reflect

Ann Summers is standing up against anti-trans hate by doubling down on their inclusive store policies and practices.

Over the last few years, the LGBTQIA+ community, especially our trans and non-binary siblings, have become the target of conservative political figures and hateful bigots.

From the 47th president of the United States introducing harmful executive orders that restrict gender-affirming care and ban trans people from participating in sports, to the UK Supreme Court ruling that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex, the existence of trans and non-binary people is being continually questioned, undermined and threatened.

Anti-trans sentiment has also gone beyond the political sphere, with it slowly infiltrating the media and retail industry.

Earlier this month, Marks & Spencer came under fire after they apologised to a mother and her daughter for an interaction they had with an employee, whom they claimed was “obviously trans.”

During the alleged exchange, the employee in question approached the pair, who were in the clothing department to schedule a bra fitting, and asked if they needed any help, per The Telegraph.

In response to the complaint, Marks & Spencer released an apology stating that they were “truly sorry” over the “distress” caused by the interaction.

The company also told The Scottish Sun that their bra fitting service was only for “female customers” before adding that they meant “biological females.”

M&S’s response was immediately slammed by LGBTQIA+ activists, allies, and customers, with many lodging complaints about the company’s handling of the situation and its lack of support for the staff member involved.  

While anti-trans rhetoric seems to be around every corner, there are a handful of businesses that have outwardly expressed their continued support for the trans community, such as Ann Summers.

In a statement shared on Reddit by a former employee of the lingerie chain, the company’s customer service branch affirmed that “inclusivity, support and dignity for all people, regardless of gender identity or expression, are core values for Ann Summers.”

“Our commitment is that every customer and staff member is welcomed, respected and supported. We believe that all people, regardless of gender identity and sexual orientation, should be treated with dignity and respect,” they continued.

“Our inclusion policies reflect that, and we proudly serve and support transgender individuals as part of our services and team. We understand the importance of language, empathy, and creating safe spaces.”

The department also informed the individual that Ann Summers staff training covers the definition of an LGBTQIA+ ally and applies the principle to their bra fitting services, hiring practices, and day-to-day workplace culture.

“Please rest assured that Ann Summers is committed to maintaining an inclusive and affirming environment for all members of the LGBTQ+ community. We are proud of the diversity and compassion our community stands for.”

Ann Summers also confirmed their trans inclusive policies in a statement to Pink News, adding that their bra fitting services and dressing rooms are “available to anyone who wishes to use them.”

This isn’t the first time the lingerie and sex toy company has expressed support for the trans community.

In 2021, the executive chair of the company, Jacqueline Gold, told The Times that trans people were “absolutely welcome.”

“We want to support them. We want to empower them. We want to make them feel comfortable. Our changing rooms are open to transgender [individuals],” she exclaimed.

WASHINGTON — The Constitution makes it clear: “The People” get to pick those who’ll represent their interests in the U.S. House of Representatives.

But just how closely do those choices reflect the overall political leanings of the people? The question is at the heart of a power play in Texas, where Republicans are trying to reshape the state’s congressional boundaries to help them maintain control of the House in next year’s midterm elections.

In many cases, a state’s congressional delegation doesn’t align very closely with what would seem to be the will of the voters, although that’s not always because of partisan gerrymandering.

Every state decides how to draw its own congressional boundaries. Some, like California, rely on independent redistricting commissions, while most leave it to the state Legislature and the governor to hammer out a plan. It’s states where one party controls all the levers of government where redistricting dramas like the one in Texas often play out as the majority tries to maximize its power.

Regardless of the process, the resulting maps often produce congressional delegations much more lopsided in favor of one party than the state’s partisan demographics might suggest.

A state’s presidential vote result isn’t a precise tool for measuring what its congressional delegation ought to look like, but it can provide a compelling point of comparison. Politicians frequently cite it when decrying partisan redistricting practices they think are unfair.

President Trump, who’s pushing Texas and other GOP-controlled states to redraw their maps, has said Republicans are “entitled to five more seats” in Texas based in part on the size of his win there in November. Trump won 56% of the Texas vote, but Republicans already hold 65% of the state’s congressional delegation — which would rise to 79% if the GOP’s new maps are adopted and past voting patterns hold in the next election.

During an event with Texas Democratic lawmakers in Boston, Missouri state Rep. Ashley Aune cited her state’s presidential vote results in warning of possible Republican-driven redistricting efforts there.

“Fifty-eight percent of Missouri voted for Trump, but they want to send an 87% representation to Congress,” said Aune, a Democrat.

It’s actually fairly common for a state’s congressional delegation not to align with statewide presidential vote results.

In 41 of the 44 states with more than one congressional district, the party of the winning presidential candidate had a larger share of the state’s congressional seats than its share of the presidential vote, an Associated Press analysis found. In most cases, it was a much larger share, a gap of at least 10 percentage points.

Here’s a comparison of the congressional delegations and presidential vote results in a sampling of states, including some of those considering a redraw of their congressional boundaries after Texas called its special session.

California and Illinois

In remarks to CNBC, Trump pointed to California and Illinois as justifications for redrawing the Texas map in Republicans’ favor.

“You notice they go to Illinois for safety, but that’s all gerrymandered,” he said in reference to the Texas Democrats who relocated to the Chicago area to block, at least temporarily, the Republican redistricting efforts.

“California’s gerrymandered. We should have many more seats in Congress in California,” he said.

He’s right about Illinois: Democrats have gerrymandered the lines so they hold 14 of the 17 House seats. Not so in California.

Democrats there do have an outsized majority, holding 43 of the state’s 52 House seats, about 83%. Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat, received about 59% of the November vote. But that’s not because of Democratic gerrymandering. A ballot initiative took the process away from state lawmakers and gave it to an independent citizens commission.

California’s lopsided map is due in part to the way like-minded people cluster: California Democrats tend to live in and near major cities that get more congressional districts because of their population.

Florida

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis scored a legal victory in July when the state Supreme Court upheld his congressional redistricting plan redrawing a district with a large Black population. That plan resulted in Republicans holding about 71% of the state’s 28 U.S. House seats. Trump carried the state in November with 56% of the vote.

DeSantis later indicated there may be more “defects” in the map that need to be addressed before the next census.

Republicans held an 18-7 advantage over Democrats in Florida’s House delegation after the 2000 census. Democrats slowly narrowed the gap, reaching 13 seats to Republicans’ 14 after the 2018 election. But Republicans reestablished their advantage after the redistricting that followed the 2020 census, when they reached the 20-8 split they hold today.

New York

Democrats have long enjoyed an advantage at the New York ballot box in presidential and congressional elections. Harris received nearly 56% of the vote in 2024, while Democrats hold 73% of the state’s 26 House seats.

With Democratic advantages in both chambers of the state Legislature, New York might have been a ripe target for Democrats looking to offset Republican redistricting gains in Texas and elsewhere. But they would need to amend the state Constitution to conduct a new round of redistricting before the next census. That constraint means the earliest Democrats could enact a new map would be for 2028.

North Carolina

North Carolina, among the most closely divided states, has been embroiled in its own redistricting drama.

State Republicans implemented new House boundaries in 2023 that turned a 7-7 congressional delegation into one in which Republicans took a 10-4 advantage with the 2024 elections. Several districts are now the subject of a federal lawsuit, with Democrats alleging Republicans illegally diluted Black voting power.

North Carolina has been among the most competitive states in the last several presidential elections. While Trump carried the state in November with about 51% of the vote, it has elected Democrats as governor and attorney general and to other statewide offices.

In the 2008 presidential election, Democrat Barack Obama narrowly edged Republican John McCain with 49.7% of the vote. The congressional delegation at the time mirrored that with an almost even split, with Democrats holding seven seats and Republicans six after the 2010 midterms.

But after rounds of Republican-controlled redistricting after the 2010 census, Republicans held a 10-3 or 9-4 advantage in the congressional delegation for the rest of that decade.

After the 2020 census, a Democratic-majority North Carolina Supreme Court threw out a Republican-drawn plan and permitted elections under a map adopted by trial judges that produced the 7-7 split. The U.S. Supreme Court allowed the boundaries to be used in the 2022 elections.

After flipping to a Republican majority in 2023, the state Supreme Court ruled partisan gerrymandering wasn’t outlawed by the state Constitution, allowing GOP lawmakers to redraw a congressional map in use today that led to their party’s 10-4 majority.

Minnesota

Minnesota is the state where the congressional breakdown most closely matches the 2024 presidential result. Harris received 51% of that vote, compared with Trump’s 47%. Democrats and Republicans split the state’s eight House seats with court-imposed maps.

Nevada

Nevada, where a Democratic Legislature drew the lines, is the only state where the party of the winning presidential candidate is outnumbered by the other party in the state’s congressional delegation. Trump received 51% of the vote in Nevada, but Democrats hold three of the state’s four House districts.

Yoon writes for the Associated Press. Associated Press writer Leah Willingham in Boston contributed to this report.

Few initiatives of the Trump administration more seriously undermine our understanding of the nation’s past than Executive Order 14023 from March 27, which promises “to restore Federal sites dedicated to history, including parks and museums, to solemn and uplifting public monuments.”

The order directs the Interior secretary to cleanse all National Park Service sites of any signage that “inappropriately disparages Americans past or living” and instead “emphasize the beauty, grandeur, and abundance of landscapes and other natural features.” The Park Service staff was also instructed to purge gift shops of books that could be construed as critical of any American. In a similar vein, the Smithsonian Institution was ordered to remove “improper ideology” from its properties to assure they reflected “American greatness.”

Unwilling to depend on park personnel to enforce the patriotism mandate, the Trump administration is enlisting park visitors to report potentially offending displays and ranger talks that present an insufficiently sanitized account of American history. On June 9, acting National Park Service director Jessica Bowron instructed regional directors to “post signage that will encourage public feedback via QR code and other methods that are viable” concerning anything they encounter at a park site that they believe denigrates the nation’s history. (It is worth noting that when queried about the QR code directive, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum claimed to know nothing of the mandate, although he signed it on May 20.) How will the Trump administration respond if a visitor uses one of the mandatory QR codes to file a complaint?

And that is just the beginning. The Trump administration has also made clear it would like to eliminate entire sites that are not “National Parks, in the traditionally understood sense.” That means targeting those features that lack the grandeur of Yosemite and the Grand Tetons: smaller parks, sites and memorials, many of which honor women and minorities. Generally lacking soaring redwoods or massive gorges, these sites — many in urban areas where President Trump’s revisionist history has not caught on — would seem to describe places in California such as César Chavez National Monument outside Bakersfield, Manzanar National Historic Site and Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond.

Trump and his ahistorical myrmidons — he just mused that the Civil War ended in 1869 — regularly display an abysmal ignorance of basic American history. In their view, such federal (and presumably state) sites should present only a simplistic view of our complex 249-year history, one that virtually ignores the contributions and struggles of hundreds of millions of Americans.

Even before we see how many “tips” the Park Service’s invitation elicits from visitors eager to rat on rangers, the wording of the executive order itself is chilling. Any signage or lecture that “inappropriately disparages Americans past or living” — and who is to say what constitutes disparagement? — must be replaced with rhetoric that emphasizes “the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people.” Needless to say, the many sites that tell the stories of civil rights and anti-slavery struggles, the Civil War, the role of immigrants, the battles for labor rights and the rights of women and LGBTQ+ people are going to have a challenging time ensuring they in no way offend those willing to acknowledge only uninterrupted “greatness” of the American story. Sometimes our greatness has been manifested by our progress toward a more perfect union — and that story cannot be told without mentioning imperfections.

One need not have a PhD in history to appreciate the dire threat presented by these efforts to replace historical scholarship with uncritical flag-waving. Historians have an obligation to challenge myth, to uncover obscured stories, to give voice to those who were unable to fully participate in earlier eras of the American story because of their race, ethnicity, gender or viewpoints. That is why our government has protected sites including Ellis Island (which President Lyndon B. Johnson added to Statue of Liberty National Monument), Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument and Stonewall National Monument (both recognized by President Obama). Trump’s Orwellian orders seek to undo a half-century of scholarship that revealed a far more complex and nuanced history than the simplified versions taught to generations of schoolchildren.

Fortunately, professional historians have not been cowed like many university leaders, law firms and others who have shamefully capitulated to Trump’s assault on free speech and intellectual integrity. A March statement from more than 40 historical societies condemned recent efforts to “purge words, phrases, and content that some officials deem suspect on ideological grounds [and] to distort, manipulate, and erase significant parts of the historical record.”

The national parks consistently rate as one of the most popular features of American government. Neither their rangers nor their exhibits should be intimidated into parroting a sanitized and distorted version of the nation’s past. As the historians declared, “We can neither deny what happened nor invent things that did not happen.” Americans should use those QR codes to send a clear message rejecting efforts to manipulate our history to suit an extremist ideological and political agenda.

John Lawrence is a visiting professor at the University of California’s Washington Center and a former staff director of the House Committee on Natural Resources.

Any doubts as to whether Archer still had the skill for red-ball cricket were effectively answered in his first over of the match, when he dismissed Yashasvi Jaiswal with his third delivery.

Having been given the new ball immediately on his return, he was the bowler Stokes turned to again and again throughout the match.

Archer’s new-ball spell in India’s second innings on the fourth evening, despite including another dismissal of Jaiswal, was wayward, but he still opened the bowling on day five with the game in the balance.

Archer responded by ripping out Rishabh Pant’s off stump, two balls after India’s most dangerous remaining batter had advanced to hit him for four down the ground, and added a word into the departing India wicketkeeper’s ear.

“I just told him to charge that one,” said Archer.

“He came down the track and that annoyed me a little bit so when the ball nipped down the slope, I was so grateful for that.”

Former England captain Michael Vaughan described Archer’s performance as “a great comeback”.

“He bowled with that pace and X-Factor,” Vaughan told BBC Test Match Special. “England will be delighted he is back in the team.”