Politics
EXCLUSIVE: Meet the LGBTQ staff working on Biden’s re-election campaign
Munoz, Gifford view 2024 as existentially important
(Editor’s note: This is the first in a three-part series profiling senior LGBTQ staff working on President Biden’s re-election campaign. Part two will be published next week.)
The Biden-Harris administration has made history with the number and seniority of its LGBTQ appointees — a fact that is perhaps almost as familiar as the faces of America’s first openly gay Cabinet-level official, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, or Karine Jean-Pierre, who is both the first Black woman and the first lesbian White House press secretary.
Queer people are also helping to lead the largely behind-the-scenes, grueling reelection effort, and last week the Washington Blade spoke with five of them at the campaign’s headquarters in Wilmington, Del., and another remotely over Zoom.
The campaign’s spokesperson Kevin Munoz and finance chair Rufus Gifford, both gay men, view next year’s election and its stakes for LGBTQ Americans, for all Americans, as existentially important.
So, too, do the staff who will be profiled in Parts 2 and 3 of this series: Sergio Gonzales, senior adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris; Rubi Flores, special assistant to campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez; Becca Siegel, senior adviser to the campaign; and Teresa Tolliver, director of operations for the campaign.
Each brings diversity with respect to both identity and experience to their roles.
“I entered politics as someone that had worked in advertising,” Munoz told the Blade.
Joining the Biden for President campaign in 2019 as the Nevada press secretary without much experience liaising with reporters or drafting press releases, Munoz said he promised to “work like the Dickens on the things that I [didn’t] know enough about.”
After joining team Biden in Las Vegas, he would go on to serve as an assistant White House press secretary, working on critically important matters, including the administration’s response to COVID and other public health crises, before joining the campaign last March.
Throughout, Munoz said, “There’s never been an environment in which I haven’t felt really comfortable to be myself and really able to use my background, as someone from Florida, as a Latino, as a gay man, to my advantage and to be able to speak about issues that uniquely impact me or people like me.”
“When I was at the White House,” he said, “I had the opportunity to work on LGBT issues as it relates to health care,” including with the emergence of mpox, which “was uniquely impacting” gay men.
Munoz remembers that as the National Security Council — which is responsible for handling outbreaks of disease at their early outset — held a briefing, “I said to some colleagues and the powers that be, this guy is going to be the guy that is able to talk candidly and be credible and trusted, and also talk about all the wonky public health things all at once.'”
He was referring to Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who was director of the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before the White House named him deputy coordinator of the national mpox response in 2022 — a move that, Munoz said, demonstrated that the administration “understands the need to have LGBTQ people at the table and really leading the response on something like this.”
Munoz is also from Florida. In March, “We had to lead the response when ‘Don’t Say Gay’ was just becoming an issue,” he said, during which time the bill was signed into law by the state’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, now a presidential candidate.
“I remember being with Jen [Psaki], in the Press Secretary’s office, when this was coming out and we started talking about this early on, about how this is an issue of freedom,” he said. “They want to tell you who you can be.”
The controversial law prohibits classroom discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in Florida’s public schools, potentially penalizing teachers who might, for example, display a photo of their same-sex spouse on their desk.
In the campaign, Munoz said his experience in advertising became an asset, too. With the challenges stemming from the fragmented media environment, where voters get their information from places like Snapchat and WhatsApp, Munoz said, “I’m very grateful to have come from a background where I was doing message testing and ad testing and ad recall.”
“We need to build a bench of different places that we can go and tap into, to talk about Joe Biden’s message” and “how he’s delivering,” he said, so there is a built-in advantage because “I’m not starting from ground zero.”
“When your life is on the line, you’re gonna fight like your life is on the line,” he said, noting how, leading into next year’s elections, “virtually every state attorney general in Republican states is attacking trans Americans.”
The importance of centering voices whom voters can trust and identify with extends to outreach to LGBTQ voters, too, Munoz said, noting that the community constitutes “a huge voting bloc in our battleground states.”
From the campaign’s perspective, this means continuous year-round outreach to Black communities, younger people, the LGBTQ community, and other stakeholders, he said, adding that “when we start to do more coalition specific work directly from the campaign as the general election is built out,” this will likely mean a revival of the 2020 Out for Biden campaign.
Likewise, speaking with the Blade by Zoom from his home in Boston, Gifford said that “a critically important part of the Biden Harris victory next year is engaging the LGBT community across the board.”
“Not only are we going to be an extremely important fundraising piece of this puzzle,” he said, “but look: These states, I mean, if you think about the margins in ’20 — 10,000 votes, 20,000 votes in some of these states — the LGBT community can flip a state.”
A large part of Gifford’s work, both now and in previous roles, involves dealing with people. “I’m very out and I’m very proud,” he said. “I will never lie about who I am,” he said.
Gifford said he has been out for 30 years, during which time he worked on a total of five presidential campaigns, beginning with John Kerry’s in 2004 and then Barack Obama’s in 2008 and 2012, and then Joe Biden’s in 2020 and, now, 2024.
From 2013 to 2017, he served as U.S. ambassador to Denmark, and then from 2022 to the start of his work on the campaign this year, he was chief of protocol of the U.S., an officer position with the rank of ambassador and assistant secretary of state.
“I worked for Barack Obama for 10 years,” Gifford said, but the Biden-Harris administration “is the most pro-LGBT administration in the history of the United States of America.”
“I think being gay is inherently political — I mean, it has to be,” he said. “You know, people have politicized our lives. People have politicized our love lives; they’ve politicized our sex lives; they’ve politicized everything about us.”
Gifford was a young man when the U.S. Senate rejected Jim Hormel’s nomination by President Clinton to be U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg, before he went on to serve in that role as a recess appointment.
At the time, he said the ordeal foreclosed, in his mind, the possibility of following in Hormel’s footsteps.
After his unanimous Senate confirmation to serve as ambassador to Denmark, as “one of the first openly gay ambassadors appointed” to serve in “a very progressive country,” Gifford said, “I was shocked by how much people cared” about the significance of his being an out gay man.
“It was just a couple years before I showed up in Copenhagen, that the Bush administration was pushing a constitutional amendment to ban marriage equality,” he said. “And there was the American ambassador getting married to his husband at the U.S. ambassador’s residence literally just a few years later.”
As chief of protocol with the State Department, Gifford said that in many cases, “I was the guy at the bottom of the staircase, greeting, at Andrews Air Force Base, the leader of a country that criminalized homosexuality.”
This was part of the job, he said, “whether I agree with them or not, or whether Joe Biden agrees with them or not — but I was doing it as an openly gay man,” a fact about which these foreign leaders, all of whom “well briefed and well-staffed” were certainly aware.
“Politics is about choices,” Gifford said. “And for our community, to look at the choices, it’s just so damn clear.”
The stakes, again, are very real. “Mike Johnson, the new Speaker of the House, introduced a federal ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill,” he noted. “You don’t think Donald Trump would sign that bill in a second if they could get that through the Senate and the House? This is what we’re up against. This is what we’re dealing with.”
Congress
MTG resigns after years of anti-LGBTQ attacks amid Trump feud
Greene’s abrupt departure adds fresh uncertainty to an already fractured Republican Party.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene announced on Friday that she is resigning from Congress.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter), the Georgia 14th Congressional District representative announced her sudden decision to resign from office.
The nearly 11-minute-long video shows Rep. Greene stating she will step down from her role representing one of Georgia’s most Republican districts on Jan. 5, 2026. She cited multiple reasons for this decision, most notably her very public separation from Trump.
In recent weeks, Greene — long one of the loudest and most supportive MAGA members of Congress — has butted heads with the president on a slew of topics. Most recently, she supported pushing the DOJ to release the Epstein Files, becoming one of only four Republicans to sign a discharge petition, against Trump’s wishes.
She also publicly criticized her own party during the government shutdown. Rep. Greene had oddly been supportive of Democratic initiatives to protect healthcare tax credits and subsidies that were largely cut out of national healthcare policy as a result of Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” passed in July.
“What I am upset over is my party has no solution,” Greene said in October.
Trump recently said he would endorse a challenger against the congresswoman if she ran for reelection next year, and last week went as far as to declare, “Marjorie ‘Traitor’ Green is a disgrace to our GREAT REPUBLICAN PARTY!” on his Truth Social platform.
Trump told ABC News on Friday night that Greene’s resignation is “great news for the country,” and added that he has no plans to speak with Greene but wishes her well.
Despite her recent split with the head of the Republican Party, Rep. Greene has consistently taken a staunch stance against legislation supporting the LGBTQ community — notably a hardline “no” on any issue involving transgender people or their right to gender-affirming care.
Rep. Greene has long been at odds with the LGBTQ community. Within her first month in office, she criticized Democrats’ attempts to pass the Equality Act, legislation that would bar anti-LGBTQ employment discrimination. She went as far as to suggest an apocalypse-like scenario if Congress passed such a measure.
“God created us male and female,” she said on the House floor. “In his image, he created us. The Equality Act that we are to vote on this week destroys God’s creation. It also completely annihilates women’s rights and religious freedoms. It can be handled completely differently to stop discrimination without destroying women’s rights, little girls’ rights in sports, and religious freedom, violating everything we hold dear in God’s creation.”
Greene, who serves one of the nation’s most deeply red districts in northwest Georgia, attempted to pass legislation dubbed the “Protect Children’s Innocence Act,” which would have criminalized gender-affirming care for minors and restricted federal funding and education related to gender-affirming care in 2023. The bill was considered dead in January 2025 after being referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary.
Her push came despite multiple professional medical organizations, including the nation’s largest and most influential — the American Medical Association — stating that withholding gender-affirming care would do more harm than any such care would.
She has called drag performers “child predators” and described the Democratic Party as “the party of killing babies, grooming and transitioning children, and pro-pedophile politics.”
Greene has also publicly attacked Delaware Rep. Sarah McBride, the nation’s first and only transgender member of Congress. She has repeatedly misgendered and attacked McBride, saying, “He’s a man. He’s a biological male,” adding, “he’s got plenty of places he can go” when asked about bathrooms and locker rooms McBride should use. Greene has also been vocal about her support for a bathroom-usage bill targeting McBride and transgender Americans as a whole.
She has repeatedly cited false claims that transgender people are more violent than their cisgender counterparts, including falsely stating that the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooter in Texas was transgender.
The former MAGA first lady also called for an end to Pride month celebrations. She criticized the fact that the LGBTQ community gets “an entire” month while veterans get “only one day each year” in an X post, despite November being designated as National Veterans and Military Families Month.
Under Georgia law, Gov. Brian Kemp (R) must hold a special election within 40 days of the seat becoming vacant.
The Washington Blade reached out to both the White House and Greene’s office for comment, but has not heard back.
PFLAG honored U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) with the “2025 PFLAG National Champion of Justice” award during their annual “Love Takes Justice” event in Washington.
Waters has represented California’s 43rd Congressional District — including much of Los Angeles — since 1991 and has been a vocal advocate for LGBTQ rights since her swearing-in.
Her track record includes opposing the Defense of Marriage Act, which would have made marriage only between a man and a woman; co-sponsoring the Respect for Marriage Act, ultimately requiring all U.S. states to recognize same-sex marriages performed by other states; and is a long time supporter of the Equality Act, which would codify comprehensive protections for LGBTQ Americans.
In addition to her work on marriage equality, she also created the Minority AIDS Initiative to help address the devastating impact of HIV/AIDS on minority communities, particularly communities of color.
The award reception took place Tuesday at the headquarters of the American Federation of Teachers, where Waters was presented with the award by former U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), the openly gay member of Congress. Frank praised Waters for her unwavering support for the LGBTQ community and her lifelong commitment to advancing equality for all.
“One of the most encouraging developments in the fight for human rights is the failure of those who traffic in any form of bigotry, including bigotry to divide the Black and LGBTQ+ communities,” said Frank, who came out in 1987 while in office. “No one deserves more recognition for strengthening our unity than Maxine Waters.”
During the reception, Waters spoke about her extensive history of LGBTQ advocacy within the halls of Congress, emphasizing that her idea of government centers around uplifting its most vulnerable and threatened communities.
“From the very beginning of my public life I’ve believed that the government must protect those that are vulnerable, including LGBTQ+ people, who have been pushed to the margins, criminalized and told that their lives and their love do not matter,” Waters said. “Discrimination has no place in our laws.”
She continued, adding that the discrimination LGBTQ people have dealt with — and continue to deal with — is unconstitutional and wrong.
“I am proud to stand with LGBTQ+ families against efforts to write discrimination into our constitution, against attempts to deny people jobs, housing, healthcare and basic dignity because of who they are or who they love,” she said.
Waters joins a slew of other LGBTQ advocates who have received this award, beginning with the late-Georgia Congressman John Lewis in 2018. Past honorees include Oakland (Calif.) Mayor Barbara Lee, who was then a member of Congress, U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Frank, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, who was then a member of Congress, and Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
PFLAG CEO Brian Bond commented on the continued fight for LGBTQ rights in the U.S. as anti-transgender rhetoric and policies coming from the Trump-Vance White House grow each week.
“LGBTQ+ people and their families — and all of you here — know too well the reality of the political climate, the attitudes of the public, and the sheer lack of respect that LGBTQ+ people are experiencing in the world today. There’s no end to the hostile barrage of harmful laws, city ordinances, and regulations, especially against our trans loved ones,” Bond said. “This particular moment in history calls us to increase and fortify our work, advocating at every level of government.”
He ended with some hope — reminding the LGBTQ community they have been on the receiving end of discrimination and unjust treatment before, but have risen above and changed the laws — saying we can do it again.
“PFLAG members and supporters are uniquely suited for this moment, because we are fighting for and alongside our LGBTQ+ loved ones, we know that our love is louder … and love and liberty are inseparable,” said Bond.
Congress
Global Respect Act reintroduced in US House
Measure would sanction foreign officials responsible for anti-LGBTQ human rights abuses
U.S. Reps. Sarah McBride (D-Del.) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) on Thursday reintroduced a bill that would sanction foreign officials who carry out anti-LGBTQ human rights abuses.
A press release notes the Global Respect Act would direct “the U.S. government to identify and sanction foreign persons who are responsible for torture, arbitrary detention, physical attacks, murder, and other flagrant abuses against LGBTQI+ individuals.” The measure would also require “annual human rights reporting from the State Department and strengthens coordination with foreign governments, civil society, and the private sector to prevent anti-LGBTQI+ persecution.”
“Freedom and dignity should never depend on your zip code or who holds power in your country,” said McBride.
The Delaware Democrat who is the first openly transgender person elected to Congress notes consensual same-sex sexual relations remain criminalized in more than 60 countries, while “far too many (countries) look away from the violence that follows.”
“The Global Respect Act reaffirms a simple truth: no one should be targeted for who they are or whom they love,” said McBride. “This bill strengthens America’s voice on human rights.”
“No person should ever face imprisonment, violence, or discrimination on the basis of who they are,” added Fitzpatrick. “The Global Respect Act imposes real and necessary sanctions on those who carry out these abuses and strengthens America’s resolve to uphold basic human rights worldwide.”
The Global Respect Act has 119 co-sponsors. McBride and Fitzpatrick reintroduced it in the U.S. House of Representatives on the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance.
“As we mark Transgender Day of Remembrance, we reaffirm that no one, no matter where they live in the world, should be persecuted or subjected to violence simply because of who they are or whom they love,” said Mark Bromley, co-chair of the Council for Global Equality. “The Global Respect Act seeks to hold the world’s worst perpetrators of violence against LGBTQI+ people accountable by leveraging our sanctions regimes to uphold the human rights of all people.”
Outright International, Amnesty International USA, Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, ORAM (Organization for Refuge, Asylum and Migration), and the Human Rights Campaign are among the other groups that have endorsed the bill.
U.S. Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) in June introduced the Global Equality Act in the U.S. Senate. Gay California Congressman Robert Garcia and U.S. Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) on Monday introduced the International Human Defense Act that would require the State Department to promote LGBTQ and intersex rights abroad.
The promotion of LGBTQ and intersex rights was a cornerstone of the Biden-Harris administration’s overall foreign policy.
The global LGBTQ and intersex rights movement since the Trump-Vance administration froze nearly all U.S. foreign aid has lost more than an estimated $50 million in funding.
The U.S. Agency for International Development, which funded dozens of advocacy groups around the world, officially shut down on July 1. Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier this year said the State Department would administer the remaining 17 percent of USAID contracts that had not been cancelled.
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