National
Barbara Walters dies at 93
Groundbreaking journalist interviewed Jazz Jennings, Ellen DeGeneres, among others
If ever there was a gold standard for American broadcast journalists the likely two top choices would be famed CBS reporter and anchor Walter Cronkite and the groundbreaking ABC News reporter and anchor Barbara Walters.
The news came late Friday that the latter, a legendary broadcast journalist had died peacefully surrounded by family and friends at her home in New York at age 93. Walters shattered the glass ceiling in her profession and became a dominant force in an industry once dominated by men. Walters is survived by her adopted daughter Jacqueline.
Without a doubt Walters likely holds a record for the shear number of interviews of the rich and famous, political leaders, as well as celebrities from every walk of life and endeavor. Walters, who won 12 Emmy awards, 11 of those while at ABC News was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1989.
In her 50-plus year career as a broadcast journalist she had earned nearly universal acclaim, respect and admiration for her work.
At ABC News as the co-anchor of the network’s extremely successful award winning “20/20,” she interviewed the people who made history in the mid 20th century into the early 21st century conducting her last interview, of then-businessman and potential presidential candidate Donald Trump, in 2015.
Walters began her national broadcast career on NBC’s “Today” show as a reporter, writer and panel member before being promoted to co-host in 1974. Her rising popularity with viewers resulted in Walters receiving more airtime, and in 1974, NBC executives promoted her to be the co-host of the program, the first woman ever to hold such a title on an American news program
Walters joined ABC News in 1976 after, becoming the first female anchor on an evening news program. Three years later, she became a co-host of “20/20,” and in 1997, she launched “The View.”
Bob Iger, the CEO of the Walt Disney Company, which is the parent company of ABC News, praised Walters as someone who broke down barriers.
“Barbara was a true legend, a pioneer not just for women in journalism but for journalism itself. She was a one-of-a-kind reporter who landed many of the most important interviews of our time, from heads of state to the biggest celebrities and sports icons. I had the pleasure of calling Barbara a colleague for more than three decades, but more importantly, I was able to call her a dear friend. She will be missed by all of us at The Walt Disney Company, and we send our deepest condolences to her daughter, Jacqueline,” Iger said in a statement Friday.
She made her final appearance as a co-host of “The View” in 2014, but remained an executive producer of the show and continued to do some interviews and specials for ABC News.
“I do not want to appear on another program or climb another mountain,” she said at the time. “I want instead to sit on a sunny field and admire the very gifted women — and OK, some men too — who will be taking my place.”
From American presidents to her famed interview with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, along the way Walters touched on the lives of diverse and dynamic cross-section of humanity.
Her face to face conversations included face-to-face conversations with folks like actors Katharine Hepburn, John Wayne, Patrick Swayze, Fred Astaire. She spoke with musicians such as Michael Jackson, Justin Bieber, Barbra Streisand and, without missing a beat, the significant political figures of her day like Henry Kissinger, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Vladimir Putin and Fidel Castro. Her interviews with Oprah Winfrey and Monica Lewinsky shot the network’s ratings audiences through the roof.
The New York Times reported in 1999 that Walters’ interview with Lewinsky, the former White House intern who was a key component in the impeachment trial of then President Bill Clinton, “attracted an average of 48.5 million viewers, and an estimated 70 million people watched all or part of the two-hour program, in about 33.2 million homes.”
Walters directly asked Lewinsky, “You showed the president your thong underwear. Where did you get the nerve? I mean — who does that?” she said. She also asked the 25-year-old: “Where was your self-respect, where was your self-esteem?”
The list of people in front of the camera with her on the “Barbara Walters Specials” was breathtaking. Yet the stories of everyday folks, their lives, and struggles were a staple of her work searching out stories that needed to be told.
For the LGBTQ community, Walters often told the stories that painted a picture that was critical in putting a human face on an oft times maligned community. Her ABC documentary on transgender children originally broadcast in 2007, introduced the world to trans girl Jazz Jennings, who was at six years of age at the time, and her hugely supportive family.
The Hollywood Reporter noted in an honest interview, Ellen DeGeneres talked to Walters about everything from her movie career to her decision to come out as a lesbian. She also opened up about her stepfather sexually abusing her and how she broke through a window one night to get away.
Walters in later years did have her share of detractors among younger journalists and writers including Alex Pareene, the former editor-in-chief of online news site Gawker and later a staff writer at The New Republic in 2019.
Pareene penned an unflattering profile of Walters on May 13, 2013, in Salon headlined “Good riddance, Barbara Walters.”
He noted: “[…] current co-host of ‘The View,’ is a national icon and a pioneer, and probably as responsible as any other living person for the ridiculous and sorry state of American television journalism. She has announced her retirement a year in advance, so that a series of aggrandizing specials can be produced celebrating her long and storied career. So let’s get things started off right, by reminding everyone how her entire public life has been an extended exercise in sycophancy and unalloyed power worship.
Pareene also took aim at her relationship with “Roy Cohn, the notorious scumbag McCarthyite mob attorney.”
Writing about the relationship between the two Pareene notes: […] “she, legendarily, pretended to be seeing (romantically) Roy Cohn, the notorious scumbag McCarthyite mob attorney who was also, notoriously, a closeted gay man (who had persecuted closeted ‘deviants’ while working with McCarthy.) Cohn was one of the slimiest and most detestable characters of the entire 20th century.
He was finally disbarred, in part for his hospital visit to a dying and incapacitated millionaire in which Cohn held up the man’s hand and had him ‘sign’ a codicil to his will naming Cohn the trustee of his estate. Despite his moral bankruptcy, Cohn remained a member of elite Washington and New York society his entire life.
Walters said she was and remained close to him because he helped her father with a legal matter when she was a girl. But this also seems to explain why they were ‘dating’ in the 1950s.”
Did Cohn have a secret ‘nice’ side? She was asked.
“I would not use the word nice,” she laughs. “He was very smart. And funny. And, at the time, seemed to know everyone in New York. He was very friendly with the cardinal, he was very friendly with the most famous columnist in New York, Walter Winchell, he had a lot of extremely powerful friends.”
Barbara Walters dies at 93 l ABC News
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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