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Already Ready for Hillary

LGBT activists join campaign to persuade Clinton to run in 2016

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Lisa Changadveja, Hillary Clinton, Ready for Hillary, gay news, Washington Blade
Lisa Changadveja, Hillary Clinton, Ready for Hillary, gay news, Washington Blade

Lisa Changadveja was named as Ready for Hillary’s LGBT Americans Director. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

Ready for Hillary, an independent super PAC created to urge former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to run for president in 2016, made its first visible outreach to the LGBT community in October when it set up a booth at the annual LGBT Pride festival in Orlando, Fla.

In a development that Ready for Hillary’s leaders believe is indicative of the sentiment of the LGBT community, the booth was inundated throughout the day by more than 900 people who signed up to get involved with the organization and a possible Clinton presidential campaign.

“We’re here to encourage her to run in 2016 because she has the grassroots support behind her and she has the LGBT community behind her if and when she decides to run,” said Lisa Changadveja, who was named in September as Ready for Hillary’s LGBT Americans Director.

Changadveja organized the Hillary booth at the Orlando Pride festival. She said she and other Ready for Hillary staffers along with a corps of volunteers and student interns will set up booths at LGBT Pride festivals throughout the country next year.

Under her supervision, Changadveja said, Ready for Hillary will also have a presence at important LGBT conferences and events other than Pride festivals, including the upcoming annual Creating Change Conference in Houston, organized by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

The Ready for Hillary outreach to the LGBT community comes at a time when Democratic Party activists and big name party contributors, including entertainment industry figures in Hollywood, have been clamoring for Clinton to enter the 2016 presidential race.

Changadveja, 25, a native of Atlanta, has worked on political campaigns since finishing college. She joined Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2007, working on get-out-the-vote efforts in the Nevada Democratic caucus and the Ohio and Indiana Democratic primaries. She worked on campaigns for Democratic candidates and progressive advocacy groups through earlier this year, when she served as a campaign manager for a lesbian candidate for the Texas House of Representatives in the Houston area.

“In her new role, Lisa will harness the enthusiasm of Hillary supporters in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community who are encouraging Hillary to run,” according to a statement released by Ready Hillary.

Although she’ll be traveling across the country, Changadveja works out of the Ready for Hillary headquarters on the fifth floor of a high-rise office building in the Rosslyn section of Arlington, Va.

“We have about 30 staffers across the nation,” she said. “We have tons of interns and volunteers in our office daily,” she added, noting that many of the interns come from nearby Georgetown University and George Washington University.

In its mid-year finance report filed with the Federal Election Commission, the group reported receiving $1.25 million in contributions between Jan. 1 and June 30 of this year and spending $469,000 during that same period to carry out its mission. The report says the organization had $784,641 in cash on hand as of June 30.

The group has announced it adopted a self-imposed cap of $25,000 as the maximum donation from an individual while at the same time it has encouraged and welcomed small donations. According to an internal memo obtained by ABC News in July, Ready for Hillary executive director Adam Parkhomenko reported that 75 percent of all donations received by the group were for $25 or less.

Among the contributors listed on the organization’s FEC report were Andrew Tobias, the gay treasurer of the Democratic National Committee and longtime LGBT rights advocate; Hilary Rosen, the lesbian Democratic activist and businesswoman; and Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers who’s a lesbian and longtime LGBT rights advocate.

Gay rights attorney and political commentator Richard Socarides, who served as White House liaison to the LGBT community under President Bill Clinton, said he, too, wants Hillary Clinton to run in 2016.

“I hope she runs,” he said. “I’ve been helping Ready for Hillary informally. I think she would receive overwhelming support from the LGBT community. And it is richly deserved.”

Changadveja said most LGBT Democrats are familiar with Hillary Clinton’s record of support on LGBT issues beginning with her tenure as first lady and her role as a U.S. senator from New York through her stint as Secretary of State under the Obama administration.

For those not familiar with Clinton’s record, Changadveja is happy to fill them in.

“Hillary has been very active in the LGBT community and she’s been a longtime friend,” she said she tells potential supporters. In addition to Clinton’s support for LGBT rights legislation and marriage equality, her support for LGBT employees at the State Department, and her call as Secretary of State for equating LGBT rights with human rights, Changadveja adds a lesser known part of Clinton’s LGBT rights portfolio.

“She was the first first lady to march in a Gay Pride parade,” she said.

D.C. gay Democratic activist Peter Rosenstein, who backed Clinton in her unsuccessful presidential run in 2008, said he and many other LGBT Democrats in the D.C. area are excited about a Clinton run in 2016.

“They have over a million people who ‘liked’ them on Facebook,” Rosenstein said of the Ready for Hillary PAC.

D.C.-area supporters of Hillary Clinton are being invited to a “grassroots” fundraiser for Ready For Hillary scheduled for Dec. 12 at Look Lounge, a K Street, N.W. club. The admission price, Changadveja said, is $20.16, a figure the organization uses to encourage small donors.

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New York

Men convicted of murdering two men in NYC gay bar drugging scheme sentenced

One of the victims, John Umberger, was D.C. political consultant

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(Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)

A New York judge on Wednesday sentenced three men convicted of killing a D.C. political consultant and another man who they targeted at gay bars in Manhattan.

NBC New York notes a jury in February convicted Jayqwan Hamilton, Jacob Barroso, and Robert DeMaio of murder, robbery, and conspiracy in relation to druggings and robberies that targeted gay bars in Manhattan from March 2021 to June 2022.

John Umberger, a 33-year-old political consultant from D.C., and Julio Ramirez, a 25-year-old social worker, died. Prosecutors said Hamilton, Barroso, and DeMaio targeted three other men at gay bars.

The jury convicted Hamilton and DeMaio of murdering Umberger. State Supreme Court Judge Felicia Mennin sentenced Hamilton and DeMaio to 40 years to life in prison.

Barroso, who was convicted of killing Ramirez, received a 20 years to life sentence.

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National

Medical groups file lawsuit over Trump deletion of health information

Crucial datasets included LGBTQ, HIV resources

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HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is named as a defendant in the lawsuit. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

Nine private medical and public health advocacy organizations, including two from D.C., filed a lawsuit on May 20 in federal court in Seattle challenging what it calls the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’s illegal deletion of dozens or more of its webpages containing health related information, including HIV information.

The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington, names as defendants Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and HHS itself, and several agencies operating under HHS and its directors, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration.

“This action challenges the widespread deletion of public health resources from federal agencies,” the lawsuit states. “Dozens (if not more) of taxpayer-funded webpages, databases, and other crucial resources have vanished since January 20, 2025, leaving doctors, nurses, researchers, and the public scrambling for information,” it says.

 “These actions have undermined the longstanding, congressionally mandated regime; irreparably harmed Plaintiffs and others who rely on these federal resources; and put the nation’s public health infrastructure in unnecessary jeopardy,” the lawsuit continues.

It adds, “The removal of public health resources was apparently prompted by two recent executive orders – one focused on ‘gender ideology’ and the other targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion (‘DEI’) programs. Defendants implemented these executive orders in a haphazard manner that resulted in the deletion (inadvertent or otherwise) of health-related websites and databases, including information related to pregnancy risks, public health datasets, information about opioid-use disorder, and many other valuable resources.”

 The lawsuit does not mention that it was President Donald Trump who issued the two executive orders in question. 

A White House spokesperson couldn’t immediately be reached for comment on the lawsuit. 

While not mentioning Trump by name, the lawsuit names as defendants in addition to HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., Matthew Buzzelli, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health; Martin Makary, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration; Thomas Engels, administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration; and Charles Ezell, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management. 

The 44-page lawsuit complaint includes an addendum with a chart showing the titles or descriptions of 49 “affected resource” website pages that it says were deleted because of the executive orders. The chart shows that just four of the sites were restored after initially being deleted.

 Of the 49 sites, 15 addressed LGBTQ-related health issues and six others addressed HIV issues, according to the chart.   

“The unannounced and unprecedented deletion of these federal webpages and datasets came as a shock to the medical and scientific communities, which had come to rely on them to monitor and respond to disease outbreaks, assist physicians and other clinicians in daily care, and inform the public about a wide range of healthcare issues,” the lawsuit states.

 “Health professionals, nonprofit organizations, and state and local authorities used the websites and datasets daily in care for their patients, to provide resources to their communities, and promote public health,” it says. 

Jose Zuniga, president and CEO of the International Association of Providers of AIDS Care (IAPAC), one of the organizations that signed on as a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in a statement that the deleted information from the HHS websites “includes essential information about LGBTQ+ health, gender and reproductive rights, clinical trial data, Mpox and other vaccine guidance and HIV prevention resources.”

 Zuniga added, “IAPAC champions evidence-based, data-informed HIV responses and we reject ideologically driven efforts that undermine public health and erase marginalized communities.”

Lisa Amore, a spokesperson for Whitman-Walker Health, D.C.’s largest LGBTQ supportive health services provider, also expressed concern about the potential impact of the HHS website deletions.

 “As the region’s leader in HIV care and prevention, Whitman-Walker Health relies on scientific data to help us drive our resources and measure our successes,” Amore said in response to a request for comment from  the Washington Blade. 

“The District of Columbia has made great strides in the fight against HIV,” Amore said. “But the removal of public facing information from the HHS website makes our collective work much harder and will set HIV care and prevention backward,” she said. 

The lawsuit calls on the court to issue a declaratory judgement that the “deletion of public health webpages and resources is unlawful and invalid” and to issue a preliminary or permanent injunction ordering government officials named as defendants in the lawsuit “to restore the public health webpages and resources that have been deleted and to maintain their web domains in accordance with their statutory duties.”

It also calls on the court to require defendant government officials to “file a status report with the Court within twenty-four hours of entry of a preliminary injunction, and at regular intervals, thereafter, confirming compliance with these orders.”

The health organizations that joined the lawsuit as plaintiffs include the Washington State Medical Association, Washington State Nurses Association, Washington Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Academy Health, Association of Nurses in AIDS Care, Fast-Track Cities Institute, International Association of Providers of AIDS Care, National LGBT Cancer Network, and Vermont Medical Society. 

The Fast-Track Cities Institute and International Association of Providers of AIDS Care are based in D.C.

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U.S. Federal Courts

Federal judge scraps trans-inclusive workplace discrimination protections

Ruling appears to contradict US Supreme Court precedent

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Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas (Screen capture: YouTube)

Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas has struck down guidelines by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission designed to protect against workplace harassment based on gender identity and sexual orientation.

The EEOC in April 2024 updated its guidelines to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), which determined that discrimination against transgender people constituted sex-based discrimination as proscribed under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

To ensure compliance with the law, the agency recommended that employers honor their employees’ preferred pronouns while granting them access to bathrooms and allowing them to wear dress code-compliant clothing that aligns with their gender identities.

While the the guidelines are not legally binding, Kacsmaryk ruled that their issuance created “mandatory standards” exceeding the EEOC’s statutory authority that were “inconsistent with the text, history, and tradition of Title VII and recent Supreme Court precedent.”

“Title VII does not require employers or courts to blind themselves to the biological differences between men and women,” he wrote in the opinion.

The case, which was brought by the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation, presents the greatest setback for LGBTQ inclusive workplace protections since President Donald Trump’s issuance of an executive order on the first day of his second term directing U.S. federal agencies to recognize only two genders as determined by birth sex.

Last month, top Democrats from both chambers of Congress reintroduced the Equality Act, which would codify LGBTQ-inclusive protections against discrimination into federal law, covering employment as well as areas like housing and jury service.

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