National
Supporters bullish about repealing ‘Don’t Ask’
But GOP aide warns ‘minefields’ await
Capitol Hill observers are optimistic that sufficient support now exists to pass standalone “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal legislation amid questions about when the Senate will take on the legislation.
A Senate Democratic aide, who spoke to the Blade on condition of anonymity, said the chances of passing the new standalone repeal legislation are “looking better and better each day.”
“Based on what I’m hearing, I think there is a very keen interest by Democratic leaders in the Senate and the House to make a standalone bill a big priority,” the aide said. “I think that they are taking steps to ensure that chances are good for passage.”
Winnie Stachelberg, vice president for external affairs at the Center for American Progress, also said she believes there’s a chance the bill will pass before Congress is out of session.
“Having a chance is all that you need,” she said. “And you need the pieces to fall into place and the commitment of those on the Hill and the White House to get it done. People really need to lean into this to get it done.”
But a Senate Republican aide, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, was more cautious and said passage depends “on so many variables.”
“I think if the omnibus, the continuing resolution, all that stuff stretches past Thursday night, Friday, then it gets real difficult,” the aide said. “Those things are already set in motion. It could happen, but there’s just a lot of minefields.”
Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) introduced the new repeal legislation last week after the Senate on Thursday failed to meet the 60-vote threshold necessary to move major defense budget legislation to the floor containing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal.
Lieberman’s legislation is identical to the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” provision in the fiscal year 2011 defense authorization bill. Even if the standalone is signed into law, repeal wouldn’t take effect until the president, the defense secretary and the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff certify the U.S. military is ready to implement open service.
Support for the legislation in the Senate has grown rapidly as Lieberman — and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), an original co-sponsor for the bill — have worked to gather co-sponsors for the legislation. According to the Human Rights Campaign, the measure as of Monday had 40 co-sponsors.
Joe Solmonese, president of HRC, said the growing number of co-sponsors for the legislation “adds momentum” to the effort to legislatively repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” this year.
“Now the question is whether the Senate and House will take up this measure quickly and get it to the president’s desk,” Solmonese said. “There should be no excuses for inaction.”
When the bill comes to the floor, eyes will be on senators who say they support repeal, but didn’t vote in favor of bringing the defense legislation to the floor last week, such as Sens. Scott Brown (R-Mass.), Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) and Lisa Murkowksi (R-Alaska).
Last week, many Republicans said they were voting “no” because they didn’t believe the amendment process was fair enough for Republicans. The defense authorization bill typically takes several days of debate and both parties offer amendments to the legislation.
This year, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) had proposed 10 Republican amendments and 5 Democratic amendments as part of the agreement to proceed to the legislation.
But the Republican aide noted that passing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” as standalone legislation as opposed as passing it as part of the defense authorization bill eliminates arguments to vote “no” on procedural grounds.
“You take away everything that people had problems with — procedure, tax cuts and everything else,” the aide said. “It’s a ‘Hail Mary’ pass, but could it work? Yes.”
Stachelberg also said the standalone bill would have a better chance because Republicans wouldn’t be able to say they were being offered an unfair deal for amendments on the larger defense bill.
“We can argue they got that or not with the deal that was offered, but they didn’t feel like they got that,” Stachelberg said. “The process arguments with respect to repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ fall away when you strip out the context of the defense authorization bill.”
As attention remains focused on whether sufficient support exists in the Senate to pass the bill, action is underway in the House to act first to make repeal efforts less complicated in the upper chamber.
On Tuesday, Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Pa.) introduced companion legislation in the U.S. House. Drew Hammill, spokesperson for U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), said a vote on the bill will take place on Wednesday.
The plan was to have a vote in the House and to send the legislation to the Senate as a “privileged” bill, which would allow the Senate to take up the measure without having a cloture vote on the motion to proceed.
The maneuver would skip the 60 votes needed for the motion to proceed with the legislation and shave off the 30 hours of time that is normally needed after cloture is filed to vote on whether to end debate.
Still, even with this plan, the Senate would need 60 votes to proceed to final passage of the legislation.
But the timing for when the Senate would bring up the vote after the House acts remains in question.
Asked if he could offer an estimate for when the Senate would take up repeal legislation, Fred Sainz, HRC’s vice president of communications, replied, “No, my friend, nobody knows that.”
Sources have said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) intends to bring the legislation to the floor before year’s end, but when the bill would come up amid other priorities — such as the START Treaty, a nuclear arms reduction agreement — remains in question.
Jim Manley, a Reid spokesperson, said Monday there’s “nothing to announce yet” on when the bill would come to the floor and said Senate leadership is “still working on next steps for everything we have left to do.”
Some sources say the new repeal legislation could come to the floor as early as this week after the Senate resolves the extension the Bush-era tax cuts, but others say “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” would come next week to the floor after additional measures are addressed.
On Monday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said he believes the START Treaty would come up “soon after” the Senate has finished work on the tax extension plan.
“Obviously it’s unclear yet the number of hours of debate after the procedural vote today before the Senate takes up for final passage of the tax agreement,” he said. “But I think fairly soon after, the Senate will move to the debate on START ratification.”
Still, Gibbs said he thinks “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is part of the “basket of issues” that the Senate will take up before adjourning for the year.
“I think there’s no doubt that based on the votes last week, it’s clear that a majority of the Senate supports the President’s position of doing away with ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” — repealing that,” Gibbs said. “Certainly our hope is that the Senate will take this up again and it will see this done by the time the year ends.”
The Senate Democratic aide said another attempt to bring up the defense authorization bill — this time with the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” language and other provisions stripped — could come up first for a vote before the standalone repeal bill.
“My strong guess is that the defense bill will have ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ and some other sensitive provisions stricken out so that the defense bill could pass fairly easily, and then we could move on to ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ which I think has 60 votes,” the aide said.
The Comings & Goings column is about sharing the professional successes of our community. We want to recognize those landing new jobs, new clients for their business, joining boards of organizations and other achievements. Please share your successes with us at [email protected].
Congratulations to Gil Pontes III on his recent appointment to the Financial Advisory Board for the City of Wilton Manors, Fla. Upon being appointed he said, “I’m honored to join the Financial Advisory Board for the City of Wilton Manors at such an important moment for our community. In my role as Executive Director of the NextGen Chamber of Commerce, I spend much of my time focused on economic growth, fiscal sustainability, and the long-term competitiveness of emerging business leaders. I look forward to bringing that perspective to Wilton Manors — helping ensure responsible stewardship of public resources while supporting a vibrant, inclusive local economy.”
Pontes is a nonprofit executive with years of development, operations, budget, management, and strategic planning experience in 501(c)(3), 501(c)(4), and political organizations. Pontes is currently executive director of NextGen, Chamber of Commerce. NextGen Chamber’s mission is to “empower emerging business leaders by generating insights, encouraging engagement, and nurturing leadership development to shape the future economy.” Prior to that he served as managing director of The Nora Project, and director of development also at The Nora Project. He has held a number of other positions including Major Gifts Officer, Thundermist Health Center, and has worked in both real estate and banking including as Business Solutions Adviser, Ironwood Financial. For three years he was a Selectman, Town of Berkley, Mass. In that role, he managed HR and general governance for town government. There were 200+ staff and 6,500 constituents. He balanced a $20,000,000 budget annually, established an Economic Development Committee, and hired the first town administrator.
Pontes earned his bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth.
Kansas
ACLU sues Kansas over law invalidating trans residents’ IDs
A new Kansas bill requires transgender residents to have their driver’s licenses reflect their sex assigned at birth, invalidating current licenses.
Transgender people across Kansas received letters in the mail on Wednesday demanding the immediate surrender of their driver’s licenses following passage of one of the harshest transgender bathroom bans in the nation. Now the American Civil Liberties Union is filing a lawsuit to block the ban and protect transgender residents from what advocates describe as “sweeping” and “punitive” consequences.
Independent journalist Erin Reed broke the story Wednesday after lawmakers approved House Substitute for Senate Bill 244. In her reporting, Reed included a photo of the letter sent to transgender Kansans, requiring them to obtain a driver’s license that reflects their sex assigned at birth rather than the gender with which they identify.
According to the reporting, transgender Kansans must surrender their driver’s licenses and that their current credentials — regardless of expiration date — will be considered invalid upon the law’s publication. The move effectively nullifies previously issued identification documents, creating immediate uncertainty for those impacted.
House Substitute for Senate Bill 244 also stipulates that any transgender person caught driving without a valid license could face a class B misdemeanor, punishable by up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. That potential penalty adds a criminal dimension to what began as an administrative action. It also compounds the legal risks for transgender Kansans, as the state already requires county jails to house inmates according to sex assigned at birth — a policy that advocates say can place transgender detainees at heightened risk.
Beyond identification issues, SB 244 not only bans transgender people from using restrooms that match their gender identity in government buildings — including libraries, courthouses, state parks, hospitals, and interstate rest stops — with the possibility for criminal penalties, but also allows for what critics have described as a “bathroom bounty hunter” provision. The measure permits anyone who encounters a transgender person in a restroom — including potentially in private businesses — to sue them for large sums of money, dramatically expanding the scope of enforcement beyond government authorities.
The lawsuit challenging SB 244 was filed today in the District Court of Douglas County on behalf of anonymous plaintiffs Daniel Doe and Matthew Moe by the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Kansas, and Ballard Spahr LLP. The complaint argues that SB 244 violates the Kansas Constitution’s protections for personal autonomy, privacy, equality under the law, due process, and freedom of speech.
Additionally, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a temporary restraining order on behalf of the anonymous plaintiffs, arguing that the order — followed by a temporary injunction — is necessary to prevent the “irreparable harm” that would result from SB 244.
State Rep. Abi Boatman, a Wichita Democrat and the only transgender member of the Kansas Legislature, told the Kansas City Star on Wednesday that “persecution is the point.”
“This legislation is a direct attack on the dignity and humanity of transgender Kansans,” said Monica Bennett, legal director of the ACLU of Kansas. “It undermines our state’s strong constitutional protections against government overreach and persecution.”
“SB 244 is a cruel and craven threat to public safety all in the name of fostering fear, division, and paranoia,” said Harper Seldin, senior staff attorney for the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Rights Project. “The invalidation of state-issued IDs threatens to out transgender people against their will every time they apply for a job, rent an apartment, or interact with police. Taken as a whole, SB 244 is a transparent attempt to deny transgender people autonomy over their own identities and push them out of public life altogether.”
“SB 244 presents a state-sanctioned attack on transgender people aimed at silencing, dehumanizing, and alienating Kansans whose gender identity does not conform to the state legislature’s preferences,” said Heather St. Clair, a Ballard Spahr litigator working on the case. “Ballard Spahr is committed to standing with the ACLU and the plaintiffs in fighting on behalf of transgender Kansans for a remedy against the injustices presented by SB 244, and is dedicated to protecting the constitutional rights jeopardized by this new law.”
National
After layoffs at Advocate, parent company acquires ‘Them’ from Conde Nast
Top editorial staff let go last week
Former staff members at the Advocate and Out magazines revealed that parent company Equalpride laid off a number of employees late last week.
Those let go included Advocate editor-in-chief Alex Cooper, Pride.com editor-in-chief Rachel Shatto, brand partnerships manager Erin Manley, community editor Marie-Adélina de la Ferriére, and Out magazine staff writers Moises Mendez and Bernardo Sim, according to a report in Hollywood Reporter.
Cooper, who joined the company in 2021, posted to social media that, “Few people have had the privilege of leading this legendary LGBTQ+ news outlet, and I’m deeply honored to have been one of them. To my team: thank you for the last four years. You’ve been the best. For those also affected today, please let me know how I can support you.”
The Advocate’s PR firm when reached by the Blade said it no longer represents the company. Emails to the Advocate went unanswered.
Equalpride on Friday announced it acquired “Them,” a digital LGBTQ outlet founded in 2017 by Conde Nast.
“Equalpride exists to elevate, celebrate and protect LGBTQ+ storytelling at scale,” Equalpride CEO Mark Berryhill said according to Hollywood Reporter. “By combining the strengths of our brands with this respected digital platform, we’re creating a unified ecosystem that delivers even more impact for our audiences, advertisers, and community partners.”
It’s not clear if “Them” staff would take over editorial responsibilities for the Advocate and Out.
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