Welcome to Trump’s America, The i Paper’s World Insight series presenting the sharpest, deepest thinking on an era-defining shift in history and politics, investigating how Donald Trump and his administration have changed the US and the world – and where we go from here.
• The heavy price America has paid for Jeff Bezos’s ambition• The US is becoming impossible to live in• I told Trump over dinner he didn’t have my loyalty – it sealed my fate• This is how the world will look after Trump• I’ve seen what ICE has done to Minnesota. Farage wants to import that to the UK• The men who want to stop women voting• Trump isn’t damaging America. He’s reinventing it’
The colourful crossing on Orange Avenue in Orlando, Florida, was, for years, a sign that the LGBTQ+ community was seen and valued after 49 people were killed and dozens injured in a horrific shooting at the nearby Pulse nightclub on 12 June, 2016.
Then, one quiet night last summer, the rainbow disappeared. The state government painted over the colours, with its Republican Governor and Donald Trump ally Ron DeSantis posting on X: “We will not allow our state roads to be commandeered for political purposes.”
Before turning his attention to Florida’s roads, just a few years prior, DeSantis introduced a law banning LGBTQ-inclusive education in the state’s classrooms — the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill — and books containing LGBTQ+ themes remain banned in school libraries, deemed “harmful to minors.”
