National
New Post owner gave $2.5 million for marriage initiative
Amazon CEO says paper’s current leadership team to stay
Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeffrey Bezos this week purchased the Washington Post; he and his wife are prominent supporters of same-sex marriage.
The Washington Post’s new owner, Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeffrey Bezos, gave $2.5 million last year in support of a ballot measure to legalize same-sex marriage in Washington State.
The contribution made jointly by Bezos and his wife, which is believed to be the highest ever single contribution for the cause of marriage equality, was viewed with interest this week by LGBT activists following the surprise announcement on Monday that Bezos is buying the Post for $250 million.
Most political and media observers are predicting the type of news coverage the Post has provided under the leadership of the Katherine Graham family and its liberal-progressive leaning editorial positions will continue under Bezos – at least for the near future.
The Post in recent years has expanded its news coverage of LGBT issues and has expressed strong support for LGBT rights, including same-sex marriage, on its editorial page.
In separate statements, the Post and Bezos made it clear that the Seattle-based Amazon Company won’t play any role in the purchase or operation of the Post.
“Bezos himself will buy the news organization and become its sole owner when the sale is completed, probably within 60 days,” the Post reported. “The Post Co. will get a new, still-undecided name and continue as a publicly traded company without the Post,” according to the Post story.
Records from the U.S. Federal Election Commission show that Bezos has given only $83,000 to federal candidates running for public office since 2001. Most of his contributions have been to progressive Democrats, such as his two current home state senators, Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, both Democrats; Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), and Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.).
However, FEC records show he has also contributed money to the campaigns of a few moderate Republicans, including former Sen. Slade Gordon (R-Wash.) and former Sen. Spencer Abraham (R-Mich.).
During his tenure as CEO of Amazon.com, the Human Rights Campaign has given Amazon overall high marks in the LGBT rights group’s Corporate Equality Index, which rates Fortune 500 U.S. corporations on their policies related to LGBT employees. In its recently released corporate index for 2012, HRC gave Amazon a rating of 90 out of a possible score of 100.
According to HRC’s write-up accompanying Amazon’s rating, the company includes sexual orientation and gender identity in its employee non-discrimination policy and provides health benefits to employees’ same-sex partners. Amazon also includes the topics of sexual orientation and gender identity in its diversity training program for employees and managers.
Rod Hearne, a board member of the statewide LGBT advocacy group Equal Rights Washington, said that while Amazon is well known as an LGBT-friendly employer, the company and Bezos have taken a low profile on controversial political issues. Bezos made an exception to that posture a few years ago, Hearne said, when he made a large donation to the campaign opposing a ballot measure to put in place a state income tax for large businesses.
Hearn said Bezos and his wife’s mega donation to the marriage equality initiative last year came in response to a request from an out lesbian who was a retired employee and who had worked with Bezos shortly after Amazon’s founding.
“She had sent Bezos a short, heartfelt email asking for a donation in the $100,000 range,” Hearn told the Blade. “He responded quickly with a short note saying that he’d discussed it with his wife, that the issue was important to them, and they were in for $2.5 million,” said Hearn. “Everyone was blown away because they had never taken such a bold, public stance on an issue like marriage equality.”
Hearn, who says he’s friends with several LGBT Amazon employees, doubts that Bezos will exert “heavy-handed editorial control” over the Post.
“I don’t think Bezos is buying it out of charity, but he’s perfectly comfortable sustaining short-term operating losses while building out a broad customer base for a long-term payoff,” Hearn said. “While I doubt Bezos will be pushing a particular editorial agenda, I think the editors will not get any pushback at all from their new publisher when it comes to support for LGBT civil rights and marriage equality.”
Democratic National Committee Treasurer Andrew Tobias, who’s gay, said the FEC records show that Bezos has not been a very large contributor to candidates running for public office.
“But his marriage contribution seems to tell us all we need to know on this topic,” Tobias said.
Like many of the nation’s large daily newspapers, the Post has struggled in recent years as the circulation of its print edition has declined. Information released by the Post on Monday showed that the Post pulled in $582 million in revenue last year but incurred an operating loss of $53.7 million.
Bezos, whose personal net worth is said to be about $25.2 billion, can afford to own a paper that loses money, but he is likely to take steps to make the Post profitable, industry analysts said this week.
“The values of the Post do not need changing,” Bezos said in a statement published on the Post website Monday afternoon. “There will, of course, be change at The Post over the coming years,” he said in his statement. “That’s essential and would have happened with or without new ownership.”
He added that he will remain in Seattle as Amazon’s CEO and won’t be running the Post on a day-to-day basis.
“Besides that, the Post already has an excellent leadership team that knows much more about the news business than I do, and I’m extremely grateful to them for agreeing to stay on.”
Curtis Tate, president of the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association’s Washington, D.C. chapter, said many of NLGJA’s friends and members work at the Post.
“Changes in ownership can create a great deal of anxiety and uncertainty, as journalists across the country know all too well,” he said. “However, we hope that the new ownership will allow the paper’s great journalism traditions to continue. Our Post colleagues should be proud of what they have accomplished, and we wish them nothing but the best.”
Hungary
Vance speaks at Orbán rally in Hungary
Anti-LGBTQ prime minister trailing ahead of April 12 vote
Vice President JD Vance on Tuesday urged Hungarians to support Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in the country’s April 12 elections.
“We have got to get Viktor Orbán re-elected as prime minister of Hungary,” Vance told Orbán supporters who gathered at Budapest’s MTK Sportpark.
Vance and Orbán on Tuesday met before they held a press conference in Budapest. Orbán also spoke at the rally.
The U.S. vice president after he took to the stage called President Donald Trump, who told the crowd he is “a big fan of Viktor” and is “with him all the way.” Vance, as he did during Tuesday’s press conference with Orbán, criticized the European Union.
“We want you to make a decision about your future with no outside forces pressuring you or telling you what to do. I’m not telling you exactly who to vote for, but what I am telling you is that the bureaucrats in Brussels, those people should not be listened to,” said Vance. “Listen to your hearts, listen to your souls, and listen to the sovereignty of the Hungarian people.”
Vance in his speech noted “across the West, we’ve got a small band of radicals” who, among other things, “condemn children to mutilization and sterilization in the name of gender care.” Vance also criticized a “far-left ideology given quarter in university circles, in the media, and in our entertainment industry, and increasingly among bureaucrats on both sides of the Atlantic.”
Vice President JD Vance speaks at MTK Sportpark in Budapest, Hungary, on April 7, 2026
Orbán has been in office since 2010. He and his Fidesz-KDNP coalition government have faced widespread criticism over its anti-LGBTQ crackdown.
A Hungarian activist with whom the Washington Blade previously spoke said it is “impossible to change your gender legally in Hungary” because of a 2020 law that “banned legal gender recognition of transgender and intersex people.” Hungarian MPs the same year effectively prohibited same-sex couples from adopting children and defined marriage in the country’s constitution as between a man and a woman.
The European Commission in 2022 sued Hungary, which is a member of the EU, over the country’s anti-LGBTQ propaganda law.
Hungarian lawmakers in March 2025 passed a bill that banned Pride events and allowed authorities to use facial recognition technology to identify those who participate in them. MPs later amended the Hungarian constitution to ban public LGBTQ events.
Upwards of 100,000 people last June defied the ban and marched in Budapest’s annual Pride parade.
Polls indicate Orbán is trailing Péter Magyar and his center-right Tisza party ahead of the April 12 election. Vance at Tuesday’s rally told Orbán supporters that he and Trump “want you to make a decision about your future with no outside forces pressuring you or telling you what to do.”
“I’m not telling you exactly who to vote for, but what I am telling you is that the bureaucrats in Brussels, those people should not be listened to,” said Vance. “Listen to your hearts, listen to your souls, and listen to the sovereignty of the Hungarian people.”
“Unlike some of the leadership of Brussels, I’m not threatening you or telling you that we’re going to withhold funds to which you’re legally entitled,” he added. “You will make the decision about Hungary’s future.”
The White House
White House ends protections for trans students in multiple school districts
Cape Henlopen School District in Delaware among administration’s targets
The Department of Education has terminated agreements with five school districts and a college aimed at protecting the rights of transgender students, backtracking requirements made in prior administrations, according to the Associated Press.
Allowing the reversal of these federal obligations removes formerly mandatory measures, including faculty training on responding to a student’s preferred name and pronouns, and policies allowing trans children to use bathrooms that align with their gender identity.
This policy change is a major shift from past democratic-led administrations, and will impact Delaware Valley School District in Pennsylvania, Sacramento City Unified School District in California, Cape Henlopen School District in Delaware, Fife School District in Washington, and La Mesa-Spring Valley School District, as well as Taft College in California.
Delaware Valley School District received notice from the Trump-Vance administration in February and has since voted to roll back anti-discrimination protections. Other schools, like Sacramento City Unified School District, said the change in minimum protections a district must offer will not affect their policies because it “remains committed to the support of our LGBTQ+ students and staff.”
This is part of a wider wave of anti-trans actions taken by the Trump-Vance administration. This White House has penalized schools attempting to accommodate students’ gender identity, filed lawsuits in California and Minnesota over state policies allowing trans students to participate in interscholastic sports, and opened civil rights investigations into multiple schools and universities over their policies on trans students.
Kimberly Richey, the Department of Education’s Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, said the action underscored the administration’s efforts to prevent trans students from participating in girls’ and women’s sports teams and accessing shared locker rooms.
“Today, the Trump administration is removing the unnecessary and unlawful burdens that prior administrations imposed on schools in its relentless pursuit of a radical transgender agenda,” she said in a written statement.
According to the AP, this is just one instance of the administration rescinding civil rights protections in education. Last year, the Department of Education terminated two agreements: one involving the removal of books from a school library in Georgia, and another addressing harsh discipline and unequal education opportunities for Native students in the Rapid City Area School District in South Dakota.
Shiwali Patel, the senior director of education justice at the National Women’s Law Center, issued a statement in response to the removal of protections for trans students, saying the rollback will negatively impact all students — not just trans ones.
“There is absolutely no basis for what the Department of Education is doing, and it is unimaginably cruel. Title IX exists to ensure that students are protected from discrimination and treated with dignity so that they can learn and thrive in our schools,” Patel said. “It’s what students, families, lawmakers, and advocates fought for when Title IX was passed decades ago. But the Trump administration’s Department of Education has spent its limited resources to strip Title IX of that very purpose.”
She continued, highlighting the issues that will arise from the agreement removals in schools.
“Real complaints of discrimination and sexual assault are going unanswered by the Department of Education while conservative lawmakers continue to escalate their attacks on a small minority of students,” the nationally recognized Title IX expert and advocacy leader for gender-based harassment added. “Parents, teachers, and students need the Department to focus on addressing real harms on campuses instead of rolling back policies that keep all students safe.”
The schools that had their agreements terminated vary, but stem from the same issue: treating trans students with the same protections from harassment as their cisgender peers.
In 2023, Taft College, a community college in California’s Central Valley, became one of the few schools to settle a case with the Department of Education’s Civil Rights Office after a student accused faculty of discrimination, including refusing to use the student’s preferred pronouns. The college agreed to faculty training on Title IX protections and revised its policies to clarify that refusing to use a person’s preferred name and pronoun can constitute harassment.
The now-canceled agreement with Sacramento City Unified School District stemmed from a 2022 complaint brought by a student after a teacher refused to use the student’s preferred pronouns and/or refused to allow the male-identifying student to work in a boys’ group for a class activity. The 2024 resolution agreement had mandated training for employees on civil rights law, sexual harassment, and how to handle formal complaints.
Under a settlement the Delaware Valley School District reached with the Obama-Biden administration, the district was required to permit students to use bathrooms aligned with their gender identity. In February, the Trump-Vance administration sent the district a letter rescinding the settlement and requiring the rollback of antidiscrimination protections for trans students. The school board voted in late March to change its policies accordingly.
This move is part of a broader pattern of anti-trans actions from the White House since Trump returned to office.
In addition to restricting protections in federally funded education spaces, the administration has attempted to end trans girls’ and women’s participation in sports competitions and has sued states that have not complied. It has also blocked trans and nonbinary people from choosing sex markers on passports and attempted to stop those under 19 from receiving gender-affirming medical care.
South Carolina
Man faces first S.C. ‘hate intimidation’ charge
Timothy Truett allegedly shot at gay club in Myrtle Beach on April 1
A South Carolina man remains in custody on a more than $300,000 bond after he allegedly opened fire at a Myrtle Beach nightclub on April 1, according to WMBF.
Reports say 37-year-old Timothy James Truett Jr., of Clover, S.C., was detained by the Myrtle Beach Police Department after the April 1 incident outside Pulse Ultra Club. He was later arrested and charged with possession of a weapon during a violent crime, discharging a firearm into a dwelling, discharging a firearm within city limits, malicious injury to real property valued over $5,000, and assault or intimidation due to political opinions or the exercise of civil rights.
At 10:57 a.m. on April 1, officers responded to a call about a possible shooting at Pulse Ultra Club, located in the 2700 block of South Kings Highway.
In an affidavit released later, the club’s owner, Ken Phillips, said he was doing paperwork that morning when he heard “five or six” gunshots. He went outside and found a window and the windshield of his SUV shattered by bullets. An SUV with blue plastic covering one window was left at the scene.
Police later reviewed footage that showed a silver vehicle stopping in the middle of the road. The video appeared to capture muzzle flashes coming from the passenger-side window.
According to the affidavit, an officer later pulled over a vehicle driven by Truett and found spent shell casings in the back seat, along with a gun.
Documents do not detail why Truett was ultimately charged under the state law covering assault or intimidation tied to political opinions or the exercise of civil rights.
As of April 1, records show Truett is being held in Horry County on a combined bond of more than $312,000.
WMBF spoke with Phillips after the incident and asked whether there was any prior conflict that might have led to the shooting.
“I don’t know if it’s personal, I don’t know if it’s related to being gay, I don’t know if it’s related to the bar issues,” Phillips told WMBF. “Anybody with a mindset of pulling out a weapon in broad daylight is not right.”
“My primary concern has and always will be the safety of my community and my customers,” he added. “It’s given me great concern … as to how far people will go.”
WMBF also spoke with Adam Hayes, vice chair of Myrtle Beach’s Human Rights Coalition, who was involved in pushing for the ordinance. He said that while the incident itself is troubling, it shows the policy is being put to use.
The ordinance is intended to deter “crimes that are motivated by bias or hate towards any person or persons, in whole or in part, because of the actual or perceived” identity, in the absence of a statewide hate crime law.
“It’s nice to see that something we put into policy is not just a piece of paper, that it’s actually being used,” said Hayes.
He said the shooting underscores the need for a statewide hate crime law in South Carolina and added that the incident has left the local LGBTQ community shaken.
South Carolina and Wyoming are the only two states in the U.S. without a comprehensive statewide hate crime law.
Truett remains in jail as of publication.
Vance speaks at Orbán rally in Hungary
White House ends protections for trans students in multiple school districts
Amendments to India’s transgender rights law criticized
Cuba under pressure and without answers
Police mental health struggles gain growing attention
Belarusian lawmakers approve bill to crackdown on LGBTQ rights
How new barriers to health care coverage are hitting D.C.
Kenyan advocacy groups launch LGBTQ voter mobilization campaign
Calendar: April 3-9
