National
ENDA passage effort renewed with Senate introduction
Merkley backs exec order barring LGBT job bias
Sens. Jeff Merkley (left) and Mark Kirk introduced ENDA in the Senate on Thursday (Blade photo by MIchael Key)
The junior senator from Oregon introduced the Employment Non-Discrimination Act in the U.S. Senate on Thursday as he voiced support for an executive order that would bar the federal government from contracting with companies that don’t have their own workplace protections for LGBT people.
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) endorsed the idea of an executive order an as interim alternative to passing ENDA during a news conference on Capitol Hill in response to a question from the Washington Blade after he announced the Senate introduction of the legislation
“Certainly, I share the perspective that it would be tremendous to accomplish this by legislation,” Merkley said. “But I also feel that this is a conversation that is going to reverberate at a number of levels. You have counties, you have state action and certainly, I feel, it’s a legitimate possibility, and I would support the president saying that contractors who are beneficiaries of federal funds should in fact practice non-discrimination, so I would support that.”
The executive order endorsed by Merkley has been seen as an interim alternative to ENDA passage while Republicans are in control of the House and progress on the measure in the lower chamber of Congress is unlikely. The White House hasn’t said one way or the other whether Obama would be open to issuing such a directive. Last month, Gay Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) also expressed support for the executive order.
However, Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), an original co-sponsor of ENDA who was present at the conference, didn’t offer the same support for an executive order that was voiced by Merkley.
“I would just say when you have executive action without the statute, then quickly that would be wiped out by the next administration,” Kirk said. “The best way to go is a statute where you have a stable decision that can only be overturned by a subsequent act of Congress.”
Kirk also advised against an executive order because of what he said was a “tremendous of uncertainty right now” in the U.S. economy, which is still climbing its way out of recession.
“If we load executive order upon executive order, all which would be wiped out the day after the president of the other party takes power, you really haven’t advanced the ball much,” Kirk said. “That’s why the legislation is absolutely necessary.”
Merkley endorsed the executive order on the same day he introduced ENDA to the Senate, which as of the end of Thursday had 38 co-sponsors. The legislation would bar job discrimination against LGBT people in most situations in the public and private workforce.
Job discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is legal in 29 states and legal in 38 states on the basis of gender identity. More than 85 percent of Fortune 500 companies already have their own workplace protections based on sexual orientation and more than one-third on the basis of gender identity.
Merkley said passage of ENDA is necessary because the “right to work and earn a living” for all Americans — including LGBT people — is a “fundamental right.”
“It is essential to the success of an individual, it is essential to the success of a family,” Merkley said. “It’s certainly essential to the pursuit of happiness — that value that we place right up front in our Declaration of Independence — and it’s part and parcel of equality under the law.”
Kirk said his support for ENDA, which puts him in the minority among Republicans, fits his model of public service in the image of the late U.S. Senator from Illinois Everett Dirksen, whom Kirk described as a “strong national security conservative, fiscal conservative and social moderate.”
“It was Sen. Dirksen that clinched the deal on the [1964] Civil Rights Act,” Kirk said. “I see this legislation as in that tradition to make sure that our country is a country not of equal outcomes, which would be a Communist state, but of equal opportunities, and to make sure that everyone has that opportunity regardless of orientation.”
A number of LGBT advocacy groups issued a statements on Thursday praising Merkley for introducing ENDA and calling on Congress to take action to pass the legislation.
Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said ENDA passage is essential to ensure LGBT Americans have equal access to the American workplace.
“In today’s economy job security is important to all Americans, especially LGBT people who can be fired for no other reason than their sexual orientation or gender identity,” Solmonese said. “Passing ENDA is essential to ensuring that all Americans have an equal opportunity to work and contribute to this country’s economy.”
Jeff Krehely, director of the LGBT Research at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, pointed to a 2009 Out & Equal Workplace Survey that found that 44 percent of gay, lesbian, and bisexual people have said they’ve faced workplace discrimination and at least 47 percent of transgender people have made the same claim.
“ENDA will help end this discrimination by requiring workplaces to make their hiring and firing decisions based on a person’s ability to get the job done, and not irrelevant factors such as their sexual orientation or gender identity,” Krehely said.
Shin Inouye, a White House spokesperson, also reiterated President Obama’s support for passage of ENDA and noted the administration’s previous efforts in pushing for the legislation.
“The president’s support for an inclusive ENDA is well established,” Inouye said. “It’s worth noting that last Congress, when [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission] Acting Chairman Stuart Ishimaru testified on behalf of the Obama administration on ENDA before the House Education & Labor Committee, it was the first time that any administration offered its support for this legislation.”
Despite the enthusiasm behind ENDA, most Capitol Hill observers says the legislation’s prospects for passage during the 112th Congress are slim at best. Last week, Rep. Barney Frank, a gay lawmaker, introduced the House version of ENDA as he categorically said the legislation wouldn’t pass with Republicans in control of the House.
A Senate Democratic aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, was pessimistic about the chances of passing ENDA even in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
“The prospects for passing ENDA in the Senate during the 112th Congress are not great, unless there is a major push from President Obama,” the aide said. “The Senate is narrowly controlled by Democrats, who generally will support ENDA. But unless there are enough common-sense Republicans who can help bring the total to 60 votes to overcome a Republican filibuster, ENDA won’t pass the Senate.”
Despite the challenges facing ENDA passage, the notable Republican support the legislation upon introduction could be a sign of hope. Three GOP senators — Kirk, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) signed on — have signed on as original co-sponsors.
Kirk said he’s hopeful that he can find enough Republican support for the legislation to reach the 60-vote threshold necessary to end a filibuster if the legislation came to the Senate floor.
“I asked Sen. Merkley, ‘Let’s start this out very balanced with members that have reputations to be able to move legislation, and I think we’ve done that today,'” Kirk said.
R. Clarke Cooper, executive director of Log Cabin Republicans, said he talked with Kirk following ENDA’s introduction about finding sufficient Republican support to move forward with ENDA and was told “the votes are there” for passage.
“Our conversation was Senate focused, but could apply to the House as well,” Cooper said.
One possible strategy for passing ENDA in the Senate would be attaching it as an amendment to another legislative vehicle. Such a move could enhance ENDA’s chances for passage because standalone legislation could be vulnerable to hostile amendments on the Senate floor.
The anonymous Senate Democratic aide said ENDA would be fare better as an amendment on the Senate floor as opposed to standalone legislation because “any stand alone bills are tough to pass in the Senate these days.”
During the news conference, Kirk suggested that plans are in place to pass ENDA in the Senate as an amendment to another vehicle. The Illinois senator said he wants to move the legislation “as I’m now learning, hopefully by amendment.”
Following Kirk’s remark, Merkley said ENDA’s proponents have “no specific plans” to pass the legislation as an amendment to another bill at this time, but are on the lookout for potential opportunities to pass legislation that “may have trouble getting to the floor as a freestanding piece.”
Asked whether there would any candidates for legislation that would serve as vehicles for ENDA, Merkley replied, “If only I could forecast all the bills that are going to be on the floor.”
Whatever the prospects for pushing ENDA through both chambers of Congress, LGBT advocates are hoping for progress at least in the committee that holds jurisdiction over ENDA. Supporters of the legislation are already calling on Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chair Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), an original co-sponsor of the legislation, to hold a hearing on the legislation during the 112th Congress.
Tico Almeida, a civil rights litigator at Sanford, Wittels & Heisler in D.C., said a Senate hearing on ENDA would allow LGBT victims of workplace discrimination a public venue to tell their stories.
“Sen. Tom Harkin, chairman of the Senate [HELP] Committee, can and should organize an ENDA hearing during the upcoming year,” Almeida said. “He can and should call one or more transgender Americans to testify at that hearing,”
In response to calls for a hearing, Justine Sessions, a Harkin spokesperson, said is committed to working with Merkley and other co-sponsors to move the legislation forward.
Merkley said he’s spoken with Harkin about an ENDA committee hearing or markup and said he’s “working with him and committee staff about that direction.”
The Oregon senator recalled that in 2009, Harkin held the an committee hearing on ENDA in which Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez, head of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, represented the Obama administration during the hearing.
New York
Judge blocks DOJ from obtaining transgender patients’ medical records
Advocacy groups sued White House
A judge for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York has granted a request from multiple transgender people for a temporary restraining order, blocking the disclosure of plaintiffs’ and class members’ medical information to the Justice Department.
Judge Katherine Polk Failla approved the Temporary Restraining Order and Provisional Class Certification, preventing any further information from being provided to the Trump-led DOJ.
The medical data was requested through subpoenas issued by the Trump-Vance administration’s DOJ to multiple hospitals in New York City — most notably NYU Langone — which halted its Transgender Youth Health Program in May following a federal push to stop providing trans minors with gender-affirming care.
In May 2026, NYU Langone Hospitals received a subpoena from a federal grand jury in Fort Worth, Texas, demanding that the hospitals turn over the identities and sensitive health information of any patient who had received medical treatment for gender dysphoria while under the age of 18 at NYU Langone between January 2020 and May 2026.
Lambda Legal, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the New York Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit, “Coe, et al. v. Blanche, et al.,” against the Trump-Vance administration on behalf of three families with trans youth and two trans young adults who were minors when they began care, in June 2026.
The lawsuit requests a temporary restraining order blocking the DOJ from violating the patients’ constitutional privacy rights by obtaining identifying and sensitive health information as part of its investigation into unspecified health offenses. The DOJ issued subpoenas to NYU Langone and other similar healthcare institutions in New York City, including Mount Sinai, that provide or have provided gender-affirming medical care to trans minors. All plaintiffs have filed under pseudonyms to maintain their privacy and anonymity.
Multiple leaders of organizations that helped push for the restraining order provided quotes about the ongoing situation and what it means for the fight for trans children’s access to healthcare in the U.S.
“Today’s order from the court is a victory for the basic privacy of our clients and all families like theirs across New York City. It is no secret that this administration will use every lever in its power to attack transgender people and fulfill its misguided goal to ‘end’ gender-affirming medical care — care that is legal and protected in New York State. Using subpoenas to attain the identities and sensitive health information of transgender young people to effectuate such goals should send chills down the spine of every American. Our laws and our Constitution recognize that we all have a right to confidentiality about the most intimate and private information about ourselves,” said Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, senior counsel and health care strategist at Lambda Legal. “Whether a young person receives any type of medical care is a decision for that patient, their family, and their doctor, not for political appointees to decide, interfere with, or know. The government cannot abuse its powers to violate the constitutional rights of transgender young people and their families. It is an enormous relief for these families that the court has stopped them from doing so as this case proceeds.”
“We’re thankful the court has granted our emergency request to protect the privacy interests of transgender New Yorkers and their families,” said Chase Strangio, co-director of the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Rights Project. “Patients and families trust their doctors with their most intimate, private information and should trust in turn that this information will be protected from impermissible and harassing demands for disclosure from the federal government or anyone else. For the past year, the Trump administration has not only decided that it knows better than these families and their doctors what their medical needs are, but has also sought to obtain troves of sensitive information about patients in New York. We will continue to fight on behalf of these families and the fundamental liberty of all transgender New Yorkers and those who come here to seek needed medical care.”
“New York’s laws recognize that transgender youth deserve fundamental privacy protections for their sensitive medical records and unobstructed access to the care they need,” said Bobby Hodgson, deputy legal director at the New York Civil Liberties Union. “As the Trump administration tries to bully transgender youth, scare families, and intimidate healthcare providers into dropping their patients, we’re thankful the court found these tactics are likely unconstitutional and put a stop to them here in New York.”
Federal Government
Trump holds housing bill hostage to anti-trans SAVE Act
President’s SAVE Act failed in the Senate
President Donald Trump is refusing to sign a new bipartisan housing bill unless his SAVE Act is approved by the legislative branch.
The bill being prevented from being enacted into law is the “21st Century ROAD to Housing Act.” The legislation is an attempt by Congress to make buying a home in the U.S. Senate more affordable in response to various factors — including housing shortages and regulatory constraints — that have made homeownership increasingly difficult. The total number of homeowners has nearly stopped growing, with high interest rates and surging home prices pushing more Americans toward renting.
The housing bill was considered highly bipartisan, something that is rare in this Congress. The House voted to pass the bill 358-32 on Tuesday after the Senate approved the measure 85-5 a day earlier. The legislation was led by U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Tim Scott (R-S.C.) in the Senate and U.S. Reps. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and French Hill (R-Ark.) in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Some of the highlights of the legislation are aimed at increasing the supply of affordable housing while making homeownership more accessible. The bill would streamline environmental reviews and direct the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to provide guidance to communities on reforming zoning and land-use policies that can create barriers to housing development.
The legislation would also expand the definition of “manufactured housing,” making it cheaper and easier to mass-produce homes built in factories before being transported to their sites. To encourage additional development, the bill would provide grants and loans for the construction of new housing, the rehabilitation of aging properties, and the conversion of vacant buildings into residential units. It would also increase certain banks’ Public Welfare Investment cap, allowing them to direct more capital toward low-income and affordable housing projects.
In an effort to help more Americans purchase homes, the legislation would create a program to expand access to small-dollar mortgages, which are often used to finance lower-cost homes, while also seeking to improve housing opportunities for veterans. The bill would further promote homeownership by limiting the number of single-family homes that large institutional investors can own and requiring them to disclose how many such properties they control, a measure intended to prioritize American families over corporate buyers.
The bill the president wants enacted — the SAVE Act — is a restrictive and anti-transgender piece of proposed legislation.
The bill would impose a number of new limitations on voter registration across the country by amending the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 to require in-person proof of citizenship for anyone seeking to vote in U.S. elections. The bill would also limit acceptable forms of identification to documents such as a birth certificate or passport — records that the Brennan Center for Justice estimates more than 21 million Americans do not possess — effectively restricting access to the ballot. It would also ban online voter registration, DMV voter registration efforts, and mail-in voter registration.
Trump pushed for the SAVE Act to include a provision that would ban gender-affirming medical care for trans minors, even with parental consent, and prohibit trans people from participating in school or professional sports consistent with their gender identity rather than their sex assigned at birth.
Trump also pressed Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) to eliminate the filibuster so the Republican-controlled Congress could pass the SAVE Act, saying Republicans will never win another election without it.
It is expected that Congress will override the president’s veto and pass the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, as it requires a two-thirds supermajority vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate — a threshold the legislation currently exceeds.
It is not expected that the SAVE Act will pass the Senate in its current form. It passed the House, but every Democrat and four Republicans voted against it in the Senate.
New York
N.Y. governor’s race presents stark contrast on LGBTQ rights
Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul expected to face Republican Bruce Blakeman
As states across the country grapple with a rapidly changing federal landscape under President Donald Trump, governors have increasingly become the first line of defense — or enforcement — on issues ranging from healthcare and education to LGBTQ rights.
Nowhere is that more apparent than in New York, Trump’s home state, where the 2026 gubernatorial race is shaping up as a high-profile battle over the future of LGBTQ protections.
Incumbent Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul is seeking a second full term as New York’s 57th governor and the state’s first female governor. She enters the race with strong support from LGBTQ advocates and organizations, including an endorsement from the Stonewall Democrats of New York City. Earlier this year, Hochul was also endorsed by progressive leaders like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She is running alongside New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams as her lieutenant governor candidate.
Throughout her tenure, Hochul has signed a series of measures aimed at strengthening protections for LGBTQ New Yorkers, particularly transgender residents.
Among the most notable is New York’s “Trans Safe Haven Act,” which protects out-of-state trans youth, their parents, and medical providers who travel to New York to access legally protected gender-affirming care. Hochul has also signed legislation requiring health insurance plans to cover HIV prevention medications, including PrEP and Post-Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP), without out-of-pocket costs.
Additionally, Hochul signed a Long-Term Care Bill of Rights that prohibits discrimination against LGBTQ seniors and people living with HIV in long-term care facilities.
“As the birthplace of the LGBTQ+ rights movement, New York has long been at the forefront of advancing equality,” Hochul said in a statement during Pride month. “During Pride month, we celebrate New York’s vibrant LGBTQ+ community and acknowledge the importance of protecting the rights and freedoms of LGBTQ+ New Yorkers. This month and every month, we proudly stand with the LGBTQ+ community and remain committed to building a more inclusive and equitable future for all where everyone can live freely with dignity, safety, and respect.”
On the Republican side, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman has emerged as the party’s leading candidate. Blakeman is running with Madison County Sheriff Todd Hood as his lieutenant governor pick.
Blakeman, Nassau County’s 10th county executive, was first elected in 2021 after defeating Democratic incumbent Laura Curran. He previously served as a commissioner of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, a Nassau County legislator, and a Hempstead town councilman.
A longtime supporter of Trump, Blakeman appeared alongside the president during a 2024 event honoring slain NYPD Officer Jonathan Diller.
LGBTQ advocates have frequently criticized Blakeman for his positions on trans issues, particularly his opposition to trans women participating in women’s sports.
In February 2024, Blakeman signed an executive order barring women’s sports teams that include trans women from using Nassau County athletic facilities. The policy applies to youth, collegiate, and professional teams. Teams that include trans men were not affected. The order has since been halted by the New York State Appellate Division swiftly issued an injunction halting enforcement while the plaintiffs appeal the decision
Ahead of announcing the order, Blakeman repeatedly referred to trans women as “biological males” and argued they should compete on men’s or co-ed teams. LGBTQ rights groups condemned the policy, saying it discriminates against trans athletes and contributes to the marginalization of trans youth.
Trump endorsed Blakeman’s gubernatorial campaign in December 2025, shortly after U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) announced she would not seek the Republican nomination. The president made his endorsement via Truth Social that “Bruce is MAGA all the way, and has been with me from the very beginning.”
The Washington Blade contacted Blakeman’s campaign seeking comment on his LGBTQ policy priorities and views on issues including nondiscrimination protections, trans rights, and healthcare access. The campaign did not respond.
The race highlights two sharply different approaches to LGBTQ policy in a state widely regarded as the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ rights movement, home to the 1969 Stonewall uprising that helped launch the contemporary movement for LGBTQ equality.
Despite the ideological contrast, early polling suggests Hochul remains the clear favorite. Most public surveys show the incumbent holding a double-digit advantage over her potential Republican challengers, with some polls placing her lead at roughly 20 percentage points ahead of the November election.
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