Category: News

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National Security Officials Raised Concerns Before & After Trump Call With Ukraine President

President Zelensky of Ukraine with Donald Trump
President Zelensky of Ukraine with Donald Trump (image via Flickr/WhiteHouse – public domain)

The Washington Post is reporting at least four national security officials found the Trump administration’s attempts to pressure Ukraine for political purposes so disconcerting that they raised concerns with a White House lawyer both before and immediately after Donald Trump’s July 25 call with Ukraine President Zelensky.

The nature and timing of the previously undisclosed discussions with National Security Council legal adviser John Eisenberg indicate that officials were delivering warnings through official White House channels earlier than previously understood — including before the call that precipitated a whistleblower complaint and the impeachment inquiry of the president.

At the time, the officials were unnerved by the removal in May of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine; subsequent efforts by Trump’s lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani to promote Ukraine-related conspiracies; as well as signals in meetings at the White House that Trump wanted the new government in Kiev to deliver material that might be politically damaging to Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.

Those concerns soared in the call’s aftermath, officials said. Within minutes, senior officials including national security adviser John Bolton were being pinged by subordinates about problems with what the president had said to his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky. Bolton and others scrambled to obtain a rough transcript that was already being “locked down” on a highly classified computer network.

So, basically, the ‘transcript’ of the call released by the White House is the PG-13 rated version.

And the Justice Department refused to pursue the whistleblower complaint even though security officials had already sounded urgent alarms…?

In related news, NBC News reports that Fiona Hill, Trump’s former top aide on Russia and Europe, plans to tell Congress that Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland circumvented the National Security Council and the normal White House process to pursue a shadow policy on Ukraine.

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Appeals Court Rules Against Trump Attempt To Hide Tax Returns

Donald Trump has ordered US military forces to the Middle East following an Iranian attack on Saudi oil facilities

Donald Trump has ordered US military forces to the Middle East following an Iranian attack on Saudi oil facilities CNBC reports that Donald Trump has lost in a second attempt to block a Congressional subpoena requesting his tax returns. What is this guy hiding?

A federal appeals court in a split ruling Friday rejected President Donald Trump’s bid to block a House committee subpoena for his income tax returns. The subpoena was issued earlier this year to Trump’s accountants at Mazars USA by the Democrat-controlled House Committee on Oversight and Reform for his tax returns.

A federal judge in Manhattan had denied Trump’s effort to block the subpoena. Trump then appealed that ruling to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit.

That appeals court, in a 2-1 decision, upheld the lower court’s ruling on Friday. The dissent came from Judge Neomi Rao, who was appointed by Trump to that Manhattan-based appellate court.

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White House Advised Diplomats To ‘Play Down’ Release Of Ukraine Funds

Donald Trump (photo via Flickr/WhiteHouse – public domain)
New reporting shows the White House advised diplomats to “play down” the release of security funding to Ukraine once the money was finally approved. Newly-released emails show the officials knew the funds were being held for corrupt purposes but chose to look the other way. From the New York Times:

“Keep moving, people, nothing to see here …” Brad Freden, the State Department’s acting deputy assistant secretary overseeing issues in Europe and Eurasia, wrote in a Sept. 12 email obtained by The New York Times.

He said the National Security Council would not publicly announce that $141 million in State Department assistance was being restored after being held up in what the White House described as a normal review.

The money is now at the heart of an impeachment inquiry by House Democrats into whether President Trump withheld a total of $391 million in funding as he sought damaging information on his political opponents from Ukraine’s newly elected leader.

Much more at the link.

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New Film Explores Stigma & Journey Of HIV+ Priest

Sebastian LaCause (screen capture)
Award-winning actor, writer and director Sebastian LaCause (Hustling, He’s With Me, Life’s A Drag) has a new, provocative film project in the works – Holy Water. In the intro video for the upcoming short film, LaCause explains the story follows “a gay priest at a crossroads of identity and self-acceptance as he struggles to come to terms with an HIV diagnosis.” Explaining that film and other entertainment can have a positive social impact, the filmmaker hopes to spark positive momentum toward fighting HIV related stigma and homophobia that many within the community feel in their homes, schools, and society at large. The struggle for his protagonist in Holy Water is not only with his sexuality but also the “dark consequences of not knowing your value.” The priest in his film is described as “someone who has spent a lifetime denying large parts of himself in order to feel worthy,” says LaCause. “He is someone who has spent a lifetime not loving himself and not knowing his value.”
(screen capture)
And speaking of ‘value,’ LaCause shares part of the journey of the project that led to an epiphany of his own. After sharing the concept of the film at a ‘pitch-fest’ in Los Angeles, LaCause was about to move from one studio executive to the next when the executive he’d just spoke to asked, “Why are you the one to tell this story?” LaCause took a long pause before telling the exec, “Because I’m HIV-positive.” In the video below, it’s clear that information is something LaCause has felt very private about for some time. Speaking the words out loud, the effect on him is obvious. “And I suddenly felt free,” he continues. “I’m done with shame; I’m done with fear; I’m done with hiding.” “I could care less about negative expectations, or backlash, or ruining my career because I now know what’s the point of having a career if you don’t feel worthy of it?” “I have been running away from myself my whole life. It feels good to be speaking my truth.” The honest, visceral, authentic moment definitely evokes an interest in how LaCause will bring Holy Water to fruition. Watch the video pitch below. Note – while the video is from a crowdsourcing campaign, this article is not meant to elicit donations. Feel free to do so, but the interest here was in the storytelling by LaCause and his desire to fight HIV stigma.

If you haven’t discovered LaCause’s terrific web series, Hustling, it’s definitely worth watching. Thoughtful, sexy, pensive, provocative…and did I mention sexy? Over the course of three seasons, the series snatched up tons of nominations and awards for Best Writing, Best Drama Series, Lead Actor, Lead Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting and Soundtrack at the Indie Series Awards, Webby Awards, LA Webfest and more. For an idea of where LaCause may head with Holy Water, check out the teaser for the third season of Hustling below.

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Trump Rants At Fox Poll: “Oh Well, I’m President!”

Donald Trump has vented his anger at Fox News after a poll commissioned by the network showed most Americans want him to be impeached. The new poll indicated 51% of those surveyed feel Trump should be impeached, a notable rise from the 42% who said so last month. Trump, predictably, tweeted his rage at the usually supportive, conservative news outlet. “From the day I announced I was running for President, I have NEVER had a good @FoxNews Poll,” he wrote on Twitter. “Whoever their Pollster is, they suck. But @FoxNews is also much different than it used to be in the good old days.” And, for a bit of added snark, the Donald closed with, “Oh well, I’m President!”

Fox News polls in the current election cycle consistently show Trump losing in 2020 to several top Democratic presidential contenders, including Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, and Pete Buttigieg.

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News Round-Up: October 9, 2019

Some news items you might have missed: • InstaHunks: The Griffopotamus dropped his phone and it still takes great snaps (above). Maybe if I drop MY phone my pics will come out this good, too…? • OUT: Mey Rude wonders aloud, “Ellen DeGeneres was a lesbian hero – but who is she now?  She broke ground 20 years ago, but her recent actions and words have me rethinking her lesbian icon status.” • Bloomberg: Donald Trump pressed then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to help persuade the Justice Department to drop a criminal case against an Iranian-Turkish gold trader who was a client of Rudy Giuliani, according to three people familiar with the 2017 meeting in the Oval Office. Tillerson refused. The report adds others present in the Oval Office were shocked by the request. • ABC News: Montgomery, Alabama, once known as the cradle of the Confederacy and later the birthplace of the civil rights movement, has elected Steven Reed as its first African American mayor in the city’s 200-year history.

• Facebook: Evangelist Franklin Graham recently opined about a CNN article that reported how three particular STIs – gonorrhea, chlamydia, and syphilis – are at all-time highs in the U.S. in 2018, according to numbers from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Graham wrote that the solution to preventing STIs is heterosexual monogamy: “God made us male and female and gave sex for us to enjoy inside a marriage relationship between a man and a woman — not two men, not two women.” • Fox News: According to a new Fox News poll (FOX NEWS y’all), 51 percent wants Trump impeached and removed from office, 4 percent want him impeached but not removed, and 40 percent oppose impeachment altogether. In July, just 42 percent favored impeachment and removal. • Queerty: Indie movie maven and sometime drag performer Tyler Perry has announced the opening of a 12-sound stage 330-acre movie studio complex in Atlanta that will also feature a shelter for victims of sex trafficking and displaced LGBTQ youth.

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Out Swimmer Removed From Training Group Admits To Drinking/Breaking Honor Code

Two-time NCAA champion Abrahm DeVine (image via Instagram)
Last week, two-time NCAA champion swimmer Abrahm DeVine shared a lengthy message on his Instagram addressing homophobia he said he experienced as an openly gay athlete at Stanford University. DeVine, who graduated from the university this year but is continuing to take classes, accused the Stanford Swim coaching staff of removing him from the Stanford swim team because of his sexuality. “There are surface level reasons I was kicked off the Stanford swim team, but I can tell you with certainty that it comes down to the fact that I am gay,” wrote DeVine.

View this post on Instagram

As many of you know, I’m an openly gay swimmer and I am the only one at my level. I want to use this post to call out some of the homophobia that I’ve experienced being an athlete, and encourage everyone to be thoughtful and intentional about changing some of the homophobic aspects of the athletic culture that exists today. While I have many specific examples of micro aggressions and outright aggressions that I’ve experienced, homophobia is ultimately much more than an accumulation of experiences. In fact, it is a denial of experience. While I feel like I’ve tried to convey this to many people, many of whom deny any possibility that they contribute it, I’ve started to ask myself: Why is it my job to educate coaches and athletes at the most resourceful university in the world? I cannot continue to try to engage people in this conversation when there is so much fragility to obscure my humanity and character, so much rhetoric to keep me silent. Everyone says they support me, and yet, for the millionth time, I am the only one speaking up. To my coaches who sport the pride flag on their desk, to the athletes who liked my pride photo on Instagram, I need you to wake up to what’s happening around you. How can you say you support me and my equality? How can you not see how Stanford Swim has treated me and used me over the last 4 years? Am I invisible? Plain and simple: there are surface level reasons I was kicked off the Stanford swim team, but I can tell you with certainty that it comes down to the fact that I am gay. This is a pattern. Homophobia is systematic, intelligently and masterfully designed to keep me silent and to push me out. I am a talented, successful, educated, proud, gay man: I am a threat to the culture that holds sports teams together. I want something to change, because I can’t take it anymore. My story is not unique. There are queer voices everywhere and all you have to do is listen. I am asking, begging for some sort of action. If you are reading this, this post is for you! Gay or straight, swimmer or not. None of us are exempt from homophobia. It is your civil duty to educate yourself. If you choose not to, it is at my expense.

A post shared by Abrahm DeVine (@abrahmdevine) on

The coaching staff of Stanford Swim issued a statement refuting DeVine’s claims and added that the athlete wasn’t being allowed to train with the team “for reasons entirely unrelated to his sexuality.” I remember reading the story and at the time both the ‘surface reasons’ and the ‘reasons entirely unrelated’ comments stuck out as intentionally vague.

The Stanford Daily is now reporting DeVine’s “expulsion came after he drank at a Team USA swim meet instead of showing up to support his teammates who were competing, a violation of the National Team’s Honor Code.” The Daily also makes a point to clarify that DeVine wasn’t kicked off the swim team but was “barred from the University’s pro-training group after finishing his collegiate career.” DeVine told the Daily that while he stands by his Instagram post, he feels people focused on just one aspect of the essay and not his main point. “I think that I wrote this entire Instagram post where every sentence is very important, but the only one that people are really focusing on is me calling out Stanford, and that makes my message sound very aggressive and that I’m out for blood, when in reality that is not what I wanted at all,” DeVine said. “I’m here to just say this is a systemic issue.” DeVine says his message was meant to highlight what he feels is a homophobic environment on the Stanford team and to “call out” the homophobia he says he experienced. During his time on the Stanford swim team, DeVine recalls coaches attempting to motivate swimmers by appealing to “masculine stereotypes,” and when he tried to explain why he felt excluded from the team as a gay athlete, the coaching staff would “get defensive and unwilling to listen to him.” DeVine came out in an interview with Swimming World magazine in September of 2018. At the time, he told the magazine he felt his teammates and coaches “received the news warmly” and expressed regret that he had struggled with deciding to come out to them. “I remember that being a pretty emotional time, and just feeling my whole team wrap around me and feeling that love in a place where I hadn’t really felt it, that was definitely pretty special for me,” DeVine said. “Just seeing them kind of prove me wrong was definitely special, something I’ll never forget.”

(source: Stanford Daily, Swimming World)

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Turkey Begins Attack On Northern Syria

The New York Times reports:

Turkey launched a planned military operation in northeastern Syria on Wednesday aimed at flushing out a Syrian militia backed by the United States, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wrote on Twitter.

Mr. Erdogan said the operation aimed to “prevent the creation of a terror corridor across our southern border,” but provided no other information about whether Turkish ground troops had entered Syria or how far in they would go.

A spokesman for the United States-backed militia, the Syrian Democratic Forces, said that Turkish warplanes had begun carrying out airstrikes.

Turkey’s long-planned move to root out United States-allied Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria accelerated rapidly after President Trump seemingly gave a green light in a call with Mr. Erdogan on Sunday. The operation has sparked fierce debates in Washington and could open a dangerous new front in Syria’s eight-year-old war.

Donald Trump tweeted that he wants the Middle East to take care of itself:

Republicans in the Senate and House of Representatives underscored their opposition to Trump’s decision to move U.S. forces out of the area:

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News Round-Up: October 8, 2019

L-R Sean Hayes of Will & Grace and Olympian Gus Kenworthy (image via Instagram)
Some news items you might have missed: • Will & Grace: Out Olympian Gus Kenworthy shared the pic above with W&G star Sean Hayes as he shares the news he shot an episode for the upcoming final season of the iconic sitcom. Congrats, Gus! • Washington Blade: 133 LGBTQ activists were arrested outside the U.S. Supreme Court building today as justices heard oral arguments regarding whether federal civil rights laws protect LGBTQ people in the workplace. • Politico: Since taking office, Donald Trump has continually suggested asking White House staffers to take lie detector tests. The Donald has ramped up the idea again as two whistleblowers have come forward with clear information about his phone call with the Ukrainian president. • Netflix: The Fab 5 jet off to Japan for a four-episode Queer Eye mini-season. Streaming giant Netflix premieres the bonus installments on November 1.

• KIT212: It’s Tennis Tuesday over at Kenneth’s place where he always finds the hottest tennis players to showcase. Last week’s specimen will be pretty hard to top… 🙂 • Washington Post: The Senate Intelligence Committee, a Republican-led panel that has been investigating foreign electoral interference for more than two and a half years, said in blunt language that Russians worked to damage Democrat Hillary Clinton while bolstering Republican Donald Trump — and made clear that fresh rounds of interference are likely ahead of the 2020 vote. • New Music: Halsey drops the music video (nearly a million views in 6 hours) for her single, “Graveyard,” which has already amassed over 65 million streams since its release. The music video, featuring Euphoria star Sydney Sweeney, begins in Halsey’s bedroom but evolves into a sweet same-sex romp at a carnival. Stereogum praised “Graveyard” as a “strong pop song about depression and co-dependence” and noted, “Halsey… can sing about stark internal stuff and still make the songs sound like they belong in an arena.”

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Hate Crime Victim Left With Broken Jaw & No Teeth After Assault

Cedrick Green (mugshot)
Cedrick Green of Racine, Wisconsin, has been arrested for a hate crime charge of battery – great bodily harm, plus two incidents of jumping bail. The Journal Times reports that the victim of the assault, which took place on July 29, told police he was attacked by three men who called him “gay” and “taunted him for his sexual orientation.” At one point in the assault, the victim was able to distance himself from the three men and ran to a nearby gas station for safety. The victim suffered injuries to his face, jaw, left arm and left knee. But the injuries to the victim’s jaw were so severe, according to the police complaint, “it required all of his teeth to be removed from his mouth.” Green, 23, was positively identified from a photo lineup by the victim. He is now being held on $10,000 bail and made his first appearance in court on Monday, October 7. He is scheduled to return to court on October 17. In addition to the hate crime battery charge, Green had previously been arrested on misdemeanor charges in an unrelated incident. He’d been released on bail with the condition that he not commit any more crimes. Green also has prior convictions for theft, carrying a concealed weapon, possession of THC and resisting an officer, according to the Journal Times. The two other assailants have not been identified at this time.