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23-Year Old Beheaded In Anti-Gay Hate Crime Murder In South Africa

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A 23-year old transgender and gay man was beheaded in his home town of Kuruman, South Africa Friday, in an anti-gay hate crime. Thapelo Makutle, who was crowned Miss Gay Kuruman, was murdered by two men who remain at large. Reports state that police, for reasons of language and training, are not classifying the murder as a hate crime, and do not understand the significance of the attack. On report states the police reject that Makutle was beheaded, but acknowledge his throat was slashed.

Mamba Online reports:

According to the group Legbo Northern Cape, Thapelo Makutle was attacked at his place of work in the John Taolo Gaetsewe district on Friday. The organisation said that there was an argument related to “his sexuality and homosexuality”.

His two attackers are believed to have followed him to the room where he lived and on Saturday cut his throat, decapitating him.

They left his body under a blanket as though he were sleeping.

Makutle, who identified as both gay and transgender, was a volunteer for Legbo Northern Cape. He recently participated in the Kimberley Out In Africa Gay and Lesbian Festival, was known as a beauty queen named Queen Bling and was recently crowned Miss Gay Kuruman.

“It’s so sad. I can’t describe the pain that we are feeling right now,” Shaine Griqua, director of Legbo Northern Cape, told Mambaonline. “We have lost a young, talented, gay man who was open about who he was. The last few days have been like a dark cloud.”

He said that no arrests have yet been made in connection with the murder. He expressed his frustration with the lack of support for LGBT people in the Northern Cape and noted that hate crimes are on the rise in the province.

“We recently had a lesbian stabbed three times in a bar because they said that she should be a woman and not a man. She chose not to press charges because she didn’t want her family involved,” Griqua said.

“The government is not interested in this problem,” he added.

A later report form Mamba Online states:

According to the Mothibistad police, Thapelo Makutle’s body was found lying on the floor of his rented room. It is alleged that the victim has been out with his friends that night. He left unannounced and his friends assumed that he had gone home to sleep.

Shaine Griqua, Director of Legbo Northern Cape, who first reported the attack, said that confusion around the state of the body likely stems from miscommunication due to most people in the area not speaking English as a first language.

Griqua believes that the attack was a hate crime and said that he has information that Makutle was killed as a result of an argument about his sexuality and gender appearance, but police have yet to confirm this, saying that the motive is as yet unknown.

He told Mambaonline that the police in the area are ill-equipped to deal appropriately with a hate crime.

“These people [the police] are not reliable. They don’t even know what a hate crime is. If you ask them if it was related to his sexuality they will say ‘no’ because they don’t understand the context,” Griqua insisted.

Global Post adds:

In a statement, Cosatu’s Northern Cape secretary Anele Gxoyiya condemned “this brutal attack on a young, brilliant and educated soul whose head was chopped off in a hate crime.”

While South Africa is one of the few countries in the world to extend equal rights to homosexuals, and the only nation in Africa to allow same-sex marriage, the reality of life in townships and rural areas for gays and lesbians has been one of often brutal violence.

In a high-profile incident last year, Noxolo Nogwaza, a lesbian activist based in KwaThema township near Johannesburg, was gang-raped and then stabbed and stoned to death, in what the New York-based group Human Rights Watch described as part of an “epidemic” of hate crimes against gays and lesbians in South Africa.

Politics Web published a statement in response to the murder, by Lindiwe Mazibuko MP, Democratic Alliance Parliamentary Leader:

This violent and gruesome assault is yet another reminder that many of our country’s people are still denied the basic rights and freedoms which our Constitution enshrines.

There is a spate of homophobic hate crimes which have recently taken place across our country, including the repugnant and unconscionable crime of so-called “corrective rape” committed against lesbian South African women.

At this time, South Africa needs strong leadership from President Jacob Zuma, and an indication of his commitment to ensuring that all South Africans are able to live their lives free from fear of discrimination or violence.

Unfortunately, the silence from the Presidency has been deafening. This silence is made worse by the fact that President Zuma has in the past shown himself to be prejudiced towards homosexuals.

Last year, the DA welcomed the establishment of a government-led Joint Task Team on a “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex (LGBTI) Intervention Strategy”, established in September 2011, under the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development.

Unfortunately, this task team has yet to make any report on its work.

Meanwhile, the spate of crimes continues.

President Zuma must speak out against this weekend’s horrific murder, and the many others like it, which are in danger of becoming all too commonplace in our country today.

I will today be calling for a debate in Parliament about the prevalence of these crimes in South Africa, and calling on MPs to discuss what can be done by the government to address this ongoing problem.

In addition, I will also be writing to the President to ask what immediate steps his government will be taking to address the violence and intimidation that homosexual South Africans must face on a daily basis.

Such crimes, and the President’s silence on them, cannot be allowed to continue.

Hat-tip: Towleroad

 

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News

‘I Didn’t Say That You Said That’: Trump Backpedals as ‘Obnoxious’ Reporter Corners Him

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December 8, 2025

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President Donald Trump tried to backpedal on last week’s promise to release full video of a second boat strike some are calling unlawful, when cornered by a reporter he subsequently denounced as “obnoxious” and “terrible.”

Video shows that Trump did promise to release the full video, telling reporters last Wednesday, “whatever they have, we’d certainly release.”

On Monday, ABC News Senior Political Correspondent Rachel Scott said to Trump, “Mr. President, you said you would have no problem with releasing the full video of that strike on September 2nd off the coast of Venezuela.”

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“I didn’t say that,” Trump replied. “You said that, I didn’t say that.”

“This is ABC fake news,” the president added.

“You said that you would have no problem releasing the full — okay, well, Secretary Hegseth —” Scott continued.

“Whatever Hegseth wants to do is okay with me,” Trump said.

“He now says it’s under review,” she explained. “Are you ordering the secretary to release that full video?”

“Whatever he decides is okay with me,” Trump responded.

After the president claimed that every boat the U.S. military destroys saves 25,000 American lives, the reporter pressed him to confirm his position on releasing the video.

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“Didn’t I just tell you that?” he charged.

“You said that it was up to the secretary,” she responded.

“You are an obnoxious reporter in the whole place,” Trump said, attacking Scott. “Let me just tell you, you are an obnoxious, a terrible, actually a terrible reporter, and it’s always the same thing with you.”

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Image via Reuters

 

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GOP Struggles to Message on Affordability as House Republicans Kill Affordability Bill

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18 hours ago

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December 8, 2025

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Republicans are taking heat on two fronts as they struggle to win the affordability messaging battle while killing affordability legislation.

“Republican lawmakers, aides and strategists tell NBC News they worry that high prices and their party’s poor messaging on affordability could cost them in the midterms,” the news network reported over the weekend.

Politico reported on Monday that “Republicans are divided over how to address growing cost-of-living concerns over health care, housing, student debt and more.”

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As President Donald Trump calls affordability a “hoax” and a “con job,” recent polls show his approval rating is underwater, and some say Republicans have not made the affordability crisis a central legislative focus.

Senate Republican Majority Leader John Thune appeared to suggest affordability is an issue to tackle down the road.

“We haven’t probably messaged as effectively as we should,” Leader Thune said in an interview, Politico noted. “I think we’ll have lots of opportunities now that we’re getting into an election year to talk about the things we’ve done and how they are going to lead to things being more affordable for the American people, probably starting with tax relief next year.”

One of the things Senate Republicans did was join with Democrats to pass out of committee — unanimously, some Democrats noted — a bill to improve housing availability and affordability.

House Republicans killed the legislation, known as the ROAD to Housing Act.

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“Just this weekend, congressional leaders released a compromise version of the annual National Defense Authorization Act without housing legislation sought by Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and ranking member Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), after House Financial Services Chair French Hill (R-Ark.) and other key House Republicans objected.”

Senate Democrats expressed outrage.

“Leave it to House Republicans to fumble a comprehensive, bipartisan housing package that passed out of the Senate committee UNANIMOUSLY!” decried U.S. Senator Tina Smith (D-MN).

“Unbelievable,” lamented U.S. Senator Mark Warner (D-VA). “House Republicans just killed our broadly bipartisan housing affordability bill, which would have been a great first step towards lowering skyrocketing rents & mortgages. Republicans are actively torpedoing progress towards lowering your rent.”

“Trump claims he wants to lower housing costs, but his allies in the House just axed a bipartisan bill that UNANIMOUSLY passed the Senate to do just that,” noted U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). “If Republicans keep blocking legislation to cut housing costs, Democrats will pass it ourselves when we take back Congress.”

The communications director for U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), James Singer, summed it up: “It’s not the message, it’s the policies.”

Economist and economics professor Justin Wolfers told CNN, “When we talk about affordability, so much of what’s going on with prices is in fact a direct result of public policy. We’ve seen tariffs that have raised costs. We’ve seen a big rise in deportations, which are making it difficult for farmers to bring in their crops. We’ve seen health insurance premiums rise as Congress has fiddled with Obamacare subsidies.”

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Image via Reuters

 

 

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‘Corrupt’: Kushner’s Role in Warner Brothers Discovery Takeover Bid Draws Fierce Blowback

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21 hours ago

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December 8, 2025

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On Sunday, President Donald Trump declared that he will “be involved” in the federal government’s decision on whether to allow the streaming service Netflix to buy mass media and entertainment conglomerate Warner Brothers Discovery. On Monday, Paramount Skydance, another mass media and entertainment conglomerate, announced a hostile takeover bid for WBD — with news soon following that Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner’s private equity firm is part of the Paramount offer.

“Paramount is telling WBD shareholders that it has a smoother path to regulatory approval than does Netflix, and Kushner’s involvement only strengthens that case,” Axios reported. “Paramount is led by David Ellison, whose billionaire father Larry is a major supporter of President Trump.”

Axios added that Kushner’s firm, Affinity Partners, “was not mentioned in Paramount’s press release on Monday morning about its $108 billion bid, nor were participating sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar.”

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Fortune reported that “Affinity and the other outside financing partners have agreed to forgo any governance rights, which Paramount said means the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States would have no jurisdiction over the transaction.”

But Axios’ Sarah Fischer wrote on social media: “Ask yourself, why would anyone want to put money into an investment of this caliber and have no governance rights or board seats?”

“Essentially,” she added, “people want to have control/access/political power behind the scenes.”

“Reality is,” Fischer explained, this hostile takeover is a good explanation “of how capitalism/democracy can be exploited for political gain,” with “Paramount essentially betting our open system incentivizes shareholders to take [the] best financial deal even if it means giving soft power” to three sovereign wealth funds, the President, and his son-in-law.

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Critics are blasting Kushner’s and Trump’s involvement.

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) remarked, “Donald Trump said he’ll ‘be involved in’ deciding if Netflix can buy Warner Bros. Is that an open invite for CEOs to curry favor with Trump in exchange for merger approvals? It should be an independent decision by the Department of Justice based on the law and facts.”

Award-winning journalist Sophia A. Nelson, responding to trump’s remarks, observed: “This is ridiculous. Corrupt. And NOT what a President gets involved in.”

Professor, investor, and marketing executive Adam Cochran wrote: “Trump is talking about him personally being involved in deciding the fate of the Netflix-Warner Brothers deal, and how it’s ‘bad.’ Meanwhile his son-in-law is financing the competing offer. There has truly never been a more corrupt administration in US history!”

Alexander Vindman, former Director of European Affairs for the United States National Security Council (NSC), wrote: “F– NO to another corrupt Trump deal. Nepobaby, Jared’s, involvement would deliver CNN to MAGA.”

NewsNation’s Kurt Bardella, a communications advisor and media relations consultant, asked: “Alexa, what is a ‘conflict-of-interest’?”

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Image via Reuters 

 

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