Disney workers dismayed

Don’t say gay

Disney employees throughout the United States threatened to walk out in March, claiming CEO Bob Chapek did not respond quickly enough against a recent Florida bill that bans sexual orientation instruction for kindergarten students up to third grade. But the demonstrations were mostly limited to a few hundred workers at Disney offices in Burbank, Calif., and Hollywood stars who shared support on social media. Opponents have labeled the Parental Rights in Education bill the “Don’t Say Gay” bill (although the bill doesn’t contain the word) and said it demonizes LGBTQ people. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is expected to sign the bill soon, criticized Chapek for bending to cancel culture by pulling political contributions in the state. Employees said Chapek should have acted earlier against the bill. He apologized for not publicly condemning it before it passed the state legislature.

Genocide

Secretary of State Antony Blinken made the long-anticipated declaration of genocide in Myanmar on March 21 at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. The museum features an exhibit on the Rohingya minority, who faced a deadly military operation that sent about 730,000 refugees into neighboring Bangladesh. The military now controls Myanmar, also known as Burma, after a coup last year. The move could potentially heighten international pressure to bring the ruling junta to justice. The junta has killed more than 1,600 people and detained nearly 10,000 others since its coup began in February 2021.

Sexual harassment

Eight female employees of Christianity Today have alleged that former editor-in-chief Mark Galli touched them inappropriately or made inappropriate comments to them, according to a story published in March by Christianity Today. The report said that former advertising director Olatokunbo Olawoye had also been accused of sexual harassment. Reporters discovered a dozen firsthand accounts of harassment in Human Resources records spanning more than a decade. Olawoye was arrested in 2017 and sentenced to three years in prison for traveling to have sex with a minor. Galli retired in 2019.

Hunter’s laptop

The New York Times has finally admitted Hunter Biden’s laptop is real—more than a year after DailyMail.com and other media outlets authenticated its contents with top experts. When The New York Post published files from the laptop before the 2020 presidential election, the Times cast doubt on its provenance, linked it to Russian disinformation, and made no public attempt to obtain and verify it. But buried 1,200 words into a story this week about a federal probe into the president’s son, the Times finally acknowledged the emails were legitimate. Reporters referenced emails “obtained from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop," adding that they “were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation.”