On Friday, President Donald Trump dismissed Steve Bannon, his chief strategist and advisor to the president’s campaign throughout the 2016 election, from his White House post, reports The Washington Post.
Bannon’s dismissal comes after a week of racial unrest, most notably after white supremacists, white nationalists, and Neo-Nazis converged on Charlottesville to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. There, white nationalists clashed with counter-protesters, resulting in the death of a 32-year-old woman.
Ever since last year’s presidential campaign, Trump has been criticized for allowing Bannon, the former chairman of the conservative media outlet Breitbart, to influence him. Many critics of the president see Bannon’s fingerprints in several of the president’s policies, particularly those dealing with hot-button cultural issues, such as affirmative action, immigration, abortion, and LGBTQ rights.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters in a statement that White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Bannon had “mutually agreed” that Bannon would exit his role in the Oval Office on Friday.
“We are grateful for his service and wish him the best,” Sanders said.
The Post reports that Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general brought in last month to serve as chief of staff, had been contemplating dismissing several White House staffers, including Bannon. Kelly was brought in to stop ideological fights between various staffers and damaging leaks to the news media.
A source close to Bannon, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Post that Bannon has accepted the situation, but will continue to advocate for the president’s agenda.
“No matter what happens, Steve is a honey badger,” the person said. “Steve’s in a good place. He doesn’t care. He’s going to support the president and push the agenda, whether he’s on the inside or the outside.”
“Steve Bannon has built a career peddling white nationalism and placing large targets on the backs of marginalized communities, including LGBTQ people,” Sarah Kate Ellis, the president and CEO of GLAAD, said in a statement. “From Day One, President Donald Trump has surrounded himself with anti-black, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-women, and anti-LGBTQ activists aimed at strengthening institutional discrimination and erasing LGBTQ Americans from the fabric of this nation. Steve Bannon may have resigned, but the fact that he even held the position of White House Chief Strategist is chilling, completely unacceptable, and will not be forgotten.”
“A radical white nationalist like Steve Bannon should never have been put in a position of public trust in any White House,” JoDee Winterhof, senior vice president for policy and political affairs at the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement. “His removal was necessary, but make no mistake, the bigotry in the White House goes far beyond one person. President Trump and Vice President Pence continue to push forward the same dangerous and hateful vision for America and the world that Steve Bannon embodies.”
Justine Lindsay, the NFL's first out transgender cheerleader, recently revealed that she was fired this year, a decision she alleges was motivated by transphobia and Donald Trump's election as president.
"I was cut because I'm trans," Lindsay said in an Instagram Live with Gaye Magazine. "I don't wanna hear nobody saying, 'She didn't wanna come back.' Why the hell would I not wanna come back to an organization that I've been a part of for three years? That makes no sense to me. So I was cut. I was devastated. It stung. I was hurt."
Lindsay, who made history as the NFL's first transgender cheerleader when she tried out and made the Carolina Panthers's TopCats squad in 2022, told the magazine that her teammates "know the truth" about the decision to cut her from the squad.
Dutch authorities say Veronica Clifford-Carlos failed to prove she faces a "legitimate risk of persecution" or threat of physical harm in the United States.
A Dutch court has upheld a ruling rejecting a U.S. transgender woman's bid for asylum, finding she does not face a substantial enough threat of persecution in her home country.
Veronica Clifford-Carlos, a 28-year-old visual artist from California, said she once believed she’d build a life in the United States, but felt compelled to flee after receiving death threats over her gender identity.
Clifford-Carlos left the United States -- leaving behind friends and her dog -- and flew to the Netherlands with her father. Upon arrival, she applied for asylum, telling authorities about the abuse she endured in the United States, particularly after President Donald Trump’s re-election last fall.
U.S. Rep. Julie Johnson, one of several Democrats targeted in Texas's latest gerrymander, says she will seek reelection after a federal three-judge panel blocked a Republican-backed congressional map that would have drawn her out of her Dallas-area district for 2026.
The lesbian congresswoman is one of five Texas Democrats whose districts were reshaped to give Republicans a 2026 edge, and among several Democrats who were effectively drawn out of the seats they currently represent.
In Johnson's case, the proposed map would have stretched her Dallas-based 32nd District into Republican-leaning Rockwall County and rural East Texas, while shifting her hometown of Farmers Branch into GOP Rep. Beth Van Duyne's 24th District, a seat Trump won by 16 points in 2024.
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