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Exclusive: Famous Writer Del Shores Endorses Obama. ‘I’ve Got His Back.’

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In our exclusive interview, Del Shores, of “Sordid Lives” and “Queer as Folk” fame, tells guest author Jeremy Stubbs he’s endorsing President Obama: “I’ve got his back.”

Del Shores is a busy man. His latest movie, “Blues for Willadean,” has been screening in L.A. and takes on the serious subject of spousal abuse and violence while still providing some of his well known southern comedy. It stars the always engaging Beth Grant, Dale Dickey of “True Blood,” and Octavia Spencer in the first movie following her Academy Award winning performance in “The Help.”

I could feel over the phone his excitement about the screening as he spoke with me about the recent attempts in Texas to block his famous play “Sordid Lives” from going into production. Despite a warm welcome from fans — since 1987 — of his plays, movies, and his production of such shows as “Queer as Folk,” Shores’ work still gets met with strong resistance in places like the Deep South. Has it ever stopped the refreshingly outspoken Del Shores? Not for one second.

READ: Art Imitates Life In A Small Texas Town’s Fight Against ‘Sordid Lives’

“You know what I think?,” he says as we jump right into what felt like a conversation you might have with a neighbor or friend. “That play is about love and acceptance. These people have just refused to enlighten themselves over the years, hiding behind a few scriptures to feel their own hatred. They try to call it offensive or complain because it has the f-word or whatever, but what they are doing is hiding behind their own homophobia.”

“I would like all those people that tried to block the show to come out to the Wimberley Players for the preview so we can have a civil conversation about censorship,” Shores continued. “I’d especially like to talk to the ones that made all those comments and have never even read the play,” he tells me in his message to the very vocal minority who threatened to pull funding from the Wimberly Players playhouse. “If they won’t do that, and they to come out to picket, then bring a camera. I am the son of a Southern Baptist preacher and I will go toe-to-toe with them on scripture. There are gay people in anti-gay states like Texas and North Carolina, where they voted hate into their constitution, that need to know that there are others fighting on their behalf.”

Mr. Shores is also scheduled to appear at nearby Texas State University to speak with playwriting students, LGBT groups on campus, and perform sections of his one man shows on November 8. The show will be followed by a meet and greet and will be hosted by the university’s Honors College, where an LGBT studies program has just begun earlier this year.

Del Shores’ work often includes such subjects as religion, family, and LGBT issues. It all pours onto the page at once after the characters have brewed in his mind like he mentions they are now for his next play, already titled, “This Side of Crazy.”

“I always tell people I’m just this side of crazy,” he jokes. “I just don’t tell them which side I’m on.”

Del Shores is a native of Texas, a well-known Republican stronghold in the upcoming election, and he will be in the state on election night. “I feel good about it,” he tells me. “I was talking to a relative lately who said Obama hasn’t been able to get us out of this debt and fix our problems. There’s something lost when it comes to these people’s expectations. It’s going to take longer, and in my opinion there is one big elephant in the room that hasn’t gone away. His name is George W. Bush.”

“As you might assume, I’m for Obama,” Shores tells me. “What he said about marriage equality was just fantastic. I’ve got his back.”

“I do get political in Naked. Sordid. Reality, also,” he continues. “I talk about Newt Gingrich and Victoria Jackson. The audiences have really been responding to her and the part about Kirk Cameron. They are some of the biggest hypocrites and haters towards the gay community.”

In addition to politics, Shores’ most recent show discusses his divorce, being single again, and his real Aunt Sissy, who is a favorite of his characters among his fans. Sharing how he is looking forward to performing at Texas State University he tells me, “I love playing the South. It’s like group therapy. I start off with one twisted story that no one has been able to top yet. It really is my hope audiences will walk away laughing and forgetting about everything else for a while. If they also walk away thinking just a little bit, then that’s an added bonus.”

Before hanging up we shared the last of many laughs throughout our conversation. It was a bit of laughter through tears after we both got choked up when he allowed me to share with him a cherished memory, from a summer in Alabama at age fourteen, of watching his first movie with my late grandmother. It was the same kind of heartfelt moment we see often in his shows and movies. It indicated to me that when we watch his work we are truly seeing his heart, his humanity, and that he is very much enjoying his true to life characters right along with us.

“Blues for Willadean” premieres at Camelot Theatres in Palm Springs, CA this weekend.

Images of Del Shores by Bryan Putnam (top) and Alan Mercer (center).

 

Guest author Jeremy Stubbs credits his parents for his twisted sense of humor. He currently lives just outside of Austin, Texas with his wonderful partner and their pesky cat. When he’s not working to pay the bills he is photographing and writing about the world around him.

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OPINION

‘Doesn’t Care if Pregnant Women Live or Die’: Alito Slammed Over Emergency Abortion Remarks

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April 24, 2024

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The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case centered on the question, can the federal government require states with strict abortion bans to allow physicians to perform abortions in emergency situations, specifically when the woman’s health, but not her life, is in danger?

The 1986 federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), signed into law by Republican President Ronald Reagan, says it can. The State of Idaho on Wednesday argued it cannot.

U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, The Washington Post’s Kim Bellware reported, “made a clear delineation between Idaho law and what EMTALA provides.”

“In Idaho, doctors have to shut their eyes to everything except death,” Prelogar said, according to Bellware. “Whereas under EMTALA, you’re supposed to be thinking about things like, ‘Is she about to lose her fertility? Is her uterus going to become incredibly scarred because of the bleeding? Is she about to undergo the possibility of kidney failure?’ ”

READ MORE: Gag Order Breach? Trump Targeted Cohen in Taped Interview Hours Before Contempt Hearing

Attorney Imani Gandy, an award-winning journalist and Editor-at-Large for Rewire News Group, highlighted an issue central to the case.

“The issue of medical judgment vs. good faith judgment is a huge one because different states have different standards of judgment,” she writes. “If a doctor exercises their judgment, another doctor expert witness at trial could question that. That’s a BIG problem here. That’s why doctors are afraid to provide abortions. They may have an overzealous prosecutor come behind them and disagree.”

Right-wing Justice Samuel Alito appeared to draw the most fire from legal experts, as his questioning suggested “fetal personhood” should be the law, which it is not.

“Justice Alito is trying to import fetal personhood into federal statutory law by suggesting federal law might well prohibit hospitals from providing abortions as emergency stabilizing care,” observed Constitutional law professor Anthony Michael Kreis.

Paraphrasing Justice Alito, Kreis writes: “Alito: How can the federal government restrict what Idaho criminalizes simply because hospitals in Idaho have accepted federal funds?”

Appearing to answer that question, Georgia State University College of Law professor of law and Constitutional scholar Eric Segall wrote: “Our Constitution unequivocally allows the federal gov’t to offer the states money with conditions attached no matter how invasive b/c states can always say no. The conservative justices’ hostility to the spending power is based only on politics and values not text or history.”

Professor Segall also served up some of the strongest criticism of the right-wing justice.

READ MORE: ‘They Will Have Thugs?’: Lara Trump’s Claim RNC Will ‘Physically Handle the Ballots’ Stuns

He wrote that Justice Alito “is basically making it clear he doesn’t care if pregnant women live or die as long as the fetus lives.”

Earlier Wednesday morning Segall had issued a warning: “Trigger alert: In about 20 minutes several of the conservative justices are going to show very clearly that that they care much more about fetuses than women suffering major pregnancy complications which is their way of owning the libs which is grotesque.”

Later, predicting “Alito is going to dissent,” Segall wrote: “Alito is dripping arrogance and condescension…in a case involving life, death, and medical emergencies. He has no bottom.”

Taking a broader view of the case, NYU professor of law Melissa Murray issued a strong warning: “The EMTALA case, Moyle v. US, hasn’t received as much attention as the mifepristone case, but it is huge. Not only implicates access to emergency medical procedures (like abortion in cases of miscarriage), but the broader question of federal law supremacy.”

READ MORE: ‘Blood on Your Hands’: Tennessee Republicans OK Arming Teachers After Deadly School Shooting

 

 

 

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News

Gag Order Breach? Trump Targeted Cohen in Taped Interview Hours Before Contempt Hearing

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3 hours ago

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April 24, 2024

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Hours before his attorneys would mount a defense on Tuesday claiming he had not violated his gag order Donald Trump might have done just that in a 12-minute taped interview that morning, which did not air until later that day. It will be up to Judge Juan Merchan to make that decision, if prosecutors add it to their contempt request.

Prosecutors in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office told Judge Juan Merchan that the ex-president violated the gag order ten times, via posts on his Truth Social platform, and are asking he be held in contempt. While the judge has yet to rule, he did not appear moved by their arguments. At one point, Judge Merchan told Trump’s lead lawyer Todd Blanche he was “losing all credibility” with the court.

And while Judge Merchan directed defense attorneys to provide a detailed timeline surrounding Trump’s Truth Social posts to prove he had not violated the gag order, Trump in an interview with a local television station appeared to have done so.

READ MORE: ‘They Will Have Thugs?’: Lara Trump’s Claim RNC Will ‘Physically Handle the Ballots’ Stuns

The gag order bars Trump from “commenting or causing others to comment on potential witnesses in the case, prospective jurors, court staff, lawyers in the district attorney’s office and the relatives of any counsel or court staffer, as CBS News reported.

“The threat is very real,” Judge Merchan wrote when he expanded the gag order. “Admonitions are not enough, nor is reliance on self-restraint. The average observer, must now, after hearing Defendant’s recent attacks, draw the conclusion that if they become involved in these proceedings, even tangentially, they should worry not only for themselves, but for their loved ones as well. Such concerns will undoubtedly interfere with the fair administration of justice and constitutes a direct attack on the Rule of Law itself.”

Tuesday morning, Trump told ABC Philadelphia’s Action News reporter Walter Perez, “Michael Cohen is a convicted liar. He’s got no credibility whatsoever.”

He repeated that Cohen is a “convicted liar,” and insisted he “was a lawyer for many people, not just me.”

READ MORE: ‘Old and Tired and Mad’: Trump’s Demeanor in Court Detailed by Rachel Maddow

Since Cohen is a witness in Trump’s New York criminal case, Judge Merchan might decide Trump’s remarks during that interview violated the gag order, if prosecutors bring the video to his attention.

Enter attorney George Conway, who has been attending Trump’s New York trial.

Conway reposted a clip of the video, tagged Manhattan District Attorney Bragg, writing: “cc: @ManhattanDA, for your proposed order to show cause why the defendant in 𝘗𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘷. 𝘛𝘳𝘶𝘮𝘱 should not spend some quiet time in lockup.”

Trump has been criminally indicted in four separate cases and is facing a total of 88 felony charges, including 34 in this New York criminal trial for alleged falsification of business records to hide payments of “hush money” to an adult film actress and one other woman, in an alleged effort to suppress their stories and protect his 2016 presidential campaign, which experts say is election interference.

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Blood on Your Hands’: Tennessee Republicans OK Arming Teachers After Deadly School Shooting

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OPINION

‘They Will Have Thugs?’: Lara Trump’s Claim RNC Will ‘Physically Handle the Ballots’ Stuns

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4 hours ago

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April 24, 2024

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Minutes before Donald Trump addressed his MAGA crowd at the Ellipse on January 6, 2021 his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump spoke to his supporters, vowing to “take our country back” because the Trump “family didn’t get in this fight for just four years. We are in this fight to the bitter end.”

Fast forward to April, 2024.

Lara Trump is now co-chair of the Republican National Committee, after Donald Trump’s efforts to install her and his hand-picked RNC chairman, Michael Whatley. Whatley is a North Carolina Republican who served on George W. Bush’s Florida recount team for the 2000 presidential election that was decided at the U.S. Supreme Court. Years later Whatley declared, “it was really the first time that Republicans got down into the trenches and fought,” and claimed, “if we were not there, they were going to steal it.”

Now both Michael Whatley and Lara Trump are leading the RNC, and with Donald Trump as the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, they are continuing the ex-president’s focus on “election integrity.”

Tuesday night Lara Trump served up some insight into what they’re planning.

READ MORE: Trump Complains He’s ‘Not Allowed to Talk’ as He Gripes Live on Camera

“We now have the ability at the RNC not just to have poll watchers, people standing in polling locations, but people who can physically handle the ballots. We want people all across this country –” she said before host Eric Bolling interrupted her.

“I want to hear this, this is really fascinating to me,” Bolling said. “You have 100,000 people who are, I think I saw paid at one point, but whatever – irrelevant, but, so they will be stationed inside polling places? I didn’t even know you can do that. Tell us about it.”

Trump replied, “there was a moratorium for about 40 years on the RNC actually training people to work in these polling locations in the tabulation centers where the mail-in ballots come in. And last year, the judge who implemented that passed away, so that was lifted, and that gives us a great ability as we head into what I assume everyone understands is the most important election of our lifetime.”

Bolling went on to ask, “Will these people, will they be allowed to physically handle the ballots as well, Lara?”

“Yup,” Trump replied. “And that means Eric that they should know and they can count how many ballots come in, and how many ballots should go out of every single polling location.”

READ MORE: ‘I’m Not Suicidal’: Kari Lake Pushes Hillary Clinton Murder Conspiracy Theory

She went on to say if anyone cheats, “we will prosecute you to the full extent of the law.”

“It is not worth it to cheat in a federal election, that is a crime my friends you do not want to commit.”

Bolling was referring to the more than 100,000 attorneys and volunteers the RNC reportedly has lined up to monitor vote counting. In a joint statement the Trump campaign and the RNC called it, “the most extensive and monumental election integrity program in the nation’s history.”

Former RNC Chairman Michael Steele blasted Lara Trump.

“Lara, you know why there was ‘a moratorium on the RNC for 40 years’? Because the RNC was caught cheating. The RNC was placed under a 1982 Consent decree for voter caging. Voter caging hinders an eligible voter’s ability to vote. The process involves efforts to identify and disenfranchise improperly registered voters solely on the basis of undeliverable mail. It often leads to the unwarranted purging of election rolls of otherwise eligible voters.”

“So,” Steele continued, “given the continued lies about the 2020 election and your daddy-in-law claiming if he loses in 2024 it’s because the election is rigged, you’re planning to have your people ‘physically handle the ballots’–and we’re supposed to think that’s a good idea?”

NYU professor of history Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a scholar on fascism, authoritarianism, propaganda, and the protection of democracy, also served up strong criticism.

“What does this mean, they will have thugs to physically take the ballots to make sure they are marked for Republican candidates?” Ben-Ghiat asked. “Sounds like a perfect authoritarian election plan to me.”

Watch the video above or at this link.

READ MORE: Biden Campaign Hammers Trump Over Infamous COVID Comment

 

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