The Biden administration has gone all-in to promote the updated Progress Pride flag, the pro-LGBT banner that includes stripes to include black people, Hispanics, and other minorities.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken ordered it flown in Foggy Bottom, and top diplomats are wearing the flag pin. Curtis Ried, a State Department official at the White House National Security Council, pointed to his when addressing a Wilson Center Pride Month conference.
“My friends tease me that I’m becoming Madeleine Albright with my broaches at work,” he said, referencing the famous pin-wearing Clinton-era secretary of state.
Other departments have also flown the Progress Pride flag, notably the Energy Department. … ✪
- Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House deputy press secretary, also addressed the event and told of her mother’s initial rejection of her coming out. “I am a black, immigrant, queer woman, and I grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and Queens, New York. And when I came out to my parents at 16, my mom, my immigrant mother who grew up in Haiti, who I loved dearly, she didn’t accept it, and I ended up going back in the closet,” she said. “It was a little bit of a different time.” She added that it “went horribly wrong, and you fast-forward decades later, and I have a partner. I have a 7-year-old daughter. My mom could not be more proud of me. She could not be more proud of her daughter, and she could not, you know, love her grandchild and my partner more.” … ✪
- You might have been forced to stay home for vacation last year during the coronavirus crisis, but Congress didn’t. — far from it. A new State Department inspector general report said the department handled 600 overseas congressional trips last year, a 50% jump since 2012. … ✪
- Sparked by the debates over transgender issues and critical race theory, a new conservative group has formed to pull politics out of classrooms. The Free to Learn Coalition debuted with an ad calling students to be taught the basics instead.
