L.A.'s wildfires have intensified city's decades-long housing crisis
On a special episode (first released on January 30, 2025) of The Excerpt podcast: As wildfires continue to erupt across greater Los Angeles, the urgency of the housing crisis is front and center for Angelinos. With thousands of homes gone, the various issues that have plagued the real estate industry since the '80s are just that much more urgent. Where will people live and at what cost? Peter Dreier, an urban and environmental policy professor at Occidental College, joins The Excerpt to discuss the worsening situation and what it means for the people who call L.A. home.
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Yahoo
9 hours ago
- Yahoo
This Is Not the Time to Lecture Protesters
The protest of the protests has overwhelming evidence that the demonstrations in Los Angeles are largely peaceful, we're nonetheless hearing the paternalistic refrain that protesters should 'obey the law'—as if they're feral children in need of reminders about the norms of civic society. The sages of the punditocracy have rather predictably conflated mass anger with mass mayhem, even suggesting that the best strategy is simply to go home and hope for the best. 'As unsatisfying as it may be for some citizens to hear, the last thing anyone should do is take to the streets of Los Angeles and try to confront the military or any of California's law-enforcement authorities,' Tom Nichols pleaded in The Atlantic on Sunday. Fearing Trump is searching for a 'pretext' to use force (as if Trump requires a pretext), he cautioned the protesters: 'Be warned: Trump is expecting resistance. You will not be heroes. You will be the pretext.' Yes, please don't resist. By all means, take to the streets—but do so in a perfectly orderly, law-abiding way. If you encounter the military, National Guard, or law enforcement, tuck tail and run. Better yet, sit quietly in your living room and watch it all play out on TV. Because otherwise you risk giving Trump a pretext to crack down even harder on undocumented immigrants, to militarize entire cities, and even to take control of elections. This line of reasoning, which can be readily found among the center-left and center-right commentariat, makes a number of fatal mistakes. We all know (or should know by now) that Trump doesn't actually need a pretext to do whatever he wants to do. And for many Angelinos, whatever Trump attempts to do next is hardly front of mind; as far as they're concerned, the worst-case scenario is happening to them right now. ICE is snatching up family members, neighbors, friends, and co-workers at their workplaces. The terror has already reached their doorstep, even if it has not yet reached the pundits'. Nichols suggested that the greatest victory for Trump's opponents would be for government forces to arrive with rifles in tow and find the streets empty, so that they would wonder why the president had sent them there. 'This kind of restraint will deny Trump the political oxygen he's trying to generate,' Nichols argued. The logic is confounding, to say the least: If only the protesters completely capitulate, then Trump will be humbled. It will appear as though there was civil unrest and violence before he sent in the military, and then peace in the immediate aftermath of him doing so, but somehow this will make Trump weaker? Nichols's Atlantic colleague David Frum seemed largely in concurrence, arguing that Trump's actions in L.A. constitute, per the essay's headline, a 'dress rehearsal' for future deployments, when the president might use the military to challenge elections. Any perception of widespread disorder, Frum argued, could serve Trump's purposes. 'If Trump can incite disturbances in blue states before the midterm elections,' Frum contended, 'he can assert emergency powers to impose federal control over the voting process, which is to say his control.' The problem, though, is that Trump is already doing this: He issued an executive order in March outlining such a plan and providing justification for the trimming of voter rolls. If we don't show that we're willing to fight back, peacefully but forcefully, there may be no midterm—at least not a wholly legitimate one. The pleas for protesters to be law-abiding—which have come not just from pundits, of course, but many elected Democrats too—may seem noncontroversial, but it's the kind of preaching that inadvertently advances Trump's narrative about chaos in the cities of Democratic-run states. It implicitly accepts the prevailing media narrative of violence and destruction, even though only a tiny fraction of protests, largely in one small pocket of Los Angeles, are responsible for the images being shown 24/7 on cable news. It's also a bit ironic given Trump's very own lawlessness. He's constantly pardoning MAGA members who've committed serious offenses, including the January 6 attackers; has suffered no true legal consequences for his own lawlessness; is, by any reasonable measure, the most corrupt president in history; and recently called on border czar Tom Homan to arrest California Governor Gavin Newsom for allegedly obstructing federal immigration enforcement. Trump's very sending in of the National Guard and Marines—now totaling 4,700 soldiers—likely violates the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which prohibits using the military for general policing purposes. Trump could invoke the Insurrection Act, as he's threatened to do in the past, but he's forgotten about that one so far. (It would be outlandish to argue that the protests constitute an insurrection, but the letter of the law has never concerned him.) This is not to excuse any violence on the part of protesters. Yes, there have been arrests for violence, including some serious ones, like a man arrested for attempted murder. But out of 114 people arrested on Monday night, 53 had committed the 'crime' of failure to disperse. In other words, they were arrested for protesting out of designated protest zones—zones often used to make sure protesters are little seen and less heard. As the protest continues, you can be sure that more arrests will be of this nature, especially now that Mayor Karen Bass has instituted an 8 p.m. curfew. Yet, while we definitely want to avoid violence, we should not want to avoid tension. In fact, we want the 'creative tension' that MLK called for in his Letter From a Birmingham Jail—a form of direct action that brings injustices to the surface. There's a history of this: the Boston Tea Party, the Selma march, the AIDS die-ins, the lunch counter sit-ins—all were deemed illegal, as were various Vietnam protests. The Kent State and Attica tragedies, meanwhile, both occurred after the National Guard was called in—legally—supposedly to keep order. Requiring protests to be perfectly lawful is a way of precluding all protests. It makes every protester responsible for every other protester, and justifies the use of restrictions like delineated protest zones, orders for dispersal, and the curfew Bass has now instituted. People who set cars on fire or throw rocks at police should be arrested, but they shouldn't be used to mischaracterize protests that are the result of justifiable anger at Trump administration policies that have destroyed families and communities. Likewise, while safeguarding property and people's businesses should be important, safeguarding the right to protest should be considered absolutely essential, since without free speech there is no democracy. Measures taken to curtail that right should only be instituted with great diligence and only in circumstances where a clear and extraordinary danger to the public requires it. That's not what we're witnessing here; the federal government isn't stopping the danger, it's creating it. It is Trump who is causing the conflagration through his instigation and escalation, which was surely the goal the entire time (predictably, top Trump aide Stephen Miller was the architect of the ICE crackdown in Los Angeles). The monster isn't attacking from outside; it's in the house. And that house is the White House. Newsom, hopefully done playing footsie with bigoted Trump acolytes like Charlie Kirk and recovering his backbone somewhat, has acknowledged this fact. On Tuesday, he accused Trump of putting everyone in danger by inflaming an already combustible situation. He called it a 'perilous moment,' wherein 'a president who wants to be bound by no law or Constitution [is] perpetuating a unified assault on American tradition.' With watery, intense eyes, he added, 'California may be first, but it clearly will not end here. Other states are next. Democracy is next. Democracy is under assault before our eyes.' Now's the time to stand up and fight. Otherwise, we'll watch democracy die on the operating table in front of us. A plurality of Americans oppose Trump's military campaign in L.A.; their numbers will likely grow if he escalates it and expands it to other cities where protests are spreading. But if protesters were to stand down, out of fear that any potential conflict with law enforcement empowers Trump, then that would make an inept buffoon of a leader appear to be strong. Some pundits may prefer that we all just sit home and hope the whole Trump problem goes away. But I prefer the doctrine of the famed AIDS activist and gay rights leader Larry Kramer, who said simply, 'Shove it in their faces.'
USA Today
14 hours ago
- USA Today
Curfew enacted for parts of LA as protests spread to other cities
Curfew enacted for parts of LA as protests spread to other cities | The Excerpt On Wednesday's episode of The Excerpt podcast: USA TODAY National Correspondent Trevor Hughes joins us again from Los Angeles as protests also spread to other cities. USA TODAY Pentagon Correspondent Tom Vanden Brook discusses President Donald Trump's push for 20,000 troops to help his immigration crackdown. Trump says he's restoring the names of military bases that honored Confederate soldiers. Water from the faucets of at least 42 million Americans is contaminated with unacceptable levels of 'forever chemicals." Let us know what you think of this episode by sending an email to podcasts@ Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text. Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here Taylor Wilson: Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Wednesday, June 11th, 2025. This is The Excerpt. Today, protests spread to other cities as a curfew is announced for Los Angeles. Plus a look at Trump's push for some 20,000 troops to aid his immigration crackdown. And as water in your neck of the woods contaminated with forever chemicals. ♦ A curfew was issued for parts of downtown Los Angeles yesterday, following days of protests over immigration enforcement raids. Mayor Karen Bass said the curfew was announced to stop bad actors who are taking advantage of the president's chaotic escalation. Meanwhile, defense officials said the Pentagon is spending $134 million to deploy National Guard troops and Marines to the area. Protests have also spread this week to a number of US cities, including New York, Austin, and Chicago. So as USA TODAY national correspondent Trevor Hughes told me as he prepared to depart Los Angeles yesterday, things have simmered down since erupting over the weekend. Thanks for joining me again, Trevor. Trevor Hughes: You bet. Taylor Wilson: We know Governor Gavin Newsom has now issued this emergency motion. Let's start here. What's the latest and do tensions kind of broadly continue between California and the federal government? Trevor Hughes: Honestly, right now the fight seems to be between the federal government and the state and local officials. There's not a lot of protests happening right now on the ground here in Los Angeles. Taylor Wilson: Tuesday out around Los Angeles, Trevor, what were some of the things you saw, some of the folks that you spoke with? Trevor Hughes: I was really struck by how different it smells. Sunday night, Monday night, it smelled like tear gas. It smelled like pepper spray. It smelled like people smoking marijuana, which is legal here in California. This morning, it smelled like citrus based cleaners because there are a whole bunch of people cleaning graffiti right now. You can hear pressure washers everywhere. Folks are really cleaning up the downtown area. Now, the reality is they do this almost every day already because of graffiti and gang signs that get painted. But right now, it's anti-Trump, anti-ICE stuff that they're removing. Taylor Wilson: All right, well, just to step back for a second, multiple journalists have been injured this week. Are we learning anything further about who was impacted and what happened to them? Trevor Hughes: Those are folks who put themselves between the protesters and the police, and that is always a dangerous place to be. Obviously the police targeted those folks and they were hurt and I hope they're okay. It is not always easy to know who is a journalist in the scrum of these protests or these disturbances or even these riots, the police often have complained that reporters actually make things worse because we tend to go to the front lines, which gives everyone else the confidence that they should do the same thing. And then it becomes this snowball effect in which the police respond in force. Taylor Wilson: As for folks whose status in the country might lead them to an ICE detention or even deportation, Trevor, how are they living in this moment? Have you had conversations with some of these folks? I guess many still need to go to work, for instance, even amid some of the protests we've seen this week. Trevor Hughes: Well, absolutely, and again, let's be clear, the protests have been relatively narrow. I mean, LA is a very, very big place and it has a large number of residents. And so the vast majority of people here are going to work during their normal lives. The media, ourselves included, have maybe done folks no service by showing the same cars burning over and over and over again. There haven't been that many cars burned down. There haven't really been buildings burned down. It has not been as widespread as perhaps the perception is. And the reality is for something like 18 million people, life goes on pretty normally and that means going to work, worrying about your family if they have been detained. But again, that's also still a relatively small number. Taylor Wilson: Trevor, as you leave Los Angeles, what was your biggest takeaway from your couple days on the ground there in Southern California? Trevor Hughes: This is one of those situations where the fight between President Trump and Governor Gavin Newsom has been going on for years. And this feels like a continuation and extension of that, to be honest. It's the kind of thing where what happened in downtown LA was pretty bad, and I saw rocks and bottles being thrown at police officers. I saw a police car set on fire. Just so we're clear here, but at the same time, it really feels like this may be a proxy war between these two very powerful leaders. Taylor Wilson: All right. Trevor Hughes is a national correspondent with USA TODAY joining us from Los Angeles. Thanks, Trevor. Trevor Hughes: You bet. ♦ Taylor Wilson: A number of potential moves would shift the military from its mission of defending the nation against foreign adversaries, toward policing its streets when it comes to immigration enforcement. I spoke with USA TODAY Pentagon correspondent Tom Vanden Brook for the latest. Tom, always a pleasure. Tom Vanden Brook: Thanks for having me, Taylor. Taylor Wilson: So let's start with this request for some, what? 20,000 National Guard troops as part of President Trump's crackdown on illegal immigration. What do we know as of now here? Tom Vanden Brook: For the first time in this memo that we have, it shows that they're going to be involved in domestic law enforcement. In other words, some of these guardsmen would be used to track down immigrants and arrest them. So that's a significant escalation in what the guard has typically done. They've been helping at the border, obviously guarding the border, but this would be inside the United States, in cities actively going after people suspected of being here illegally. Taylor Wilson: Well, Tom, this news comes as Trump has deployed National Guards and even Marines to Southern California this week. What's the bigger picture here? I know Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is indicating there will be a larger role for the National Guard writ large going forward. Is that correct? Tom Vanden Brook: Yeah, this is it. They sound as though they want to make this a much more widespread effort that won't take place just in California, but across the nation and using National Guard troops in large part to make it happen. Taylor Wilson: And how about new plans for detention on military bases? What can you tell us here? Tom Vanden Brook: We've learned that over the past few months, the Pentagon has been reviewing with customs border patrol, different sites around the country at bases where they could detain migrants suspected of being illegally. And they would be in bases everywhere from Fort Dix in New Jersey to California. They have actually set up some facilities at Fort Bliss in Texas, and they're building a larger facility there that could house as many as 5,000 migrants. Taylor Wilson: And Tom, really, what is the Trump administration's argument for expanding the military's immigration enforcement role in this way? Tom Vanden Brook: Well, that they need the help. They're overwhelmed. They don't have enough customs boarder patrol, DHS needs the added manpower to do this, and the guard is situated to be able to help them. So they see this as Trump has said before, an invasion, and that's the way they're viewing it. And they use some fairly novel legal justifications to do it, but so far they're being challenged in court, but nothing has come through on that front yet. Taylor Wilson: What are you seeing or hearing from critics on some of these issues, Tom? Tom Vanden Brook: Well, this is a militarization of a law enforcement function that is inappropriate. And Senator Jack Reed, who's the leading Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, thinks it's inappropriate, potentially illegal. And he's opposed to it and he's going to be questioning Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in all likelihood on Wednesday when he appears before a Senate committee. Taylor Wilson: Well, and as you're right, Tom, active-duty troops are generally prohibited from domestic policing under the Posse Comitatus Act. Just remind us what that law is and will it present any barrier to the Trump administration's expected actions here? Tom Vanden Brook: The Posse Comitatus Act prevents, generally speaking, active-duty military from law enforcement within the United States. There are certain circumstances in which they can do it, and one of them is if Trump were to evoke the 1807 law called the Insurrection Act, and that would be to put down a rebellion inside the United States. But there's no indication obviously that there's a rebellion and he has not done that yet. Although he does refer to the protesters in Los Angeles Insurrectionists. So it's possible that he could do that. There are other ways he could do it. He could be invited to bring in National Guard troops paid for by the federal government, by governors in states that want to have the National Guard do this sort of law enforcement. Taylor Wilson: Folks can find this full piece with a link in today's show notes. Tom Vanden Brook covers the Pentagon for USA TODAY. Thanks, Tom. Tom Vanden Brook: Thanks, Taylor. ♦ Taylor Wilson: President Trump says he's restoring the names of military bases that the U.S. changed because they paid tribute to Confederate soldiers, delivering remarks at Fort Bragg, which had been designated Fort Liberty before his administration reverted the installation to its previous name. Trump said the Pentagon planned to rename seven other bases. Trump has long sought to keep the original base names in place. He vetoed legislation at the end of his first term in 2020 that authorized the creation of an independent commission to recommend name changes. Congress repassed the bill which came in the wake of racial justice protests with bipartisan supports. During his Fort Bragg remarks, Trump also made some comments about his military parade set for Saturday. Donald Trump: Recently, other countries celebrated the victory of World War I. France was celebrating. Really, they were all celebrating. The only one that doesn't celebrate is the USA and we're the ones that won the war. Without us, you'd all be speaking German right now. Maybe a little Japanese thrown in, but we won the war. We don't celebrate, but we're going to celebrate on Saturday and we're going to celebrate from now on. We're going to celebrate our greatness and our achievements. Taylor Wilson: U.S. Army is marking its 250th anniversary with a palm-filled procession through the streets of the nation's capital. The date also coincides with Trump's 79th birthday. The parade, which will feature army equipment, flyovers, musical performances, and thousands of soldiers in uniform from the past and present caps off a week of programming designed to celebrate the country's military strength. You can read more with a link in today's show notes. ♦ Water pouring from the faucets of at least 42 million Americans is contaminated with unacceptable levels of forever chemicals. That's according to a USA TODAY analysis of records the Environmental Protection Agency released earlier this month. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS are a family of chemicals engineered to be nearly indestructible. Studies have shown they can accumulate over time in human bodies, leading to certain cancers and other health complications. Altogether, USA TODAY found 774 systems that do not meet the limits for forever chemicals. Those utilities probably will need to install advanced filtration systems or find other sources of drinking water by 2031. You can see which U.S. cities report forever chemicals with a link in today's show notes. ♦ And later today, can alligators help fight climate change? Any research points in that direction, according to Chris Murphy of Southeastern Louisiana University. Chris Murphy: What we found was a positive correlation between alligator abundance and carbon sequestration in specific habitats. So if alligators aren't there, my hypothesis is that carbon sequestration rates would lower, meaning more CO2 would be emitted into the atmosphere. Taylor Wilson: You can hear more about how America's largest reptile is playing a key role in reducing carbon emissions when my colleague Dana Taylor, sits down with Chris today beginning at 4:00 P.M. Eastern Time, right here on this feed. ♦ And thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio. And as always, you can email us at podcasts@ I'm Taylor Wilson. I'll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA TODAY.
USA Today
15 hours ago
- USA Today
Opinion: What does Pride month mean to the LGBTQ+ community in 2025?
Opinion: What does Pride month mean to the LGBTQ+ community in 2025? | The Excerpt On a special episode (first released on June 9, 2025) of The Excerpt podcast: As Pride Month 2025 gets underway across the country (albeit with fewer corporate sponsors), we asked what pride means to you – not just the parades, protests and community, but also your feelings, fears and hopes – and whether it can continue to exist in its current form. Here's what you told us. Forum is a series from USA TODAY's Opinion team that is dedicated to showcasing views from across the political spectrum on issues that Americans are starkly divided on. If you'd like to weigh in on a different topic, you can find more questions at And if your submission is selected for print, we might invite you to add your voice to a future special bonus episode like this one. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending an email to podcasts@ Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text. Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here Michael McCarter: Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. LGBTQ+ rights are back in the spotlight as President Donald Trump issues executive orders banning transgender military service members and rescinding funding from educational institutions that allow trans athletes to compete in sports. So far, in 2025, more than 500 bills targeting the LGBTQ+ community have been introduced across America. As Pride Month 2025 gets underway across the country, we asked what Pride means to you, not just the parades, protests, and community, but also your feelings, fears, hopes, and whether it can continue to exist in its current form. I'm Michael McCarter. I lead the opinion sections of Gannett, the parent company of USA TODAY. This is a bonus episode of The Excerpt highlighting a series from USA TODAY's opinion team called Forum. Here's what readers told us. Gillian Gurney is 26 and lives in New York. She shared that current events have made Pride more important and that Pride must be seen through the lens of revolution and protest. Gillian Gurney: Pride is beyond important though in the current climate we are seeing people try to consistently attack this month in a way that hasn't been seen in several decades. And to me, Pride means so much more than just the joy and courage that we exude as a community year round. But I think this time specifically is a time to acknowledge the revolution that it took to get us here. This is my second Pride being publicly out at age 26, and I think back to people like my grandfather, who is an out gay man, but wasn't able to actually be out until the 1980s when at the same time, the AIDS crisis was rampant throughout his community and he lost several friends to AIDS unknowing as to why, and was treated like a national pariah. So not only is Pride about joy, but Pride is also about honoring those who came before us to make things like this possible. Trump has never been shy about his direct homophobia, transphobia, and attacks against the queer community amidst at least every other minority community in this country. His hateful rhetoric and quite frankly, unconstitutional directives that he's issued since his first day in office that are purporting baseless attacks on our community that doesn't affect him in any way are deeply concerning. So if corporations, organizations, communities, lawmakers and individuals at every single level of both government and public sector and private sector don't stand up and mobilize and advocate in ways that we need, we could see our country fall back into a time where being yourself could be punishable by law. And we're already starting to see that. This highlights the responsibility that we have both as queer people and both as allies to stand up and not allow that to happen because the second that we curtail to being silenced, that's when the other side wins. The queer community is both a very diverse community in and of itself, and I think my question would be how can we unite together and not allow other communities to split us up into further factions and band together to make sure that we're able to help everyone? Michael McCarter: Sixty-four-year-old David Thibodeau lives in Washington D.C. He's concerned about the threat of violence at Pride events across the country. David Thibodeau: I mean, I've worked corporate for a long time and they were strong supporters of Pride and I hate to see corporations and their support for Pride, I hate to see that atrophy. I think it is important. I probably won't be going to Pride this year, even though [inaudible 00:03:55] is holding World Pride. Last year during Pride, there were a lot of warnings from the previous administration about credible terrorist threats to Prides across the country, and this year there have been none, and it gives me pause because I don't think those groups that were issuing the threats last year have stopped issuing threats. I think that this administration is not paying attention to those groups anymore, so it's a matter of safety. I actually had invited family to come down because it was World Pride this year, and I've kind of uninvited them. I don't want them to be in the middle of anything that might be unsafe. Kind of goes back to when I was a lot younger. Maybe I feel like we've gone 30 years back in time, maybe 40 years. I don't know. I think that anti-LGBTQ voices, their groups are being given a voice and I'm not sure that they represent the greater sentiment of the population. I'm pretty sure that they don't. I think we need to recognize more the root of these events and where they come from and that they are form of protest. There should be more room for a somber recollection of why these events are important. Michael McCarter: Houston, Texas native Jazz Paz told us she sees Pride as one way to honor elders in the LGBTQ+ community. She's 73. Jazz Paz: I think Pride month is very important and to me it means the celebration of our survivorship. It means that we recognize and are grateful to our elders who made Pride happen. What I'm seeing, especially this year, is big corporations wanting to participate anonymously, which doesn't seem very Pride-ful to me. There are also, of course, the ones that only come out for the Pride events and we never hear or see from them again. That makes me kind of mad. Ones like Target that used to be supportive are now almost like against us, and I think it is a lot of the DEI pushback that we're seeing from this prevailing political environment. I suspect the federal government might continue to honor Pride Month with lip service, but I don't think they're proud of us and I don't think they like us, and I don't think they're going to be enthusiastically endorsing us for the next several years. I'm a little bit sad that Pride Month has sort of devolved into just partying. There's no sense of, at least in Houston, there didn't seemed to be any recognition of what made all this necessary or possible. It was a political and very serious, it was joyful, but it was taken seriously. In the beginning, in Pride in Houston all the bars closed, all the stores closed. Everybody was in the street watching the parade. There was a band. There was very creative floats. But it was just for our community, nobody else even knew about it. And now there's people with babies in strollers and their grandparents are there, and it's a spectacle. It's no longer, in Houston at least to me, it's no longer an honoring holiday. I think too many of the elders that suffered and really, really worked hard to make this possible have passed on. I think the more younger generations don't have any idea how hard it was just to survive as a gay person. It was against the law to be gay. It was against the law for women to wear front zipping pants in Houston years ago, maybe like 50 or 60 years ago. And all the people that went to jail and a lot of them committed suicide when they were going to be outed in the newspapers, I don't think young people realize any of that. I think there's a lot of difference between reading about it or hearing about it and knowing the people that separate these things and knowing them personally as your friend. Michael McCarter: KJ Novoa is 27 and he's from Douglas, Arizona. He shared that Pride can't be erased even if corporations and politics stand against it. KJ Novoa: I think Pride means a lot of things to me, but first and foremost, it means visibility. I think I associate Pride with being out not just in terms of social media or in the media sphere, but also just in the world, being authentic, being ourselves. It's a reminder that we're free to be ourselves in this day and age no matter where the political winds may swing. I do think corporations play some role in Pride, and I do think that could be a positive thing and also to our detriment. Corporations obviously provide a lot of visibility whether we like it or not, and they are sort of a gateway to exposure for whatever cause that we may want to put out there. I think that in the same way, corporations pulling out based on a political direction being inconvenient for them can also be to our detriment, because then that means less visibility for us. We shouldn't have to depend on corporations or big companies for this type of exposure and visibility for any type of marginalized community, but unfortunately we do. I think within the LGBTQ community, we have to ask ourselves regarding Pride, are we going to hinge so much on corporate support? Are we going to hinge so much on whether a certain president supports us or not? Are we going to hinge so much on public opinion that we let that decide whether we want to be visible or not? Whether we want to be out and about free and showing who we are without embarrassment or without any type of reservation? I feel like even though I'm only 27 years old, I have learned a lot about LGBTQ history, and I know there's been many cases throughout history where there was times where the politics at the time were even more hostile towards LGBTQ people, whether it was during the Reagan years and when the AIDS crisis started to emerge, or the Lavender Scare when people were afraid of being associated even with certain colors or walking or acting a certain way because they thought it would get them labeled as gay and thrown out of their jobs. So I think we need to remember that above all, we're resilient, and regardless of whether political winds swing right or left, I think that at the end of the day, we have to remember we're not going to be erased. Michael McCarter: That's all we have for today's episode. This is a co-production with the Forum team at USA TODAY, where we invite our readers to weigh in writing on a national topic of interest. If your submission is selected for print, we might invite you to add your voice to a future special bonus episode like this one. There's a link to Forum in the show description. Let us know what you think about this episode by sending an email to podcasts@ Thanks for listening. I'm Michael McCarter, vice president of the Gannett Opinion Group. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.
