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Florida Bill Banning Pride Flag Would Make Showing Support for LGBTQ People a ‘Political Viewpoint’

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A Florida Republican lawmaker’s bill declares showing support for LGBTQ people is a “political viewpoint,” despite the existence of LGBTQ Democrats, Republicans, independents, and entirely unaffiliated and non-political LGBTQ people.

The goal of GOP State Rep. David Borrero’s legislation is to ban all versions of the LGBTQ pride flag from any and all local government buildings, including schools and universities.

“A governmental entity may not erect or display a flag that represent [sic] a political viewpoint, including, but not limited to, a politically partisan, racial, sexual orientation and gender, or political ideology viewpoint. The governmental entity must remain neutral when representing political viewpoints in displaying or erecting a flag,” HB 901 reads.

The bill makes no mention of religious flags.

READ MORE: ‘GoFundMe’: Experts Say Clarence Thomas Being ‘Sponsored by Billionaires’ Is ‘Bribery’

This is the second time Rep. Borrero has tried to get LGBTQ pride flags banned from government buildings.

“Borrero’s bill is similar to legislation he and Tampa Republican Sen. Jay Collins filed in February (SB 668),” Florida Politics reports. “Collins later filed an amendment with a list of allowable flags, including the Confederate flag, but quickly withdrew it and his original bill from consideration.”

It is possible this legislation could gain more traction now.

“Last year, a parent sued the Palm Beach County school district over a pair of pride flags hung in his seventh-grade child’s classroom. He echoed DeSantis’ repeated assertion that the flag represents a concerted effort to ‘indoctrinate‘ kids,” Florida Politics adds.

On his campaign website, Rep. Borrero talks about “moral values” and “conservative principles,” and says, “Religious freedom is under assault and gravely at-risk in our state and nation. While freedom of speech and religious freedom are being attacked by the liberal media and liberal special interests, additional protections need to be established to ensure churches, synagogues and religious organizations do not lose their tax-exempt status and are able to practice their faiths and express their values without intervention from the government.”

Last month, Borrero announced, “I’m proud to stand with and endorse Donald J. Trump for President of the United States.”

READ MORE: DeSantis Says Trump Not a Danger to Democracy and Should Have Gone Further

Benjamin J. Kirby, who appears to have been the communications director for the mayor of the City of St. Petersburg, responded to the news, writing: “Creating the tradition of raising the #pride flag over #StPete City Hall was a wonderful legacy of the Kriseman Administration. I hope all my #LGBTQ friends in Florida recognize the danger of the Republican Legislature and vote accordingly in November.”

Equality Florida, the state’s largest LGBTQ nonprofit advocacy organization, responded by warning: “If conservative lawmakers won’t stop trying to erase us, we won’t stop showing up to oppose them.”

 

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White House Responds to ‘Stone-Cold Loser’ Carville After Devastating Prediction

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In a rare move, the White House is pushing back against James Carville, after the longtime political consultant and prolific pundit predicted that Donald Trump’s presidency would end within the next year.

“I’m saying this right now,” Carville declared on his Politicon podcast. “You’re not going to be president a year from now. You’re too soft a man. You’re too weak. Your support is draining out.”

“People are going to be on to you. And when the Democrats get back in office in January, they’re going right after the corruption,” Carville added.

“We’re going to find out all the money that has gone the wrong way, and we’re going to have a legal proceeding, and we’re going to have what you call a clawback,” he said.

The White House, in a statement to Fox News, slammed Carville.

READ MORE: Where Were Republicans as Trump Zigzagged on Iran War and Peace?

“James Carville is a stone-cold loser who suffers from a severe and incurable disease known as Trump Derangement Syndrome, and it has rotted his peanut-sized brain,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle told Fox News Digital in a statement.

Carville had other strong words for the president.

“You’re so screwed,” he warned, before referring to a New York Times article.

“They’re leaking on you like crazy,” Carville said.  “You can’t trust anybody. Your staff is leaking on you. The Pentagon is leaking on you. The State Department is leaking out here. Everybody is dumping all over you, loser. And, you know, this is just the tip of the iceberg.”

He also warned the president about Vice President JD Vance’s loyalty, and later said, “you’re done, dude. You’re really done. No one fears you anymore. Your own staff doesn’t fear you.”

“But, dude, you and I know something,” Carville continued. “We got a little secret between me and you. You’re done. People hate you. Trust no one. Be as paranoid as you possibly be, because you can’t be paranoid enough.”

READ MORE: Will ‘Sputtering’ Trump Ever Learn His Lesson?: Columnist

 

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Will ‘Sputtering’ Trump Ever Learn His Lesson?: Columnist

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As his tenuous ceasefire approaches the 48-hour mark, President Donald Trump remains a “foolhardy and unpredictable executive-in-training” who got “schooled” by Iran, writes Trump biographer and Bloomberg columnist Timothy L. O’Brien.

In addition to costing American taxpayers tens of billions of dollars, Trump’s Iran war has cost the lives of American soldiers, and thousands of Iranians. The economic tab may soon approach $100 billion, says O’Brien. But there have also been enormous “reputational, civic and strategic costs” for America.

“In the run-up to a two-week ceasefire announced on Tuesday evening, the president took to social media and the airwaves to warn Iran and the world that ‘a whole civilization will die’ and he intended to bomb the country ‘back to the stone ages.’ He brushed off questions about whether he was willing to commit war crimes by noting that Iranians are ‘animals.'”

Trump’s “dangerous and reckless flexes” may have just been him “bluffing, but sophisticated dealmakers know that undeliverable threats backfire when your bluff is called” — and Iran “called Trump’s bluff.”

READ MORE: Where Were Republicans as Trump Zigzagged on Iran War and Peace?

Now, writes O’Brien, Trump is, “essentially, a downed power line. If he is left to his own devices, sputtering, further conflagrations could consume the Middle East.”

O’Brien reminds that once elected, presidents “should come to the job with tangible aptitudes for management, leadership, policy, rationality and decency,” and not need the White House to be their “finishing school.”

But “largely uneducable,” Trump faces an Iran ceasefire that “is a recess of sorts for the world’s most powerful and incendiary pupil, and he may return to class having failed to absorb his studies.”

Trump is a “blinkered, close-minded leader,” charges O’Brien, and “a serial bankruptcy artist” who, before entering the White House, “was never an adept dealmaker.”

A “serious student” would try to learn from the ceasefire. But a cornered Trump may become “even more dangerous and thuggish.”

Ultimately, Trump “will be measured by whether he defines his Iranian studies by weeks of failed exams — or commits himself to years of mindless and cataclysmic classwork.”

READ MORE: Trump Rages in Incoherent Truth Social Rant

 

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Bill Kristol Diagnoses Trump’s ‘Conquistador’ Complex

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Conservative commentator Bill Kristol suggests President Donald Trump has a “conquistador” complex — which is a complete reversal from how he campaigned in 2024, on “no new wars.”

“If Kamala wins, only death and destruction await because she is the candidate of endless wars. I am the candidate of peace. I am peace,” Trump declared during his 2024 campaign.

“These war hawks, they want to draft your kids to die in wars, and they will never fight themselves,” Trump said, days before the 2024 election.

The night he won, Trump told supporters, “I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.”

Kristol writes at The Bulwark, “We haven’t heard much talk recently from the president about wars we’re not getting into.”

“Will one consequence of his humiliating failure in Iran be a return to such a stance? Perhaps the difficulties of the last two weeks have diminished Trump’s interest in foreign excursions?” he asks. “Appears not. A taste for foreign adventures seems to have lodged itself in Trump’s brain.”

READ MORE: Trump Rages in Incoherent Truth Social Rant

He points to Trump just weeks ago saying, “Cuba is ​next by the way.”

Just yesterday, Trump returned his focus to Greenland.

“NATO WASN’T THERE WHEN WE NEEDED THEM, AND THEY WON’T BE THERE IF WE NEED THEM AGAIN. REMEMBER GREENLAND, THAT BIG, POORLY RUN, PIECE OF ICE!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Thursday night, Trump appeared to threaten Iran again, declaring that all “U.S. Ships, Aircraft, and Military Personnel, with additional Ammunition, Weaponry, and anything else that is appropriate and necessary for the lethal prosecution and destruction of an already substantially degraded Enemy, will remain in place in, and around, Iran, until such time as the REAL AGREEMENT reached is fully complied with.”

He concluded: “In the meantime our great Military is Loading Up and Resting, looking forward, actually, to its next Conquest. AMERICA IS BACK!”

Kristol notes that it is unusual for an American president to “proclaim ‘Conquest’ as his goal. In his June 6, 1944 D-Day prayer, President Roosevelt said that American soldiers ‘fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate.'”

But for this president, “the dream of foreign conquest seems to have become a more central part of Trump’s personal sense of grandiosity, not to say megalomania, than it was earlier in his career.”

READ MORE: Trump Administration Wants Protected Health Records of Federal Workers

 

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