National
Gay mayor-elect vows to ‘clean up’ Atlantic City
Republican beat incumbent with support from Democrats
Don Guardian shocked Atlantic City’s political establishment by defeating the Democratic incumbent earlier this month. (Photo courtesy of Guardian)
Don Guardian said he never became involved in politics until recently when he “got fed up with how bad things were” in his hometown of Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Guardian, 60, a gay Republican, ran for mayor this year in the Nov. 5 election. He shocked Atlantic City’s political establishment by defeating incumbent Mayor Lorenzo Langford, a Democrat, in a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans among registered voters by a nine to one margin.
“I said I thought we needed to bring all of the different groups within Atlantic City together,” Guardian told the Blade. “And that extended to race, color, creed, national origin, political parties, sexual orientation and gender.”
For the past 21 years, Guardian has worked as executive director of the Atlantic City Improvement District, a non-profit corporation recently acquired by the state government that provides services to the city’s tourism district where more than a dozen casinos and upscale hotels are located.
Guardian said he believes he succeeded in defining himself as a good-government reform candidate capable of using his knowledge and experience in running the tourism district to address the longstanding problems plaguing the rest of the city, where most of the residents live.
“From a city standpoint the services are very, very poor,” he said. “From not cleaning the streets or replacing lights, paving roads, maintaining parks and playgrounds, cleaning beaches, maintaining the boardwalk – services that you would expect from a city to be commonplace – are not,” he said.
“And yet we have the third highest budget in the State of New Jersey. Only Newark and Jersey City are larger than us,” he said. “And we have the largest workforce in the state.”
Added Guardian, “I ran on a platform that I was going to bring those services to the other half of the city that was not receiving them.”
Pointing to his promise to limit his tenure in office to two terms, Guardian said he also “ran on a campaign that I needed eight years to clean up this city, to bring development back, to bring housing back, to bring up the standards, to lower taxes and to reduce crime.”
To the surprise of many of the city’s political observers, he attracted the support of constituency groups that traditionally back Democratic candidates, including a key local labor union and Latino and Asian-Pacific Islander advocacy groups.
Also on his agenda, he said, are plans to strengthen efforts already under way to promote Atlantic City as an entertainment and beach destination in addition to its well-known reputation as a center for casino gambling. With many other states legalizing casino gambling, Atlantic City no longer has an East Coast monopoly on gaming, Guardian said, making it essential that the city “reinvent itself” as a destination with attractions other than gaming.
Among the groups that endorsed Guardian were the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the Latino Leadership Alliance of New Jersey, and the Pakistani-American Muslim Organization of South Jersey.
Guardian said rank-and-file Democrats clearly crossed over to vote for him following what he says was an aggressive grassroots campaign in which he knocked on the doors of more than 3,000 homes to listen to what people’s concerns were.
“There’s no question – Democrats and independents are the reason that I’m the mayor-elect today,” he said. “They provided the majority of my volunteers, the majority of the funding.”
Following a recount and careful examination of mail-in and provisional ballots counted during a 10-day period after the Nov. 5 election, the Atlantic County Board of Elections last week issued its final vote count in the mayoral race.
Guardian received 3,929 votes compared to Langford, who received 3,568 votes, showing Guardian won by a razor-thin 361-vote margin. An independent candidate, John McQueen, received 230 votes.
Although Guardian beat Langford by a close margin, election results show he received 1,032 more votes in Atlantic City than Gov. Chris Christie, who won his statewide re-election bid by a landslide.
In Democratic dominated Atlantic City, Democratic State Sen. Barbara Buono beat Christie, a Republican, by a vote of 4,293 to 2,897. In the statewide vote, Christie trounced Buono by a margin of 60 percent to 38 percent, catapulting him into the national spotlight as a possible presidential candidate in 2016.
Guardian said that although he has yet to meet Christie, the governor initiated policies in his first term to boost economic development efforts in Atlantic City. He said he looks forward to an amicable relationship with the Christie administration.
Most political observers said Langford’s relationship with Christie became strained last year when he and Christie clashed over an evacuation plan for Atlantic City during the onset of Tropical Storm Sandy, which devastated much of the Southern New Jersey coast.
Guardian, in describing himself as a political newcomer, said he was unaware of the existence of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, a national political organization that raises money for openly LGBT candidates running for public office. Had he applied for and received an endorsement from the Victory Fund, he could have received additional financial support for his campaign.
“I have to tell you I was very naïve in not knowing there was such a thing as organized gay, lesbian, transgender support, either financial or otherwise,” he said. “And so no, I never applied and no one contacted me.”
Gregory Angelo, president of the Log Cabin Republicans, said there is no state Log Cabin organization in New Jersey, which prevented Log Cabin from endorsing Guardian under the group’s bylaws.
“I had my eye on this but we were not involved,” Angelo told the Blade. “But the fact that we have an elected gay Republican is a good thing.”
While he had few connections with LGBT organizations, Guardian said he supported LGBT equality during his tenure with the Atlantic City Special Improvement District, which he said adopted its own internal non-discrimination policy for LGBT employees.
As a longtime member and leader of the Rotary Clubs of Southern New Jersey, Guardian said he and his partner of 19 years, Louis Fatato, used the occasion of Guardian’s 2005 induction ceremony as district governor of the Rotary International organization of South Jersey to formally announce they had legally filed for a domestic partnership.
“It was great for us to announce it,” he said. “This was a great day for Rotary and for me personally. I have a domestic partnership and I’m also being inducted as a governor of Rotary International.”
During this year’s mayoral campaign, Guardian said he expressed his support for same-sex marriage in New Jersey in response to a question presented to him and Langford during a candidate debate.
“He said that was a national issue and he was a Christian and everybody has their own views,” said Guardian. “My response was the courts have made it very clear that gay marriage is a civil rights issue and that I would always stand on the right side of civil rights.”
Added Guardian: “In other words, I’m not supporting it because I’m a gay guy. I’m supporting it because the courts have already ruled that New Jersey has to provide gay marriage and that our current domestic partnership is not the same as civil marriage and therefore it had to be changed.”
According to Guardian, Langford never raised Guardian’s sexual orientation directly on the campaign trail in his public statements. But Guardian said a letter that the Langford campaign sent to voters urged voters to ask Guardian about “his unacceptable lifestyle.”
Neither Langford’s office nor his campaign responded to a request from the Blade for comment on this and other issues surrounding the campaign.
Similarly, the Atlantic County Democratic Party Chair, James Schroeder, and the county’s Republican Party Chair, Keith Davis, did not return calls seeking comment on Guardian’s election as mayor. Atlantic City is located within Atlantic County.
Also not responding to calls from the Blade for comment on Guardian’s election were spokespersons for Christie.
Federal Government
Trump-appointed EEOC leadership rescinds LGBTQ worker guidance
The EEOC voted to rescind its 2024 guidance, minimizing formally expanded protections for LGBTQ workers.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission voted 2–1 to repeal its 2024 guidance, rolling back formally expanded protections for LGBTQ workers.
The EEOC, which is composed of five commissioners, is tasked with enforcing federal laws that make workplace discrimination illegal. Since President Donald Trump appointed two Republican commissioners last year — Andrea R. Lucas as chair in January and Brittany Panuccio in October — the commission’s majority has increasingly aligned its work with conservative priorities.
The commission updated its guidance in 2024 under then-President Joe Biden to expand protections to LGBTQ workers, particularly transgender workers — the most significant change to the agency’s harassment guidance in 25 years.
The directive, which spanned nearly 200 pages, outlined how employers may not discriminate against workers based on protected characteristics, including race, sex, religion, age, and disability as defined under federal law.
One issue of particular focus for Republicans was the guidance’s new section on gender identity and sexual orientation. Citing the 2020 U.S. Supreme Court’s Bostock v. Clayton County decision and other cases, the guidance included examples of prohibited conduct, such as the repeated and intentional use of a name or pronoun an individual no longer uses, and the denial of access to bathrooms consistent with a person’s gender identity.
Last year a federal judge in Texas had blocked that portion of the guidance, saying that finding was novel and was beyond the scope of the EEOC’s powers in issuing guidance.
The dissenting vote came from the commission’s sole Democratic member, Commissioner Kalpana Kotagal.
“There’s no reason to rescind the harassment guidance in its entirety,” Kotagal said Thursday. “Instead of adopting a thoughtful and surgical approach to excise the sections the majority disagrees with or suggest an alternative, the commission is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Worse, it is doing so without public input.”
While this now rescinded EEOC guidance is not legally binding, it is widely considered a blueprint for how the commission will enforce anti-discrimination laws and is often cited by judges deciding novel legal issues.
Multiple members of Congress released a joint statement condemning the agency’s decision to minimize worker protections, including U.S. Reps. Teresa Leger Fernández (D-N.M.), Grace Meng (D-N.Y.), Mark Takano (D-Calif.), Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.), and Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) The rescission follows the EEOC’s failure to respond to or engage with a November letter from Democratic Caucus leaders urging the agency to retain the guidance and protect women and vulnerable workers.
“The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is supposed to protect vulnerable workers, including women, people of color, and LGBTQI+ workers, from discrimination on the job. Yet, since the start of her tenure, the EEOC chair has consistently undermined protections for women, people of color, and LGBTQI+ workers. Now, she is taking away guidance intended to protect workers from harassment on the job, including instructions on anti-harassment policies, training, and complaint processes — and doing so outside of the established rule-making process. When workers are sexually harassed, called racist slurs, or discriminated against at work, it harms our workforce and ultimately our economy. Workers can’t afford this — especially at a time of high costs, chaotic tariffs, and economic uncertainty. Women and vulnerable workers deserve so much better.”
Minnesota
Lawyer representing Renee Good’s family speaks out
Antonio Romanucci condemned White House comments over Jan. 7 shooting
A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis on Jan. 7 as she attempted to drive away from law enforcement during a protest.
Since Good’s killing, ICE has faced national backlash over the excessive use of deadly force, prompting the Trump-Vance administration to double down on escalating enforcement measures in cities across the country.
The Washington Blade spoke with Antonio Romanucci, the attorney representing Good’s family following her death.
Romanucci said that Jonathan Ross — the ICE agent seen on video shooting Good — acted in an antagonizing manner, escalated the encounter in violation of ICE directives, and has not been held accountable as ICE and other federal agents continue to “ramp up” operations in Minnesota.
A day before the fatal shooting, the Department of Homeland Security began what it described as the largest immigration enforcement operation ever carried out by the agency, according to DHS’s own X post.
That escalation, Romanucci said, is critical context in understanding how Good was shot and why, so far, the agent who killed her has faced no consequences for killing a queer mother as she attempted to disengage from a confrontation.
“You have to look at this in the totality of the circumstances … One of the first things we need to look at is what was the mission here to begin with — with ICE coming into Minneapolis,” Romanucci told the Blade. “We knew the mission was to get the worst of the worst, and that was defined as finding illegal immigrants who had felony convictions. When you look at what happened on Jan. 7 with Renee and Rebecca [Good, Renee’s wife], certainly that was far from their mission, wasn’t it? What they really did was they killed a good woman — someone who was a mother, a daughter, a sister, a committed companion, an animal lover.”
Romanucci said finding and charging those responsible for Good’s death is now the focus of his work with her family.
“What our mission is now is to ensure that we achieve transparency, accountability, and justice … We aim to get it in front of, hopefully, a judge or a jury one day to make that determination.”
Those are three things Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and DHS has outright rejected while smearing Good in the official record — including accusing her of being a “domestic terrorist” without evidence and standing by Ross, who Noem said acted in self-defense.
The version of events advanced by Noem and ICE has been widely contradicted by the volume of video footage of the shooting circulating online. Multiple angles show Good’s Honda Pilot parked diagonally in the street alongside other protesters attempting to block ICE agents from entering Richard E. Green Central Park Elementary School.
The videos show ICE officers approaching Good’s vehicle and ordering her to “get out of the car.” She then puts the car in reverse, backs up briefly, shifts into drive, and steers to the right — away from the officers.
The abundance of video evidence directly contradicts statements made by President Donald Trump, Noem, and other administration officials in interviews following Good’s death.
“The video shows that Renee told Jonathan Ross that ‘I’m not mad at you,’ so we know that her state of mind was one of peace,” Romanucci said. “She steered the car away from where he was standing, and we know that he was standing in front of the car. Reasonable police practices say that you do not stand in front of the car when there’s a driver behind the wheel. When you leave yourself with only the ability to use deadly force as an option to escape, that is not a reasonable police practice.”
An autopsy commissioned by Good’s family further supports that account, finding that her injuries were consistent with being shot from the direction of someone driving away.
The autopsy found three gunshot wounds: one to Good’s left forearm, one that struck her right breast without piercing major organs, and a third that entered the left side of her head near the temple and exited on the right side.
Romanucci said Ross not only placed himself directly in harm’s way, but then used deadly force after creating the conditions he claimed justified it — a move that violates DHS and ICE policy, according to former Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Juliette Kayyem.
“As a general rule, police officers and law enforcement do not shoot into moving cars, do not put themselves in front of cars, because those are things that are easily de-escalated,” Kayyem told PBS in a Jan. 8 interview.
“When he put himself in a situation of danger, the only way that he could get out of danger is by shooting her, because he felt himself in peril,” Romanucci said. “That is not a reasonable police practice when you leave yourself with only the ability to use deadly force as an option. That’s what happened here. That’s why we believe, based on what we’ve seen, that this case is unlawful and unconstitutional.”
Romanucci said he was appalled by how Trump and Noem described Good following her death.
“I will never use those words in describing our client and a loved one,” he said. “Those words, in my opinion, certainly do not apply to her, and they never should apply to her. I think the words, when they were used to describe her, were nearly slanderous … Renee Good driving her SUV at two miles per hour away from an ICE agent to move down the street is not an act of domestic terrorism at all.”
He added that his office has taken steps to preserve evidence in anticipation of potential civil litigation, even as the Justice Department has declined to open an investigation.
“We did issue a letter of preservation to the Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, and other agencies to ensure that any evidence that’s in their possession be not destroyed or altered or modified,” Romanucci said. “We’ve heard Todd Blanche say just in the last couple of days that they don’t believe that they need to investigate at all. So we’re going to be demanding that the car be returned to its rightful owner, because if there’s no investigation, then we want our property back.”
The lack of accountability for Ross — and the continued expansion of ICE operations — has fueled nationwide protests against federal law enforcement under the Trump-Vance administration.
“The response we’ve seen since Renee’s killing has been that ICE has ramped up its efforts even more,” Romanucci said. “There are now over 3,000 ICE agents in a city where there are only 600 police officers, which, in my opinion, is defined as an invasion of federal law enforcement officers into a city … When you see the government ramping up its efforts in the face of constitutional assembly, I think we need to be concerned.”
As of now, Romanucci said, there appears to be no meaningful accountability mechanism preventing ICE agents from continuing to patrol — and, in some cases, terrorize — the Minneapolis community.
“What we know is that none of these officers are getting disciplined for any of their wrongdoings,” he said. “The government is saying that none of their officers have acted in a wrongful manner, but that’s not what the courts are saying … Until they get disciplined for their wrongdoings, they will continue to act with impunity.”
When asked what the public should remember about Good, Romanucci emphasized that she was a real person — a mother, a wife, and a community member whose life was cut short. Her wife lost her partner, and three children lost a parent.
“I’d like the public to remember Renee about is the stories that Rebecca has to tell — how the two of them would share road trips together, how they loved to share home-cooked meals together, what a good mother she was, and what a community member she was trying to make herself into,” Romanucci said. “They were new to Minneapolis and were really trying to make themselves a home there because they thought they could have a better life. Given all of that, along with her personality of being one of peace and one of love and care, I think that’s what needs to be remembered about Renee.”
The White House
Trump-Vance administration ‘has dismantled’ US foreign policy infrastructure
Current White House took office on Jan. 20, 2025
Jessica Stern, the former special U.S. envoy for the promotion of LGBTQ and intersex rights, on the eve of the first anniversary of the Trump-Vance administration said its foreign policy has “hurt people” around the world.
“The changes that they are making will take a long time to overturn and recover from,” she said on Jan. 14 during a virtual press conference the Alliance for Diplomacy and Justice, a group she co-founded, co-organized.
Amnesty International USA National Director of Government Relations and Advocacy Amanda Klasing, Human Rights Watch Deputy Washington Director Nicole Widdersheim, Human Rights First President Uzra Zeya, PEN America’s Jonathan Friedman, and Center for Reproductive Rights Senior Federal Policy Council Liz McCaman Taylor also participated in the press conference.
The Trump-Vance administration took office on Jan. 20, 2025.
The White House proceeded to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, which funded LGBTQ and intersex rights organizations around the world.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio last March announced the State Department would administer the 17 percent of USAID contracts that had not been cancelled. Rubio issued a waiver that allowed PEPFAR and other “life-saving humanitarian assistance” programs to continue to operate during the U.S. foreign aid freeze the White House announced shortly after it took office.
The global LGBTQ and intersex rights movement has lost more than an estimated $50 million in funding because of the cuts. The Washington Blade has previously reported PEPFAR-funded programs in Kenya and other African countries have been forced to suspend services and even shut down.
Stern noted the State Department “has dismantled key parts of foreign policy infrastructure that enabled the United States to support democracy and human rights abroad” and its Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor “has effectively been dismantled.” She also pointed out her former position and others — the Special Representative for Racial Equity and Justice, the Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues, and the Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice — “have all been eliminated.”
President Donald Trump on Jan. 7 issued a memorandum that said the U.S. will withdraw from the U.N. Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women and more than 60 other U.N. and international entities.
Rubio in a Jan. 10 Substack post said UN Women failed “to define what a woman is.”
“At a time when we desperately need to support women — all women — this is yet another example of the weaponization of transgender people by the Trump administration,” said Stern.
US ‘conducting enforced disappearances’
The Jan. 14 press conference took place a week after a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent killed Renee Good, a 37-year-old woman who left behind her wife and three children, in Minneapolis. American forces on Jan. 3 seized now former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, at their home in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, during an overnight operation. Trump also continues to insist the U.S. needs to gain control of Greenland.
Widdersheim during the press conference noted the Trump-Vance administration last March sent 252 Venezuelans to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, a maximum-security prison known by the Spanish acronym CECOT.
One of them, Andry Hernández Romero, is a gay asylum seeker who the White House claimed was a member of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang the Trump-Vance administration has designated as an “international terrorist organization.” Hernández upon his return to Venezuela last July said he suffered physical, sexual, and psychological abuse while at CECOT.
“In 2025 … the United States is conducting enforced disappearances,” said Widdersheim.
Zeya, who was Under Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights from 2021-2025, in response to the Blade’s question during the press conference said her group and other advocacy organizations have “got to keep doubling down in defense of the rule of law, to hold this administration to account.”
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