Starbucks Denies Union Allegations of a Ban on Pride Decorations

Starbucks has banned Pride decorations in stores halfway through Pride Month, the company’s workers union claimed Tuesday. If true, it would be a stunning cave to far-right anti-LGBTQ fury—but the coffee chain denies that any such policy is in place.

There has been a wave of ultra-conservative pushback against companies that express support for equal rights. It started when Bud Light did a campaign with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney in March, but things really kicked off when Target displayed its Pride swimwear collection. Target said it would pull back its Pride merchandise in response to the outcry.

“For the last two weeks, Starbucks workers have taken to social media to report that the company is no longer allowing Pride decorations in-store,” the Starbucks workers’ union tweeted.

But Starbucks spokesperson Andrew Trull said there has been no change to corporate policy regarding displays for Pride or any other heritage month. “We unwaveringly support the LGBTQIA2+ community,” he said in a statement. “There has been no change to any policy on this matter and we continue to encourage our store leaders to celebrate with their communities including for U.S. Pride month in June.”

“We’re deeply concerned by false information that is being spread especially as it relates to our inclusive store environments, our company culture, and the benefits we offer our partners,” he added.

Starbucks has always adopted a pro-LGBTQ stance, at least in public. This year, they even partnered with artist Tim Singleton to design a series of special Pride-themed tumblers. But according to the union, workers in stores in at least 21 states were told that all Pride decorations must come down—even in unionized stores, where Starbucks normally argues it can’t make sweeping changes without first discussing it with workers.

Starbucks Workers United told The New Republic that workers at a store in Massachusetts were told they couldn’t decorate because there weren’t enough “labor hours” to decorate and run the store. Some employees were told decorating was a safety concern: in Georgia, workers were told it was unsafe to be on ladders to hang a Pride flag. In Oklahoma, workers were told Pride decor was considered unsafe because of recent attacks on Target.

Employees at a Maryland store were told that some people felt excluded by Pride decorations. Posts on Reddit that did not indicate location showed that other workers were also told some customers considered the Pride decor exclusionary. 

The union also noted that this would not be the first time Starbucks has failed to stand up for LGBTQ people, including its own employees. In October, some trans Starbucks workers found that their health benefit plan had changed, forcing them to pay out of pocket for certain treatments and causing them to lose access to certain providers, according to Starbucks Workers United. Trull told The New Republic in a separate conversation that Starbucks health care policy has not changed.

It would be understandable for Starbucks to suddenly grow wary of overt Pride displays, considering how bad the right-wing rage has become. Target stores in five different states received bomb threats over the weekend and had to be evacuated.

But there had been no such fury directed at Starbucks.

This article has been updated.

Representative James Comer on Tuesday admitted again that he has no basis for his investigation into President Joe Biden.

The Kentucky Republican has led the months-long probe into the Biden family but has been unable to provide any actual evidence linking Biden or his son Hunter to any wrongdoing. Most recently, Comer had threatened to hold FBI Director Christopher Wray in contempt of Congress if he didn’t hand over a document Comer claimed would prove some of the allegations. House members were finally allowed last week to see a redacted version of the FBI document, which includes an unverified allegation of audio recordings of Biden and Hunter Biden accepting a bribe.

When asked Tuesday morning on Newsmax if the recordings were legitimate, Comer hedged. “I can confirm that the recordings were in the 10-23,” Comer said, referring to an FD 10-23, a form the FBI uses to note unverified information from confidential sources.

Newsmax host Rob Finnerty pressed him to confirm the recordings were real, and Comer replied, “I can confirm they were listed in the 10-23 that the FBI redacted. We don’t know if they’re legit or not.”

After lawmakers saw the redacted version of the form, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said it contained information about Hunter Biden’s time on the board of Ukrainian oil company Burisma Holdings. She also said that the information alleges two unnamed members of the Biden family accepted a $10 million bribe to remove former Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin in 2016 to stop a probe into Hunter Biden’s role at the company (a narrative first pushed years ago by Donald Trump, and one refuted by Ukrainian prosecutors and activists).

Comer said he and Senator Chuck Grassley were allowed to see an unredacted version of the form. Grassley called Monday for the FBI to release the unredacted version of the 10-23, claiming it mentioned 17 audio recordings of Biden and Hunter Biden accepting a bribe from a Burisma executive.

Comer also accused the FBI Tuesday of not investigating these claims. Except the FBI did: The bureau, alongside a U.S. attorney appointed by then-President Donald Trump, reviewed the bribery accusation when it was made in 2020 and found it to be unsubstantiated.

Republicans have repeatedly admitted that they have nothing of substance against the Biden family. Grassley even went so far as to say that the party isn’t “interested in whether or not the accusations against Vice President Biden are accurate or not.” But they have begun to turn up the heat in recent weeks, particularly as the federal indictment against Trump seemed to draw closer.

Just a few days ago, before the details of Donald Trump’s second indictment were released, Nikki Haley joined many Republicans in lambasting the unseen charges as phony, as dangerous. But on Monday, three days after the indictment was unsealed, the 2024 presidential candidate and former South Carolina governor finally sang a different tune.

“If this indictment is true, if what it says is actually the case, President Trump was incredibly reckless with our national security,” Haley said on Fox.

Here was Haley just days ago, for context:

Still, Haley anchored herself in the generic conservative attack on the FBI and Department of Justice (not for anything related to their histories targeting civil rights leaders, for instance, but for actually getting it right by going after one of the more prominent serial criminals of our time). She insisted that “two things can be true at the same time,” that the agencies have “lost all credibility with the American people” and that if the charges against Trump are true, he was “incredibly reckless.”

“My husband’s about to deploy this weekend. This puts all of our military men and women in danger, if you are going to talk about what our military is capable of or how we would go about invading or doing something with one of our enemies,” Haley continued. “And if that’s the case, it’s reckless, it’s frustrating, and it causes problems.”

Haley also pointed out that this is the second, and potentially third indictment Trump faces, hedging her concern about Trump’s never-ending list of crimes with electability for the general election.

It ain’t much (and it’s not honest work), but Haley’s comments are now among the strongest of the 2024 primary field, let alone the Republican Party more broadly. It’s refreshing that someone running against Trump is remembering that she is in fact running against Trump. The other handful of candidates might do well to remember the same. All the candidates have very little chance of winning as it is. Why not at least lose with a smidgen of dignity? If nothing else, their narrow chances increase ever so slightly if they don’t waste all their time and limited campaign air dismissing the litany of very real criminal charges against their main opponent!

A former adviser to Donald Trump said Monday that the indictment against the former president is already bad enough that it should end his political career.

Trump was indicted last week (for the second time) for his alleged mishandling of classified documents. John Bolton, who served as Trump’s national security adviser, noted to CNN that while he doesn’t know the exact material Trump allegedly kept, he was familiar with the type of documents Trump had access to.

“They did go to absolute, the most important secrets that the United States has, directly affecting national security, directly affecting the lives and safety of our service members and our civilian population,” Bolton said. “If he has anything like what … the indictment alleges, and of course the government will have to prove it, then he has committed very serious crimes.”

“This is a devastating indictment,” Bolton continued. “This really is a rifle shot, and I think it should be the end of Donald Trump’s political career.”

Trump was charged with a total of 37 counts for keeping national defense information without authorization, making false statements, and conspiring to obstruct justice. The investigation revealed that Trump had kept hundreds of documents and stored them everywhere, such as on the stage of the Mar-a-Lago ballroom and in a bathroom. He also reportedly showed the documents off to people who did not have security clearance, such as a representative of his PAC and members of staff.

Since Trump left office, Bolton has repeatedly criticized him for how he behaved during the presidency. But it’s worth noting that Bolton firmly had Trump’s back while he was a Cabinet member.

The most powerful House Republican in Congress says it’s OK Donald Trump hid top secret government documents in his lavish resort’s bathroom, because, well, at least the door locks.

“Was that a good look for the former president to have boxes in a bathroom?” a reporter asked Kevin McCarthy.

“I don’t know,” McCarthy started, glancing up in sardonic thought. “Is it a good picture to have boxes in a garage that opens up all the time? A bathroom door locks.”

Kevin McCarthy’s remarks follow the second indictment of the already twice-impeached and liable-for-sexual-abuse former president. Trump was indicted for taking boxes upon boxes of classified government documents upon leaving the White House and subsequently mishandling them. He repeatedly refused government appeals to return the documents, flouting subpoenas and eventually forcing the government to conduct a search in his swanky Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

In the search and investigation, it was discovered that Trump hid the documents everywhere from a Mar-a-Lago ballroom to a bathroom, and showed off the secret documents (from agencies like the CIA, Defense Department, and NSA) to a representative of his PAC as well as staff members.

McCarthy’s comments were in reference to classified documents from the Obama administration found in President Joe Biden’s home garage earlier this year. Biden, like Mike Pence who also found classified documents in his possession after leaving the White House, has cooperated with government efforts to retrieve them. Trump definitively has not, and was actively involved in both removing the documents from the White House, and in showing them to an array of individuals without government clearance.

Beyond the marked differences between Trump and other former White House occupants, the comparison between a garage door and bathroom door itself is obviously meaningless. If it needs to be spelled out: Bathroom doors generally lock with a simple click from the inside. Anyone who might have had a vested interest in taking a peep at a CIA or NSA document wouldn’t have too much trouble getting through a bathroom door. Garage doors may actually be a degree more secure, but you don’t see Hakeem Jeffries making the comparison McCarthy is anyhow—because it’s dumb!

McCarthy’s remarks followed similarly sophomoric ones from Senator Lindsey Graham. Some seven years after warning “if we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed … and we will deserve it,” Graham took to the Sunday show circuit to snarl and stutter at ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, refusing to definitively say it was wrong for Trump to take and hide secret government documents.

Meanwhile, other Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene and do-nothing Representative Tim Burchett are going even further, calling to literally defund the Department of Justice.