Local
Street-naming bill honoring gay Democrat on ‘indefinite’ hold
Some say Rausch not significant enough to warrant honor
Richard Rausch was an LGBT rights and Democratic Party activist. (Photo courtesy David Meadows)
According to D.C. Council Chair Phil Mendelson (D-At-Large), a bill introduced last year calling for the ceremonial naming of a street on Capitol Hill for the late Richard Rausch, a prominent gay Democratic Party activist and advocate for LGBT rights, has been placed on “indefinite hold.”
Mendelson, who chairs the Council’s Committee of the Whole, where the bill was sent, noted that the Ward 6 Advisory Neighborhood Commission with jurisdiction over the 200 block of 2nd Street, S.E., where the ceremonial name would be installed, strongly opposes the bill.
D.C. Council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6) has said he has a policy of deferring to ANCs in his ward on issues of street naming and has called on Mendelson not to move the bill out of committee for a full Council vote. Mendelson told the Blade last week that he, too, has a longstanding policy of deferring to Council members whose ward a street naming bill impacts and thus he will honor Allen’s request that the bill be placed on hold.
Both Allen and Mendelson said they have asked members of ANC 6B to consider changing their position on the bill, but so far the ANC members have declined to reverse their position on the matter.
In a letter to Mendelson in December, the ANC said its members voted 10-0 to oppose the Rausch street naming based mostly on procedural grounds. The letter says neither the Council nor the city agency in charge of street namings notified the ANC or residents of the street about the pending bill until six months after it was introduced and after a public hearing was held on the bill in September.
City officials said the lack of notification was due to a typographical error in the initial version of the bill that identified the street as the 200 block of 2nd Street, S.W. rather than S.E. This resulted in residents and the ANC in the wrong location being notified about the bill.
But supporters of the Rausch ceremonial street naming, including Earl Fowlkes, president of the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, the city’s largest local LGBT political group, have said although ANC 6B wasn’t initially notified about the bill, its members were eventually notified and had sufficient time to weigh in on the proposal.
Fowlkes said he is concerned that the ANC may have other motives for its opposition. He pointed to a comment by an ANC member at the meeting in which the vote opposing the bill was taken that Rausch may have been a client of a gay male escort service back in the 1980s. A brief discussion among ANC members about the escort service matter could be heard on an audio recording that the ANC makes of all of its meetings and which was obtained by the Washington Blade.
At least two commissioners also were heard on the recording saying they didn’t think Rausch was a significant enough figure to merit a street naming after him.
Fowlkes takes strong exception to that assertion, saying Rausch, who died in 2007 of natural causes at 71, worked on behalf of civil rights, including LGBT rights and women’s rights, for a period of more than 40 years.
“Richard was an extraordinary man and also did a lot for the Democratic Party,” said Fowlkes, who also serves as executive director of the Center for Black Equity, a national LGBT organization. “He blazed a trail and many of us are following behind those trails. So I stand in gratitude for people like that who stood up for our rights.”
Mendelson and Allen said they are ready to bring up the bill for a vote in the full Council, where it is expected to pass, if the ANC changes its mind or if some type of compromise can be reached to make the bill acceptable to the ANC. All ANC members throughout the city are up for re-election in November.
Rehoboth Beach
Women’s FEST returns to Rehoboth Beach next week
Golf tournament, mini-concerts, meetups planned for silver anniversary festival
Women’s+ FEST 2026 will begin on Thursday, April 9 at CAMP Rehoboth Community Center.
The festival will celebrate a remarkable milestone in 2026: its silver anniversary. For 25 years, Women’s+ FEST has brought fun and entertainment for all those on the spectrum of the feminine spirit. There will be a variety of events including a golf tournament, mini-concerts and happy hour meetups.
For more information, visit Camp Rehoboth’s website.
District of Columbia
How new barriers to health care coverage are hitting D.C.
Federally qualified health centers bracing for influx of newly uninsured patients
Washington, D.C. has the second-lowest rate of people who lack health insurance in the country, but many residents are facing new barriers to health care due to provisions of the sweeping federal law passed in July, which threatens access for thousands.
Changes to insurance eligibility and the rising cost of premiums, which kicked in for some in October and others more recently, are expected to leave many more patients uninsured or unable to afford medical care. Federally qualified health centers, including D.C.’s Whitman-Walker Health, where 10 to 12 percent of patients are uninsured, are bracing for an influx of newly uninsured patients while facing their own financial challenges.
Even in D.C., where uninsured rates have been among the lowest in the country, changes brought on by the passage of the Republican mega bill (known as the “Big Beautiful Bill”) will have major effects.
The changes from the bill affect Medicaid, which is free to low-income patients, and subsidies for insurance that people buy on the health insurance exchanges that were started under the Affordable Care Act, which were allowed to expire on Dec. 31.
Erin Loubier, vice president for access and strategic initiatives at Whitman-Walker Health, says some Whitman-Walker Health patients have received notices about premium increases, including several who say the increases are up to 1,000 percent more than they were paying.
“That is like paying rent,” she says. “We live in an expensive city, so any increases are going to be really, really hard on people.”
Whitman-Walker Health and other healthcare providers are expecting the changes to have multiple effects — some patients may not be able to afford coverage or may avoid going to the doctor and allow health conditions to worsen because they can’t afford care, and many more will be seeking care who don’t have insurance.
“I’m worried that we’re going to not just have people who can’t get care, but that they delay care until they’re really sick, and then the care is not as effective because they might have waited too long, and then we may have a less healthy population,” Loubier says.
Loubier says delaying care, and serving more people without insurance has major implications for Whitman-Walker Health and other health centers serving the community.
“There’s going to be a lot of pressure on us to try to find and raise more money, and that’s going to be harder, because I think all organizations who provide health care are going to be facing this,” she says.
The U.S. health care system is the most expensive in the world, and has much higher out-of-pocket costs for individuals. But in other countries like the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and many others, health care is much less expensive — or even free.
Even though the U.S. has a high-priced healthcare system, critics say there are still ways to bring down costs by forcing insurance and pharmaceutical companies to absorb more of the costs, rather than transferring the costs to patients.
“In the U.S., they end up trying to cut costs at the person’s level, not at the level of the different corporations or structures that are making a lot of money in healthcare,” said Loubier. “Our system is so complicated and there is probably waste in it, but I don’t think that that cost and waste is at the ‘people’ level. I think it’s higher up at the system level, but that is much, much harder to get people to try to make cuts at that end.”
Ultimately at Whitman-Walker Health, healthcare providers and insurance navigators are planning to help with everyday necessities when it comes to healthcare coverage and striving to provide healthcare in partnership with patients, said Loubier.
“The key here is we’re going to have a lot of people who may lose insurance, and they’re going to rely on places like Whitman-Walker Health and other community health centers, so we have to figure out how we keep providing that care,” she said.
(This article was written by a student in the journalism program at Bard High School Early College DC. This work is part of a partnership between the Washington Blade Foundation and Youthcast Media Group, funded through the FY26 Community Development Grant from the Office of D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser.)
District of Columbia
Mayor Bowser signs bill requiring insurers to cover PrEP
‘This is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS’
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on March 20 signed a bill approved by the D.C. Council that requires health insurance companies to cover the costs of HIV prevention or PrEP drugs for D.C. residents at risk for HIV infection.
Like all legislation approved by the Council and signed by the mayor, the bill, called the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act, was sent to Capitol Hill for a required 30-day congressional review period before it takes effect as D.C. law.
Gay D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5) last year introduced the bill.
Insurance coverage for PrEP drugs has been provided through coverage standards included in the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. But AIDS advocacy organizations have called on states and D.C. to pass their own legislation requiring insurance coverage of PrEP as a safeguard in case federal policies are weakened or removed by the Trump administration, which has already reduced federal funding for HIV/AIDS-related programs.
Like legislation passed by other states, the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act requires insurers to cover all PrEP drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Studies have shown that PrEP drugs, which can be taken as pills or by injection just twice a year, are highly effective in preventing HIV infection.
“I think this is a win for our community,” Parker said after the D.C. Council voted unanimously to approve the bill on its first vote on the measure in February. “And this is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS.”
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