Another green dildo was thrown onto a WNBA court last night, this time hitting two spectators and the Fever’s Sophie Cunningham. It’s the third dildoing in less than a month, and frankly, it’s the dumbest. We’ve all seen Cunningham yoke a girl for less, and some young punk really thought she was the one to try?

In today’s newsletter, we take a look at RFK Jr’s latest chicanery. Plus, we take a quick trip to Love Island with Julianne Escobedo Shepherd to learn about colorism. We’ve also got your weekend reading list.

Staying on Sophie’s good side,

Shannon Melero

WHAT’S GOING ON

A “tremendous” setback: This week, known vaccine hater Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that the government would be canceling roughly $500 million in contracts committed to the development of mRNA technology—the research responsible for making viable COVID vaccines and saving millions of lives. Scientists have long been studying other applications for mRNA technology, looking to develop better flu vaccines and studying the possibility of putting mRNA to work in treating melanoma, lung, and pancreatic cancers. With some early success in those areas, hope was starting to bloom that mRNA technology could potentially improve women’s health in particular, via new ways to treat and even prevent breast cancer—but when it comes to medical research, hope dies without dollars.

“The attacks on vaccine research are devastating to the future of breast cancer research,” Fran Visco tells The Meteor. Visco is the president of the National Breast Cancer Coalition and a 30-year breast cancer survivor. “We’re just beginning to look at vaccines as possible treatment and prevention for breast cancer, and having the head of the Department of Health and Human Services say that mRNA vaccines have safety issues and pulling vaccine research funding…is going to set back breast cancer research tremendously,” she says.

Essentially, the federal government has removed a tool in the fight against breast cancer before researchers have really even had the time to learn if it’s useful or not. Such a short-sighted move, Visco believes, means scientists won’t have the means to investigate what mRNA is fully capable of, because the government is the largest supporter of biomedical research in the country. There’s also a concern that the public may become more skeptical of vaccine research as a whole. “You need the public to believe in [the safety of mRNA technology] because they’re going to have to enroll in the clinical trials in order to test whether these vaccines are effective or not,” Visco explains. “If the public is getting the message that the federal government doesn’t believe in it, they will not want to be engaged in that type of research…so it hurts you at every level, and there’s absolutely no basis for what the federal government is doing right now in terms of vaccines.”

A number of medical researchers have called these funding cuts dangerous and argue that the decision flies in the face of decades of established scientific research. Visco echoes their concerns and cuts straight to the point: “People are going to die because of the positions that this administration has taken in health and research.”

AND: 

• The Trump administration is reviving and updating its inhumane family separation policy. During the president’s first term, the most common form of separation involved families being divided when they were detained at the border. But now, reporting by Hamed Aleaziz for The New York Times finds that ICE has been performing “interior separation,” a policy in which immigrants already inside the country can be detained and their children taken away for refusing to “self-deport.” (According to the Times, ICE officials deny there is a new policy in place, but Aleaziz found at least nine instances where this was the case.) “Every single way that ICE can, they’re looking to boost their [deportation] numbers,” Aleaziz wrote.

• This week, New York opened the nation’s first shelter for unhoused transgender and gender non-conforming people. Located in Long Island City, the shelter has 150 beds and will provide residents with psychiatric care, GED classes, and job training. It will be managed by the non-profit group Destination Tomorrow, which you can support by clicking here.

• Elder millennials gather, there is bad news. A staple of our mall youth, Claire’s, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy again. The stores won’t be disappearing just yet as they scramble for a lifeline, but it would seem that the bubble writing is on the wall for a beloved retailer of earrings that turn your lobes green. RIP to a real one.

The Call is Coming From Inside the Villa

Love Island: USA has Latine viewers confronting their anti-Black history

BY JULIANNE ESCOBEDO SHEPHERD

MEMBERS OF THE SEASON 6 CAST AT AN EVENT IN NEW YORK (VIA GETTY IMAGES) 

Love Island is the escapist watch of the summer with its outsized personalities and tropical setting—but as the aftermath of this season has proven, it’s never truly an escape from the dynamics of the real world.

A little background if you’re not one of the tens (hundreds?) of millions that made this season Peacock’s biggest streaming series ever: Love Island is a reality show in which a dozen “sexy singles” are sequestered inside a neon villa with the sole directive to find love amongst themselves, has been airing for a decade in the UK, and six years in the U.S., but it didn’t really take off here until last year, thanks to improved production values after a switch from CBS to Peacock. This summer, it was an inescapable hit: Love Island seemed like the only thing unifying the country, to be honest, a fact I chalked up to our desperate collective need for an hour of reprieve from encroaching fascism. And since it airs almost every single day for two months, it’s easy to immerse oneself in the petty dramas and flirtations of its sculpted and spray-tanned twenty-something cast.

I’ve been watching Love Island for years—last summer I realized I had seen over 550 episodes, at which point I had to stop counting—and like the best reality shows, it manages to put larger-world concerns under a microscope; its anthropological utility is vast. Even in its unreal Fijian (or Mallorcan) setting, familiar biases and prejudices play out in real time. And this year especially, anti-Black racism has shown up both in the villa and among the show’s fanbase.

This year was notable for the way Olandria Carthen and Chelley Bissainthe, this season’s beloved Black women leads, were characterized by fans and certain tabloid media. They were both perfectly dignified and two of the main reasons the season was watchable—only to find that, having emerged from the villa at the end of the season, they’d been saddled with the “angry Black women” stereotype. (Production has also been accused of airing decontextualized outbursts by Huda Mustafa, Love Island’s first-ever Palestinian cast member and an outspoken mother, while editing out the male behavior that led to her outbursts.)

WEEKEND READING 📚

On resisting fascism: Meteor collective member Sarah Sophie Flicker tells the history of the Danish resistance—including her own great-grandfather’s role in it—and reminds us that we too can say no to tyrants. (The Nation)

On ridesharing: “Uber received a report of sexual assault or sexual misconduct in the United States almost every eight minutes on average between 2017 and 2022.” The worst sentence you’ve ever read. (The New York Times)

On your face: Wedding cakes are meant to be eaten, not shoved up the bride’s nostrils. Don’t marry these men! (The Cut)

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