Hedge fund manager Scott Bessent, the first out gay man to serve as Secretary of the Treasury, at his January 2025 Senate confirmation hearing. Photo credit: Maxim Elramsisy/Shutterstock
We begin with this clip from Donald Trump, speaking immediately after the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, and before the New Hampshire primary, in 2016.
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In the news:
* For the past week, California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsome has trolled President Donald J. Trump with tweets, memes, and AI-generated videos that mimic MAGA-world’s worship of him as a sacred figure, pop culture icon, and superhero. He’s been getting attention for this, but also getting out information—for example that red state murder rates are higher than those in Blue states. He is also spoofing MAGA with a so-called “Patriot shop” that has made $300,000 since Monday selling merch that says things like Make America Gavin Again. Is it a coincidence that he has also surged 8 points in the polls, and is currently the leading Democratic candidate for 2028?
* MAGA world went into a tailspin this week when the iconic right-wing Cracker Barrel restaurant chain unveiled its corporate redesign: a new logo and decorating scheme, and menu items like—margaritas. The “old timer,” also known as “Old Uncle Herschel” was disappeared from a newly-minimalist sign, and the company—founded with one Tennessee store in 1969 that became a national chain has abandoned its “old-fashioned” charm. Donald Trump weighed in to say that Cracker Barrel should put everything back the way it was: as of late yesterday, it appears that they have. In fact, the company was trying to broaden its appeal: it has been in trouble for some time.
* On the flip side, Hooters—which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy status last spring, and closed 30 locations in Florida and California—may be in for a renaissance. Attorney Neil Keifer, who owns two dozen franchises and sees the second Trump administration as a great opportunity to market a tacky aesthetic, says he wants to “re-hooterize” the chain. This apparently means butter on everything and slightly longer shorts for the all-female waitstaff, who will no longer be instructed to do everything short of a pole dance to get a tip. The new business plan still emphasizes a wholesome nostalgia for scantily clad—but covered—women that doesn’t cross the line into sexual behavior.
* Today we learned that bright red Iowa no longer has a Republican supermajority in its state legislature: Democrat Caitlin Drey appears to have defeated Republican Christopher Prosch by 11 points in a lean-red northwest district near Sioux City.
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).
Image created by ChatGPT on August 27, 2025
This week’s focus is on the large number of gay men working for Donald Trump, in an administration determined to stamp out the individual rights that the LGBT community has achieved over the last half century. But we also want to know: where are the lesbians?
* This week we return to a conversation about who advises Donald Trump, with a focus on the large number of out gay men in his administration. It’s a network that the New York Times described this week as “a new power tribe” in Washington. Charles Moran, the former head of Log Cabin Republicans and now in charge of national nuclear security at the Department of Energy, explains that gay networks have always existed in government, but were not visible.
* The Republican party has been the party of homophobia, and in many respects, still is, although that role was shared with Democrats until quite recently. Here’s a short account of the Lavender Scare, still up on the National Archives website: in the 1940s and 1950s, both parties identified queers in government as mentally ill, vulnerable to blackmail, and a national security risk.
* Gender transition has been an issue that has made it possible to identify and mobilize MAGA-leaning queers, particularly lesbians. Currently, the Trump administration also has some deniability because most of the attacks on LGBT rights have happened at the state level (there are currently 604 bills pending and the Department of Justice will not be stepping in to enforce civil rights precedents) and/or affect transgender people, with whom Republican queers misidentify.
* Yet, here is the record: although Trump endorsed gay marriage in the 2017 campaign, his first administration saw a steady erosion of LGBT rights: here’s the ACLU’s report. GLAAD is maintaining an “accountability tracker” for the second term, which demonstrates not just the loss of funding, but the erosion of visibility. A series of Day One executive orders target the LGBT community. Trump has also taken numerous actions that will impact the health of LGBT people.
* By the 1970s, lesbian and gay people became part of the reform movement within the Democratic party that also included feminists, Black and Latino voters. In the 1960s and 1970s, coalitions between queer voters and communities of color resulted in progressive victories in cities like San Francisco and Chicago. In 1980, over 70 out delegates were elected to the Democratic National Convention.
* Here’s the Log Cabin Republican Club’s official history of how their politics and power in the party have developed over time, and why they see the Trump administration as a defender of their rights.
* But where are all the Republican lesbians? There’s only one out lesbian in the Trump administration; that is former Fox News host Tammy Bruce, nominated this month as deputy UN ambassador.
* Will we see more lesbians in the MAHA and wellness space, like lesbian podcaster wellness influencer Jillian Michaels? Another former reality television star, she recently leaped to Donald Trump’s defense in a conversation on The View where the panel discussed the Trump administration’s attack on The Smithsonian.
What we want to go viral:
* Neil wants you to read about the trend in lux college dorm decorating. In “How Parents Hijacked the College Dorm” (The Atlantic, August 26, 2025), Meaghan Francis invites readers into the world of “well-curated rooms coming together with lots of parental assistance.”
* Claire can’t stop talking about Dana A. Williams’s recent book, Toni at Random: The Iconic Writer’s Legendary Editorship (Amistad, 2025). It illuminates Morrison’s time at Random House, as she was also establishing herself as a leading novelist. But as an editor, Morrison leveraged her growing power in mainstream publishing to elevate Black authors. It’s biography, literary, and intellectual history, all wrapped into one package.
Short takes:
* Get your jab now, if you haven’t had one recently. The Daily Beast’s Tom Latchem reports that, based on a discredited study, the HSS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. may move to pull the Covid-19 vaccine from the market in the next calendar year. “Dr. Aseem Malhotra, a British cardiologist who has repeatedly claimed in the face of scientific consensus that the vaccines are more dangerous than the virus, told the Daily Beast that Kennedy’s stance is shared by `influential’ members of President Donald Trump’s family,” Latchem writes, noting that Malhotra has th administration’s ear. “Like Kennedy himself, no Trumps hold any scientific qualifications.” (August 25, 2025)
* “It’s easy, maybe even tempting, to think” that RFK, Jr'.’s “hostility to vaccines has nothing to do with his enthusiasm for fitness,” Jonathan Cohn explains at The Bulwark. But the two have a crucial connection.” It’s the theory that “healthy living” confers” confers "natural immunity” to disease. A backbone of the MAHA world that imagines all humans have the power to heal themselves without medical or pharmaceutical intervention, and that conquering a disease confers for lasting benefits than vaccine-induced protections. (August 24, 2025)
* The high focus on fake conspiracies in the Trump Department of Justice has overshadowed news in the department of actual conspiracies. As the nation approaches the 70th anniversary of Emmett Till’s lynching, the federal government has released 6,500 documents in a “cold case” whose White perpetrators were and are well known, but who were shielded for decades. “Davis Houck, the founder of the Emmett Till Archives, said for decades historians have longed to see these records, many of them files of the FBI, which balked at a federal investigation in 1955,” Jerry Mitchell reported last week at Mississippi Today. “The records can be seen at the Civil Rights Cold Case Records portal, maintained by the National Archives and Records Administration.” (August 21, 2025)
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