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Will new voices call on Obama to sign ENDA exec order?

New letter gives Dem leaders, Republicans chance to seek action

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Debbie Wasserman Schultz, DNC, Democratic National Committee, Lesbian Leadership Council, gay news, Washington Blade
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, DNC, Democratic National Committee, Lesbian Leadership Council, gay news, Washington Blade

DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz is among those who haven’t articulated support for an ENDA executive order. (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)

A new letter is being circulated among members of Congress urging President Obama to sign an executive order barring discrimination against LGBT workers, raising questions about whether pro-gay lawmakers who have previously made no explicit calls for the directive will take the opportunity to do so.

Key members of the Democratic leadership have yet to call for the executive order as have Republicans who’ve already articulated support for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, legislation that would bar workplace discrimination against LGBT people.

The letter that’s being circulated among lawmakers calls on Obama to sign the order in the wake of his declaration that 2014 will be a “Year of Action” through administrative means if Congress doesn’t act on his legislative agenda.

“As we continue to work towards final passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) with strong bipartisan support, we urge you to take action now to protect millions of workers across the country from the threat of discrimination simply because of who they are or who they love,” the letter states.

A source familiar with the letter said the opportunity to sign it would close at the end of Monday.

Although this is the first letter intended to include signatures from members of both the House and Senate, it’s not the first time lawmakers signed letters calling for the executive order. Last year, 110 House Democrats signed a letter seeking the directive and 37 senators signed a letter to that effect.

But neither of those letters included names of lawmakers in Democratic leadership or Republicans — even though many had previously articulated support for the executive order or ENDA in some capacity. The newly circulated letter presents an opportunity for those lawmakers to augment the call with powerful voices and create a bipartisan effort to push Obama to take administrative action to protect LGBT workers from discrimination.

The top members of the House Democratic Caucus — House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and Assistant House Minority Leader Jim Clyburn (D-Calif.) — each refrained from signing the House version of the letter in 2013. None of the offices for those lawmakers responded to the Washington Blade’s request to comment on whether they’d sign the letter this time around.

[UPDATE: Mariel Saez, a Hoyer spokesperson, told the Washington Blade on Monday following the initial publication of this article that the Democratic Whip “is signing onto the letter.”]

Even though she didn’t sign the letter, Pelosi has been on the record in support of the executive order since 2011, when the Blade asked her during her weekly news conference if she’d support that action. She also said Obama “of course” should sign the directive in January when speaking with The Huffington Post.

Clyburn was quoted as saying by The Huffington Post he feels “very strongly” that Obama should sign the executive order just months ago, reportedly adding “I don’t know where I would be today if the executive order had not been used to get rid of slavery.” The Blade is unaware of any public comments from Hoyer on the LGBT executive order.

At the time the 2013 letter was made public, Pelosi’s office cited a policy that she refrains from signing group letters because of her position in Democratic leadership. However, she had earlier signed her name to letters seeking action from the administration to help bi-national same-sex couples in addition to signing amicus briefs calling on federal courts to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act.

[UPDATE #2: Following publication of this article, Drew Hammill, a Pelosi spokesperson, said his boss won’t sign the letter currently being circulated, noting she rarely signs group letters, and said she’ll instead take her own course of action.

“Leader Pelosi has publicly expressed support for this executive order and will be sending her own private letter to the President on this matter,” Hammill said.]

Also conspicuously absent from the 2013 letter is Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who also serves as chair of the Democratic National Committee and is known for her support of LGBT rights. In the past week, she’s announced the DNC would form a lesbian leadership council and hired a gay operative as the DNC’s national political director.

Neither Wasserman Schultz’s congressional office in D.C. nor the DNC responded to the Blade’s request for comment on whether she’d sign the letter this time around.

In January, Wasserman Schultz told The Huffington Post she broadly supports the idea of Obama using his executive authority, but refused to say whether that principle applies to an executive order for LGBT workers.

Wasserman Schultz’s name was also absent from letters seeking support of bi-national same-sex couples. At the time one letter was signed in 2011, Wasserman Schultz told reporters during an Immigration Equality fundraiser she supported the action, but didn’t feel comfortable making demands on the administration because of her position in the DNC.

“Given that I’m the chair of the DNC, it’s a little odd for me to be asking the administration to do specific things,” Wasserman Schultz said at the time. “So I personally support it, but because I’m also the political voice of the president, asking the president to do things publicly can get a little awkward.”

On the Senate side, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) also didn’t sign his chamber’s version of the letter in 2013. His office didn’t respond to a request for comment on whether he’ll add his name this time around.

Reid has offered a nuanced position on the executive order. In February, he told The Huffington Post, “If the president decides to do it, I’d be in favor of it.”

But on either the letter signed by the House or the Senate in 2013, not a single Republican signed their name. If a single one did so this time around, it would represent the first time that a Republican lawmaker had called on Obama to sign an executive order.

None of the offices of 10 Republican senators who voted for ENDA on the Senate floor responded to a request for comment on the letter. Those are Sens. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Dean Heller (R-Nev.), Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), John McCain (R-Ariz.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.).

Despite being an original co-sponsor of ENDA, Kirk has previously spoken against an executive order prohibiting federal contractors from discriminating against LGBT workers.

“If we load executive order upon executive order, all of 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 in 2011. “That’s why the legislation is absolutely necessary.”

In the House, six Republicans co-sponsor ENDA: Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), Richard Hanna (R-N.Y.), Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.), Chris Gibson (R-N.Y.) and Jon Runyan (R-N.J.).

According to the Huffington Post, Ros-Lehtinen has said she doesn’t support the executive order. Of those six Republicans, only Dent’s office responded to the Blade’s request to comment on the letter, and the response was negative.

“Congressman Dent believes that the regular legislative process is the best way to proceed in making this critical legislation outlawing workplace discrimination the law of the land,” said Dent spokesperson Shawn Millan.

Gregory Angelo, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, said he doesn’t know whether Republicans will sign the letter, but hopes to see some GOP names calling for the executive order.

“I’m not going to engage in speculation, but with declared GOP support for ENDA among House members of both the House and Senate, I would hope to see some Republican representation on any letter holding the president accountable to a promise he made to Americans six years ago,” Angelo said.

Neither the LGBT Equality Caucus, which is handling circulation of the letter in the House, nor the office of ENDA’s chief sponsor in the Senate Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), which is handling it in the Senate, responded to the Blade’s request for comment over the weekend about expected signers of the letter.

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Israel

Activist recalls experience in Tel Aviv after Israel-Iran war began

Marty Rouse was part of Jewish Federations of North America Pride mission

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Marty Rouse, second from left, at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. (Photo courtesy of Marty Rouse)

A long-time activist who was in Israel last month when its war with Iran began has returned to D.C.

Marty Rouse traveled to Israel on June 6 with the Jewish Federations of North America. The 5-day mission ended the night before the annual Tel Aviv Pride parade was scheduled to take place.

Mission participants met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog and several LGBTQ activists in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. They visited the Western Wall, the Nova Music Festival site, and Nir Oz, a kibbutz in southern Israel that is less than a mile from the country’s border with the Gaza Strip. Mission participants also visited Sderot, a city that is roughly a mile from the Hamas-controlled enclave, a veterans rehabilitation facility, a new LGBTQ health center and the Aguda: The Association for LGBTQ Equality in Israel in Tel Aviv.

Hamas militants on Oct. 7, 2023, killed upwards of 360 partygoers and kidnapped dozens more at the music festival that was taking place at a campground near Re’im, a kibbutz that is roughly 10 miles southwest of Nir Oz. The militants killed or took hostage nearly a quarter of Nir Oz’s residents. They also took control of Sderot’s police station.

A burned out home in Nir Oz, Israel. Hamas militants killed or kidnapped a quarter of the kibbutz’s residents on Oct. 7, 2023. (Photo courtesy of Marty Rouse)

Tel Aviv Deputy Mayor Chen Arieli spoke at the mission’s closing party that took place at the Sheraton Grand, a hotel that overlooks Tel Aviv’s beachfront, on June 12.

Rouse and other mission participants planned to stay in Tel Aviv for the Pride parade, which was scheduled to take place the following day. He and Gordie Nathan, another mission participant who lives in Palm Springs, Calif., had checked into a nearby hotel that was less expensive.

“We said our farewells,” recalled Rouse when he spoke with the Washington Blade in D.C. on June 24. “We went to our hotels, and we get the warning, and then all hell broke loose.”

Israel early on June 13 launched airstrikes against Iran that targeted the country’s nuclear and military facilities.

Rouse said mission organizers told him and other participants who remained in Tel Aviv to meet at the Sheraton Grand for breakfast and dinner — Israel’s airspace was closed in anticipation of an Iranian counterattack, and authorities cancelled the Pride parade.

He said he went to bomb shelters at least twice a night for three nights.

Israel’s Home Front Command during the war typically issued warnings about 10 minutes ahead of an anticipated Iranian missile attack. Sirens then sounded 90 seconds before an expected strike.

Rouse and Nathan walked to the Sheraton Grand on June 13 when the Home Front Command issued a 10-minute warning. They reached the hotel in a couple of minutes, and staff directed them to the bomb shelter.

“You know to walk slowly, everything’s fine,” recalled Rouse. “You get 10 minutes, so everything was fine when the alarm goes off.”

Rouse described the Sheraton Grand shelter as “well lit” with WiFi, a television, and air conditioning. He was watching an Israeli television station’s live coverage of the Iranian missile attack when he saw one hit an apartment building in the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Gan.

A 74-year-old woman died and her boyfriend was seriously injured.

“I go over to look at the TV, just to watch,” recalled Rouse. “All of a sudden, you watch, and you see one bomb go and land and explode in Tel Aviv on TV. It landed and blew up.”

“I was like, okay, this is real, and so that was scary,” he added.

Rouse said the bomb shelter in the hotel where he and Nathan were staying after the mission ended was far less comfortable.

“It was dark. It was humid. It was hot. It was very uncomfortable,” said Rouse. “You really felt alone.”

People in a bomb shelter in Tel Aviv, Israel, watch an Iranian missile attack on Israeli television on June 13, 2025. (Photo courtesy of Marty Rouse)

Rouse and nearly everyone else on the mission who were in Tel Aviv when the war began left Israel on June 15. They boarded buses that took them to the Jordanian capital of Amman, which is a roughly 2 1/2-hour drive from Tel Aviv through the West Bank.

Rouse described the trip as “like a field trip” until they drove across the Jordan River and arrived at the Jordanian border crossing.

“You walk into this room, and instead of being in a well air-conditioned airport, you’re in this hot, humid, small place in the middle of the desert, packed with people, and those big, large, loud fans and pictures of military people on the walls,” he said. “It was almost like a Casablanca kind of feeling.”

Rouse said Jordanian authorities brought mission participants through customs in groups of 10. A Jewish Federations of North America liaison from Amman who previously worked as a tour guide for A Wider Bridge — a group that “advocates for justice, counters LGBTQphobia, and fights antisemitism and other forms of hatred” — went “behind closed doors” to ensure everyone was able to enter the country.

“It took a really long time,” Rouse told the Blade.

The border between Israel and Jordan near the West Bank city of Jericho on June 15, 2025. (Photo courtesy of Marty Rouse)

Mission participants arrived in Amman a short time later. They checked into their hotel and then had dinner at a restaurant.

“Now we feel like we’re safe and we’re in Amman,” recalled Rouse. “We’re sitting outside having a beautiful dinner.”

Iranian missiles passed over Amman shortly after Rouse and the other mission participants had begun to eat their dessert. They went inside the restaurant, and waited a few minutes before they boarded busses that brought them back to their hotel.

“No one was openly freaking out, which I was surprised by,” said Rouse.

The group was scheduled to fly from Amman to Cairo at 11 p.m. local time (4 p.m. ET) on June 16. They visited Jerash, an ancient city north of Amman, before their flight left Jordan.

“[The Jerash trip] actually took our minds off of everything,” said Rouse.

A Jewish Federations of North America contact met Rouse and the other mission participants at Cairo’s airport once their flight landed. Rouse arrived at JFK Airport in New York on June 17.

Trump-announced ceasefire ended 12-day war

President Donald Trump on June 23 announced a ceasefire that ended the 12-day war.

The U.S. three days earlier launched airstrikes that struck three Iranian nuclear sites. The ceasefire took effect hours after Iran launched missiles at a U.S. military base in Qatar.

Iran said the war killed more than 900 people in the country.

The Associated Press notes Iranian missiles killed 28 people in Israel. One of them destroyed Tel Aviv’s last gay bar on June 16.

The war took place less than two years after Oct. 7.

The Israeli government says Hamas militants on Oct. 7, 2023, killed roughly 1,200 people on that day when it launched its surprise attack on the country. The militants also kidnapped more than 200 people.

The Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry says Israeli forces have killed nearly 55,000 people in the enclave since Oct. 7. Karim Khan, the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor, has said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who the IDF killed last October, are among those who have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza and Israel.

Destroyed homes in the outskirts of Khan Younis, Gaza, in January 2024. (Courtesy photo)

Rouse upon his return to the U.S. said he “was never as aware of the comfort of another human being than I was during that time.” Rouse affectionately called Nathan his “bomb shelter boyfriend” and even questioned the way he reacted to the missile alerts.

“He’s sitting on the edge of the bed and he goes, okay, I’m going to put on my socks and my shoes, and I say, really? You’re going to put on your socks,” Rouse told the Blade. “The fact that I was nervous, that putting on socks might have changed the direction of our lives, to me was like I can’t believe I said that to him.”

Rouse quickly added Nathan helped him remain calm.

“If I was by myself, those nights would have been long enough,” said Rouse. “It’s a totally different feeling to be with another human that you know than to be by yourself.”

From left: Gordie Nathan and Marty Rouse in Tel Aviv, Israel. (Photo courtesy of Marty Rouse)

Rouse also praised the Jewish Federations of North America.

“JFNA really sprung into action and started to figure out all options to get us all safely home,” said Rouse. “It was all about logistics. Staff worked around the clock identifying and then mobilizing to get us back to the states. It was a great team effort and I know I speak for everyone in expressing our deep appreciation for their dedication to getting us safely home.”

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Congress

Congress passes ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ with massive cuts to health insurance coverage

Roughly 1.8 million LGBTQ Americans rely on Medicaid

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U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

The “Big, Beautiful Bill” heads to President Donald Trump’s desk following the vote by the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives Thursday, which saw two nays from GOP members and unified opposition from the entire Democratic caucus.

To partially offset the cost of tax breaks that disproportionately favor the wealthy, the bill contains massive cuts to Medicaid and social safety net programs like food assistance for the poor while adding a projected $3.3 billion to the deficit.

Policy wise, the signature legislation of Trump’s second term rolls back clean energy tax credits passed under the Biden-Harris administration while beefing up funding for defense and border security.

Roughly 13 percent of LGBTQ adults in the U.S., about 1.8 million people, rely on Medicaid as their primary health insurer, compared to seven percent of non-LGBTQ adults, according to the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute think tank on sexual orientation and gender identities.

In total, the Congressional Budget Office estimates the cuts will cause more than 10 million Americans to lose their coverage under Medicaid and anywhere from three to five million to lose their care under Affordable Care Act marketplace plans.

A number of Republicans in the House and Senate opposed the bill reasoning that they might face political consequences for taking away access to healthcare for, particularly, low-income Americans who rely on Medicaid. Poorer voters flocked to Trump in last year’s presidential election, exit polls show.

A provision that would have blocked the use of federal funds to reimburse medical care for transgender youth was blocked by the Senate Parliamentarian and ultimately struck from the legislation — reportedly after the first trans member of Congress, U.S. Rep. Sarah McBride (D-Del.) and the first lesbian U.S. senator, Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), shored up unified opposition to the proposal among Congressional Democrats.

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U.S. Supreme Court

Supreme Court to consider bans on trans athletes in school sports

27 states have passed laws limiting participation in athletics programs

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U.S. Supreme Court (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to hear two cases involving transgender youth challenging bans prohibiting them from participating in school sports.

In Little v. Hecox, plaintiffs represented by the ACLU, Legal Voice, and the law firm Cooley are challenging Idaho’s 2020 ban, which requires sex testing to adjudicate questions of an athlete’s eligibility.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals described the process in a 2023 decision halting the policy’s enforcement pending an outcome in the litigation. The “sex dispute verification process, whereby any individual can ‘dispute’ the sex of any female student athlete in the state of Idaho,” the court wrote, would “require her to undergo intrusive medical procedures to verify her sex, including gynecological exams.”

In West Virginia v. B.P.J., Lambda Legal, the ACLU, the ACLU of West Virginia, and Cooley are representing a trans middle school student challenging the Mountain State’s 2021 ban on trans athletes.

The plaintiff was participating in cross country when the law was passed, taking puberty blockers that would have significantly reduced the chances that she could have a physiological advantage over cisgender peers.

“Like any other educational program, school athletic programs should be accessible for everyone regardless of their sex or transgender status,” said Joshua Block, senior counsel for the ACLU’s LGBTQ and HIV Project. “Trans kids play sports for the same reasons their peers do — to learn perseverance, dedication, teamwork, and to simply have fun with their friends,” Block said.

He added, “Categorically excluding kids from school sports just because they are transgender will only make our schools less safe and more hurtful places for all youth. We believe the lower courts were right to block these discriminatory laws, and we will continue to defend the freedom of all kids to play.”

“Our client just wants to play sports with her friends and peers,” said Lambda Legal Senior Counsel Tara Borelli. “Everyone understands the value of participating in team athletics, for fitness, leadership, socialization, and myriad other benefits.”

Borelli continued, “The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit last April issued a thoughtful and thorough ruling allowing B.P.J. to continue participating in track events. That well-reasoned decision should stand the test of time, and we stand ready to defend it.”

Shortly after taking control of both legislative chambers, Republican members of Congress tried — unsuccessfully — to pass a national ban like those now enforced in 27 states since 2020.

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