National
Sigh of relief as shutdown ends
HIV service providers spared; staffers return to work
Some federal workers are troubled over accusations made by Sarah Palin and others that the U.S. Park Service is being disrespectful to veterans by denying access to monuments in Washington. (Photo by Therealbs2002; courtesy Wikimedia Commons)
UPDATE: The federal government shutdown ended Thursday and thousands of employees returned to work in D.C. and across the country. This story was posted shortly before Congress passed a bill to fund the government and avert a default:
As the federal government’s shutdown entered its third week, LGBT and AIDS advocates expressed alarm that community-based AIDS service providers in D.C. and across the nation could be forced to lay off employees and curtail services if the shutdown and its related funding reductions continued much longer.
Democratic and Republican leaders in the Senate announced a bipartisan agreement on Wednesday calling for raising the debt ceiling and ending the government shutdown. Although political observers thought there were enough votes to approve the agreement in both the Senate and the House, no one was certain whether the GOP-controlled House would pass the compromise bill initiated in the Senate.
Leonard Hirsch (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
Leonard Hirsch, president of the LGBT federal workers group Federal GLOBE, said that, like all federal workers, thousands of furloughed LGBT federal employees continued as of Wednesday to struggle without a paycheck.
The shutdown, which closed many but not all federal agencies, left more than 800,000 federal employees furloughed, according to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. With the federal government being the largest employer in the D.C. metro area, the area is said to have been affected the most by the shutdown.
“Everyone that I know in the federal workforce is very frustrated that they’re not allowed to be getting work done, that things are piling up, that their clients are not being served,” said Hirsch, who has worked at the Smithsonian Institution for 24 years.
Hirsch said he and nearly all the federal workers he knows – LGBT and straight – are especially troubled over accusations by Obama administration critics, including former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, that the U.S. Park Service is being disrespectful to veterans and other citizens by denying them access to the World War II Memorial and other monuments in Washington.
“The law is clear,” he said. “If Congress has not appropriated money you cannot work on things and do things. And so we can’t open parks. We can’t open museums and monuments because Congress has not appropriated the money.”
Added Hirsch, “I don’t know a single person at the Park Service who is happy about closing doors, and I know a lot of people at the Park Service…It’s putting the federal worker in this horrible bind to say we can’t do these things and being abused for following Congress’s direction.”
Don Blanchon (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)
Don Blanchon, executive director of Whitman-Walker Health, the D.C. area’s largest private agency providing medical and social services to people with HIV and the LGBT community, said Whitman-Walker has “weathered” the federal shutdown so far largely because it accumulated a substantial reserve fund over the past several years.
“By and large, the impact of the shutdown directly on our operations and patient care is minimal,” he told the Blade on Monday. “We’re open. We’re serving patients. And for the foreseeable future we don’t see this shutdown causing us a tremendous amount of difficulty right now,” he said.
But Blanchon noted that Whitman-Walker along with other D.C. community-based health groups serving people with HIV has been hit by D.C.’s inability to pay its Medicaid reimbursements. Under a federal law, D.C. is prohibited from spending its own money obtained through local tax revenue if Congress doesn’t approve the city’s annual budget.
With Congress deadlocked over the federal budget, under which the D.C. budget falls, the city has been unable to spend much of its own funds since the federal shutdown began on Oct. 1 at the start of the new fiscal year. Since D.C.’s budget is intertwined with the federal budget, D.C. has been impacted by the shutdown in a way that no other city or state has, a development that has infuriated D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray.
At an Oct. 11 town hall meeting Gray said the shutdown has forced the city to tap into its reserve funds to keep city agencies open and to continue city services through the end of this week or next, at which time he said the usable portion of the reserve fund would be depleted.
But Gray said the reserve fund wasn’t large enough to enable the city to cover $90 million in Medicaid reimbursement payments to the city’s private clinics and medical providers that take Medicaid patients during the previous week.
Blanchon said the delay in the Medicaid payments resulted in Whitman-Walker not receiving about $70,000 in reimbursements for its Medicaid patients.
While Whitman-Walker’s reserve fund will enable the LGBT health provider to “weather the storm” for the time being, as Blanchon put it, other community-based health providers don’t have such a financial cushion, officials with those groups have said. Some of them have already been forced to lay off employees and curtail services, including HIV-related services, the officials have said.
Ruby Corado (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)
“We’re already seeing services cut back for LGBT and Latino community clients,” said Ruby Corado, director of the LGBT community center Casa Ruby. Corado said Casa Ruby, which is funded largely by private donors, wasn’t immediately affected by the shutdown.
Ron Simmons, executive director of Us Helping Us, a D.C.-based HIV service provider that reaches out to black gay men, said his group has also managed to get buy for the past two weeks “without any noticeable impact.”
But Simmons said Us Helping Us won’t be able to operate without possible service interruptions if the federal shutdown continues indefinitely. Although his organization doesn’t have the type of reserve fund that Whitman-Walker has, Simmons said much of the group’s federal funding for the fiscal year has already been appropriated by Congress through various grants. He said the payments through those grants, including one from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have continued uninterrupted during the shutdown.
Similar to other HIV service providers in D.C. and across the nation, funding from the Ryan White federal AIDS program also had been appropriated by Congress prior to the shutdown, enabling groups receiving Ryan White grants to continue to receive the funds through the rest of the fiscal year, according to Carl Schmid, deputy director of the AIDS Institute, a national HIV/AIDS advocacy organization.
Carl Schmid (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)
“Luckily, the grants went out in April,” said Schmid in referring to the Ryan White program, which he said provides millions of dollars to AIDS groups across the country.
But Schmid cautioned that if the federal shutdown were to continue, AIDS service providers would be adversely impacted in a number of ways.
One immediate effect, he said, was federal officials who provide support for the processing of Ryan White grant applications were furloughed as soon as the shutdown began on Oct. 1.
“The new grant applications are due Oct. 31,” he said. “So what if people have questions about putting their grant applications together in the cities and states? Right now there’s no one to turn to.”
Schmid noted that most of the federal officials that administer the Obama administration’s national AIDS strategy program as well as the White House Office on AIDS Policy were also on furlough since Oct. 1.
“One or two days are one thing,” said Schmid. “But now this is going on too long and we’re definitely going to have ramifications. Let’s hope this gets solved soon.”
Michael Cole-Schwartz, a spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign, told the Blade that LGBT-related implications of the shutdown could, among other things, include a cutback in the enforcement of the federal hate crimes act that covers hate crimes targeting LGBT people.
Cole-Schwartz said the furloughing of Justice Department personnel could negatively impact enforcement of both the hate crimes law and Title IX of an existing civil rights statute that protects women and transgender people from gender-related discrimination.
State Department
Rubio mum on Hungary’s Pride ban
Lawmakers on April 30 urged secretary of state to condemn anti-LGBTQ bill, constitutional amendment
More than 20 members of Congress have urged Secretary of State Marco Rubio to publicly condemn a Hungarian law that bans Pride events.
California Congressman Mark Takano, a Democrat who co-chairs the Congressional Equality Caucus, and U.S. Rep. Bill Keating (D-Mass.), who is the ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Europe Subcommittee, spearheaded the letter that lawmakers sent to Rubio on April 30.
Hungarian lawmakers in March passed a bill that bans Pride events and allow authorities to use facial recognition technology to identify those who participate in them. MPs last month amended the Hungarian constitution to ban public LGBTQ events.
“As a NATO ally which hosts U.S. service members, we expect the Hungarian government to abide by certain values which underpin the historic U.S.-Hungary bilateral relationship,” reads the letter. “Unfortunately, this new legislation and constitutional amendment disproportionately and arbitrarily target sexual and gender minorities.”
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government over the last decade has moved to curtail LGBTQ and intersex rights in Hungary.
A law that bans legal recognition of transgender and intersex people took effect in 2020. Hungarian MPs that year also effectively banned same-sex couples from adopting children and defined marriage in the constitution as between a man and a woman.
An anti-LGBTQ propaganda law took effect in 2021. The European Commission sued Hungary, which is a member of the European Union, over it.
MPs in 2023 approved the “snitch on your gay neighbor” bill that would have allowed Hungarians to anonymously report same-sex couples who are raising children. The Budapest Metropolitan Government Office in 2023 fined Lira Konyv, the country’s second-largest bookstore chain, 12 million forints ($33,733.67), for selling copies of British author Alice Oseman’s “Heartstopper.”
Former U.S. Ambassador to Hungary David Pressman, who is gay, participated in the Budapest Pride march in 2024 and 2023. Pressman was also a vocal critic of Hungary’s anti-LGBTQ crackdown.
“Along with years of democratic backsliding in Hungary, it flies in the face of those values and the passage of this legislation deserves quick and decisive criticism and action in response by the Department of State,” reads the letter, referring to the Pride ban and constitutional amendment against public LGBTQ events. “Therefore, we strongly urge you to publicly condemn this legislation and constitutional change which targets the LGBTQ community and undermines the rights of Hungarians to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.”
U.S. Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Sarah McBride (D-Del.), Jim Costa (D-Calif.), James McGovern (D-Mass.), Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), Summer Lee (D-Pa.), Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), Julie Johnson (D-Texas), Ami Bera (D-Calif.), Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), Becca Balint (D-Vt.), Gabe Amo (D-R.I.), Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), Dina Titus (D-Nev.), Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) and Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) signed the letter alongside Takano and Keating.
A State Department spokesperson on Wednesday declined to comment.
Federal Government
HRC memo details threats to LGBTQ community in Trump budget
‘It’s a direct attack on LGBTQ+ lives’
A memo issued Monday by the Human Rights Campaign details threats to LGBTQ people from the “skinny” budget proposal issued by President Donald Trump on May 2.
HRC estimates the total cost of “funding cuts, program eliminations, and policy changes” impacting the community will exceed approximately $2.6 billion.
Matthew Rose, the organization’s senior public policy advocate, said in a statement that “This budget is more than cuts on a page—it’s a direct attack on LGBTQ+ lives.”
“Trump is taking away life-saving healthcare, support for LGBTQ-owned businesses, protections against hate crimes, and even housing help for people living with HIV,” he said. “Stripping away more than $2 billion in support sends one clear message: we don’t matter. But we’ve fought back before, and we’ll do it again—we’re not going anywhere.”
Proposed rollbacks or changes at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will target the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program, other programs related to STI prevention, viral hepatitis, and HIV, initiatives housed under the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, and research by the National Institutes of Health and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
Other agencies whose work on behalf of LGBTQ populations would be jeopardized or eliminated under Trump’s budget include the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Small Business Administration, and the U.S. Department of Education.
U.S. Supreme Court
Supreme Court allows Trump admin to enforce trans military ban
Litigation challenging the policy continues in the 9th Circuit
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed the Trump-Vance administration to enforce a ban on transgender personnel serving in the U.S. Armed Forces pending the outcome of litigation challenging the policy.
The brief order staying a March 27 preliminary injunction issued by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington notes the dissents from liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
On the first day of his second term, President Donald Trump issued an executive order requiring Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to effectuate a ban against transgender individuals, going further than efforts under his first administration — which did not target those currently serving.
The DoD’s Feb. 26 ban argued that “the medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals who have a current diagnosis or history of, or exhibit symptoms with, gender dysphoria are incompatible with the high mental and physical standards necessary for military service.”
The case challenging the Pentagon’s policy is currently on appeal before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The lead plaintiff is U.S. Navy Commander Emily Shilling, who is joined in the litigation by other current transgender members of the armed forces, one transgender person who would like to join, and a nonprofit whose members either are transgender troops or would like to be.
Lambda Legal and the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, both representing the plaintiffs, issued a statement Tuesday in response to the Supreme Court’s decision:
“Today’s Supreme Court ruling is a devastating blow to transgender servicemembers who have demonstrated their capabilities and commitment to our nation’s defense.
“By allowing this discriminatory ban to take effect while our challenge continues, the Court has temporarily sanctioned a policy that has nothing to do with military readiness and everything to do with prejudice.
“Transgender individuals meet the same standards and demonstrate the same values as all who serve. We remain steadfast in our belief that this ban violates constitutional guarantees of equal protection and will ultimately be struck down.”
U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer noted that courts must show “substantial deference” to DoD decision making on military issues.
“The Supreme Court’s decision to allow the military ban to go into effect is devastating for the thousands of qualified transgender servicemembers who have met the standards and are serving honorably, putting their lives on the line for their country every single day,” said GLAD Law Senior Director of Transgender and Queer Rights Jennifer Levi. “Today’s decision only adds to the chaos and destruction caused by this administration. It’s not the end of the case, but the havoc it will wreak is devastating and irreparable. History will confirm the weight of the injustice done today.”
“The Court has upended the lives of thousands of servicemembers without even the decency of explaining why,” said NCLR Legal Director Shannon Minter. “As a result of this decision, reached without benefit of full briefing or argument, brave troops who have dedicated their lives to the service of our country will be targeted and forced into harsh administrative separation process usually reserved for misconduct. They have proven themselves time and time again and met the same standards as every other soldier, deploying in critical positions around the globe. This is a deeply sad day for our country.”
Levi and Minter are the lead attorneys in the first two transgender military ban cases to be heard in federal court, Talbott v. Trump and Ireland v. Hegseth.
U.S. Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) issued a statement on behalf of the Congressional Equality Caucus, where he serves as chair.
“By lifting the lower court’s preliminary injunction and allowing Trump to enforce his trans troop ban as litigation continues, the Supreme Court is causing real harm to brave Americans who simply want to serve their nation in uniform.
“The difference between Donald Trump, a draft dodger, and the countless brave Americans serving their country who just happen to be trans couldn’t be starker. Let me be clear: Trump’s ban isn’t going to make our country safer—it will needlessly create gaps in critical chains of military command and actively undermine our national security.
“The Supreme Court was absolutely wrong to allow this ban to take effect. I hope that lower courts move swiftly so this ban can ultimately be struck down.”
SPARTA Pride also issued a statement:
“The Roberts Court’s decision staying the preliminary injunction will allow the Trump purge of transgender service members from the military to proceed.
“Transgender Americans have served openly, honorably, and effectively in the U.S. Armed Forces for nearly a decade. Thousands of transgender troops are currently serving, and are fully qualified for the positions in which they serve.
“Every court up to now has found that this order is unconstitutional. Nevertheless, the Roberts Court – without hearing any evidence or argument – decided to allow it to go forward. So while the case continues to be argued, thousands of trans troops will be purged from the Armed Forces.
“They will lose their jobs. They will lose their commands, their promotions, their training, pay and benefits, and time. Their units will lose key players; the mission will be disrupted. This is the very definition of irreparable harm.”
Imara Jones, CEO of TransLash Media, issued the following statement:
“The Supreme Court’s decision to uphold Trump’s ban on transgender soldiers in the military, even as the judicial process works its way through the overall question of service, signals that open discrimination against trans people is fair game across American society.
“It will allow the Trump Administration to further advance its larger goal of pushing trans people from mainstream society by discharging transgender military members who are currently serving their country, even at a time when the military has struggled recently to meet its recruiting goals.
“But even more than this, all of my reporting tells me that this is a further slide down the mountain towards authoritarianism. The hard truth is that governments with authoritarian ambitions have to separate citizens between who is worthy of protection and who’s not. Trans people are clearly in the later category. And this separation justifies the authoritarian quest for more and more power. This appears to be what we are witnessing here and targeting trans people in the military is just a means to an end.”
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