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Spicer hints at coming action on anti-LGBT ‘religious freedom’ order
Trump transition official says directive being redrafted and coming soon
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer says he expects something on a “religious freedom” executive order.
Amid renewed concerns President Trump would sign a “religious order” undermining LGBT rights, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said Monday he expects the administration would soon “have something.”
Spicer made the remarks in response to a question from the Daily Signal, an arm of the anti-LGBT Heritage Foundation, on whether the order is still coming and whether it would extend beyond the Johnson Amendment, a law Trump has pledged to repeal barring churches from making political endorsements.
“I think we’ve discussed executive orders in the past, and for the most part, we’re not going to get into discussing what may or may not come until we’re ready to announce it,” Spicer replied. “So, I’m sure as we move forward we’ll have something.”
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the “something” to which Spicer was referring was an actual executive order or a statement on a policy position for the way forward.
Although Trump initially passed up the opportunity to sign a proposed anti-LGBT “religious freedom” executive order at the time of the National Prayer Breakfast during the start of the administration, a recent report in The Huffington Post raised concerns a different order will come soon.
The report quotes Ken Blackwell, a senior fellow at the anti-LGBT Family Research Council who oversaw domestic policy for the Trump transition team, from an interview he had with Sirius XM’s Michelangelo Signorile in which Blackwell says the order is being redrafted and on the way.
“In the final analysis, what we want is an executive order that will meet the scrutiny of the judicial process,” Blackwell is quoted as saying. “If there is no executive order, that will disappoint [social conservatives]. But a good executive order will not. So we’re still in the process.”
Blackwell reportedly said the former director of Family Research Council’s Center for Religious Liberty, Ken Klukowski, had “actually structured” the initial draft order as a legal adviser to Trump’s transition team and is now one of the lawyers “in the process of redrafting it.” Klukowski is now a senior attorney at the Liberty First Institute and a contributor to Breitbart, a conservative website.
The “anchor concept” of the order, Blackwell is quoted as saying, is a directive allowing people in the course of business to refuse services to LGBT people out of religious objections.
“I think small business owners who hold a religious belief that traditional marriage is between one man and one woman should not have their religious liberty trampled upon,” he explained. “I would imagine that that will be, strongly and clearly, the anchor concept [of the order].”
No federal law prohibits discrimination in public accommodations on the basis of gender, sexual orientation or gender identity and an executive order like this would send a signal to individuals they should feel free to discriminate. A federal “religious freedom” executive order wouldn’t preempt state laws barring anti-LGBT discrimination.
Klukowski is also quoted in the Huffington Post article as saying he’s “not at liberty to speak about” the order specifically, but nonetheless expressed confidence Trump would act to protect religious freedom both through judicial appointments and possibly administrative actions.
“And I’m confident,” Klukowski reportedly said, “that the president is showing ― much to the shock of many establishment people who said, ‘There’s no way this’ll happen’ ― that he keeps his promises, even when they’re things that an establishment player would never do. And I’m confident that he’s going to keep his promise when it comes to protection of religious liberty as well.”
Last month, a draft executive order began circulating among federal advocacy groups that would allow persons and religious organizations — broadly defined to include for-profit companies — to discriminate on the basis of religious objections to same-sex marriage, premarital sex, abortion and transgender identity.
At the time, the White House downplayed the draft executive order and said Trump wouldn’t sign it — at least for the time being. Media reports circulated that Ivanka Trump and Jared Kuskner convinced Trump not to sign the “religious freedom” order and the president wasn’t ever seriously considering doing so.
The White House issued a statement saying Trump would preserve the Obama-era order against workplace discrimination among federal contractors and is “respectful and supportive of LGBTQ rights.” That pledge of support was undermined after the administration later rescinded guidance protecting transgender students from discrimination at schools.
Olivia Dalton, the Human Rights Campaign’s senior vice president for communications and marketing, said renewed plans for an anti-LGBT “religious freedom” order shouldn’t come as a surprise.
“Donald Trump and Mike Pence have repeatedly threatened the LGBTQ community, and by their own admission this ‘license to discriminate’ order has been circulating for weeks,” Dalton said. “No one should be surprised — their despicable attack on transgender kids last week showed just how low they’re willing to go.”
Eswatini
Eswatini’s government ordered to allow LGBTQ group to legally register
Unanimous Supreme Court ruling caps off 7-year legal battle
Eswatini’s Supreme Court has ordered the government to allow an LGBTQ rights group to legally register.
The Registrar of Companies in 2019 denied Eswatini Sexual and Gender Minorities’ request to register.
The advocacy group in 2020 petitioned the Supreme Court to hear the case. The Supreme Court initially ruled against Eswatini Sexual and Gender Minorities, but it appealed the decision.
The Eswatini Commerce, Industry, and Trade Ministry in 2023 said it would not allow the group to register. The Supreme Court on Tuesday in a unanimous ruling ordered the Swazi government to allow Eswatini Sexual and Gender Minorities to register.
“For seven years the Eswatini Sexual and Gender Minorities group has fought the Swazi government for its citizens to have the right to freedom of association,” said Eswatini Sexual and Gender Minorities on Tuesday in a Facebook post. “But this is a hard fight against a government and king who believe LGBTI people have no place in the kingdom and who are trying to restrict the power of civil society organizations.”
Eswatini is a small, landlocked country in southern Africa that borders South Africa and Mozambique.
Consensual same-sex sexual relations between men remain criminalized in the country.
Discrimination and harassment based on sexual orientation and gender identity is commonplace in Eswatini. The country’s first Pride parade took place against this backdrop in 2018.
District of Columbia
Nearly 6,000 turn out for Pride Night Out at the Nationals
Gay Men’s Chorus sings National Anthem
“Just shy of” 6,000 people purchased tickets for the Wednesday, June 24, 21st annual Pride Night Out at the Washington Nationals baseball stadium, which the Nationals said is the longest running LGBTQ Pride event in Major League Baseball, according to a Nationals spokesperson.
The event was organized with the Nationals by Team D.C., the local LGBTQ sports group that organizes similar Pride Nights for other professional D.C. area sports teams.
“It was a good time had by all as the Nationals celebrated the LGBTQ+ community during the Nationals 21st Pride Night Out, presented by Team D.C.” the Nationals said in a statement.
Nationals spokesperson Erica George said the overall game attendance was 27,200.
Similar to recent past years, the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington sung the National Anthem at the start of the game, drawing loud cheers from people throughout the stadium.
The Nationals lost the game to the Philadelphia Phillies by a score of 5-4. Although most of the LGBTQ attendees of the event, held in the right-field mezzanine section of the stadium, were cheering for the Nationals, a sizeable number also cheered for the Phillies.
Miguel Ayala, one of Team D.C.’s lead organizers, said he noticed fans displaying Pride flags and recognized LGBTQ people in all parts of the stadium, indicating significantly more LGBTQ people and their supporters attended the game beyond the close to 6,000 or more who purchased the specific Pride Night Out tickets.
“It was a great excitement last night,” he told the Washington Blade on the day following the event. “I saw a lot of big crowds of our people, I saw everybody I can think of in the community. And it was really great to see the turnout.”
Also, like in previous years, Team D.C. along with the Nationals helped to organize a pre-game show on the large concourse platform area next to the stadium seating area involving a drag show led by local drag performer Shi-Queeta Lee.
“During pregame ceremonies, the Nationals Pride employee resource group was recognized on the field,” the statement released by the Nationals says. “Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, a physician and public health leader who has had a profound impact on the LGBTQ+ community and those living with or vulnerable to HIV, threw out the ceremonial first pitch as the guest of Team D.C.,” the statement says.
It adds that Team D.C.’s scholarship recipient Spencer Doll made the ceremonial call to “Play Ball.”
As if all that were not enough, a Nationals employee who entertains during the Nationals pre-game shows on the field dressed as a giant eagle named “Screech” wearing an eagle’s head mask appeared in the seating area where the Pride Night Out crowd was seated and mingled with the LGBTQ fans, many of whom posed for photos with Screech.
South Africa
White House to end PEPFAR funding for South Africa
State Department says country failed to respond to 2025 executive order demands
The Trump-Vance administration will end PEPFAR funding for South Africa.
A State Department spokesperson on Wednesday told the Washington Blade the State Department “will begin a phased drawdown of PEPFAR programming in South Africa, with most programs ending by Sept. 30, 2026, and critical personnel support continuing through March 31, 2027.”
Semafor last week reported South Africa has received more than $8 billion in PEPFAR funding since President George W. Bush created the program to combat the global HIV/AIDS pandemic in 2003.
President Donald Trump on Feb. 7, 2025, issued an executive order that addressed what it described as “egregious actions of the Republic of South Africa.” The State Department spokesperson with whom the Blade spoke noted the directive included five specific requests:
• South African government provides exemptions or alternatives for U.S. companies to Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment laws and other race-based mandates.
• Senior government officials (e.g., president, deputy president, or minister of justice) unequivocally condemn all race-based incitement to violence, including the “Kill the Boer” song, more frequently.
• The South African government prevents the implementation of measures that would allow expropriation without fair compensation and due process under the Expropriation Act of 2024.
• South African Police Service designates rural crime a “priority crime” and increases resources dedicated to high-crime rural areas.
• South Africa refrains from actions that would significantly interfere with the implementation of the refugee program, within the confines of South African law.
“The United States communicated to the government of the Republic of South Africa multiple times at many levels that PEPFAR funding was likely to be terminated in the absence of progress on the five asks,” said the State Department spokesperson.
The State Department spokesperson further noted South Africa is “one of the largest economies in sub-Saharan Africa” and “has funded the vast majority of its own HIV response, estimated at 76 percent of the total, including procurement of all treatment commodities.”
“South Africa will continue to be supported by the Global Fund, including for the introduction and scale up of lenacapavir through Global Fund Resources,” the spokesperson told the Blade.
Lenacapavir is groundbreaking HIV prevention drug that users inject twice a year. Eswatini, which borders South Africa, is among the African countries that have received doses of the drug through PEPFAR.
HIV/AIDS service organizations in the U.S. and around the world have sharply criticized the Trump-Vance administration over plans to not fully fund PEPFAR and to cut domestic HIV/AIDS funding.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio shortly after the current White House took office issued a waiver that allowed PEPFAR and other “life-saving humanitarian assistance” programs to continue to operate during a freeze on nearly all U.S. foreign aid spending. HIV/AIDS service providers around the world with whom the Blade has spoken say PEPFAR cuts and the loss of funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development, which officially closed on July 1, 2025, has severely impacted their work.
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