An Indiana prosecutor has declined to file criminal charges against a woman who made a false child welfare complaint against Pete Buttigieg.

Buttigieg, the former transportation secretary in the Biden-Harris administration, was accused in June of posing a threat to his children via an anonymous call to police that resulted in him being temporarily separated from his four-year-old twins.

Marshall County Prosecuting Attorney E. Nelson Chipman Jr. opted not to pursue charges against the Alabama woman who filed the false child welfare claim against the Democratic political figure while she was in Marshall County.

According to ABC 57, the television station in South Bend that published a letter from Michigan State Police to Indiana State Police, the 50-year-old woman, identified only as TJ of Alabama, was responsible for the “brief and intrusive investigation” into Buttigieg and his family.

In the letter to Indiana State Police, Michigan State Police described TJ’s documented alcoholism and other chemical dependencies, as well as hallucinations and delusional thinking. The prosecutor also noted that TJ has self-identified as God and claims to hear voices only she can hear.

The letter from Michigan State Police to Indiana State Police states:

“Your investigation reveals that TJ, 50 years old, has a documented history of alcohol abuse and has experienced numerous treatment facilities and programs for alcoholism and other chemical dependency over the years. Further, TJ has a long history of mental illness, manifested by hallucinations and delusional thinking which includes frequently responding to voices only she hears and grandiose ideation including self-identifying as God. She frequently reports she has enjoyed an evening meal with Barack and Michele Obama.

TJ is from Alabama. During her relatively short stay here, TJ was able to generate three separate police encounters that resulted in reports, one of which resulted in TJ’s arrest for domestic battery. I note her BAC in that case was reported at .323. I also note one of the three early reports was based upon TJ’s claim of herself being a victim of sexual abuse at the age of 3 by her mother some 47 years prior. Her explanation for such a delayed report was incoherent.

As you found out, TJ returned to Alabama and took up residence in a treatment facility only to be soon evicted for a rule violation. She currently resides in a half-way house near Alabama, with very limited mental health treatment options available. I note TJ’s abusive and harassing attitude has resulted in restricting only somewhat her access to a telephone, and that she continues to have access to computers at the facility. Obviously she may still have the ability to file additional complaints. No doubt a regrettable situation.

In light of the totality of circumstances, I am unable to conclude that TJ is capable of forming the requisite intent to support a criminal conviction for this offense. Accordingly, this office will not be filing a criminal case in this matter.

Thank you, as always, for a thorough investigation and cogent report.

Stay safe.

Best regards,

E. Nelson Chipman, Jr.

Marshall County Prosecuting Attorney”

When the situation first arose in June, Buttigieg opened up about the experience via his Substack, where he described the situation as one of the worst things that has ever happened to his family — one that resulted in him being separated from his twins, Joseph August “Gus” and Penelope Rose, for their safety.

“The caller said that he had spoken to a woman who claimed to have met me at a conference several years ago in Alabama, where she said I told her that I had committed unspeakable violent crimes, and the caller believed my children were still at risk,” Buttigieg wrote in a post he titled “A Terrible Thing Happened to My Family.” “I am a reasonable man. I try to keep as calm and low-key as possible. But I cannot describe the mix of rage and sadness that I feel at the idea that someone brought our children into this.”

A Buttigieg spokesman declined to comment on the prosecutor’s decision not to pursue charges, but did tell the Washington Post in a statement: “This has been a painful and infuriating situation for the family. They are in touch with Michigan authorities, seeking answers and accountability for what happened.”

In response to the story Buttigieg shared on his Substack, Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, released the following statement:

“I know how I would feel if someone tried to come between me and my kids. This is truly bottom-of-the-barrel stuff. It takes an awful, hateful person to question someone’s fitness as a parent just because of who they are, who they love, or in Sec. Buttigieg’s case, perhaps even who he speaks out against politically. We’re thinking of Pete, Chasten, and their whole family in this moment — and we aren’t resting until all LGBTQ+ families have the kind of safety and justice every one of us deserves.”

The Washington Blade reached out to Michigan State Police after the story initially broke to ask if any disciplinary action would be imposed on the woman who made the false report, but was told to file a FOIA request to view the full report. After filing a FOIA request, the Blade was denied access to any additional information.

Many in the LGBTQ community in the D.C. area and throughout the country were expected to join friends, co-workers, and family members this week in commemorating the 25^th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the New York World Trade Center’s Twin Towers and on the Pentagon just outside D.C. as well as the jetliner hijacking that ended in a fatal crash in an open field in Shanksville, Pa.

A total of 2,996 people died in the 9/11 attacks, including 19 terrorists who hijacked four jetliners whose passengers included Americans and citizens of many other countries.

Activists involved with local and national LGBTQ advocacy organizations recall witnessing a coming together of LGBTQ people and their co-workers, neighbors, and family members to support one another during a time of unimaginable horror and grief.

Among those who lost their lives in the 9/11 terrorist attacks was American Airlines co-pilot David Charlebois, an out gay man and member of the Gay Pilots Association, who was on American Airlines Flight 77, which the terrorists crashed into the Pentagon.

Also among the terrorist victims in the 9/11 attacks was gay public relations executive and rugby enthusiast Mark Bingham of San Francisco, who was among several passengers of the hijacked United Airlines jet who reportedly stormed the cockpit to regain control of the jetliner before one of the hijackers crashed the jet into the countryside in rural Pennsylvania.

The jet had taken off from Newark, N.J. with its destination being San Francisco. Investigators learned the hijackers turned the plane around and were heading to Washington, D.C., with plans to crash it into the White House or the U.S. Capitol.

The passengers, including Bingham, who stormed the cockpit and were among the 44 passengers and crew who lost their lives in the crash are credited by investigators and family members and friends with saving the lives of hundreds of others if the hijackers succeeded in crashing into the White House or Capitol.

Among the other LGBTQ people known to have lost their lives in the 9/11 attacks was Father Mychal Judge, 68, a gay Franciscan priest who served as a Catholic chaplain for the New York City Fire Department. According to the National Catholic Reporter, Judge rushed to the scene of the World Trade Center shortly before the Twin Towers collapsed. He was fatally struck by debris falling from the south tower while giving last rites to a fallen firefighter, the Catholic publication reported. 

“He was a decent, wonderful human being,” said New York gay journalist Andy Humm, who had interviewed Judge for LGBTQ-related stories prior to the 9/11 attacks. “I saw him at many demonstrations for gay and AIDS causes, showing up in his Franciscan monk’s cassock,” Humm told the Washington Blade five years ago at the time of the 9/11 20^th anniversary. “And he was equally beloved by the fire department, there at every major fire tragedy in the city, lending moral support to firefighters,” Humm said.

Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministries, a Maryland-based LGBTQ Catholic group that advocates for LGBTQ supportive policies within the church, reported five years ago that his group was supporting an effort to call on the Catholic Church to officially recognize Fr. Judge as a saint by canonizing him. But DeBernardo told the Blade this week that those efforts failed to obtain the needed support from various Catholic entities, including the Franciscan Order of Friars Minors, of which Judge was affiliated, ending efforts to canonize Judge as a saint. 

DeBernardo has written a book about Judge’s life and legacy published in 2023 called “Mychal Judge:Take Me Where You Want Me to Go.” 

Among the other widely reported LGBTQ victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks were a gay couple from California, Daniel Brandhorst and Ronald Gamboa, and their adopted son, David, who were among those who died aboard the United Airlines flight that crashed in Pennsylvania. The Los Angeles Times reported that Brandhorst, an attorney, and Gamboa, the manager of a Santa Monica Gap store, had adopted three-year-old David when he was an infant.

For many LGBTQ residents of New York and the D.C. area, the suffering over the loss of loved ones, including same-sex partners, was heightened a short time later when they learned they were initially ineligible for local and federal programs aimed at providing financial assistance to survivors of the 9/11 attack victims because same-sex couples were not legally recognized. 

At the urging of LGBTQ rights organizations, state and local officials in the New York and the D.C. area took steps to address the initial denial of financial support for surviving same-sex partners In programs under their control. Officials with a massive federal aid program for 9/11 survivors, however, said they did not have legal authority to authorize payments to same-sex partners. 

The officials, in the administration of then-President George W. Bush, said the best they could do would be to leave it up to local authorities to determine whether state probate laws would recognize a same-sex partner as a family member for eligibility in the federal aid program for 9/11 survivors, many of whom lived in states outside the New York and D.C. area.

Nicole Nava, a spokesperson for the September 11^th Victim Compensation Fund, a federally funded program established to compensate for physical harm or death caused by the 9/11 terrorist attacks, including support for surviving family members, said she would inquire into whether same-sex surviving partners were being supported under that program in subsequent years in response to a request from the Washington Blade.

Jenny Pizer, an attorney for the LGBTQ litigation group Lambda Legal, which supported LGBTQ partner survivors of victims of the 9/11 attacks, said the information she and her organization had showed that many if not most of the LGBTQ partner survivors were unable to obtain the federal Victim Compensation Fund payment benefits that married heterosexual spouses obtained. She said she didn’t have a definitive answer on whether some LGBTQ surviving partners were compensated.

However, at least one case where an LGBTQ partner was compensated was reported by the Washington Post in a Jan. 22, 2003, news story about Peggy Neff, the lesbian partner of 18 years of Sheila Hein, 51, a civilian employee at the Pentagon, who was killed when the terrorist hijacked jetliner crashed into the Pentagon.

The Post reported that the Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund, under the leadership of its director, Kenneth Feinberg, approved an award of $557,390 for Neff in compensation for the loss of her partner. The Post story quoted a spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign as saying, “It is our sincere hope that this signals that other gay families who have suffered the loss of a loved one will be treated similarly.”    

The compensation program, which is operated by the U.S. Department of Justice, remains in operation until 2090. The Blade will report on any additional similar awards for LGBTQ surviving partners if Nava provides such information.    

Events commemorating the 25^th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks were scheduled to take place this week at memorial sites honoring the 9/11 victims located outside the Pentagon in Arlington, Va., at the site of the World Trade Center Twin Towers in New York City, and the site of the jetliner crash in Shanksville, Pa., which is operated by the U.S. National Park Service.

The U.S. Congress in 2017 and 2021 approved separate bills signed by President Donald Trump during his first term in office and President Joe Biden creating the Global War on Terrorism Memorial and its construction, to be built on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. that’s scheduled to be completed in 2028.     

The memorial, to be located near the Lincoln Memorial and Vietnam Veterans Memorial close to 23^rd Street and Constitution Avenue, N.W., is intended to honor people who served and were lost in the wars and counterterrorism operations that followed the 9/11 attacks, including U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.     

Longtime LGBTQ rights advocate Jay Fisette, who at the time of the 9/11 attacks held the elected position of chair of the Arlington County Board, which serves as the county’s governing body, was among the Arlington officials that came to the Pentagon’s grounds in Arlington to oversee efforts by firefighters to rescue Pentagon workers on the day of the attack. 

At an Oct. 7, 2001, 9/11 Day of Remembrance and Appreciation ceremony held in Arlington, Fisette expressed the views of many in the community in response to the 9/11 attacks.

“Tonight, our community gather as a family,” he told the gathering. “We gather in sorrow and in disbelief, in remembrance and appreciation,” he said. “But we come here, too, with resolve and pride. We come together as Arlingtonians who love our country, as Americans who love our country,” he said.

“Our enemies may hurt our bodies and destroy our buildings, but they will never defeat our determination to make this a world of peace and a community in which our children grow up safe and secure,” Fissette said. 

Although some of the same-sex partners of those killed in the 9/11 attacks faced obstacles in obtaining financial support through the federal 9/11 relief program, Tom Hay, the surviving partner of 14 years of American Airlines pilot David Charlebois was treated with respect and honor by American Airlines officials and colleagues at Charlebois’s funeral mass at D.C.’s St. Matthew Cathedral. 

More than a dozen uniformed company pilots and flight attendants attended the mass. And a press release issued by American Airlines mentioned Charlebois’s relationship with Hay and told how Hay stood with Charlebois when Charlebois advocated for equal rights for LGBTQ people in the airline industry through his involvement with the National Gay Pilots Association.

“David was an early member of the NGPA,” the American Airlines statement said. “His contribution helped ensure ongoing progress toward fairness and solidarity.” 

Activists in New York have said the 9/11 attacks drew attention to the need for legal protections for same-sex couples, including the need for recognition of same-sex marriage, which the U.S. Supreme Court legalized nationwide in its landmark ruling in 2015.

But LGBTQ advocates in New York pointed to the difficulties LGBTQ surviving partners faced when desperately seeking to find out if a partner had survived at the site of the World Trade Center attack where the Red Cross and other emergency relief agencies set up a station near the site of the attack. 

“Literally, gay people had to go there, turn around, go back home, and get some paperwork that spouses didn’t have to get to prove a relationship existed,” said Ross Levi, who at the time served as executive director of the New York LGBTQ advocacy group Empire State Pride Agenda.

“You were nervous and scared and sad and then you had to go through that,” Levi told the Blade in 2011 at the time of the 10-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. “And worse yet, other people turned them away, even with the paperwork, saying sorry you’re not a family according to our guidelines.”

Activists said New York City and New York State officials quickly recognized the inequities faced by same-sex partner survivors and took steps to change polices and laws to correct the situation. Among other things, New York’s then-Gov. George Pataki (R) issued an executive order in October 2001 that included surviving partners of gay and lesbian victims of the World Trade Center attacks in receiving full spousal benefits from the state’s Crime Victims Board.

In a separate development, the LGBTQ litigation group Lambda Legal, ESPA, the Human Rights Campaign, and other LGBTQ advocacy groups created the September 11 Gay & Lesbian Family Fund to provide some support to surviving same-sex partners who were ineligible for help from the federal relief fund program. 

“The terrorist attack on September 11^th is a tragedy that touched every American, impacting people and families from all walks of life,” Jonathan Lovitz, the Human Rights Campaign’s Senior Vice President for Campaigns and Communications told the Blade in a statement this week.

“As in all moments in American history, LGBTQ+ Americans were there, and feel the impact of this day,” he said. “As we remember the lives lost 25 years later, the heartbreak remains strong and the work to ensure that every person can live safe from violence in this country continues.”

A new report that Outright International released on Thursday notes 90 percent of LGBTQ and intersex rights groups around the world have lost funding since January 2025.

The New York-based global advocacy group surveyed 229 LGBTQ and intersex rights groups in 94 countries.

Forty-nine percent of the organizations that responded said they have lost more than half of their total budget since January 2025 — 75 percent of the groups said they lost more than a quarter of their total funding.

“For nearly half of the respondents, the cuts removed most of the resources that sustained the organization,” reads the report.

When asked which funders “had reduced, suspended, or withdrawn support,” more than half of the responding groups “pointed to a source tied to the United States government, including USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development), the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), and the Department of State.”

“No other funder came close,” notes the report.

‘What was initially framed as a temporary freeze has become a structural disruption’

The Trump-Vance administration froze nearly all U.S. foreign aid shortly after it took office on Jan. 20, 2025.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio in March 2025 announced 83 percent of USAID contacts had been cancelled, and the State Department would administer the remaining programs. USAID officially shut down on July 1, 2025.

Rubio issued a waiver that allowed PEPFAR and other “life-saving humanitarian assistance” programs to continue to operate during the funding freeze. The Washington Blade has previously reported PEPFAR-funded programs in Kenya and other African countries have been forced to suspend services and even shut down because of gaps in U.S. funding.

(Washington Blade video by Michael K. Lavers)

The Outright International report notes the State Department under the Trump-Vance administration “terminated the programs of the Global Equality Fund, the public-private partnership it launched in 2011 with allied governments, companies, and foundations, which distributed more than $100 million in its first decade to LGBTIQ organizations and human rights defenders in over 100 countries.” The Trump-Vance administration, among other things, has withdrawn the U.S. from the U.N. LGBTI Core Group, a group of U.N. member states that have pledged to support LGBTQ and intersex rights.

Outright International Executive Director Maria Sjödin in an op-ed the Blade published on Jan. 28, 2026, wrote the global LGBTQ and intersex rights movement since January 2025 lost more than $125 million — or 30 percent of its total annual funding.

“What was initially framed as a temporary freeze has become a structural disruption,” notes the Outright International report. “The effects have cascaded far beyond U.S. government funding: corporate, institutional, and philanthropic donors have also shifted, stalled, or quietly withdrawn, often without public scrutiny.”

“The broader environment in which LGBTIQ movements operate has continued to deteriorate — with democratic backsliding, anti-NGO legislation, rising violence, coordinated legislative attacks on trans and intersex people’s rights, and emboldened anti-rights actors filling the space left by the retreat of U.S. global leadership.”

The report contains specific examples that include:

• Iraqi lawmakers in 2024 passed a law that criminalized consensual same-sex sexual relations and transgender people. Funding cuts forced IraQueer, an Iraqi advocacy group, to stop offering safety and security trainings and workshops to activists and LGBTQ rights organizations in the country.

• An intersex-led organization in West Africa can no longer maintain office space or pay its staff.

• An Ecuadorian group that operated a community center for a decade was “forced to close” it on Feb. 1, 2026. “It has been a true loss for the LGBTIQ+ communities in our city and the country as a whole, as we were a model of self-management and resistance in one of Ecuador’s most conservative cities,” said the group in the report.

• An “LGBTIQ-led refugee organization” in Uganda “has lost the emergency relocation support that once moved people facing immediate violence to safer locations.”

• An advocacy group in Ukraine that lost funding said it was “forced to stop paying some of our specialists and reduce our hours for handling inquiries … We used to be able to respond promptly to requests and support people throughout the entire process of resolving their issues, whereas now we are forced to limit ourselves to one-time consultations or refuse assistance altogether due to a lack of resources.”

• The Tonga Leitis Association in the report said a lack of funding has forced it to reduce “the number of activities the organization can run and erodes the prevention infrastructure behind” the country’s low HIV rate.

The Outright International report notes “global LGBTIQ funding had begun to fall even before the current U.S. administration took office.”

It further cites statistics from the Human Rights Funders Network that project “rights-focused development assistance will fall by between” $1.4-$1.9 billion a year by 2026, “with movements for LGBTIQ people’s rights and gender equality among the hardest it.”

“At the same time, LGBTIQ organizations have not stood still,” reads the Outright International report. “They have continued to resist, adapt, and serve their communities under extraordinary pressure, often absorbing the costs of these funding shocks in ways that remain largely invisible.”

“This report is an effort to make those costs — and that resilience — visible,” it adds.