Politics
Massive defeat for anti-trans & anti-LGBTQ+ riders in spending bill
More than 40 were defeated
By Erin Reed | On Thursday, Congress unveiled theĀ much-anticipated spending billĀ to avert a government shutdown. The bill, which includes funding for major government departments such as Health and Human Services and Education, featured fierce negotiations over conservativeĀ āpolicy riders.āĀ
These policy riders included bans on coverage for gender-affirming care, DEI bans, sports bans, and more. Despite some indications that Democrats might compromise due to the sheer number of conservative policy riders, it appears those fears did not come to fruition. Democrats held firm in negotiations, and the most impactful anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ+ riders were nowhere to be found.
One policy rider proposed for the Food and Drug Administration would have defunded any hospital that ādistributes, sells, or otherwise uses drugs that disrupt the onset of puberty or sexual development for those under 18,ā a measure targeting not only transgender youth but also those experiencing precocious puberty.
Another rider sought to bar any government funding toward āsurgical procedures or hormone therapy for the purposes of gender-affirming careā in the Department of Health and Human Services. This move would have significantly impacted private and subsidized insurance in the Healthcare Marketplace. It also aimed to bar the enforcement of President Bidenās executive order titled āPreventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity,ā which broadened anti-discrimination protections for transgender individuals.
Additional riders included bans on funding for any organization that āpromotes transgenderism,ā Title IX protections for transgender youth, bans on legal challenges against states over anti-LGBTQ+ laws, book bans, DEI bans, and more.
In total, over 40 riders were proposed and negotiated in the spending bills. None of these were found in the final bill
Ultimately, the final spending bill released contained only a single anti-LGBTQ+ rider: a ban on pride flags being raised or displayed above foreign embassies. The policy, while certainly qualifying as anti-LGBTQ+ andĀ a regression to Trump-era policies, notably does not bar personal displays of Pride flags by embassy workers.
In the past, some embassies have gotten around such bans by not āflying a flag over the embassyā but rather, painting portions of the embassy in rainbow colors or draping flags on the side of buildings.
News of the defeat of the most impactful anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ+ riders comes after a significant push from Equality Caucus Democrats and the Biden Administration against the riders. āAs you negotiate government funding for Fiscal Year 2024 (FY24), we write to strongly urge you to reject any attempts to include anti-LGBTQ+ provisions in any final FY24 funding agreement,ā said a letter signed by 163 representatives on behalf of the Congressional Equality Caucus to the Biden Administration.
However, Republicans also pushed hard for their inclusion. In a shutdown threat issued February 21st from the House Freedom Caucus, Republicans indicated that bans on gender affirming care and transgender participation in sports were necessary to prevent a potential shutdown.
Previously, Representative Dan Crenshaw stated that such bans are the “hill we will die on.” In a report published by Axios, one Republican lawmaker stated, āPeople are predicting a shutdown even if it’s just for a few days.ā Others concurred, citing gender affirming care riders as one of the potential reasons for such a shutdown.
Many anti-LGBTQ+ leaders in the Republican Party reacted negatively to the bill. Rep. Matt Gaetz expressed anger at funding for the New Jersey Garden State Equality in Education Fund, calling it āforce feeding the LGBT agenda in schoolsā and stating that it enables āgender mutilation surgeries in minors,ā ābiological menā in womenās bathrooms, and transgender participation in sports.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene decried the lack of a DEI ban. Rep. Andrew Clyde stated that Republicans āsurrenderedā to Democrats on hormone therapy. The House Freedom Caucus published a lengthy list of healthcare and equality centers that the budget would fund, urging the GOP to vote ānoā and to shut down the government.
In a press release published by House Appropriations Democrats, they stated that the bill rejected over a hundred poison-pill riders, many of which targeted LGBTQ+ people. For example, the Labor-HHS-Education portion of the bill blocked provisions around gender affirming care, sports bans, and nondiscrimination.
See the House Appropriations Democrats statement:
The bill must pass by Friday evening to avert a government shutdown, though the impacts of such a shutdown would likely not be felt until Monday. If passed, the bill would keep the government funded through September, at which point all of the riders could resurface during the peak of the 2024 presidential election.
However, for the next several months, LGBTQ+ riders will not pose a significant threat in a year where transgender and queer individuals have faced attacks at historic levels.
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Erin Reed is a transgender woman (she/her pronouns) and researcher who tracks anti-LGBTQ+ legislation around the world and helps people become better advocates for their queer family, friends, colleagues, and community. Reed also is a social media consultant and public speaker.
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The preceding articleĀ was first publishedĀ atĀ Erin In The MorningĀ and is republished with permission.
Politics
Heritage Foundation praises effort to ban transgender healthcare for military families
House GOP signals eagerness to implement Project 2025’s anti-LGBTQ policies
In a statement released Tuesday, the conservative Heritage Foundation praised House Republicans’ military spending bill, including the provision added by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) that would ban gender-affirming healthcare interventions for the children of U.S. service members.
Victoria Coates, vice president of the organization’s Kathyrn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy, said the National Defense Authorization Act, which was passed by the U.S. House Rules Committee along party lines on Monday, marks an “important step toward a defense budget that flows from strategy and directs DOD to become as lethal as possible to protect the national security of Americans.”
āThe bill authorizes resources for DOD at the border, retains the Houseās ban on corrosive race-based policies, eliminates the Senate’s provision to draft our daughters, prohibits transgender surgeries for minors under TRICARE, supports military construction in the Indo-Pacific and shipbuilding, including a third Arleigh Burkeāclass destroyer, and incremental funding for a second Virginia-class submarine,” Coates said. “These policies in this bill, combined with new military leadership, will make America stronger.ā
In April 2022, the Heritage Foundation published Project 2025, a comprehensive 920-page governing blueprint for President-elect Donald Trump’s second term that proposes radical reforms to imbue the federal government with ābiblical principlesāĀ and advance a Christian nationalist agenda, including by stripping rights away from LGBTQ Americans while abandoning efforts to promote equality for sexual and gender minorities abroad.
“The next conservative president must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors,” the authors explain on page four, beginning “with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (āSOGIā), diversity, equity, and inclusion (āDEIā), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term … out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.”
The document also lays the groundwork for the incoming administration to revive the ban on military service by transgender troops that Trump implemented during his first term, arguing that “gender dysphoria is incompatible with the demands of military service.”
Leading up to the election, when Project 2025 became a political liability for Trump, he tried to distance himself from the document and its policy proposals, but as the New York Times documented, an “analysis of the Project 2025 playbook and its 307 authors and contributors revealed that well over half of them had been in Mr. Trumpās administration or on his campaign or transition teams.”
The Times also noted that Trump has held meetings with Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts and a co-founder, Edwin Feulner.
In October, the Congressional Equality Caucus published a report entitled, āRipping Away Our Freedoms: How House Republicans are Working to Implement Project 2025ās Assault on LGBTQI+ Americansā Rights.ā
The group’s openly gay chair, U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), noted that āWhen Republicans took control of the House of Representatives last year, we saw an avalanche of attacks against the LGBTQI+ community.ā
The congressman added, āDuring the past two years, they forced more than 70 anti-LGBTQI+ votes on the House floor. And nearly every bill and amendment idea was ripped out of the pages of Project 2025ās āMandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise.’ā
The NDAA filed by House Republicans is unlikely to pass through the U.S. Senate while the chamber remains under Democratic control, and President Joe Biden has vowed to veto legislation that discriminates against transgender and LGBQ communities, but the spending package will face far fewer obstacles after the new Congress is seated on Jan. 3 and Trump is inaugurated on Jan. 20.
Objecting to the spending bill’s inclusion of language prohibiting military families from accessing gender affirming care are congressional Democrats like U.S. Rep. Adam Smith (Wash.), who serves as the ranking member of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee, and advocacy groups like the Human Rights Campaign and the American Civil Liberties Union.
Congress
House moves to block gender-affirming care for children of service members
Rules Committee approved NDAA on Monday
House Republicans added a provision to the annual must-pass military spending bill, filed over the weekend, that would prohibit the children of U.S. service members from accessing gender-affirming healthcare interventions.
President Joe Biden has promised to veto legislation that discriminates against the trans community, and the likelihood that the bill would pass through the U.S. Senate is uncertain with Democrats controlling the upper chamber until the 119th Congress is convened on Jan. 3.
Nevertheless, the GOP’s National Defense Authorization Act was passed along party lines by the U.S. House Rules Committee on Monday night, and a floor vote could come as early as Tuesday.
During the hearing yesterday, the committee’s top Democrat, U.S. Rep. Adam Smith (Wash.) said the NDAA negotiated by the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees did not include this provision barring gender-affirming care and it was House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) who insisted that it be added after the fact.
Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is urging House Republicans to attach the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which is aimed at college campuses, to the NDAA, but Johnson reportedly wants the Democratic leader to put the bill to a floor vote on its own ā a move that would inhibit his party’s ability to confirm as many judicial nominees as possible before control of the upper chamber changes hands.
Smith’s office published a statement objecting to the anti-transgender language added by the Republican leader:
āFor the 64th consecutive year, House and Senate Armed Services Committee Democrats and Republicans worked across the aisle to craft a defense bill that invests in the greatest sources of Americaās strength: Service members and their families, science and technology, modernization, and a commitment to allies and partners.
Rooted in the work of the bipartisan Quality of Life Panel, the bill delivers a 14.5 percent pay raise for junior enlisted service members and 4.5 percent pay raise for all other service members. It includes improvements for housing, health care, childcare, and spousal support.
House Armed Services Democrats were successful in blocking many harmful provisions that attacked DEI programs, the LGBTQ community, and womenās access to reproductive health care. It also included provisions that required bipartisan compromise. And had it remained as such, it would easily pass both chambers in a bipartisan vote.
However, the final text includes a provision prohibiting medical treatment for military dependents under the age of 18 who are diagnosed with gender dysphoria. Blanketly denying health care to people who clearly need it, just because of a biased notion against transgender people, is wrong. This provision injected a level of partisanship not traditionally seen in defense bills. Speaker Johnson is pandering to the most extreme elements of his party to ensure that he retains his speakership. In doing so, he has upended what had been a bipartisan process.
I urge the speaker to abandon this current effort and let the House bring forward a bill ā reflective of the traditional bipartisan process ā that supports our troops and their families, invests in innovation and modernization, and doesnāt attack the transgender community.ā
The Congressional Equality Caucus spoke out against the Republican NDAA with a statement by the chair, openly-gay U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), who said “In the last 72 hours, brave Americans who serve our nation in uniform woke up to the news that Republicans in Congress are trying to ban healthcare for their transgender children.”
Pocan continued, āFor a party whose members constantly decry ābig government,ā nothing is more hypocritical than hijacking the NDAA to override servicemembersā decisions, in consultation with medical professionals and their children, about what medical care is best for their transgender kids. The Congressional Equality Caucus opposes passage of this bill, and I encourage my colleagues to vote no on it.ā
Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson also issued a statement, arguing that āThis legislation has been hijacked by Speaker Mike Johnson and anti-LGBTQ+ lawmakers, who have chosen to put our national security and military readiness at risk for no other reason than to harm the transgender kids of military families.ā
āThe decisions that families and doctors make for the wellbeing of their transgender kids are important and complex, especially so for military families, and the last thing they need is politicians stepping in and taking away their right to make those decisions,” she said.
“When this comes up in the full House, lawmakers need to vote down this damaging and dehumanizing legislation,” Robinson added.
āThis is a dangerous affront to the dignity and well-being of young people whose parents have dedicated their lives to this countryās armed forces,ā said Mike Zamore, national director of policy and government affairs at the American Civil Liberties Union.
āMedical care should stay between families and their doctors but this provision would baselessly and recklessly inject politics into the health care military families receive,” he said. “Nobody should have to choose between serving the country and ensuring their child has the health care they need to live and thrive. Members of Congress must vote against the defense bill because of the inclusion of this deeply harmful, unconstitutional provision.ā
Congress
Protests against anti-trans bathroom policy lead to more than a dozen arrests
Demonstrations were staged outside House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) office
About 15 protestors affiliated with the Gender Liberation Movement were arrested on Thursday for protesting the anti-trans bathroom policy that was introduced by U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) and enacted last month by U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.).
Whistleblower Chelsea Manning and social justice advocates Raquel Willis and Renee Bracey Sherman were among those who were arrested in the women’s bathroom and the hallway outside Johnson’s office in the Cannon House Office Building.
Demonstrators held banners reading āFLUSH BATHROOM BIGOTRYā and āCONGRESS: STOP PISSING ON OUR RIGHTS!ā They chanted, āSPEAKER JOHNSON, NANCY MACE, OUR GENDERS ARE NO DEBATE!ā and “WHEN TRANS FOLKS ARE UNDER ATTACK WHAT DO WE DO? ACT UP, FIGHT BACK!”
Protests began around 12:10 p.m. ET. Within 30 minutes, Capitol Police arrived on the scene, began making arrests, and cleared the area. A spokesperson told Axios the demonstration was an illegal violation of the D.C. code against crowding, obstructing or incommoding.
Mace and her flame-throwing House GOP allies have said the bathroom policy was meant to target Sarah McBride, the Delaware state senator who will become the first transgender member of Congress after she is seated in January.
LGBTQ groups, elected Democrats, and others have denounced the move as a bigoted effort to bully and intimidate a new colleague, with many asking how the policy’s proponents would enforce the measure.
Outside her office in the Longworth House Office Building, the Washington Blade requested comment from Mace about the protests and arrests.
“Yeah, I went to the Capitol Police station where they were being processed, so I’ll be posting what I said shortly,” the congresswoman said.
Using an anti-trans slur, Mace posted a video to her X account in which she says, “alright, so some tranny protestors showed up at the Capitol today to protest my bathroom bill, but they got arrested ā poor things.”
“So I have a message for the protestors who got arrested,” the congresswoman continued, and then spoke into a megaphone as she read the Miranda warning. “If you cannot afford an attorney ā I doubt many of you can ā one will be provided to you at the government’s expense,” she said.
āEveryone deserves to use the restroom without fear of discrimination or violence. Trans folks are no different. We deserve dignity and respect and we will fight until we get it,ā Gender Liberation Movement co-founder Raquel Willis said in a press release.
āIn the 2024 election, trans folks were left to fend for ourselves after nearly $200 million of attack ads were disseminated across the United States,” she said. “Now, as Republican politicians, try to remove us from public life, Democratic leaders are silent as hell.”
Willis continued, “But we canāt transform bigotry and hate with inaction. We must confront it head on. Democrats must rise up, filibuster, and block this bill.ā
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