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Biden nominates Sean Patrick Maloney to ambassadorship

President Joe Biden nominated Maloney to be the next Representative of the U.S. to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development

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Former New York Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney with husband Randy Florke, November 7, 2022. (Photo Credit: Maloney/Facebook)

The White House announced Friday that President Joe Biden has nominated former Democratic New York Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney to be the next Representative of the U.S. to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, with the rank of Ambassador.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is an intergovernmental organization with 38 member countries, founded in 1961 to stimulate economic progress and world trade.

He is the first openly LGBTQ person ever elected to Congress from New York and the highest ranking openly LGBTQ person ever to serve in the House. He and his husband, Randy Florke, recently celebrated their 30th anniversary together as couple and have raised three children together.

Maloney was elected five times to represent New York’s 18th congressional district in the House and served from 2013 to 2023. While in Congress, Maloney chaired both the Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Subcommittee of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee as well as the Commodity Markets, Digital Assets, and Rural Development Subcommittee of the House Agriculture Committee

He served additionally as a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and was elected by his colleagues to House leadership in 2020. He is the author of more than 40 pieces of legislation that became law.

Prior to serving in the House, Maloney served as President Bill Clinton’s White House Staff Secretary, and leaving government service helped found a financial services software company, and worked as a partner at two global law firms.
 
Raised in Hanover, N.H., as the youngest of six siblings, Maloney attended public elementary and high schools before earning undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Virginia. He worked as a volunteer with the Jesuits in rural Peru between college and law school from 1988 to 1989.

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The White House

Trump nominates Mike Waltz to become next UN ambassador

Former Fla. congressman had been national security advisor

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U.N. headquarters in New York (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)

President Donald Trump on Thursday announced he will nominate Mike Waltz to become the next U.S. ambassador to the U.N.

Waltz, a former Florida congressman, had been the national security advisor.

Trump announced the nomination amid reports that Waltz and his deputy, Alex Wong, were going to leave the administration after Waltz in March added a journalist to a Signal chat in which he, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and other officials discussed plans to attack Houthi rebels in Yemen.

“I am pleased to announce that I will be nominating Mike Waltz to be the next United States ambassador to the United Nations,” said Trump in a Truth Social post that announced Waltz’s nomination. “From his time in uniform on the battlefield, in Congress and, as my National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz has worked hard to put our nation’s Interests first. I know he will do the same in his new role.”

Trump said Secretary of State Marco Rubio will serve as interim national security advisor, “while continuing his strong leadership at the State Department.”

“Together, we will continue to fight tirelessly to make America, and the world, safe again,” said Trump.

Trump shortly after his election nominated U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) to become the next U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Trump in March withdrew her nomination in order to ensure Republicans maintained their narrow majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.

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The White House

White House does not ‘respond’ to reporters’ requests with pronouns included

Government workers were ordered not to self-identify their gender in emails

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White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and a senior advisor in the Department of Government Efficiency rejected requests from reporters who included their pronouns in the signature box of their emails, each telling different reporters at the New York Times that “as a matter of policy,” the Trump-Vance administration will decline to engage with members of the press on these grounds.

News of the correspondence between the journalists and the two senior officials was reported Tuesday by the Times, which also specified that when reached for comment, the White House declined to “directly say if their responses to the journalists represented a new formal policy of the White House press office, or when the practice had started.”

“Any reporter who chooses to put their preferred pronouns in their bio clearly does not care about biological reality or truth and therefore cannot be trusted to write an honest story,” Leavitt told the Times.

Department of Government Efficiency Senior Advisor Katie Miller responded, “I don’t respond to people who use pronouns in their signatures as it shows they ignore scientific realities and therefore ignore facts.”

Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, wrote in an email to the paper: “If The New York Times spent the same amount of time actually reporting the truth as they do being obsessed with pronouns, maybe they would be a half-decent publication.”

A reporter from Crooked media who got an email similar to those received by the Times reporters said, “I find it baffling that they care more about pronouns than giving journalists accurate information, but here we are.”

The practice of adding pronouns to asocial media bios or the signature box of outgoing emails has been a major sticking point for President Donald Trump’s second administration since Inauguration Day.

On day one, the White House issued an executive order stipulating that the federal government recognizes gender as a binary that is immutably linked to one’s birth sex, a definition excludes the existence of intersex and transgender individuals, notwithstanding the biological realities that natal sex characteristics do not always cleave neatly into male or female, nor do they always align with one’s gender identity .

On these grounds, the president issued another order that included a directive to the entire federal government workforce through the Office of Personnel Management: No pronouns in their emails.

As it became more commonplace in recent years to see emails with “she/her” or “he/him” next to the sender’s name, title, and organization, conservatives politicians and media figures often decried the trend as an effort to shoehorn woke ideas about gender (ideas they believe to be unscientific), or a workplace accommodation made only for the benefit of transgender people, or virtue-signaling on behalf of the LGBTQ left.

There are, however, any number of alternative explanations for why the practice caught on. For example, a cisgender woman may have a gender neutral name like Jordan and want to include “she/her” to avoid confusion.

A spokesman for the Times said: “Evading tough questions certainly runs counter to transparent engagement with free and independent press reporting. But refusing to answer a straightforward request to explain the administration’s policies because of the formatting of an email signature is both a concerning and baffling choice, especially from the highest press office in the U.S. government.”

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USCIS announces it now only recognizes ‘two biological sexes’

Immigration agency announced it has implemented Trump executive order

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An American flag flies in front of a privately-run U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in the Southeast U.S. on July 31, 2020. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has announced it now only recognizes "two biological genders, male and female." (Washington Blade photo by Yariel Valdés González)

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services on Wednesday announced it now only “recognizes two biological sexes, male and female.”

A press release notes this change to its policies is “consistent with” the “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” executive order that President Donald Trump signed shortly after he took office for the second time on Jan. 20.

“There are only two sexes — male and female,” said DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin in a statement. “President Trump promised the American people a revolution of common sense, and that includes making sure that the policy of the U.S. government agrees with simple biological reality.”

“Proper management of our immigration system is a matter of national security, not a place to promote and coddle an ideology that permanently harms children and robs real women of their dignity, safety, and well-being,” she added.

The press release notes USCIS “considers a person’s sex as that which is generally evidenced on the birth certificate issued at or nearest to the time of birth.”

“If the birth certificate issued at or nearest to the time of birth indicates a sex other than male or female, USCIS will base the determination of sex on secondary evidence,” it reads.

The USCIS Policy Manuel defines “secondary evidence” as “evidence that may demonstrate a fact is more likely than not true, but the evidence does not derive from a primary, authoritative source.”

“Records maintained by religious or faith-based organizations showing that a person was divorced at a certain time are an example of secondary evidence of the divorce,” it says.

USCIS in its press release notes it “will not deny benefits solely because the benefit requestor did not properly indicate his or her sex.”

“This is a cruel and unnecessary policy that puts transgender, nonbinary, and intersex immigrants in danger,” said Immigration Equality Law and Policy Director Bridget Crawford on Wednesday. “The U.S. government is now forcing people to carry identity documents that do not reflect who they are, opening them up to increased discrimination, harassment, and violence. This policy does not just impact individuals — it affects their ability to travel, work, access healthcare, and live their lives authentically.”  

“By denying trans people the right to self-select their gender, the government is making it harder for them to exist safely and with dignity,” added Crawford. “This is not about ‘common sense’—it is about erasing an entire community from the legal landscape. Transgender, nonbinary, and intersex people have always existed, and they deserve to have their identities fully recognized and respected. We will continue to fight for the rights of our clients and for the reversal of this discriminatory policy.” 

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