Politics
Harris becomes the de facto 2024 Democratic Party nominee for president
Advocacy groups praise vice president, President Biden

Less than three days after President Joe Biden announced his decision to step off the ticket and endorsed Kamala Harris to run in his stead, the vice president had emerged as her party’s de facto pick to take on the Republican nominee Donald Trump in November.
According to data from the Associated Press, by Monday 2,868 of the nearly 4,000 delegates who represent Democratic voters had endorsed Harris, well exceeding the 50 percent threshold necessary for her to lock up the nomination, which will be made official during the Democratic National Convention next month. The first ballots will be cast between Aug. 1 and Aug. 7.
“When I announced my campaign for president, I said I intended to go out and earn this nomination,” the vice president said in a statement Monday. “Tonight, I am proud to have secured the broad support needed to become our party’s nominee,” she said, adding, “I look forward to formally accepting the nomination soon.”
Virtually all prominent Democrats whose names were floated as potential rivals quickly lined up behind Harris, including Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who was tapped to co-chair the campaign, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, the first openly gay Cabinet member, who is considered a top contender to be her running-mate for vice president.
As of midday Wednesday, endorsements had come from over 90 percent of House Democrats, including Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) as well as from every Democratic governor and every Democratic U.S. senator except for Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) (who was just convicted on charges related to an international bribery scheme and announced plans to resign from Congress.)
Also supporting Harris are major organizations that are allied with the party (limited, of course, to those permitted under FEC rules to endorse political candidates). Among them are major labor unions like SEIU and IBEW, advocacy shops like Emily’s List and Gen Z for Change, and civil rights groups like UnidosUS and the Human Rights Campaign.
And in a signal of the popularity of a reconfigured Democratic ticket led by the vice president, her campaign announced that a record breaking sum in excess of $100 million was raised between Saturday afternoon and Tuesday morning with mostly small-dollar contributions from 1.1 million supporters, 60 percent of whom were first-time donors.
The journey toward Harris’s nomination began with the president’s shaky performance against Trump during the televised CNN debate on June 27, which led to a chorus of calls for the 81-year-old to step aside as polls showed he had no clear path to winning the race.
By and large, the Democratic donors, celebrities, and elected officials who pushed for a new ticket did so despite their admiration and affinity for Biden and respect for his record as president. Within the party and beyond, his decision to walk away was celebrated as a patriotic sacrifice of personal ambition for the good of the country.
After Biden backed Harris, she visited campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Del., on Monday, where she delivered remarks about how she will parlay her experience as a prosecutor who went after “predators” and “fraudsters” into her work arguing the case against Trump and ultimately defeating him in November.
Harris also reaffirmed her loyalty to and kinship with Biden while reassuring campaign staff, who had just weathered — by far (at least, so far) — the rockiest period of the 2024 cycle.
“I know it’s been a rollercoaster, and we’re all filled with so many mixed emotions about this,” she said, adding, “I just have to say: I love Joe Biden.”
The president, who was isolating and recovering from COVID-19 at his home in Rehoboth Beach, Del., called in to the event with words of support and encouragement for the team and for Harris, to whom he said, “I’m watching you, kid,” and “I love ya.”
The next day, Harris headlined a rally in the key battleground state of Wisconsin, where the reception she received was widely described as palpably energetic and enthusiastic, especially when compared to similar campaign affairs prior to the vice president’s emergence this week as the presumptive Democratic nominee.
Putting aside voters’ apparent enthusiasm for her candidacy, the massive uptick in fundraising dollars, the rapid coalescence of support for her nomination from virtually the entire Democratic Party along with the various affiliated interests and entities, and the deftness with which she navigated an especially fraught conflict of which she was in the very center both personally and politically, any lingering questions about whether Harris has the full suite of skills and attributes of a top-tier candidate for national political office may have dissipated with her performances in these and other recent public appearances.
If, in fact, they persist, concerns about Harris’s ability to rise to the occasion largely stem from her 2020 Democratic presidential primary campaign, which folded ahead of the Iowa caucuses amid criticism that the California Democrat failed to articulate a cohesive and authentic message about her reasons for running and her vision for America.
As San Francisco Chronicle Washington Correspondent Shira Stein said during Jake Tapper’s CNN program on Tuesday, Harris has sharpened her skills as a politician over the past four years as she has served as vice president.
The political landscape has also shifted in ways that seem more broadly favorable to her candidacy in 2024. For example, voters might be more receptive to a nominee who built her career as a smart-on-crime prosecutor now that conversations about justice in policing are less salient than they were in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder while concerns about public safety are now more ascendant.
The 2020 campaign aside, to the extent that Harris may have other handicaps — missteps while in office, controversial elements of her prosecutorial record, her perceived shortcomings as a candidate — they are, largely, already known, Stein said. “She’s been in political life for quite a long time.”
Far less clear is what the polls will look like over the months ahead as Harris reintroduces herself to voters and the dust settles from recent events that have caused tremendous upheaval in the 2024 race, including Biden’s departure from the ticket.

LGBTQ groups and leaders back Harris while thanking Biden
In written statements and public remarks over the past few days, LGBTQ leaders and organizations highlighted Biden and Harris’s records advancing rights and protections for the community, touted their administration’s legacy as the most pro-LGBTQ in history. (Washington Blade editor and co-owner Kevin Naff published an op-ed Wednesday titled, “Joe Biden, our fiercest ally“.)
They voiced confidence in Harris’s vision for building on that progress over the next four years and chronicled the ways in which she — in her roles as San Francisco district attorney, California attorney general, U.S. senator, and vice president — had a hand in many of the major milestones in the fight for LGBTQ civil rights that were won over the past few decades, from the legalization of same-sex marriage to ending the so-called “gay and trans panic defense.”
Several who spoke out to support Harris noted that she would be the first Black woman and the first South Asian presidential nominee to lead a major party ticket, having previously broken barriers throughout her career in elected office.
“We are deeply grateful to President Biden for his more than 50 years of public service and his longtime support for the LGBTQ+ community,” HRC President Kelley Robinson said. “Today’s announcement reflects what President Biden has done his entire career and will be core to his legacy: Putting the needs of Americans and his country above his own.”
“We owe the Biden-Harris team a debt of gratitude for leading the country out of a state of chaos and constant crisis under former President Trump,” she said. “And the Human Rights Campaign endorses the tough, formidable, and experienced Vice President Kamala Harris for president. Vice President Harris has the support of millions of Americans, as primary voters have already made the decision to put her on the ticket.”
Robinson said, “Vice President Kamala Harris is a trailblazer and has been a champion for LGBTQ+ equality for decades: from leading the fight in San Francisco against hate crimes and her work in California to end the so-called gay and transgender ‘panic defense’ to her early support for marriage equality and her leadership serving as our vice president.”
“Convicted felon Donald Trump has already shown that he aims to destroy democracy and divide the country in his quest for power,” she said. “Vice President Kamala Harris is a true champion of unity and accountability – and will fight for a country where no one is above the law and ‘justice for all’ means something.”
HRC, Robinson wrote, “could not be prouder to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris and commit to channeling our resources and supporters to work to elect the first Black and South Asian woman president of the United States.”
LGBTQ+ Victory Institute President Annise Parker said her organization “commends President Joe Biden on leading the most progressive and inclusive presidential term in American history” under which “LGBTQ+ people have received a record number of federal appointments, including cabinet members, judges and around 14 percent of political appointments.”
“His dedication to supporting LGBTQ+ communities and championing pro-equality legislation and executive action has created the most inclusive and affirming administration our country has ever seen,” Parker said. “And, despite attacks on LGBTQ+ liberties in state governments nationwide, the Biden administration has reinforced its dedication to LGBTQ+ equality through action.”
“We are sincerely grateful for President Biden’s leadership, partnership and service to our nation,” she said. “We know we have a trusted ally in Vice President Kamala Harris who works tirelessly toward full LGBTQ+ equality.”
Noting how Harris’s identity would make her nomination historic for the party and the country, Parker said she “is an enthusiastic supporter of pro-equality policies and LGBTQ+ communities” and added that “the record-breaking LGBTQ+ inclusivity of the Biden/Harris administration will continue under Harris’ leadership” while “the possibility that someone like Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg could be her running mate is monumental.”
“The prospect of a Harris/Buttigieg ticket would be a watershed moment in our decades-long efforts to make all levels of government more inclusive and could be the most historic Presidential ticket ever in our nation,” she said.
National LGBTQ+ Task Force Action Fund Executive Director Kierra Johnson said: “We are grateful for President Biden’s decades of service and allyship to LGBTQ communities — and for everything his administration has done to move our community forward.
“At this critical moment for our democracy and our freedoms, we have both hope and excitement for Vice President Kamala Harris and what she can do for our country. We fully expect a continued commitment to always putting our communities first.
We now recommit to moving forward in the democratic process, the upcoming convention and the November elections.
The Task Force action fund calls on LGBTQ+ people and our allies to take action and engage in the political process. Only through a show of voting power in the Nov. 5 election will we begin building the democracy we deserve.”
Gay U.S. Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), who on Saturday became the 36th Democrat on Capitol Hill to call for Biden to exit the race, urged the president to hand “the torch to Vice President Harris as the Democratic Party presidential nominee.”
“It has become clear to me that the demands of a modern campaign are now best met by the Vice President, who can seamlessly transition into the role of our party’s standard bearer,” he wrote.
Another gay Democrat in the California delegation, U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia, told Lesley Marin of CBS News on Monday that “we’re going to unite behind Vice President Harris,” noting “the incredible record that she’s been a partner of,” which has included “lowering the price of insulin, infrastructure, investments in climate change, [and] her incredible work in protecting women’s right to choose.”
“At the same time, she’s a prosecutor,” Garcia said. “Look at her work as attorney general. She’s going to prosecute the case against Donald Trump.”
U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), the openly gay chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, also spoke in support of Harris during an interview with CBS News Sunday, arguing that “She’s ready to win Wisconsin,” which is “one of those pivotal states” along with Michigan and Pennsylvania that “are on the top of the list” for Democrats to win in November.
Harris has “the energy to run around the state and do all the campaigning and show that contrast with” the Republican nominee who is “old” and “tired,” the congressman said, using an argument against Trump that has been rolled out by a number of Democrats following Biden’s withdrawal from the race on Sunday.
The vice president will be especially effective in relaying to voters how Trump’s appointment of three conservative justices to the U.S. Supreme Court during his first term led to a decision revoking constitutional protections for abortion that were in place since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, Pocan said. As a result, he added, “now we are in 1849 law in Wisconsin” with respect to reproductive rights.
An ally both politically and personally
In a written statement to the Blade, Harris for President Senior Spokesperson Kevin Munoz said, “Vice President Harris has been a steadfast ally and fighter for LGBTQ+ Americans since her early days in office.”
He added, “Like President Biden, she’s never shied away from fighting for us, as demonstrated by her record throughout her time in public service, as well as being a part of the most pro-LGBTQ+ administration in history. Vice President Harris has had the LBGTQ+ community’s back, and this November, we’ll have hers.”
High-profile LGBTQ officials serving in the Biden-Harris government include Buttigieg, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine, and Ben LaBolt and Karine Jean-Pierre, who respectively serve as communications director and press secretary for the White House.
Two gay men who were on her staff prior to her election as vice president spoke with the Blade for a story in June that accompanied the newspaper’s exclusive interview with Harris. Munoz and Sergio Gonzales, senior advisor to Harris and the campaign, were among the six LGBTQ aides and officials who participated in a three-part profile series last year (during which time the operation in Wilmington was far leaner than it is now.)
Those who are close with the vice president (or those who follow her speeches closely) understand she has deep ties to the community and treasured relationships with LGBTQ friends and colleagues like Jim Rivaldo, a political consultant who helped elect gay rights pioneer Harvey Milk before leading Harris to victory in her first district attorney’s race in 2003.
As vice president, Harris not only shared in the credit for her administration’s pro-LGBTQ wins while maximizing representation from the community in positions of power and influence in American government, but she also found ways to signal her support through other personal, individual means.
For example, Harris in 2022 became the first sitting VP to host a Pride month celebration at the vice presidential residence at the Naval Observatory, which became an annual tradition under her tenure.
Rosenberg Foundation President Tim Silard, who worked under Harris when she was San Francisco district attorney, shared a statement with the Blade by text voicing his support for her candidacy.
“Vice President Harris will be the most outstanding President in my lifetime,” he said. “She has been an unwavering champion of the LGBTQ community, fighting to make all of our families safer and expanding civil rights and our opportunities to thrive.”
Silard added, “I know she will take on bullies at home and abroad and bring our nation together in new and exciting ways. I could not be prouder to support her and will do anything I can to help elect her.”

Congress
Marjorie Taylor Greene’s bill to criminalize gender affirming care advances
Judiciary Committee markup slated for Wednesday morning

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.”
Congress
Pappas in Senate race focuses on costs, health care, and personal freedoms
Gay NH congressman hopes to succeed retiring US Sen. Jeanne Shaheen

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.”
Politics
Joe Biden diagnosed with ‘aggressive form’ of prostate cancer
The former president and his family are reviewing treatment options, according to a statement

According to a statement from his personal office on Sunday, former President Joe Biden has been diagnosed with an “aggressive form” of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones.
“Last week, President Joe Biden was seen for a new finding of a prostate nodule after experiencing increasing urinary symptoms. On Friday, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, characterized by a Gleason score of 9 (Grade Group 5) with metastasis to the bone,” the statement said.
Biden and his family “are reviewing treatment options with his physicians,” the statement said. “While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management.”
“Cancer touches us all,” the former president posted on X Monday. “Like so many of you, Jill and I have learned that we are strongest in the broken places. Thank you for lifting us up with love and support.”
Cancer touches us all. Like so many of you, Jill and I have learned that we are strongest in the broken places. Thank you for lifting us up with love and support. pic.twitter.com/oSS1vGIiwU
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) May 19, 2025