President Trump’s cabinet continues to overhaul federal programs and initiatives, with some recent AI-related moves hitting the Department of Commerce. 

Secretary Howard Lutnick announced that the AI Safety Institute will now be called the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI). In addition to removing “safety” from the title of the agency, which was created under the Biden administration in 2023 to set AI standards and guidance, CAISI will pivot to focus more on national security risks and global competitiveness.  

“For far too long, censorship and regulations have been used under the guise of national security. Innovators will no longer be limited by these standards,” Lutnick said in a press release. “CAISI will evaluate and enhance U.S. innovation of these rapidly developing commercial AI systems while ensuring they remain secure to our national security standards.”

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As bombs exploded outside his home in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Alex had to make a colossal decision — whether or not to flee, and if so, where to go. 

The technologist and startup founder, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of pending immigration status, landed in the US on May 24, 2023, after a 16-country tour with his wife and six-month-old son. A soccer injury to his ACL about 2 months prior to the war exonerated him from the draft that his home country applies to all men between the ages of 25 and 60. But the exemption didn’t protect him or his family from the invasion Russia launched in February 2022.   

He’s here thanks to the Uniting for Ukraine program, which brought in about 158,000 individuals from the war-plagued country, per government data. But the Trump administration paused the program, leaving Alex and thousands of others in the lurch. 

Through Uniting for Ukraine, established during the Biden administration, Ukrainians can work and access public benefits in the US for up to two years with the possibility of extension. His stay is almost up, and he’s applied for Temporary Protected Status, but hasn’t heard whether or not it’s been approved. 

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More than a year after the Oct. 7 attacks that spurred Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, some Maryland residents have continued protesting Israel’s conduct in the conflict. 

Like others around the world demonstrating in solidarity against Israel’s ongoing occupation of Palestinian territories and the tens of thousands killed, these protestors have illuminated the local dimensions of this international issue. Much of their attention has fallen on an organization using public and private resources to facilitate economic exchange with Israel — including with companies developing tech for its military actions. 

A local group called Al-Aqsa Swim Club has held demonstrations and posted information about the state’s economic connections to Israel throughout 2024. Work particularly ramped up in tandem with the first anniversary of Oct. 7, with demonstrators showing up to politicians’ houses calling for a ceasefire, posting educational graphics on Instagram and creating an in-depth resource guide.

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Northern Virginia’s blistering summer heat saw Data Center Alley’s electricity consumption surge even higher than usual.

Like people blasting their air conditioning, the building-size systems powering the modern internet need to stay cool to run smoothly. Climate control accounts for a large portion of the energy used by data centers in general, said Johns Hopkins University electrical and computing professor Yury Dvorkin.

“They go on top of what our existing baseline consumption is,” Dvorkin said. “It creates an additional energy demand in the form of electricity that has never been served before.”

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Music has always been a part of Joy Redmond’s life. She began playing piano at 7 years old, and it took off from there. Now, Redmond, a composer and pianist, is making her Kennedy Center debut this month. 

Redmond is part of the American Opera Initiative at the Kennedy Center, a program that commissions original one-act opera works. Her piece, which she co-created with librettist Sam Norman, will premiere on Jan. 19. 

“Hairpiece” follows the story of a wigmaker, Esther. Redmond and Norman brainstormed the storyline together, and Norman wrote the story while Redmond composed. The other main characters, a man and a non-binary person, all come together, and clash, but also find common ground and get to know themselves on a deeper level. The opera explores what it means to feel comfortable in authentically expressing gender, and how that need to feel seen connects people. 

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The FBI made three arrests of Jan. 6 fugitives on Saturday morning — on the third anniversary of the attack on the U.S. Capitol. 

Jonathan Daniel Pollock, Olivia Michele Pollock and Joseph Daniel Hutchinson III were arrested early Saturday morning at a ranch in Groveland, Florida. They are scheduled to appear in Federal Court in Ocala, Florida on Monday. The FBI has not released any more details on their arrests. 

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Sarah Robinson didn’t see people like herself in romance novels, so she decided to write ones in which she did.

“I want to write stories that I feel like I can see myself in and my friend groups in,” Robinson tells City Paper. “I just wanted to see more stories that felt authentic to me. And what I want to read.”

A queer, nonbinary author and therapist based in Arlington who uses she/they pronouns, Robinson has been writing romance novels for about a decade, but over the past five years, Robinson has committed to telling LGBTQIA-specific stories. Since the pivotal release of Red, White & Royal Blue, a 2019 romance novel following a queer relationship between two famous men, LGBTQIA representation in the romance genre has improved, but Robinson notes that lesbian, nonbinary, and multisexual love is still lacking. Their novels focus on what they call “underrepresented” queer and trans identities, including nonbinary and multisexual characters.

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Photo courtesy Republic Records

Actor, musician, writer, and director Billy Porter is embarking on his first-ever music tour this spring.

Porter, 53, will visit 25 cities across the United States. “The Black Mona Lisa Tour: Volume 1,” tells Porter’s life story through song.

The show will feature songs from his new album due this fall, “Black Mona Lisa,” and his well-loved hits like “Love Is on the Way” and “Love Yourself.” It also nods to his long Broadway career and role in “Pose.”

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As pop and hip-hop music vibrated down Peabody Street in the Brightwood Park neighborhood on a February afternoon, frustrated tenants silently marched down the front pathway to their apartment building, holding signs over their faces.

“No justice no rent.”
“We deserve to be safe.”

Some building staff uncomfortably looked away. Amid the thrumming lyrics, these signs did the loudest talking.

On the same day tenants planned to protest living conditions in their building, their management decided to stage a festive “resident appreciation day.”

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Photo by Tyrone Turner // WAMU/DCist

Towanda Chew has gone to extraordinary lengths to prioritize her children’s education. Like many parents navigating homelessness, keeping this promise remains a harrowing challenge. It requires that she first keep them safe and sheltered. 

“I wish I could have walked on the stage,” said Chew, who didn’t graduate from high school, but got her GED. “And that’s why I’m so hard on them about finishing school, going through that … I stay on them about that,” said Chew. She is a single mom to five daughters and two sons, two of whom still live with her. 

After experiencing homelessness on and off for three years, Chew and her children finally moved into a subsidized apartment along Martin Luther King Jr Ave. in Southeast D.C. in 2020. 

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When Aida Peery decided to get an abortion at 18, she felt scared and confused. It was a few years after the historic Roe V. Wade ruling, the 1973 landmark case protecting a person’s right to an abortion. But Peery was unsure how she could access the procedure.

At the time, her home state of Illinois required unmarried people 18 and under to first obtain parental consent to undergo an abortion. Peery, nervous but committed to her decision, enlisted the help of a family friend to pose as her mother at a clinic in Chicago. She felt like she couldn’t be honest with her family about the situation 

“I was scared to talk to my family about it,” Peery said. “They instilled a lot of fear in me.”

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Photo by Kaela Roeder

Karoly Freeman sat down on the outside patio at The Potter’s House on a routine Monday afternoon in late March. After some hopeful warm days, the cold was back again. He sipped the hot coffee with sugar and light cream and sighed. Freeman smiled and greeted several people walking out of the coffee shop and bookstore. 

A 63-year-old native Adams Morgan resident and veteran, Freeman experienced homelessness 13 years ago. Now, he has an apartment and gives back by giving haircuts to people experiencing homelessness. 

The Potter’s House offers a variety of services, including a free meal program and soon, a job-training program. The Potter’s House is one of few establishments offering free meals in the District, let alone in the Adams Morgan neighborhood.  

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Juniper Simonis (Photo by Mariah Harris)

It was a typical day for Juniper Simonis. The freelance ecologist decided to break from work for lunch at about 3 p.m. to take their service dog, Wallace, to the local dog park and grab a bite to eat.  

But a planned peaceful afternoon quickly turned ugly. Simonis says they survived a gang assault of about 30 perpetrators in Gresham, Ore., a suburb outside of Portland. The Oregon resident encountered the group for only minutes but suffered a concussion, sprained jaw, extensive car damage and verbal assaults, they said. 

“They nearly killed me,” they said.

Simonis said they turned into a parking lot to pick up lunch in Gresham, Ore., and stumbled upon a rally that included several members of the Proud Boys — a far-right, ultra-nationalist organization known for its anti-LGBTQ, anti-feminism and neo-fascist ideologies. 

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Rachel Pike (front) and Jo McDaniel (back), the founders of As You Are Bar. Photo by Zayn Thiam

On pre-pandemic nights, Rachel Pike and Jo McDaniel could typically be found bartending at A League of Her Own, a lesbian bar in Washington, D.C.

Now, more than a year after Covid-19 began to upend the daily lives of most Americans, the newly engaged duo can instead be found on Zoom hosting trivia contests, happy hours and dance parties for LGBTQ people of all identities through a virtual venue.

The venue, As You Are Bar, has been operating online since February, and Pike, 36, and McDaniel, 39, describe it as a combination of a bar, cafe, community center and club for people over 18.

“The pandemic made us realize that there is so much need for connection — even outside of a brick-and-mortar space,” McDaniel said.

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(Photo courtesy of Jon Carmichael)

Jon Carmichael could become the first openly gay man to travel to space, and he says it’s “about time.”

An astrophotographer and pilot, Carmichael is applying to the Inspiration 4 program — the first all-civilian space mission. The trip will be led by pilot Jared Isaacman, the founder and CEO of Shift4 Payments, a company that supports e-commerce platforms.

The spacecraft will take four people to travel in Earth’s orbit for three to five days. The launch date has not been determined, but it will be no earlier than October.  

Carmichael, 34, says he has had an interest in space since he was a kid.

“It’s my lifelong dream now to go to space, and it’s actually more realistic now,” he told the Washington Blade. “It actually could happen.”

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D.C. began distributing COVID-19 vaccines to people experiencing homelessness in low-barrier shelters and Pandemic Emergency Program for Medically Vulnerable Individuals, or PEP-V, centers this month. 

The D.C. Department of Human Services is collaborating on the rollout with Unity Health Care, a nonprofit that offers medical services to people experiencing homelessness in D.C. This distribution is part of Phase 1B of the vaccine rollout in the District, which includes essential workers and at-risk populations. 

The nonprofit vaccinated residents in all PEP-V centers the first week of February, said Dr. Anne Cardile, the medical director for healthcare for the homeless at Unity Health Care. Vaccines are now being administered at low-barrier shelters beginning with locations with the largest number of residents and continuing to locations with the fewest people. Unlike most vaccine appointments in the District, a photo I.D. is not required to receive the vaccine at the shelter clinics. 

Unity announced COVID-19 vaccinations and in-person appointments were delayed due to inclement weather Feb. 1. But, according to Cardile, no vaccine delays occurred because no appointments were scheduled for Feb. 1. Vaccinations began on Feb. 2 in PEP-V centers. 

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President Biden on Jan. 28 axed the so-called global gag rule, a Reagan-era order that restricts U.S. funding and assistance to overseas organizations that offered abortions.

Also known as the Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance policy, the rule prohibited groups that received public funding from the U.S. to offer abortion services or disclose relevant information related to the practice. This applied in countries where the procedure is legal, as well.

In the past, the rule restricted reproductive health and did not extend into other health sectors. But under the Trump administration, restrictions were taken a step further and expanded the barriers to all types of global health funding to non-U.S. NGOs. Because many organizations that provide HIV/AIDS resources also offer reproductive health services, LGBTQ people abroad saw limited access to care. The rule did not dictate what can be done with U.S. dollars, but who can receive the funding, said Beirne Roose-Snyder, the director of public policy at the Center for Health and Gender Equity.

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Thousands of President Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday as lawmakers were beginning to certify the Electoral College results.

Trump loyalists breached security on the steps of the Capitol, then stormed further into the building after they scaled walls and broke windows. It was then placed on lockdown after the infiltration. Debate on the Electoral College results that will certify the election of President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris paused at around 2 p.m.

The Washington Blade was on the east side of the Capitol when police used tear gas in an unsuccessful attempt to stop the protesters from entering the building. This reporter saw at least three people with pro-Trump signs standing in a window.

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A new global study has found the coronavirus pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on transgender people’s mental health and economic stability.

The study by a team of seven researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the University Center for Public Health and Human Rights found 77 percent of respondents expected a decrease in income. And more than half of them reported losing gender-affirming resources; including surgery delays, inability to purchase beauty products and other factors. 

The study is one of the first of its kind to analyze the intersections of economy, mental health and gender-affirming care for trans people.

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Photo courtesy of Pedro Julio Serrano

An LGBTQ activist in Puerto Rico regained access to his verified and personal Facebook pages on Wednesday after being banned for more than two months.

Pedro Julio Serrano was unable to access his Facebook pages since late August, both platforms comprising of more than 140,000 followers in total. He was alerted he violated community guidelines and “pretending to be a well-known person or public figure.”

Serrano is not aware of violating any guidelines and wasn’t pretending to be a public figure. At the time, he was the sole administrator of his pages but added two users on Wednesday to act as administrators in case another ban occurs.

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