Dem Senators Demand: No Anti-LGBTQ or Abortion Measures in Funding Bill
An apparently unified Senate Democratic caucus is demanding that government funding legislation not include “poison pill policy riders” targeting reproductive freedoms and LGBTQ rights.
In a letter to Appropriations Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Vice Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine), 45 Democratic senators wrote that “partisan, discriminatory, and harmful policy riders have no place in must-pass legislation such as appropriations bills.”
“In the recent past, the Senate has had success passing bipartisan bills in committee because these bills did not contain new poison pill riders,” the senators wrote. “Unfortunately, in FY25, the House has included more than 55 new anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ+ riders in its appropriations bills, which we urge you to reject from any final FY25 appropriations bills.”
Forty-two of the Democratic senators who signed the letter will serve in the next Congress. Murray, a recipient of the letter, recently said that “Democrats absolutely do not need to sacrifice trans people’s rights — or anyone else’s rights for that matter — to win elections.” (Four additional Democratic senators will be sworn in next month.)
While Senate Republicans will hold a 53-47 seat majority next term, government funding bills, like most legislation, are generally subject to the Senate legislative filibuster’s 60-vote requirement. That means Democrats should be able to keep unrelated, controversial policy add-ons out of appropriations bills, if they stand together and hold the line.
The Republican appropriation bills in question include riders that would explicitly target access to reproductive and gender affirming care, including — as described by the letter — “a measure to stop the implementation of the Biden administration’s executive orders to protect access to abortion care in the wake of Dobbs, a provision that would interfere with essential postgraduate medical training in abortion care, and a provision that would restrict access to abortion and fertility care for servicemembers, veterans, and their families.”
Riders targeting gender affirming medical care, part of Trump and Republicans public crusade against transgender Americans, include provisions that would allow businesses to discriminate against LGBTQ individuals, a ban on Medicare and Medicaid funds for health care providers who provide gender affirming medical care, and restrictions on access to gender affirming care.
Medical groups and civil rights advocates have told Rolling Stone that the amendments in question will likely lead to widespread discrimination against transgender individuals — as hospitals and medical institutions will likely prioritize access to federal funds over a subsection of their patients.
“I think if they had to make the choice of, ‘Do we provide this care and potentially have to close our doors to everybody,’ they probably won’t do it,” said Asa Radix, head of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health.
Ahead of the letter’s publication, three Democratic senators — Cory Booker of New Jersey, Chris Coons of Delaware, and Jeff Merkley of Oregon — told Rolling Stone that they opposed the inclusion of anti-trans policy provisions in appropriations legislation. All three signed onto the letter.
The signatories urged the leaders of Senate Appropriations to “reject these extremist riders from the final FY25 appropriations bills,” as the inclusion of partisan “poison pills” would “severely
undermine Congress’ ability to push forward must-pass legislation and keep the government open and working for the American people.”
On Thursday, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) defended the inclusion of anti-trans policies in the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act. We “believe it’s important to refocus the Pentagon on military lethality, not radical woke ideology. This legislation permanently bans transgender treatment for minors, prohibits critical race theory in military academies, ends the DEI bureaucracy, and combats antisemitism,” Johnson wrote in a post on X.
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