MISSISSIPPI. Votes to remove Confederate “symbol of terror” from state flag. “The bill passed by a vote of 91-23 in the House and 37-14 in the Senate. The bill now goes to the desk of Governor Tate Reeves, who on Saturday morning said he would sign the legislation into law, reversing resistance to a legislature-led change to the flag. Mississippians will vote on a replacement flag in the November election. According to the legislation, the current flag design cannot be an option.”
INCITER. Trump shares video of St. Louis “Ken and Karen” pointing guns at BLM protesters.
PRIDE PARADE OF THE DAY. Taiwan. “With its coronavirus outbreak defeated, Taiwan hosted one of the few pride marches around the world as the island’s LGTBQ community and its supporters took to the streets, holding signs of encouragement with the locations of cities across the world where marches were not possible due to social distancing restrictions.”
ONE-TERM LOSER. This is Trump’s main worry driving his insanity: “The president has told me [on multiple occasions] that he is determined to not be a one-termer, and says that history forever remembers them as ‘losers,’” said a former senior Trump administration official. “A lot of it is about legacy for him and how he will be remembered. And if he loses, I don’t think he’ll take a defeat [at the hands of] Biden, of all possible people, lightly.”
COVID-19 VACCINE. Its effectiveness will not be blunted by anti-vaxxers: “Dr. Anthony Fauci says he would “settle” for a Covid-19 vaccine that’s 70% to 75% effective, but that this incomplete protection, coupled with the fact that many Americans say they won’t get a coronavirus vaccine, makes it “unlikely” that the US will achieve sufficient levels of immunity to quell the outbreak.”
MUD FACIALS. Hulu pulls Golden Girls episode over blackface concerns.
TOO ETHNIC. Christina Aguilera said execs told her to change her name.
TAYLOR SCHILLING. Orange is the New Black actress comes out….
NIGHT WORK. Looking back at the Scissor Sisters classic a decade later: “There was ‘a lot of pushback from the label’, says frontman Jake Shears, as well as ‘from inside the band itself’. But Shears stuck to his guns and insisted that Mapplethorpe’s 1980 photo of dancer Peter Reed clenching his butt in tight-fitting cotton leggings absolutely had to be the album cover. ‘I can’t imagine another sleeve for this record – it’s the perfect, perfect sleeve,’ Shears says, ‘which is why we’re on the phone talking about it 10 years later.’ The band’s third album, released 10 years ago today, is now considered a modern queer classic.”
CASHLESS SOCIETY. ATM use plummets amid COVID-19 pandemic: “People have suddenly stopped using money — of the bill-and-coin variety — for fear it may spread the virus. Some worried shopkeepers have stopped accepting it, too.”
HATE SPEECH. Starbucks pauses ads on Facebook…
MALE MODEL MONDAY. Sergio Carvajal, Michael Yerger, Julian Keukomm, Enrique Dustin, Matt Law and more!
JOHN WAYNE AIRPORT. Should it be renamed because he was a racist and bigot?
LOOKING BACK. What happened when a biracial couple tried to establish a gay community in the Nevada desert during the AIDS epidemic: “Fred Schoonmaker and Alfred Parkinson planned to name the community Stonewall Park, after the 1969 uprising in New York that launched the gay rights movement. The effort to transform the abandoned ghost town of Rhyolite into an enclave with gay-owned banks, shops, casinos, and single-family homes mecca made news.”
TRAILER OF THE DAY. Yes, God, Yes.
MONDAY MUSCLE. Antony Tran.
