District of Columbia
D.C. debates how to cope with crime as reform bill heads to Senate
House Democrats join GOP in voting to overturn measure
Just over three weeks after the D.C. Council overturned Mayor Muriel Bowser’s veto of a controversial criminal code reform bill that the Council had passed unanimously last November, the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives on Feb. 9 voted 250 to 173 to overturn the D.C. bill.
In a development that surprised some D.C. political observers, including LGBTQ activists, 31 House Democrats were among those joining Republicans in voting to overturn the sweeping 450-page Revised Criminal Code Act of 2022.
On the same day that it voted to overturn the crime bill, the House voted 260 to 162, with 42 House Democrats voting yes, to pass a second disapproval resolution calling for overturning a bill approved by the D.C. Council to allow non-citizens to vote in local D.C. elections.
Both bills must now go to the U.S. Senate, where Democrats have a slim majority and where just a few Democratic senators voting to overturn either of the two bills, including the crime bill, could result in passage of the disapproval measure. It would then go to President Joe Biden, who would be faced with the choice of vetoing the measures or allowing one or both of the two D.C. bills to be overturned.
The president has said he opposes both of the two disapproval resolutions in the House, but he has not said whether he would veto the disapproval measures.
Most of those who have expressed concern over the criminal code reform bill, including Bowser, D.C. Police Chief Robert Contee, and the Office of the U.S. Attorney for D.C., have said they support 95 percent of the bill’s provisions.
Supporters, including D.C. Council Chair Phil Mendelson (D-At-Large), point out that the voluminous bill was methodically developed over the past 16 years by the nonpartisan D.C. Criminal Code Reform Commission to modernize the city’s criminal code that has not been significantly changed since 1901.
Mendelson and D.C. Council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), who headed the Council committee that drafted the legislation, strongly dispute claims that the bill would result in increased crime in the city or that it would hamper efforts by police to curtail crime.
The mayor has said her opposition centers around several of the bill’s provisions that, among other things, would eliminate most mandatory minimum prison sentences, reduce maximum sentences for crimes such as burglaries, carjackings, and robberies, and allow jury trials for all misdemeanor cases in which a prison sentence is possible.
Critics say allowing a jury trial for most misdemeanor cases would overwhelm the D.C. Superior Court that they say already has too few judges to handle its criminal case load. Under the city’s 1971 Home Rule Act approved by Congress, the U.S. president appoints all D.C. court judges, and the U.S. Senate must confirm the appointments.
Supporters of the criminal code reform measure point out that it is currently drafted so it does not take effect until 2025, which they say will give the court system time to adapt to the new criminal code. But opponents, including the mayor, say that would not prevent the problems that they say the bill as currently written will bring about when it takes effect.
“This bill does not make us safer,” said Bowser in announcing her decision to veto the bill.
“While no one believes that penalties alone will solve crime and violence right now, we must be very intentional about messages that we are sending to our community, including prosecutors and judges,” the mayor said in a statement. “People, we know, are tired of violence and right now our focus must be on victims and preventing more people from becoming victims,” she said.
Bowser added that the bill would weaken what she said was an already lenient sentence for illegal gun possession by reducing the maximum sentence for carrying a pistol without a license and being a convicted felon in possession of a gun.
She has expressed strong opposition to Congress stepping in to overturn the bill, saying that it should be left up to the city to make any changes needed to improve the bill. Bowser last week submitted to the Council legislation calling for changes in the bill, including removing provisions in the current bill that would lower maximum penalties and allow jury trials for most misdemeanor cases.
Among the most outspoken critics of the criminal code revision bill has been the D.C. Police Union, whose chairperson, Gregg Pemberton, said the legislation would result in “violent crime rates exploding more than they already have.”
Most local LGBTQ organizations have not taken an official position on the bill. Capital Stonewall Democrats, the city’s largest local LGBTQ political group, has yet to take a position on the bill itself and most likely will not do so at this time, according to Monika Nemeth, the group’s recently elected president.
Nemeth said threats by Congress to overturn this and other D.C. bills are of great concern to the organization, and it reconfirms Capital Stonewall Democrats’ strong support for D.C. statehood.
Adam Savit, president of Log Cabin Republicans of D.C., the local chapter of the national LGBTQ Republican organization Log Cabin Republicans, said the local chapter also has not taken an official position on the D.C. criminal code bill. But he said in an email to the Blade that “we generally sympathize with the sentiments of the D.C. GOP,” which has come out against the legislation on grounds that it will result in a higher rate of crime in the city.
“Decreased penalties mean a decreased deterrent, and it will absolutely lead to increased criminality and further undermine the ability of the police to keep order,” Savit said in expressing his own opinion. “The way to protect LGBTQ citizens is to set credible penalties for violent crime and enforce the law,” he said.
The DC Center for the LGBT Community, which oversees its longstanding LGBTQ Anti-Violence Project, did not respond to a request by the Blade for comment on the crime bill.
The D.C. Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance, however, has taken a position in strong support of the measure.
“We applaud the D.C. Council for enacting the Revised Criminal Code Act, an important modernization of our criminal laws that is the product of over 15 years of careful deliberation,” said GLAA President Tyrone Hanley in a statement to the Blade. Hanley said the statement was approved by the GLAA board.
“We have long known that mandatory minimums do not make communities safer, but exacerbate mass incarceration,” the GLAA statement says. “The larger symbolic reductions in maximum sentences for certain crimes bring them in-line with actual practice [by judges], plus research demonstrates that the length of sentence is not an effective deterrent to most crime,” the GLAA statement continues.
“We should not give in to right-wing narratives that some wish to use to exert power over D.C. and return to ineffective and harmful approaches,” the statement concludes.
Longtime D.C. gay activist and former GLAA President Rick Rosendall has taken a similar position, saying in an email to the Blade that opposition to the bill is based on “alarmist talking points.” Rosendall pointed to the assertion by D.C. Council member Kenyan McDuffie (I-At-Large) that some provisions in the bill actually raise penalties and create new categories of crimes that make it easier for prosecutors to prove.
Another longtime LGBTQ rights advocate and Democratic Party activist Peter Rosenstein has taken a differing view. He says he fully agrees with Bowser’s decision to veto the crime bill and said the Council should not have passed the separate bill to allow non-U.S. citizen D.C. residents the right to vote in local D.C. elections.
“Lowering the maximum possible penalties for burglaries, carjackings (now at their highest) and robberies, while residents are seeing a crime wave, is irresponsible and won’t make the city safer,” Rosenstein said in a Washington Blade commentary. “If Congress takes action on these bills, the Council must accept the full blame,” he said. “While Congress shouldn’t interfere with the D.C. government (I have long advocated for budget and legislative autonomy for the District) we don’t have it yet.”
D.C. Congressional Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) has strongly criticized the House for passing the disapproval resolutions calling for overturning the crime bill and the noncitizen voting rights bill. She said she is alarmed that Republican members of the House and Senate are once again attempting to intervene and usurp the will of the democratically elected D.C. local government.
Norton noted that since Congress passed the D.C. Home Rule Act of 1971, creating the city’s elected mayor and Council – with Congress retaining the ability to make the final decision on all laws passed by the D.C. government – Congress has only used its power to overturn a D.C. law on three occasions over the past 40 years.
One of the three laws overturned by Congress was the Sexual Assault Reform Act of 1981, which called for repealing the city’s antiquated sodomy law that made it a crime for consenting same-sex adults and consenting heterosexual adult to engage in oral or anal sodomy. It took another 12 years for the Council to pass legislation repealing the D.C. sodomy law in 1993. At that time gay then-U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) played a lead role in persuading Congress not to overturn the sodomy repeal law once again.
But with states throughout the country now passing or considering anti-LGBTQ bills, including bills targeting transgender people and drag performances, the emboldened action by the U.S. House on Feb. 7 to overturn two bills passed by the D.C. Council raises the possibility that GOP lawmakers in Congress might attempt to impose anti-LGBTQ policies on the District.
Norton has pointed out that although Congress has so far overturned only three D.C. laws, it has also imposed restrictions on the city through its power to control the city’s budget and spending. Without needing approval by the Senate, the GOP-controlled House has in the past — and can at this time — add hostile provisions to the city’s annual budget bill.
In recent years, the House has used the budget process to ban D.C. funding for abortions for women in financial need and to block the city from allowing the sale of marijuana as part of D.C.’s legislation – which Congress allowed the city to pass – decriminalizing the possession of marijuana.
Most LGBTQ activists contacted by the Blade said they haven’t had a chance to read the entire 450-page Revised Criminal Code Act, but from what they have learned about the bill from media reports leads them to believe it most likely would not impact LGBTQ people any more or less than the overall D.C. population.
Some activists, however, point out that transgender women of color have been targeted for crimes in the D.C. area, including murder, in greater numbers than others in the community. And the release by D.C. police in January of the city’s data on reported hate crimes in 2022 show that similar to the past 10 years or more, LGBTQ people were targeted for hate crimes in greater numbers than other categories of victims of hate crimes such as race, ethnicity, or religion.
“I’m not certain what contributes to the uptick in some types of calls that we’ve seen or some of the crimes that we’ve seen,” said D.C. Police Chief Robert Contee in response to a question from the Blade about what, if anything, police can do to address hate crimes targeting LGBTQ people.
“But our commitment is to investigate those cases thoroughly and hold people accountable when we identify people who are responsible for those types of crimes,” Contee said. “Our LGBT community is something special, not just to Washington, D.C. but to the Metropolitan Police Department,” he said. “They have a strong relationship with our Special Liaison Branch,” he noted, which oversees the department’s LGBT Liaison Unit.
“So, we’re going to continue to do the things we need to do to make sure that those calls are coming in and people are trusting us to report these crimes to us,” Contee told the Blade. “And again, we do everything we can to investigate those crimes.”
District of Columbia
Fadi Jaber’s Middle Eastern background shapes Adams Morgan bakery
The Cakeroom is on 18th Street, N.W.
Fadi Jaber is the gay owner behind the Cakeroom’s bright pink facade on 18th Street, N.W. He combines his Middle Eastern background and American flavors to bring a nostalgic spread of desserts to Adams Morgan.
Born and raised in a U.S. compound in Saudi Arabia, Jaber first unlocked an interest in classic American desserts from his classmates.
“I was jealous that their moms would bring these delicious cupcakes to school when it was their birthdays, and my mom never made stuff like that. It was just grape leaves and hummus and very good Arabic food,” Jaber said.
After years of making boxed cake mixes in Saudi Arabia, Jaber tried a carrot cake from a friend’s wife from the U.S. He soon decided to make the recipe himself. When letting his parents sample the treat, Jaber’s mother suggested adding dates instead of carrots.
Now, Jaber sells the same date cake at the Cakeroom.
Jaber solidified his appreciation for American baked goods after a friend took him to Magnolia’s Bakery in New York. The visit inspired him to enroll in the Institute of Culinary Education.
“I just fell in love with the concept, and it was very much up my alley,” Jaber said. “I was already baking from scratch and making homemade style desserts that weren’t super chichi and elegant, but more just delicious and fun and nostalgic, and a throwback to people’s childhood.”
Upon leaving culinary school, Jaber moved to Jordan, where his parents relocated. He decided to leave his corporate job and open a bakery. According to Jaber, his father initially refuted the idea until he tried the desserts Jaber perfected in culinary school.
“He was part of the Palestinian diaspora. So, you know, given all the instability in his life having been forced out of their homes in 1948, it was really a very scary thought to add more instability by going out on your own and starting your own business,” Jaber said.
Jaber then opened Sugar Daddy’s, his first bakery, in Amman, Jordan, in 2007.
According to Jaber, the bakery was the first cupcake shop in the Middle East. He soon launched additional locations in Beirut, Lebanon, and Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
After six years, Jaber decided to return to the U.S. Jaber noted that he had “always longed” to live there, but he struggled to make his cakes a novel concept to an American audience.
“I’m kind of bringing pasta to the Italians, in a sense, where my cupcakes were very unique in Jordan, they wouldn’t be as unique in D.C.,” Faber said. “But my mom had confidence. She didn’t even bat an eye, and she was like, ‘I think you should do it.’”
Years prior, Jaber began visiting Washington while attending the College of William & Mary. Upon the move, he settled on Washington as a less competitive market than New York, citing his appreciation for the city’s international feel, architecture and nature.
After recruiting investors, Jaber opened Sugar Daddy’s in Adams Morgan in December 2013. However, upon being struck with a cease and desist letter from a bakery in Ohio with a similar name, Jaber experimented with 20 different names for the business.
Finally, he settled on the Cakeroom in the summer of 2014.
“I actually got some calls from D.C. government employees thanking me for the name change, because they said Sugar Daddy’s didn’t look good when they would Google it on their work laptops,” Jaber said, jokingly.
As for Jaber’s identity as a gay man, he notes that he hopes customers visit the Cakeroom because “they like our product” rather than due to his sexual identity. Still, he notes that operating the bakery in an LGBTQ-friendly city increases business opportunities to bake for LGBTQ weddings.
“A lot of people know me as the owner, I’m the face behind the brand. People in D.C. know that I’m gay, so I think we do get some business that way, but I would hate for people to just support my business because of my sexual orientation,” Jaber said.
Jaber manages the Cakeroom remotely, focusing on online orders, deliveries, scheduling, ordering, cash management, and more. He notes that while most days are routine, “at least two, three times a week there’s some firefighting that needs to happen.”
While Jaber does not intend on opening another location of the Cakeroom, he hopes to continue managing the business for another decade.
“I’ve been in this industry for 18 years,” Jaber said. “So if I can just keep it afloat, that would be my hope. It gives me purpose on a daily basis.”
Jaber’s top recommendations from the Cakeroom’s array of sweets include Nutella cookies, the date cake, and the carrot cake.
The carrot cake is based on the dessert that first inspired Jaber to pursue a career in baking.
“I think I altered it just a tiny bit, but for the most part, it is based off of the original recipe that I got from my friend’s wife,” Jaber said.
District of Columbia
D.C.’s LGBTQ bookstore moves to new location
Little District Books’ larger shop to host more authors, book club events
Little District Books, D.C.’s only LGBTQ bookstore, in early October moved its store from the Barracks Row section of Capitol Hill to a new, larger space at 631 Pennsylvania Ave., S.E. in a more prominent location on Capitol Hill less than a block from the Eastern Market Metro station.
The store, which describes itself on its website as a “queer owned and operated” independent bookstore that “celebrates LGBTQ+ authors and stories,” first opened in its previous location on 8th Street, S.E. in June 2022.
At that time it became the first D.C. LGBTQ bookstore since 2009, when the city’s famed Lamda Rising LGBTQ bookstore closed its doors after its owner Deacon McCubbin retired.
Little District Books owner, D.C. attorney Patrick Kern, said his main reason for moving was to find a larger space in which to provide a larger number of books and to host larger events. Among the events he said his store has hosted in the previous location were author book-signings and meetings of a number of book clubs.
“We started looking for somewhere that would allow us to do a lot more,” he told the Washington Blade. “So, in the old space we had like 2,800 different titles,” he said. “And in this new space we will be able to go up significantly.”
According to Kern, the old location was only about 700 square feet, with the new location providing nearly 2,000 square feet.
“We have a lot of plans,” Kern said. “We will launch a little café corner later this year, so we’ll have a more dynamic in-space experience,” he said. “We’re going to have a little tea counter where you can buy hot drinks” as well as cold non-alcoholic beverages, he said.
Kern has said Little District Books carries books that cover a wide range of topics and stories, both fiction and nonfiction.
“We have books by LGBT authors about LGBT topics. We have books by LGBT authors about non-LGBT topics,” he said. “And then I have LGBT stories that are written by non-LGBT people as well,” he told the Blade in a July 2023 interview.
He told the Blade last week that he was hopeful that the new location’s larger space, that will allow more and larger events and more books, will continue to prompt people to come into the store to buy their books rather than buy them through online sites where most books are now sold.
District of Columbia
Second gay candidate announces run for Ward 1 D.C. Council seat
Miguel Trindade Deramo among candidates seeking Brianne Nadeau’s seat
Gay Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Miguel Trindade Deramo on Nov. 18 announced his candidacy for the Ward 1 D.C. Council seat being vacated by incumbent Councilmember Brianne Nadeau.
Trindade Deramo, 39, became at least the sixth Democratic candidate competing for the Ward 1 Council seat in the city’s June 16, 2026, Democratic primary. Among his competitors is fellow gay Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Brian Footer, who announced his candidacy in July.
Footer serves as chairman of ANC 1E, which represents the city’s Howard University, Park View, and Pleasant Plains neighborhoods in Ward 1.
Trindade Dermo serves as chairman of ANC 1B, which, according to its website, represents the neighborhoods of lower Columbia Heights, Cardozo, LeDroit Park, North Shaw, Meridian Hill, the U Street Corridor, and lower Georgia Avenue. The U Street Corridor is where multiple nightlife establishments are located, including at least 10 gay bars.
“I’m running for D.C. Council because I believe this community deserves a leader who will roll up their sleeves and turn progressive policy into action,” Trindade Deramo said in a statement announcing his candidacy. “Together we can unlock Ward 1’s full potential by tackling affordability, reimagining public safety, and addressing local neighborhood concerns,” he said.
His announcement statement says he was born in Michigan, where his mother immigrated from Brazil. It says he came to D.C. in 2012 to train as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer at the State Department. It says he chose to make D.C. his home in 2016 and says he “now lives at 14th and Chapin with his partner, Luis.”
A biographic write-up on his education and career posted on his campaign website states, “Miguel attended Northwestern University, where he immersed himself in LGBTQ+ activism and established himself as a student leader.”
It says that after graduating with a degree in international relations and political science, he became a Foreign Service Officer at the State Department. According to the write-up, after serving a tour in São Paulo, he pursued a graduate degree in Islamic studies at McGill University in Montreal and he later began another federal job as an intelligence analyst at the Department of Homeland Security.
“However, after witnessing the erosion of democratic norms under the Trump administration, the hyper-militarized response to the Black Lives Matter movement, and the insurrection of Jan. 6, Miguel acted on his deep sense of civic duty by leaving the federal government and joining the pro-democracy movement,” his campaign write-up says.
It adds that he soon became involved in electoral reform organizations and a short time later emerged as one of the lead organizers of the D.C. Initiative 83 campaign, in which D.C. voters overwhelming approved a ranked choice voting system as well as open D.C. primary elections.
The June 16, 2026, D.C. Democratic primary in which Trindade Deramo and Footer will be competing against each other and at least four other candidates will be the first time the city’s ranked choice voting system will be in place for D.C. voters.
Under the system, in elections where there are more than two candidates competing, voters can mark their first choice and their second, third, or more choices if they wish to do so. In the Ward 1 Democratic primary next June LGBTQ voters as well as all other voters will have the option of voting for Trindade Deramo or Footer as their first or second choice.
When asked by the Washington Blade what message he has for LGBTQ voters in Ward 1 who will be choosing among two gay candidates, Trindade Deramo said, among other things, he will point out that he has represented the U Street Corridor in his role as an ANC member.
“A huge mission of mine is to make that space for everyone,” he said. “And U Street unites everyone. All the different people from all over the city come there for theater, for clubbing, for thinking, for eating, whatever,” he added. “And that includes LGBTQ+ people.”
Footer didn’t immediately respond to a request by the Blade for comment on Trindade Deramo’s candidacy.
Trindade Deramo’s campaign website can be accessed here:
Brian Footer’s campaign website can be accessed here:
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