WASHINGTON – The U.S. Coast Guard’s Deputy Commandant for Operations, Vice Admiral Peter W. Gautier, appeared in a hearing before the House Committee on Homeland Security on Thursday to answer congressional questions regarding U.S. Artic operations and planning strategies.

During the course of the hearing, Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ), a member of the House GOP’s far-right Freedom Caucus opened a line of inquires, not related to the hearing’s focused agenda, which included questioning the admiral’s length of service in the U.S. Coast Guard.

Crane aggressively questioned the admiral over retention and recruitment, which Gautier responded at one point that the ongoing long-term effects of the coronavirus pandemic could possibly be factored into recruiting new personnel. “Why do you think you’re, across the military, having so many recruiting issues?” Crane asked and added, “You believe that COVID-19 the main reason the military is having its recruiting issues?”

Gautier responded saying “I’m an optimist sir so when you hear these things about eligibility because of weight and pharmaceuticals and stuff, is lower than average in the young population- that there isn’t this propensity to serve. I heartedly disagree. I think that there are a lot of great young Americans that just don’t know about the Coast Guard. That if they knew that we are law enforcement; we are military; that we clean up the environment; that we serve the American people I think you know that we will have a lot more folks coming in.”

After thanking him for his answer Crane then asked the admiral: “To follow up on that, Do you think it might have anything to do with what you regularly hear as being described as some of the “wokeness” within the military such as CRT [critical race theory] training, DEI [Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion] training, drag shows on base, things like that. Do you think that has anything to do with it? Then he flatly stated: “You’re kind of a loss on the focus of what the military is supposed to be about.”

Clearly frustrated by Rep. Crane’s position and attitude, Gautier responded: “You know, I just don’t see that in the United States Coast Guard, what you’re referring to and um our work force is the best workforce that I have seen in my 36 year career. The people that are in the Coast Guard today are better than ever before. A lot of them have college educations, a lot of them have had professional careers that want to do something different and better and that come to us. So I don’t think so.”

Crane then challenged the admiral: “You haven’t seen any of that?” Gautier responded, “No.” The congressman then asked: “You haven’t seen a change in the culture of the military? How long have you been in admiral?” Gautier replied: “37 years.” Crane then flatly stated: “With all due respect I find that hard to believe sir.”

Crane, elected in 2022 after defeating incumbent Democrat Tom O’Halleran, is a former U.S. Navy SEAL and co-founded Bottle Breacher, a company that manufactures bottle openers made of 50-caliber shell casings. This past October, he was among the eight Republican members who voted to remove then House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).

During a heated debate on the house floor last June regarding one of his proposed amendments to the annual defense budget and policy bill that would prohibit the Defense Department from requiring participation in training or support for “certain race-based concepts” in the hiring, promotion or retention of individuals, Crane angered Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH) when he said:

“My amendment has nothing to do with whether or not colored people or Black people or anybody can serve, okay? It has nothing to do with color of your skin… any of that stuff.”

Beatty, a distinguished Black lawmaker, who had previously served as the chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, immediately asked that Crane’s offensive words be stricken from the House record.

“I am asking for unanimous consent to take down the words of referring to me or any of my colleagues as ‘colored people,'” she said.

Crane at first tried to amend his remarks to “people of color” before Rep. Beatty interrupted and again said she wanted his words stricken. When no one in the chamber objected, the chair ordered it stricken by unanimous consent.

CBS News later reported that Crain said he “misspoke.” “In a heated floor debate on my amendment that would prohibit discrimination on the color of one’s skin in the Armed Forces, I misspoke. Every one of us is made in the image of God and created equal,” Crane said in a statement.

Beatty however wasn’t having it. First on Twitter posting:

“I am still in utter and disbelief that a Republican uttered the words ‘colored people’ in reference to African-American service members who sacrifice their lives for our freedom… I will not tolerate such racist and repugnant words in the House Chamber or anywhere in the Congress. That’s why I asked that those words be stricken from the record, which was done so by unanimous consent.”

Later in an interview with CBS News, the Ohio Democrat said she doesn’t accept Crane’s explanation that he “misspoke”. 

“He didn’t misspeak,” Beatty said. “He said clearly what, in my opinion, he intended to.” 

She said some lawmakers intend to hold a special order hour on Monday to address the issue through a series of speeches on the floor. 

“It shows us directly why we need DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion),” Beatty explained. “DEI is not about just hiring a Black person or putting a person in the military or in college. It’s about having diversity of thought.” 

“It’s very frustrating to have to fight the battles on the United States House floor,” she added.

Vice Admiral Peter W. Gautier assumed the duties of Coast Guard Deputy Commandant for Operations (DCO), in June 2022. Previously, he served as Deputy Commander, Coast Guard Pacific Area, and from 2018 to 2020, he served as Commander, Coast Guard Eleventh District in Alameda, California, where he directed all Coast Guard missions in California and the Eastern Pacific Ocean.

Gautier graduated from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy located in New London, Connecticut, as a member of the Class of 1987. This is the admiral’s 37th year in the Coast Guard.

 

(Editor’s note: This is the second in a three-part series profiling senior LGBTQ staff working on President Biden’s re-election campaign. Part one was published last week and Part three will be published next week.)

WILMINGTON, Del. — From the team’s headquarters here, the Washington Blade spoke with the Biden-Harris reelection campaign’s director of operations, Teresa Tolliver, and Rubi Flores, special assistant to Campaign Manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez.

Tolliver came to the campaign from the Democratic National Committee, having previously worked in the White House Presidential Personnel Office and then at the U.S. Air Force under Undersecretary Gina Ortiz Jones, who was nominated by President Joe Biden to become the first lesbian and first woman of color to serve in the role.

It was at PPO “where I learned more about Gina and then was like, ‘I want to work for that person,'” Tolliver said, adding that while she was always interested in national security, the chance to serve in the Pentagon with the Air Force’s new lesbian undersecretary was too good to pass up.

Among other responsibilities at PPO, Tolliver said her work included “helping to place high ranking LGBTQ folks in the administration as well as in special assistant roles; everything up and down within the admin,” which has made history with the number and seniority of LGBTQ appointees serving across the federal government.

“Whether we’re looking at people of color, or whether we’re looking at, you know, LGBTQ folks, this is an administration that is now going to be a campaign that we want to look like America,” Tolliver said. The approach influences not just hiring practices but also choices over who will be interviewed for which roles and how they will be supported to be as effective as possible.

“We used to joke in PPO that it was a very queer team,” she said, with “a lot of LGBTQ folks,” so it was “very special for me to work during that time because I actually came out to my family when I was working.”

In 2021 on National Coming Out Day, observed each year on Oct. 11, Vice President Kamala Harris arranged a photo with LGBTQ folks serving in the administration (as she has done in subsequent years). “I ended up being dead-center next to her,” Tolliver said, “and I was like, ‘I should probably tell my parents.'”

Tolliver came out as a lesbian to her family, friends, and colleagues just as she began dating her now-fiancée. She said she considers herself lucky, “being able to work in an environment where I just felt open and comfortable and able to be myself so much that I then decided that it was time to come out.”

She and her fiancée were engaged in January, during which time Tolliver was at the DNC, and the couple decided to get married in August of 2024. While it is guaranteed to be a busy time, Tolliver said they wanted to be wed with Biden in office and in New York City, where “we will have a validated marriage” even if same-sex marriage rights are repealed or undermined. “There’s always the possibility that we do not win an election,” Tolliver noted.

The fight is personal. “We all have these very deeply personal reasons to be here and working here,” she said, “whether you’re here because you’re fighting for LGBTQ rights, or because, you know, abortion is something that you care deeply about, or immigration, or whatever the case may be.”

Tolliver contrasted her experiences working for Team Biden — “I feel like half of our wedding is people who I worked with on 2020,” as “campaigns give you these lifelong friendships” — with the casual homophobia she encountered at a bridal shop where she worked while in college.

“I remember not being out and my boss saying, ‘Oh, never hire a lesbian,’ or, ‘I could never hire a gay person because [they’re] gonna see women changing and everything in their bridal gowns,’ and I just remember kind of sinking back into the closet after that,” Tolliver said.

Flores, likewise, has encountered prejudice in previous workplaces and found a supportive home on the Biden campaign, as well as a mentor in Chávez Rodríguez who, like Jones, had broken barriers as the “first Latina campaign manager for a major presidential campaign.”

At the same time, “I don’t talk about my trans identity,” Flores said, “because it’s just too hard,” and instead “the way that I cope, in my life, is to just be exceptional in every other way I can.”

“Being Brown and an immigrant and being a trans woman present so many challenges in my life,” said Flores, who moved to conservative South Texas from Mexico City at age 10. “I’ve struggled a lot, being who I am, and especially when you’re a kid, you know, it’s just impossible.”

In the current political environment, where conservatives have fear mongered about the trans community and passed laws restricting their rights, Flores said the challenges are deeper than, for example, ensuring that youth can maintain access to medically necessary gender affirming healthcare — “it’s having the space to even imagine oneself as that.”

“When a child has no opportunity to imagine themselves as who they really are,” Flores said, “that just breaks my heart and and it’s unacceptable.”

Like many trans women, Flores said she has encountered employment discrimination in the past. “One of the things that, you know, growing up and making the decision, if you can call it that, to transition, is the reality that trans women can’t get jobs,” she said, adding, “it’s something that’s just absolutely real.”

Flores was on the policy research team at FWD.us, an immigration advocacy organization, when she was approached by the Biden campaign. “I knew it would be a tremendously difficult job,” but the primary draw was that “I had the opportunity to contribute to those things getting better and most importantly, in the context that we are in, to not make them worse.”

“The kinds of laws and policies that are being implemented by Republican administrations at the state level and that could potentially come into place at the national level if our opponents win absolutely terrify me,” Flores said. “They could upend my life.”

She continued, “If I was living in some of the states where some of these policies passed, I would have trouble securing care for myself.”

The work, therefore, is “being part of an administration and trying to reelect a president that is fighting to protect those rights – it’s not only an honor, but it’s a responsibility.” In terms of her decision to join the campaign, Flores said, “It’s not even tangential or something that comes to mind, it’s central to why I chose to work here.”

In separate interviews, Flores’s colleagues agreed with her that the hours are “incredibly long,” but “there’s a great culture that we have here and just the fact that we’re all in it together is huge.”

Several also echoed Flores’s statement that “there’s power in the fact that other people can see LGBTQ folks in our presidential campaign” to reelect a candidate who is working to protect and defend the community’s rights.

However, while these spaces have often been restricted for LGBTQ people in general, trans folks have often been wholly excluded from them.

“I’m just generally apprehensive to sound like, ‘oh, everything’s gonna get better,’ when there’s just so much work left to be done, specifically in trans issues and trans representation,” Flores said.

“I just could have very easily not be here. Not have the job. Not be alive. That’s just a possibility for many of us,” she said.

Flores also noted the unprecedented level of hostility directed at the trans community recently. “As hard as it was for me to be who I am and look how I look, there wasn’t this — I mean, there’s always been transphobia, but there wasn’t this sort of pervasive thing that automatically categorize[s] a trans identity as everything that’s horrible with the world,” she said.

WASHINGTON – Activists from MoveOn Political Action inflated a 15-foot-tall balloon depicting U.S. Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) wearing a “full of lies” tie and displayed it on the Mall near the United States Capitol on Tuesday.

Activists called for the expulsion of the congressman following a U.S. House Ethics Committee report detailing fraud and misuse of funds.

Big George Santos balloon in front of the Capitol. Covering for @WashBlade pic.twitter.com/fnmPsqGXzX

— Michael Patrick Key (@MichaelKeyWB) November 28, 2023

By Matthew S. Bajko, Assistant Editor | SANTA CLARA COUNTY, Calif. – With the news Tuesday that Congressmember Anna Eshoo (D-Palo Alto) will retire from the South Bay House seat she has held since 1993, it provides an opportunity to see the first LGBTQ person from the Bay Area be elected to Capitol Hill.

Long considered a likely congressional candidate once a seat opened up, gay Assemblymember Evan Low (D-Cupertino) is widely expected to enter the 2024 race to succeed Eshoo. Low, 41, told the Bay Area Reporter that he is interested in running for it but is not yet ready to make an official announcement.

“Any person who follows in her footsteps must commit themselves completely to upholding her incredible legacy. Today, I’m going to celebrate one of our valley’s greatest public servants and a personal mentor to me. There are a lot of people in the community I need to talk to before I make a formal decision,” Low, who has until early December to decide, wrote in a texted reply November 21.

Tuesday morning Eshoo released a video about her decision not to seek reelection next year in order to break the news to her constituents.

“As the first Democrat and first woman to ever represent this distinguished congressional district, no one could ever be prouder than me to carry our Democratic Party values,” Eshoo wrote in an email to her supporters.

Eshoo’s 16th Congressional District spans both San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. She had first sought a House seat six years after winning election to the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors but fell short in the general election of 1988 to Republican then-Stanford professor Tom Campbell.

When Campbell opted not to run for another term in 1992, and instead mounted an unsuccessful U.S. Senate bid, Eshoo ran again and won. She has long been a champion of LGBTQ issues in Congress and has enjoyed strong support from the LGBTQ community throughout her time in the House.

As the B.A.R.’s online Political Notes column reported last year, Eshoo ran her first TV ads since being elected to Congress for her 2022 candidacy. In it, she touted being an original co-sponsor of the Equality Act, the federal omnibus LGBTQ rights legislation adopted by the House in 2021. (It died when the U.S. Senate failed to vote on it.)

It is believed to be the first time a Bay Area congressmember highlighted their support of the Equality Act in a campaign commercial. In an interview Eshoo had told the B.A.R. she was proud to have that distinction.

“I have always believed there is one class of citizenship in our country and that is first class. So without the movement for equality and fullness of citizenship that can’t happen,” Eshoo had told the B.A.R. “I am very proud of that, so I wanted to highlight the Equality Act.”

Eshoo also had the honor of being the first woman to serve as chair of the Democratic Party in San Mateo County, as she noted in her email to constituents. She also served as a member of the Democratic National Committee.

“I’m so proud of all we’ve achieved together and that the strength of our party rests on a strong foundation of clubs, caucuses, and county committees with our allies in Labor and other valued advocates. Our party continues to be strengthened by our diversity, and I’m confident this will continue because it is who we are,” wrote Eshoo. “As the last year of my service in Congress lies ahead, be assured that I will continue to bring my tenaciousness and unswerving commitment to my work to strengthen our democracy, and our work together for a sweeping Democratic victory for the country we love so much.”

In a statement he released reacting to Eshoo’s news, Low called Eshoo “an icon” and a “personal hero” to him. He also praised her for being a “champion who leads this community with tremendous energy, grace, and grit.”

He added that he is looking forward “to the many ways” the community can honor Eshoo for “her extraordinary service” over the years.

“We are so blessed to have her as our leader, gracefully navigating the complex issues in this valley of high expectations,” stated Low. “Her public service has been noble and selfless, advancing quality healthcare access for all, immigration reform rooted in compassion and humanity, and stringent consumer protections unfettered by special interests.”

As the B.A.R. reported last year, Low moved into the redrawn 26th Assembly District that includes Cupertino, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, and parts of San Jose in order to avoid competing against his colleague Assemblymember Marc Berman (D-Palo Alto) for reelection to the state Legislature. Berman had been drawn into Low’s former Assembly District.

Doing so required Low to vacate the 1,100 square foot condo in Campbell that he co-owns with his brother, a San Jose police officer. He moved into the Sunnyvale home of his father and stepmother.

Low grew up in San Jose, and his parents separated when he was 18. He graduated from San Jose State University and went on to win election to the Campbell City Council in 2006.

He was the first Asian American to serve on the governing body. Four years later he became the youngest openly LGBTQ+ mayor in the country at age 26.

He first won election to the state Assembly in 2014. He has strong ties to Silicon Valley’s tech industry, which could benefit him in a House race as a source of support and financial donations to his campaign.

Low would be the second out candidate running next year for an open House seat in the Bay Area. Jennifer Kim-Anh Tran, Ph.D., a queer leader within the state’s Vietnamese American community, is seeking to succeed Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-Oakland), who is running for U.S. Senate rather than seek another House term.

Tran is the partner of Nenna Joiner, who owns several sex shops in the East Bay and a downtown Oakland nightlife venue. She is in a tough race to survive the March primary along with fellow Democrats BART board member Lateefah Simon and business owner Tim Sanchez, a U.S. Navy Reserves veteran who served in Afghanistan.

As the B.A.R. first reported in an online story November 17, there are now out House candidates in all three of the West Coast states. The 2024 election could thus see the California congressional delegation’s LGBTQ contingent expand from its current two gay members, while those in Oregon and Washington state could see their first out members.

**************************************************************************************

The preceding article was previously published by the Bay Area Reporter and is republished with permission.

Help keep the Bay Area Reporter going in these tough times. To support local, independent, LGBTQ journalism, consider becoming a BAR member.

ATLANTA, Ga. – Embattled New York Representative George Santos told conservative Christian podcast and radio presenter Monica Matthews that he fully expects to be expelled from the U. S. House, during a live-stream interview on X-Spaces (formerly Twitter) last Friday.

Santos told her, “I know I’m going to get expelled when this expulsion resolution goes to the floor- I can do math.” But the New York Republican, who has publicly stated he will not seek reelection to his seat in 2024, was openly defiant and expressed particular antagonism towards House Ethics Committee Chair Rep. Michael Guest, (R-Miss) who had introduced a resolution to expel Santos prior to the Thanksgiving holiday break.

After telling Matthews he will fight the resolution, telling he’s “not giving up without a fight,” adding, “I will defend myself until the end of time.” Santos went after the Ethics Committee Chair saying, “I think he should be a man and stop being a pussy,” daring Guest to force a vote on the House floor.

Axios political journalist Alexander Solender reported Santos also bashed his fellow Republicans as “felons galore — people with all sorts of shysty backgrounds.”

Then, referring to himself as the “Mary Magdalene” of Congress, referring to the devoted follower of Jesus present at the crucifixion, Solender reported that the openly gay lawmaker characterizing the attitude of his colleagues said to Matthews, who herself is a self-identified committed Christian, “We’re all going to stone this mother fucker because it’s just politically expedient.”

“If you want to expel me, I’ll wear it like a badge of honor,” Santos said. “I’ll be the sixth expelled member of Congress.”

“I’m not leaving,” Santos emphasized. “These people need to understand, it’s done when I say it’s done.”

Solender also reported that if he is kicked out of the House, Santos said he wouldn’t “rule out another run for office.” Though he said it would not be in 2024 and it would not be in New York.

Santos is also dreaming of overseas posts.

“I’d love to be an ambassador one day,” Santos said. “I speak multiple languages, I’m well-traveled, I’m cultured.”

But he admitted getting confirmed by the Senate to become an ambassador would be more than difficult. “We all know there’s no chance in hell” that would happen, Santos conceded.

He said he can “still join the Army.”

Related:

LTTLE ROCK, Ark. – This past Monday Republican Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders appointed Jason Rapert, a Christian nationalist, anti-LGBTQ+ activist and former state senator to the state library board.

The Arkansas State Library is both an information resource center for state government and a support system for local public libraries, according to its website. The state library board oversees the distribution of state and federal funds to public libraries.

Rapert, a former Arkansas state senator and the founder & president of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, has a lengthy record of anti-LGBTQ public statements including earlier this month when he posted a lengthy rant railing against Democrats and the LGBTQ community on X-Twitter:

“The Devil may have won a few political battles in #America on Tuesday, November 7, 2023, but evil will soon be overcome by righteousness when more #Pastors become accountable for leading the congregations they serve to remember faith without works is dead.

Across the country in elections yesterday, the Leftists in our nation through the #DemocratParty outworked the good people in America who work hard, run businesses, and keep America strong. I predict that the voter turnout among church people was abysmally low in areas where abortion butchery won on the ballot, recreational marijuana was passed, and a transgender candidate was elected to a state senate seat.

Pastors must do more to preach the truth of the Bible and urge their congregations to vote according to a Biblical worldview. The future of #America is on the line and Christians are the only block of voters left to #SaveTheNation from the current march to the bottom of the pit of hell being led by the Democrat Party in our nation.

The Democrat Party is behind the antisemitic riots we saw in Washington, D.C. recently. Democrat activists in Congress have openly supported #Hamas terrorists that slaughtered Jewish babies and families on October 7, 2023.

The Democrat Party is behind the bloodthirsty #abortion demands stirring people with lies and deception. They support #KILLING babies up until the time of birth.

The Democrat Party is behind the radical homosexual movement in our nation that sought the dilution of marriage between one man and one woman. The Democrat Party is behind the radial LGBTQ insanity attacking our children through public libraries and activist teachers that are pushing homosexual pornography on minor children.

The Democrat Party LGBTQ activists are behind the efforts to takeover church denominations and tear them apart as they have done with the Methodist Church, Episcopal Church, and other mainline traditional churches that have been hijacked by homosexuals. They have turned many once faithful houses of worship into apostate churches.

The Democrat Party through Obama and his army of leftist revolutionaries are behind election rigging in urban areas. Many have reported voting irregularities and some have been verified with convictions though many election tampering incidents are covered up by local politicians, prosecutors and judges who are complicit in the fraud.

The Democrat Party is behind the rise in atheists and satanism in our country. Statistics prove this. You cannot be a sincere Bible believing Christian and vote for candidates who advocate the Democrat Party beliefs and policies. So who is responsible for telling Christians the truth? Who is responsible for the decline of our society? Who is best positioned to inspire Christians to take action and help #SaveTheNation?

I submit to all the Christians in America that pastors leading our churches are supposed to be the shepherds of their flock. The Bible teaches this. If you attend a church and your pastor fails to encourage you to fulfill your duty to vote, or fails to educate and inform you about the decline of faith in America, the sin of abortion, the sin of homosexuality, the reality of heaven and hell, the dangers of radical Islam, the sin of adultery, the danger of Marxist ideology which is joined at the hip with atheism, salvation through grace and faith in Jesus Christ, and the overall truth of the Bible – replace the pastor or get out!

We are at a crossroads in America. There is no more time to waste. We need a modern day #AppealToHeaven to save our once great nation. If we continue to slaughter babies, idolize the profane, promote sinful homosexual lifestyles, abandon our support for Israel, and reject God – America will fail and cease to exist as we have known it. “

Rapert served in the state Senate from 2011 to January of this year. He did not run for reelection in 2022 and instead unsuccessfully sought the GOP nomination for lieutenant governor but was defeated in the primary.

Rapert credits his National Association of Christian Lawmakers for pushing an extremist measure that prohibits trans Arkansans from using a bathroom matching their gender identity in the state’s K-12 public school facilities. Governor Sanders signed the bill into law last March. After Sanders signed the measure Rapert said:

 “We are fighting for the lives of little babies. We are fighting against the people that are putting the queer books into your school libraries and trying to groom these children into homosexuality. We’re standing up. We’re pursuing school board policies to save the nation. We are standing up and have our members running bills in the halls of the state legislatures to stand up against this woke ideology, to push back against the things of the devil in our country.”

KUAR, the NPR local affiliate in Little Rock, reported Rapert is joining the seven-member board while the state is being sued over a law that would alter Arkansas libraries’ processes for reconsidering material and create criminal liability for librarians who distribute content that some consider “obscene” or “harmful to minors.” A federal judge temporarily blocked portions of Act 372 of 2023 in July before it went into effect.

Editor’s note: This is the first in a three-part series profiling senior LGBTQ staff working on President Biden’s re-election campaign. Part two will be published next week.

WILMINGTON, Del. -The Biden-Harris administration has made history with the number and seniority of its LGBTQ appointees — a fact that is perhaps almost as familiar as the faces of America’s first openly gay Cabinet-level official, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, or Karine Jean-Pierre, who is both the first Black woman and lesbian White House press secretary.

Queer people are also helping to lead the largely behind-the-scenes, grueling reelection effort, and last week the Washington Blade spoke with five of them at the campaign’s headquarters in Wilmington, Del., and another remotely over Zoom.

The campaign’s spokesperson Kevin Munoz and finance chair Rufus Gifford, both gay men, view next year’s election and its stakes for LGBTQ Americans, for all Americans, as existentially important.  

So, too, do the staff who will be profiled in Parts 2 and 3 of this series: Sergio Gonzales, senior adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris; Rubi Flores, special assistant to campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez; Becca Siegel, senior adviser to the campaign; and Teresa Tolliver, director of operations for the campaign.

Each brings diversity with respect to both identity and experience to their roles.

“I entered politics as someone that had worked in advertising,” Munoz told the Blade.

Joining the Biden for President campaign in 2019 as the Nevada press secretary without much experience liaising with reporters or drafting press releases, Munoz said he promised to “work like the Dickens on the things that I [didn’t] know enough about.”

After joining team Biden in Las Vegas, he would go on to serve as an assistant White House press secretary, working on critically important matters, including the administration’s response to COVID and other public health crises, before joining the campaign last March.

Throughout, Munoz said, “There’s never been an environment in which I haven’t felt really comfortable to be myself and really able to use my background, as someone from Florida, as a Latino, as a gay man, to my advantage and to be able to speak about issues that uniquely impact me or people like me.”

“When I was at the White House,” he said, “I had the opportunity to work on LGBT issues as it relates to health care,” including with the emergence of mpox, which “was uniquely impacting” gay men.

Munoz remembers that as the National Security Council — which is responsible for handling outbreaks of disease at their early outset — held a briefing, “I said to some colleagues and the powers that be, this guy is going to be the guy that is able to talk candidly and be credible and trusted, and also talk about all the wonky public health things all at once.’”

He was referring to Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who was director of the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before the White House named him deputy coordinator of the national mpox response in 2022 — a move that, Munoz said, demonstrated that the administration “understands the need to have LGBTQ people at the table and really leading the response on something like this.”

Munoz is also from Florida. In March, “We had to lead the response when ‘Don’t Say Gay’ was just becoming an issue,” he said, during which time the bill was signed into law by the state’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, now a presidential candidate.

“I remember being with Jen [Psaki], in the Press Secretary’s office, when this was coming out and we started talking about this early on, about how this is an issue of freedom,” he said. “They want to tell you who you can be.”

The controversial law prohibits classroom discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in Florida’s public schools, potentially penalizing teachers who might, for example, display a photo of their same-sex spouse on their desk.

In the campaign, Munoz said his experience in advertising became an asset, too. With the challenges stemming from the fragmented media environment, where voters get their information from places like Snapchat and WhatsApp, Munoz said, “I’m very grateful to have come from a background where I was doing message testing and ad testing and ad recall.”

“We need to build a bench of different places that we can go and tap into, to talk about Joe Biden’s message” and “how he’s delivering,” he said, so there is a built-in advantage because “I’m not starting from ground zero.”

“When your life is on the line, you’re gonna fight like your life is on the line,” he said, noting how, leading into next year’s elections, “virtually every state attorney general in Republican states is attacking trans Americans.”

The importance of centering voices whom voters can trust and identify with extends to outreach to LGBTQ voters, too, Munoz said, noting that the community constitutes “a huge voting bloc in our battleground states.”

From the campaign’s perspective, this means continuous year-round outreach to Black communities, younger people, the LGBTQ community, and other stakeholders, he said, adding that “when we start to do more coalition specific work directly from the campaign as the general election is built out,” this will likely mean a revival of the 2020 Out for Biden campaign.

Likewise, speaking with the Blade by Zoom from his home in Boston, Gifford said that “a critically important part of the Biden Harris victory next year is engaging the LGBT community across the board.”

“Not only are we going to be an extremely important fundraising piece of this puzzle,” he said, “but look: These states, I mean, if you think about the margins in ’20 — 10,000 votes, 20,000 votes in some of these states — the LGBT community can flip a state.”

A large part of Gifford’s work, both now and in previous roles, involves dealing with people. “I’m very out and I’m very proud,” he said. “I will never lie about who I am,” he said.

Gifford said he has been out for 30 years, during which time he worked on a total of five presidential campaigns, beginning with John Kerry’s in 2004 and then Barack Obama’s in 2008 and 2012, and then Joe Biden’s in 2020 and, now, 2024.

From 2013 to 2017, he served as U.S. ambassador to Denmark, and then from 2022 to the start of his work on the campaign this year, he was chief of protocol of the U.S., an officer position with the rank of ambassador and assistant secretary of state.

“I worked for Barack Obama for 10 years,” Gifford said, but the Biden-Harris administration “is the most pro-LGBT administration in the history of the United States of America.”

“I think being gay is inherently political — I mean, it has to be,” he said. “You know, people have politicized our lives. People have politicized our love lives; they’ve politicized our sex lives; they’ve politicized everything about us.”

Gifford was a young man when the U.S. Senate rejected Jim Hormel’s nomination by President Clinton to be U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg, before he went on to serve in that role as a recess appointment.

At the time, he said the ordeal foreclosed, in his mind, the possibility of following in Hormel’s footsteps.

After his unanimous Senate confirmation to serve as ambassador to Denmark, as “one of the first openly gay ambassadors appointed” to serve in “a very progressive country,” Gifford said, “I was shocked by how much people cared” about the significance of his being an out gay man.

“It was just a couple years before I showed up in Copenhagen, that the Bush administration was pushing a constitutional amendment to ban marriage equality,” he said. “And there was the American ambassador getting married to his husband at the U.S. ambassador’s residence literally just a few years later.”

As chief of protocol with the State Department, Gifford said that in many cases, “I was the guy at the bottom of the staircase, greeting, at Andrews Air Force Base, the leader of a country that criminalized homosexuality.”

This was part of the job, he said, “whether I agree with them or not, or whether Joe Biden agrees with them or not — but I was doing it as an openly gay man,” a fact about which these foreign leaders, all of whom “well briefed and well-staffed” were certainly aware.

“Politics is about choices,” Gifford said. “And for our community, to look at the choices, it’s just so damn clear.”

The stakes, again, are very real. “Mike Johnson, the new Speaker of the House, introduced a federal ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill,” he noted. “You don’t think Donald Trump would sign that bill in a second if they could get that through the Senate and the House? This is what we’re up against. This is what we’re dealing with.”

WASHINGTON — More evidence of House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) close ties to the far-right fringes of evangelical conservatism has surfaced with a closer look at the board of directors of his ministry, Onward Christian Education Services.

Research compiled by Accountable.US and shared exclusively with the Washington Blade reveals that a judge and minister who have known Johnson for years and are serving as two of the four members of his organization’s board have espoused, endorsed, or been linked to extreme views about LGBTQ people, women, and the scientific consensus on evolution.

Additionally, the judge — Chris Victory of the Caddo Parish Court, which is the First Judicial District Court of Louisiana — has a controversial record on the bench with respect to cases involving use of force by law enforcement.

Spokespeople for Johnson did not immediately return a request for comment.

Accountable.US had provided the research that led to a report by Politico on Wednesday highlighting Johnson’s close ties to Ray Comfort, a minister who argued that mpox (formerly “monkeypox”) was God’s comeuppance for homosexuality. The speaker has served on the board of Comfort’s Christian publishing company for more than a decade.

The board treasurer of Johnson’s ministry, Victory’s candidacy for the judgeship was endorsed by Johnson in 2020, including with an Instagram post touting their four-year friendship.

As an attorney in 2016, Victory represented Johnson, who was then a state legislator, in a lawsuit against Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) over protections for LGBTQ government workers that the plaintiffs claimed were a “play” and overreach.

Last year, as reported by The Root, Victory acquitted four Louisiana police officers who were charged with negligent homicide over the death of Tommie McGlothen, a Black man in their custody who had a history of mental health issues.

The Department told his family that he had suffered a heart attack, but body cam footage revealed the officers had tased and beaten McGlothen, who “also had a broken nose, broken jaw, and the entire right side of his face was swollen.”

Two months later, prosecutors sought Victory’s recusal from another criminal case against a sheriff’s deputy, claiming he “is biased, prejudiced and/or personally interested in favor of law enforcement to such an extent that he would be unable to conduct a fair and impartial trial.”

Victory was then a member of the Fraternal Order of Police, which prosecutors said he had failed to disclose. The sheriff’s deputy was the 13th officer facing criminal charges who had opted for a bench trial with Victory over a jury trial.

Gevan Spinney, president of the board of Onward Christian Education Services, senior pastor of First Baptist Haughton, and former president of the Louisiana Baptist Convention, appears to have had a close personal relationship with Johnson for at least eight years.

In 2016, the Louisiana Baptist Convention under Spinney’s leadership published a resolution “Against The Sexual Politics Of Transgenderism,” contained within its Annual Report that also argues, “A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ.” 

Two years later, Spinney published an Instagram post that appeared to reject or cast doubt upon the scientific consensus on evolution.

“He may try to pass himself off as unassuming, but the board of his nonprofit is off the deep-end on issues from abortion to evolution,” Accountable.US executive director Tony Carrk told the Blade. “It’s no surprise he feels at home leading the MAGA majority.”

WASHINGTON – About 60 people turned out Wednesday night, Nov. 15, on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol for a Trans Justice Rally in which participants demanded that Congress enact transgender supportive policies rather than propose, as some Republican lawmakers have, banning health care services for trans youth.

The event was organized by the National LGBTQ Task Force Action Fund, the ACLU, and other supportive organizations and activists.

LaLa B. Zannell, a trans activist and an official with the ACLU of New York who served as moderator at the rally, said the health and safety of the transgender community was being threatened by proposed state and federal legislation restricting and, in some cases, imposing criminal penalties against doctors and other healthcare providers who provide gender-related medical services for both teenage and adult trans people.

Zannell called on those attending the rally to shout out several messages to lawmakers at the Capitol, including members of the U.S. Senate, which was in session at the time of the rally.

“What do we want?” she shouted. “Medical liberation!” rally participants shouted back repeatedly.

Among those speaking at the rally was Anne Merica, who identified herself as the proud mother of her teenage transgender son, Matteo, who stood next to his mother and said he is a senior at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Va. Merica said she was hopeful that lawmakers would end efforts to pass legislation hostile to trans people like her son and will instead provide support for the trans community.

“Congress needs to do its job to protect our kids,” she said.

Diego Sanchez, National Director of Advocacy, Policy & Partnerships for the national LGBTQ parents organization PFLAG, told the rally he too was hopeful that members of Congress will support rather than act against the health and well-being of transgender people. Sanchez was among the first transgender people to come out as trans while working as a congressional staff person. He worked for more than 10 years on the staff of gay former U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.).

Others who spoke at the rally included Pony Knowles, director of National Campaigns for the ACLU and Allen Morris, policy director at the National LGBTQ Task Force.

 “Our trans siblings deserve freedom, dignity, and access to care,” a statement released by rally organizers says. “Over 90,000 trans people are losing health care many trans people need,” the statement says. “Others sneak bans on essential care into the federal budgets that our tax dollars pay for!” it says.

“We must come together to make sure that every member of Congress hears our voices,” the statement concludes. “We stand united to protect healthcare for trans people everywhere.”

WASHINGTON – In a late evening vote Wednesday, the U.S. Senate approved a House stopgap funding measure to prevent a Federal shutdown on Friday. The bipartisan vote was 87-11, with 10 Republicans and one Democrat — Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) — voting in opposition.

“Because of bipartisan cooperation, we are keeping the government open without any poison pills or harmful cuts to vital programs — a great outcome for the American people,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told reporters before the vote.

The Hill reported Senate and House conservatives pledged they would do everything in their power to avoid having to consider another omnibus spending package right before Christmas and New Year’s, something that has become a Washington tradition.  

House Speaker Mike Johnson’s two-step continuing resolution, which he unveiled last weekend, would do that by funding two tranches of government programs until Jan. 19 and Feb. 2.  

As a result, lawmakers won’t face the usual end-of-year brinkmanship and the threat of a government shutdown right before the Christmas recess.  

But House conservatives, led by Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a member of the Freedom Caucus, did not get the steep spending cuts they wanted attached to the stopgap measure, which would freeze government funding at current levels for two more months.

The bill would extend funding at current levels for some agencies and programs until Jan. 19 and all others through Feb. 2. It would also extend the authorization of programs and authorities in the farm bill until Sept. 30.

The funding bill next heads to President Joe Biden’s desk for his expected signature.

87–11: Senate approves House-passed stopgap funding measure.

The bill now heads to President Biden for his signature ahead of the Friday midnight deadline to avert a government shutdown. https://t.co/QNIroKXvfY pic.twitter.com/uRs8gstQoV

— CSPAN (@cspan) November 16, 2023

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House averts shutdown, bill heads to Senate for final passage