The Sarasota Herald Tribune reports:
Florida arts and culture organizations, still struggling to recover after the COVID pandemic, took another unexpected financial hit when Gov. Ron DeSantis eliminated state funding for cultural programs.
DeSantis vetoed nearly $1 billion from the $116.5 billion state budget before signing it in Tampa on Wednesday, including nearly $90 million the legislature earmarked for 669 different arts and culture projects and for special line item programs.
It is the first time that no money will be allocated for arts and culture programs by the state.
Florida Politics reports:
“The veto of all cultural and museum grants from the budget is unprecedented,” said Carlos Guillermo Smith, a former Orlando Representative who was just elected to the Senate.
“The governor reviews every bill and appropriation that comes across his desk and uses his authority under the Florida Constitution to make veto decisions that are in the best interest of the State of Florida,” DeSantis’ Deputy Press Secretary Julia Friedland said, reissuing a statement given to media previously.
Read the full article.
Affected institutions include museums, community theater groups, performance venues, and the Orlando Philharmonic.
Earlier this month DeSantis boasted that Florida has a $17 billion budget surplus for the 2024-2025 year.
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Reuters reports:
Illinois Republican party chairman Don Tracy resigned on Wednesday, less than a month before next month’s Republican National Convention in neighboring Wisconsin, citing infighting with the party.
In his resignation letter, Tracy said he spent “too much time dealing with intra party power struggles and local intra party animosities,” the Chicago Tribune and local ABC affiliate reported.
“In better days, Illinois Republicans came together after tough intra party elections but now it seems that agreeing 80% of the time, as President Reagan said, is simply not enough for some who would rather fight each other than take on the Democrats,” he said in a statement.
Read the full article.
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Via press release from Sen. Tim Kaine:
Today, U.S. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), a member of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees, and Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) led the introduction of a Senate resolution that acknowledges and apologizes for the mistreatment of and discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) individuals who have served our nation in the uniformed services, as civil servants, or in the Foreign Service.
“LGBT civil servants, foreign service officers and servicemembers have made countless sacrifices and contributions to our country and national security. Despite this, our government has subjected them to decades of harassment, invasive investigations and wrongful termination because of who they are or who they love,” said Kaine.
“This Pride Month, I’m proud to lead this resolution alongside Senator Baldwin to reaffirm our commitment to righting our past wrongs and fighting for equality for all LGBT Americans.”
“Anyone who serves our country, whether they are in uniform or a civil servant, deserves to be treated with respect, fairness, and dignity, regardless of who they are or who they love,” said Baldwin. “I am proud to lead this effort to show our commitment to creating a more accepting, equal country that lives up to our nation’s ideals.”
The United States has a long, disturbing history of discrimination against servicemembers and other federal employees identifying as LGBT.
Beginning in the early 1940s and continuing through the 1990s, a period historians label the “Lavender Scare,” thousands of federal employees were discriminated against because of their sexuality.
At least 100,000 LGBT military service members were forced out of the Armed Forces between World War II and 2011, most recently due to the 1994-2011 ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy, which prohibited servicemembers from disclosing their sexual orientation.
In 2014, President Obama signed Executive Order 13672, officially prohibiting the federal government and federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
In 2023, the Department of Defense announced that it would undertake a proactive review of the service records of individuals discharged due to their sexual orientation to assess whether to grant them discharge upgrades.
While these are significant steps in the right direction, we still have more work to do to ameliorate the harm done by decades of discriminatory policies.
The senators have long fought for equal treatment and rights for all individuals, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. Last year, they introduced the Equality Act, historic, comprehensive legislation to protect Americans from discrimination based on their gender identity or sexual orientation.
In 2022, they helped pass the Respect for Marriage Act, which was signed into law to ensure that same-sex and interracial marriages are recognized by every state.
The resolution is also cosponsored by U.S. Senators Chris Coons (D-DE), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), John Fetterman (D-PA), Patty Murray (D-WA), Brian Schatz (D-HI), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Bob Casey (D-PA), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Edward Markey (D-MA), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Michael Bennet (D-CO), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), and Mark R. Warner (D-VA).
Read the full press release.
In 2021, gay US House reps David Cicilline and Mark Takano proposed a similar resolution (see below), but it went nowhere after being referred to several committees.
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Mediaite reports:
The 45th president is evidently no fan of beer, bratwurst, and Brewers baseball. During a closed-door meeting with Republican Congressional leaders, former President Donald Trump trashed Milwaukee, the site of the looming Republican National Convention, as a “horrible city” — according to Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman. If Milwaukee’s Journal-Sentinel had any sense of humor, their headline tomorrow morning would be “Trump to Milwaukee: DROP DEAD!”
Read the full article. Horrible, no doubt, because there’s no local Trump hotel or golf resort for cultist conventioneers to slavishly patronize.
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Politico reports:
Donald Trump makes his first visit to Capitol Hill since leaving the presidency Thursday morning, meeting with Republican lawmakers in what is being billed as a resolutely forward-looking session focused on a potential 2025 legislative agenda. In fact, Trump has bigger, more immediate legislative priorities.
He has been obsessed in recent weeks with harnessing the powers of Congress to fight on his own behalf and go to war against the Democrats he accuses of “weaponizing” the justice system against him. It’s a campaign he orchestrated in the days after his May 31 conviction on 34 felony counts in New York, starting with a phone call to the man he wanted to lead it: Speaker Mike Johnson.
Trump was still angry when he made the call, according to those who have heard accounts of it from Johnson, dropping frequent F-bombs as he spoke with the soft-spoken and pious GOP leader. “We have to overturn this,” Trump insisted.
Read the full article. There’s much more. No paywall. Last week GOP reps introduced a bill that would move Trump’s New York City case to federal court, meaning that Trump could pardon himself if elected.
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