It Doesn’t Matter Nate Silver Is Gay. It Matters America Knows He Is.
var addthis_config = {“data_track_addressbar”:true};Nate Silver is gay, in case you didn’t know. Until yesterday, practically no one did. Silver is the incredibly accurate statistician who gave President Obama a 91.6% probability of winning re-election on Election Day, and gave right wing pundits and prognosticators such angst for the months leading up to the election they created an entire new system of poll reading — that, like most everything the right does, was totally wrong.
Silver, author of the bestselling book, The Signal and the Noise, has not been totally wrong. In fact, he’s been almost totally right. Silver’s statistical model ultimately predicted President Obama would win the White House with an a weighted probability average of about 315 electoral votes — with 332 the most likely scenario — and 50.9% of the popular vote. Obama won 332 electoral college votes and 50.6% of the popular vote. Perhaps more important, Silver’s model predicted the vote correctly in all 50 states. In 2008, Silver correctly predicted 49 out of 50 states and all 36 Senate races.
“I’ve always felt like something of an outsider,” Nate Silver tells Carole Cadwalladr of The Observer, a liberal British newspaper. “I’ve always had friends, but I’ve always come from an outside point of view. I think that’s important. If you grow up gay, or in a household that’s agnostic, when most people are religious, then from the get-go, you are saying that there are things that the majority of society believes that I don’t believe.â€
Cadwalladr, who in her extensive profile of the 34-year old superstar, published in the U.S. at The Raw Story, notes, “Silver is gay,” and writes:
“What made you more of a misfit, I ask, being gay or a geek?”
“Probably the numbers stuff since I had that from when I was six.”
Silver’s blog, FiveThirtyEight, is published at The New York Times, but Silver is not a Times employee; instead, he licenses his award-winning blog to the Old Grey Lady.
Silver, a total nerd and geek in the best possible meaning of the words, was named by Time magazine one of The World’s 100 Most Influential People in 2009. Despite all this, Silver has had to bear his share of anti-gay attacks, even when most of the world didn’t know he was gay.
On October 25, when the right was in total freak-out mode over Silver having given President Obama a 71% chance of winning re-election, the right’s new wunderkind, Dean Chambers, aka Mr. Unskewed Polls, wrote:
Nate Silver is a man of very small stature, a thin and effeminate man with a soft-sounding voice that sounds almost exactly like the “Mr. New Castrati” voice used by Rush Limbaugh on his program. In fact, Silver could easily be the poster child for the New Castrati in both image and sound. Nate Silver, like most liberal and leftist celebrities and favorites, might be of average intelligence but is surely not the genius he’s made out to be.
Silver responded, indirectly, two days later, via Twitter:
Unskewedpolls argument: Nate Silver seems kinda gay + ??? = Romney landslide!examiner.com/article/the-fa…
— Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) October 27, 2012
Chambers later removed the graf and apologized, but not before Gawker, who noted Chambers’ numbers are “generated in the same way that a kid turns an F into an A by drawing an extra bar down the right side of it,” had some fun:
Nate Silver, the famed statistician behind the FiveThirtyEight election forecast blog at the New York Times, is wrong. And gay. At least according to the more virulent elements of right-wing media. That he’s wrong is only confirmed by his gayness, just as surely as his gayness is the source of his wrongness. Nate Silver is a tautology of being queer as hell about everything.
Hardcore conservatism’s loathing of science has lurked around GOP politics for so long that its easy to forget how nasty it is. Over 40 years, that disdain has slid from “pointy-headed intellectuals” to something very like a jock slapping a math book out of a kid’s hands and saying, “NICE NUMBERS, FAG.” But this is what you do when you can’t crunch the numbers yourself or when they will not save you. You shoot the messenger.
…
Don’t you get it? Nate Silver is wrong, because Nate Silver sounds like a goddamn queer.
So, why does it matter that Silver is gay?
Four years ago, when I began The New Civil Rights Movement, anyone’s coming out was viewed as big news. If an actor at the Oscars, Emmys, or even Tonys acknowledged their same-sex partner, or even commented on marriage equality, blogs lit up and Twitter cheered. Today, if we ran a similar story, it would be met with yawns.
Times have changed, and for the better.
But not necessarily for kids.
Kids need role models.
That geeky, nerdy gay fifth grader needs to know there are geeky, nerdy successful and respected adults. That nine-year old girl who knows she’s different from other girls, needs to know there are lesbians like her and one of them just became a U.S. Senator.
And the school yard bullies who beat the crap out of geeky, nerdy gay fifth graders need to know that the gay kids they’re beating up today may well grow up to be revered statisticians.
It doesn’t matter that Nate Silver is gay. It matters that people who don’t like or respect gay people — or who even hate gay people — people who think we’re immoral and a danger to society, know that Nate Silver is gay.
And that should help them start to change their perception.
It doesn’t matter that Nate Silver is gay. But it matters people know because there are lawmakers who want to ban same-sex marriage. And religious leaders and pundits who want to criminalize our relationships. And presidential candidates who want to take away our right to visit our loved ones in the hospital. And schoolyard bullies who cut gay boys’ hair — who grow up to be presidential candidates who want to take away our right to visit our loved ones in the hospital.
America is changing, because people know we’re not going away.
It doesn’t matter that Nate Silver is gay. It matters that America knows he is. And it matters that people know you are. Because when they know we’re here, they know that can’t hurt us anymore. They have lost the ability to stop us from marrying and raising families and serving in the military and in Congress and running businesses and living our lives.
Â
Image by randy stewart via Wikimedia
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to describe more accurately Silver’s statistical model prediction of the electoral college results.
Enjoy this piece?
… then let us make a small request. The New Civil Rights Movement depends on readers like you to meet our ongoing expenses and continue producing quality progressive journalism. Three Silicon Valley giants consume 70 percent of all online advertising dollars, so we need your help to continue doing what we do.
NCRM is independent. You won’t find mainstream media bias here. From unflinching coverage of religious extremism, to spotlighting efforts to roll back our rights, NCRM continues to speak truth to power. America needs independent voices like NCRM to be sure no one is forgotten.
Every reader contribution, whatever the amount, makes a tremendous difference. Help ensure NCRM remains independent long into the future. Support progressive journalism with a one-time contribution to NCRM, or click here to become a subscriber. Thank you. Click here to donate by check.
 |
The Trump administration reportedly has plans to scrape your private medical data from sources like your doctor, your pharmacy, your insurance company, the lab that processes your bloodwork, your smartwatch, and your fitness apps—to create a “registry” of people with autism.
“The National Institutes of Health is amassing private medical records from a number of federal and commercial databases to give to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s new effort to study autism,” CBS News reported. “The new data will allow external researchers picked for Kennedy’s autism studies to study ‘comprehensive’ patient data with ‘broad coverage’ of the U.S. population for the first time, NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya said.”
CBS also adds that “a new disease registry is being launched to track Americans with autism, which will be integrated into the data. Advocacy groups and experts have called out Kennedy for describing autism as a ‘preventable disease,’ which they say is stigmatizing and unfounded.”
“By bringing the data into one place,” Bhattacharya “said it could give health agencies a window into ‘real-time health monitoring’ on Americans for studying other health problems too.”
“What we’re proposing is a transformative real-world data initiative, which aims to provide a robust and secure computational data platform for chronic disease and autism research,” he said.
READ MORE: Trump’s SignalGate Sit-Down Mocked as a ‘Him in a Nutshell’ Moment
Critics warn that a registry of people with autism poses great privacy and health risks, while others wonder about HIPAA violations—especially in light of what some say is Secretary Kennedy’s apparent bias against autism and people on the spectrum.
Last week, Secretary Kennedy’s remarks about children with autism drew intense fire.
“This is an individual tragedy,” Kennedy declared (video below). “Autism destroys families. And more importantly, it destroys our greatest resource, which our children. These are children who should not be, who should not be suffering like this. These are kids who, many of them, were fully functional, and regressed because of some environmental exposure into autism when they’re two years old.”
“And these are kids who will never pay taxes. They’ll never hold a job. They’ll never play baseball. They’ll never write a poem. They’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted. And we have to recognize we are doing this to our children,” he alleged, to widespread criticism.
“How are they going to collect all this data without violating HIPAA laws and privacy protection?” Dr. Joel Shulkin asked, as The Daily Dot reported. “How are they going to de-identify all the data so that it cannot be misused against people who are involved in it? And what are they planning to do with that data once they finish their so-called study?”
ASAN, the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, warned: “There is no indication that autistic people whose data is being taken would be afforded any say in whether their data is used or what it is used for. This raises significant moral, legal, and practical concerns. People have a right to decide what is done with data about their health. Unethical science is bad science.”
“Medical data can also easily be manipulated by unscrupulous researchers to create the appearance of causation where it does not exist,” ASAN added. “This has already happened this year with an anti-vaccine ‘study’ about autism that RFK Jr. approvingly cited during his confirmation hearing. The study, which was not published in a reputable scientific journal and did not go through peer review, used Medicaid data from Florida to show that children who had doctors visits to receive vaccinations were statistically more likely to also have doctors visits to receive care for autism.”
And the National Consumers League warns that “RFK Jr.’s autism study will pull private medical records, pharmacy data, insurance claims—even data from your fitness tracker—all under the banner of a flawed and stigmatizing narrative that autism is a ‘preventable disease.’ This kind of data grab raises serious questions about privacy, consent, and how personal health info could be misused in the name of speculative science.”
“RFK Jr.’s proposed national autism registry is straight-up dystopian,” declared Democratic strategist Chris D. Jackson. “Centralizing private medical data—from pharmacies, labs, fitness trackers, even veterans—and handing it to third parties? That’s not research. That’s surveillance. Let’s be clear: this echoes the darkest chapters of history, when regimes like Nazi Germany used medical registries to target and dehumanize vulnerable populations.”
READ MORE: ‘Incompetent. Irresponsible. Negligent’: Calls Mount for Hegseth’s Ouster or Prosecution
“And calling autism a ‘preventable tragedy’? That’s not science—it’s dangerous, ableist propaganda. Autistic people deserve respect, not to be tracked, labeled, or erased.”
Dr. Kristin Lyerly, who hosts The Dr. Kristin Lyerly Show, wrote: “I am very concerned about this effort for so many reasons, including health privacy and respect for people and families living with autism. This reeks of eugenics.”
“First RFK Jr says that people on the autism spectrum are useless eaters,” noted Yale Professor of History Timothy Snyder, an expert on authoritarianism. “And then he announces that the government is going to make a list of them, a ‘registry.'”
Daily Beast columnist Wajahat Ali, like many social media users, wrote: “Nazis did registries by the way.”
Fred Wellman, a West Point and the Harvard Kennedy School graduate, an Army veteran of 22 years who served four combat tours, and now a political consultant and the host of the podcast “On Democracy,” blasted the Trump administration:
“RFK Jr. wants to create a national registry of people with autism. The Admin wants to increase baby supply with a motherhood medal. Trump wants to deport US citizens to a third world gulag. They formed an Anti-Christian Bias Task Force to prosecute people for their speech. A White House advisor is floating arresting Americans for speaking in support of immigrants as terror supporters. Does this all sound familiar?”
Harvard Law Cyberlaw Clinic Instructor Alejandra Caraballo warned: “This won’t be limited to just autism. They’re building the panopticon to track anyone with any ‘undesirable’ illness. This is eugenics, full stop.”
Fred Guttenberg, an anti-gun violence activist who lost his daughter in the Parkland mass school shooting, wrote: “Help me understand how these lunatics who spent years fighting me on gun safety & used the idea of a government registry to create fear, now believe in a government registry to track people with autism. Everything they say is a lie, & everything they do is designed to hurt people.”
A user on the social media platform X posted this response:
“I’m autistic And when I heard RFK Jr. wants a government registry to track people like me using private medical records I didn’t think ‘safety’ I thought Nazi Germany A roundup’s of disabled people Because I know history And I know exactly what comes after the list is made This isn’t about health This is about control It’s about fear It’s about marking people People like me Neurodivergent people Different people Don’t dress it up as policy This is how roundups begin You want to stop autism discrimination? Start by not creating a fucking list.”
Watch the video below or at this link.
RFK JR: And these are kids who will never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem. They’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted pic.twitter.com/8T3hcYYn9O
— Acyn (@Acyn) April 16, 2025
READ MORE: ‘Taunting SCOTUS’: Concerns Mount Over ‘Openly Contemptuous’ White House
Image via Shutterstock
President Donald Trump announced he will be sitting for an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic who was erroneously included in a group chat about military strikes in Yemen and subsequently broke the SignalGate story.
Trump suggested he agreed to the interview with Goldberg and two other reporters because of the supposed title of the proposed article: “The Most Consequential President of this Century.” And while there have only been four presidents this century, including himself, Trump appeared happy to indulge the reporters in exchange for the compliment.
“Later today I will be meeting with, of all people, Jeffrey Goldberg, the Editor of The Atlantic, and the person responsible for many fictional stories about me, including the made-up HOAX on ‘Suckers and Losers’ and, SignalGate, something he was somewhat more ‘successful’ with,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
READ MORE: ‘Incompetent. Irresponsible. Negligent’: Calls Mount for Hegseth’s Ouster or Prosecution
“Jeffrey is bringing with him Michael Scherer and Ashley Parker, not exactly pro-Trump writers, either, to put it mildly! The story they are writing, they have told my representatives, will be entitled, ‘The Most Consequential President of this Century.’ I am doing this interview out of curiosity, and as a competition with myself, just to see if it’s possible for The Atlantic to be ‘truthful.’ Are they capable of writing a fair story on ‘TRUMP’? The way I look at it, what can be so bad – I WON!”
Despite Trump’s dismissals, the “suckers and losers” stories were well-documented, fact-based reporting, as was the SignalGate story.
Finance journalist James Surowiecki of Fast Company and The Atlantic, writes, “This may be my favorite Trump tweet ever – it’s him in a nutshell. He attacks Jeff Goldberg, and complains about The Atlantic. But of course he’s going to do the interview, because he can’t resist being the focus of attention, and being labeled ‘The Most Consequential President.'”
READ MORE: Trump Doubles Down Calling Egg Prices ‘Too Low’ as Costs Soar to Record Highs
Yahoo Finance’s Jordan Weissmann adds, “Trump grudgingly admitting Goldberg was ‘somewhat more successful’ with SignalGate is one of the funniest ‘OK, you got us there’ moments I’ve ever seen.”
Earlier this month Goldberg, speaking about his SignalGate article and Trump, said: “I’m not going to be bullied, because there’s no end to the bullying if you agree to be bullied in the first place. If there are consequences to not bending, fine.”
“It beats selling your soul.”
Watch the video below or at this link.
“If the president of the United States says we’re lying, and I have the truth, I’m going to publish the truth”: Jeffrey Goldberg on The Atlantic’s decision to publish the Signal chats following the Trump administration’s initial response to the leak. https://t.co/YZ5mSWNKr8 pic.twitter.com/kPtAIJhOao
— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) April 3, 2025
READ MORE: ‘Taunting SCOTUS’: Concerns Mount Over ‘Openly Contemptuous’ White House
Image via Reuters
With seemingly near-daily revelations about U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s alleged—and potentially unlawful—leaks of classified or sensitive information, concerns over his leadership, judgment, and efforts to reshape the Department of Defense, pressure for his resignation or removal and even prosecution is rapidly intensifying.
Hegseth, confirmed by the narrowest of margins (51-50), is one of the youngest (44) Defense Secretaries, and had already been one of the most controversial. His Senate hearings were flooded with allegations and questions about sexual assault, use of alcohol, infidelities, position on women in combat, previous alleged poor leadership and financial mismanagement at several small nonprofits, and general lack of experience—sans his weekend gig as a Fox News host.
Hegseth’s repeated use of the insecure messaging app Signal on his cellphone, from which he reportedly shared sensitive and classified military strike secrets—in at least two separate instances, including one with his wife, brother, and personal attorney—alone, some say, should have led to his firing and prosecution.
“If a ‘regular’ clearance holder did this, almost assuredly they would lose their security clearance,” remarked national security attorney Mark Zaid, pointing to this NBC News report. “Given it is literally imminent military strike planning, not inconceivable prosecution would be on the table. In normal times. This ain’t that.”
READ MORE: Trump Doubles Down Calling Egg Prices ‘Too Low’ as Costs Soar to Record Highs
More recent news that he directed to have Signal installed on his Defense Department computer, that he spent thousands in Pentagon funds to construct a “makeup room” for TV spots, that his security credentials, including personal cell phone number, email address and password, and WhatsApp account were posted on the dark web, and the “disarray” in his inner circle, have served to strengthen the calls for his firing, resignation, or prosecution—and continued downplaying by the Trump administration.
“President Donald Trump is unlikely to dismiss Hegseth and has spoken to him twice since The New York Times and CNN reported on the second Signal group on Sunday night,” CNN reported Wednesday. “In their first call, Trump said he had Hegseth’s back and voiced frustration at ‘leakers’ he said were trying to damage his administration, according to a person familiar with the conversation.”
CNN also reports that “Hegseth’s most trusted advisers are now his wife, his lawyer and his junior military aide, who may soon be appointed his new chief of staff, multiple people familiar with the matter said.” Hegseth’s wife is a former Fox News producer who is not a Pentagon employee. It is “unclear,” the news network reported separately, if she has a security clearance.
“The Pentagon is in ‘total chaos’ and Hegseth is unlikely to remain in his role, according to its former top spokesperson, who painted a scene of dysfunction, backstabbing and continuous missteps at the highest levels of DOD,” Politico Deputy Managing Editor of Global Security Dave Brown reported Sunday evening.
READ MORE: ‘Taunting SCOTUS’: Concerns Mount Over ‘Openly Contemptuous’ White House
“Chaos in the world’s most lethal fighting force is an open invitation to our enemies,” responded U.S. Senator Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), a, Iraq War veteran who served in the Marines for over a decade. “Amateur hour with Hegseth. Time to resign.”
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s denouncement of classified inform action leaking on Wednesday also served to invite anger, upset, and concern over Hegseth’s actions.
“Politicization of our intelligence and leaking classified information puts our nation’s security at risk and must end,” Gabbard, Trump controversial DNI wrote. “Those who leak classified information will be found and held accountable to the fullest extent of the law. Today, I referred two intelligence community LEAKS to the Department of Justice for criminal referral, with a third criminal referral on its way, which includes the recent illegal leak to the Washington Post. These deep-state criminals leaked classified information for partisan political purposes to undermine POTUS’ agenda. I look forward to working with @TheJusticeDept and @FBI to investigate, terminate and prosecute these criminals.”
The Atlantic’s Dr. Norman Ornstein, the renowned political scientist, commented to Gabbard: “I am looking forward to the time when you refer Pete Hegseth for criminal prosecution.”
Calls for Hegseth’s ouster—one way or another—have flooded social media this week.
“When the Secretary of Defense screws up,” commented U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chair Mark Warner (D-VA), servicemembers’ lives are on the line. Pete Hegseth has shown time and time again he screws up way too much to do this job. He must resign or be fired.”
“The first thing they make you do before going into a classified meeting is to remove your phone,” noted U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA), an awarded former U.S. Air Force Colonel in the Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps. “Why? Because phones can be hacked. (Eg look up Pegasus spyware). Hegseth using his personal phone multiple times to reveal combat operations is a dereliction of duty. He must resign.”
“Incompetent. Irresponsible. Negligent,” wrote U.S. Rep. Chris Pappas (D-NH). “For our national security and the safety of our troops, Pete Hegseth must resign or be removed from his position.”
“Being the Secretary of Defense is serious business and it’s clear he’s not up to it. Hegseth needs to resign or be fired,” observed U.S. Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ), who served for 25 years in the U.S.Navy, including as a NASA astronaut who spent 54 days in space.
Awarded Iraq War veteran U.S. Rep. Pat Ryan (D-NY), a West Point graduate who served as an Army Captain in the Military Intelligence Corps, urged President Trump to fire Hegseth.
“Will Donald Trump, who made his reputation for quote unquote firing people, actually fire this guy and make our country safe again and really support our troops?” Congressman Ryan asked. “That’s what every American should be asking.”
Watch the video below or at this link.
Want to “Make America Safe Again” @realDonaldTrump?
FIRE Pete Hegseth. pic.twitter.com/YGUvCFRBz6
— Pat Ryan 🇺🇸 (@PatRyanUC) April 24, 2025
READ MORE: Trump’s Latest Target: The Watchdog That Keeps Suing Him
Image via Reuters
‘Incompetent. Irresponsible. Negligent’: Calls Mount for Hegseth’s Ouster or Prosecution
Trump’s SignalGate Sit-Down Mocked as a ‘Him in a Nutshell’ Moment
‘Reeks of Eugenics’: RFK Jr.’s Autism ‘Registry’ Draws Nazi Germany Comparisons
‘Reeks of Eugenics’: RFK Jr.’s Autism ‘Registry’ Draws Nazi Germany Comparisons
Trump’s SignalGate Sit-Down Mocked as a ‘Him in a Nutshell’ Moment
‘Incompetent. Irresponsible. Negligent’: Calls Mount for Hegseth’s Ouster or Prosecution
Trump Doubles Down Calling Egg Prices ‘Too Low’ as Costs Soar to Record Highs
