Vue lecture

Jon Ossoff went low on Natalie Harp. The plan worked | Moira Donegan

The senator’s remarks reflect a turning point in Democrats’ attacks on the president. What should we make of them?

Apparently, he likes to say her name with a French accent. “Na-tah-lee!” the president cries out, in that affected tone of faux-formality that one might use with a person they love but do not quite respect, and she comes running, her thin legs teetering on her heels.

Natalie Harp, Trump’s 35-year-old “executive assistant”, was an odd recurring character in the latest blockbuster Trump administration book, Regime Change, by the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. In the book, Harp features like a silent sentinel, ever present but eerily quiet as Trump rants and raves. It’s not exactly clear what the scope of her responsibilities is; though, as Jamelle Bouie points out, the fact that she evidently helps run the president’s social media accounts, which can sway markets and influence his foreign counterparts, makes her one of the most powerful people in the federal government.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: American Photo Archive/Alamy

© Photograph: American Photo Archive/Alamy

© Photograph: American Photo Archive/Alamy

  •  

Conservative Gay Rights Group Ends Support for Trans Causes

The Log Cabin Republicans, which is dedicated to gay causes, says that trans rights advocates focus too much on minors.

© Michael Brochstein/Sipa, via Associated Press

A Log Cabin Republicans table at the 2025 Conservative Political Action Conference in Oxon Hill, Md. The organization had embraced trans rights issues in 2015 before its reversal.
  •  

I once saw Enes Kanter speak truth to power. Now he only punches down | Bryan Armen Graham

Nearly a decade after I watched him defy Erdoğan at great personal cost, the ex-NBA player is using his hard-won freedom to turn transgender people into a punchline

Nine years ago, I watched Enes Kanter ask America to take him in. It was May 2017, inside the National Basketball Players Association’s offices in midtown Manhattan. Kanter had just returned from a frightening detention at Bucharest airport, where Romanian border police told him Turkey had canceled his passport. He’d just turned 25, an NBA center with a green card and no country he could safely call home.

“I’m open for adoption,” he joked from the head of a table in a nondescript conference room, addressing a dozen reporters hastily summoned by his manager. Then he turned serious: “My next move is to just become an American citizen.”

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Michael Reaves/Getty Images

© Photograph: Michael Reaves/Getty Images

© Photograph: Michael Reaves/Getty Images

  •  

New Mexico to continue funding gender-affirming care for minors after federal cuts

Trump administration finalized rule to end Medicaid support for care including hormones and speech therapy

New Mexico will continue funding gender-affirming care for minors after a federal rule ending Medicaid support for such care goes into effect.

On 13 August, the Trump administration finalized a rule – set to go into effect on 13 October – that will end funding for gender-affirming care through Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (Chip).

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Reginald Mathalone/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Reginald Mathalone/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Reginald Mathalone/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

  •  

The fight to protect a trans landmark in California from ICE’s biggest contractor

Compton’s Cafe is one of the earliest examples of LGBTQ+ resistance. Today, a prison company occupies the site

One of the earliest documented examples of LGBTQ+ resistance against police happened on a hot summer night 60 years ago this month. It started not with the throwing of a brick, as it did in New York City’s 1969 Stonewall riots, but with the throwing of a coffee cup inside Compton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco.

When police attempted to raid Compton’s – a hub for the drag performers, trans people and sex workers in the city’s Tenderloin neighborhood – hundreds of people in the community fought back. A drag queen threw a coffee mug at a police officer; others threw dishes and chairs outside. It was the culmination of years of police harassment, arrests and violence against the community and the beginning of the city’s trans movement.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Don Rasmussen/ProBonoPhoto.org

© Photograph: Don Rasmussen/ProBonoPhoto.org

© Photograph: Don Rasmussen/ProBonoPhoto.org

  •  

Texas Tech University Is Using A.I. to Cut Left-Leaning Content

Texas Tech is using A.I. to cut left-leaning content in its curriculum. Some say the effort to ferret out forbidden topics is a dystopian academic nightmare.

© David Kozlowski/Getty Images

The Texas Tech campus in Lubbock is in a right-leaning part of the state. Its leader is trying to clamp down on teaching about gender and sexuality.
  •  

Liechtenstein Changes Its Law to Allow Women to Ascend the Throne

The move puts the principality in the majority among nearby nations with royal families.

© Romina Amato/Reuters

Hereditary Prince Alois of Liechtenstein, arriving at the country’s National Day celebrations in Vaduz, the capital, on Saturday.
  •  
❌