District of Columbia
Local officials weighing impact of Trump’s D.C. executive order
‘Safe and Beautiful Task Force’ slammed as ‘blatant federal overreach’
D.C. government officials and local LGBTQ rights advocates have expressed differing views on the potential impact of an executive order issued by President Donald Trump on March 27 that creates a federally controlled D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force.
A statement released by the White House says the task force, among other things, will be directed to, “Surge law enforcement officers in public areas and strictly enforce quality-of-life laws in public areas like drug use, unpermitted demonstrations, vandalism, and public intoxication.”
The White House statement adds that the task force will also, “Maximize immigration enforcement to apprehend and deport dangerous illegal aliens, including monitoring D.C.’s cooperation with federal immigration authorities.”
According to the five-page executive order, the newly created D.C. task force will take on a wide range of other functions, including overseeing and coordinating “more robust local law enforcement presence” throughout the city, including in federal parks such as the National Mall, museums and national monuments, Union Station, and widely used public roads and highways such as Rock Creek Parkway.
One of its provisions calls for government entities to provide “assistance to increase the speed and lower the cost of processing concealed carry license requests in the District of Columbia.” The provision refers to D.C.’s process for licensing the right to carry a concealed handgun.
D.C. Congressional Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) is among the city’s elected officials who have denounced the D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force as a serious infringement on the city’s locally elected home rule government.
“President Trump’s thoroughly anti-home rule EO is insulting to the 700,000 D.C. residents who live in close proximity to a federal government, which continues to deny them the same rights afforded other Americans,” Norton said in a statement.
“The task force created by the EO would not include a single D.C. official to represent the interests of the people who reside within the District,” Norton said.
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, who has been cautious in her response to the Trump administration’s controversial policies to downsize the federal government, has not yet taken a position on the Trump D.C. executive order, according to mayoral spokesperson Daniel Gleick.
D.C. City Council Chair Phil Mendelson (D-At-Large) is among the local officials and community advocates who have said it is too soon to make a definitive judgment on the Trump created task force’s impact on D.C. home rule. Mendelson pointed out at a March 31 news conference that a large part of the stated actions for the task force are aimed at overseeing federal parklands and other federally controlled areas such as national monuments.
“I don’t want to say that everything in there is innocuous,” Mendelson told reporters at the news conference. “But overall, a lot of it, if not most of it, is directives to the federal government to do things that are within the federal government’s purview, not as a let’s step on home rule,” Mendelson said.
But others, including Norton, said they believe the overall executive order and the task force it creates will result in a serious infringement on D.C. home rule and possibly the rights of D.C. residents.
Gay D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5) issued a statement pointing out that over two decades D.C. has had a balanced local budget, achieved “historic decline in crime,” and had one of the nation’s “fastest improving urban school districts,” suggesting the Trump task force was not needed.
“Based on my reading of the executive order, I think it is impossible to determine if it will have any direct impact on the LGBTQ community in the District,” said longtime D.C. LGBTQ rights advocate Peter Rosenstein.
But Rosenstein added, “The EO is an offense to all the people of the District, as it disregards home rule. It will be crucial to see who is finally appointed to the panel and see what their plans are to implement it.”
He was referring to the fact that the order itself and the White House so far have not announced which federal officials will be appointed to serve on the task force. However, the White House statement names nine federal agencies whose leaders or designees will be among the task force’s members. Among the agencies named are the Departments of Interior, Transportation, and Homeland Security, along with the FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service.
The leaders of D.C.’s local LGBTQ Democratic Party and local LGBTQ Republican Party organizations – Capital Stonewall Democrats and Log Cabin Republicans of D.C. – had sharply differing views on the impact of the executive order and task force on the LGBTQ community.
The Washington Blade reached out to the two leaders for comment.
“This executive order is not about D.C. ‘Safe and Beautiful’ – it’s about control,” said Capital Stonewall Democrats president Howard Garrett in a statement to the Blade. “It’s about stripping away the power of the people who live, work, and love in the city,” Garret said.
“History has shown that when authoritarian leaders impose their will on a people without their consent, it is the most vulnerable – LGBTQ+ individuals, people of color, the unhoused – who bear the brunt of that oppression,” Garret’s statement continues. “We will not be silent as our community is put at risk under the guise of ‘safety and beautification.’”
He added, “Capital Stonewall Democrats reject this blatant federal overreach, and we stand firm in the belief that D.C.’s future must be decided by D.C. residents – not by those who neither understand nor respect our community.”
Andrew Minik, president of Log Cabin Republicans of D.C., expressed strong support for the Trump executive order and its D.C. task force, saying it will have a positive impact on the city as a whole and on the LGBTQ community.
“The only thing negatively impacting D.C. residents is the incompetent leadership of local Democratic politicians,” Minik said in his own statement. “’Home rule’ means nothing when the people in charge surrender the city to criminals, allow our parks to become open-air drug markets, and treat public spaces like dumpsters,” he said.
Minik called the commission “a breath of fresh air,” adding, “Finally someone is stepping in to do what the city government refuses to: clean up the filth, restore safety, and make our Nation’s Capital beautiful again.”
Asked by the Blade if he feels the commission could have a negative impact on the LGBTQ community, Minik said, “Absolutely not.” He added, “What does harm LGBT Washingtonians is having to walk through trash-strewn streets, sleep deprived from sirens and gunshots and live in fear of crime.”
“This commission is a win for LGBT residents who are sick of being ignored by a local government more concerned with virtue signaling than actual leadership,” he said. “The LGBT community in D.C. and across the country deserves more than broken promises and chaos. We deserve leadership that works, and President Trump is giving us that.”
Norton and other city officials have disputed claims by Trump and his fellow Republicans that crime in D.C. has been out of control.
“The ‘Fact Sheet’ about the EO currently on the White House website states that crime in D.C. is ‘near historic highs,’” Norton says in her statement on the executive order. “This simply isn’t true. It’s contradicted by the Department of Justice, which noted on January 3 that violent crime was down by 35% in 2024 and overall violent crime in D.C. is at a 30-year low,” according to Norton.
“Like cities, states, and counties across the country, D.C. has passed laws to support and protect the safety of all its residents, regardless of immigration status,” Norton said. “In passing these laws, D.C. followed its values and was convinced of the benefits for the entire city,” she said.
Details of the Trump D.C. executive order and the task force it creates can be accessed on the White House website.
District of Columbia
Gay priest credited with boosting church support for LGBTQ Catholics
Fr. Tom Oddo’s biographer speaks at Dignity Washington event
The author of a biography of a U.S. Catholic priest said to have advocated for support by the Catholic Church of gay Catholics in the early 1970s has called Father Thomas ‘Tom’ Oddo a little known but important figure in the LGBTQ rights movement.
Tyler Bieber, author of the recently published book “Against The Current: Father Tom Oddo And the New American Catholic,” told of Oddo’s life and work on behalf of LGBTQ rights at a March 22 talk before the local LGBTQ Catholic group Dignity Washington.
Among Oddo’s important accomplishments, Bieber said, was his role as a co-founder of the national LGBTQ Catholic group Dignity U.S.A. in 1973 at the age of 29.
But as reported in the prologue of his book, Bieber presented details of the sad news that Oddo died in a fatal car crash in 1989 at the age of 45 in Portland, Ore., where he was serving as the highly acclaimed president of the University of Portland, a Catholic institution.
“He was a major figure in the gay rights movement in the 1970s, an unsung hero of that movement,” Bieber told Dignity Washington members, who assembled for his talk in a meeting room at St. Margaret Episcopal Church near Dupont Circle, where they attend their weekly Catholic mass on Sundays.
“And Dignity U.S.A. saw intense growth in membership and visibility” during its early years under Oddo’s leadership, Bieber said. “The story of Father Tom and his contemporaries is a story largely untold in the history of the gay rights movement, but one worth knowing and considering,” he said.
As stated in his book, Bieber told the Dignity Washington gathering Oddo was born and raised in a Catholic family on Long Island, N.Y., and attended a Catholic high school in Flushing Queens. It was at that time when he developed an interest in becoming a priest, according to Bieber.
After studying at the University of Notre Dame and completing his religious studies he was ordained as a priest in 1970 and began his work as a priest in the Boston area, Bieber said. It was around that time, Bieber told the Dignity Washington audience, that gay Catholics approached Oddo to seek advice on how they should interact with the Catholic Church. It was also around that time that Oddo became involved in a group supportive of then gay Catholics that later became a Dignity chapter in Boston.
In a development considered unusual for a Catholic priest, Bieber said Oddo in 1973 testified in support of gay rights bill before a committee of the Massachusetts Legislature and collaborated with then Massachusetts gay and lesbian rights advocate Elaine Noble.
In 1982, at the age of 39, Oddo was selected as president of the University of Portland following several years as a college teacher in the Boston area, Bieber’s book states. It says he was seen as a “vibrant and capable administrator who delivered real results to his campus,” adding, “His magnetism was obvious. One student described him as ‘John Kennedyesque’ to the university’s student newspaper.”
Bieber said that although Oddo was less active with Dignity U.S.A. during his tenure as UP president, he continued his support for gay Catholics and what is now referred to as LGBTQ rights.
“For those that knew him prior to his term at UP, though, he represented something greater than an accomplished university administrator and educator,” Bieber’s book states. “He was a new kind of priest, a gay man living and ministering in a world set loose from tradition by the Second Vatican Council,” the book says.
It was referring to the Vatican gathering of worldwide Catholic leaders from 1962 to 1965 concluding under Pope Paul VI that church observers say modernized church practices to allow far greater participation by the laity and opened the way for sympathetic consideration of gay Catholics.
District of Columbia
HRC to host National Rainbow Seder
Bet Mishpachah among annual event’s organizers
The 18th National Rainbow Seder will take place at the Human Rights Campaign on Sunday.
The sold out event is the country’s largest Passover Seder for the Jewish LGBTQ community.
Organizations behind the event include Bet Mishpachah, a local D.C. LGBTQ synagogue that Rabbi Jake Singer-Beilin leads, and GLOE, an Edlavitch DC Jewish Community Center program that sponsors events for the queer Jewish community. The theme for this year’s Seder is “Liberation For All Who Journey: Remembering, Resisting, Rebuilding.” Rabbis Atara Cohen, Koach Frazier, and Avigayil Halpern will lead it.
The Seder will honor the late GLOE co-chair Michael Singer. Singer also served on the Edlavitch DC Jewish Community Center’s board.
“This Seder is both a celebration of how far we have come and a call to continue building a more just and inclusive world.” Bet Mishpachah Executive Director Joshua Maxey told the Washington Blade.
District of Columbia
Trans Day of Visibility events planned
Rally on the National Mall scheduled for Saturday
The Christopher Street Project has a number of events planned for the 2026 Trans Day of Visibility, including a rally on the Mall and an “Empowerment Ball” at the Eaton Hotel. Plenaries, panel discussions and meetings with members of Congress are scheduled in the three days of programming.
Announced speakers include N.H. state Rep. Alice Wade; Commissioner of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago Precious Brady-Davis; activist and performer Miss Peppermint (“RuPaul’s Drag Race”); Lexington, Ky. Councilwoman Emma Curtis; Rabbi Abby Stein; D.C. activist and host Rayceen Pendarvis; Air Force Master Sgt. Logan Ireland; among other leaders, advocates and performers.
Conference programming on Thursday and Friday includes an educational forum and a Capitol Hill policy education day. Registration for the two-day conference has closed.
The “Trans Day of Visibility PAC Reception” is scheduled for Thursday, March 26 from 7:30-9 p.m. at As You Are (500 8th St., S.E.). Special guests include Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nevada) and Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.). Tickets are available at christopherstreetproject.org starting at $25.
The National Council of Jewish Women and the Christopher Street Project host a “Trans Day of Visibility Shabbat” on Friday, March 27 from 7-8 p.m. at Sixth & I (600 I St., N.W.). The service is to be led by Rabbi Jenna Shaw and Rabbi Abby Stein.
The “Now You See Me: Trans Empowerment Social & Ball” is scheduled for Friday, March 27 from 6-11 p.m. at the Eaton Hotel (1201 K. St., N.W.). The trans-themed drag ball is hosted by the Marsha P. Johnson Institute with support from the D.C. Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ+ Affairs, the Capital Ballroom Council, the Christopher Street Project, the Center for Black Equity, Generation for Common Good, and Parenting is Political. RSVP online at christopherstreetproject.org.
The National Transgender Day of Visibility Rally is scheduled for Saturday, March 28 on the National Mall at 11 a.m. The rally will include speakers and performances. Following the rally, attendees are encouraged to participate in the “No Kings” rally being held at Anacostia Park.
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