Outside the administration, however, advocates for more popular priorities—and, arguably, more important ones—are concerned that their agenda items were left to buckle under the weight of the now-foiled efforts to bring Tanden across the finish line…

The act passed through the House of Representatives last week, albeit by a narrower margin than it passed in 2019, and now faces stiff headwinds in the U.S. Senate, where a filibuster appears near-certain unless Democrats can bring over ten Republican senators. Now, LGBTQ stakeholders are concerned that the Biden administration threw too much of its heft behind the doomed venture of Tanden’s nomination.

“Neera’s confirmation is sucking the air out of the actual legislative Biden agenda,” one major—and majorly frustrated—backer of the Equality Act told The Daily Beast hours before Tanden withdrew. “Eighty percent of America supports the Equality Act. Eighty percent of America has no idea who the fuck Neera Tanden is.”