A drag performer at Palace Bar – Photo: Palace Bar, via Facebook.
An LGBTQ bar in Miami has received threats and negative reviews on its social media pages after a conservative activist accused it of having children perform in drag shows.
In one Instagram post, a user wrote: “I hope y’all end up like Pulse,” referring to the massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando on June 12, 2016 that killed 49 people and wounded 53. The FBI later deemed the shooting a terrorist attack.
In another instance, a Facebook user from Houston, Texas, gave the bar a zero-star review, writing: “Has children involved in their x-rated shows. Having money thrown at the children and telling them to pick it up! Unbelievable!!”
But Thomas Donall, the owner of the Palace, in South Beach, says that the threats and negative messages making false accusations against the bar on social media are untrue — the result of a misinformation campaign being spread by conservatives.
The incident that sparked the conservative outrage was a drag show where a performer was doing a routine dedicated to Madonna. Two young girls, whose parents had brought them to the bar, got permission to interact with the drag queens and began prancing and voguing on stage alongside a drag queen. The children, following the drag queen’s example, began picking up dollar bills from the floor that were dropped by customers as “tips” for the drag queen.
“It was all innocent fun for the girls,” Donall told Miami-based ABC affiliate WPLG. “I mean, they were posing with a Madonna show.”
However, Angela Stanton-King, a former Republican congressional candidate, conservative activist, and supporter of the QAnon conspiracy movement, claimed that she went to the Palace earlier this year and saw the children interacting with the drag queen.
“These people have children in a [expletive] drag show,” she said in a video she shot. She shared the video on Instagram with her nearly 300,000 followers, including footage of a confrontation she had with a Palace employee, during which she said: “I feel offended and disrespected by being a survivor of sexual abuse!”
Stanton-King has argued that city officials must take action to keep drag queen away from children, adding: “I’m anti-sexual exploitation of children.”
Such rhetoric isn’t new for Stanton-King, a Trump acolyte who was pardoned by the former president for her role in a car theft ring, who has previously spread misinformation on various topics on social media.
But Donall worries that Stanton-King’s misinformation campaign is going too far, and hurting his business, which was already negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene recently repeated Stanton-King’s claims when she called for the drag queen who interacted with the children at the club (while, in typical fashion for Greene, misstating the club’s location, as well as repeating other erroneous information). This has prompted some conspiracy theorists to complain to Miami Beach City Hall, urging politicians to step in and stop the drag shows.
Donall claims one city official even asked him to change the drag queens’ artistic expression.
A spokeswoman for the city told WPLG she wasn’t aware the city had taken any action against the bar. But Donall says the attacks are taking a toll on his staff.
“It’s really difficult for us and heart-wrenching … I mean it just makes me … really sick to my stomach,” he said.
Harvard University has drawn criticism from conservatives after announcing that Tufts professor Kareem Khubchandani -- who performs and occasionally lectures in drag as "LaWhore Vagistan" -- will serve as a visiting associate professor in its Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality department.
The visiting professorship was established through an endowment from members of the Harvard Gender & Sexuality Caucus, the university's LGBTQ alumni group. It was created to bring in scholars focused on issues related to sexual minorities and sexuality.
Khubchandani is scheduled to teach two courses during the 2025-2026 academic year: "Queer Ethnography," in the fall semester, and "RuPaulitics: Drag, Race, and Desire" in the spring semester, focusing on the cultural influence of the show RuPaul's Drag Race.
Reports that the person who fatally shot conservative activist Charlie Kirk had left behind bullet casings engraved with phrases espousing "transgender ideology" have been debunked.
The rumor spread quickly after conservative commentator Steven Crowder posted to X on the morning of September 11 -- the day after the shooting -- claiming he had received an email from a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives officer describing such engravings.
Crowder shared what he said was an email from an ATF officer claiming investigators had recovered the weapon used in Kirk's killing, with one spent cartridge in the chamber and three rounds still in the magazine. The email further alleged the cartridges were engraved with "transgender and anti-fascist ideology."
The founders of the legendary Miss Adams Morgan Pageant talk about how D.C.'s largest drag event has evolved over 37 years.
By John Riley Photographs from the 1998 to 2024 pageants courtesy of the Dupont Social Club
October 1, 2025
"The whole Miss Adams Morgan Pageant really started by accident," says Steven Brandt, a board member of the Dupont Social Club, which organizes the annual drag pageant, now a fixture on many D.C. residents' calendars.
Brandt recalls that he and his now-husband, Rick Boylan, were celebrating Halloween in drag with friends when, on their way to a piano bar, walking through Dupont Circle, they were accosted by a group of teenagers.
"It was raining," recalls Brandt. "They ripped my wig off and threw it in a puddle, spewing all kinds of hatefulness. After that, we decided we needed a place to be able to go in drag if we wanted. It was maybe only the first or second time we'd been in drag, but I was so enraged by the experience that I kept saying over and over, 'We've got to...This isn't right.'"
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