District of Columbia
D.C. debates how to cope with crime as reform bill heads to Senate
House Democrats join GOP in voting to overturn measure
Just over three weeks after the D.C. Council overturned Mayor Muriel Bowser’s veto of a controversial criminal code reform bill that the Council had passed unanimously last November, the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives on Feb. 9 voted 250 to 173 to overturn the D.C. bill.
In a development that surprised some D.C. political observers, including LGBTQ activists, 31 House Democrats were among those joining Republicans in voting to overturn the sweeping 450-page Revised Criminal Code Act of 2022.
On the same day that it voted to overturn the crime bill, the House voted 260 to 162, with 42 House Democrats voting yes, to pass a second disapproval resolution calling for overturning a bill approved by the D.C. Council to allow non-citizens to vote in local D.C. elections.
Both bills must now go to the U.S. Senate, where Democrats have a slim majority and where just a few Democratic senators voting to overturn either of the two bills, including the crime bill, could result in passage of the disapproval measure. It would then go to President Joe Biden, who would be faced with the choice of vetoing the measures or allowing one or both of the two D.C. bills to be overturned.
The president has said he opposes both of the two disapproval resolutions in the House, but he has not said whether he would veto the disapproval measures.
Most of those who have expressed concern over the criminal code reform bill, including Bowser, D.C. Police Chief Robert Contee, and the Office of the U.S. Attorney for D.C., have said they support 95 percent of the bill’s provisions.
Supporters, including D.C. Council Chair Phil Mendelson (D-At-Large), point out that the voluminous bill was methodically developed over the past 16 years by the nonpartisan D.C. Criminal Code Reform Commission to modernize the city’s criminal code that has not been significantly changed since 1901.
Mendelson and D.C. Council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), who headed the Council committee that drafted the legislation, strongly dispute claims that the bill would result in increased crime in the city or that it would hamper efforts by police to curtail crime.
The mayor has said her opposition centers around several of the bill’s provisions that, among other things, would eliminate most mandatory minimum prison sentences, reduce maximum sentences for crimes such as burglaries, carjackings, and robberies, and allow jury trials for all misdemeanor cases in which a prison sentence is possible.
Critics say allowing a jury trial for most misdemeanor cases would overwhelm the D.C. Superior Court that they say already has too few judges to handle its criminal case load. Under the city’s 1971 Home Rule Act approved by Congress, the U.S. president appoints all D.C. court judges, and the U.S. Senate must confirm the appointments.
Supporters of the criminal code reform measure point out that it is currently drafted so it does not take effect until 2025, which they say will give the court system time to adapt to the new criminal code. But opponents, including the mayor, say that would not prevent the problems that they say the bill as currently written will bring about when it takes effect.
“This bill does not make us safer,” said Bowser in announcing her decision to veto the bill.
“While no one believes that penalties alone will solve crime and violence right now, we must be very intentional about messages that we are sending to our community, including prosecutors and judges,” the mayor said in a statement. “People, we know, are tired of violence and right now our focus must be on victims and preventing more people from becoming victims,” she said.
Bowser added that the bill would weaken what she said was an already lenient sentence for illegal gun possession by reducing the maximum sentence for carrying a pistol without a license and being a convicted felon in possession of a gun.
She has expressed strong opposition to Congress stepping in to overturn the bill, saying that it should be left up to the city to make any changes needed to improve the bill. Bowser last week submitted to the Council legislation calling for changes in the bill, including removing provisions in the current bill that would lower maximum penalties and allow jury trials for most misdemeanor cases.
Among the most outspoken critics of the criminal code revision bill has been the D.C. Police Union, whose chairperson, Gregg Pemberton, said the legislation would result in “violent crime rates exploding more than they already have.”
Most local LGBTQ organizations have not taken an official position on the bill. Capital Stonewall Democrats, the city’s largest local LGBTQ political group, has yet to take a position on the bill itself and most likely will not do so at this time, according to Monika Nemeth, the group’s recently elected president.
Nemeth said threats by Congress to overturn this and other D.C. bills are of great concern to the organization, and it reconfirms Capital Stonewall Democrats’ strong support for D.C. statehood.
Adam Savit, president of Log Cabin Republicans of D.C., the local chapter of the national LGBTQ Republican organization Log Cabin Republicans, said the local chapter also has not taken an official position on the D.C. criminal code bill. But he said in an email to the Blade that “we generally sympathize with the sentiments of the D.C. GOP,” which has come out against the legislation on grounds that it will result in a higher rate of crime in the city.
“Decreased penalties mean a decreased deterrent, and it will absolutely lead to increased criminality and further undermine the ability of the police to keep order,” Savit said in expressing his own opinion. “The way to protect LGBTQ citizens is to set credible penalties for violent crime and enforce the law,” he said.
The DC Center for the LGBT Community, which oversees its longstanding LGBTQ Anti-Violence Project, did not respond to a request by the Blade for comment on the crime bill.
The D.C. Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance, however, has taken a position in strong support of the measure.
“We applaud the D.C. Council for enacting the Revised Criminal Code Act, an important modernization of our criminal laws that is the product of over 15 years of careful deliberation,” said GLAA President Tyrone Hanley in a statement to the Blade. Hanley said the statement was approved by the GLAA board.
“We have long known that mandatory minimums do not make communities safer, but exacerbate mass incarceration,” the GLAA statement says. “The larger symbolic reductions in maximum sentences for certain crimes bring them in-line with actual practice [by judges], plus research demonstrates that the length of sentence is not an effective deterrent to most crime,” the GLAA statement continues.
“We should not give in to right-wing narratives that some wish to use to exert power over D.C. and return to ineffective and harmful approaches,” the statement concludes.
Longtime D.C. gay activist and former GLAA President Rick Rosendall has taken a similar position, saying in an email to the Blade that opposition to the bill is based on “alarmist talking points.” Rosendall pointed to the assertion by D.C. Council member Kenyan McDuffie (I-At-Large) that some provisions in the bill actually raise penalties and create new categories of crimes that make it easier for prosecutors to prove.
Another longtime LGBTQ rights advocate and Democratic Party activist Peter Rosenstein has taken a differing view. He says he fully agrees with Bowser’s decision to veto the crime bill and said the Council should not have passed the separate bill to allow non-U.S. citizen D.C. residents the right to vote in local D.C. elections.
“Lowering the maximum possible penalties for burglaries, carjackings (now at their highest) and robberies, while residents are seeing a crime wave, is irresponsible and won’t make the city safer,” Rosenstein said in a Washington Blade commentary. “If Congress takes action on these bills, the Council must accept the full blame,” he said. “While Congress shouldn’t interfere with the D.C. government (I have long advocated for budget and legislative autonomy for the District) we don’t have it yet.”
D.C. Congressional Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) has strongly criticized the House for passing the disapproval resolutions calling for overturning the crime bill and the noncitizen voting rights bill. She said she is alarmed that Republican members of the House and Senate are once again attempting to intervene and usurp the will of the democratically elected D.C. local government.
Norton noted that since Congress passed the D.C. Home Rule Act of 1971, creating the city’s elected mayor and Council – with Congress retaining the ability to make the final decision on all laws passed by the D.C. government – Congress has only used its power to overturn a D.C. law on three occasions over the past 40 years.
One of the three laws overturned by Congress was the Sexual Assault Reform Act of 1981, which called for repealing the city’s antiquated sodomy law that made it a crime for consenting same-sex adults and consenting heterosexual adult to engage in oral or anal sodomy. It took another 12 years for the Council to pass legislation repealing the D.C. sodomy law in 1993. At that time gay then-U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) played a lead role in persuading Congress not to overturn the sodomy repeal law once again.
But with states throughout the country now passing or considering anti-LGBTQ bills, including bills targeting transgender people and drag performances, the emboldened action by the U.S. House on Feb. 7 to overturn two bills passed by the D.C. Council raises the possibility that GOP lawmakers in Congress might attempt to impose anti-LGBTQ policies on the District.
Norton has pointed out that although Congress has so far overturned only three D.C. laws, it has also imposed restrictions on the city through its power to control the city’s budget and spending. Without needing approval by the Senate, the GOP-controlled House has in the past — and can at this time — add hostile provisions to the city’s annual budget bill.
In recent years, the House has used the budget process to ban D.C. funding for abortions for women in financial need and to block the city from allowing the sale of marijuana as part of D.C.’s legislation – which Congress allowed the city to pass – decriminalizing the possession of marijuana.
Most LGBTQ activists contacted by the Blade said they haven’t had a chance to read the entire 450-page Revised Criminal Code Act, but from what they have learned about the bill from media reports leads them to believe it most likely would not impact LGBTQ people any more or less than the overall D.C. population.
Some activists, however, point out that transgender women of color have been targeted for crimes in the D.C. area, including murder, in greater numbers than others in the community. And the release by D.C. police in January of the city’s data on reported hate crimes in 2022 show that similar to the past 10 years or more, LGBTQ people were targeted for hate crimes in greater numbers than other categories of victims of hate crimes such as race, ethnicity, or religion.
“I’m not certain what contributes to the uptick in some types of calls that we’ve seen or some of the crimes that we’ve seen,” said D.C. Police Chief Robert Contee in response to a question from the Blade about what, if anything, police can do to address hate crimes targeting LGBTQ people.
“But our commitment is to investigate those cases thoroughly and hold people accountable when we identify people who are responsible for those types of crimes,” Contee said. “Our LGBT community is something special, not just to Washington, D.C. but to the Metropolitan Police Department,” he said. “They have a strong relationship with our Special Liaison Branch,” he noted, which oversees the department’s LGBT Liaison Unit.
“So, we’re going to continue to do the things we need to do to make sure that those calls are coming in and people are trusting us to report these crimes to us,” Contee told the Blade. “And again, we do everything we can to investigate those crimes.”
District of Columbia
D.C. Council approves increased funding for Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs
Increase attached to 2027 budget bill
The D.C. Council on July 14 gave final approval for the city’s fiscal year 2027 budget that includes an amendment calling for increasing the number and size of funding grants that the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs provides for local organizations providing services for the LGBTQ community.
The amendment, called the “LGBTQ Community Grant Amendment Act of 2026,” was introduced earlier this year by D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5), the Council’s only gay member.
The D.C. LGBTQ Budget Coalition called the Parker amendment “a historic measure that establishes the District’s most sustainable model for a vehicle for investing in LGBTQ communities.”
The Council approved the version of the FY 2027 budget bill with the attached Parker amendment in its first of two required votes on June 9. Shortly after voting unanimously to give final approval of an earlier version of the two-part budget measure on July 7 that includes the Parker amendment, the Council sent the bill to Mayor Muriel Bowser for her signature.
Bowser has expressed strong opposition to several provisions in the $22 billion budget measure passed by the Council that are unrelated to the Parker amendment regarding the Office of LGBTQ Affairs. The mayor has yet to say whether she will sign, veto, or choose not to sign the bill.
The latter option would allow the bill to become law if Congress does not choose to overturn it during its required 30-day legislative review period for all D.C. bills. Political observers believe the Council will vote to override a veto if Bowser chooses to veto the bill.
When contacted by the Washington Blade on July 22 to determine where the mayor stands on the budget bill, mayoral spokesperson Daniel Gleick said only, there was “no update on the budget just yet.”
Among other things, the Parker amendment calls for the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs to issue a $980,000 grant in FY 2027 to a private, nonprofit organization in partnership with the office “for the purpose of supporting programs that promote the welfare of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning community.”
It says the organization selected would also initiate its own fundraising effort to expand the amount of funds beyond the amount the office would provide, enabling it to provide larger grants to a greater number of local LGBTQ organizations.
“The legislation arrives at a critical moment, as LGBTQ-serving organizations face unprecedented uncertainty,” the D.C. Budget Coalition said in its comment on the Parker amendment. “Growing demand for services is colliding with shrinking resources, federal attacks on LGBTQ programs, and ongoing threats to local funding streams,” the coalition’s statement says.
In what some observers have called a highly controversial action; the budget bill approved by the Council reverses and restores millions of dollars in budget cuts proposed by Bowser in the budget she submitted to the Council earlier this year.
Among other things, the Council’s budget preserves the current level of funding for housing vouchers, childcare, paid family leave, and other programs slated to be cut in the mayor’s proposed budget, according to a report by the Washington Post.
Bowser points out that the Council approved budget bill calls for using $150 million from the city’s reserve fund, which she and others have said could put the city in jeopardy in future years. The mayor has said the cuts were needed to prevent a major funding shortfall brought about by the action by Republicans in Congress to cut the city’s budget by over a billion dollars.
District of Columbia
Is the Metro safe for riders?
WMATA says crime dropped 37 percent on system in 2025
I was inside Benning Road train station in April waiting for my train with two friends on the way to school. It usually took me 25-30 minutes to get from Benning Road Station to school at Congress Heights. As I waited for the train, I kept noticing that every train that got to five minutes away would disappear from the Metro screen before it got to my stop.
I found out from one of my friends that a Metro work vehicle had crashed into a train at Metro Center and that all trains were now delayed. While my friends were able to call their family to pick them up, I had no such luxury. The train was my only option. It took me more than an hour to get to school. I missed my first period because of it and had to make up my work later in the day. I was marked absent because when a student misses one class, they’re marked absent for the day and an email is sent to their parents. I felt irritated knowing that I had to deal with all of these problems that weren’t even my fault due to an incident that happened on a different side of town.
The incident at Metro Center isn’t the only incident that I have experienced on the subway. I have experienced kids fighting and almost pushing me on the tracks, massive delays because a woman was passed out on the train and Metro police pulling out their assault rifles and arresting someone in the station, which caused people to panic and start running.
I later learned the crash that led to me being late to school caused 11 injuries to people who were on the train, according to media reports. And the Metro has experienced other dangerous incidents this year. A man was beaten so badly on Cinco de Mayo that he needed staples in his head and another man was beaten to death by a stranger at the Addison Road station.
However, I’ve never experienced any incident that has led to me getting hurt, nor actually seen anyone get hurt.
So, is the Metro safe?
Metro experienced the lowest crime rate in its history in 2025, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority said. The crime rate decreased by 37 percent in 2025 compared to 2024.
Last year, the Metro Transit Police Department increased enforcement efforts department-wide by more than 25 percent, Metro said. WMATA said it is in the process of installing upgraded video systems on our 6000 and 7000-series rail cars, which make up most of the cars in the system. This new camera system allows for live video access to rail cars from Metro’s Integrated Command and Communications Center.
Asked if he felt unsafe using the Metro, Dr. Aruna Rajam, a teacher at Bard High School Early College DC and George Washington University, recalled being on the train with a man who was smoking weed and yelling.
“It didn’t turn physically violent, but it was alarming and made me feel like the situation could go sideways quickly,” said Rajam, who takes the train to both of his jobs, traveling day and night.
Incidents like these are what make Rajam feel unsafe occasionally when he is riding the subway at night: “Late at night — like my 8:45 ride from Foggy Bottom to Springfield — it’s a different atmosphere.”
Jayden Payne, a rising sophomore at Bard, worries even more.
“There was a man who seemed intoxicated, moving around his phone, pretending it was a gun-all up in ladies’ faces,” he said in an interview.
When asked if he would recommend the subway to others, he gave a firm “no” due to all of the incidents that he has heard about that have happened on the Metro.
Erin Bray, who graduated from Bard in June, recalled an incident when a man brought a gun on the train when she was on it. Asked if she felt safe on the subway, Bray said: “No, because there’s not enough security and people keep bringing [weapons] on there.”
Metro said it launched a Safety Risk Reduction Plan to improve riders’ safety and employs several other safety tactics, including Safe Passage patrols to help students in D.C. get to and from school safely.
While all of the people interviewed said that they saw or experienced an uncomfortable incident, Metro said it is increasing its security and safety protocols.
WMATA data coincides with what one of my interviewees said about his experience on Metro.
“I feel safer now than I felt riding the Metro today than I did 10 years ago,” Dr. Samuel Slattery, a social science teacher at Bard High School Early College, said.
He spoke of his experience with the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority subway in Philadelphia in comparison: “… That’s what an unsafe train system feels like,” Slattery said.
The week before he was interviewed in May, Slattery said he was on SEPTA and there was a woman “eating beans off the floor of the train,” a homeless man “passed out in the middle of the train,” and a mentally ill woman yelling in his and other passengers’ faces that, “‘Jesus was watching her’ and the rest of us were in contact with demons.” This incident agitated Slattery so much that he said, “Screw this” to his friend and decided to pay extra for an Uber.
Metro riders who want to report an incident or safety concern can call Metro Transit Police (MTPD) at 202-961-2121 or text MYMTPD (696783). Metro also posts a daily Crime Blotter on its website where the public can see the calls MTPD responded to on a given day. The Crime Blotter can be found here: https://www.wmata.com/about/transit-police/crime-stats.cfm
Christian Jennings, a 2026 graduate of Bard High School Early College DC, is a rising freshman at North Carolina State University, where he plans to major in nuclear engineering. He worked with journalist-instructors at Youthcast Media Group on this article.
District of Columbia
Wanda Alston Foundation announces passing of founding executive director Brian Watson
D.C. activist praised as “passionate advocate” for homeless LGBTQ youth
The Wanda Alston Foundation, which provides housing and support services for homeless LGBTQ youth in the D.C. metro area, announced on July 20 that its founding executive director, Brian Watson, has passed away.
In a statement the Alston Foundation called Watson “one of Washington, D.C.,’s most passionate advocates for LGBTQ+ youth experiencing homelessness.”
Neither the statement nor others who knew Watson have disclosed the cause of death or his age. Longtime LGBTQ community activist Rayceen Pendarvis said she heard only that Watson’s passing followed “a long time illness.”
“The origins of the Wanda Alston Foundation can be traced to a meeting convened by then-Mayor Anthony Williams at the request of Wanda Alston, the Mayor’s Director of LGBTQ Affairs,” the statement says.
“During that meeting, Brian spoke powerfully about the growing crisis of homelessness among LGBTQ+ youth in the District of Columbia and the urgent need for dedicated housing and support services,” it says. “His advocacy helped crystalize a vision that every young person deserves a safe place to call home.”
The statement points out that following Alston’s untimely death, Watson joined other community leaders “to transform that vision into reality by establishing the Wanda Alston Foundation in her memory.”
It says that today the Alston Foundation “proudly carries forward the mission Brian helped create by providing emergency and transitional housing, counseling, workforce development, life-skills training, and other supportive services that empower LGBTQ+ youth to achieve stability, independence, and hope for the future.”
Watson’s LinkedIn page says he served as executive director of the Alston Foundation from July 2013 to March 2014. The Washington Blade reported in April 2014 that the Alston Foundation announced in a March 11, 2014, statement that Watson had resigned to “pursue other opportunities.”
His LinkedIn page shows he worked for or with in a supporting role three local nonprofit organizations since leaving the Alston Foundation, including serving from February 2019 to November 2019 as a Methamphetamine Services Specialist for the D.C. group HIPS, which provides services for drug users and sex workers.
According to his LinkedIn page, from October 2014 to “present,” he also served as Chief Innovation Officer for the Propel Foundation, Inc., which he described as a “501c3 nonprofit organization founded in D.C. that works to strengthen nonprofit organizations through fiscal sponsorship and capacity building.”
A Facebook posting by his brother, Vidale Watson, says his family will be making arrangements for a memorial service and will share the date, time, and location once the details have been finalized.
“There are no words to describe the heartbreak our family is feeling,” Vidale Watson wrote. “While we are grateful for every prayer, kind word, and act of support we’ve received over the past week, this loss is still incredibly fresh.”
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DOJ seeks to dismiss some claims in gay FBI employee’s bias lawsuit
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