News
DNC chair discouraged support for ENDA directive: sources
Wasserman Schultz’s office calls allegation a ‘bald-faced lie’
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 gay Democratic activist claims that Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) has discouraged House members from asking President Obama to take administrative action to protect LGBT workers, an assertion her office calls a “bald-faced lie.”
Paul Yandura, political director for gay philanthropist Jonathan Lewis, made the allegation when speaking with the Washington Blade from his home in West Virginia on Thursday regarding a 2013 missive that was circulated among House members by Reps. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) and Lois Capps (D-Calif.).
“I was told personally by two members that she was tamping down on public calls for the president to make good on his promise — this was last year when the issue was really getting hot,” Yandura said. “She is most likely doing the same still.”
Yandura’s allegation comes as lawmakers — led by the LGBT Equality Caucus and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) — are circulating a new missive among members of Congress calling on Obama to sign an executive order barring federal contractors from engaging in anti-LGBT workplace discrimination.
Two sources familiar with the 2013 letter told the Washington Blade that Wasserman Schultz discouraged members of Congress from signing it, but Yandura was the only source willing to go on the record. The other source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Wasserman Schultz, who represents Florida’s 23rd congressional district in the U.S. House, dissuaded Democrats from signing the letter in private conversations on the House floor.
Although these sources said Wasserman Schultz may be engaging in the same tactic for the letter currently being circulated, no one has made the same claim to the Blade about the upcoming letter. As the Blade reported this week, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) has already pledged to sign it.
Yandura said he wouldn’t disclose the names of the House members who told him Wasserman Schultz was discouraging support for the 2013 letter because he didn’t want to “rat them out.”
“I’m sure she’ll come with something that sounds like a good excuse, but it’s about time,” Yandura said. “It’s time that she not only signs it, but tells people that they should publicly, and that it’s OK and that there’s no pressure not to sign it.”
Mara Sloan, a Wasserman Schultz spokesperson, disputed the allegations made by Yandura, saying any assertion that she discouraged members from signing the letter “is a bald-faced lie.”
“The congresswoman believes the most effective way to ensure equal rights for LGBT Americans in the workplace is through passing comprehensive non-discrimination legislation,” Sloan said. “The congresswoman regularly speaks to the administration about issues important to the LGBT community, and will continue to be a fierce advocate for full equality.”
Sloan didn’t immediately respond to a follow-up email about whether that response means Wasserman Schultz won’t sign the group letter currently being circulated among House members calling for the LGBT executive order. The response is along the lines of responses to requests for comment about the order by the White House, which consistently redirects attention to the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.
Despite her record of support for the LGBT community, Wasserman Schultz has never explicitly called on Obama to sign an executive order barring LGBT discrimination among federal contractors. Asked about the issue in January by The Huffington Post, Wasserman Schultz said she supports the idea of Obama using his executive authority in “as broad a way as he can to ensure that we can move this country forward.”
Yandura said he thinks Wasserman Schultz refuses to express support for the executive order and has discouraged House members from speaking out in favor of it for political reasons.
“I think she doesn’t want to embarrass the president, and still doesn’t want to embarrass the president, because it is an embarrassment that he still hasn’t done it,” Yandura said. “We’re now coming down to the end of the second term, and if they don’t get moving on it, it’ll never even get implemented.”
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has refused to bring ENDA to the floor for a vote; the Senate passed a version last year.
Yandura said he heard from House members about Wasserman Schultz because he was part of the effort to gather signatures for the 2013 letter. It ultimately was signed by 110 House Democrats. A separate letter to the same effect was signed by 37 Senate Democrats.
At the time, Yandura said he didn’t speak to the media about what he heard, but urged other groups working on the letter — Freedom to Work and most likely GetEQUAL — to address the situation with Wasserman Schultz. Freedom to Work didn’t immediately respond to a request to comment.
Heather Cronk, managing director for GetEQUAL, said she couldn’t corroborate allegations that Wasserman Schultz was actively discouraging House members from signing the letter.
“I actually can’t corroborate that,” Cronk said. “I’ve heard that she wasn’t a fan of the Executive Order, but I don’t have any evidence that she actively worked against it.”
Fred Sainz, vice president of communications for the Human Rights Campaign, said he hasn’t heard anything about Wasserman Schultz discouraging members from the signing the letter, even though his group was active in gathering signatures.
Yandura said he didn’t contact HRC about about Wasserman Schultz “probably because I don’t see them as good accountability enforcers for the president or Dems.”
The offices of Capps and Pallone, who were responsible for gathering signatures for the House letter, didn’t immediately respond with information about whether they had heard anything about Wasserman Schultz discouraging support for it.
Yandura has a history of making inflammatory statements against the DNC for not undertaking sufficient efforts on behalf on LGBT rights. In 2004, he landed his partner Donald Hitchcock, then the DNC’s LGBT liaison, in hot water by publicly asserting that the Democratic Party wasn’t doing enough to combat the multitude of anti-gay marriage amendments on the ballot that year.
Yandura’s boss has contributed to LGBT organizations such as Freedom to Work and GetEQUAL. Last year, Lewis announced that he would no longer donate to the Democratic Party after Senate Democrats excluded same-sex bi-national couples from immigration reform legislation (which was later remedied by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision against the Defense of Marriage Act) and President Obama’s decision to continue to withhold an executive order barring LGBT discrimination.
Invoking the assertion from LGBT advocates that the executive order is a 2008 campaign promise from then-candidate Obama, Yandura said the best way to convince Obama to pen his name to the directive is increased pressure.
“I think that if the pressure could get built again, we might be able to shame him into doing it,” Yandura said. “We’ve waited for him to do the right thing. Now, I don’t know what it will take other than what it took to get him to do other things — and that is causing a shitstorm, getting up in his face and demanding it get done.”
National
HIV/AIDS group NMAC is ‘destabilized’ and in financial crisis: sources
Organization disputes allegations of mismanagement by new CEO
A statement sent to the Washington Blade by an anonymous source claiming to be a current staff member at NMAC, formerly known as the National Minority AIDS Council, alleges that the prominent HIV/AIDS advocacy organization is facing “a rapid and systemic collapse of leadership, governance, and ethical standards.”
The three-page detailed statement sent on April 4 by someone identifying himself only as “John Doe” includes multiple specific allegations that NMAC CEO Harold Phillips, who began his position in October 2025, “has destabilized the organization at every level,” including hiring nine new high-level appointees with salaries of $220,000 each who are performing “duplicative and unjustifiable roles.”
The Blade was able to corroborate some of the allegations by talking to two other knowledgable sources who spoke on condition of anonymity. Those sources said they had received the John Doe statement and believed many, if not most, of its allegations were accurate.
With a total staff of about 30 to 35 employees, the John Doe statement claims the high salaries of the nine new staff members have added to financial problems NMAC has been facing in recent years. It says that at least two NMAC staffers who raised concerns about Phillips’s actions were terminated on grounds of insubordination.
One of the two anonymous sources who spoke to the Blade said one of the dismissed staff members was considering filing a lawsuit against NMAC in response to the firing.
“An external firm was recently brought in to assess the organizational health,” the John Doe statement to the Blade says. “The findings were staggering — more than 50% of staff reported they are actively seeking employment elsewhere,” it says.
The Blade sent the John Doe statement to NMAC this week and asked for a response to the allegations.
NMAC spokesperson Jennifer Moore Phillips, who serves as chief strategy officer and who is not related to Harold Phillips, sent the Blade a short statement calling the John Doe allegations “false and purposefully misleading,” but which did not comment on each of the specific allegations.
“A recent anonymous letter containing unfounded allegations about NMAC makes claims that are simply false and purposefully misleading,” the NMAC statement says. “Evidenced by our new strategic plan and recent successful Biomedical HIV Prevention Summit in Chicago, NMAC’s new leadership is laser focused on delivering on our mission serving the HIV community with renewed energy and vision,” the statement concludes.
The Biomedical HIV Prevention Summit referred to in the statement, which took place in Chicago April 8-10 of this year, is one of the two largest HIV/AIDS related conferences that NMAC organizes each year. Jennifer Phillips said more than 1,400 people attended the event.
The largest NMAC event, the United States Conference on HIV/AIDS, the most recent of which was held in D.C. Sept. 4-7, drew more than 2,400 participants and was hailed by AIDS activists as a highly successful gathering of a diverse group of experts seeking to push for the end to the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
One of the keynote speakers at that conference was Paul Kawata, who served as executive director and CEO of NMAC for 36 years and who delivered his farewell address at the conference following the announcement that he would retire on Oct. 7, 2025.
Many of the conference speakers praised Kawata, who became NMAC’s leader two years after its founding in 1987, as the leading force behind its growth and evolution into one of the nation’s leading HIV/AIDS advocacy organizations with a special outreach to people of color.
It was at that time that Harold Phillips, who served as director of the White House Office of AIDS Policy under then-President Joe Biden and who later joined NMAC as deputy director before the NMAC board named him Kawata’s successor as CEO, emerged as NMAC’s next leader.
“The Board has exuberantly elected Harold Phillips as our new CEO,” said Lance Toma, chair of the NMAC Board of Directors at the time Phillips’s appointment was announced. “In this unprecedented moment, there is no one more strategically positioned and experienced to lead our movement through what we know will be some of the most tumultuous and complicated times ahead,” the statement said.
The John Doe statement raising questions about Phillips’s actions and leadership says NMAC staff members formally appealed to the board of directors to intervene.
“The Board has remained silent, while Harold arrogantly told the staff that ‘the board has my back,’” the statement says.
The Blade has also attempted to reach out to Kawata by email for comment on how he feels NMAC is doing six months after his retirement. As of April 14, Kawata had not responded to the Blade’s inquiry.
According to the John Doe statement, NMAC officials have recently “sought external financial rescue,” including a visit by an NMAC official to California to request assistance from the pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences. “Without such intervention, layoffs seem imminent,” the statement says.
“This is not a functioning nonprofit,” the John Doe statement concludes. “It is an organization in crisis – bleeding resources, hemorrhaging staff, and operating without transparency, accountability, or governance,” it says, adding, “The communities NMAC serves, the donors who fund its mission, and the public at large deserve to know what is happening behind closed doors.”
By contrast, the NMAC website describes the organization as a highly functioning nonprofit continuing to lead the fight against HIV/AIDS.
“Launched in 1987 during the early years of the HIV/AIDS crisis in the United States, NMAC is a national HIV organization that offers capacity building, leadership development, policy education, and public engagement to end the HIV epidemic among communities most impacted in the United States,” a statement on the NMAC website says.
“In 2026, we mark 45 years of the HIV movement,” the statement adds. “NMAC continues to pivot to center the needs of people of color impacted by HIV by responding to political challenges that threaten federal funding and programs that have provided an essential survival safety net,” it says. “Simultaneously, as HIV treatment allows people to age with HIV, our whole-person approach extends to achieving optimal quality of life beyond attaining viral suppression.”
In its most recent action, NMAC issued a detailed press release on April 14 criticizing President Donald Trump’s proposed fiscal year 2027 budget provisions that call for cutting more than $1.5 billion in HIV prevention, substance use, housing and other programs. The release provides details on how the cuts would negatively impact important HIV prevention programs and urges Congress to reject the proposed cuts.
Senegal
Senegalese court issues first conviction under new anti-LGBTQ law
Man sentenced to six years in prison on April 10
A Senegalese court has issued the first conviction under a new law that further criminalizes consensual same-sex sexual relations.
The Associated Press notes the court in Pikine-Guédiawaye, a suburb of Dakar, the Senegalese capital, on April 10 convicted a 24-year-old man of committing “acts against nature and public indecency” and sentenced him to six years in prison.
Authorities arrested the man, who Senegalese media reports identified as Mbaye Diouf, earlier this month. The court also fined him 2 million CFA ($3,591.04).
Lawmakers in the African country on March 11 nearly unanimously passed the measure that increases the penalty for anyone convicted of engaging in consensual same-sex sexual relations from one to five years in prison to five to 10 years. The bill that Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko introduced also prohibits the “promotion” or “financing” of homosexuality in Senegal.
MassResistance, an anti-LGBTQ group based in the U.S., reportedly worked with Senegalese groups to advance the bill that President Bassirou Diomaye Faye signed on March 31.
“This prison sentence is unlawful under international law,” said Human Rights Watch on Wednesday. “Senegal is bound by treaty obligations that protect every person’s right to dignity, privacy, and equality.”
Maryland
Evan Glass is leaning on his record. Is that enough for Montgomery County’s top job?
Gay county executive candidate pushing for equitable pay, safer streets, and cleaner environment
By TALIA RICHMAN | During a meet-and-greet at Poolesville Memorial United Methodist Church, Evan Glass got his loudest applause of the night with a plan he acknowledged was decidedly unsexy.
“Day one, I’ll hire a director of permitting services,” the county executive candidate said.
Doing so, he added, is a step toward easing the regulatory burdens that can stifle small businesses in Montgomery County.
The only problem? At least one of his fiercest competitors is making a similar pledge.
The rest of this article can be read on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
HIV/AIDS group NMAC is ‘destabilized’ and in financial crisis: sources
Madonna announces release date for new album
Senegalese court issues first conviction under new anti-LGBTQ law
Evan Glass is leaning on his record. Is that enough for Montgomery County’s top job?
D.C. bar, LGBTQ+ Community Center to mark Lesbian Visibility Week
An effort to increase the number of psychiatrists of color
Comings & Goings
Trump budget targets ‘gender extremism’
Minimal version of ‘Streetcar Named Desire’ heading to Dupont Underground
