Politics
LGBTQ leaders, DNC chair address LGBTQ Caucus meeting at Democratic convention
Danica Roem, Sarah McBride among attendees

CHICAGO — A coalition of LGBTQ leaders addressed the second meeting of the LGBTQ Caucus at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago’s McCormick Place Convention Center on Wednesday.
In order of appearance, speakers included Democratic National Committee LGBTQ Caucus Chair Earl Fowlkes, Harris-Walz National LGBTQ+ Engagement Director Sam Alleman, congressional candidate and Delaware state Sen. Sarah McBride (D), senior advisor to Vice President Kamala Harris Sergio Gonzales, LGBTQ Victory Fund and Institute President Annise Parker, Chasten Buttigieg, Texas state Rep. Julie Johnson (D), Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison, actor and LGBTQ activist Wilson Cruz, writer and LGBTQ activist Charlotte Clymer, Virginia state Sen. Danica Roem (D), National LGBTQ Task Force President Kierra Johnson, Stonewall veteran and transgender rights activist Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, and U.S. Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.).
Fowlkes celebrated the record-breaking number of LGBTQ delegates in Chicago this year — more than 800, up from 635 in 2020 — and invited those who were in the room to gather near the stage for photos. He also noted his formation of a trans advisory commission, an ad-hoc committee to the LGBTQ caucus.
“I don’t think I have to tell anyone how clear as day the difference between our ticket is and their ticket is when it comes to issues for our community,” Alleman said. Outlining the Out for Harris national LGBTQ organizing program, he noted the events and investments in earned and paid media, along with metrics.
Up next, Alleman said, will be continued onboarding of sub-groups and state programs with a focus on Broadway, drag performers, queer women, Black LGBTQ people, and “mama bears and allies.” He said Out for Harris will also scale national direct voter contact and organizing efforts through an organizing call on Aug. 29, weekly direct voter contact trainings and activations, which will become daily on Oct. 12, and get out the vote (GOTV) efforts.
McBride, the Democratic Party’s endorsed candidate for Delaware’s open congressional seat, said that while to she hopes to “join you in four years not just as Delaware’s next member of Congress, but as the first openly trans member of Congress in American history,” she is “running to make historic change on all of the issues that matter.”
“Right now, there is a cruel and concerted effort,” McBride said, to “roll back the clock on our progress” and “target some of the most vulnerable but badass members of the LGBTQ community for hate and discrimination — trans young people.”
“We also know what is possible when it comes to all of the issues that we face, because at the end of the day, as Audre Lorde reminds us, there is no such thing as a single issue cause, because no one lives single issue lives,” she said.
“As someone who has worked up close with the vice president now for a number of years,” said Gonzales, who has been a senior advisor to Harris from the time she began serving in the U.S. Senate in 2017, “the only thing I really want to focus on today for his remarks is just to make sure that you know we are on the cusp of electing a leader and a champion who has been in the LGBTQ community for years.”
But while “we know that Kamala Harris has showed up for our community time and again,” Gonzales said, now “Kamala Harris needs you” because “this is going to be a really tight election” and “we know the ugliness of the other side, the kind of hate that they’re spewing towards our community in particular.”
After outlining the services provided by the Victory Fund, which works to elect LGBTQ people to public office, and the Victory Institute, which provides training, professional development, and networking services, Parker discussed the stakes of November’s elections.
“Kamala Harris is going to have coattails,” she said, “but she’s going to need us at the grassroots pushing up. And people are going to show up for the trans school board candidate in their community. People are going to show up for a state rep who is non binary in their community. People going to show up for a lesbian or gay man who is running for city council. Even if they’re not excited about the top of the ticket, as we are, they will show up in their community for people they know.”
“Politics has always pushed me to try to do the right thing, and I don’t think me becoming a parent has changed my political convictions, but it sure has scared the daylight out of me,” said Buttigieg, who is raising a son and daughter with husband Pete Buttigieg, secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation.
“I hope that we can remind one another that, yes, some dreams have come true because of politics and because of progress, because of the people linking arms in this room saying ‘we demand more, we demand better,'” he said, but there are kids out there who are afraid to be who they are or unable to be open about who they are for fear for their safety. “So let’s go out there and show them that there can be a better way, and I know we can do that by electing Kamala Harris and Tim Walz this November.”
Noting that she formed the first-ever LGBTQ caucus in the Texas legislature, Johnson said the message from her opponents during her primary campaign was “that the gay community, that the trans community, were terrible, were going to destroy our society and ruin the American family.”
“I was the only Democrat on TV, and my message was, I am gay all day, I am gay, gay, gay, gay, gay,” she said. “My message to you is this, don’t hide from your truth. Own it. Campaign on it. People value it. They will vote for you, and you will win, just like I did in the state of Texas.”
“I describe this convention as a big and probably the hardest family reunion in the world,” Harrison said, “because, in family reunions, people are laughing, they’re hugging, they’re dancing, and they’re crying sometimes, but those reunions are filled with love and happiness, joy” while “the other party is a party that’s built around fear; they want to make you afraid of everything.”
“When they come for one of us, they come for all of us,” he said. “I want every LGBTQ+ person who is growing up in this country to understand you matter, you are enough, and we are going to fight for you.”
Cruz defined the two tickets in stark and diametrically opposite terms. “We can have a White House that believes in equality for all of us,” he said, “or we can have a dictatorship hellbent on ending American democracy itself.”
“And that’s why I’m showing up,” said the actor, who is board chair of SMYAL, the LGBTQ youth-serving organization in D.C. “A brighter future is worth fighting for. For our young people, our freedoms are worth fighting for. We have made incredible progress, and we are not going back.”
Clymer thanked the DNC for “a fantastic convention this week,” adding that, “very respectfully, I also want to say something that I think needs to be heard.” At a time when “trans people are being viciously, directly attacked on a daily basis, and in a year when we are about to elect the first trans member of Congress, it is absolutely ridiculous that Sarah McBride is not on the speaking program” in the evening primetime sessions at the United Center.
When Terry McAuliffe lost the Virginia gubernatorial race to Republican Glenn Youngkin in 2021 “there was a lot of talk about CRT (critical race theory) and LGBTQ rights and all the hateful speech that is usually brought up in the analysis of why Democrats lose,” Clymer said. “What was missing in that post-election analysis is that a progressive trans woman was elected to the state Senate and outperformed the top of the ticket in her district.”
She was referring to Roem, the next speaker to take the stage. “Throughout this week, I’ve gotten the chance to hear people describe Vice President Harris as being fearless,” the Virginia state senator said, “and we heard even earlier about how she was that kid standing up to the playground bully as a child,” referring to an anecdote that was repeated by Harrison.
Roem explained how she learned to be fearless, too, as she gradually came out as trans, beginning around the time when Harris, then the newly elected district attorney of San Francisco, “started officiating [same-sex] weddings, and she did it with the same joy that’s the cornerstone of her campaign today.”
She “supported us before it was popular, even in the Democratic Party, not because it was easy, but because it was right,” Roem said.
“I met President Carter at the convention in Denver in 2008,” Johnson said. “You may not know that his administration was the first administration to entertain a queer delegation, and the Task Force led that delegation — yes, my president, President Carter, was the only president that the National LGBTQ Task Force Action Fund ever endorsed until just this year, when we endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris.”
She added, “It is only fitting, given that together, she and Tim [Walz] have a nearly unmatched record for being champions of LGBTQ+ people, and with you, with us, with our peoples, we can secure the presidency, the Senate and the House, and ensure the Equality Act is finally, finally passed — an Equality Act that was first introduced by President Carter, and we’re gonna finish that business with this next administration.”
After she was introduced by Johnson, members of the audience approached the stage to hear Miss Major draw the contrast between Harris, the first presidential candidate she has ever endorsed, and Trump, who she feels is beneath contempt.
The activist spoke with the Washington Blade last week for a profile focused on her decades of work as an activist, her involvement in this election, her work with the Task Force, and her take on the Harris campaign’s commitment to not go back.
Vermont’s first woman and first LGBTQ member of Congress took the stage to share how she “learned recently that there is this incredible thing that happens when we experience a sense of awe.”
“And when you experience that, something changes inside of you,” Balint said. “We know this intuitively, but the data also bears it out — you are more open to the world; you have more humility; you have more curiosity, which is why we seek it.”
“I want you to remember you have a part in this. You do not need to be in elected office to transform your community, to transform the people around you. Lean hard into your humility and your curiosity and your generosity. Others will be drawn to you.”
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