Republican Governor Declares June “Fidelity Month” in Snub to Pride

People of myriad sexual and gender identities across the U.S. will spend June celebrating Pride Month, a commemoration of the decades-long fight for civil rights for the LGBTQ+ community. But in Arkansas, residents will instead be celebrating a new invention.

Republican Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders bestowed a new name on June, dubbing it “Fidelity Month,” per a new declaration.

The effort is intended to cultivate “fidelity to God, family, community, and country,” and to a “healthy, stable, well-ordered society.” The memo underscores the values of faith, liberty, and patriotism, which Sanders’s office argue are the country’s founding principles, and notes the commemorative month aims to elevate “spiritual and civic institutions” at the core of the state’s “collective identity.”

It’s hard not to see the move as a direct attack on the LGBTQ+ community and everything it’s achieved.

Pride has been the preeminent June celebration since 1970. The protests and parades that take place throughout the month commemorate the history of the Stonewall Uprising, which lasted for six days but began on June 28, 1969, when police raided one of the city’s most popular gay bars, the Stonewall Inn. Incensed by the incursion, New York City’s LGBTQ+ community rebelled, marching through the streets in one of the most significant acts of civil rights disobedience in U.S. history.

At the time, homosexuality was criminalized in every U.S. state save Illinois, which granted individuals the right to express their sexuality in private in 1962.

Sanders’s order comes at a complicated time for gay rights. There are currently 530 anti-LGBTQ+ bills across the country, according to a legislation tracker created by the American Civil Liberties Union. They include attempts to censor school curriculums, redefine sex, create anti-transgender health care barriers, prohibit drag, and force minors out of the closet in school settings.

In Arkansas specifically, state laws do not protect LGBTQ+ people from being fired, evicted, or denied services due to sexual orientation or gender identity. The state Supreme Court ruled against nondiscrimination ordinances in 2017, blocking local, voter-approved referendums to create a more explicitly LGBTQ+ friendly community.

But Arkansas isn’t the only state making an unsubtle jab at gay rights. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee recently signed a similar resolution, marking June as “Nuclear Family Month.” The bill’s text defines the nuclear family as “consisting of one husband, one wife, and any biological, adopted, or fostered children” as intended by “God’s design.”

Meanwhile, marriage equality is nationally upheld by the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, a protection that seems increasingly fragile in light of the court’s decision to overturn abortion access via its 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

At the time, Justice Clarence Thomas penned a concurring opinion in Dobbs, arguing that the court “should reconsider” its substantive due process precedents, including its rulings on contraception, same-sex marriage, and even same-sex relationships.

The Trump administration is suspending its $1.776 billion slush fund for alleged MAGA victims of political targeting after internal disagreement.

“The Department of Justice disagrees strongly with the decision on the Anti-Weaponization Fund put forth by the United States District Court Judge in the Eastern District of Virginia, wherein the Court stated that, under no circumstances, may the Department of Justice proceed with the Anti-Weaponization Fund recently established in order to make up for the tremendous abuse, harm, and hate unfairly shown to so many people,” the Justice Department wrote on X Monday afternoon, referring to the fund’s temporary ban last Friday. “This Fund was open to anybody who was so weaponized, targeted, or persecuted, whether they were Democrat, Republican, Conservative, Independent, or otherwise. The Department will abide by the Court’s ruling.”

Last week, a federal judge suspended the administration from proceeding with its slush fund for at least two weeks, scheduling a June 12 hearing to hear arguments.

If Trump has truly given up on his plans, this would be a quick life and death for an enrichment fund that drew criticism from both Democrats and even some Republicans, as both sides decried it as a problematic conflict of interests at best and blatant taxpayer theft at worst. Outrage grew as the administration refused to exclude January 6 rioters convicted of assaulting police officers from getting a payout.

“This has become a distraction,” an administration source told Axios. “The president believes government was weaponized against people—it wasn’t just him. But this isn’t the time and vehicle for it.”

During the second day of the Minnesota GOP’s annual conference in Duluth on Saturday, the state’s Republicans conducted a moment of silence for Derek Chauvin, who is currently serving a prison term of 22 and a half years for the second-degree murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

When asked about the moment of silence on Monday, Minnesota GOP Chair Alex Plechash said the request came from the group’s body, not leadership. (The moment of silence reportedly came at the request of one of the state’s delegates.)

“There are a lot of people, I think, that believe Derek Chauvin was improperly convicted and not treated well, and those people wanted to have a moment of silence and recognition because they felt that way,” he said.

Asked whether he agreed with those members, Plechash declined to comment. “I believe the court system had its verdict and I’m not going to challenge the court,” he said.

Of course, Plechash’s consent to honor Chauvin is all the evidence one needs that party leadership is bowing to an extremist sect that basks in conspiracy theories and celebrates state violence.

It also feels particularly cruel following the more recent killings of two other Minnesotans, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, at the hands of federal law enforcement. The alleged perpetrators, ICE officer Jonathan Ross, Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa, and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez, have yet to face any charges for the killings.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday ruled against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s transgender military ban in a 2–1 decision, stating that the decision was motivated by animus.

The “Commander-in-Chief declared transgender people as categorically unfit for military service explicitly because of their gender identity. To add insult, the President labeled transgender persons as dishonorable, undisciplined, arrogant, selfish liars,” the court wrote in a 107-page opinion, which came on the first day of Pride Month.

The court ruled that Hegseth’s ban can remain in place for future service members, but not for any currently enlisted. However, the greater ban still remains in place as the Supreme Court weighs its merits.

“What has been clearly and repeatedly explained are the foundational premises of the Hegseth Policy: persons with a ‘false gender identity’ are unfit for the military, and persons with a history of gender dysphoria are also unfit because they lack ‘honesty, humility, … and integrity,’” the court wrote. “Those animus-filled reasons were expressly given to justify aspects of the Hegseth Policy. As a result, this is not a case where we are left to speculate why the government drafted such broad, undifferentiated classifications. Unless we are going to fall for the old Groucho Marx line—‘who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?’—we have direct evidence in this case that animus motivated the classifications in the Hegseth Policy.”

The ban was announced via a Trump executive order in the president’s first week in office last year. It stated that “radical gender ideology” had infected the military, and that being transgender wasn’t an “honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle.”

“A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member,” it read—equating gender dysphoria with mental illness or a deep moral deficiency.

This story has been updated.

Kash Patel’s girlfriend is suing MS NOW over a report that she abused federal resources as a result of her relationship with the FBI director.

Alexis Wilkins filed a defamation suit against the news network Friday, alleging that MS NOW had knowingly and recklessly published lies about her. The suit took particular issue with a December article that cited anonymous sources who claimed Patel had ordered an FBI detail to escort one of Wilkins’s inebriated friends back home after a night of debauchery in Nashville.

“This was hogwash and they knew it,” Wilkins’s attorneys wrote.

Over the span of 16 pages, Wilkins’s legal team claimed that the story was unfounded because Wilkins’s personal FBI security detail “did not even exist at the time” (she does concretely have one now—the first time in U.S. history the bureau’s director has extended such protection).

The attorneys further claimed the story was illegitimate because Patel’s 27-year-old beau “does not drink.” In reality, the article never suggested Wilkins herself was inebriated—but even Wilkins’s legal team seemed confused by the details. In their filing, her team contradicted themselves, later writing that Wilkins “very rarely drinks.”

The colorful lawsuit accuses MS NOW of fabricating the story “to self-promotingly advance their own agenda and notoriety,” at Wilkins’s expense, “in George Costanza fashion.” Much of the filing is spent defending Patel against various criticisms, even though Patel is not a listed defendant.

MS Now unequivocally defended its reporting. In a statement, MS Now President Rebecca Kutler told The New Republic that the company stands “firmly behind” its reporting, though it added that it doesn’t comment on ongoing legal matters.

The 46-year-old conspiracy podcaster turned agency chief is up to his neck in his own legal woes. In April, a federal judge threw out Patel’s defamation claims against a former FBI official, Frank Figliuzzi, who told MS NOW that Patel had “been visible at nightclubs far more” than he had been seen on the seventh floor of the bureau’s Washington headquarters.

Patel is also in the midst of suing The Atlantic after the magazine published a damning report on the director’s alleged drinking problem, which reportedly goes “far beyond the occasional beer” and may be contributing to Patel’s erratic, paranoid behavior.

Patel has already sparked several scandals in his position due to his wild habits. Over the last year, he has wantonly flown around the country in FBI jets on the taxpayer’s dime. His trips have included a jaunt to Las Vegas, a trip to Nashville, and at least one widely publicized instance in which he flew to Penn State to visit Wilkins, where she was singing at a wrestling event.

Patel also ruffled feathers when he appeared at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan, where he was caught on video chugging beer and whooping it up with the U.S. Men’s hockey team. (He later insisted he was celebrating with his “friends.”)