Hi guys — Sammy here!

Welcome to the very first issue of the Girl and the Gov® Diaries.

Unlike the other newsletters I write, this one’s personal. It’s a curated collection of what’s been crossing my desk (and my mind): the internet finds that had me immediately hitting “share,” the items that mysteriously landed in my shopping cart (oops), pop culture musings and unsolicited opines, side quests in all their chaotic glory — and, of course, conversations with interesting people doing cool things.

This issue features an interview with Emily LaTrue, the content creator behind the term girl gambling and the woman making Peninsula Dems a thing in Charleston, SC. It’s a mix of fun, thoughtful, and just the right amount of niche — which is exactly the vibe we’re going for around here.

Right now, the plan is to publish monthly. That said, I had to cut this first issue down from short-novel length… so we’ll see. If you find yourself wanting more, more often, help grow this little corner of the internet: forward it to a friend, drop it in the group chat, send it to anyone who’d have fun reading along.

I’m so glad you’re here. Truly. Let’s get into it. 💌

IN THE DMS

Things of amusement I’d send to a friend

  • My fave magazine stores, Casa Magazines, does a weekly round-up of pubs they’ve gotten in, and I’m going to need 80% of these [Vogue Italia, I’m lookin’ at you]. P.S. Casa’s attached coffee window to the second door of the shop is super yummy.

  • RFK Jr. being an absolute loser-fest on the stair master, aka this bestie at the gym won a competition he didn’t know he was in. And that’s on stair-maxxing.

  • This absolute real, absolutely on-it take from red carpet host Keltie Knight on influencers hosting or interviewing celebs on the red carpet. The TL;DR is that if influencers are going to do it, they need to respect it, take it seriously, and do their research [I say heavy on the retweet in the political world too]. 

  • When am I going to Mexico City? IDK, but I have started a TikTok Collection for the places I want to go when I do, and this stunning Jewish deli made the cut.

  • On a biblical level, I need this whimsical lamp. On a logical level, I have absolutely no where to put it.

SHOPPING CART

Finds, things I’ve got my eye on, & generally cool sh*t worth a click

  • NGL I finally found an at-home self-tanner that makes me tan, not orange – which is critical in these trying times if you know what I mean. The tanner is by Salty Face, and I’ve tried the ‘body set’ so far. Up next to try: the tanning water. *Ordering Notes: for 10% off your order, use code: GIRLANDTHEGOV10

  • While the streets this winter have been ANYTHING but dry, the lack of humidity has been testing the limits of my skin to levels beyond. The one thing that’s been helping, not just with my skin but also with my sinuses, is the Canopy Portable Humidifier. I have it in lavender (looks more lav IRL] and use the Unwind aroma, which I loooove the scent of – a huge feat because I’m SUPER picky with scents. One walk down the candle aisle in TJ Maxx and I’m lights out, like that level of picky. *Ordering Notes: Comes with really clear set-up instructions – no IKEA wtf does this mean sitch

ICYM-a-link, here they are

→ The cotton t-shirt from Uniqlo that has found its way into 5 million of my OOTDs

→ The classic tube Aquaphor that saved my lips from complete catastrophe 

→ The super refreshing Glow Recipe Watermelon Glow Niacinamide Drew Drops

→ GAP’s “Big shirt” aka the comfiest oversized button down in amazing color ways

→ The bachelorette must-have that is the Let’s Fucking Date card game

QUESTS

Side quests, main quests, & generally fun sh*t to check out or do

  • At this point, my friends and I have accumulated enough bridesmaid and guest dresses to clothe every NY Fashion Week show, so we decided to do a bride dress swap and donation hang. Everyone presented the dresses they were going to part with, giving everyone an opportunity to take a dress for a different upcoming wedding. Any and all dresses that didn’t get scooped up [hint: most of the dresses], were then donated to the Brooklyn Prom Project, which provides free prom dresses so that no one misses the high school rite of passage. A critical piece of this ‘event’ were the cookies from Culture Espresso.

  • One of my b-i-g goals for 2026 was and is to do more side quests during work days, or in other words, take the hour to explore something, or hop in a coffee shop I’ve been meaning to try instead of being guilt-locked into my computer/phone. I’ve documented a few of these ventures on social, but my favorite so far has been Albertine, which is a French bookstore on UES. Albertine earned itself the ‘fave’ for now title because its legendary upstairs ceiling really is as cool IRL, and because one of my other ‘26 goals is to re-learn my high school level French, which made their selection of over 14K titles a huge W in my book [pun intended]. 

  • A few of my friends and I went to this matchmaking event on Valentine’s Day [in jest, okay, everyone calm yourselves, no one was taking this seriously]. Half of us literally ended up with ‘friend matches’ because they didn’t have enough guys to match us with. Classic. Anyways, we did bounce from there to Twins Lounge in Greenpoint because a bar with two floors is more fun than a bar with only one IMO. To note, it’s cash only, so keep that in mind before you roll deep.

  • In another venture outside during work hours, I side-quested my way over to Carl Radke’s Soft Bar to try their coffee menu. The menu actually caught my eye because I spotted a coffee with cinnamon and a full ingredient list I actually like – lemme tell ya, this is how the adventure landed.

MUSES

The misc files 

  • THE AGE OF THE RAPID RESPONSE IG ACCOUNT: Between working as a new media consultant [TYSM Boston Globe for the shoutout] and being chronically online as a result [okay, fine, I always just love to scroll], I certainly see the best and the worst of elected officials trying to make their social media happen. One strategy that I’m seeing an increase of are Dem govs launching ‘rapid response’ press office branded IG accounts. First there was Newsom’s, somewhere in there Hochul’s, and now Gov. Shapiro’s team has launched theirs, which originated on Twitter. It expands the amount of work the team needs to be [congrats, y’all are never sleeping again], but also provides a different content entity that can have a different flavor from the official, ‘individual’ account, and the campaign account. I’m all for it as long as each handle feels distinct enough to exist on its own. Making sure that each account has its own flavor can be tough – and if you need help drawing those distinct lines, call me, beep me, book a time with me for Office Hours.

  • CHAPPELL ROAN’S ANTI-ABORTION UNCLE: A story was published in Jezebel, which revealed that the Pink Pony Club singer, Chappell Roan’s uncle is a Missouri state rep behind a bill to ban abortion in Missouri – despite voters continually saying no to a ban [although people keep electing these weirdos, so cognitive dissonance is alive and well there]. The comment section on the story’s IG post is filled with “it’s not her fault” and “she can’t choose her family.” Now, both of those things are true. However, what absolutely maddens me is that she spent all of summer 2024 pushing people away from voting for Kamala with some pretty bonkers bad takes and TikToks. Meanwhile, she’s close enough to the fire as a result of this relative to know what a Trump presidency results in – more of her uncle in charge of decisions on women’s healthcare… To me, it furthers the sin of the way she used her platform, because it provides evidence that she knew and knows better than she likes to feign. 

CHATTER

Convos with friends at the intersection of culture, politics, & everything else

I had the absolute pleasure of getting to interview Emily LaTrue for the very first edition of this newsletter. If you don’t already follow Emily on TikTok – first off, let’s take care of that follow right here – she’s fostered a growing online and IRL community in Charleston, SC, and has become known as “the girl that makes the Democrat videos.” I’m not sure what era of TikTok Emily crossed my desk, but I’m going to gather it was somewhere at the intersection of Southern Charm, her pushing back on Ticketmaster, and using the platform to organize blue dots in her area. Regardless, I’m so happy she did, and I think y’all will feel the same after reading our chat – and of course, after back-scrolling through her content, because duh.

THE TOP-LINE: 

astrological sign: pisces

the closet essential: high-top converse

playing on the headphones: rihanna’s anti album

must-scroll creator: rachellovely5

→ SOUTHERN CHARM & POLITICS

SK: I'm so curious, especially as a Southern Charm watcher, what is the political vibe in Charleston? Obviously thinking about South Carolina, I think about a red state, but then cities obviously carry a little bit of a difference there. 

Emily: It's interesting. I moved down from DC and before that I was in NYC. It was definitely whiplash coming to the South and being like, if I'm going to a workout class, and I start making friends with someone – I really have no idea where they align politically. That's never been something that I really even considered before moving down to Charleston. Charleston itself votes blue, but just going out this weekend, I was with some of my single girlfriends and wowza…it was wild to see most of the men clearly are MAGA and not just like “I vote Republican,” but will also lie about being proudly MAGA. The Charleston demographic, we vote blue, but damn, the men here are very red.

SK: It’s so interesting because we've seen the data that's showing that women are going more to the left and men are going more to the right, but then when you actually see it IRL, it’s really quite damning. I've also had conversations with people about some of the male Dem influencers and ones that have popped up recently and just how when there even is one, it's just like,” OMG.”  They're a rare breed; like protect them at all costs. How rare it is is so bizarre... I'm like, do you guys have sisters? Clearly you guys have moms somewhere along the lines.

SK: To pull it back to the Southern Charm of it all, we had JT that left LOL, but has come out as this more liberal progressive “voice” on social. Now we have Whitner also pushing back [against this Admin] which has gained him some fans. And then there’s Salley's thoughts and feelings on him, which is kind of interesting in and of itself…

Emily: I'm curious about that. I think it's interesting because there are a few – let's see, I guess Whitner and… Shep surprisingly is a Dem? I think Austin is… he's not outspoken about it but his parents were at No Kings….but then we have like Craig…

SK: Yeah. I've been thinking about Craig a lot recently, which just really feels like a loaded statement, but especially with Summerhouse starting, right? And now we're seeing Kyle who’s liberal, but is also kind of the worst and it’s like which path, which poison is worse? Is it “the Kyle” or “the Craig?” And maybe it's apples and oranges in its own weird way but I'm curious what your thoughts are.

Emily: I think that Craig is worse because I think that Kyle is not a good husband, but he's a good person. What you see is what you get with Kyle. Whereas Craig pretends to be this nice guy, this wholesome guy. But in reality, I've literally stopped watching the season of Southern Charm because I can't stand Craig so much. He pretends to be this person that he's not. And I think his insecurities and his rage come out. When you pretend to be the nice guy and you're actually not the nice guy, I think that that's more dangerous.

SK: 1000%. He is – and I hate the overuse of the term gaslight, but he’s a gaslighter king to the nth degree. I've never seen anything quite as bad and I've dated some whack jobs. I'm also curious to hear your thoughts on how you would like to see some of the Southern Charmers and even Southern Hospitality crew use their platforms in a political way. What do you think would be helpful?

Emily: I do like that a lot of them are starting to talk about national level politics. That's a good first step. I think that if they want to have a big impact, then they need to start talking about what's happening locally in Charleston and the surrounding area. We oftentimes have our state house trying to push through a wild abortion ban or anti-trans legislation, and that’s always something the Peninsula Dems will do a massive email campaign on, where we will try and get everyone to send a version of an automated email that we've set up. We've had a lot of success with that. I imagine that if we got these people that have larger platforms to be more hands-on involved we would have much more of an impact.

→ PENINSULA DEMS & GETTING INVOLVED LOCALLY:

SK: I want to talk about Peninsula Dems a little bit, because the second you got involved, I hit follow. TBH, you guys seem to do really cool events and are making it younger and funner and all the things. I want to know two things. One, how did you get involved? And two, what do you see going forward?

Emily: I spent the beginning of ‘25 getting really anxious and pissed off about every single headline that was coming across our desk and feeling really hopeless. But I also was doing the Five Calls app and calling and writing and posting, etc. It made me realize that doing that, made me feel like I had no control and was giving me a lot of anxiety. And honestly the MAGA freaks in my comment section, I couldn't deal with it any longer. I realized I can't be someone that is bitching on the internet if I'm not actually doing anything productive to make positive change. So I went to a Peninsula Dems meeting by myself. I'm about to be 33. I was probably the youngest person there by 10 years probably and there were only 25 people there. So I made a TikTok basically saying our age group has the opportunity to actually make an impact and all we're doing right now is reposting memes on our Instagram stories and that's not actually going to make a difference. We need to stop just yelling into the void. That video went what I call “local viral” in Charleston. One of the things that I said was that I was planning on going to the meeting in November, and if anyone wanted to meet me before the meeting, I'd be happy to walk in with them, so that we could go in as a group and they weren’t going alone.

SK: I love that. That's so cute.

Emily: I feel like one of the barriers to entry is the feeling of showing up somewhere by yourself.

SK: Totally. It's the same thing with any event, whether it's networking or anything else – I think as you get older too, you get more accustomed to doing it [showing up alone] and have a little bit more of a fuck it attitude scenario. However, there still are things that are super intimidating, and so I think by you offering that that's a huge barrier lift.

Emily: I thought that that would maybe be like five people. No, it was hundreds of people. Once that video started going viral, the two guys that started PenDems reached out to me. And to be fair, they started Peninsula Dems in May because we didn't have a Dem group there. Charleston is almost like how you think about NYC. We’re on the peninsula and then there's West Ashley, there's James Island, there's John's Island, across the river and then across the other river is Mount Pleasant. Think of it like Brooklyn or NJ. We didn't have a PenDems group, so they started it in May and it was slow going, but I appreciate them for starting it. Then me showing up, starting this… we went from 20 people showing up to a meeting to now it's 200 people coming to events. I started our group[chat] in Halo, and we have about 1K people in it. The first big event that we had was in November. We did what we call a “progressive pours” event, and we did a massive handwritten letter campaign because they were trying to push through an anti-abortion bill, which we ended up being able to stop. It felt like such a big win because we had this happy hour type event, we had speakers, and we had people handwriting notes that we sent off in the post office. We sent ~120 handwritten letters and I can't help but feel like that it had an impact.

SK: That's huge. There are a few things that are takeaways from that, and one just the fact that you're able to get that many people just even in the group chat is huge. I've built out online communities before, and it’s incredibly difficult to get people through the door let alone then keep them active in there. I've seen the [event] videos. I'll definitely throw it in the newsletter here. There are a lot of people in the room. And I think it’s probably a good little warning for these Republicans that people are paying attention, and that's what that full room translates to to them.

Emily: And in a city like Charleston where you think that everyone is Republican, and then literally every single month we're having anywhere from 150-250 people show up to an event.

SK: There's that classic phrase, “an assumption makes an ass out of you and me,” right? And I think about that a lot with politics, and oftentimes I've been a victim of that phrase myself, right? Where I've been like, "Oh, like NYC is so liberal," and then I meet like 10 Republicans. But I think that has been something that has gotten in the way of Democrats in traditionally red places, of assuming,” well, there's no way we can win.” But realistically, it's like they're getting ahead of themselves, as opposed to putting in the work to actually see whether that's true or not.

Emily: 100%. SC is very gerrymandered, so it’s an uphill battle. It's going to be a tough hill to climb for sure, but I think that right now we’re in a unique environment where Trump is just screwing everything up on such an epic level that we do have a bit of a blue tsunami behind us. If there's ever going to be an opportunity for us to make change, it's to ride this wave and really push.

SK: Totally.

Emily: That's one of the reasons that I'm so activated right now. For example, people here don't show up for midterm elections to vote for say Annie Andrews at the top of the ticket because they think there's no chance of her beating Lindsey Graham. We've been doing a lot of strategy sessions and finding that people don't show up for the top of the ticket. People show up for the bottom of the ticket, meaning city council seats, the state assembly. If we can get people to rally around the six districts that we're trying to flip locally, then they're going to vote for Annie Andrews at the top of the ticket. But they may not have actually shown up because they would have felt like what does my vote matter. If we're getting people to show up for the bottom of the ticket, then it actually funnels up to those larger seats.

SK: That’s such an interesting take. I think there's two elements to that, right? It's partially because people know who's in their neighborhood and whatnot. You're more likely to vote for somebody that you know and that you're like, "Oh, well Joe is great to have a beer with, right?" And I think if you then start to see that "Oh, wow. there's more blue neighbors around me than I realize,” and that maybe flipping this local seat is more possible that you thought, you do show up because you think you can have a change.

Emily: I think most people assume that the top of the ticket, the shiny object seat, is what gets people to show up, but it's actually not. It's the state/ local seats that get people to show up - and then people like Annie Andrews will benefit from that.

→ GIRL GAMBLING:

SK: On a totally different note, we have to talk about girl gambling – you need to copyright this BTW. For anyone that doesn't know what girl gambling is, can you give a quick little explainer?

Emily: On platforms like Poshmark and eBay, you can submit an offer. If you submit an offer and the seller accepts it, then you have to buy it. You're not negotiating, like they can send a counter offer, but if they accept your offer, you're buying it. So it's kind of fun to go on one of these sites and just lowball offers on things and see what you can get. I'll have a glass of wine and sit at my computer and go by brand. Two weeks ago I did Tibi, and got a pair of culottes for $40, and I lowballed just to see what would happen. It's girl gambling because you're putting down a bet, right? But they could accept or they could not accept. And if they accept, you get something from it.

SK: 1000% it's way less risk. The risk is you losing the item, right? And them saying no. It's safer than boy gambling because you're not risking money on it.  It's like, okay, then you don't get the item and then you're on to the next one.

Emily: I like it because I feel like girl math is cute, but it's a bit derogatory, you know? Like women are smart. But girl gambling, we're claiming something that is derogatory towards men.

SK: 1000%. Especially as this male gambling fiasco continues to get worse.

Emily: It's like they have access to too many vices and there's no shame with the vice anymore.

SK: I think shame is kind of “rest in peace,” in general. I'm not sure what year shame died…

Emily: 2016.

SK: I'm gonna sign the death certificate on that one.

Le fin.

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