SAY WHAT?

INTEL REPORT--While RuPaul’s Drag Race just crowned its season 11 winner as America’s Next Drag Superstar, one of the show’s most accomplished queens, Shangela, recently popped up in a funny commercial for McDonald’s breakfast items. It’s the latest example of how drag has turned from a queer fringe art form to an increasingly mainstream form of entertainment.

Shangela — who has competed in four installments of RuPaul’s Drag Race but just narrowly missed the crown — walks into the commercial clad in a bright red and yellow dress, contrasting with subdued colors of settings where sleepy-eyed people unhappily slurp cereal, cover themselves in crumbs and fight with a vending machine just to eat breakfast.

INTEL REPORT--News about climate change has been so spooky for so long that it can feel like background noise. We find a way to carry on like normal, even when the news is disquieting.

Well, let me tell you I’m having a moment when it’s hard to do that.

INTEL REPORT--A Salvadoran trans woman died in ICE custody on June 1, the first day of Pride Month. 

Johana Medina was a migrant from El Salvador. She was seeking asylum in the U.S.

Known to her friends as Joa, Johana passed away Saturday night from complications due to HIV/AIDS. Her death was announced on the Diversidad Sin Fronteras Facebook page on Sunday. 

INTEL REPORT--House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) speaks during her weekly news conference at the U.S. Capitol April 4, 2019 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Special Counsel Robert Mueller on Wednesday made public remarks that numerous Democratic members of Congress interpreted as a clear "impeachment referral," but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sparked anger from progressives by responding with a statement that did not even hint at impeachment.

"Nancy Pelosi and House leadership are out of touch with their own party."
—Zach Carter, HuffPost

INTEL REPORT--This week, thousands of McDonald's workers went on strike in 13 U.S. cities to demand higher wages, a union, and an end to rampant sexual harassment and other forms of violence in the workplace. The cities included Durham, North Carolina, and Florida's Miami, Orlando, and Tampa.

The mass protests were held just days after the Fight For $15, American Civil Liberties Union, and Time's Up Legal Defense Fund announced they were bringing more than two dozen sexual harassment charges and lawsuits against the company on behalf of workers nationwide who claim that McDonald's failed to protect them from sexual harassment and violence in the workplace.

MEMORIAL DAY INTEL REPORT--You’ve probably seen that black and white POW/MIA flag flying somewhere nearby. The stark banner, dedicated to American prisoners of war and those missing in action, is especially ubiquitous around Memorial Day.

If a new bipartisan bill passes, you may see it more often, year-round.

The bill — backed by Democratic senators Elizabeth Warren and Kyrsten Sinema and Republicans John Thune and Tom Cotton — would require prominent federal properties to fly that flag all year, as opposed to on specific holidays. With its stark image of a war prisoner and the words “you are not forgotten,” it would become the only permanent fixture alongside Old Glory.

INTEL REPORT--Facing the possibility of being imprisoned yet again in the coming days for refusing to testify before a secretive grand jury, U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning on Sunday warned of the grave threat the Trump administration poses to press freedoms.

"I think that ultimately what they really want is, they want to go after journalists," Manning said during an interview on CNN when asked whether the Trump administration's effort to extradite WikiLeaks founder and publisher Julian Assange to the U.S. is a danger to the free press.

INTEL REPORT--American Christian extremist Steven Anderson (photo above), best known for his hateful diatribes and calls for violence against LGBTQ people, has been denied entry into 26 European countries this week. The Arizona pastor has already been banned from Jamaica, South Africa, the UK, and Canada; he was arrested and deported while in Botswana in 2016. 

Anderson planned a trip to the Netherlands to do some “soul winning” according to the Netherlands Times. After activists pointed out Anderson’s history, State Secretary Mark Harbers of Justice and Security responded by not only banning Anderson from entering Dutch boundaries, he made sure that Anderson wasn’t allowed entry into the entire Schengen Area.

Photo: Shutterstock

INTEL REPORT--First it was the word “gay.” For decades, conservatives objected to people using the word to describe homosexuality on the grounds that it corrupted a perfectly good word and prevented it from being used to mean cheerful. No less an institution than The New York Times refused to use the word until well after its meaning was widely accepted. 

Now the right has conceded that battle, even using “LGBT” to show that it’s entered the 21st century. But what the right isn’t about to do is abandon its desperate battle to de-gay the rainbow.

INTEL REPORT--“Socialism,” snarled Donald Trump at a recent pep rally of far-right Republicans. The obedient crowd of Trumpistas snarled back in unison: So-sh’ll-izz-ummm! 

There you have the entire intellectual content of the GOP’s 2020 re-election strategy under Generalissimo Trump: Slap Democrats with a scurrilous campaign branding them as Lenin-Trotsky-Stalin re-incarnate. 

INTEL REPORT--A person who said they were going to donate $7600 to a GoFundMe for a baby with cancer changed their mind when they found out that the baby had two mothers, blaming the baby’s cancer on “God’s way” of saying that lesbians shouldn’t raise kids.

Callie June, 18 months, has stage 4 nueroblastoma, a type of nerve cancer, and her moms Tiffany and Albree Shaffer have been by her side ever since the diagnosis.

Her moms have incurred a lot of debt to pay for her care and one of them quit her jobs to take care of Callie. So someone in her extended family set up a GoFundMe to help with expenses.

INTEL REPORT--Two of the gay men who posed for a photo at Coachella with closeted former Congressman Aaron Schock have apologized, saying they had no idea who he was. They assert they had just met when he asked to be included in the picture that has outraged the LGBTQ community.

Schock, a Republican, actively opposed LGBTQ rights while he was in office. He was caught on video later that night making out with another man while shoving his hand down the man’s pants.

 “Rob [Masi] and I have been out since we were 14 and 15, respectively; and living as proud gay men in a loving relationship, who hope to get married one day. We are entirely against Aaron Schock’s values, views and actions,” Will Rossi wrote in a post on Instragram.

INTEL REPORT--Amazon is a company that’s drunk on profits and market share.

Last year, the online retail giant netted $11 billion in profits while paying $0 in taxes. The company controls nearly half of all online sales in the United States, and its Amazon Web Services division is the leader in providing cloud-based computing services, counting Netflix and the U.S. government among its major clients.

You’d think that with all this money, Amazon would be a leader in tackling climate change, since it’s the biggest threat to our planet — and since Amazon uses massive amounts of energy. However, after taking some steps in the right direction on clean energy, Amazon has since made it clear that profits are the only thing that matters.

INTEL REPORT--The GOP ex-congressman whose sexuality was DC’s worst-kept secret has been spotted making out with another man at Coachella. Former Representative Aaron Schock who made a splash in the nation’s capital with his clothing choices, Instagram photos, and interior decorating choices, resigned after being accused of illegally using campaign funds to finance his over-the-top lifestyle. 

Schock was a reliably anti-gay vote for Republicans, despite the parade of young men who visited his DC apartment, and his outing by journalist Itay Hod in 2014. Hod claimed he had walked in on his male roommate and Schock showering together. 

INTEL REPORT--As we continue to follow along with the soap operatic saga known as Jussie Smollett’s Chicago case, many have expressed a desire for it all to be over. The rollercoaster of plot twists — including the biggest of them all, when all charges were dropped, abruptly — sent everyone in a tailspin, and frankly, it was exhausting.

Though current Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel was basically blowing smoke out of his ears like a character straight out of a Looney Tunes scene featuring a villain with foiled plans, newly-elected Mayor Lori Lightfoot believes the city has other priorities. Earlier this month, Emanuel demanded the 36-year-old actor-singer fork over $130,000 to recoup costs to the Chicago Police Department for allegedly wasting the force’s resources and to take care of billable “overtime hours.” 

INTEL REPORT--American Media Inc. is actively seeking to sell off the National Enquirer, according to three people familiar with the process who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

The decision to sell came after the hedge fund manager whose firm controls American Media became “disgusted” with the Enquirer’s reporting tactics, according to one of these people.

INTEL REPORT--There is no question that racial resentment was a major driver of support for Donald Trump during his presidential campaign in 2016. At the height of the race, a lot of Republican candidates for the House of Representatives and the Senate tried to distance themselves from his highly charged rhetoric.

New research suggests these efforts were in vain—which was good news for the Republicans in question. It seems that Trump's ethnic hostility ultimately worked to their advantage.

"We find that racial animus among voters helped Republicans at multiple ballot levels," write political scientists Carlos Algara and Isaac Hale of the University of California–Davis.

INTEL REPORT--According to The New York Times (NYT), Facebook is creating its own cryptocurrency. It would be used on WhatsApp, which Facebook owns, to facilitate transactions between users. 

Facebook’s move is clearly to counter the threat from up and coming messenging rivals Telegram and Signal. NYT said that the Facebook secret effort to build its own cryptocurrency “started last year after Telegram raised an eye-popping $1.7 billion to fund its cryptocurrency project”. 

Between Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram, which Facebook owns, there are a collective 2.7 billion users. If Facebook decides to back the value of its own digital coin with a basket of foreign currencies, then it could potentially become the largest central bank in the world — because that’s what central banks do; print money backed by their country’s economy and foreign currency reserves.

INTEL REPORT--Syria’s envoy to the United Nations, Bashar Jaafari, lambasted the Trump administration for recognizing the Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights. 

He said that if Trump wanted to give somebody else’s territory to Israel, it should be North and South Carolina.

The United Nations Charter forbids the acquisition of territory by military force and insists on preserving the territorial integrity of the world’s states.

Israel conquered Syria’s Golan Heights in 1967, which, whatever Pm Binyamin Netanyahu might allege, was not a defensive war for Israel, since it launched the first attacks. It is not illegal for Israel to occupy the Heights until a peace treaty can be achieved between Israel and Syria, but it is illegal for Israel to simply permanently steal its neighbor’s land.

INTEL REPORT--Collusion — or a lack of it — turns out to have been the rhetorical trap that ensnared President Trump’s pursuers. There was no need for detailed electoral collusion between the Trump campaign and Vladimir Putin’s oligarchy because they had an overarching deal: the quid of help in the campaign against Hillary Clinton for the quo of a new pro-Russian foreign policy, starting with relief from the Obama administration’s burdensome economic sanctions. The Trumpites knew about the quid and held out the prospect of the quo.

Run down the known facts about the communications between Russians and the Trump campaign and their deal reveals itself. Perhaps, somewhere along the line, Russians also reminded the Trump family of their helpful cooperation with his past financial ventures. Perhaps, also, they articulated their resentment of Mrs. Clinton for her challenge as secretary of state to the legitimacy of Mr. Putin’s own election. But no such speculation is needed to perceive the obvious bargain reached during the campaign of 2016.

INTEL REPORT--Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning has been held in solitary confinement for 17 days as of Monday, after being held in contempt of court for refusing to answer a grand jury's questions about her disclosures of U.S. military documents to Wikileaks. (Photo: @xychelsea/Instagram)

Supporters of U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning are demanding she be released from solitary confinement, in which she has been held for 17 days since refusing to answer a grand jury's questions.

Chelsea Resists!, Manning's support committee, released a statement over the weekend denouncing her treatment and invoking the United Nations' own statements about the dangers and injustice of isolation in prisons.