News
LGBTQ Trump supporters tiptoe away from president after U.S. Capitol attack
One-time won’t commit to forcibly removing Trump from office
In the aftermath of the assault on the U.S. Capitol instigated by President Trump, his one-time LGBTQ supporters are now distancing themselves from him without outright renouncing their previous support.
Many LGBTQ Trump supporters didn’t respond to the Washington Blade’s request for comment. Others condemned the violence at the U.S. Capitol, but sought to artfully distance themselves from Trump while minimizing their previous support for him as an incumbent president running for re-election in 2020.
One-time Trump supporters — amid talk of Trump being forced to resign, impeached and removed from office or being stripped of the presidency through never-before invoked powers of executive officers under the 25th Amendment — wouldn’t commit to supporting any of those outcomes.
Charles Moran, managing director of Log Cabin Republicans, condemned the assault on the U.S. Capitol as “a dark day in the current chapter of American history,” but compared it to racial unrest of 2020 and said “it brought into the new year the anger and violence that we experienced only recently in the summer of 2020.”
“That said, the violence and un-American acts committed yesterday by those who stormed the Capitol building were completely unacceptable and those who took part in trying to forcefully stop our democracy from working should be identified, arrested, tried and punished to the fullest extent of the law,” Moran said, “Full stop, no exceptions.”
Moran said Log Cabin Republicans, which endorsed Trump in the 2020 election, learned from the success it enjoyed in increasing the LGBTQ vote for the Republican presidential nominee (according to exit polls) but said those efforts were never about Trump himself.
“While the gay left has had a deranged obsession with Donald Trump, our movement has never been about one man,” Moran said. “We can and will achieve continued success, with or without Donald Trump.”
Moran also side-stepped the issue of what should happen with Trump amid talk of removing him from office before end of his presidential term.
“President Trump’s last day in office will be January 20, when Vice President Biden will be sworn into office,” Moran said. “I don’t know what President Trump will do next. The Republican Party today, however, is transformed, and I think for the better.”
Chad Felix Greene, who wrote a self-published book “Without Context,” disputing each of the LGBTQ media watchdog GLAAD’s accounts of anti-LGBTQ attacks by Trump, told the Blade the assault on the Capitol was “an act of domestic terrorism and should not be tolerated.”
“The right has attracted a population of people that think anarchy and obscenity are political activism,” Greene added. “White supremacists, antisemites and other assorted idiots latched onto the MAGA movement because it was rebellious and counter culture and controversial.”
Greene said he lost his respect for Trump “when he began behaving as a conspiratorial voice leading his followers into madness,” and is now looking to Mike Pence for leadership, despite the vice president’s long anti-LGBTQ record.
“While I appreciated [Trump’s] policies as a leader, he proved himself to be a threat to everything we built over the last four years over his ego,” Greene added. “Pence is the perfect mirror image of this. Consistent. Calm. Trustworthy and a man of integrity. He’s not the face of what MAGA became as an aggressive and passionate movement. He reminded us of what good Republican and conservative leadership can be.”
Greene said he expects Trump to “leave office” and “won’t support” him in future political efforts, but at the same time doesn’t back efforts to forcibly remove the president from office before the end of his term.
“Honestly it’s in two weeks,” Greene said. “He reluctantly gave a statement on an orderly exit. I think current efforts at removing him are political and short-sighted. We’ve completely forgotten the stimulus and vaccine rollout that needs attention. Trump is done. Further political theater seems petty and unnecessary to me.”
Dan Innis, a Republican former New Hampshire state senator who supported Trump and after the 2020 election said on Twitter he wouldn’t accept the results, told the Blade the assault on the U.S. Capitol was “very sad,” but wouldn’t give up his previous position.
“My concerns about the validity of the election remain,” Innis said. “If the election was fair, and I hope it was, show us. Why the secrecy? If there is nothing to hide, don’t hide it. However, given yesterday’s events, we will never know the truth about the election. As a result, millions of Americans, me included, will forever doubt the integrity of the American election process.”
Innis also sought to minimize Trump as a leader of the conservative movement, adding “vanquishing” him “will not change my views, or the views of those millions” who don’t trust the nation’s leaders and institutions.
“Trump was nothing but a figurehead of a larger movement, and that movement is not going to just go away just because Trump goes away,” Innis said. “If the Democrats, including Joe Biden, think that is going to happen, I think they will be surprised.”
The distancing from Trump corresponds to the growing list of administration aides resigning in the aftermath of the assault on the U.S. Capitol.
Among them was Tyler Goodspeed, who’s gay and was acting chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, who resigned Thursday. “The events of yesterday made my position no longer tenable,” Goodspeed was quoted as saying to the New York Times.
But several other LGBTQ officials with ties to Trump had little to say for themselves and didn’t respond to the Blade’s request for comment. Among them was Richard Grenell, who was the face of LGBTQ outreach for Trump’s re-election. Although Grenell condemned the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Twitter as it was unfolding, by the next day his focus shifted to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Iran, Big Tech and the media, but not Trump.
Brandon Straka, the gay conservative who founded the “Walk Away” movement and was among the speakers at the “Stop the Steal” rally that led to the assault on the U.S. Capitol also didn’t respond to the Blade’s request for comment.
After the assault, Straka posted on Twitter a one-hour video skirting the violence and expressing outrage at the rioters and issued a call to “completely gut the conservative movement and start again.” On Friday, Straka indignantly tweeted about Facebook disabling the “Walk Away” campaign on the social media platform.
Also not responding to the Blade was Gregory Angelo, who cheered Trump on after stepping down as head of the Log Cabin Republicans and later took a job at the Trump White House; and Rob Smith, a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” activist who later became a chief spokesperson for the pro-Trump student group Turning Point USA.
Other LGBTQ conservatives who spoke to the Blade, but didn’t support Trump for re-election in 2020, weren’t shy about saying the assault on the U.S. Capitol confirmed their fears about him.
Brad Polumbo, a D.C.-based conservative journalist and host of the podcast “Breaking Brad,” said the Trump administration yielded good policy — including for LGBTQ people, despite Trump’s anti-LGBTQ reputation — but the recent events proved him right.
“The crazed mob attack on the Capitol and President Trump’s denial of the election results that fomented it, for me, vindicate the decision to never get on board the Trump train,” Polumbo said. “From tax cuts to deregulation to the confirmation of several excellent Supreme Court justices to Middle East peace deals and an unprecedented openness to gay Americans, there are many successes gay conservatives like me can take away from the Trump presidency. But recent events have also served as a painful reminder to LGBT conservatives, and all conservatives, really, that policy aside, our leaders’ character matters.”
Jennifer Williams, a New Jersey-based Republican transgender advocate who challenged Trump over his supporters using anti-trans campaign tactics that ended up failing in the 2020 election, denounced the assault on the U.S. Capitol.
“The people who stormed and violently entered the Capitol to disrupt yesterday’s election certification acted not as Americans, but as vandals to democracy,” Williams said. “Every single one of the perpetrators should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. These people did not act as Republicans, because what they did is not in the spirit of what Republicans stand for or how we conduct ourselves. However, that is the least of my worries. I fear our children seeing our country as they saw it yesterday.”
Williams, who said the results of the 2020 election are clear, issued a clarion call that the time has come for Trump to step down before the end of his term, or that officials should do the job for him.
“President Trump should consider stepping down and/or ceding his day-to-day authority to Vice President Pence for these last few days in order to restore a sense of peace to our country,” Williams said. “The president and his son — after using strong anti-transgender and vulgar language in his own speech — encouraged the protesters to march on our Capitol building. That is unconscionable and every American, liberal or conservative and LGBTQ or not, must recognize this. We are a country of laws and freedom, not anarchy and mob rule.”
District of Columbia
D.C. police arrest man for burglary at gay bar Spark Social House
Suspect ID’d from images captured by Spark Social House security cameras
D.C. police on Feb. 18 arrested a 63-year-old man “of no fixed address” for allegedly stealing cash from the registers at the gay bar Spark Social House after unlawfully entering the bar at 2009 14th St., N.W., around 12:04 a.m. after it had closed for business, according to a police incident report.
“Later that day officers canvassing for the suspect located him nearby,” a separate police statement says. “63-year-old Tony Jones of no fixed address was arrested and charged with Burglary II,” the statement says.
The police incident report states that the bar’s owner, Nick Tsusaki, told police investigators that the bar’s security cameras captured the image of a man who has frequently visited the bar and was believed to be homeless.
“Once inside, the defendant was observed via the establishment’s security cameras opening the cash register, removing U.S. currency, and placing the currency into the left front pocket of his jacket,” the report says.
Tsusaki told the Washington Blade that he and Spark’s employees have allowed Jones to enter the bar many times since it opened last year to use the bathroom in a gesture of compassion knowing he was homeless. Tsusaki said he is not aware of Jones ever having purchased anything during his visits.
According to Tsusaki, Spark closed for business at around 10:30 p.m. on the night of the incident at which time an employee did not properly lock the front entrance door. He said no employees or customers were present when the security cameras show Jones entering Spark through the front door around 12:04 a.m.
Tsusaki said the security camera images show Jones had been inside Spark for about three hours on the night of the burglary and show him taking cash out of two cash registers. He took a total of $300, Tsusaki said.
When Tsusaki and Spark employees arrived at the bar later in the day and discovered the cash was missing from the registers they immediately called police, Tsusaki told the Blade. Knowing that Jones often hung out along the 2000 block of 14th Street where Spark is located, Tsusaki said he went outside to look for him and saw him across the street and pointed Jones out to police, who then placed him under arrest.
A police arrest affidavit filed in court states that at the time they arrested him police found the stolen cash inside the pocket of the jacket Jones was wearing. It says after taking him into police custody officers found a powdered substance in a Ziploc bag also in Jones’s possession that tested positive for cocaine, resulting in him being charged with cocaine possession in addition to the burglary charge.
D.C. Superior Court records show a judge ordered Jones held in preventive detention at a Feb. 19 presentment hearing. The judge then scheduled a preliminary hearing for the case on Feb. 20, the outcome of which couldn’t immediately be obtained.
District of Columbia
Judge rescinds order against activist in Capital Pride lawsuit
Darren Pasha accused of stalking organization staff, board members, volunteers
A D.C. Superior Court judge on Feb.18 agreed to rescind his earlier ruling declaring local gay activist Darren Pasha in default for failing to attend a virtual court hearing regarding an anti-stalking lawsuit brought against him by the Capital Pride Alliance, the group that organizes D.C.’s annual Pride events.
The Capital Pride lawsuit, initially filed on Oct. 27, 2025, accuses Pasha of engaging in a year-long “course of conduct” of “harassment, intimidation, threats, manipulation, and coercive behavior” targeting Capital Pride staff, board members, and volunteers.
In his own court filings without retaining an attorney, Pasha has strongly denied the stalking related allegations against him, saying “no credible or admissible evidence has been provided” to show he engaged in any wrongdoing.
Judge Robert D. Okum nevertheless on Feb. 6 approved a temporary stay-away order requiring Pasha to stay at least 100 feet away from Capital Pride’s staff, volunteers, and board members until the time of a follow-up court hearing scheduled for April 17. He reduced the stay-away distance from 200 yards as requested by Capital Pride.
In his two-page order issued on Feb. 18, Okun stated that Pasha explained that he was involved in a scooter accident in which he was injured and his phone was damaged, preventing him from joining the Feb. 6 court hearing.
“Therefore, the court finds there is a good cause for vacating the default,” Okun states in his order.
At the time he initially approved the default order at the Feb. 6 hearing that Pasha didn’t attend, Okun scheduled an April 17 ex parte proof hearing in which Capital Pride could have requested a ruling in its favor seeking a permanent anti-stalking order against Pasha.
In his Feb. 18 ruling rescinding the default order Okun changed the April 17 ex parte proof hearing to an initial scheduling conference hearing in which a decision on the outcome of the case is not likely to happen.
In addition, he agreed to consider Pasha’s call for a jury trial and gave Capital Pride 14 days to contest that request. The Capital Pride lawsuit initially called for a non-jury trial by judge.
One request by Pasha that Okum denied was a call for him to order Capital Pride to stop its staff or volunteers from posting information about the lawsuit on social media. Pasha has said the D.C.-based online blog called DC Homos, which Pasha claims is operated by someone associated with Capital Pride, has been posting articles portraying him in a negative light and subjecting him to highly negative publicity.
“The defendant has not set forth a sufficient basis for the court to restrict the plaintiff’s social media postings, and the court therefore will deny the defendant’s request in his social media praecipe,” Okun states in his order.
A praecipe is a formal written document requesting action by a court.
Pasha called the order a positive development in his favor. He said he plans to file another motion with more information about what he calls the unfair and defamatory reports about him related to the lawsuit by DC Homos, with a call for the judge to reverse his decision not to order Capital Pride to stop social media postings about the lawsuit.
Pasha points to a video interview on the LGBTQ Team Rayceen broadcast, a link to which he sent to the Washington Blade, in which DC Homos operator Jose Romero acknowledged his association with Capital Pride Alliance.
Capital Pride Executive Director Ryan Bos didn’t immediately respond to a message from the Blade asking whether Romero was a volunteer or employee with Capital Pride.
Pasha also said he believes the latest order has the effect of rescinding the temporary stay away order against him approved by Okun in his earlier ruling, even though Okun makes no mention of the stay away order in his latest ruling. Capital Pride attorney Nick Harrison told the Blade the stay away order “remains in full force and effect.”
Harrison said Capital Pride has no further comment on the lawsuit.
District of Columbia
Trans activists arrested outside HHS headquarters in D.C.
Protesters demonstrated directive against gender-affirming care
Authorities on Tuesday arrested 24 activists outside the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services headquarters in D.C.
The Gender Liberation Movement, a national organization that uses direct action, media engagement, and policy advocacy to defend bodily autonomy and self-determination, organized the protest in which more than 50 activists participated. Organizers said the action was a response to changes in federal policy mandated by Executive Order 14187, titled “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation.”
The order directs federal agencies and programs to work toward “significantly limiting youth access to gender-affirming care nationwide,” according to KFF, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that provides independent, fact-based information on national health issues. The executive order also includes claims about gender-affirming care and transgender youth that critics have described as misinformation.
Members of ACT UP NY and ACT UP Pittsburgh also participated in the demonstration, which took place on the final day of the public comment period for proposed federal rules that would restrict access to gender-affirming care.
Demonstrators blocked the building’s main entrance, holding a banner reading “HANDS OFF OUR ‘MONES,” while chanting, “HHS—RFK—TRANS YOUTH ARE NO DEBATE” and “NO HATE—NO FEAR—TRANS YOUTH ARE WELCOME HERE.”
“We want trans youth and their loving families to know that we see them, we cherish them, and we won’t let these attacks go on without a fight,” said GLM co-founder Raquel Willis. “We also want all Americans to understand that Trump, RFK, and their HHS won’t stop at trying to block care for trans youth — they’re coming for trans adults, for those who need treatment from insulin to SSRIs, and all those already failed by a broken health insurance system.”
“It is shameful and intentional that this administration is pitting communities against one another by weaponizing Medicaid funding to strip care from trans youth. This has nothing to do with protecting health and everything to do with political distraction,” added GLM co-founder Eliel Cruz. “They are targeting young people to deflect from their failure to deliver for working families across the country. Instead of restricting care, we should be expanding it. Healthcare is a human right, and it must be accessible to every person — without cost or exception.”
Despite HHS’s efforts to restrict gender-affirming care for trans youth, major medical associations — including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Endocrine Society — continue to regard such care as evidence-based treatment. Gender-affirming care can include psychotherapy, social support, and, when clinically appropriate, puberty blockers and hormone therapy.
The protest comes amid broader shifts in access to care nationwide.
NYU Langone Health recently announced it will stop providing transition-related medical care to minors and will no longer accept new patients into its Transgender Youth Health Program following President Donald Trump’s January 2025 executive order targeting trans healthcare.
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