Congress
Frost talks gun control with the Blade on anniversary of March for Our Lives
26-year-old congressman has been a gun violence prevention advocate since 2012
Author’s note: The full interview with Congressman Frost will be published next week.
U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), after a week of making headlines for his gun violence prevention advocacy, sat down with the Washington Blade for an exclusive interview on Friday, which marks the five-year anniversary of the founding of March for Our Lives.
The 26-year-old freshman congressman, who before his election was national organizing director for the student-led gun control group, had just introduced his first piece of legislation Tuesday with U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn. that would establish an Office of Gun Violence Prevention within the U.S. Department of Justice.
The proposal’s aim, in part, is to better facilitate the implementation of last year’s Bipartisan Safer Communities Act by establishing a singular office to coordinate that work.
And on Thursday, Frost captured and tweeted a video of a confrontation between U.S. Capitol Police and Patricia and Manuel Oliver, gun control advocates who lost their son Joaquin in the 2018 Parkland, Fla., high school shooting.
The couple had been removed by police from the House Oversight and House Judiciary Committees’ gun rights hearing at the request of GOP Reps. Andy Biggs (Ariz.) and Pat Fallon (Texas).
Frost, who was in attendance, told the Blade the conflict started when Patricia Oliver “just stood up and she said, ‘you took my son’ and she sat down,” but “instead of moving on, the Chair [Fallon] escalated things.”
The congressman said the hearing itself was “a sham” convened for the purpose of attacking the Biden administration’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the entity within the U.S. Justice Department that investigates violations of laws governing the manufacture, possession, and use of guns.
“The real story here,” said the congressman, “is the fact that there were two parents who lost their son who was in high school, because he was shot to death and died in a pool of his own blood, and now they’re going to spend the rest of their lives fighting for a world where it doesn’t happen to anybody else.”
Frost noted the Olivers were joined at the hearing by other families, activists, and organizers – all of whom were gathered in Washington, D.C., to advance the mission established by the group of teenaged Parkland survivors who founded March for Our Lives five years ago.
Among these student activists were Cameron Kasky, who identifies as queer, and X González, who is bisexual and uses they/them pronouns.
Frost has repeatedly said he ran for Congress because of his involvement in the gun violence prevention advocacy movement, which began with his volunteering on behalf of the Newtown Action Alliance, a group formed in the wake of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
The congressman told NPR the 2016 shooting at Pulse, the gay nightclub in Orlando “where 49 angels were murdered right here because they’re queer” marked one of the most significant moments of his life.
That same year and in that same city, Frost himself survived a gun violence incident.
During his congressional campaign, on the heels of last year’s elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, Frost tweeted: “10 years ago I became an Organizer because of Sandy Hook. 3 years later, I’d become a survivor myself. That same year, Pulse. Now I’m running for Congress and 15 lives were taken at another Elementary school. I will not stop until the endless shootings do.”
Congress
Garcia confronts Noem over gay asylum seeker ‘forcibly removed’ to El Salvador
Andry Hernández Romero is makeup artist from Venezuela
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.”
Congress
HRC: GOP reconciliation bill would imperil critical LGBTQ-specific programs
Republicans on House Ways and Means Committee released full text Monday
The cuts to federal spending in a reconciliation proposal published on Monday by the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Republican majority could jeopardize critical programs that disproportionately serve LGBTQ communities, the Human Rights Campaign warned.
As lawmakers were set to convene for a markup on Tuesday, the country’s largest LGBTQ advocacy group said in a press release that the bill would “pose significant threats” particularly for those that might be “low-income, living with HIV, or facing food insecurity.”
HRC added that conservative members have added provisions that would (1) prohibit the use of federal Medicaid and CHIP funding to support guideline-directed, medically necessary healthcare interventions for transgender youth (2) prevent “states from defining that care as ‘essential health benefits’ for transgender people of all ages,” and (3) block funding for health providers like Planned Parenthood that “have worked diligently to create welcoming, affirming environments for the LGBTQ+ community and that are committed to reproductive freedom and providing care to all who need it.”
Since reconciliation is carved out as an exemption to the Senate filibuster, which typically requires a 60-vote threshold for legislation to pass, Republicans would need only a simple majority in the upper chamber.
In a statement, HRC President Kelley Robinson said:“People in this country have been clear — they want policies and solutions that make life better and expand access to the American Dream. Instead, anti-equality lawmakers drafted a handout for billionaires built on the backs of hardworking people — with devastating consequences for the LGBTQ+ community.
“Proposed cuts to programs like Medicaid and SNAP or resources like Planned Parenthood clinics, all of which disproportionately support LGBTQ+ Americans, are not just numbers on a page. They would mean families forced to choose between seeing a doctor and paying the rent. They would mean people forced to skip check ups and testing. They would mean kids missing meals.
“And attempts to load up the bill with attacks on access to health care for transgender youth drive home the point that this bill is not about the American people, but inflicting harm for political gain. This country deserves better, and we’re going to fight for it.”
Per HRC’s press release, the Congressional Budget Office estimates the Republican led proposal “could kick 13.7 million people off of Medicaid,” a program that covers “a disproportionate share of low-income LGBTQ+ people, including 21 percent of transgender individuals and 40 percent of people living with HIV.”
Along with the threat of withholding access to medicines for individual patients living with HIV, the proposed cuts could also undermine public health goals with respect to America’s decades-long effort to combat the epidemic, along with the work of community health centers that provide “services like mental health support, gender-affirming care, and STI testing.”
The group notes that LGBTQ populations — especially women, younger individuals, and LGBTQ people of color — tend to experience higher rates of food insecurity, the group noted, which means they are likely to suffer greater harm from the “stricter eligibility requirements, work mandates, and benefit reductions” targeting the SNAP program.
Congress
Top Congressional Democrats reintroduce Equality Act on Trump’s 100th day in office
Legislation would codify federal LGBTQ-inclusive non-discrimination protections
In a unified display of support for LGBTQ rights on President Donald Trump’s 100th day in office, congressional Democrats, including leadership from the U.S. House and U.S. Senate, reintroduced the Equality Act on Tuesday.
The legislation, which would prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, codifying these protections into federal law in areas from jury service to housing and employment, faces an unlikely path to passage amid Republican control of both chambers of Congress along with the White House.
Speaking at a press conference on the grass across the drive from the Senate steps were Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), House Democratic Whip Katherine Clark (Mass.), U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (Wis.), who is the first out LGBTQ U.S. Senator, U.S. Rep. Mark Takano (Calif.), who is gay and chairs the Congressional Equality Caucus, U.S. Rep. Chris Pappas (N.H.), who is gay and is running for the U.S. Senate, U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.), and U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (Ore.).
Also in attendance were U.S. Rep. Sarah McBride (Del.), who is the first transgender member of Congress, U.S. Rep. Dina Titus (Nev.), U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley (Ill.), and representatives from LGBTQ advocacy groups including the Human Rights Campaign and Advocates 4 Trans Equality.
Responding to a question from the Washington Blade on the decision to reintroduce the bill as Trump marks the hundredth day of his second term, Takano said, “I don’t know that there was a conscious decision,” but “it’s a beautiful day to stand up for equality. And, you know, I think the president is clearly hitting a wall that Americans are saying, many Americans are saying, ‘we didn’t vote for this.'”
A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll released Sunday showed Trump’s approval rating in decline amid signs of major opposition to his agenda.
“Many Americans never voted for this, but many Americans, I mean, it’s a great day to remind them what is in the core of what is the right side of history, a more perfect union. This is the march for a more perfect union. That’s what most Americans believe in. And it’s a great day on this 100th day to remind our administration what the right side of history is.”
Merkley, when asked about the prospect of getting enough Republicans on board with the Equality Act to pass the measure, noted that, “If you can be against discrimination in employment, you can be against discrimination in financial contracts, you can be against discrimination in mortgages, in jury duty, you can be against discrimination in public accommodations and housing, and so we’re going to continue to remind our colleagues that discrimination is wrong.”
The Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which was sponsored by Merkley, was passed by the Senate in 2013 but languished in the House. The bill was ultimately broadened to become the Equality Act.
“As Speaker Nancy Pelosi has always taught me,” Takano added, “public sentiment is everything. Now is the moment to bring greater understanding and greater momentum, because, really, the Congress is a reflection of the people.”
“While we’re in a different place right this minute” compared to 2019 and 2021 when the Equality Act was passed by the House, Pelosi said she believes “there is an opportunity for corporate America to weigh in” and lobby the Senate to convince members of the need to enshrine federal anti-discrimination protections into law “so that people can fully participate.”
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