Karin Brulliard, writing for The Washington Post:

The sparrows and finches that visit backyard feeders number fewer each year. The flutelike song of the western meadowlark — the official bird of six U.S. states — is growing more rare. The continent has lost nearly 3 billion birds representing hundreds of species over the past five decades, in an enormous loss that signals an “overlooked biodiversity crisis,” according to a study from top ornithologists and government agencies. […]

There are 29 percent fewer birds in the United States and Canada today than in 1970.

I don’t know quite what to say about this, other than that it is very sad. Almost as sad as the fact that some people don’t believe humans are having any significant impact on our environment.

Ever feel like you’re always seeing posts from the same people on Facebook? That isn’t an accident. Your opinions are being quarantined for profit—it really is digital Gerrymandering, and it’s the reason that elections and politics are getting uglier and uglier; the electorate is becoming increasingly polarized as a result of having their beliefs affirmed by algorithms that skew their newsfeeds to lean whichever way they lean.

#deletefacebook

Frida Ghitis, in an opinion piece for CNN:

The wall is a fantasy conjured by Trump to get elected. While Trump has imbued the wall with near-mythical powers, many experts say it will do little to stop the current flow of migrants from Central America, who typically turn themselves over to authorities to seek asylum, rather than trying to sneak in undetected. In the horror story Trump told voters in 2016, America was being invaded by rapists, drug dealers and other criminals who "threatened" the country. […]

In his speech at the Republican National Convention in 2016, Trump spoke of a dystopian America with a broken political system and broken borders, before taking on the mantle of the superhero by declaring, "I alone can fix it."

It’s hard to quantify the amount of hubris it takes to make such a claim. Talk about a god complex.

The Trump administration is taking $3.6 billion from approved military construction projects to pay for part of the wall. […]

Altogether, 23 states and three US territories are losing $1.8 billion in funds, and another $1.8 billion will come from construction overseas. Among the projects losing money, according to the Pentagon, are military bases devastated by hurricanes in Florida, North Carolina and Puerto Rico, funding for the US Military Academy at West Point, cyber operations facilities, schools for the children of service members, upgrades to facilities storing hazardous waste and Navy ship repairs.

I’ve written about this a few times before; it’s a subject that really gets under my skin, as it should for any true patriot.

It is absolutely shameful that the greatest military in the world has a Commander in Chief who has proven himself, time and time again, to be completely unconcerned with the successful execution of their day to day operations. It’s too bad he had those bone spurs in 1968 that prevented him from serving in the Vietnam war (see: “draft dodger”), if it weren’t for that, he may have developed some respect for the brave men and women who make sacrifices every day for our freedom. Alas, he seems to have no appreciation for their commitments, as he frequently uses them as political props to fire up his base, which unfortunately, is too ignorant to realize (or, after 2016, too prideful to admit) that such actions represent values opposite of those they have traditionally held dear.

Queer Eye’s Antoni Porowski, in an opinion article for The Washington Post:

This bigotry is unacceptable. Historically, Poland has survived hundreds of years of oppression and violent occupation from neighboring countries, from the invasion by the Soviet Union to the Katyn massacre to World War II. We have managed to keep our faith, language and identity through it all. It baffles me that we would choose to persecute our own because of who we love and how we identify in terms of gender. We must stop attacking our own.

Honestly, he’s hitting the nail on the head here. It’s pretty bold for the runt of Europe to be persecuting anyone, much less their own people.

John Gruber has a great, succinct take over on Daring Fireball on this story about marketing firms using purchased location data to map out where fried chicken fans eat on Sundays when they can’t get Chick-fil-a.

It’s time to get scared. The sale of consumer location data between companies should be illegal. It’s a Pandora’s box; even if you only share your location once, you’ll never be able to track down all the companies that have access to the data you shared, much less know how they’re exploiting it. We need to call on our legislators to put an end to this.

#deletefacebook

Well, this article from Tiffany FitzHenry is really something. There’s a lot of information to process here, and while FitzHenry does offer a lot more evidence to support her claims that Ellen is in cahoots with the C.I.A. than I would’ve believed possible, I’m still left with more questions than answers.

Maybe I’m the only one who wasn’t paying attention back in 2013 when this news first broke, but the fact that the C.I.A. has a $600 million contract with Amazon is terrifying. It’s allegedly for cloud services via Amazon Web Services, but still, Amazon seems quite eager to appease the C.I.A., and as FitzHenry suggests, we would be foolish to believe that the C.I.A. has no interest in the massive amount of data Amazon posses about their customers. I’ve long been skeptical of Amazon’s Alexa products, and my position remains firm: only a fool would put an Alexa device in their home.

Netflix’s ”The Great Hack” is one of the best documentaries I’ve ever seen. It explains what happened with the whole Cambridge Analytica/Facebook scandal, and makes it easy to understand for those with little prior knowledge. They take a largely nonpartisan look at how these companies were able to influence the 2016 U.S. General Election, the Brexit Referendum in the U.K., and dozens of other elections in smaller countries.

It has never been clearer that the technology we all take for granted has been taking advantage of us; it is evident that data aggregated by Facebook and exploited by Cambridge Analytica has been used to effectively brainwash the public, and the tactics they’ve used were even more efficient and dangerous than the ones utilized by the propagandists of the Third Reich. Nearly all of the blame for the explosively divisive nature of those elections belongs at the feet of Alexander Nix and Mark Zuckerberg.

“The Great Hack” very well may be the most important film of the decade, and I urge everyone to watch it. Make a concerted effort to be open minded, and don’t immediately rule out the possibility that these companies may have pulled one over on you—it’s easy to dismiss their alleged wrongdoings on the basis of “well if anyone had convinced me to think one way or the other, I think I would know.” The problem is that many people do dismiss it on those grounds, but by the very nature of what they’ve done, nobody could know until it’s too late. These are companies with billions of dollars at their disposal and a team of scientists who possess deep knowledge of how the human brain works—there is no shame in admitting they may have duped you. They certainly got me. What’s most important is what we do now that we know what they’ve done.

I’ve been pounding the #deletefacebook drum since well before the scandal broke, and there has never been a better time to get out of their corrosive network: delete your Facebook account. However, even that isn’t enough at this point.

The safety and integrity of every democracy on earth depends on everyone understanding what these companies did and calling upon our representatives to finally limit the boundless power that big tech companies have over our data. If those things don’t happen, the world will never see another free and fair election.

#deletefacebook

See also: “The Social Dilemma”

Please help our nation move past the mass shootings and white nationalism. Please contact your legislators. Please.

Our country faces immense problems, and we’re only going to overcome them if we work together. We have to demand more of our leaders. We have to stop these senseless shootings, which seem to be a uniquely American phenomenon. We the people MUST stand up to corrupt politicians and the NRA, and demand common sense gun legislation that will put an end to the slaughter of innocent American citizens. Yes, we must insist on strict background checks and mental health evaluations. But the shooting today in El Paso was not a result of mental illness. The shooter’s manifesto was terrifyingly cold and racist, but most disturbingly, it was extremely measured, reasoned, and calculated. The shooter clearly was not suffering from mental illness.

We must go further than just demanding mental health evaluations. We must also end the sale of military grade weapons to civilians. We must also ban bump stocks and high capacity magazines. We must also criminalize and heavily punish the undocumented sale of firearms between individuals, close the gun show loophole, and demand national firearm registration and licensing systems. The notion that a good guy with a gun is the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun has been proven false time and time again. Nobody came to the rescue of the poor souls in El Paso, despite the fact that multiple shoppers were armed with weapons of their own during the shooting. More guns is not the answer.

We also have to put white nationalism firmly in the past where it belongs. Our President is capitalizing on racism and white nationalism for political gain, and the consequences are already deadly. It will only get worse. Everyone in this nation, but especially white people, have an obligation to stand up to racists and white nationalists, and constantly remind them that the flag they continue to pervert, the flag of the United States of America, stands for liberty and justice for ALL. We must not continue to tolerate their intolerance.

It’s not overselling it to say that everything our country was built on and everything we hold dear is at stake. Please call or write to your legislators. Please.

If you’re in North Carolina, use these links to contact Senator Burr and Senator Tillis. If you’re in NC-10, you can use this link to contact Rep. McHenry. If you’re somewhere else, use this tool to quickly find your representative and senators, and reach out to them.

UPDATE: 8/4/19, 10:34;

I am heartbroken to learn that another mass shooting occurred last night at a bar in Dayton, Ohio, where 9 were killed and 26 more were injured. Police say they were able to “neutralize the shooter in less than a minute.” Less than a minute, and he shot 36+ people. More guns is NOT the answer. Please contact your legislators and beg them to end this epidemic.

If you were afraid of Islamic terrorism after 9/11 but you aren’t afraid of white nationalist terrorism now, you’re a fool.

My color coded rankings (in rainbow order, with “poor” being red and “terrific” being blue) of each candidate’s performance in the second round debates.

The second round of debates was a little less exciting than the first, but there were a few good moments. As I said before the first round, they could’ve narrowed the field by half and had a much more productive debate.

The Candidates Who Should Really Stop Wasting Everyone’s Time:

John Delaney

Tim Ryan

Jay Inslee

Steve Bullock

Marianne Williamson

Michael Bennet

John Hickenlooper
 

The Candidates Who Have at Least Some Chance of Getting The Nomination:

O’Rourke: If he doesn’t want Trump to win, he needs to drop out and throw his support to a better candidate.

Yang: He actually managed to explain how his Freedom Dividend plan could possibly work, and he incorporated it into nearly every answer he gave.

Castro: Again, I think he gets a little more credit than he deserves, but he did have a couple of good answers.

Gillibrand: She still has a certain passion that a lot of the others lack and I quite like her attitude, but she just doesn’t seem to have enough support to get her to the Oval Office.

De Blasio: Again, had a few answers that impressed me, but I doubt he makes it too much further.

Klobuchar: Notably weaker performance than in the last debate. Surprisingly (and potentially devastatingly) forgettable.

Gabbard: Tulsi absolutely hammered Kamala Harris, and she did so with grace and strength. She had an incredible night, and she absolutely deserves to be the most googled candidate.

Candidates Who Aren’t Exactly Long Shots, But Definitely Aren’t Leading The Pack:

Booker: Cory Booker definitely stepped it up this time. He went toe to toe with Joe Biden and held his own. He’s not my favorite, and I think he’s a bit inexperienced, but he impressed me this time.

Buttigieg: Pete didn’t seem to have a great night this round. His answers were rather forgettable, and it didn’t help that he was having to compete with the moderators who wanted to focus on Sanders and Warren. I don’t think this debate was representative of his potential as a candidate.

Harris: Kamala Harris had a wild night. She threw a few punches but also sustained a few blows. Unfortunately for her, the most memorable parts of the night were when she was getting (deservedly) railroaded by Tulsi Gabbard.

Candidates Most Likely to Receive the Nomination:

Biden: He took a lot of hits from every direction, but he held up better than I would’ve liked. I think Crazy Uncle Joe needs to drop out ASAP, but if he continues to hold up to scrutiny like he did in the second debate, he’ll likely stick around for a while.

Sanders: Bernie did a lot better in this debate. I still don’t really love him, but he did better than I expected, and had quite a few shining moments. However, nothing he says will make him younger, and that’s one of the things I dislike the most about him. It’s time for a younger, more in touch President.

Warren: I think Warren’s performance this round was on par with her performance last time, which is to say, pretty damn strong. She’s got nerve, and she’s not afraid of stepping on toes to accomplish what she thinks is right.

My Current Top 3:

Buttigieg: I still really like Pete’s level headedness and I think he has solid policies. He didn’t really shine in this debate, but he didn’t have a ton of opportunities to do so; I think the moderators were more interested in pitting Bernie and Liz against each other. Hopefully he’ll really impress in the next debate.

Warren: She’s a top tier candidate, she’s got a ton of detailed policies, and she could absolutely wipe the floor with Trump in a debate.

Gabbard: I’m not a fool; I realize Tulsi Gabbard’s path to the White House is extremely narrow. That said, I love her attitude and her fearlessness, and I think she also has good policies. Plus, her background as a soldier and her focus on national security issues could help her gain traction with moderates and conservatives. As of right now, she’s my top pick, but she needs a little more help making it to the next debate. Check out her campaign site, and consider donating.

This article titled My Mayor Pete Problem from The New Republic is fucking disgusting, and they were wrong to allow it to be published in the first place. People are saying that the best way to deal with it is by not acknowledging it, therefore limiting the number of people who read it, but I disagree. I think everyone should read it so they know what a gross human being this author is, and never make the mistake of giving any weight to his opinions.

The author, Dale Peck, is the type of gay who simultaneously bases his entire personality around his sexuality and also loathes himself for it. Based on this gross article, he probably hates himself more than every closeted frat guy in the SEC, combined. He seems to think that his sexuality gives him credibility to talk about others’, as if his own sexual attraction to men provides him with any meaningful insight into any other man’s character. He paints with a broad brush, and almost every aspect of his analysis is based on conjecture. He completely devalues Buttigieg’s military service and makes disgusting, homophobic assumptions about his specific sexual preferences; the whole piece was so offensively left that it seemed right-wing. It doesn’t get much slimier than this.

Funny enough, he begins the article with an anecdote describing how he has been unnecessarily hateful and cruel for the past 30 years. Gays like this are the absolute worst, and they’re the reason why so many men who are attracted to men want absolutely nothing to do with the “gay community”: it seems like the more involved in the gay community a man is, the more likely he is to be catty and dramatic, to be self-hating and self-aggrandizing, and to treat others with cruelty for the sake of his own entertainment and for a boost to his perpetually ebbing and flowing ego. Dale Peck may have a problem with Mayor Pete, but every self-respecting man who is attracted to men should have a problem with people like Dale Peck.

Five billion dollars is more than a slap on the wrist, even for Facebook. That’s a ton of money, and I’m glad the FTC has approved a serious fine and not just a measly couple million bucks, as I was afraid would be the case. However, this is not significant enough to change Facebook’s business model. At the least, Facebook needs to be punished so severely that they MUST change their business model in order to remain profitable (I want them to be fined out of existence, personally). Cases like this must continue to be brought against them, because they make the same privacy violations day after day. Legislation must be enacted that safeguards the American people from such egregious privacy violations in the future.

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I think the best way to fix the whole Facebook mess is to break up the company, throw Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg in prison, and throw away the key. They have been intentionally dishonest and immeasurably greedy. Maybe have a ceremonial Hunger Games with the rest of the company’s executives.

As far as the company’s stockpile of cash, I think it should be doled out evenly to everyone who ever had an account. Facebook has been deceitfully profiting off of our information, so I don’t think its going too far to suggest that we put a stop to this nonsense and try to compensate the citizens of the world for the data Facebook stole from them and weaponized.

As far as the actual platform, pull the plug and shut it down. Facebook makes people increasingly hostile and drives them further to the edges of the political spectrum. It upsets people, and it wastes their time. It’s a toxic wasteland of clickbait ads that serve no purpose other than to confuse, captivate, and enrage people, and it’s making “journalists” lazier by the day; we’re in dangerous territory where people on different sides of the aisle can rarely agree on facts and truth, and we need to address these issues sooner rather than later, or we’re going to lose all common understanding of truth as technology progresses and deep fake videos get more and more realistic. I know there are a lot of people whose small businesses rely on Facebook; not to be too harsh, but they should have done more work to understand the platform and the dangers of it before putting all of their digital eggs in that basket. If their businesses are providing legitimate value to consumers, they will find a way to continue doing business with them; hoorah, capitalism.

#deletefacebook

This clip should be a source of shame for every true patriot in the United States. The fact that any U.S. President knows so little about our history is absolutely devastating to me as a someone who graduated with a History major and an American Studies minor.

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The whole “Salute to America” thing was just another instance of state sponsored nationalism; Trump knows that such displays do a terrific job of riling up his base. It really pisses me off that he so callously parades our military around as a political tool, and I don’t understand why Republicans aren’t upset by his disrespect for our service members. But then again, a lot of what Republicans support these days confuses me—in what universe would a draft dodging billionaire who has publicly credited Russian interference for his being elected become the favorite of a once patriotic party that cherished honest workers and veterans?

The debates sure proved to be interesting. I stand by my original post saying that they could’ve easily narrowed it down by half, but I’ll concede that doing it over two nights gave more of the serious contenders more chances to speak. The ten I would’ve cut before the debate are, for the most part, the same ten I’d cut after watching them, though I’m ready to make even more cuts now. Two days ago I’d have said they should’ve gone ahead and gotten rid of Delaney, Ryan, Inslee, Swalwell, Williamson, Bennett, Hickenlooper, Castro, Gillibrand, and Klobuchar. My post-debate thoughts on each candidate are as follows.
 

First up, the Nobodies:

Delaney: Sir, this is a Wendy’s. For real though, he seems like a lunatic, who even invited him?

Ryan: This dumbass is really arguing FOR endless war. Bye.

Inslee: You’re here for your grandkids? Cool. You’re too old.

Swalwell: I have nothing to say other than he was extraordinarily unmemorable.

Williamson: The closing remarks about love were interesting but she also seemed a little out of it.

Bennet: Again, very unmemorable.

Hickenlooper: Funny name.
 

Next, the Maybe Potential Contenders who should’ve just quit while they were ahead:

O’Rourke: The Spanish thing was cringeworthy, but he managed to dodge questions in two languages, so I guess that’s cool. Why were we considering him in the first place, given that he couldn’t even beat one of the most despised senators in the country?

Booker: The Spanish thing was even more cringeworthy this time, and somehow the whitest thing I’ve ever seen (which is notable, given that Cory Booker is a black man who was speaking Spanish). He somehow had the most speaking time yet said nothing of substance.

Yang: If people take him seriously, it’s only because he offered them $1k a month for free (and apparently thinks that’s gonna solve climate change or anything else).

Castro: People are giving him more credit than I think he deserves. He did well coming out against Beto, but aside from that and his “Adios Trump” line, he just seemed to be taking angry swipes for no reason.

Biden: Crazy Uncle Joe has GOT to go. He went toe to toe with Kamala Harris to defend an inarguably racist position.

Sanders: I believe Bernie is turning 143 this year, and he is happy to croak to you about how he’s held the exact same political beliefs for 141 of those years.

Better than expected: 

Gillibrand: She really went all in with a passion a lot of other candidates simply lacked, especially in regards to reproductive health.

De Blasio: He wasn’t terribly exciting, but he did have a few answers that impressed me.

Klobuchar: Also had some solid answers, and seemed more genuine than a lot of the others. Her debate performance definitely made her seem like more of a contender than her cringy Twitter videos.

Gabbard: I was originally rooting for Tulsi, but my interest in her had waned a bit. The debate revived that interest; I thought she seemed dedicated and presidential, and she really held Tim Ryan to task on the endless war-front.

Top 3:

Warren: I think Elizabeth Warren conducted herself well. She wasn’t too ambitious and she’s a little older than I’d prefer, but her policy positions are very thorough. Her debate performance wasn’t out of this world, but it was enough to cement her place as a top contender.

Harris: I was mildly interested in Kamala a few months ago, but the debate showed that she’s ready to play hard ball.

Buttigieg: Mayor Pete is my favorite, and he has been since I learned who he was a few months ago. He is calm, but confident. He takes responsibility for his mistakes and shows that he can learn from them. He calls out hypocrisy, and he talks to the people. I believe he is the best candidate for 2020, and I would encourage you to donate to his campaign. 

The parallels between Nazi Germany and the United States are growing stronger by the day.

Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler both:

• capitalized on decades worth of escalating feelings of white supremacy and perverse nationalism to get elected

• sought to remove a particular race of people from their nations

• attempted to censor/discredit press coverage that negatively portrayed their administrations

• declared national emergencies as a way to circumvent legal systems

• established detention facilities for people they wished to expel

• allowed for horrendous living conditions in those detention facilities

• escalated to using physical force to quell peaceful protestors

• attacked the press and allowed law enforcement agents to use physical force against them

• utilized secret police forces

• deployed chemical agents against their citizens

• intended to skirt the electoral process and install themselves as permanent leaders

• had specific days that kicked off their extreme persecution of the groups they sough to expel from their nations

• used war as a political tool

• utilized downward pointing red triangles as a symbol to identify political opponents

Americans have got to wake up. Donald Trump needs to be removed from office, and the Republican Party (as well as the Democratic Party) needs to be dismantled.

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

UPDATED: 06/18/20, 14:17

Source 

Grayson Fritts absolutely deserves to be fired. By citing fears of free-speech lawsuits as their reason for offering him an early buyout instead of terminating his employment, the Knox County Sheriff’s Department is demonstrating how spineless they are, they’re demonstrating their disregard for gay Knoxvillians, and they’re demonstrating a lack of understanding of how free speech actually works. 

Grayson Fritts is a Knox County Sheriff’s Department detective who is currently on administrative leave for shooting an unarmed shoplifter in the neck as they ran away. He also happens to be a fire and brimstone, bible thumping lunatic who apparently pastors a church. Recently, a video surfaced of Fritts “evangelizing” to his “congregation” in a venue that looks like it very well could have been a poorly renovated DMV office. During the five minutes of his recorded tirade, he refers to gay people as “animals,” “sodomites,” and “freaks.” He also declares multiple times that gay people should be executed for their “transgressions,” and that police officers have a commitment to carry out those “sentences.” His absurd “sermon” has garnered national attention, having been picked up by publications such as USA Today and The Washington Post.

Grayson Fritts is obviously way out of line here, and so is the KCSD. Inciting violence and hate speech are not types of speech that are protected by the first amendment, and calling for the extermination of a minority group undeniably fits those categories. Knox County Sheriff Tom Spangler needs to do his due diligence in protecting the community he serves, rather than protecting the homophobic officers that serve him. 

Grayson Fritts also called out Taylor Swift for her outspoken support of the Equality Act. Criticizing my girl is enough to make me want to choke anybody, but this desperately closeted faggot clearly offers plenty of other reasons as well.  

Grayson Fritts is a disgusting human being; hopefully he soon suffers a stress induced heart attack behind his Office Depot lectern. There’s no guarantee that will happen, so if you’d like to contact the Knox County Sheriff’s Office to advocate for Fritts’s termination without compensation, you can call them at (865) 215-2444, or you can submit this contact form.

Let me start this angry post by saying I am not a Democrat. I generally think that people who cling to political parties, whether Republican or Democrat, have a tendency to be uninformed followers. It’s 2019, and it’s time for us to educate ourselves so that we’re equipped to make our own decisions on individual issues rather than relying on political parties to tell us what our beliefs are. Regardless of whether you’re more liberal or conservative, you need to be paying attention to the political landscape on both sides of the aisle in the run up to the 2020 election, and you also need to be seriously asking yourself whether your beliefs are ones that you’ve forged on your own, or whether they were a predetermined collection of beliefs bestowed to you by a political party, religious organization, or other group.

Getting back to the topic at hand, the Democratic Party needs to get their shit together if they want to challenge Trump in 2020. Some of these candidates are absolutely laughable. Most of them aren’t polling higher than 2%. Bernie is about 900 years old these days. Everyone sees Biden as “Crazy Uncle Joe.” There are really only a few viable options here—in my opinion, the best two democratic candidates are Pete Buttigieg (who is polling at 14% in Iowa) and Elizabeth Warren. Arguments could be made for Beto O’Rourke and Kamala Harris. Ultimately however, I think the DNC could’ve cut the number of candidates in half, and we’d probably have a much more informative debate that will showcase the talents of those who deserve to be there, unlike some of them who seem to have been gifted their spots.

I know there’s a certain amount of strategy behind not letting a front runner emerge this early for the sake of limiting the time their opponents have to pick them apart, but it’s almost as if they want to drag this out and keep all these irrelevant names on the table until the point when none of them can get ahead enough to gain any notoriety, just so they can all keep complaining about Trump for four more years.

I am pretty critical of Donald Trump and his administration, but credit must be given where credit is due. Yesterday evening, Trump retweeted a series of tweets from early May by Sec. Alex Azar (the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services), which announced a huge step along the path of ending AIDS in the United States. The official statement from HHS.gov explains that the Trump Administration has arranged a deal with pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences, the manufacturer of the drug Truvada (Tenofovir Emtricitabine). The details of the deal include arrangements to provide access to Truvada for PrEP for 200,000 Americans per year for up to eleven years.

Truvada is a once-per-day pill which can be taken as a preventative for those at an elevated risk of HIV exposure, a group which consists largely of men who have sex with men. When taken consistently, Truvada for PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) has been found to be significantly more effective than condoms at preventing HIV infections that result from anal sex with an HIV-positive partner.

The Department of Health and Human Services website explains that this initiative by the Trump Administration to end the AIDS epidemic could reduce new HIV infections by 90% by 2030. This is absolutely groundbreaking news.

I am a big proponent of PrEP; I personally use Truvada and can attest to its effectiveness. If you are interested in learning more about PrEP or how you can get it for free (with or without insurance), please feel free to reach out to me and/or check out this info packet from the CDC.

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It is also worth pointing out that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently received a lot of well-deserved media attention for calling out Gilead Sciences CEO, Daniel O’Day, for the outrageous price of Truvada in the United States (nearly $2,000 per month, for those without insurance), given that it is available in other countries for dramatically less (just $8 per month in Australia).

Unfortunately, neither the right-wing nor left-wing media outlets decided to give the Trump Administration much recognition for their undeniably positive work in securing access to this drug for Americans who need it, because it doesn’t fit their established models of relying on identity politics to draw in audiences. It must have been unfathomable for Fox News to consider recognizing Donald Trump for doing something to benefit gay people, given that so much of their support of him is founded on his appeal to their largely homophobic audience. Similarly, it would have been nearly impossible for any of the left-wing news outlets to give Trump credit for helping gay people, because so much of their negative coverage of him is predicated on the fear-inducing idea that he is homophobic and poses a threat to LGB Americans. This is a perfect example of why identity politics is so harmful—an unarguably positive story from Washington got practically no airtime because it didn’t benefit the news outlets to present it, even though the story itself is extremely beneficial for their audiences.

Both the left-wing and right-wing media have been on this path for a while, and the LGB people of America have played right into the identity politics. The truth is that Donald Trump is not out to get LGB people. In fact, he promised to protect them:

“As your president, I will to everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens”

(Crowd cheering)

“And I have to say, as a Republican, it is so nice to hear you cheering for what I just said. Thank you.”

—Donald Trump, RNC Nomination Acceptance Speech, Jul. 21, 2016

Additionally, there’s this photo of Trump holding a rainbow flag at a campaign rally in Greely, Colorado, adding further support to the idea that Trump genuinely wants to make a positive impact for LGB Americans.

Whether you think his previous claims of supporting LGB people were genuine or not, this latest move is definitive proof. Working to provide Truvada for PrEP for 200,000 people has the potential to be the greatest impact of his term, and it very well could be the nail in the coffin for the AIDS epidemic in the United States.

This is an absolutely shameful utilization of our military. Coming on the heels of the story about the USS John McCain, Trump is once again illustrating his lack of respect for our men and women in uniform, this time by having them engage in degrading busy work that serves no practical purpose and is solely intended to make an ugly political proposal more palatable. If you believe painting a wall is a legitimate task for our troops, you are no patriot.

Increased military presence along the southern border, whether our troops are being ordered to paint walls or herd immigrant children into cages, is not what we need to fix our ineffective immigration system. Undocumented immigrants do pose a threat to our economy, and it is a huge problem, but it’s one that needs to be solved with enforceable, effective policy—not by military action. As I wrote last week, it seems clear that this administration has no moral qualm with using our military as a political tool to rile up support from their base, and the American people (on both sides of the aisle) need to do a better job of calling out our leaders and demanding more respect for our military personnel.

But we need more resource officers to prevent school shootings. Okay.

After the most recent shooting in Virginia Beach, I wrote three letters (one to my representative, Patrick McHenry, and to my two senators, Richard Burr and Thom Tillis) to express my concerns and encourage our leaders to support common sense gun legislation. You should do the same. Find your representative’s and senators’ contact information with this handy app.

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