National
U.S. lawmakers spurn Ugandan LGBT activists
Inhofe-led delegation to reportedly meet with East African country’s president

A congressional delegation is scheduled to meet with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni in his country’s capital on Jan. 23. (Photo by the U.K. Department for International Development; courtesy Wikimedia Commons)
The Washington Blade has learned a congressional delegation is expected to meet with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni next week amid outrage over the passage of a bill that would impose a life sentence upon anyone found guilty of repeated same-sex sexual acts.
U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) will lead the delegation that includes U.S. Reps. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.), Ander Crenshaw (R-Fla.), Ann Kirkpatrick (D-Ariz.) and Erik Paulsen who are scheduled to travel to Uganda on Jan. 23. A source familiar with the trip told the Blade the lawmakers are scheduled to meet with Museveni while they are in the East African country.
A copy of an itinerary the source forwarded to the Blade indicates the lawmakers will also travel to Germany, Turkey, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Rwanda and Niger before returning to the U.S. on Jan. 26.
“The purpose of the CODEL’s (congressional delegation’s) engagements in Africa is to better understand how to address the ‘Arc of Instability’ through the center of Africa so the SASC (Senate Armed Services Committee) can support USG (U.S. government) efforts to address the underlying causes of our problems on the continent rather than just reacting to the symptoms,” it reads.
The source familiar with the trip told the Blade the delegation will focus on efforts to combat the Lord’s Resistance Army that led a bloody insurgency against the Ugandan government from 1986-2006. Inhofe and other U.S. lawmakers are also expected to discuss counter-terrorism efforts against the Somali Islamist militant group al-Shabab, the escalating conflict in South Sudan and “other U.S. interests.”
The source told the Blade the lawmakers have rejected Ugandan LGBT rights advocates’ requests to meet with them while in the East African country.
“We understand that Sen. Inhofe will be meeting with President Museveni and we believe other officials in Uganda on Jan. 23,” Maria Burnett of Human Rights Watch told the Blade on Friday. “We understand that they have been close for many, many years and maintain a great deal of dialogue on a range of issues. And given the recent events on the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, it seems like a crucial time for Sen. Inhofe to restate his lack of support of the bill quite clearly.”
Ugandan lawmakers on Dec. 20 approved the Anti-Homosexuality Bill that originally contained a provision that would have imposed the death penalty on anyone found guilty of repeated same-sex sexual acts. The measure would also criminalize the promotion of homosexuality.
The White House, Florida Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay are among those who criticized the measure’s passage. Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, announced after Ugandan lawmakers approved the Anti-Homosexuality Bill that his company would not do business in the country.
Museveni’s spokesperson told Agence France-Presse on Jan. 2 the Ugandan president “won’t rush” to sign the measure into law. A Ugandan newspaper on Friday reported Museveni has blocked the bill because Parliament Speaker Rebecca Kadaga allowed a vote on the measure without the required number of lawmakers needed for quorum.
Uganda is among the more than 70 countries in which homosexuality remains criminalized.
The Center for Constitutional Rights in March 2012 filed a federal lawsuit against Scott Lively in Massachusetts on behalf of Sexual Minorities Uganda, a Ugandan LGBT advocacy group, that accuses the evangelical Christian of exploiting homophobic attitudes in the East African country and encouraging lawmakers to approve the Anti-Homosexuality Bill. U.S. District Judge Michael A. Posner of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts last August ruled the group’s lawsuit can move forward.
Ugandan Parliamentarian David Bahati, who introduced the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in 2009, has ties to the Fellowship Foundation, a Christian evangelical group that hosts the annual National Prayer Breakfast in D.C. Inhofe is also closely aligned with the secretive organization also known as “The Family.”
The Oklahoma Republican told MSNBC host Rachel Maddow during a 2012 interview he had “never heard” of Bahati when she asked him about the parliamentarians’ claims the idea for the Anti-Homosexuality Bill came from a conversation he had with members of the Fellowship.
“I do not, nor have I ever, supported or condoned this legislation,” said Inhofe in an Oct. 2011 statement to the website Red Dirt Report. “It is my hope that Uganda will abandon this unjust and extraordinarily harsh legislation.”
The Oklahoma Republican has not publicly spoken about the measure since Ugandan lawmakers approved it.
“Frankly this is not the only human rights issue that we think would be important for a high-level American delegation to raise with President Museveni,” Burnett told the Blade. “We have a lot of other concerns, such as obstacles to Ugandans rights to expression and assembly, but Senator Inhofe happens to be going at a particularly significant moment in the course of this bill.”
Inhofe’s spokesperson, Donelle Harder, denied reports the delegation will meet with the Ugandan president while in his country.
“It appears someone gave you a bad itinerary as the members are not meeting with Museveni,” she told the Blade. “Sen. Inhofe will be in Uganda briefly to meet with local officials regarding the [Lord’s Resistance Army.]”
A U.S. State Department spokesperson deferred to the staffers of the delegation members.
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

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.
National
Medical groups file lawsuit over Trump deletion of health information
Crucial datasets included LGBTQ, HIV resources

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.
U.S. Federal Courts
Federal judge scraps trans-inclusive workplace discrimination protections
Ruling appears to contradict US Supreme Court precedent

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.