Happy Pride Month, friend! 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🎉

This June, I'm celebrating and uplifting the LGBTQ+ community in Florida and nationwide, and honoring the brave leaders who fought for their equality and civil rights.

Despite the major advancements the LGBTQ+ community has made in the last 20 years, this month, I'm especially mindful of the ongoing fight to protect those rights against the growing attacks from cruel extremist Republicans at all levels of power, with those from our state leading the charge.

Rick Scott is one of the extremists who use their positions of power to harm the LGBTQ+ community.

Scott was the governor of Florida when the mass shooting at Orlando's Pulse nightclub took place. After this horrific attack on our local LGBTQ+ and Hispanic communities took the lives of 49 people, including our loved ones, friends, and neighbors, his staff promised he'd sign an order banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

That never happened.

And since joining the Senate, he's authored a policy denying the mere existence of trans people and tried to block a law to protect same-sex marriage.

Thanks to the bravery of everyday Floridians, Ron DeSantis' 2022 "Don't Say Gay or Trans" law here at home has been dismantled, nullifying its intended purpose as a tool to discriminate or erase the LGBTQ+ community.

But the fact that it was passed at all proves that the hateful rhetoric and laws pushed by far-right extremists, in Florida or otherwise, is no bluff. And when put in positions of power, these extremists will wield that power to hurt anyone who doesn't look, act, or feel exactly like them. To extinguish their joy. To erase their existence from the fabric of our communities.

But I know I'm not alone when I say ya no más — enough is enough.

I'm running to retire Rick Scott because our government should focus on fixing real problems for Americans of all stripes — like safeguarding reproductive health care access, defending our democracy, and protecting key benefits — not excluding and oppressing the very people we are elected to serve.

In the House, I co-sponsored the Equality Act to strengthen anti-discrimination protections for the LGBTQ+ community, women, and more.

And as Senator, I'll be a proud voice defending LGBTQ+ Floridians' freedoms to live and love as they choose from the extremists dead set on taking them away — starting by getting the Equality Act across the finish line.

But for now, I'm celebrating the LGBTQ+ community in Florida and nationwide as they live and love as their authentic selves, with pride. I hope you will, too.

Thanks for reading, and happy Pride,

Debbie Mucarsel-Powell