National
In seesaw experience, LGBTQ fed’l workers enjoy new openness under Biden
Pride Month celebrated after neglect in Trump years

With Pride month underway and the coronavirus pandemic getting under control, LGBTQ federal workers are expressing a new sense of ebullience about being able to celebrate openly this season after a more muted experience during the Trump administration.
The new excitement about the openness is the latest chapter for LGBTQ federal employees, who have a unique seesaw experience of having alternating periods of support mixed with periods when the leadership is disengaged or even hostile.
Anthony Musa, chair of Pride in Federal Service for LGBTQ federal employees, said the change in feeling to “a sense of acceptance” is in no small part the result of outreach from the top in the Biden administration.
“There is a strong push by the White House, especially lately in the past couple of weeks to really reach out directly to LGBTQ+ federal employees and ensure that Pride month is celebrated and that employees are supported by both the administration and the political appointees within the individual departments and agencies,” Musa said.
One example of the Biden administration reaching out, Musa said, is the White House Office of Public Engagement coming to affinity groups for LGBTQ federal workers and offering assistance for promotion and coordination of Pride celebrations.
It’s not just Pride events. Musa said the U.S. Office of Personnel Management has been conducting periodic calls about the Federal Health Benefits Program to highlight opportunities for LGBTQ families and health care for transgender and non-binary people.
The Biden administration’s outreach to LGBTQ employees is visible in other ways. For the first time, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm last week raised the Progress Pride flag outside of her department’s headquarters in D.C. in an event recognizing Pride month.
The sense of jubilation outside the Department of Energy was palpable among its LGBTQ employees, who were able to openly celebrate Pride at an official event with a top Biden administration official.
Helping Granholm raise the flag was Tarak Shah, chief of staff for the energy secretary and the first openly gay person to occupy that role.
Shah said via email to the Washington Blade he considers the experience of raising the Pride flag at the Department of Energy “a moment that is incredibly personally meaningful – and one I don’t take for granted.”
“For much of our nation’s history, our institutions have held LGBTQ+ people back,” Shah said. “But, when we raised the flag over DOE this month, we symbolically lifted up our people up, and set an example for the energy and scientific communities around the world. I am proud to be part of an administration that says clearly ‘we have your back’ and for an energy secretary who is a champion for LGBTQ people everywhere.”
The State Department is experiencing a similar change. After the Trump administration in its final years prohibited U.S. embassies from flying the Pride flag on the official pole, the State Department reversed the policy, allowing the rainbow flag to be flown alongside the U.S. flag.
A gay civil service officer at the State Department, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak with the media, said the new policy at U.S. embassies as well as Pride proclamations from Biden and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken are having a positive impact.
“One thing I’ve been noticing is within the GLIFAA group on Facebook, people sharing photos of our embassies and consulates around the world with the [Pride] flag flying on the same pole with the U.S. flag,” the officer said. “Those kinds of signals alone I think are making people feel like it’s just a completely different world instead of months ago for us. You know where we were.”
The new flag policy, the officer said, is consistent with a broader change at the State Department of leadership making diversity writ large a priority, which includes having a diversity and equity official in place who reports directly to the secretary of state.
In contrast, the Trump administration’s approach to LGBTQ employees was largely hands-off — if not a climate of hostility. LGBTQ people who continued to work in the federal government didn’t have the same engagement from the top down and contended with policies frustrating plans for Pride activities.
One example of the Trump administration being counterproductive was the executive order former President Trump signed prohibiting critical race theory in diversity training for federal employees. Because the directive required review of all diversity engagement — even if it didn’t include critical race theory — the executive order hampered organization among LGBTQ employees.
In fact, last year Pride in Federal Service was forced to cancel a summit for LGBTQ federal employees because Trump’s executive order on critical race theory made things too complicated.
Musa said the Trump administration offered “absolutely no outreach or support” for engagement with federal government employees.
“We were offering some training with OPM on diversity and inclusion that we had to suspend because it fit within those guidelines of what was restricted,” Musa said. “So it was difficult to say the least.”
But the change in atmosphere isn’t the result of the change in administration alone. LGBTQ workers are also feeling a sense of renewal with the coronavirus in the rear-window as domestic vaccinations continue to increase and events cancelled in the past year are happening again.
One event in honor of Pride month cancelled last year due to coronavirus, but now happening again, is a celebration at the Pentagon for LGBTQ service members and civilian employees. Although the events at the Defense Department had taken place annually since “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal was certified in 2011, coronavirus broke the annual streak of that new tradition.
Rudy Coots, president of the LGBTQ employee group DOD Pride, said LGBTQ federal employees are able to reconnect in ways that haven’t been possible for a long time thanks to the lifting of coronavirus restrictions.
“I would say that we’re excited to be able to celebrate Pride month this year in person since COVID-19 prevented us from having an event last year,” Coots said. “So we’re very excited about that, and we’re certainly in the department very excited that the secretary of defense will honor us with remarks as our keynote speaker.”
Also in contrast to the previous administration at the Pentagon event for Pride month is the presence at the event of a Cabinet-level official. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is set to deliver the keynote address, a stark contrast to the Trump years when Pride events within federal agencies were more limited and didn’t include Cabinet-level officials.
With such a distinction between one administration and the next, LGBTQ workers in the federal government acknowledge they face a unique seesaw effect — and the on-and-off experience takes a toll.
In recent years, the neglect and outright hostility during the George W. Bush administration changed when former President Obama took office, but the pendulum swung the other way during the Trump years, and now the situation for LGBTQ federal workers has changed once again with Biden in office.
Musa said the back-and-forth isn’t necessarily as difficult for workers who live in D.C., which has robust legal protections against anti-LGBTQ discrimination, but the situation is different for federal employees in other areas.
“We are a small minority of federal employees; the majority of federal employees work outside the D.C. region,” Musa said. “And I think that really having that back and forth seesaw type thing where things are either really good depending on what administration’s in charge or really bad, is particularly aggravating.”
Musa added the stress of the back-and-forth would be alleviated if a federal law expanding the prohibitions on anti-LGBTQ discrimination, such as the Equality Act, were in place. The bill, however, continues to languish in Congress and is all but dead.
Despite the on-and-off track record, LGBTQ federal workers continue to hold out hope of greater stability in the near future and say as time passes the changes made for a welcoming work environment have become more and more durable.
The gay civil service officer at the State Department said the momentum is toward greater LGBTQ inclusion within the federal workforce and “over time, it will be harder and harder to walk back these changes,” pointing to a few bright spots in the Trump administration.
“They yanked the flag and some other stuff, but they were still fighting to get same-sex spouses accredited and countries that don’t allow you to accredit your spouse,” the officer said. “And so a lot of the things that had changed actually under the Obama administration did remain in place.”
The officer conceded, however, LGBTQ public advocacy in the State Department on behalf of the community, both abroad and within its workforce “really fell away, and then obviously there were specific cases of political attacks against LGBTQ staff that are well documented.”
Musa predicted the situation with LGBTQ employees would evolve to a place of continued support regardless of the administration in power, which he said would stem from civil service leadership’s more consistent support as opposed to political appointees.
“That’s sort of my hope,” Musa concluded. “Worst case scenario we end up back in the same way we were in late 2020, but hopefully we don’t go back to that.”
CORRECTION: An initial version of this article misspelled the name of Rudy Coots. The Blade regrets the error.
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.
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