President Donald Trump at CPAC 2017, Photo: Gage Skidmore / Flickr
On Monday, President Donald Trump issued an executive order allowing companies that do business with the federal government to avoid disclosing past instances of discrimination or violating labor laws.
Trump’s order rescinds an Obama-era executive order that required companies with federal contracts to report whether they have been found liable for violations of any labor laws or executive orders, including those that prohibit discrimination against protected classes of people, including LGBTQ individuals. The executive order also instructed federal officials to consider those violations when awarding contracts.
LGBTQ legal advocacy organization Lambda Legal slammed Trump for rescinding Obama’s executive order. The group’s CEO, Rachel Tiven, called the now-rescinded regulations in the order a valuable enforcement tool intended to hold employers responsible for violations of nondiscrimination laws. She also encouraged LGBTQ employees of federal contractors, and those with HIV, to contact the organization if they believe their rights have been discriminated against because of their sexual orientation or HIV status.
“This sends a message that the government condones discrimination,” Tiven said of Trump’s actions. “Scrapping an order like this one is different than not adopting one. It’s not surprising given Donald Trump’s sordid history with women that this administration is allowing companies to hide sex discrimination — including sexual harassment.
“Furthermore,” Tiven added, “this administration is inviting businesses to the table that violate equal pay and fair wage laws, ignore laws requiring family medical leave, or target employees for discrimination based on race, sex, gender identity, gender non-conformity (including being gay or lesbian), disability (including HIV), and numerous other grounds. All of these things violate the law. Companies that flout the law should be sued — not invited to win our tax dollars.”
If you’ve been on social media this summer, those five words have been almost inescapable. Originally part of a British budget airline ad, featuring Jess Glynne singing a snippet of her hit "Hold My Hand," the soundbite has taken on a viral life of its own.
On TikTok alone, the sound has been used in over 2.1 million videos, scoring everything from bad flight experiences to cringe-worthy vacation blunders.
The Trump administration jumped into the Jet2 Holiday meme-a-palooza in its own way. On July 29, the official White House X account posted a video of Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees in restraints, set to the ad's soundtrack.
"I was always for IVF. Right from the beginning, as soon as we heard about it.… We’re doing this because we just think it’s great. And we need great children, beautiful children in our country, we actually need them," President Donald Trump said in an August 2024 NBC News interview as he mounted his reelection bid.
He pledged to support free in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments, a promise that came just months after the Alabama Supreme Court controversially ruled that frozen embryos created through IVF should be considered "children" under state law.
"I was really into politics at a very young age," says Tim Miller, host of The Bulwark Podcast and an MSNBC political analyst. "I can't remember what they were called, but you'd get those kid magazines about politics that would come to your school, and I remember always really being drawn to them, and reading them and wanting to know more. I always knew lots of weird facts about politics and geography as a little middle school nerd."
Raised in St. Louis until fourth grade, when his family relocated to Littleton, Colorado, Miller became enmeshed in conservative politics at a young age, taking various campaign jobs throughout his career as a former Republican strategist. He jokes that his success at handicapping political races dates back to the 1992 election, when he won a $1 wager after betting his grandmother that then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton would unseat sitting president George H.W. Bush.
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