Politics
A White House reporter’s reflections on Helen Thomas
Pioneering work helped open doors for many others in press corps


Helen Thomas as a member of the White House Press Corps — past and more recent. (Photo of Helen Thomas with President Gerald Ford by Marion S. Trikosk; Photo of Helen Thomas with President Barack Obama by Pete Souza).
The news of Helen Thomas’s death on Saturday morning jolted me. It wasn’t surprising in one sense, because she was 92 years old, but it made me pause to reflect on my own presence in the White House press corps and how she opened the door for so many reporters, including me.
I first saw Helen Thomas in the White House briefing room when I started attending daily briefings at the start of the Obama administration, working the beat for federal LGBT politics. Blade reporters had been kicked out of the briefing room during George W. Bush’s second term, so it was a new era and an exciting time.
I remember thinking Thomas could move around the press area deftly for a woman in her late 80s and could hold her own in conversations with other reporters. During a news conference with President Obama in the East Room, she had to have someone escort her by hand over the wires and between the chairs, but otherwise she seemed full of energy.
Bestowed with a front row seat in the briefing room by her colleagues, Thomas would pester then-White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs with questions that would probably veer a little too close toward editorializing than other reporters in the briefing room would be comfortable asking.
One such instance occurred in October 2009 when Thomas asked Gibbs if the administration had given up on including a government-run public option as part of health care reform. Gibbs replied, somewhat light-heartedly to the octogenarian reporter, that he had answered the question several times before.
“I apparently don’t answer it to your satisfaction,” Gibbs said. “I’ll give you the same answer that I gave you unsatisfactorily for many of those other days.”
When Gibbs said the administration would work to include choice and competition in health care reform, Thomas vocally surmised, “You’re not going to get it.” And when Gibbs responded with his own question about why Thomas kept asking, she responded, in an almost grandmotherly way, “Because I want your conscience to bother you.”
But Thomas was holding the White House accountable long before the Obama administration. Getting her start in the Kennedy administration, Thomas broke up the boys’ club that was the White House Press Corps and was the first female reporter to cover the president, rather than the first lady.
In 1962, she pressed Kennedy to skip the annual dinner of the White House Correspondents Association unless it were open to women. After he said he wouldn’t attend, the dinner for the first time admitted women.
One of my major regrets is that I never initiated a conversation with Thomas during the times I saw her in the White House briefing room or the press area. Our time that coincided covering the White House in 2009 was very short. Also, I was little intimidated as I was still getting my bearings. Lesson to all: If you see someone you admire, take the opportunity to speak to them before it’s too late.
It’s unfortunate that her White House career came to a somewhat ignominious end.
In 2010, when Thomas was questioned on Jewish Heritage Celebration Day by a reporter about her thoughts on Israel, she replied, “Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine.” Asked where Israeli Jews should go, Thomas offered that Poland, Germany or the United States would be good options instead of Israel, adding “Why push people out of there who have lived there for centuries?” As a controversy unfolded and supporters of Israel grew angry, Thomas submitted her resignation to Hearst Newspapers.
I remember Gibbs responded to the controversy in a much more grave tone than the manner in which he addressed her questions about the public option. He took the liberty of not just speaking for the White House, but for the press corps.
“Those remarks were offensive and reprehensible,” Gibbs said. “I think she should, and has, apologized because, obviously those remarks do not reflect certainly the opinion of, I assume, most of the people in here .. and certainly not the administration.”
Still, the way in which Thomas’s role as a White House reporter ended was a small part of her half-century career. As President Obama noted in his statement upon her death, Thomas was a “true pioneer, opening doors and breaking down barriers” for women in journalism.
And her courage opened for the door for me as well. The way Thomas broke down barriers and made sure women had a place in the White House press corps — as well as the continued tenaciousness of her questioning over the decades — made it easier for me to work as an openly gay reporter in the White House briefing room representing an LGBT publication.
I would never compare my work to Thomas’s, but the way she shook things up started a process that allowed me decades later to come to the briefings and — regardless of the news of the day occupying mainstream reporters — ask questions about “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal, the president’s evolution on marriage equality, and why the administration continues to withhold an executive order protecting LGBT workers.
Thanks to Thomas, if White House officials aren’t doing enough to advance LGBT rights, we can make sure their consciences will bother them.
Congress
Shaheen, Collins reintroduce bill prohibiting anti-LGBTQ discrimination in jury service
Senators note the absence of protections in federal courtrooms

U.S. Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) reintroduced a bill on Wednesday that would prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity during the federal jury selection process.
The bipartisan Jury Access for Capable Citizens and Equality in Service Selection (ACCESS) Act would enshrine protections for LGBTQ Americans who are serving or who might be selected to serve on juries, alongside rules proscribing discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, and economic status that are already enforced in federal courtrooms.
Co-sponsoring the bill with Shaheen and Collins are U.S. Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.)
“Serving on a jury is a civic duty that no one should be prevented from fulfilling because of who they are or who they love,” Shaheen said in a press release. “It’s preposterous that under current law there are no protections prohibiting discrimination against LGBTQ+ jurors in federal courts and Congress must take action to rectify this injustice.”
“Serving on a jury is a fundamental right and obligation that no individual should be prohibited from fulfilling based on their sexual orientation or gender identity,” said Collins. “I have long worked to fight discrimination, and I am proud to join this effort to help eliminate bias from our judicial system.”
Amid the absence of nationwide protections, the release notes that only 17 states “prohibit exclusion from jury service in state court based on sexual orientation” while “just 12 protect against discrimination based on gender identity.”
This spring, Democratic lawmakers from the House and the Senate, including leadership from both chambers, reintroduced the Equality Act, which would codify LGBTQ inclusive federal nondiscrimination rules in a range of contexts from employment and housing to public accommodations and education.
Shaheen and Collins were integral to the bill’s inclusion of protections applying to jury service.
Congress
Torres: gay Venezuelan asylum seeker is ‘poster child’ for Trump’s ‘abuses against due process’
Congressman spoke with the Blade Thursday

Democratic U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres of New York told the Washington Blade during an interview Thursday that his party erred in focusing so much attention on demands for the Trump-Vance administration to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the U.S. when the wrongful deportation of Andry Hernández Romero “was much more egregious.”
Hernández is a gay Venezuelan national who was deported to El Salvador in March and imprisoned in the country’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center, a maximum-security prison known by the Spanish acronym CECOT.
“In the case of Andry, the government admits that it has no evidence of gang membership, but he was deported without due process, without a notification to his attorney, without a court hearing to contest the allegations against him, without a court order authorizing his deportation,” the congressman said.
“He had not even the slightest semblance of due process,” Torres said. “And even though he had a court hearing scheduled for March 17, the Trump administration proceeded to deport him on March 15, in violation of a court order.”
“I think we as a party should have held up Andry as the poster child for the abuses against due process, because his case is much more sympathetic,” Torres said. “There’s no one who thinks that Andry is a gang member.”
“Also,” the congressman added, “he’s not a quote-unquote illegal immigrant. He was a lawful asylum seeker. He sought asylum lawfully under the statutes of the United States, but he was deported unlawfully at the hands of the Trump administration.”
Torres was among the 49 members of Congress who joined with Democratic U.S. Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff of California in writing to Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday demanding information about Romero, including proof of life.
The lawmakers urged the State Department to facilitate his access to legal counsel and take steps to return him, expressing fear for his safety — concerns that Torres reiterated on Thursday.
“Jails and prisons can be dangerous places for gay men, and that is especially true of a place like CECOT,” the congressman said. “He fled Latin America to escape violent homophobia. There are a few places on earth that have as much institutionalized homophobia as jails and prisons, and so I do fear for his safety.”
“I released a video telling the story of Andry,” Torres noted, adding, “I feel like we have to do more to raise awareness and the video is only the beginning … And you know, the fact that Abrego Garcia is returning to the United States shows that the administration has the ability to bring back the migrants who were unlawfully deported.”
ICE deported the wrong guy. Now they're trying to hide it.
— Ritchie Torres (@RitchieTorresNY) June 11, 2025
Free Andry. pic.twitter.com/G4hK33oJpw
Torres spoke with the Blade just after Padilla was forcibly removed from a federal building in Los Angeles after attempting to question U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem during a press conference on immigration Thursday.
Footage of the senator being pushed out of the room, onto the floor, and handcuffed by officers wearing FBI identifying vests drew outrage from top Democrats in California and beyond.
“It’s the latest reminder that Donald Trump and his administration have no respect for anything or anyone but himself,” Torres told the Blade. “And every bit as outrageous as Donald Trump himself has been the enabling on the part of the congressional Republicans who are aiding and abetting his authoritarian abuses.”
“We have to be vigilant in resisting Donald Trump,” the congressman said. “We have to resist him on the streets through grassroots mobilization. We have to resist him in the courtrooms through litigation. We have to resist him in the halls of Congress through legislation.”
Torres added that “we have to win back the majority in 2026” and “if Republicans have no interest in holding Donald Trump accountable, then those Republicans should be fired from public office” because “we need a Congress that is able and willing to hold Donald Trump accountable, to stand up to his authoritarian assault on our democracy.”
Resisting is “a matter of free speech,” he said, noting that the president’s aim is to “create a reign of terror that intimidates people into silence,” but “we cannot remain silent. We have to unapologetically and courageously exercise our right to free speech, our right to assemble peacefully, and our right to resist an authoritarian president like Donald Trump.”
Congress
Padilla forcibly removed from federal building for questioning DHS secretary
Prominent Democrats rushed to defend senator

Democratic U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla of California was forcibly removed from a federal building in Los Angeles after attempting to ask questions of U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem during a press conference on immigration Thursday
The city has been rattled in recent days as protestors objecting to the Trump-Vance administration’s immigration crackdowns clashed with law enforcement and then the president deployed National Guard troops and U.S. Marines, which was seen as a dramatic escalation.
According to a video shared by his office, the senator, who serves as ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Immigration Subcommittee, introduced himself and said, I have questions for the secretary.” After he was pushed out of the room, officers with FBI-identifying vests told Padilla to put his hands behind his back and handcuffed him.
“Senator Padilla is currently in Los Angeles exercising his duty to perform Congressional oversight of the federal government’s operations in Los Angeles and across California,” reads a statement from his office.
“He was in the federal building to receive a briefing with General Guillot and was listening to Secretary Noem’s press conference,” the statement continued. “He tried to ask the secretary a question, and was forcibly removed by federal agents, forced to the ground and handcuffed. He is not currently detained, and we are working to get additional information.”
Democrats were furious, with many releasing strong statements online condemning the actions of law enforcement officers, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D), and the state’s other U.S. senator, Adam Schiff (D).
Human Rights Campaign Chief of Staff Jay Brown also issued a statement: “A sitting U.S. senator should be allowed to ask a Cabinet secretary a question at a press conference — in his own state, on an issue affecting his constituents — without being violently thrown to the floor and handcuffed. Everyone who cares about our country must condemn this undemocratic act. Full stop.”
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