Hollywood has-been/Donald Trump loyalist Kevin Sorbo clearly isn’t making enough from his crappy VOD projects to support himself in his golden years, so he’s picked up a little side hustle as the celebrity spokesperson for a new right-wing mobile carrier.
“Now’s the time to switch phone carriers with a non woke mobile service!” the 64-year-old former Hercules actor tweeted to his 1.2 million paid Twitter followers over the weekend, along with a promo code for Patriot Mobile.
Patriot Mobile is America’s only Christian conservative wireless service provider. We offer broad coverage on dependable, nationwide 4G or 5G networks. We are committed to providing our members dependable wireless service and exceptional support, while relentlessly fighting for our shared values. While you’re out and about, Patriot Mobile donates a portion of every dollar earned to support organizations that fight for First Amendment Religious Freedom and Freedom of Speech, Second Amendment Right to Bear Arms, Sanctity of Life and the needs of our Veterans and First Responders. Will you partner with us today?
Plans start at just $25 and the company donates a portion of its proceeds to several different anti-LGBTQ hate groups, including the Family Research Council, CPAC, and Turning Point USA, thereby allowing users the unique opportunity to plot their next insurrection and rollback LGBTQ rights both at the same time. Fun!
Here’s how folx responded to Sorbo’s tweet plugging the wireless network…
Sorbo is no stranger to saying incredibly stupid things online. In the past, he’s used his social media platform to rail against vaccine mandates, bitch about the IRS, spout pro-Russia sentiments, and argue that Democrats are sub-par presidents and that’s why none appear on Mount Rushmore.
Yo, Kevin, if you’re reading… Don’t forget to update your phone…
A woman takes a picture with her smartphone of the dish “Drop it like it’s hot” at the Coccodrillo restaurant in Berlin. Monika Skolimowska/dpa
In more than 20 years at his family’s restaurant, Joel Gonzalez had never seen anything like it. Around 6 p.m. on March 25, 2021, he looked up to find a line stretching out the door of Mariscos Corona, the Van Nuys restaurant he runs with his sister. For the next two hours, the siblings did their best to manage the surge of customers eagerly requesting the restaurant’s signature dishes: aguachile-stuffed avocados and surf-and-turf burritos.
“Oh my God, we had such a rush” until closing time, Gonzalez says. “We had never seen a line out the door like that before.”
The next day, a Friday, there was another line, and the onslaught of customers continued through the weekend. The restaurant’s Instagram account gained 5,000 followers. Gonzalez ran out of avocados; eventually, his refrigerator was empty. He couldn’t open on Monday.
What Gonzalez didn’t know, when the crush started, was that Ashley Rodriguez, 29, a food influencer also known as @firstdateguide on her social channels, had posted a 42-second TikTok video featuring his soon-to-be-in-demand dishes earlier in the day.
Viewers got a glimpse of avocados overflowing with citrus-drenched seafood and a giant grilled burrito stuffed with shrimp, carne asada and French fries. At one point, Rodriguez poured an entire cup of red salsa onto the burrito, took a big bite and nodded enthusiastically — just like a trusted friend who wants you to know about a new restaurant you have to try.
The video attracted more than 200,000 views overnight and hit 1 million views in a week.
Eventually, “one of the customers that [first] day told me that he had seen our restaurant on @firstdateguide,” Gonzalez says. “That’s when we put it together.”
This is the food influencer effect — or, what it can be. If the right influencer posts a video of your food and it hits, it can lead to a larger social following and a noticeable increase in revenue.
It’s a phenomenon that’s causing a paradigm shift in the restaurant world, transferring the power of influence from traditional media to anyone with a cellphone and a love for food. And these days, sometimes seemingly spontaneous expressions of restaurant fandom are actually well-planned, calculated business transactions.
That’s exactly what happened at Mariscos Corona. Gonzalez had hired Rodriguez to promote his restaurant — he just didn’t know when her video would be posted.
A few weeks before the surge, Gonzalez had DM’d Rodriguez on Instagram, inviting her to try his food. Rodriguez explained that her rates range from $1,500 to upwards of $10,000 — depending on her following and the platform where a business is looking to be featured. Gonzalez agreed to pay Rodriguez $1,500 for one video that she posted to TikTok and, later, Instagram. Gonzalez says he spent an additional $40 for her food.
“If I could tell any other restaurant owner — it was worth it,” he says.
Food influencers come in many varieties: There are the home cooks who post how-to videos of dishes, mukbangers who livestream themselves eating, newbies looking for free food, marketing professionals with restaurant clients, gourmands who review food in their cars, and food obsessives who just like to share what they’re eating. Some influencers have agents and make a living through brand and restaurant deals. Others do it for the free products and perks. Most of the restaurants they work with are not the kinds of places you’ll find on a critic’s best-restaurants lists.
Rodriguez, along with influencers Paul Castro, 28, and Hugh Harper, 39, founded the L.A. branch of a Las Vegas-based marketing company called JMPForce. They work with about 20 local restaurants, handling their social channels and creating content. While the three regularly post non-work-related photos and videos, Rodriguez estimates that about 60% of the restaurants featured on her channels are clients.
If it were up to Rodriguez and the rest of the JMPForce crew, they wouldn’t be labeled influencers.
“I always say ‘food blogger’ because it makes me feel better than ‘food influencer,’” Rodriguez says, seated at a table at Craft by Smoke and Fire, a restaurant client in Arcadia. She was there to film content with Castro, who is also her boyfriend.
“There are too many influencers trying to take advantage, so I don’t want to be intertwined with them,” Castro adds.
Earlier this year, an incident involving a Los Angeles food influencer and Corner 17, a Chinese restaurant in St. Louis, blew up online when owner Xin Wei posted screenshots of the interaction on Instagram. The influencer requested $100 to pay for food he wanted to feature in a video, but the restaurant declined.
Antonio Malik, known online as @antonio_eats_la, visited anyway and posted an Instagram story review to his hundreds of thousands of followers. He complimented the service but had some not-so-nice things to say about the food: “Worst dumplings ever!”
Wei responded in an Instagram post: “An intentionally bad write-up from a large-following influencer because of our refusal to accept their collaboration is unprofessional and such a hostile manner can simply ruin their businesses. I want to step up because we felt threatened by this media influencer.”
The incident raised questions around the ethics of “collaborations,” the term used for an exchange of free food or other goods for social media content. Rodriguez and Castro say that requesting free food from restaurants that are not actively seeking social promotion is common among influencers who are just starting out.
Pim Techamuanvivit, the chef and owner of Nari and Kin Khao in San Francisco (temporarily closed), says she receives at least a couple of Instagram messages a week from influencers asking for free meals.
“They sort of code it and say, ‘We’d like to collaborate,’ but it doesn’t mean we’re going to collaborate on anything,” she says. “It means, ‘I don’t want to pay for my food.’‘”
The Federal Trade Commission has guidelines in place for influencers, though the process is still very much self-regulated. In a document titled “Disclosures 101 for Social Media Influencers,” accessible on the FTC website, there are clear instructions for when and how users should disclose a relationship with a brand partner on social media. If you have any familial, financial, employment or personal relationship with a brand, you must disclose it. A financial relationship includes money and free or discounted products, as well as other perks.
“If a significant portion of a food influencer’s audience doesn’t expect that the influencer is being paid or given free food and would give the influencer’s endorsement less weight if they knew about the incentives that the influencer received, then the incentives should be disclosed,” a spokesperson for the FTC told The Times in an email.
But the general consensus among the half-dozen food influencers interviewed for this story is that consumers don’t care if — and probably assume — the food is free.
Nkechi Ahaiwe, 32, who goes by the name @eatwhateveryouwant on Instagram, has more than 63,000 followers. A former beauty blogger and Enterprise Car Rental employee, Ahaiwe says she pays for all her food unless a restaurant invites her to come in; then she allows them to comp her meal, but she always tips her servers.
“If a restaurant says I need to disclose that something was free, then I’ll do it,” she says, “but if not, no, because when you put sponsored, paid, gifted, I noticed … my reach is lower.”
Do Ahaiwe and Rodriguez worry that accepting free meals might put them in a compromising position when it comes to posting about the restaurant? What if they don’t like the food?
Ahaiwe says she turns to another user-generated resource — Yelp reviews — to vet restaurants ahead of time.
“I never had an experience where I couldn’t find anything I liked, but I know eventually it will happen. I would have to apologize and just tell them that this is not going to work.”
Rodriguez says she doesn’t do reviews. “I just educate people on what there is to order and try to highlight things.”
“This is Corona Mariscos in Van Nuys, California,” Rodriguez says in her voice-over on TikTok. “Trust me, aguachiles is way better than ceviche. … Well, if you like spicy, that is. … Oh, did I mention this place has been around since 1999 and now run by two siblings? They’ve definitely kept up the quality of their father’s recipes.”
Though Rodriguez and Ahaiwe won’t knock a restaurant’s food, there are plenty of influencers who will. The hashtag #foodreview is connected to at least 1.6 million posts on Instagram and 13.4 billion on TikTok. Fear of upsetting influencers has created an unofficial code of silence among some traditional publicists and restaurant owners, who sometimes field dozens of requests from influencers for free food and restaurant tables.
“Restaurants operate on tiny margins,” Techamuanvivit says, “and we have payroll, insurance, all those things, and you’re asking us to fund your Instagram story content? It’s just not right.”
Last summer, a major-label musician with more than 1 million followers on Instagram reached out on that platform to Isaias Hernandez, chef-owner of Craft by Smoke and Fire. The celebrity — Hernandez won’t name him because he fears retaliation — asked if the Downey-based chef would be willing to supply food for 100 people at his home that evening. The celebrity told the restaurateur that he’d exchange a social media post or Instagram story for the food.
Hernandez and his partner cooked more than $400 worth of barbecue. They hand-delivered the food to the celebrity’s home, and even threw in some T-shirts in various sizes for guests. When he arrived, someone from the celebrity’s entourage took the food and the merch. Hernandez never met the celebrity or received a thank-you. There was no Instagram post.
“I messaged him later asking if he liked the food, and he never responded,” Hernandez says. He decided to eat the cost and just keep quiet.
With multiple Michelin stars and a busy dining room, Techamuanvivit says, she’s in a position to speak up for the restaurants that can’t.
“I’m sure some of these influencers that we told to go away probably have written something bad on Yelp or Google reviews, but I don’t really care,” she says, adding, “I don’t fault the restaurants who work with them. People do what you have to do to survive.”
The power to make or break a restaurant once was reserved for the authoritative voice of the restaurant critic, a long-standing figure of traditional media; at many publications, taking freebies continues to be grounds for firing. (Los Angeles Times restaurant critic Bill Addison reviews anonymously and the newspaper pays for his meals.)
When Yelp was established almost two decades ago, it launched a new community-participant phase and expanded the opinion pool. Today’s food influencer further democratizes food media with posts that sometimes feel like the creators are sitting across the table from you.
Despite his experience, Hernandez, for the most part, is not only pro-food influencer, he’s built them into his restaurant’s marketing plans.
He’d hired Rodriguez, Castro and Harper in March 2020, as he was getting ready to open a restaurant in La Habra, California. The influencers strategize and host events for Hernandez’s restaurants, participate in quarterly meetings and provide feedback on everything, from the atmosphere to the food.
Hernandez’s grilled cheese sandwich now includes barbecue sauce because Harper thought it was too dry. Rodriguez’s suggestion for a bone-in short rib sandwich led to a 15% increase in sales the week that it was introduced.
“In general,” Hernandez says, “people perceive social influencers as snake-oil salesman of the past, but social media marketing is probably our strongest pillar in terms of sales growth.”
Kristin Diehl, a professor of marketing at USC Marshall School of Business, categorizes influencers as a part of marketing that falls under a larger communications umbrella.
Though she does recognize that influencers with larger followings can have a big impact on brands, she says it’s micro-influencers, people with around 10,000 to 50,000 followers and high engagement, who tend to have the most influence when it comes to restaurants.
“These micro-influencers are particularly effective and applicable to the restaurant industry, which is more localized,” she says.
Ahaiwe is a full-time micro-influencer with a full business plan and a media kit that explains her rates. She tailors her pitches to specific companies and says her rates have more to do with how much effort she’ll need to put in to make something look beautiful versus her number of followers.
“If I have to go out of my way to do a shoot, it can easily be $825. If the brand wants me in the photo smiling with the food,” she says, “that’s going to amp it up to $1,000 because now I have to find someone to be my plus-one to take photos.”
Ahaiwe travels with a car full of trays, silverware, changes of clothing and other props, ready to style food or other products for shoots. She schedules her social media posts months in advance.
On a recent afternoon, Ahaiwe visited Hollywood Burger in West Hollywood to take some photos and film some video. In addition to the milkshake and the burger she ordered, director of operations Kevin Shea brought out a tray full of chicken wings, a soon-to-be-released menu item he wanted to promote.
Ahaiwe, in turn, carefully styled her photos, arranging the wings in a row, dunking some into condiments and taking selfies with the chicken.
Shea said he expected to see an immediate boost in terms of followers and engagement for the restaurant when Ahaiwe eventually posts her photos on Instagram.
And she isn’t the only influencer Shea works with. “We have influencers DM-ing us like three to four times a week, saying, ‘Hey, can we “collab” and give us food,’ and we say no problem,” he says.
Hernandez estimates that $1 out of every $5 made at his restaurants goes to marketing, which includes the fee and free food given to influencers.
“I will never understand TikTok, but as a business owner you need to do your due diligence and find someone who does and bring them on board,” Hernandez says. “But social marketing is just a foot in the door; then you have to convince people to keep coming back.”
For some, photographing food has become part of the appeal of going to restaurants. For food influencers, it’s a job. Andrea Warnecke/dpa-tmn
Klaus Glaetzner, better known as cult griller Klaus, is filmed by his wife Melanie for a new YouTube video at the grill. Food influencers are transforming the business of eating. Patrick Pleul/dpa
TikTok and Instagram posts can transform a restaurant’s fortunes and now, owners are integrating the platforms into their social media strategies. Jens Kalaene/dpa-Zentralbild/dpa
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Julia Roberts says the late Martin Luther King Jr and his wife Coretta Scott King paid the hospital bill for her birth.
The actress, 55, revealed the couple made the gesture as her parents couldn’t afford the fee, and said her mum and dad befriended the Kings while living in Atlanta running a theatre school.
She told Gayle King, in a clip showing her in conversation with the journalist last month that has now been shared online by a fan: “One day Coretta called my mother and asked if her kids could be part of the school because they were having a hard time finding a place that would accept her kids.
“My mom was like, ‘Sure, come on over,’ and so they all just became friends, and they helped us out of a jam.”
It has been reported that a Ku Klux Klan member blew up a car outside one of Julia’s parent’s Betty and Walter Roberts’ plays in 1965 in response to King Jr’s daughter Yolanda being cast in a role in which she kissed a white actor.
Gayle hailed Julia’s parents’ decision “extraordinary” because people didn’t see “little black children interacting with little white kids in acting school” at the time.
Julia celebrated her 55th birthday on Friday (28.10.22) by sharing a selfie of herself on Instagram sipping a mug of coffee surrounded by pink and gold balloons.
She captioned the photo: “Feeling the love and magic on my 55th Birthday! My cup runneth over.”
Julia has also paid tribute to her husband Danny Moder and their life with their children, 17-year-old twins Hazel and Phinnaeus and son Henry, 15, saying: “The life that I have built with my husband, [and] the life that we’ve built with our children, that’s the best stuff. To come home at the end of the day, triumphantly, to them.”
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Julia Roberts says the late Martin Luther King Jr and his wife Coretta Scott King paid the hospital bill for her birth.
The actress, 55, revealed the couple made the gesture as her parents couldn’t afford the fee, and said her mum and dad befriended the Kings while living in Atlanta running a theatre school.
She told Gayle King, in a clip showing her in conversation with the journalist last month that has now been shared online by a fan: “One day Coretta called my mother and asked if her kids could be part of the school because they were having a hard time finding a place that would accept her kids.
“My mom was like, ‘Sure, come on over,’ and so they all just became friends, and they helped us out of a jam.”
It has been reported that a Ku Klux Klan member blew up a car outside one of Julia’s parent’s Betty and Walter Roberts’ plays in 1965 in response to King Jr’s daughter Yolanda being cast in a role in which she kissed a white actor.
Gayle hailed Julia’s parents’ decision “extraordinary” because people didn’t see “little black children interacting with little white kids in acting school” at the time.
Julia celebrated her 55th birthday on Friday (28.10.22) by sharing a selfie of herself on Instagram sipping a mug of coffee surrounded by pink and gold balloons.
She captioned the photo: “Feeling the love and magic on my 55th Birthday! My cup runneth over.”
Julia has also paid tribute to her husband Danny Moder and their life with their children, 17-year-old twins Hazel and Phinnaeus and son Henry, 15, saying: “The life that I have built with my husband, [and] the life that we’ve built with our children, that’s the best stuff. To come home at the end of the day, triumphantly, to them.”
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The Supreme Court is to hear oral arguments about race-conscious admissions to US universities
Washington (AFP) – After abortion and guns, the US Supreme Court tackles another controversial and sensitive issue on Monday — the use of race in deciding who gets admitted to some of America’s top universities.
And the conservative-dominated court may be poised to make another historic U-turn, like it did in June when it overturned the landmark 1973 “Roe v. Wade” decision guaranteeing a woman’s right to abortion.
The court is to hear two hours of oral arguments on the use of race in admissions to Harvard and the University of North Carolina (UNC) — respectively the oldest private and public institutions of higher education in the country.
Harvard and UNC, like a number of other competitive schools, use race as a factor in trying to ensure representation of minorities, historically African Americans, in the student body.
The policy known as “affirmative action” emerged from the Civil Rights Movement in the late 1960s to “help address our country’s long history of discrimination and systemic inequality in higher education,” said Yasmin Cader, deputy legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
It has been controversial from the start, drawing fire mostly from the right, and a number of white students have mounted legal challenges over the years, claiming “reverse discrimination.”
Nine states have banned affirmative action at public universities including California, where voters did so in a ballot proposition in 1996 and rebuffed an attempt to revive the policy in 2020.
Students for Fair Admissions
The Supreme Court has previously upheld affirmative action, most recently in 2016 by a single vote, but its opponents believe the current right-leaning bench will lend a more sympathetic ear to their arguments.
“If they overturned Roe, I think they are equally likely to overturn Bakke,” said Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think-tank.
In a landmark ruling in 1978 — Regents of the University of California v. Bakke — the Supreme Court banned the use of quotas in admissions as unconstitutional.
But the court said race or ethnic origin can be considered as one factor among others in admitting students to ensure a diverse student body.
With six justices — three of whom were nominated by former president Donald Trump, a Republican — conservatives wield a solid majority on the nine-seat high court.
And those in favor of “color-blind” admissions policies believe they may have an ally in Chief Justice John Roberts.
“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” Roberts wrote in a ruling in a 2007 school integration case.
A group known as Students for Fair Admissions, which claims more than 20,000 members and was founded by Edward Blum, a long-time conservative opponent of affirmative action, is behind the latest attack on the policy.
In 2014, the group filed suits against Harvard and UNC claiming that their race-conscious admissions policies discriminate against equally qualified applicants of Asian-American origin.
Asian-American students are underrepresented at the schools considering their record of superior academic achievement, according to the complaints.
“In a multi-racial, multi-ethnic nation like ours, the college admissions bar cannot be raised for some races and ethnic groups but lowered for others,” according to Blum.
“Our nation cannot remedy past discrimination and racial preferences with new discrimination and different racial preferences.”
‘Diverse leaders’
After losing in lower courts, the group is seeking a ruling from the Supreme Court that the Constitution prohibits any form of discrimination — a decision that could also impact hiring, for example, or government contracting, where preference is sometimes given to minority-owned businesses.
The Supreme Court will hear one hour of argument in each case with Ketanji Brown Jackson, the court’s first African-American woman, sitting out the Harvard case because she has served previously on the Board of Overseers of the school.
The administration of Democratic President Joe Biden and a number of major American companies have weighed in on the side of the universities.
“Our Nation’s future depends on having diverse leaders who are prepared to lead in an increasingly diverse society,” the Department of Justice said.
Apple, General Motors and Starbucks joined a brief arguing that “diverse workforces” improve business performance “and thus strengthen the American and global economies.”
The ACLU’s Cader warned that a decision by the court overturning its previous support for affirmative action policies would have wide-ranging and long-lasting repercussions.
“We face the threat of the generations behind us having less rights than we had ourselves,” Cader said.
“And I can say that as an African American woman who went to law school under that precedent.”
We’ve made a habit of ending every month with a rundown of our favorite queer movie and TV trailers to hit the internet over the past few weeks. So, yes, it’s purely a coincidence that the October roundup falls on Halloween. But we can assure you this list is all treats, no tricks!
Throughout October, we saw new previews for all sorts of exciting, up-and-coming, gay entertainment—everything from sexy film festival favorites to true-crime documentaries to the highly anticipated returns of two of our favorite (very different) television series: The White Lotus and Young Royals.
To help you keep up with it all, we’ve assembled this handy guide recapping the best and gayest trailers that hit the internet throughout October. Check them all out below and mark your calendars accordingly!
The White Lotus: Sicily
Jennifer Coolidge’s affection-seeking Tanya McQuoid is the only return guest checking in for the second season of HBO’s The WhiteLotus, which also features Aubrey Plaza, Michael Imperioli, Tom Hollander, and Theo James—whose “well-endowed” character isn’t afraid to get naked. Fresh off of his Emmys sweep, queer creator Mike White moves the action to a Sicilian resort, and says the scenic destination will be the backdrop to a cutting and hilarious social satire about sexual politics. The WhiteLotus was one of our favorite shows of 2021, so, at this point, we’d follow White and Coolidge anywhere they want to take us.
Premiered October 30 on HBO, with new episodes airing every Sunday and streaming simultaneously on HBO Max.
Oscar-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black takes a candid look back at his childhood in the moving doc Mama’s Boy. Raised Mormon, Black used to believe his attraction to men meant he was going to hell. But when we finally came out to his mother Roseanne—who overcame polio as a child—the pair had an eye-opening discussion that would change their relationship forever, and inspire his career as both a storyteller and an activist. Laurent Bouzereau (Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind) directs, featuring interviews from Black’s husband Tom Daley, and many of their loved ones.
Premiered October 18 on HBO, now streaming on HBO Max.
Filmmaker Mohammad Shawky Hassan’s queer contemporary musical sounds like a truly one-of-a-kind cinematic experience. Inspired by his diaries, Hassan spins sexy stories of love and longing into gorgeous folk tales, threading them all together with the sounds of Egyptian pop music. This imaginative approach to autofiction lures its audience in with gorgeous colors, handsome actors, and imaginative editing. And though it’s been banned in Hassan’s home country of Egypt for portraying homosexual relationships, we’re thrilled to have an opportunity to stream it stateside.
The first season of Netflix’s steamy Scandinavian teen drama left us hanging with its star-crossed lovers—prince Wilhelm (Edvin Ryding) and his classmate Simon (Omar Rudberg)—pushing each other away. Now, after 15 months of waiting, season two picks up right where we left off, with students returning to the halls of the prestigious Hillerska Boarding School. Can Simon trust Wilhelm ever again? How will August (Malte Gårdinger) deal with the fallout of blowing up their relationship? And who’s this handsome new guy (Tommy Wättring)? He looks like he’ll be a problem for “Wilmon” ‘shippers!
God Forbid: The Sex Scandal That Brought Down A Dynasty
We’re sure you’ve heard the one about the young pool boy who was (allegedly) involved in a seven-year illicit affair with anti-LGBTQ activist Jerry Falwell, Jr. and his wife Becki, right? Well, the fallen Falwells have shared their side of the story, but now it’s the pool boy’s turn. Giancarlo Granda is in the hot seat for this shocking doc from the filmmaker behind Cocaine Cowboys. It’s the movie the Falwells don’t want you to see, exposing how this romantic entanglement had an outsized effect on both the Evangelical church and the 2020 election.
This stunning documentary explores the life of LGBTQ photographer and activist Nan Goldin, honing in on her bold fight to bring down the pharmaceutical company that effectively started the opioid crisis. From award-winning director Lauren Poitras, All The Beauty And The Bloodshed wowed audiences at the Venice International Film Festival, where it took home the top prize, and is already being hailed as a frontrunner for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar. In other words, everyone’s going to be talking about this one—don’t miss it.
Opens in NYC and LA on November 23, then expands to more theaters on December 2.
In this Canadian charmer, senior Jake (Cardi Wong) feels like he’s drowning in expectations—his dad wants him to join the basketball team, his girlfriend wants to have sex for the first time, and he just wants to figure out where he’s headed in life. Things get even more complicated when he meets his confidently gay new neighbor, Aleks (Chris Carson), a star athlete who just might convince Jake to try out for the basketball team after all. From director Jason Karman, Golden Delicious uses Jake’s burgeoning queer romance as a springboard to explore potent themes like family, legacy, and authenticity.
Now playing the film festival circuit, Golden Delicious next heads to the Vancouver Asian Film Fest on November 6. Further release details are yet to be announced.
Provocative Argentinian filmmaker Marco Berger continues to poke and prod at the limits of queer desire with Horseplay. The film invites viewers along on a holiday retreat with a group of “straight” men, who have no problem getting naked around one another, taunting and teasing in a constant game of homosocial one-upmanship. Sexy, sure, but wildly problematic, the charged playfulness between friends is infused with homophobia, and the darkly comic film plays like a a ticking time bomb of toxic masculinity, asking the viewer to consider: Is this the kind of masculinity we want to lust after?
Now playing the film festival circuit, Horseplay next heads to the Melbourne Queer Film Fest on November 13. Further release details are yet to be announced.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A U.S. judge has rejected a request for a temporary restraining order against a group accused of alleged voter intimidation, according to a ruling released on Friday.
Judge Michael Liburdi, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump to the federal court in Arizona, rejected the request against Clean Elections USA and its founder, Melody Jennings.
The lawsuit was filed on Monday by the Arizona Alliance for Retired Americans (AARA) and Voto Latino, an organization that educates Latinos on voting, alleging that Clean Elections USA is purposely trying to intimidate voters with its campaign for “dropbox watches,” which encourages individuals to monitor drop boxes for alleged suspicious behavior.
A lawyer who represented Clean Elections USA and Jennings in a hearing earlier this week did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The suit was filed after two individuals were seen wearing tactical military gear and allegedly carrying weapons while monitoring a drop box in Maricopa County, Arizona. Jennings called the pair “our people” in a now-deleted post on Truth Social, the social media platform launched by Trump.
Liburdi said in his ruling Voto Latino and the AARA did not present evidence that Clean Elections USA represented “a true threat,” adding that he could not “craft an injunction without violating the First Amendment” rights of the defendants.
He also dismissed Voto Latino from the case, stating he did not think the organization proved it would be harmed financially by Clean Election USA’s actions.
“Today’s decision is truly disappointing for our members and all older Arizonans,” Saundra Cole, president of the AARA, said in a statement. “We continue to believe that Clean Elections USA’s intimidation and harassment is unlawful.”
A notice of appeal has been filed, with a request for emergency relief.
(Reporting by Moira Warburton in Washington; Editing by Josie Kao)
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British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly is receiving backlash for suggesting gay soccer fans should be “respectful” in Qatar when attending the FIFA World Cup set to take place in the Gulf Arab state later this year.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -In the months leading up to the U.S. midterm elections, lawyers for Democrats and Republicans are already squaring off in a wave of lawsuits challenging state rules on how to vote and the counting of ballots.
Here is a summary of significant cases filed ahead of the Nov. 8 election and where they stand.
POLL WATCHERS
The Republican National Committee in November reached a settlement in a lawsuit against officials in Clark County, Nevada, that requires election officials to release poll workers’ partisan affiliations. The party filed a similar lawsuit this month seeking information on poll workers in Maricopa County, Arizona.
The RNC also successfully sued authorities in North Carolina and Michigan to roll back new restrictions on partisan poll watchers.
Meanwhile in Arizona, voting rights groups have sued over “drop box watchers” in Maricopa County, claiming their actions, including allegedly carrying weapons and tactical gear, are intimidating voters who visit the boxes to deposit their ballots. That case is pending.
COUNTING VOTES, QUESTIONING VOTERS
The American Civil Liberties Union sued to challenge the counting of votes by hand in Nevada’s rural Nye County, arguing that the process violates federal and state law. County election officials halted the hand count in response to a ruling by the Nevada Supreme Court late Thursday, the ACLU said.
Also this month, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court agreed to take up a Republican National Committee lawsuit seeking to throw out undated mail-in ballots on a fast-tracked schedule.
A Phoenix judge in August blocked a bid by Republican Arizona governor candidate Kari Lake to stop the use of electronic vote tabulators. Lake claimed the machines created “unjustified new risks” of fraud. The decision is on appeal.
In Colorado, the state chapter of the NAACP and other voting-rights groups lost a bid in April to stop a conservative group called the U.S. Election Integrity Plan from canvassing individuals about their voting activity in the 2020 election. The group claims the effort is an attempt to root out voter fraud, and the case is ongoing.
MAIL BALLOT BATTLES
Rules that concern voting by mail have been a particular flash point this year. After many states expanded mail voting in the 2020 election in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Republicans and conservative groups have sought to roll it back, arguing that it leads to fraud.
They have had success in some states, including Delaware, where the state Supreme Court this month overturned a law that allowed people to vote by mail for any reason.
In July, the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty won a challenge to ban drop boxes in the state.
Other Republican efforts have faltered. Earlier this month, a judge rejected a bid by America First Legal, a group founded by former Trump aides, to require that drop boxes in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh County be physically monitored to ensure that voters are only delivering their own ballots. The group has appealed.
In Arizona, where mail-in ballots have been widely used for decades, a state court in June dismissed a lawsuit by the state Republican party seeking to ban the practice. The party has appealed.
And in North Carolina, Republicans lost a bid to shorten the deadline for election officials to receive mail ballots from Nov. 14 to Nov. 11. Another lawsuit in Illinois, challenging the counting of mail ballots up to two weeks after election day, is pending.
VOTER OUTREACH
Civil rights groups and, in some cases, the Biden administration are challenging new Republican-backed state laws that seek to limit voter registration and outreach.
Civil-rights groups in Florida won a ruling that struck down most of a new law restricting voter-registration activity and limiting the use of drop boxes, but the provisions remain in effect while the state appeals.
In Arizona, a judge in September temporarily blocked a 2022 law allowing the cancellation of voter registrations of people suspected to be registered to vote in another county, following a challenge by a civil rights group.
The U.S. Justice Department and several Hispanic groups have separately challenged the state’s proof of citizenship requirement.
In Texas, the Justice Department and civil-rights groups are challenging a wide-ranging 2021 state law that criminalizes many voter outreach efforts. That litigation is ongoing.
The Justice Department and civil-rights groups have also sued Georgia to overturn a state law that criminalizes efforts to help people who are waiting in line to vote, among other restrictions.
(Reporting by Andy Sullivan and Jacqueline Thomsen; Editing by David Bario, Noeleen Walder, Daniel Wallis and Rosalba O’Brien)
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British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly is receiving backlash for suggesting gay soccer fans should be “respectful” in Qatar when attending the FIFA World Cup set to take place in the Gulf Arab state later this year.
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