President Joe Biden said he’s marking this year’s Pride month celebration with more than rainbows and decorations. On Wednesday, he signed an executive order aimed at combating bills opposed by LGBTQI+ communities that have been introduced in state legislatures across the country.

The administration says the new order takes steps to advance equality and address discrimination, including preventing so-called conversion therapy that seeks to change the sexual or gender identities of LGBTQI+ youth.

“Today, I'm about to sign an executive order that directs key federal agencies to protect our communities from those hateful attacks and advance equality for families," said Biden. "My order will use the full force of the federal government to prevent inhumane practices of conversion therapy. This is the first time the federal government is aiming a coordinated response against this dangerous, discredited practice.”

June is the month in the United States when LGBTQI+ communities celebrate their equality and increased visibility. Rainbows are seen as a symbol of the wide spectrum of human sexuality and gender identity.

https://www.voanews.com/a/biden-celebrates-pride-month-amid-attacks-on-lgbtqi-communities-/6619650.html

Text of President Biden's Executive Order on Advancing Equality for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex Individuals

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2022/06/15/executive-order-on-advancing-equality-for-lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender-queer-and-intersex-individuals/

MIAMI/MOSCOW – During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald J. Trump downplayed his business ties with Russia. And since taking office as president, he has been even more emphatic.

“I can tell you, speaking for myself, I own nothing in Russia,” President Trump said at a news conference last month. “I have no loans in Russia. I don’t have any deals in Russia.”

But in the United States, members of the Russian elite have invested in Trump buildings. A Reuters review has found that at least 63 individuals with Russian passports or addresses have bought at least $98.4 million worth of property in seven Trump-branded luxury towers in southern Florida, according to public documents, interviews and corporate records.

The buyers include politically connected businessmen, such as a former executive in a Moscow-based state-run construction firm that works on military and intelligence facilities, the founder of a St. Petersburg investment bank and the co-founder of a conglomerate with interests in banking, property and electronics.

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-trump-property/

Mike "Wompus" Nieznany is a 73-year-old Vietnam veteran who walks with a cane from the combat wounds he received during his service. That disability doesn't keep Nieznany from making a living selling custom motorcycle luggage racks from his home in Gainesville, Georgia. Neither will it slow him down when it's time to visit Washington, D.C.—heavily armed and ready to do his part in overthrowing the U.S. government.

Millions of fellow would-be insurrectionists will be there, too, Nieznany says, "a ticking time-bomb" targeting the Capitol. "There are lots of fully armed people wondering what's happening to this country," he says. "Are we going to let Biden keep destroying it? Or do we need to get rid of him? We're only going to take so much before we fight back." The 2024 election, he adds, may well be the trigger.

Nieznany is no loner. His political comments on the social-media site Quora received 44,000 views in the first two weeks of November and more than 4 million overall. He is one of many rank-and-file Republicans who own guns and in recent months have talked openly of the need to take down—by force if necessary—a federal government they see as illegitimate, overreaching and corrosive to American freedom.

The phenomenon goes well beyond the growth of militias, which have been a feature of American life at least since the Ku Klux Klan rose to power after the Civil War. Groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, which took part in the January 6th riot at the Capitol and may have played organizational roles, have grown in membership. Law enforcement has long tracked and often infiltrated these groups. What Nieznany represents is something else entirely: a much larger and more diffuse movement of more-or-less ordinary people, stoked by misinformation, knitted together by social media and well-armed. In 2020, 17 million Americans bought 40 million guns and in 2021 were on track to add another 20 million. If historical trends hold, the buyers will be overwhelmingly white, Republican and southern or rural.

https://www.newsweek.com/2021/12/31/millions-angry-armed-americans-stand-ready-seize-power-if-trump-loses-2024-1660953.html

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On the positive side, two federal draft voting bills are currently before Congress, the Freedom to Vote and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which aim to set national voting standards and strengthen legal protections against discriminatory voting laws and policies," he added. "It is however far from certain these will succeed in being adopted."

Republicans in the evenly split Senate this year have not only blocked those two bills, but also the bolder For the People Act. Despite such actions from the chamber's GOP, a few Democrats still refuse to support abolishing the filibuster to send voting rights legislation and other measures to President Joe Biden's desk.

Given the current conditions in the country, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance on Monday added the U.S. to its list of "backsliding" democracies. The think tank's secretary general, Kevin Casas-Zamora, said that "the visible deterioration of democracy in the United States, as seen in the increasing tendency to contest credible election results, the efforts to suppress participation [in elections], and the runaway polarization … is one of the most concerning developments."

De Varennes issued a similar warning during a Monday news briefing, according to Reuters. He said that "it is becoming unfortunately apparent that it is almost a tyranny of the majority where the minority right to vote is being denied in many areas."

https://www.salon.com/2021/11/25/un-expert-warns-of-near-tyranny-against-voting-rights-of-us-minorities-amid_partner/

Allie Young believed in Kyrsten Sinema. Her vote helped elect the seemingly progressive Democrat from Arizona to the Senate in 2018. But she wonders what happened to Sinema when she got to Washington.

Young, a voting rights activist and citizen of the Diné, or Navajo Nation, is appalled by Sinema’s refusal to reform or abolish the filibuster.

“She has betrayed her constituents,” Young, 31, said by phone this week. “The sort of inaction that she’s taking right now is an action and it’s making the BIPOC community, especially in Arizona, distrust her more and more as the days go by.”
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“Her campaign was something that attracted us because back then she seemed to be a little more progressive than she is now. That’s the part that we’re all having trouble understanding. What happened?”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/nov/06/kyrsten-sinema-filibuster-betrayed-arizona-voting-rights