Clap If You Believe in Fairies

We begin with a clip from an ad circulated by Lone Star PAC that asserts Democratic candidate for Senate James Talarico is “too weak and weird for Texas.”

Today’s theme music is “Lola” (2020 Stereo Remaster) by The Kinks; copyrighted music licensed from Lickd.

On February 12, 2026, New Yorkers rallied at the Stonewall National Monument to protest the “de-gaying” of the federal site bu the Trump administration. Christopher Penler / Shutterstock.com

In the News:

* They still have almost half the ballots to count in California, but the field for the general election is starting to shape up. Republican Steve Hilton is currently leading the pack in the governor’s race, with Democrat Xavier Becerra, former Secretary of HSS in the Biden administration, a close second, and self-funded billionaire Democrat Tom Steyer a more distant third. Incumbent Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass has made it to the general election, but again—with almost half the ballots left to count, Republican reality TV star Spencer Pratt and LA City Council member Nithya Ramen are battling it out for the second spot. Becerra’s success was the big surprise in this election, with some observers claiming that Democrats are embracing establishment figures again.

* In Iowa, paralympic athlete and Democratic state legislator Josh Turek soundly defeated his progressive colleague Zach Wahls for the Senate seat left vacant by Joni Ernst’s retirement; he’ll face Representative Ashley Hinson (IA-01), a self-described conservative mom who says she wants to make Washington D.C. run more like Iowa.

* Late last week, a federal judge in Miami re-opened the settlement in Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS, saying that the lawsuit itself was “a product of collusion and is itself a fraud on the court.” The White House seems to want to make another deal, signaling yesterday that it has abandoned a plan for a $1.8 billion fund to compensate the President’s various allies for their legal troubles. Both Republicans and Democrats have labeled the proposed compensation “a slush fund,” as has the libertarian Cato Institute; it is to be created as part of a large reconciliation bill currently on the House floor. Acting AG Todd Blanche was back in Congress defending the settlement on Tuesday.

* Also last week, the Trump administration released new proposed guidelines by which all federal grants would be held to the litmus test of President Donald Trump’s political priorities. The guidelines turn Trump’s various executive orders into a federal regulation, and prohibit (among other things) grants to projects or groups that “deny the biological reality of sex or the sex binary in humans,” or initiatives that “promote anti-American values,” contribute to illegal immigration, advance diversity, equity and inclusion or assist in voter registration. Grants could also be terminated if the administration finds they are not in “the public interest.”

* On Tuesday, we learned that Bill Pulte, a long-time Trump ally and currently head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, will become the acting Director of National Intelligence when Tulsi Gabbard departs in July. Pulte has no national security experience. At all. Pulte is independently wealthy, and came up with the genius scheme to go after Trump opponents Adam Schiff, Letitia James, and Lisa D. Cooke for mortgage fraud.

Your hosts:

Claire Potter is a historian of politics and media, a writer, a podcaster, and the sole author and editor of the Political Junkie Substack. Her most recent book is Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy (Basic Books, 2020), and she is currently writing a biography of feminist journalist Susan Brownmiller.

Neil J. Young is a historian of religion and politics, a journalist, and a former co-host of the Past Present podcast. His most recent book is Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right (University of Chicago Press, 2024).

USNS Harvey Milk, a John Lewis class replenishment ship in December, 2024. Named after gay activist Harvey Milk, a Navy veteran and the first openly gay man to be elected to office. On June 26, 2025, his name was stripped from the vessel and replaced with Medal of Honor winner Oscar V. Peterson. Photo credit: Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Maxwell Orlosky/Wikimedia Commons

News focus:

* Last week, when the Democratic nominee for Senate in Texas, James Talarico, confirmed that he is in a relationship with a woman, Congressman Wesley Hunt (TX-38) quipped: “What’s his name?” Republican attacks on Talarico’s masculinity, sexual orientation, and gender identity beyond the fact that he defended LGBT+ people in the Texas legislature: they are part of a larger cultural attack on LGBT+ people. The ACLU is currently tracking 530 bills across the United States that attack LGBT+ rights.

* Project 2025 took aim at policies that promoted LGBT+ equity and human rights. The document criticized USAID for imposing an LGBT+ “agenda” on African nations, referring to it at one point as “bullying.” It criticized HHS for LGBT+ family equity, saying such policies should be replaced with new rules that encouraged “marriage, work, motherhood, fatherhood, and nuclear families;” and that the agency had unjustly penalized those who had opposed pro-choice and LGBT equity policies on the grounds of conscience. It also argued that Trump should rescind ant-discrimination policies that prohibited “discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, and sex characteristics.”

* On January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump issued an executive order eliminating federal recognition of transgender people: buried in that document were five orders to eliminate federal guidance on harassment and inequity by sexual orientation in schools and the workplace.

* But LGBT+ people are also literally being erased from patriotic sites. In June, 2025, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth renamed the USNS Harvey Milk, commissioned in 2021: he replaced Milk’s name with Medal of Honor winner Oscar V. Peterson, saying that he was “taking the politics” out of the military.

* Since then, states have gone into motion to suppress discussion of LGBT+ people. Seven states have banned the teaching of all LGBTQ texts and topics from publicly funded schools (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, and North Carolina.) Arizona, Texas, Mississippi, and Oklahoma ban discussion of LGBT+ sexuality in sex ed; while Florida, Texas, Utah, and Iowa ban LGBT+ books from public and school libraries. All in all, 19 states have at least one law of this kind.

* Utah, Idaho and Montana ban the flying of Pride or Black Lives Matter flags on public property; there are similar bills pending in Wisconsin, Tennessee and Ohio. Florida and Texas have prohibited street art, painting crosswalks, and bridge lighting with Pride themes.

* Other than a 2019 Twitter thread, Donald Trump has never recognized Pride Month: in February, 2026, the National Parks Service removed the Pride flag from the Stonewall National Monument (it was restored after protests and a lawsuit.) However, references to transgender people have been removed from the physical site and the website, and NPS has put a pause on any donations to or research at the site.

* But this year, MAGA has gone further, by choosing June as the month to celebrate heterosexuality, patriotism, and “traditional” values. In Arkansas, on May 27, Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders declared June to be “Fidelity Month,” during which Arkansans are urged to commit to fidelity to God, family, community and country, all of which contribute to human flourishing and support a stable society. In Tennessee, Governor Bill Lee signed a proclamation in April that designated June “Nuclear Family Month.” Mike Braun of Indiana and Spencer Cox of Utah have signed similar proclamations.

* Attacks against lesbian and gay people on social media have also accelerated. Representative Andy Ogles (TN-05) celebrated Pride Month by posting on X “Homosexuality has no place in America,” although he later claimed the post had been put up by an errant staffer. Meanwhile, South Carolina Congresswoman Nancy Mace, who will face Lieutenant Governor Pamela Evette in that state’s Republican primary, has issued a campaign ad charging that Evette’s consulting company “took millions from the woke mob” to implement DEI. The ad is decorated with Pride and Trans flags.

What we want to go viral:

* Neil updates us on right-wing influencer and conspiracist Candace Owens’ new passion: Russia! In “Why Candace Owens Went to Russia” (The Free Press, June 3, 2026), Parker MacDougald digs into an infatuation that is becoming more common among MAGA dissenters—who may be running a massive propaganda operation on behalf of a foreign state.

* Claire wants you to read Yudhijit Bhattacharjee’s “In Plain Sight” (The New Yorker, May 18, 2026), about a Guinean girl named Djena who was trafficked by her father, first to a highly placed political family in Guinea at 8. They then trafficked her to the United States at the age of ten to work as an unpaid servant for their daughter and her family. Important fact: over 70% of people trafficked to the U.S. are brought not for the sex trades, but for coerced labor.

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