. Barney Frank has retired. In the Senate, the legislation will be reintroduced by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.). The lawmakers’ offices confirmed they would introduce ENDA concurrently on Thursday.
The Senate version of the bill will have five original sponsors: Merkley and lesbian Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) will be two Democrats, Sens. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) will be two Republicans and Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chair Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) will round out the quintet.
The number of original co-sponsors in the House remains to be seen. Conchita Cruz, a Polis spokesperson, said many House members have told her boss “they want to make sure that they are included” as original co-sponsors.
Tico Almeida, president of Freedom to Work, said his organization will push for a committee vote and movement on the Senate floor for ENDA “as soon as possible.”
“ENDA had a recent committee hearing where not a single Republican senator bothered to show up to express any opposition or even ask questions about the drafting of the bill, so I think Chairman Harkin should schedule the committee vote on ENDA as soon as possible in May or June,” Almeida said. “It would be great to have ENDA teed up to go to the Senate floor in July.”
Harkin, whose committee has jurisdiction over ENDA, has already pledged to mark up the legislation this year. The office of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has said Democratic leadership ālooks forward to working withā Harkin to set up a floor vote on the bill.
Almeida said the time period immediately after Supreme Court decisions are expected on California’s Proposition 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act would make July an excellent opportunity for a floor vote on ENDA, which would ban anti-LGBT employment discrimination.
“After the Supreme Court rules in the Windsor marriage case, many right-wingers are going to denounce marriage equality for same-sex couples, but claim that they donāt believe in discrimination against LGBT Americans,” Almeida said. “Thatās the time when we should call some of those bluffs by putting ENDA on the Senate floor and letting all 100 senators go on the record about whether hardworking Americans should get fired just because of who they are or who they love.”
One question about the bill was whether ENDA would be changed upon reintroduction. LGBT advocates had previously told the Washington Blade the legislation has been under review prior to reintroduction in the 113th Congress.
Two areas that were said to be under review were the religious exemption as well as the area of disparate impact, which ENDA hadn’t previously addressed. However, multiple sources familiar with ENDA said these changes were ultimately not made to the bill.
Jamal Raad, a Merkley spokesperson, said “there will be a few changes to update the language” on ENDA, but said he couldn’t provide actual legislative text until reintroduction on Thursday.
Almeida said another change he’s seeking for ENDA as it progresses through the legislative process is an update to the bill in the aftermath of the Supreme Court ruling in Gross v. FBL Financial. That 2009 decision raised the bar for the standard of proof in making certain employment discrimination claims.
“If this legal loophole does not get fixed before ENDA becomes law, there will be gay and transgender victims of discrimination with meritorious cases who are denied justice because of the unequal standard that the conservative activists on the Supreme Court created a few years ago,” Almeida said. “Gay and transgender plaintiffs deserve to have the same standard of proof applied to their cases as plaintiffs alleging racial or religious discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.”
Almeida said the fix would be along the lines of the bipartisan legislation introduced by Harkin and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) known as the Protecting Older Workers Against Discrimination Act. That bill hasn’t yet been reintroduced in the 113th Congress.
“Especially since Chairman Harkin is the author of the bi-partisan legislation to address the Gross case, Iām hoping that he and the committee staff will close this loophole when ENDA goes to mark-up,” Almeida said.
As ENDA advances, many eyes will be on the U.S. senators who’ve recently come out for marriage equality, but haven’t yet articulated a position on the legislation.
Those who’ve come to support marriage equality, but didn’t co-sponsor ENDA in the previous Congress are Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), John Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), Max Baucus (D-Mont.), Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) ā and most notably Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio). Also in question among the U.S. senators who support marriage equality is Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), who’s new to Congress.
Eyes also will be Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who voted for “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal and recently said she’s “evolving” on the issue of marriage equality.
Reid also wasn’t a co-sponsor in the previous Congress, but he typically doesn’t co-sponsor bills because of his leadership position.
Freshmen senators who were formerly U.S. House members ā Sens. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) ā were co-sponsors of ENDA in the lower chamber of Congress, so would likely support the bill again in the Senate. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) has said he supports ENDA and Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) signed an LGBT non-discrimination bill into law as governor of the state in 1998.
Other freshman Democrats ā Sens. Mo Cowan (D-Mass.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) ā signed a letter in February identifying themselves as ENDA supporters.
NOTE: An earlier version of this article neglected to include Sen. Martin Heinrich as among the freshmen Senate Democrats who supported ENDA as U.S. House members. He also signed the letter identifying himself as an ENDA supporter. Whitney Potter, a Heinrich spokesperson, said the senator intends to support ENDA as a U.S. senator.
Congress
Five HIV/AIDS activists arrested during USAID hearing
Protesters demanded full restoration of PEPFAR funding

Capitol Police on Thursday arrested five HIV/AIDS activists who disrupted a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing that focused on the U.S. Agency for International Development.
The activists ā including Health GAP Executive Director Asia Russell, Housing Works CEO Charles King, and ACT UP NY co-founder Eric Sawyer ā started chanting “PEPFAR (the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) saves lives. Restore AIDS funding now” shortly after Max Primorac, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, began to testify. They also held posters that read “Trump kills people with AIDS worldwide.”
The Trump-Vance administration last month froze nearly all U.S. foreign aid spending for at least 90 days. Secretary of State Marco Rubio later issued a waiver that allows PEPFAR and other “life-saving humanitarian assistance” programs to continue to operate during the freeze.
The Washington Blade last week reportedĀ PEPFAR-funded programs in Kenya and other African countries have been forced to suspend services and even shut down because of a lack of U.S. funding. The Trump-Vance administration’s efforts to dismantle USAID, along with the suspension of nearly all U.S. foreign aid, has been “a catastrophe” for the global LGBTQ rights movement.
“I guess these guys don’t watch the news. They didn’t realize that PEPFAR was one of the many programs that did prove to be lifesaving, so the funding was restored,” said U.S. Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.), who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, after Capitol Police removed the activists from the room. “Somebody better give ’em a link to … I don’t know, maybe Fox News or something like that.”
Protesters interrupt a House hearing on USAID spending, demanding that funding be restored to PEPFAR, but "the funding was restored" says Rep. Brian Mast. pic.twitter.com/9bQduNEwnQ
— Fox News (@FoxNews) February 13, 2025
Russell and King are two of the dozens of HIV/AIDS activists who protested outside the State Department on Feb. 6 and demanded U.S. officials fully restore PEPFAR funding.
Politics
Trump picks Richard Grenell as interim Kennedy Center executive director
President proclaimed “no more drag shows” at D.C. institution

President Donald Trump on Monday picked Richard Grenell to serve as interim executive director of the Kennedy Center, just days after appointing himself chair the national cultural center and removing several members of the institution’s board of trustees.
Grenell is an openly gay diplomat and fierce ally to the president who served in high profile roles, including as acting director of national intelligence, during his first administration.
“Ric shares my vision for a GOLDEN AGE of American arts and culture, and will be overseeing the daily operations of the Center,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “NO MORE DRAG SHOWS, OR OTHER ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA ā ONLY THE BEST. RIC, WELCOME TO SHOW BUSINESS!”
In a previous post announcing his takeover of the center and purging of Democratic board members including appointees of former President Joe Biden , Trump wrote “Just last year, the Kennedy Center featured drag shows specifically targeting our youth ā THIS WILL STOP.”
Board members oversee the administration of federally appropriated funds for the āoperation, maintenance, and capital repair of the presidential memorial as well as its trust-funded artistic programming,ā per the 2025 fiscal year budget justification to Congress. Together with previous honorees, they are responsible for selecting new Kennedy Center Honors recipients each year.
The federal government provided about $45 million in funding to the center last year, roughly a fifth of its $268 million operating budget in 2024.
On Wednesday, Grenell said on X that he was briefed by the center’s CFO and learned there is “ZERO cash on hand. And ZERO in reserves. And the deferred maintenance is a crisis.”
I was briefed today by the CFO of the Kennedy Center on its financial situation.
— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) February 13, 2025
She told me there is ZERO cash on hand. And ZERO in reserves. And the deferred maintenance is a crisis.
For the past months theyāve been digging into the DEBT RESERVES.
We must fix this greatā¦
Congress
House Dems urge OPM not to implement anti-trans executive order
Authors were Dem. U.S. Reps. Mark Takano (Calif.), Jamie Raskin (Md.), and Gerald Connolly (Va.)

Three House Democrats including Congressional Equality Caucus Chair Mark Takano (Calif.) issued a letter on Wednesday urging the Office of Personnel Management to not implement President Donald Trump’s anti-trans executive order, “Defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government.”
Also signing the letter were U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (Md.), ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, and U.S. Rep. Gerald Connolly (Va.), ranking member of the House Oversight Committee.
The lawmakers wrote the order “unlawfully attacks the civil rights of transgender Americans” while the White House’s corresponding memo and guidance “implements unlawful discrimination by the federal government against transgender people in the civil service and the provision of federal services.”
Specifically, they call unconstitutional the directive for agencies to “end all programs, contracts, grants, positions, documents, directives, orders, regulations, materials, forms,
communications, statements, plans, and training that ‘inculcate’ or ‘promote’ ‘gender
ideology’āwhich the Executive Order defines broadly to encompass acknowledging the simple
existence of transgender people and gender identity.”
āWe are deeply alarmed by these and other actions the Trump Administration has taken in its first few weeks to eliminate all government support for the transgender community, including efforts designed to enforcing the rights and support the health of transgender individuals,” the congressmen wrote.
They added, “We are also appalled by the Administrationās attempts to weaponize federal agencies to target the transgender community for discrimination and exclusion. These actions contradict federal law, Supreme Court precedent, and most importantly the Constitutionās guarantee of equal protection under the law.ā
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