Amy Carter, the youngest child of former President Jimmy Carter, wore a pin with the rainbow LGBTQ+ Pride flag during the lying-in-state ceremony for her father at the U.S. Capitol building on Tuesday.

Vice President Kamala Harris, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) each delivered remarks and laid wreaths during the service.

Distinguished guests also included U.S. Supreme Court justices, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, dozens of other members of the Carter family, and members of the Biden Cabinet and former Carter administration.

President Joe Biden will eulogize the 39th president during the funeral on Thursday at the Washington National Cathedral with President-elect Donald Trump and former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama also in attendance.

Carter, who died on Dec. 29 at the age of 100, supported LGBTQ+ rights at a time when the community’s struggle for social, political, and legal equality was in its infancy, promising during his 1976 presidential campaign to support a gay civil rights bill because “I don’t think it’s right to single out homosexuals for abuse or special harassment.”

Two months after his inauguration the following year, the White House hosted a first-of-its- kind meeting at the White House with 14 gay rights leaders.

President-elect Donald Trump has announced Tammy Bruce will become the next State Department spokesperson.

Bruce is a Fox News contributor who has described herself as a “gay woman” on the network. A GLAAD spokesperson on Monday pointed out to the Washington Blade that Bruce has also made anti-transgender comments.

“Tammy is a highly respected political analyst who understood the power of importance of ‘MAGA’ early on,” said Trump in a Jan. 3 Truth Social post that announced her appointment. “She received her bachelor’s degree in political science at the University of Southern California and, after being a liberal activist in the 1990s, saw the lies and fraud of the Radical Left, and quickly became one of the strongest Conservative voices on radio and television.”

Outstanding choice @HeyTammyBruce is a true professional & patriot pic.twitter.com/RuVKL6NwwO

— Jim Hanson (@JimHansonDC) January 4, 2025

Trump has nominated U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) to succeed Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Ned Price in 2021 became the State Department’s first openly gay spokesperson. He stepped down in March 2023.

Gay U.S. Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) will chair the LGBTQ Congressional Equality Caucus in the newly seated 119th Congress, he told Axios on Friday.

“Over the next several years, we will see a constant barrage of attacks on the rights and dignity of the queer community — especially against our transgender siblings,” Takano said. “I will lead our coalition of openly-LGBTQI+ members and our allies in the fight to both defend the queer community and push equality forward, including by reintroducing the Equality Act.”

The caucus was founded in 2008 by then-U.S. Reps. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), the latter going on to represent the Badger State in the U.S. Senate since 2013, when she became the first LGBTQ+ member to serve in the upper chamber.

Led in the last Congress by U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), the caucus’s chair and eight co-chairs are out and LGBTQ+. There are a couple dozen vice chairs and more than 160 other members, all Democrats.

In recent battles over must-pass appropriations bills, the caucus opposed House Republicans’ insistence on including anti-LGBTQ+ “poison pill” policy riders, meticulously chronicling their efforts to politicize government funding.

The caucus has also fought against and documented legislation proposed by House GOP members that takes aim at LGBTQ+ and especially transgender rights.

Takano’s tenure as chair will begin just as Republicans plan to push forward a bill that would prohibit trans women and girls from competing on women and girls’ sports teams, and just after House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) enacted a new policy that would ban transgender people from bathrooms in the U.S. Capitol building.

“Our community will have a strong defender against Republicans’ incoming attacks with Representative Takano as our chair,” Pocan said.

First elected in 2013, the California congressman is the first gay Asian member to serve in either chamber. He is also the top Democrat on the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee.

President Joe Biden awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal on Thursday to LGBTQ+ advocates Evan Wolfson, founder of Freedom to Marry, and Mary Bonauto, senior director of civil rights and legal strategies at GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders (GLAD Law).

They, along with 18 other awardees, were honored in the East Room of the White House with a ceremony celebrating their exemplary deeds of service to their country or fellow citizens.

In a statement, the White House said that, “By leading the marriage equality movement, Evan Wolfson helped millions of people in all 50 states win the fundamental right to love, marry, and be themselves,” while Bonauto, an attorney who argued the Obergefell case that made same-sex marriage the law of the land in 2015, “made millions of families whole and forged a more perfect union.”

“Together, you embody the central truth: We’re a great nation because we’re a good people,” the president said. “Our democracy begins and ends with the duties of citizenship. That’s our work for the ages, and it’s what all of you embody.”

Former Republican U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) and Democratic U.S. Rep. Benny Thompson (Miss.) were honored on Thursday for their work leading the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, siege of the U.S. Capitol.

The year 2024 didn’t end the way many LGBTQ rights supporters expected, with the re-election of Donald Trump and the anti-LGBTQ promises of the Project 2025 blueprint for his new administration. Here are the top 10 stories of the year as determined by Blade staff.

#10 LGBTQ federal workers face tough decisions amid Trump transition

There is always turnover in the federal government during presidential transitions, but the 2024 election may cause an unprecedented exodus from the public sector with President-elect Donald Trump’s plans to disband, reorient, or disempower agencies like the Education Department, the Justice Department, and the EPA in his second term. Project 2025 presents additional challenges for those who may wish to stay in their jobs after the incoming administration takes over, between the mandate to overhaul the federal civil service and — for LGBTQ employees who spoke with the Blade — the document’s proposals for removing anti-discrimination protections while stopping agencies from working to expand the community’s rights and protections.

#9 Documents show plans for ‘Christian nationalism’ in Trump second term

During the campaign, President-elect Donald Trump sought to distance himself from Project 2025, the document penned by many of the advisers closest to him both now and during his first administration, which promises a second term whose governing mandate is shaped by Christian nationalism. Other right-wing think tanks and organizations whose leaders are close to the former and future president, however, have advanced policy documents that also would make Christian nationalism a guiding principle of governance and public policy. Among them is the Center for Renewing America, which is led by Russell Vought, who was director of the Office of Management and Budget in the first Trump administration.

#8 Biden-Harris administration releases new Title IX regulations

The Biden-Harris administration in April released new Title IX regulations, clarifying that prohibitions on sex-based discrimination in educational programs that receive federal funding includes that which is based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Lambda Legal praised the move, writing in a statement that it “protects LGBTQ+ students from discrimination and other abuse.” The policy also reverses some Trump-era Title IX rules governing how schools must respond to reports of sexual harassment and sexual assault, which were widely seen as imbalanced in favor of the accused. Conservative state attorneys general sued the administration to challenge the new interpretation of the policy.

#7 Anti-trans attack ads 

Republicans spent at least $215 million on anti-trans attack ads that were run on TV for GOP campaigns in 2024, with most coming from President-elect Donald Trump’s team. After the election, Democrats debated the extent to which Republican messaging on trans rights helped to deliver major victories from the White House to the races that won the GOP control over both chambers of Congress. While the quantitative evidence of their efficacy has been mixed, with research by groups like GLAAD concluding that the commercials “yielded no statistically significant shift in voter choice, mobilization or likelihood to vote,” they tended to make viewers’ attitudes toward trans people more negative.

#6 Biden-Harris administration sets record for number of LGBTQ confirmed judges

The Biden-Harris administration named a record number of LGBTQ appointees to serve at all levels of the federal government, and likewise sought to appoint jurists to the federal bench who reflected America’s diversity. With the Senate’s confirmation in September of Mary Kay Costello’s nomination to serve on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the White House secured its 12th judicial appointment for an LGBTQ candidate — surpassing, within in four years, the record that was set during the Obama-Biden administration over the course of two terms.

#5 Biden pardons discharged LGBTQ veterans

In June, President Joe Biden issued historic pardons for approximately 2,000 LGBTQ service members who had been discharged from the military and were court-martialed over their sexual orientation or gender identity under discriminatory policies of the past, like “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” The administration announced that recipients of certificates of pardon will be able to petition for a change in their discharge status, which can facilitate their access to benefits through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Efforts to restore justice to those harmed by anti-LGBTQ policies in the military are ongoing, however, as bureaucratic and administrative hurdles continue to stand in the way.

#4 Corporate America goes soft on LGBTQ support

Several major publicly traded companies announced cuts in 2024 to LGBTQ-focused diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts — from sponsorship of Pride month events to participation in the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index survey. The trend marks a decisive shift away from years of corporate allyship amid right-wing pressure campaigns and calls for boycotts like that which has continued to harm sales at Bud Light after more than a year. LGBTQ employees at Target who were involved in the retailer’s annual Pride collection shared concerns with the Blade over the company’s decision to radically scale back the LGBTQ-themed merchandise offered in June 2024.

#3 McBride wins historic election to Congress

Delaware State Sen. Sarah McBride became the first transgender candidate elected to Congress in November, with her successful bid for Delaware’s at-large congressional seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. In response, U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) led a campaign to exclude her from women’s bathrooms in the Capitol, prompting the enactment of a new policy by Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson (La.) under which single-sex facilities in the building will be reserved for “individuals of that biological sex.” The effort presages the challenges McBride is likely to face after she is seated alongside House GOP lawmakers who are committed to both anti-trans policies and anti-trans politics.

#2 Washington Blade interviews President Biden in exclusive first and Vice President Harris in Pride exclusive

In September, the Washington Blade sat down with President Joe Biden in the Oval Office, marking his first interview with an LGBTQ outlet for a discussion about his legacy of advancing rights and protections for the community during his presidency and over his decades of public service as vice president and U.S. senator. And Vice President Kamala Harris spoke with the Blade in June for an exclusive interview focused on the stakes of the election for LGBTQ communities as well as her record of fighting for LGBTQ equality, beginning with her first elected role as district attorney of San Francisco.

#1 Trump wins the presidency after Biden drops out and Harris runs atop the ticket

After surviving two assassination attempts and a campaign cycle in which his opponent dropped out of the race to make way for Vice President Kamala Harris to run against him with just a few months before Election Day, Donald Trump was elected president in 2024. Support for Harris among LGBTQ voters was even greater than the margin by which President Joe Biden had an edge over Trump in 2020, signaling the extent to which America’s LGBTQ communities are anxious over the status of their rights and freedoms under Trump 2.0.  

Former President Jimmy Carter, who died Sunday at the age of 100, is being remembered by both admirers and political observers as a progressive southern Democrat and former Georgia governor who pushed for an end to racial injustice in the U.S., and as a beloved humanitarian who worked hard as president and during his post-presidential years to improve the lives of people in need throughout the world.

Carter’s death comes over a year after the passing on Nov. 19, 2023, of former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, his wife and devoted partner of 77 years. Carter also had the distinction of becoming the oldest living former U.S. president after the death at the age of 94 of former President George H.W. Bush on Nov. 30, 2018.

The former president’s passing also follows his decision in February 2023 to receive hospice care at his family home in Plains, Ga., at the age of 98 after declining additional medical intervention to continue treatment of several ailments that required hospitalization over the previous several months.

Modest beginnings

Jimmy Carter was born Oct. 1, 1924, at a hospital in his hometown of Plains, Ga., where he was raised on his parents’ peanut farm. His decades of public service took place after he graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1946 and he began his service as a submariner.

He left the Navy after the death of his father in 1953, taking over the Carter family business in what was then a segregated Georgia with strong lines between Blacks and Whites. He was an early supporter of the nascent civil rights movement and became an activist within the Democratic Party and a leading voice for the change needed to end racial segregation.

Carter was first elected to public office in 1963 as a state senator, for which he served until 1967. He successfully ran for governor in 1970 and served as Georgia governor until 1975, when he turned his attention to a possible run for U.S. president as a progressive southern Democrat.

Many political observers have said although he was relatively unknown outside of Georgia and within the leadership of the Democratic Party, Carter was able to parlay voter fatigue and the public’s response to the Nixon Watergate scandal and the growing opposition to the Vietnam War to establish himself as an outsider candidate removed from scandal and bad policies.

Appearing to answer the nation’s needs at that time, Carter’s slogan at the start of his presidential campaign was, “A Leader, For A Change.” He came out ahead of nine other Democrats, most of them better known than him, to win the 1976 Democratic nomination for president.

The thirty-ninth President of the United States, Carter served from 1977 to 1981 at a time when support for LGBTQ people was in its early stages, with many elected officials remaining cautious about the potential political risk for outwardly embracing “gay rights.”

Yet during his 1976 presidential campaign, Carter surprised some political observers when he stated at a press conference during a campaign trip to San Francisco in May of that year that he would sign the Equality Act, the gay civil rights bill introduced by then U.S. Rep. Bella Abzug (D-N.Y.) if it reached his desk as president.

“I will certainly sign it, because I don’t think it’s right to single out homosexuals for abuse or special harassment,” he said.

While Carter did not back away from that statement, gay activists were disappointed at the time of the Democratic National Convention in New York City in July 1976, when they said convention officials at the request of the Carter campaign refused to include a gay rights plank as part of the Democratic Party’s platform approved at the convention.

Some LGBT Democratic activists attending the convention said they agreed with the contention of Carter supporters that Carter should not be hampered by a controversial issue that could hurt his chances of defeating Republican President Gerald Ford in the November 1976 presidential election.  

Carter narrowly defeated Ford in the election. Some political observers said Ford might have won except for the negative fallout from his decision to pardon former President Richard Nixon, who resigned from office in the midst of the Watergate scandal and allegations that Nixon engaged in illegal activity by playing some role in the break-in at the Democratic Party headquarters in D.C.’s Watergate office building that triggered the scandal.

In March of 1977, just over two months after Carter was inaugurated as president, the White House hosted an historic, first-of-its-kind meeting with fourteen prominent gay rights leaders from throughout the country. Carter did not attend the meeting and was staying at the presidential retreat at Camp David, Md., at the time of the meeting, which was organized by presidential assistant for public liaison Margaret “Midge” Costanza. But White House officials said Carter was aware of the meeting and supported efforts by Costanza and other White House staffers to interact with the gay leaders.

“The meeting was a happy milestone on the road to full equality under the law for gay women and men, and we are highly optimistic that it will soon lead to complete fulfilment of President Carter’s pledge to end all forms of Federal discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation,” said Jean O’Leary, then co-executive director of the National Gay Task Force, which helped select the gay activists who attended the meeting. Among those attending was D.C. pioneer gay rights advocate Frank Kameny.

But about one year later in 1978, some LGBT leaders joined famed gay San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk in criticizing Carter for being slow to speak out against California’s Proposition 6, also known as the Briggs Initiative, a ballot measure asking voters to approve a law to ban gay and lesbian individuals from working in California public schools as teachers or staff members. 

In a June 28, 1978, letter to Carter, Milk called on the president to take a stand against Proposition 6 and speak out more forcefully in support of LGBT rights. “As the President of a nation which includes 15-20 million lesbians and gay men, your leadership is vital and necessary,” Milk wrote.

About four months later,  in a Nov. 4, 1978, campaign speech in support of California Democratic candidates in Sacramento, three days before the Nov. 7 election, Carter spoke out against Proposition 6 and urged voters to defeat it. Others who spoke out against it earlier were former President Ford and then former California GOP Governor Ronald Reagan as well as California’s then Democratic Governor Edmund Jerry Brown.

Voters defeated the proposition by a margin of 58.4 percent to 41.5 percent, with opponents of the anti-gay measure thanking Carter for speaking out against it.

During his presidency Carter helped put in place two new federal cabinet-level agencies – the Department of Energy and the Department of Education. One of the highlights of his presidential years was his role in bringing about the historic Camp David Accords, the peace agreements between Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.

The initial agreement, signed in September 1978, which led to the first-ever peace treaty between Israel and Egypt one year later in 1979, came about after Carter invited the two Middle East leaders to meet together with him and to begin negotiations at the U.S. presidential retreat at Camp David, Md. Sadat and Begin were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978 for their contributions to the historic agreements that were brokered by President Carter.

Despite this and other important achievements, Carter faced multiple setbacks the following year in 1979 related to international developments that political observers say Carter and his advisors failed to address properly. Among them was the revolution in Iran that toppled the reign of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and installed the fundamentalist Islamic regime headed by Ayatollah Khomeini that led to a dramatic drop in Iran’s production and sale of oil. That quickly led to a dramatic rise in the cost of  gasoline for American consumers along with a shortage of gas at fuel pumps leading to long lines as filling stations.

If that were not enough, Carter was hit with the take-over of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979, by militant Iranian youths supported and encouraged by Khomeini who held as hostages 52 U.S. diplomats and American citizens with no sign that they would be released any time soon. As Carter’s poll ratings declined, then U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) announced his candidacy for the 1980 Democratic presidential nomination in a rare challenge to an incumbent president.

With all that as a backdrop, gay Democratic activists launched a campaign to elect far more openly gay and lesbian delegates to the 1980 Democratic National Convention than they had in 1976. A record number of just over 100 gay and lesbian delegates emerged from this effort, with many of them pledged to Kennedy. And this time around, the Democratic Party leaders backing Carter at the convention, as well as Carter himself, according to some reports,  expressed support for including a “gay” plank in the party’s platform, which the convention adopted in an historic first.

But when it became clear that Kennedy and California Governor Jerry Brown, who also challenged Carter for the 1980 Democratic nomination, did not have enough delegates to wrest the nomination from Carter, gay activists expressed concern that the Carter campaign was backing away from taking a stronger position in support of gay rights.

Their main concern was that the response by the Carter campaign to a “gay” questionnaire the National Gay Task Force sent to all the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates seeking their party’s nomination in 1980 was significantly less specific than the response by Kennedy and Brown.

Among other things, the activists said the Carter campaign’s response, which was prepared by Carter Campaign Chairperson Robert Strauss, did not make a commitment for Carter to sign an executive order ending the longstanding discrimination against gays and lesbians in federal government agencies, including the military.  The Carter campaign response also did not express support for the national gay rights bill, even though Carter had expressed support for it back in 1976.

Carter supporters, including many in the then gay and lesbian community, pointed out that Straus’s response to the questionnaire expressed overall support for the rights of the gay and lesbian community and a commitment to follow up on that support over the next four years.  Gay Carter supporters also pointed out that Carter would be far more supportive than Ronald Regan, who had captured the 1980 Republican presidential nomination.

Some historians have said that the final straw in dooming Carter’s chances for a second term, in addition to his seeming inability to gain the release of the American hostages held in Iran, was the final televised debate between Carter and Reagan. With most political observers saying Reagan was an infinitely superior television candidate, those observations appeared to be confirmed when Carter’s poll numbers dropped significantly following the final debate.

Although Reagan captured 51.8 percent of the popular vote, with Carter receiving 41.0 percent and independent candidate John Anderson receiving 6.6 percent, Reagan won an Electoral College landslide, with 489 electoral votes compared to 49 for Carter. Reagon won in 44 states, with Carter winning in just 6 states and the District of Columbia.

Carter Center and post-presidential career

Both Carter supporters as well as critics and independent political observers agree that Jimmy Carter’s years after leaving the White House have been filled with years of work dedicated to his passion for the advancement of human rights, peace negotiations, advancing worldwide democracy, and advancing disease prevention and eradication in developing nations.

Most of that work was accomplished through The Carter Center, an Atlanta based nonprofit organization that Carter and wife Rosalynn founded in 1982. Twenty years after its founding, Jimmy Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. The Nobel Committee, among other things, stated it selected Carter for the Nobel Peace Prize “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.”

In the years following his presidency Carter also continued to lend support as an ally to the LGBTQ community. During a book tour promoting his book, “A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety,” Carter stated in a July 2018 interview with Huff Post Live, that he supported same-sex marriage.

As a long-time self-described born-again Christian, Carter said in the interview, “I think Jesus would approve gay marriage,” adding, “I  think Jesus would encourage any love affair if it was honest and sincere and was not damaging to anyone else, and I don’t see that gay marriage damages anyone else.”

His expression of support for same-sex marriage came four years after he responded to a question about his thoughts about LGBTQ rights and religion during an appearance at Michigan’s Grand Rapids Community College in 2014.

“I never knew of any word or action of Jesus Christ that discriminated against anyone,” he said. “Discrimination against anyone and depriving them of actual equal rights in the United States is a violation of the basic principles of the Constitution that all of us revere in this country,” Carter stated at the event.

President-elect Donald Trump has nominated the president of an anti-LGBTQ+ Catholic group to become the next U.S. ambassador to the Vatican.

The incoming president on Dec. 20 announced he had nominated Brian Burch, president and co-founder of CatholicVote, for the ambassadorship.

“Brian loves the church and the United States,” said Trump on Truth Social. “He will make us all proud.”

Burch on X said he is “deeply honored and humbled to have been nominated by President Trump to serve as the United States Ambassador to the Holy See.”

“The role of ambassador is to represent the government of the United States in its relations with the Holy See,” said Burch. “The Catholic Church is the largest and most important religious institution in the world, and its relationship to the United States is of vital importance.”

“I am committed to working with leaders inside the Vatican and the new administration to promote the dignity of all people and the common good,” he added. “I look forward to the confirmation process and the opportunity to continue to serve my country and the church. To God be the glory.”

Burch in his post also thanked his wife, Sara, and their nine children for their support.

I am deeply honored and humbled to have been nominated by President Trump to serve as the United States Ambassador to the Holy See. Words cannot express my gratitude to all those that have helped me achieve this nomination, most especially my wife Sara…

— Brian Burch (@BrianBurchCV) December 20, 2024

The National Catholic Reporter reported Burch last year sharply criticized Pope Francis’s decision to allow priests to bless same-sex couples.  

CatholicVote’s website repeatedly refers to transgender people in quotes.

A Dec. 5 post on the U.S. v. Skrmetti case notes the justices heard oral arguments on “whether Tennessee can protect children from puberty blockers, which chemically sterilize, and sexual surgeries that mutilate and castrate.” A second CatholicVotes post notes the justices grilled the Justice Department “on challenge to Tennessee protections for children against ‘transgender’ mutilations and sterilizations.”

The Vatican’s tone towards LGBTQ+ and intersex issues has softened since Pope Francis assumed the papacy in 2013.

Francis, among other things, has described laws that criminalize homosexuality as “unjust.” 

He met with two African LGBTQ+ activists — Clare Byarugaba of Chapter Four Uganda and Rightify Ghana Director Ebenezer Peegah — at the Vatican on Aug. 14. Sister Jeannine Gramick, one of the co-founders of New Ways Ministry, a Maryland-based LGBTQ+ Catholic organization, organized a meeting between Francis and a group of trans and intersex Catholics and LGBTQ+ allies that took place at the pontiff’s official residence on Oct. 12.

Francis during a 2023 interview with an Argentine newspaper described gender ideology as “one of the most dangerous ideological colonizations” in the world because “it blurs differences and the value of men and women.” A declaration the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith released in March with Francis’s approval condemned gender-affirming surgeries and “gender theory.”

Particularly since Republicans took the U.S. House of Representatives in 2023, legislative attacks against the LGBTQ+ community, at least at the federal level, have been blunted by U.S. Senate Democrats exercising their narrow majority in the upper chamber, along with President Joe Biden’s promise to veto any discriminatory bill that should reach his desk.

Next month, however, Republicans will take control of both chambers of Congress as President-elect Donald Trump returns to the White House, marking the first time since 2018 that the GOP has governed with a trifecta in Washington. 

“We expect the Trump administration and House and Senate Republicans to continue their anti-LGBTQ+ attacks on all aspects of life, especially against trans kids,” Josh Sorbe, a spokesperson for Senate Majority Whip and Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), told the Washington Blade.

Durbin is among the Democratic senators who spoke out this week against a policy rider added to the National Defense Authorization Act by Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson (La.), which would prohibit the military’s health provider Tricare from covering transgender medical treatments for the children of U.S. service members.

“In his first term, Donald Trump enabled LGBTQ+ workplace discrimination, banned trans service members, and vilified trans kids,” Sorbe said, while “The Biden-Harris administration and Democrats codified same-sex marriage, declared mpox a national emergency, and built up the LGBTQ+ movement.”

He added, “Democrats will continue to hold the line against misguided, anti-freedom legislation that we anticipate will be introduced.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee, one of the most powerful in Congress, exercises broad legislative jurisdiction and is responsible for oversight of the Executive Branch as well as the initial stages of confirming the president’s nominees for vacancies on the federal bench, including those picked to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.

In the 117th Congress, control of the Senate was a 50-50 split, with Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris casting tie-breaking votes. Democrats won another Senate seat in the 2022 midterms and for the past two years Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has led a 51-49 majority.

Despite the party’s narrow margin of control and starting with less than half the number of vacancies than were available for Trump to fill when he took office in 2017, Sorbe noted Senate Democrats are expected to confirm Biden’s 234th and 235th judicial nominees — surpassing, by one, the number of confirmations under the previous administration and also, by one, the record setting number of LGBTQ+ jurists appointed by President Obama over two terms. 

These “highly qualified, diverse candidates” will “help ensure the fair and impartial administration of the American justice system,” Sorbe said. Many will decide legal questions with broad implications for LGBTQ+ communities, including challenges brought against anti-LGBTQ+ legislation at the local, state, and federal level, or anti-LGBTQ+ policies enacted by the Trump-Vance administration. 

Sorbe highlighted some of the other work Durbin has done to “protect civil rights for all Americans” over the past four years in the majority, pointing to the Judiciary Committee’s 2021 hearing on the Equality Act, legislation that would codify LGBTQ+-inclusive nondiscrimination protections; a 2023 hearing that celebrated “the historic progress made in protecting the right of LGBTQ+ Americans”; the first hearing since 1984 about the Equal Rights Amendment that would “enshrine gender equality into the Constitution”; floor speeches in which the majority whip denounced “the harmful anti-LGBTQ+ legislation being introduced across the country”; and the senator’s co-sponsorship of the Respect for Marriage Act, which solidified the legal rights of interracial and same-sex married couples. 

President Joe Biden on Monday signed a proclamation to establish a national monument in Newcastle, Maine, that will honor Frances Perkins, who became the first woman named to a Cabinet-level position when she was chosen by FDR to serve as secretary for the U.S. Department of Labor.

The move highlights the Biden-Harris administration’s record of advancing women’s rights and strengthening the labor movement while also commemorating Perkins’s achievements, including the establishment of pensions, unemployment, and workers’ compensation, the minimum wage and overtime pay, the 40-hour workweek, and child labor laws.

Perkins is also credited with helping to lay the blueprint for legislation like the Social Security Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, and the National Labor Relations Act.

Research suggests she may have been a lesbian, perhaps even the first LGBTQ+ Cabinet secretary.

According to the National Park Service, “Perkins’ relationship with one roommate, Mary Harriman Rumsey,” who was a close friend of Eleanor Roosevelt, “was very intimate,” though an entry for the late labor secretary on the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project quotes her biographer Kirsten Downey’s assertion that “it is probably impossible to know whether Frances’s relationship with Mary was also sexual or romantic.”

President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday named former U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell to his administration.

Grenell will serve as special missions envoy.

“Ric will work in some of the hottest spots around the world, including Venezuela and North Korea,” Trump said on Truth Social, according to the Associated Press.

Grenell, 58, was U.S. ambassador to Germany from 2018-2020.

The Trump-Pence administration later named him acting director of national intelligence, which at the time made him the highest-ranking openly gay presidential appointee in American history. Grenell was also the previous White House’s special presidential envoy for Serbia and Kosovo peace negotiations.

The Trump-Pence administration in 2019 tapped Grenell to lead an initiative that encouraged countries to decriminalize consensual same-sex sexual relations. Grenell and then-U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Kelly Knight Craft later that year organized an event on the sidelines of a U.N. Security Council meeting that focused on decriminalization efforts.

Many activists around the world with whom the Washington Blade has previously spoken questioned whether this effort had any tangible results. Grenell also faced sharp criticism when he told Breitbart News shortly after he arrived in Berlin that he wanted to “empower” the European right.

Grenell was among those who the president-elect reportedly considered to nominate to become the next secretary of state. Trump instead tapped U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).

“Working on behalf of the American people for (Trump) is an honor of a lifetime,” said Grenell on X on Saturday. “President Trump is a problem solver who keeps Americans safe and prosperous.”

Working on behalf of the American people for @realDonaldTrump is an honor of a lifetime.

President Trump is a problem solver who keeps Americans safe and prosperous.

We have so much to do.
Let’s get to work. https://t.co/xGpTLr1QHy

— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) December 15, 2024

Log Cabin Republicans President Charles Moran and Amir Ohana, the openly gay speaker of the Israeli Knesset, are among those who congratulated Grenell.