Kent, a twice-failed House candidate and self-professed fan of the Proud Boys, last appeared here when he declared that he would be keeping a $8600 campaign donation from a Capitol rioter then-facing felony assault charges. We first heard from Kent in 2022 when he gave an interview to a white nationalist Nazi podcaster.
New from Julian Barnes, Maggie Haberman and me:Trump Appointee Pressed Analyst to Redo Intelligence on Venezuelan GangThe move followed a disclosure that intelligence agencies disagree with a key factual claim Trump made to invoke a wartime deportation law.www.nytimes.com/2025/05/16/u…
Breaking news: The US has been stripped of its top-notch triple-a credit rating by Moody’s on concerns about rising levels of government debt http://www.ft.com/content/e456…
“And they’re like, ‘Yeah, yeah. Look, we’re doing it.’ But all the sodomites are still there and we’re not going to talk about that. And I need a guy there, I need a minister there who’s gonna say, ‘Oh, but we are. Obergefell is next, we’re coming for that,’ so that you calibrate the Christians in DC by the word of God and not by whatever the present administration can tolerate.
“We’re gonna come for feminism. We’re going to go after sodomy. Those are the sins in that town. Those are sins that are acceptable among both parties in that town. And we want to plant that flag and say the Bible has something to say about this.” – Christian nationalist pastor Joe Rigney.
Food rations that could supply 3.5 million people for a month are mouldering in warehouses around the world because of U.S. aid cuts and risk becoming unusable, according to five people familiar with the situation. The food stocks have been stuck inside four U.S. government warehouses since the Trump administration’s decision in January to cut global aid programmes.
Those who give to America250, a committee created to support what Trump envisions as a large national celebration next year for America’s 250th birthday, will be given special access to three events, according to a pitch shared with donors. Those include a military parade Trump is planning on his birthday, a “military readiness” event he is leading at Fort Bragg military base with thousands of troops and an Independence Day celebration in Washington, the people said.
He continued, “I mean, you look at these rallies, it’s like a bunch of women that no guy wants to sleep with and a bunch of dudes that want to sleep with each other.”
You’ll note that Watters did not ask Kid Rock about sending his undocumented kitchen staff home to evade arrest by ICE.
Blanche last appeared here when he sanctioned the American Bar Association because its lawyers have failed to show suitable obedience to Glorious Leader.
On Thursday, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk — a far-right federal judge in the Northern District of Texas with a record of aligning with the GOP’s most extreme legal positions — issued a ruling declaring that Title VII no longer protects LGBTQ+ people from workplace discrimination. The decision directly contradicts the Supreme Court’s landmark 2020 ruling inBostock v. Clayton County, which held that discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity is, by definition, sex discrimination. Kacsmaryk’s ruling marks one of the most alarming judicial rollbacks of LGBTQ+ rights in recent memory — and sets up a direct legal challenge to one of the foundational civil rights protections for queer and trans people in the United States.
The case was brought against the EEOC by the state of Texas alongside the Heritage Foundation, a central force behindProject 2025 — an aggressive right-wing policy blueprint that explicitly calls for rolling back LGBTQ+ protections in federal law. In siding with the plaintiffs, Judge Kacsmaryk pointed to the Texas Department of Agriculture’s current employee policy, which requires “employees to comply with this dress code in a manner consistent with their biological gender,” specifying that “men may wear pants” and “women may wear dresses, skirts, or pants.” The ruling also upheld the department’s policy banning transgender employees from using restrooms that align with their gender identity.
The judge reached a verdict that Title VII only protects “firing someone simply for being homosexual or transgender,” but that it does not protect transgender or gay people from “harassment”:
Judge Kacsmaryk ruling that gay and trans people can be harassed without repercussion under Title VII.
“In sum, Title VII does not bar workplace employment policies that protect the inherent differences between men and women,” Kacsmaryk writes in his ruling.
Judge Kacsmaryk further argued that disparate treatment of transgender employees does not constitute unequal treatment, reasoning that “a male employee must use male facilities like other males” — a statement that erases transgender identity altogether. He extended that logic to dress codes and pronouns, claiming that requiring employees to adhere to clothing standards and pronoun use based on their assigned sex at birth is not discriminatory because it applies “equally” to everyone. The argument mirrors the discredited legal reasoning once used to uphold bans on same-sex marriage — that such laws didn’t discriminate against gay people because they, like straight people, were allowed to marry someone of the opposite sex. It’s a circular logic designed to mask exclusion as neutrality. It also flies in the face of the fact that Texas allows people assigned female at birth to wear gender “pants, skirts, and dresses” but denies that same right to people assigned male at birth.
Kacsmaryk, a former lawyer for an anti-LGBTQ hate group, was exposed in 2023 for failing to disclose millions in stock holdings.
Kacsmaryk was previously exposed for failing to disclose viciously anti-LGBTQ interviews and acting to hide his authorship of an anti-abortion article ahead of his Senate confirmation hearing.
Republican and Christian groups regularly filed their lawsuits in his district because they know they’ll get a friendly ear.
I think there’s a blurb about this on Peace History, but I could be misrecalling. Anyway, here is far more of the story. Language alert, from the beginning.
Queer History 111: Before the Stonewall Riots, There Was Compton’s Cafeteria by Wendy🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈🌈 Read on Substack
You’ve heard about Stonewall—everyone has. It’s become the sanitized, rainbow-washed origin story of the LGBTQ+ rights movement that gets trotted out every Pride month by corporations selling overpriced merchandise. But three years before Stonewall rocked New York City, a group of fierce-as-fuck transgender women and drag queens in San Francisco’s gritty Tenderloin district had already thrown the first punch in the fight for queer liberation. The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot of 1966 wasn’t just a footnote in history—it was a goddamn declaration of war against police brutality and societal oppression that’s been deliberately erased from our collective memory.
Let me tell you something straight up: these women weren’t politely asking for their rights with carefully worded petitions. They were fighting for their very existence in a society that treated them like garbage. And when pushed to their absolute limit one hot August night, they didn’t just push back—they burned the whole system down. Literally throwing coffee in cops’ faces, smashing windows, and lighting a police car on fire. This wasn’t a “disturbance” or an “incident”—it was a motherfucking riot, and it’s time we remember it for what it was.
The Tenderloin: Where Society Dumped Its “Undesirables”
San Francisco’s Tenderloin district in the 1960s wasn’t the gentrified hipster paradise it’s becoming today. It was a last-resort neighborhood—the only place that would accept the people society had discarded. Transgender women, particularly trans women of color, found themselves with precious few options for survival. Denied employment, housing, and basic human dignity, many turned to sex work simply to eat and keep a roof over their heads.
“We couldn’t get jobs, couldn’t get housing, couldn’t even walk down the street without being arrested,” recalled Amanda St. Jaymes, a trans woman who lived in the Tenderloin during this era. “The cops would book us as ‘female impersonators’ and throw us in the men’s jail. Do you have any fucking idea what happened to us in there?”
The brutal reality was that transgender women faced constant police harassment under California’s “masquerade laws,” which made it illegal to dress in clothing of the “opposite sex.” Cops could and did arrest trans women for the crime of simply existing in public. These weren’t occasional incidents—this was systematic persecution backed by the full force of the law.
Gene Compton’s Cafeteria, a 24-hour diner at the corner of Taylor and Turk, was one of the few places trans women could gather safely—or so they thought. Open all night, it became an unofficial community center for transgender women, drag queens, gay hustlers, and other marginalized folks who had nowhere else to go. But the management often called the police when too many “queens” gathered, leading to regular harassment and arrests.
“The Night I Got Tired of Being Bullied”
On a hot night in August 1966 (the exact date has been lost to history), the simmering tension finally boiled over. When police attempted to arrest a transgender woman at Compton’s for the “crime” of being there, she threw her coffee in the officer’s face. What followed was an explosion of rage that had been building for decades.
“It wasn’t planned,” said Felicia Elizondo, a transgender activist who frequented Compton’s. “It was just the night I got tired of being bullied. We all got tired at the same fucking moment.”
The cafeteria erupted. Cups, saucers, and trays became projectiles. The plate glass windows of the restaurant were smashed. A newsstand was set on fire. The women fought back with everything they had—high heels, heavy purses, and righteous fury. When a police car pulled up outside, it was immediately surrounded, its windows broken and, according to some accounts, set ablaze.
“Those queens fought like hell,” remembered one witness. “You’d think a bunch of ‘girls’ couldn’t do much damage, but honey, when you’ve been beaten and raped by cops, when you’ve been refused medical care, when your own family has thrown you out like trash—you fight like someone with nothing left to lose.”
The riot spilled into the streets and continued through the night. Unlike at Stonewall, there were no photographers present, no reporters to document what happened. The next day, more transgender women and supporters returned to picket the cafeteria, which had banned transgender customers in response to the riot. This marked one of the first known instances of organized transgender direct action in U.S. history.
The Cover-Up and Erasure
Here’s where the story gets even more fucked up: this watershed moment was almost completely erased from history. No major newspapers covered it. Police records of the incident mysteriously disappeared. For decades, Compton’s Cafeteria Riot existed only in the memories of those who were there, many of whom didn’t survive the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and ’90s.
“They didn’t want people to know we fought back,” explained historian Susan Stryker, whose groundbreaking documentary “Screaming Queens” finally brought the riot to public attention in 2005. “Transgender resistance didn’t fit the narrative they wanted to tell about passive victims who needed saving.”
The erasure was so complete that even many LGBTQ+ historians were unaware of the riot until nearly 40 years after it occurred. When Stryker discovered a brief reference to the “uprising of drag queens” in the archives of gay liberation periodicals, she had to piece together what happened through painstaking interviews with survivors and witnesses.
Why was this history buried? Simple: it centered transgender women—particularly trans women of color—as the vanguard of the LGBTQ+ liberation movement. It challenged the comfortable narrative that the movement began with Stonewall and was led primarily by white gay men. The Compton’s story was inconvenient for those who wanted to sanitize queer history for mainstream consumption.
The Aftermath: Real Fucking Change
What makes the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot even more remarkable is that it actually led to concrete changes in San Francisco. In the aftermath, a network of transgender support services emerged. The city established the Tenderloin Health Clinic, which provided hormones and healthcare to transgender people—the first of its kind in the nation. The police department even initiated the first-ever training on interacting with transgender people.
Sergeant Elliott Blackstone, the SFPD’s first liaison to the “homophile community,” became an unlikely ally. After the riot, he worked with transgender activists to stop police harassment and helped establish programs to support transgender residents. “I just treated them like human beings,” Blackstone later said, “which nobody else was doing.”
The riot also galvanized the formation of organizations like Vanguard, one of the first gay youth organizations in the U.S., and the National Transsexual Counseling Unit, the first peer-run support organization for transgender people. These laid the groundwork for the transgender rights movement that continues today.
“We built something from nothing,” said Tamara Ching, a Tenderloin activist who lived through this era. “We created community when the whole damn world wanted us dead or invisible.”
The Women Who Led the Charge
The heroes of Compton’s didn’t get streets named after them or Hollywood biopics made about their lives. Many died in obscurity, their contributions uncelebrated. Women like Alexis Miranda, who later became an influential transgender activist; Tamara Ching, who fought for the rights of transgender sex workers; and Amanda St. Jaymes, who established support services for transgender women in the Tenderloin.
“Some of the fiercest women I ever knew didn’t live to see their impact,” recalls Felicia Elizondo, one of the few surviving veterans of the Tenderloin scene. “They died from violence, from AIDS, from the sheer exhaustion of fighting every day just to exist.”
Unlike Stonewall, where key figures like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera eventually received some recognition (though still not enough), many of the women who fought at Compton’s remain nameless in historical records. Their revolutionary act was nearly lost to history, remembered only by those who were there.
The anonymity of many Compton’s participants speaks to the precarious nature of transgender life in the 1960s—and still today. Many lived under assumed names, without identification documents, invisible to official records. They existed in the margins, which made their uprising all the more remarkable and all the more easily erased.
Why This Matters Now More Than Ever
If you think this is just ancient history, wake the fuck up. In 2023, we’re seeing the most aggressive legislative assault on transgender rights in modern history. Over 500 anti-trans bills have been introduced in state legislatures in recent years. Access to healthcare is being restricted. Transgender people are being banned from public spaces. Sound familiar?
“It’s the same playbook,” says Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, a transgender elder who has been fighting for rights since the 1960s. “Criminalize our existence, push us out of public spaces, make it impossible to live authentically. They’ve just dressed it up in fancier language.”
The courage of the women at Compton’s Cafeteria provides a powerful template for resistance in the face of overwhelming oppression. They didn’t wait for permission to fight back. They didn’t seek respectability. They recognized that when a system is designed to destroy you, sometimes you have to break the whole damn thing and start over.
“We’ve been here before,” warns historian Jules Gill-Peterson. “And the lesson from Compton’s isn’t to write polite letters to politicians. It’s that direct action gets the goods. It’s that sometimes you have to throw the first punch—or the first coffee cup.”
The Legacy: From Shadows to Celebration
Today, the corner of Taylor and Turk in the Tenderloin bears a plaque commemorating the riot. In 2017, the city of San Francisco renamed a section of Turk Street as “Compton’s Transgender Cultural District”—the first legally recognized transgender district in the world. It’s a belated recognition of the community that has called this area home for over half a century and the uprising that marked its coming of age.
But the real legacy of Compton’s isn’t in plaques or street names—it’s in the radical tradition of transgender resistance it established. From Compton’s to Stonewall to the modern movements against police brutality, the thread of transgender leadership in liberation struggles remains unbroken, even when unacknowledged.
“Those girls didn’t have Twitter or TikTok or any way to document what they did,” reflects contemporary transgender activist Raquel Willis. “But they changed the world anyway. Imagine what we can do now with all the tools and visibility we have.”
The next time you celebrate Pride, remember that it wasn’t born from corporate sponsorships and rainbow capitalism. It was born from a coffee cup thrown in a cop’s face by a transgender woman who had decided she wasn’t going to take any more shit. It was born from the broken windows of a cafeteria in the Tenderloin and the fiery determination of women who fought back when the world told them they shouldn’t even exist.
That’s the legacy of Compton’s Cafeteria Riot—not just a historical footnote, but a battle cry that still echoes today: We have always been here. We have always fought back. And we’re not going anywhere.
References
Stryker, S. (2008). Transgender History: The Roots of Today’s Revolution.
Stryker, S., & Silverman, V. (Directors). (2005). Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria [Documentary].
Transgender Law Center. (2017). Compton’s Transgender Cultural District Report.
Dzodan, F. (2021). Before Stonewall: The Trans Women Who Sparked a Revolution.
Armstrong, E. A., & Crage, S. M. (2006). Movements and Memory: The Making of the Stonewall Myth.
Williams, C. (2014). Transgender History in the United States: A Special Unabridged Version of a Book Chapter.
Elizondo, F. (2015, August 26). Personal interview by Nicole Pasulka for Vice: “Ladies in the Streets: Before Stonewall, Transgender Uprising Changed Lives.”
Their goal is to copy Russia. The goal is to wipe the LGBTQ+ community from society, from the public view. They want to make us illegal like in the most hateful countries or again to be like Russia under Putin. I used to think these people wanted to return to the 1950s but now I think I was wrong. They want to return to the early 1930s when the Nazi party was very active and strong in the US. I kept telling the people who wanted the LGB to let the t go to protect the rest that it was a divide and conquer strategy and that they would come for the rest of us next. And they are doing that. Just being gay or fighting the haters trying to deny gay people rights is a security risk to nation according to them. Hugs
There’s a new “Axis of Evil” in the Trump administration cosmology and it’s not al Qaeda or North Korea. Instead, the preeminent threat to national security, according to the hapless folks at Donald Trump’s personal law firm, is anyone who ever donated money to LGBTQ civil rights organization GLAD. At least that’s the government’s new working theory as it tries to justify its retaliatory executive order against Susman Godfrey.
Had Susman, for example, taken on that GLAD challenge pro bono, the allegation would still be risible, but when the whole argument hinges on the firm generally donating to a prominent non-profit it crosses into professionally embarrassing.
Aside from trying to tag Susman for its charitable contributions, it’s also deeply troubling to suggest that filing a federal lawsuit is a “dangerous effort to undermine the effectiveness of the United States military.” In a rule of law society (I know, I know, but humor me on this idea for the moment), “going to court” isn’t sedition, but the system working as intended. Checks and balances and all that stuff. To call a federal lawsuit an effort to undermine the government, requires adopting the premise that it’s a threat to make sure the government isn’t doing anything illegal. Courts can get the law wrong, but the point is that we encourage people to take grievances to court and not storm federal buildings… you know, the behavior that we traditionally considered a “dangerous effort to undermine” the government. Not so much these days.
There’s no bright line between the GLAD challenge and any other discrimination case brought against the DOD. If the government chooses to contest a suit for any reason, under this standard, it’s an effort to undermine the effectiveness of the military. Frankly, there’s not much keeping the DOJ from expanding this rationale to any other case brought against the government. That would put us a little beyond warnings about a slippery slope and into “that point where Wile E. Coyote hasn’t noticed he’s off the cliff yet.”
Not that GLAD’s challenge would’ve dangerously undermined effectiveness. General Mark Milley, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated unequivocally that there isno problem with transgender troops if they meet standards. But as a career soldier, Milley cared more about merit and the ability to do the job. A civilian talk show host more interested in texting war plans to his buddies might have… different priorities.
Though all of this remains far afield of the instant issue: Susman Godfrey, giving money to an organization that has in the past filed a civil rights challenge, is not even in the same universe as a threat to national security.
But you miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take, I guess.
I can not understand the kind of hate or anger at different groups to want to cost yourself hundreds of dollars and possible jail time. To damage the books doesn’t erase the people they were written about and it doesn’t change history. It only hurts the library and the community which pays for the library. Hugs
Man accused of checking out books on Jewish, Black, LGBTQ history from Cuyahoga County Public Library and burning them on extremist website
A man checked out 100 books on topics including Jewish history, African American history and LGBTQ education before allegedly burning them in a social media video.
Credit: City of Beachwood, Ohio/Facebook
CLEVELAND — Cuyahoga CountyPublic Library officials, in a police report obtained by 3News, accused a man of checking out 100 books on Jewish history, Black history and LGBTQ education last month before filming a book burning and posting the video on a social media site described by advocates as a hub for white supremacist, neo-Nazi and extremist content.
According to an investigative report filed last week by the Beachwood Police Department, the man went into the Beachwood library branch on Shaker Boulevard and applied for a library card on April 2. He was approved for the card and checked out 50 books by the library’s proper procedure.
A library official told police that the Princeton University Bridging Divides Initiative, a non-partisan research effort that tracks political violence in the United States and monitors suspected hate crimes on social media, notified the library that the man posted a photo to Gab.com of a car trunk full of books. The post came with a caption that referenced “cleansing” the libraries, the official told police. The books in the photo “appeared to match the topics” of the books the man had checked out and also had Cuyahoga County Public Library stickers on them, the police report states.
According to the Anti-Defamation League‘s Center on Extremism, Gab is a platform known for lax content moderation policies that is widely used by “conspiracy theorists, white nationalists, neo-Nazis, members of militias and influential figures among the alt right.”
On April 10, the man returned to the Beachwood branch and borrowed another 50 books relating to similar topics. The man told a librarian that his son was a member of the LGBTQ community and he was trying to learn more about it. According to the police report, the librarian found the man’s behavior to be “very odd and concerning,” but the man did not make any threats during the encounter.
The Princeton researchers later reached out to the library again, this time saying that the man posted a video they believed depicted him burning all 100 books. The police report again states that the books in the video, a copy of which was obtained by police, “appeared to match the theme and titles” of the books that were checked out from the library. One of the books shown in the video had a CCPL sticker and was an exact match of one of the books the man withdrew, police said.
At the time the police report was filed on May 2, the man was not facing any charges in connection with the allegations. Police said the library staff were calling only to “document the incident,” and that the borrowed books were not yet overdue. The library told police that the man would be sent a bill once the books became overdue, and that the bill would be sent to collections if it was not paid.
The books had a combined total value of $1,700, the report stated.
Police told the library staff that “since a contract was entered and payment would eventually be billed,” the incident was likely a civil matter. The investigative report states the Beachwood city prosecutor would be consulted to determine whether criminal charges are warranted.
The library plans to ban the man from its property in the future. Police told the library staff to contact them for help issuing a trespass warning if the man returned.
This is selective persecution which is illegal. So if this ever goes to court he will have the charges dismissed. In the meantime the hate party cult of tRump just made him a front runner for the mayoral election. Hugs.
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested for allegedly trespassing at an ICE facility in New Jersey on Friday afternoon, authorities said.
“The Mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka, committed trespass and ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations to remove himself from the ICE detention center in Newark, New Jersey this afternoon,” Alina Habba, the Interim U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, posted on X.
Baraka was taken to an ICE field office at 620 Frelinghuysen Ave. in Newark, according to his office. The charges have not been announced.
“We are actively monitoring and will provide more details as they become available,” his representatives said.
Witnesses said the arrest came after Baraka attempted to join a scheduled tour of the facility with three members of New Jersey’s congressional delegation, Reps. Robert Menendez, LaMonica McIver, and Bonnie Watson Coleman.
When federal officials blocked his entry, a heated argument broke out, according to Viri Martinez, an activist with the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice. It continued even after Baraka returned to the public side of the gates.
In video of the altercation shared with The Associated Press, a federal official in a jacket with the logo of the Homeland Security Investigations can be heard telling Baraka he could not join a tour of the facility because “you are not a congress member.”
Baraka then left the secure area, rejoining protesters on the public side of the gate. Video showed him speaking through the gate to a man in a suit, who said: “They’re talking about coming back to arrest you.”
“I’m not on their property. They can’t come out on the street and arrest me,” Baraka replied.
Minutes later several ICE agents, some wearing face coverings, surrounded him and others on the public side. As protesters cried out, “Shame,” Baraka was dragged back through the security gate in handcuffs.
“The ICE personnel came out aggressively to arrest him and grab him,” said Julie Moreno, a New Jersey state captain of American Families United. “It didn’t make any sense why they chose that moment to grab him while he was outside the gates.”
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that as a bus of detainees was entering the detention center, “a group of protestors, including two members of the U.S. House of Representatives, stormed the gate and broke into the detention facility.”
Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin was quoted in the statement as calling it “beyond a bizarre political stunt” and saying it put agents’ and detainees’ safety at risk.
“Members of Congress are not above the law and cannot illegally break into detention facilities. Had these members requested a tour, we would have facilitated a tour of the facility,” McLaughlin said.
The department said the facility has the proper permits and inspections have been cleared.
The Newark mayor was visiting Delaney Hall to conduct oversight after the building was turned into an ICE facility.
Delany Hall was leased for $63 million annually from a private prison group known as The GEO Group. The city of Newark is suing for more inspections, claiming ICE has not indicated how many detainees it has in the building – which can only house 1,000 people.
Baraka said on Monday that the issues at Delany Hall go beyond the lack of safety inspections and proper permits.
This is a developing story please check back for updates.
Dominique Jack is a digital content producer from Brooklyn with more than five years of experience covering news. She joined PIX11 in 2024. More of her work can be found here.
–Associated press material was used in this report.
Zolnierek / iStock / Getty Images Plus
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