Local
Washington Post publishes pro-Russia supplement
Oct. 9 insert lacked references to LGBT rights record
The Washington Post on October 9 ran a paid supplement from a Kremlin-backed Russian newspaper.
The Washington Post’s Oct. 9 print edition included a paid supplement produced by a Kremlin-backed newspaper that lacked any references to the ongoing controversy over Russia’s LGBT rights record.
Rossiyskaya Gazetá produced the insert – Russia Beyond the Headlines – that contained, among other things, an op-ed from Jeffrey Mankoff of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in D.C. He cited portions of the speech that Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered during a meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club, a Russian think tank, that took place last month.
“Discussing his own view of Russian identity, Putin criticized the West for abandoning its Christian roots and ‘placing on the same level families with many children and single-sex partnerships, belief in God and belief in Satan,’” Putin said, according to Mankoff. “This cultural relativity, according to Putin, is ‘a direct path to degradation and primitivization, to a deep demographic and ethical crisis.’”
The Oct. 9 supplement is not the first time the Washington Post has published a Russia-specific insert.
The newspaper first published a Russia-themed supplement – Russia Now – in 2007.
Russia Beyond the Headlines said in a press release last month it decided earlier this year to redesign and revamp the supplement. It reappeared under the aforementioned name in the Washington Post’s Sept. 11 issue with a lead story that focused on the controversy surrounding the Russian law that bans gay propaganda to minors.
The article quoted Lyudmila Alexeyeva of the Moscow Helsinki Group, an organization that monitors human rights in Russia, as describing the statute that Putin signed in June as “a step toward the Middle Ages.” The Sept. 11 supplement reported Kirill Kobrin of Radio Free Europe’s Russia Service said he feels “it was unthinkable to even discuss these issues 20 years ago in Russia.”
“Under the Kremlin’s lead, LGBT rights are the focus of public attention and debate in Russia – albeit censored debate,” the Russia Beyond the Headlines article reads.
The New York Times on Sept. 18 published an eight-page Russia Beyond the Headlines supplement that contained articles about the gay propaganda law and coming out in the country. Putin reiterated his opposition to air strikes in Syria in an op-ed that ran in the newspaper less than a week earlier.
Ketchum PR, a public relations firm that represents Putin, placed it in the New York Times. Pro Publica reported the New York-based company received more than $1.9 million in fees and expense reimbursements from the Russian government from December 2012 through May.
The New York Times included another Russia supplement in its Oct. 16 print edition that contained an article on the arrest of 30 Greenpeace members last month who tried to board a Russian oil platform. The insert also contained a reference to the LGBT advocates who protested Russia’s gay rights record during the Metropolitan Opera’s opening night gala in New York last month.
Washington Post spokesperson Jennifer Lee declined to tell the Washington Blade how much the Russia Beyond the Headlines insert cost, but she confirmed it was a paid supplement and the advertiser provided the content. It contained a disclosure on the front page that said “it did not involve the news or editorial departments of the Washington Post.”
The top margin of each subsequent page contained a disclosure that stated the insert was “a paid supplement to the Washington Post.”
Observers and even journalists themselves have questioned the way Russian media outlets have covered the gay propaganda law, Russia’s LGBT rights record and the controversy surrounding it.
Gay American journalist Jamie Kirchick on Aug. 21 challenged Russia’s LGBT rights record during an interview with the Kremlin-backed television network RT on the sentencing of former U.S. Army private Chelsea Manning to 35 years in prison for leaking classified documents to Wikileaks.
“Being here on a Kremlin-funded propaganda network I’m going to wear my gay pride suspenders and I’m going to speak out against the horrific anti-gay legislation that Vladimir Putin has signed into law, that passed unanimously by the Russian Duma that criminalizes homosexual propaganda,” Kirchick told anchor Yulia Shapovalova. “It effectively makes it illegal to talk about homosexuality in public. We’ve seen a spate of violent attacks on gay people in Russia.”
RT aired a segment on calls to boycott the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, in response to the country’s LGBT rights record less than two weeks before Kirchick appeared on the network to discuss Manning. The journalist further criticized Shapovalova and her colleagues before RT took him off the air.
Anton Krasovsky, the former editor-in-chief of the pro-Kremlin Kontr TV, said the television station fired him in January after he came out as gay during a segment on the gay propaganda law.
The Washington Post in recent weeks has published a number of stories on the controversy over Russia’s LGBT rights record and how it threatens to overshadow the Sochi games. These include a Sept. 26 article on the International Olympic Committee’s position that it has no authority to challenge the gay propaganda law and Alex Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals’ response to a question about it during the lighting of the Olympic torch in Greece late last month.
Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, who bought the Washington Post in August and contributed $2.5 million to a group that backed a successful 2012 ballot measure that secured marriage rights for same-sex couples in Washington State, did not return the Blade’s request for comment.
Kelly McBride of the Poynter Institute, a media ethics watchdog, told the Blade that paid supplements and advertorials have become common in newspapers. She noted the Washington Post’s use of different fonts throughout the Russia Beyond the Headlines supplement is “common practice” and “is amazingly effective at cueing regular readers to advertising content.”
“Combined with the disclosures, it looks to me the [Washington Post] is within the standard practice of the industry,” McBride said.
Rehoboth Beach
Officials raise troubling concerns about Rehoboth mayoral candidate Suzanne Goode
Homophobic emails, ‘aggressive’ behavior cited: ‘It just seems to be getting worse’
As Rehoboth Beach voters prepare to elect a new mayor on Aug. 8, some city officials and local residents are raising new concerns about the behavior of City Commissioner and mayoral candidate Suzanne Goode.
In addition to a history of troubling emails in which she has used homophobic language and criticized the city’s rainbow crosswalks, Goode is being accused of inappropriate behavior by a neighbor and a fellow Commissioner related to a dispute on the Nextdoor online platform.
The Blade spoke to City Manager Taylour Tedder, Commissioner Chris Galanty, and others about Goode’s behavior during her time as commissioner.
Goode was elected commissioner in August 2024. Fellow commissioner Susan Stewart, who is also running for mayor, criticized Goode’s behavior in a March 9, 2026 meeting, bringing up emails outlining Goode’s offensive conduct toward city staff.
In one email, Goode wrote to Rehoboth Beach City Solicitor Lisa Borin Ogden: “I am sorry that I learned from Google when you were first interviewed [in the] spring [of] 2025 that you are Jewish. My opinion of my fellow Jews declined significantly thanks to you since last summer. Actually would have thought you would have more compassion than the average person, based on your late brother. Except you don’t. I am sick of your haughty attitude toward me.”
In other emails, Goode questions why city officials encouraged CAMP Rehoboth and Clear Space Theatre to apply for grant funds. She has denigrated both institutions, referring to CAMP as a “questionable non-profit” and Clear Space as “second rate” with a “woke, drag queen bent” at times. She accuses Rehoboth’s LGBTQ community of displaying “their sex lives in public view” and fears physical violence from LGBTQ activists.
Goode disputed the claims and called for the city to remove Stewart’s remarks from the website.
The following statements were included in the emails sent by Goode:
• “Gays and theatre aficionados can donate as much as they like to these pet causes. Some taxpayers think the theatre is second-rate as community theatres go, and many dislike the RB emphasis on LGBTQ when heterosexuals don’t demand equivalent display of their sex lives in public view.”
• “Just because the LGBTQ community feels oppressed and discriminated against, that doesn’t mean that those who identify as LGBTQ are better able to recognize racial discrimination than someone like myself. It might surprise some of you to learn that I briefly dated an African American fellow college student.”
• “A performing arts and LGBTQ agenda isn’t appropriate for BOC spending when the city faces over $60M in debt.”
• “But there are some folks in town, who ironically have to remain in the closet (conservatives now have to do what gays had to do in the 20th century — ah, the irony) who object to the woke, drag queen bent of Clear Space at times. They have confided this in me, and thanked me for fighting for their tax dollars. Maybe I will regret speaking up, as some LGBTQ activist will attack me physically, even though I am a complete supporter of gay rights, and have as many gay male friends as female friends now that I live in RB with a large gay population.”
In the emails, Goode also referred to City Manager Tedder as “the mayor’s whore.”
Stewart told the Blade that the troubling behavior has since escalated.
Commissioner Chris Galanty spoke to the Blade about Goode’s behavior as commissioner and her issues with the rainbow crosswalks in town.
“Suzanne told me on two separate occasions that she didn’t like the rainbow crosswalks, and she said that she didn’t understand why they had to exist, and she didn’t understand why gay people had to advertise their sexuality, and she said straight people don’t have to do that.”
Galanty said that when he challenged her on this, she “moved very quickly to another topic.” He said that she has now shifted her perspective and is more concerned that the rainbow crosswalks are an issue of labor costs.
Goode told the Blade that, “Unfortunately, the rainbow crosswalks have potentially reduced the upkeep of the conventional crosswalks. But the rainbow crosswalks are attractive in and of themselves, and they do add to our recognition of Rehoboth’s longstanding status as a gay-friendly town.”
Accusations of “aggressive” behavior by Goode aren’t limited to emails. Last summer, Goode came to the home of Diana Jones, a property owner in Rehoboth Beach who is a neighbor of Galanty’s. Jones spoke to the Blade to share her experience with Goode.
Jones is active on Nextdoor, an online social network for neighborhoods. She said that she got involved on the platform during the time of the commissioners election last summer, in which her neighbor, Chris Galanty, was elected as commissioner.
Jones said that she made posts supporting Galanty. She said that someone posted a link of a lawsuit that involved Goode’s husband, Jeffrey Goode, who lost his race for commissioner last summer. Jones said that she reposted the link after it was taken down.
Jones said that the lawsuit was “very relevant to somebody who is running for city commissioner.”
Jones said that Suzanne Goode showed up at her house as a result of the post. Jones was out walking her dog nearby so Goode briefly spoke with Jones’s husband who was home.
“She came over to my house because she was saying I was doxing him,” said Jones. Jones said that Goode then found her as she was walking her dog and tried to talk to her about her Nextdoor posts, saying that she “brought up a very painful time in her life.”
Jones said that she has not had any communication with Goode since.
When asked for comment on the situation with Jones, Goode responded by saying “Diana Jones’s behavior toward me was despicable, and the way she has chosen to give her side of the story to news media says more about her than it will ever say about me.”
Galanty told the Blade that Goode came to his house in late June of this year when he was not home. She then called him about Jones.
“She relayed to me that she was having a disagreement with my neighbor on the Nextdoor platform, and she asked me to intercede with the neighbor,” said Galanty. “She said, ‘Please speak to her because I am frustrated with what she is saying. She needs to stop, and you need to say something to her.'”
Galanty said that Goode called him four times and texted him 32 times in the span of three and a half hours the next day.
Galanty said that he responded the next day, telling her that her behavior was inappropriate.
“Eventually it took a couple of weeks, but she apologized in her own way. She just said we just need to let it go.”
From his perspective as commissioner, Galanty said, “She likes to re-litigate things that have happened, six months ago, nine months ago. She likes to rehash issues that are in the past.”
“She can be really aggressive, and people are just really turned off by her,” said Galanty.
Tedder, who has accused Goode of creating a “hostile work environment,” told the Blade about his experiences working with Goode.
“She does not support the staff, and constantly tells us to resign,” said Tedder.
Tedder said that Goode texted City Solicitor Ogden at 7:45 a.m. on a Saturday, telling her to resign.
“Sometimes she does have good ideas. It’s just it gets so lost in these pages and pages of emails and thousands of emails that she sends,” said Tedder.
In regards to Goode’s behavior, Tedder said it has been going on since the beginning. “It just seems to be getting worse.”
Maryland
Advocates for trans students urge Md. to fight White House threats
Four school districts under federal investigation
By JESSICA CALEFATI | Allies of transgender children are urging state education officials to fight back against the Trump-Vance administration, which has threatened to punish a growing number of Maryland school districts over local policies that affirm students’ gender identities.
The advocates testified Tuesday morning before the Maryland State Board of Education — one day after the U.S. Education and Justice departments alleged that Anne Arundel County’s school system violated federal student privacy law by withholding a student’s gender identity from their parents. A spokesperson for the district said Monday legal counsel had not yet reviewed the claims and that the district had no further comment.
School districts in Prince George’s, Montgomery, and Frederick Counties were already under investigation for allegedly violating Title IX, the civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination. The federal government last month threatened to revoke funding from the districts because they allow trans students to use restrooms and locker rooms that align with their identities.
The rest of this article can be read on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
Maryland
White House threatens Anne Arundel schools over gender identity policy
District faces possible legal action or loss of federal funding
By JESSICA CALEFATI | The Trump-Vance administration on Monday threatened to punish Anne Arundel County’s school system with legal action or the loss of federal funding for allegedly withholding information about a student’s gender identity and transition from the child’s parents.
The U.S. Education and Justice Departments together determined that the suburban Maryland district treats students’ gender identities as confidential medical information that cannot be shared with parents, in violation of federal student privacy law, according to a news release. A federal lawsuit filed against the district earlier this month made similar claims.
“As a mother and a grandmother, it is unconscionable that any school district would hide the most sensitive information about children in their care from their own parents,” U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement. “This is not only an affront to basic moral principles, but also to parents’ rights under federal law.”
The rest of this article can be read on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
White House orders warning signs at Smithsonian over gender identity exhibits
Rainbows in Revolt on a mission to make LGBTQ artists’ voices heard
Officials raise troubling concerns about Rehoboth mayoral candidate Suzanne Goode
Blade participates in Dutch university course on international LGBTQ rights law
US official protested at 2026 International AIDS Conference
Pentagon says hormones make trans troops unfit but gives them to men
Winsome Earle-Sears launches campaign against Va. marriage equality amendment
Calendar: July 24-30
1 dead, 29 injured in Berlin Pride attack
