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Inside Marjorie Taylor Greene’s unprecedented feud with gay Hill staffer

Tim Hysom speaks publicly for first time since he became target of harassment by right-wing lawmaker

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Tim Hysom in front of the U.S. Capitol building (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

After more than 20 years in public service working behind the scenes on Capitol Hill, Tim Hysom never imagined he would be staring down the barrel of an Ethics Committee probe into whether he had brought discredit upon the U.S. House of Representatives.

Equally inconceivable was the barrage of intimidating and hateful messages from strangers that have persisted for months, which included credible threats of violence that prompted the U.S. Capitol Police to monitor Hysom’s home for concern over his and his family’s safety.

A longtime public servant whose career has included high-profile positions in the congressional offices of Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff (Calif.), Alan Lowenthal (Calif.), and Jake Auchincloss (Mass.), Hysom also spent five years at the Congressional Management Foundation working with Republican and Democratic members of the House and Senate and served on the board of the House Chief of Staff Association, first as a vice president for Professional Development and later as president of the staff organization.

Now he is still trying to piece his life and career back together after the fallout from a conflict this summer with Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. Part of that effort, Hysom told the Washington Blade in an exclusive interview, is to go public after months of silence to tell the story of how the firebrand congresswoman, who is poised to become a member of Republican leadership in the House next year, launched an unprecedented attack on him with the goal, he claims, of forcing him out of Capitol Hill.

Congressional staff are rarely the subject of complaints filed to the House Ethics Committee. Nor are they often otherwise embroiled in controversies and political debates among members that attract public interest and news coverage.

The story of Greene’s conflict with Hysom breaks from that precedent, serving as, potentially, a harbinger of what may come when she is seated alongside Republican leadership in the next Congress.

It started with Greene’s transphobic sign

In February 2021, after Rep. Marie Newman (D-Ill.) hung a transgender flag outside her door in the Longworth House Office Building, Greene, whose office was directly across the hallway, put up a sign that read: “There are TWO genders: MALE & FEMALE…Trust The Science!”

When a series of stickers were placed on Greene’s signs over the course of several weeks earlier this year, she referred the matter to the Capitol Police, which identified Hysom in surveillance footage as the staffer placing the stickers on Greene’s signs. Using a point of personal privilege, Greene took to the House floor in June to rail against Hysom – then Auchincloss’s chief of staff – while admonishing the Justice Department for declining to bring charges against him.

Greene subsequently announced in July that she filed a complaint with the House Ethics Committee against Hysom.

Those events earned some media attention at the time, mostly from right-wing outlets, but the full story and its fallout have not yet been revealed. Nor has Hysom responded publicly before now, either through his social media or in comments to the press.

Asked for comment, Greene shared the following statement with the Blade:

“This has nothing to do with his sexual preference or orientation, or the fact that he’s married to a man, but it has everything to do with the fact that he attacked me, a Member of Congress, and my First Amendment freedom of speech, my Christian beliefs and values. He also broke the law vandalizing my office’s property multiple times, was caught on camera, and continued to do it. He’s been arrested. Unfortunately, the Department of Justice dropped the charges, but I think they should have pressed charges. It’s outrageous that a chief of staff would continue such illegal behavior, and he should be no longer employed in any office in the federal government.”

Hysom pointed out that in the first place, Greene’s decision to hang the sign seems to be a clear violation of House rules. 

While members are permitted to display flags within certain guidelines outside their offices in House office buildings, a policy updated in 2008 stipulates that: “Furnishings of any kind, including but not limited to furniture items (including sign-in/registration tables, pedestals, easels, carpets, rugs and mats); shades, drapes, and screens; artwork, exhibits and posters; and trees, flowers and other plants may not be placed in a hallway or exit access.”

“If she can violate the standing rules of the House and hang offensive and abusive material in the halls of Congress under the guise of free speech,” Hysom asked, “doesn’t the Constitution also protect my right to free speech?”

He added that Greene’s response was disproportional in the extreme. “Placing a sticker on a sign that isn’t supposed to be there in the first place is hardly a high crime or misdemeanor.”

Greene had also hung a sign that read, “Let’s go Brandon” with the hashtag “#FJB”– both slogans used on the right as substitutes for the phrase, “Fuck Joe Biden.” Hysom said many House staffers were deeply offended by the display of a message so disrespectful of the sitting president of the United States, and in a public corridor of a House government office building.

As a gay man whose religious upbringing taught the importance of love and respect as Christian virtues, Hysom was also offended when Greene hung the “there are TWO genders” sign to bully and taunt Newman.

After requesting a copy of the House’s policy governing decorations in the hallways of its office buildings, he put a sticker on Greene’s sign, which according to Hysom kicked off a back-and-forth exchange whereby Greene would occasionally respond to the stickers by writing a message on the poster back to Hysom, once signed (heart) MTG. Most of the stickers contained Bible verses to point out her hypocrisy, he said. When Hysom would put a sticker on one of Rep. Greene’s posters, she would take down the posters to replace them with new ones.

One sticker Hysom placed on Greene’s gender poster read, “True Disciples of Christ don’t say the things you say, act the way you act, or treat people the way you treat people.”

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s former office (Photo courtesy of Tim Hysom)

Greene’s escalation of the matter came as a surprise, Hysom told the Blade. “The reality is that I challenged her hate speech in the halls of the Congress in a way that triggered her and caused her to have a meltdown,” he said. “Her response was to send a like-minded horde of her followers to harass and threaten me.”  He added, “Regrettably, there are likely to be other waves of hate and vitriol, but I won’t be intimidated by her or her hate-filled acolytes.”

First, pursuant to the investigation by Capitol Police, likely conducted at Greene’s behest, an affidavit in support of an arrest warrant was issued. (Contrary to what Rep. Greene told the Blade, Hysom was never arrested or charged with a crime.)

Then, in her 31-minute speech denouncing Hysom from the House floor, Greene tried to goad Auchincloss into firing Hysom, while directing her supporters to bully and harass him.

Almost immediately, a deluge of threats and harassment started pouring in to Hysom’s personal and professional email and social media inboxes. He received a threatening letter at his home address. Many of the messages contained hateful anti-LGBTQ slurs. It continues to this day.

Now that the threats have died down, at least for now, Hysom said he is unsure whether his home is still being monitored by the Capitol Police, but the hateful messages have slowed, though they have persisted.

Example of a Facebook message Hysom received (Image courtesy of Tim Hysom)

Amid the chaos following Greene’s speech, Lowenthal reached out to offer support to his former chief of staff and extended an offer for Hysom to return to his office in the months before the lawmaker’s planned retirement from Congress at the end of this year.

The congressman sent a statement to the Blade on his experiences working with Hysom:

“Standing up to bullies and railing against injustice, while demanding equity and grace in how we treat one another, are ideals I have always aspired to. And yes, sometimes that demands what my dear friend John Lewis called ‘good trouble.’ Tim has always fought for these same ideals of justice and equality and he has demonstrated his above-and-beyond dedication to this institution more times than I can count.

“I have been honored to have him as a member of my staff, just as each of my staff have benefited, both personally and professionally, from working with him. The foundation of my success in Congress has been the efficient and effective office that Tim built for me and kept running smoothly through his more than eight-year tenure with my office. And despite his commitment to my office, he has also dedicated himself to the betterment of not only this institution as a whole, but to the development of the professional staff that works here.

“I can say without hesitation that Congress is a better institution for Tim being a part of it.”

For her part, Greene accused Hysom of targeting her for her gender and her religious beliefs. Among the messages she shared on Twitter were:

“Soon Biden’s DOJ will prosecute people for hate crimes if they dare try to stop trans strippers dressed in drag from grooming children at schools & in public, but they refuse to prosecute @JakeAuch COS Tim Hysom for hate crimes against my faith & gender and my district’s beliefs.”

And: “.@JakeAuch did you know your COS Tim Hysom repeatedly targeted me? I have some of the highest number of death threats in Congress, with approx 60 official threats just this year and one man on trial for trying to kill me. Do you or Tim Hysom know any of them? Is Hysom one?”

Hysom assured the Blade he has not sent and would never send threatening messages to the congresswoman. Apart from the exchange over the stickers, he said he has never had any contact with Greene or her office.

The poster Greene took to the House floor on June 21 – which misleadingly accuses Hysom by name of criminal conduct with photos of him taken from surveillance footage – was hung outside Greene’s office in Longworth since that time. (It is unclear whether she brought it to her new space in the Cannon House Office Building.)

Ahead of Lowenthal’s retirement, Hysom said he’s actively job hunting. “I have some prospects, but nothing has materialized definitively yet,” he said. “It’s a bit scary, but I remain hopeful. I’m an institutionalist and I love the House. I’ve spent more than 20 years trying to build up the Congress and Rep. Greene has spent every waking minute of the last two years trying to tear it down.”

In terms of the impact of his conflict with Greene, Hysom said, “Nobody on my side of the aisle puts any credence whatsoever into what Congresswoman Greene says, so it’s not like people on my side of the aisle believe putting a sticker on her poster was a ‘hate crime’ or that a Bible verse on a sticker somehow means that I hate women or Christians. On the contrary, I simply tried to point out that what the congresswoman says and does are not at all Christ-like.”

Still, the last thing Hysom was looking for was a public feud with the congresswoman. “Nobody that knows me would consider me a rabble rouser,” he said. “Walking by those hateful signs every single day just finally got to me. I couldn’t let it go unanswered.”

And then, there’s the matter of the House Ethics Committee investigation.

“The committee is still deliberating on what to do next. These are uncharted waters,” Hysom said. Republicans on the committee are perhaps unlikely to cross Greene and vote with Democrats to dismiss the complaint, while Democrats would be unlikely to assist Greene in her quest to further punish Hysom by voting with Republicans to move forward and impanel an investigative subcommittee.

With the members deadlocked, the matter could die with the end of the current Congress, though the committee could vote to extend the case into the upcoming 118th Congress.

The House Ethics Committee declined to comment.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
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Congress

Marjorie Taylor Greene’s bill to criminalize gender affirming care advances

Judiciary Committee markup slated for Wednesday morning

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U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.)’s “Protect Children’s Innocence Act,” which would criminalize guideline-directed gender affirming health care for minors, will advance to markup in the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday morning.

Doctors and providers who administer medical treatments for gender dysphoria to patients younger than 18, including hormones and puberty blockers, would be subject to Class 3 felony charges punishable by up to 10 years in prison if the legislation is enacted.

LGBTQ advocates warn conservative lawmakers want to go after families who travel out of state to obtain medical care for their transgender kids that is banned or restricted in the places where they reside, using legislation like Greene’s to expand federal jurisdiction over these decisions. They also point to the medically inaccurate way in which the bill characterizes evidence-based interventions delineated in standards of care for trans and gender diverse youth as “mutilation” or “chemical castration.”

Days into his second term, President Donald Trump signed “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” an executive order declaring that the U.S. would not “fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called ‘transition’ of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit” medical treatments and interventions intended for this purpose.

Greene, who has introduced the bill in years past, noted the president’s endorsement of her bill during his address to the joint session of Congress in March when he said “I want Congress to pass a bill permanently banning and criminalizing sex changes on children and forever ending the lie that any child is trapped in the wrong body.”

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Pappas in Senate race focuses on costs, health care, and personal freedoms

Gay NH congressman hopes to succeed retiring US Sen. Jeanne Shaheen

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U.S. Rep. Chris Pappas (D-N.H.) launches his U.S. Senate campaign with a kick-off event at his family's restaurant in Manchester, N.H., on April 3, 2025 (Photo courtesy of Chris Pappas for Senate)

U.S. Rep. Chris Pappas (D-N.H.) recently sat down with the Washington Blade for an exclusive interview following the official launch of his bid for New Hampshire’s open U.S. Senate seat, which is expected to be among the most closely watched contests of the 2026 midterm election cycle. 

The congressman, who is serving his fourth term as the representative for New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District, expects next year’s race will be “very high profile” and “challenging.” The New York Times, meanwhile, anticipates “an expensive and dogged affair.” 

Senate elections tend to attract a disproportionate share of attention and resources especially in recent years as control over the chamber has tended to change hands more often and with smaller margins, but Pappas’s race is expected to be a bellwether for Democrats as they work to mount a comeback after last year’s electoral defeat. 

At the same time, Pappas is gearing up for the battle over the Republican led reconciliation spending bill, with Democratic lawmakers exercising what little leverage they may have in the minority to fight against “disastrous cuts to Medicaid” while “finding other ways to protect what’s important to the people that we represent.” 

Lawmakers on Sunday night gave the go-ahead for the GOP’s tax and spending package, but negotiations continue into this week as Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) works to appease conservative hardliners and swing district Republicans. 

Granite Staters are “really concerned” about negotiations in Washington over spending, but also with the exigencies created by President Donald Trump over the past 100+ days of his second term, which have cropped up repeatedly during the town hall-style events in New Hampshire that Pappas has headlined over the spring. 

“That’s part of the reason why things are so challenging here in Washington,” the congressman said. “Oftentimes you’re pulled in 10 different directions on any given day based on what this administration is trying to do, based on what Republicans in Congress are trying to do.” 

“We’ve got to figure out how we can shed light on what’s happening, try to confront the damage, and use whatever tools we have to fight back,” he said, while remaining “focused on those things that matter most, whether that’s people losing their health insurance, cuts to programs like Social Security, and people’s access to their benefits.” 

The US Senate election

“I’ve got a strong foundation of support” for the Senate race, Pappas told the Blade, noting “I’ve run four campaigns for the House in half the state of New Hampshire” whose congressional map is cleaved into halves with the congressman’s constituents in the eastern portion of the state while freshman Democratic Congresswoman Maggie Goodlander represents the 2nd District. 

Following the announcement in March that New Hampshire’s senior U.S. senator, Jeanne Shaheen (D), would not be seeking reelection next year, “I spent the first couple weeks,” Pappas said, “talking directly with folks all across New Hampshire to see what was on their minds, and increasingly, I was hearing from people that they wanted me to jump into the race.” 

The sentiment was shared by Shaheen and the rest of the state’s congressional delegation — Goodlander and U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan (D) — who quickly endorsed Pappas’s bid. Speculation that the state’s popular former governor Chris Sununu, a Republican, might mount a formidable challenge for the seat ended with his announcement last month that he would not enter the race. 

Even if Pappas is on the glidepath for the Senate, which is difficult to handicap so far in advance of November 2026, the election is expected to draw substantial attention and resources. 

According to the Cook Political Report, of the Senate seats that will be up for grabs in the midterms, nine are held by incumbent Democrats and 19 by incumbent Republicans who are expected to easily win reelection, which leaves just five races whose outcomes are less certain and which therefore are likely to earn most of the attention and resources next year: The blue-leaning open seat in New Hampshire, an open seat in Michigan that is currently deemed a toss-up, the seat in Georgia held by incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, which is also considered a toss-up, and the red-leaning seats held by incumbent GOP U.S. Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Thom Tillis of North Carolina.

While the maps present long-shot odds of Democrats regaining control of the upper chamber even though Republicans had reclaimed the Senate majority last year by flipping just four seats for a modest margin of 53-47, races like Pappas’s are expected to be testing grounds for the minority party’s major campaigns midway through Trump’s second term. 

New Hampshire has long been a political battleground where elections tend to be close and voters tend to split the ticket. According to the Cook Partisan Voting Index, only three U.S. states are less politically partisan: Michigan, Wisconsin, and Georgia. The determination is based on data collated from the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections, where voters in both of the Granite State’s two congressional districts favored Joe Biden and Kamala Harris over Donald Trump while supporting the Republican gubernatorial nominees, Chris Sununu and Kelly Ayotte. 

Shaheen has “really built a brand that’s based on serving people and delivering for the constituents of New Hampshire,” Pappas said. “So that’s the kind of work that I want to carry on — but recognizing, in this time, that we really have to stand up and fight and be a part of our response to what this administration is doing.”

“We do need to re-establish some basic checks and balances here in Washington, so that there is oversight and accountability of an administration that’s blowing through all the guardrails and is really estranged from public opinion and from the Constitution,” he said, while continuing “to find ways to meet people where they are, to hear their stories, and to connect the fight here in Washington to people’s lives back home.” 

Responding to the needs of Granite Staters

Specifically, while “people are responding to a lot of different stories,” Pappas highlighted concerns about “cuts to specific programs, the fact that we’ve got 80,000 VA employees that are going to be fired,” and over the direction in which care for veterans is headed under the new administration. 

“The big fight right now is around health care,” he said. “It’s around defending Medicaid coverage, ensuring we’re going to continue to have a Medicaid expansion program in New Hampshire, which is something that I’ve worked with then-Gov. Maggie Hassan to implement, and whether we’re going to have tax fairness and prevent huge tax breaks from going to the wealthiest Americans and the biggest corporations.”

Asked about cuts to medical research that are impacting research universities across the country, Pappas said the issue has been raised often in discussions with people in his home state.

“The University of New Hampshire does a tremendous amount of research with federal funds,” he noted, “and that’s something that we’ve worked hard through the years to advocate for, and it’s really important for the university to continue to be able to do that work and help us understand the world around us, how it’s changing, and how we can respond to protect public health, for instance, to protect our communities against sea level rise — those are just important priorities.” 

Unlocking “breakthroughs in science and medicine” is important for America’s global competitiveness, the congressman added, whether by “homegrown talent here in the United States or research scientists from around the world that want to come to our country and share their expertise and help the United States move forward.”

“Donald Trump has decided that universities and colleges are a political enemy of his, and he’s trying to punish them, but in doing that, he’s really short changing our economy and the future of the United States,” Pappas said, adding, “most people recognize that, especially people in New Hampshire.” 

The congressman recounted how he was able to work closely with his colleagues in the state’s congressional delegation to leverage public pressure and influence by labor unions to reinstate probationary employees at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard who were let go following drastic cuts to the federal workforce under the Trump-Vance administration. 

“It’s really critical to the future of that facility, which rehabilitates our nuclear submarine fleet and has nearly 7,000 civilian employees,” Pappas said. “So that was one case where we found that we were able to get a lot of local attention and support around an issue, and perhaps that news made it all the way back here to the Defense Department who were concerned about public pressure.”

“We’ve got a lot of long-time employees at that shipyard,” along with “a lot of new people that have been brought on board as a result of an expansion over the last several years,” the congressman noted. “Across the board, people want to know that we’re focused, especially on our families’ bottom line right now,” which is why it was important for him and his colleagues to “go to bat for a facility that’s really important to people’s livelihoods, but also to our overall economy” and for national security. 

Moving forward, Pappas said, they will continue pushing back against “efforts to attack the right to organize and collective bargaining,” because “unions at the shipyard have a great relationship with management, but that could be disrupted by political efforts from this administration to attack labor unions.” 

The economy and protecting personal freedoms

The congressman said that while “we need to try a little bit of everything to try to identify what is going to break through,” at the same time, “I do have the sense that the last election hinged on the economy, that every election really hinges on the economy, and those are the issues that are going to be, I think, most salient to folks next year.” 

“We’ve got to make sure that we’re making progress at addressing inequities in the economy and are lowering costs,” he said. “Right now, the top issues that I hear about in New Hampshire include the high cost of housing, the lack of affordability of child care, the fact that our health care system is still inaccessible, and far too expensive for most people to be able to get the care that they need.” 

“We’re not getting any of that from Republicans right now,” Pappas said, when it comes to the “work we have to do to level the playing field in our economy,” adding, “they talked a big game in the last campaign about lowering costs, but they’re taking no meaningful action to do it, and so we need to be thoughtful about a really forward-thinking agenda that can focus on how we allow people to get ahead and stand in this economy.” 

Asked about whether and to what extent Pappas will focus his messaging on the president’s tariffs, he noted “people are already responding,” especially in “a state like New Hampshire that has a longstanding close relationship with Canada.”

He continued, “88 percent of our small businesses import something. We have a lot of exporting businesses that rely on their markets overseas, including in places like Canada and China, and some of those markets are going away because of the tariffs that have been slapped on U.S. goods that we export.” 

Trump’s trade war “has generated so much instability in our economy, it’s really hard for our small businesses to navigate,” Pappas said, with these new “disruptions to supply chains and the threat of increased costs” following a “really tough 5-year period from inflation and workforce shortages to the pandemic that predated that.” 

“This is an issue that I think brings people together across party lines,” Pappas said. “Folks understand that we have trade agreements in place that have been negotiated [and] supported on a bipartisan basis, including” the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, “which was renegotiated during the first Trump administration.” 

The congressman continued, “it only makes sense to move forward in a way where we are focused on how we can make more things in the United States, but also recognize that we can’t make everything and we can’t go it alone, so we need to be working with close partners like Canada, and there’s no there’s no reason for this sort of trade war that only hurts our businesses and our ability to create jobs and have a thriving economy.”

“I also think, with respect to personal freedoms, in the wake of the Dobbs decision, we have to continue to take steps to re-establish Roe v. Wade as the law of the land and defend reproductive freedom,” Pappas said. 

“I’m the only candidate in this race right now, and I think regardless of who the Republican is, we’re going to be fighting for the Women’s Health Protection Act and to make sure that we’re re-establishing the precedent that Roe set for more than half a century, which is broadly supported in New Hampshire,” he said. 

LGBTQ issues

A co-chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, Pappas is the first openly gay member of Congress to represent New Hampshire. If elected, he would be the third out LGBTQ U.S. senator behind U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and Laphonza Butler, who served from 2023 to 2024.  

Trump, along with his Republican allies in Congress and appointees serving in his second administration, has undermined rights and protections for LGBTQ people on a variety of fronts, including by dismantling and defunding efforts to fight against HIV. Cuts to basic and clinical science research along with public health programs have been advanced by the president’s budget and the GOP lawmakers’ reconciliation package, as well as through the reorganization of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 

Now in the minority, House Democrats “will not be in the room negotiating, as much as we would love to tell the majority exactly how we feel about all these items,” Pappas conceded. At the same time, “to get a budget put in place and appropriations bills passed, you’ll need 60 votes in the Senate, which means you need some sort of bipartisan consensus, at least in that body,” which “could potentially be a difference maker in defending some of these programs that folks care about, that the president has sought to eliminate.”

“Services for people with HIV, access to health care, vital research — those are things that Americans broadly support,” the congressman said. “We’re going to stand up against it, and where there’s harm to people and important priorities, I’ll certainly be speaking out, and I know that members of the Equality Caucus will be taking that very seriously.” 

“Many people in this administration,” Pappas said, “are not traditional Republicans and don’t support the same set of policies that we’ve seen even Republican presidents put in place,” like the PEPFAR initiative led by George W. Bush, “which has changed the trajectory of the treatment of HIV and AIDS around the world.” 

“Now, they are attacking that program and its ability to provide care for people in some of the most vulnerable regions of the world, and it’s been reported that individuals in Africa have died as a result of not getting the treatments that they were counting on through that program,” the congressman noted. 

He continued, “We really have a human responsibility to do whatever we can to meet the needs of people who are susceptible to disease or who have been exposed to it, and the fact that this administration is breaking with that long bipartisan tradition of research, of humanitarianism, I think is incredibly cruel, and it’s not what the United States should stand for.” 

What has been especially frustrating, Pappas said, is the silence from Republicans in Congress including those who “have championed these programs for decades.” 

“I don’t know what to say to that,” he said, except that “people need to be paying attention and we need to do everything possible to speak out and fight back against it” because “we can’t see an interruption in terms of the progress that’s been made in fighting disease and developing new therapies.” 

Public health aside, when asked about how the Democratic Party should approach messaging on issues of transgender rights and gender identity, Pappas stressed that “Americans largely embrace equality” and people want others “to have the same rights and responsibilities.” 

The congressman raised the Equality Act as an example — a bill that would protect Americans against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in areas from housing to employment, which was reintroduced last month with a press conference headlined by Pappas and top Democrats from both chambers of Congress. 

Democrats should not shy away from advancing bills that advance “fairness and equality before the law,” he said, “especially at a time where we know that the LGBTQ community is being targeted by really cynical political attacks.”

“Where I come from, in New Hampshire, we’ve adopted protections for trans individuals in our state’s non discrimination statutes,” Pappas noted, “and so I think when you come from an environment like New Hampshire, you understand that people do respect their neighbors for their differences.” 

He continued, “We’re a live and let live state, and so I think it’s really consistent with who we are to be tolerant and embrace people of different identities and orientations. That’s who we are as Granite Staters. And I think people recognize that in order to have a future where everyone can live a full and productive life, you need to provide people with equality before the law.”

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Garcia confronts Noem over gay asylum seeker ‘forcibly removed’ to El Salvador

Andry Hernández Romero is makeup artist from Venezuela

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Andry Hernández Romero (photo credit: Immigrant Defenders Law Center)

California Congressman Robert Garcia on Wednesday asked Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem about the well-being of a gay asylum seeker from Venezuela who the U.S. “forcibly removed” to El Salvador.

The gay Democrat during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing asked Noem whether Andry Hernández Romero is “alive” and whether “we can check and do a wellness check on him.”

“This individual is in El Salvador, and the appeal would be best made to the president and to the government of El Salvador,” Noem told Garcia.

The Trump-Vance administration in March “forcibly removed” Hernández, who asked for asylum because of persecution he suffered due to his sexual orientation and political beliefs, and other Venezuelans from the U.S. and sent them to El Salvador.

The White House on Feb. 20 designated Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang, as an “international terrorist organization.” President Donald Trump on March 15 invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which the Associated Press notes allows the U.S. to deport “noncitizens without any legal recourse.”

Alvaro M. Huerta, director of litigation and advocacy for the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, a Los Angeles-based organization that represents Hernández, said officials with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection claimed their client is a Tren de Aragua member because of his tattoos.

The Washington Blade on April 17 reported Hernández was sent to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, a maximum-security prison known by the Spanish acronym CECOT.

Garcia, along with U.S. Reps. Maxwell Alejandro Frost (D-Fla.), Maxine Dexter (D-Ore.), and Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.) last month met with U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador William Duncan and embassy staffers in San Salvador, the Salvadoran capital. The lawmakers did not visit CECOT, but Garcia told the Blade that the embassy agreed to ask the Salvadoran government to “see how (Hernández) is doing and to make sure he’s alive.”

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