In the news today: A Senate parliamentarian ruling appears to sharply limit new reconciliation options, giving Republicans a boost in their efforts to block new infrastructure spending. 100 scholars issue a public warning that Republican actions are putting the nation’s democracy at dire risk. And Joe Biden singles out two Democratic senators who continue to protect a Senate tradition long used to sabotage civil and voting rights.

I wanted to write about this simply because I didn’t want it to be overlooked. You can make of it what you will. I know what I make of it, and it’s disturbing. As reported by Summer Concepcion, forTalkingPointsMemo:

More than 100 democracy scholars called on Congress to pass national level voting rights legislation as an increasing number of GOP-led state legislatures work to implement restrictive laws at the state level in a statement issued Tuesday.

During a school board meeting on May 25, 2021, an elementary school physical education teacher in Loudoun County, Virginia, opposed a policy that would require teachers to use student’s correct pronouns. Some outlets—and people—may refer to these as “preferred pronouns,” in that they differ from the sex one was assigned at birth. However, they really are just pronouns, and the correct ones, at that.

A Georgia woman who was asked to drive into work for a six-minute meeting took the kind of leap of faith many only wish they can take. Portia Twidt got dressed, took her two children to day care, and drove into the office like she was required to do, but then she quit, Bloomberg reported. “I had just had it,” she told the news site.

If I were to tell you that Donald Trump’s proposed “Garden of Heroes” was being resurrected by the Biden administration to form the basis of a new national theme park, one with blackjack and bumper cars, would you believe me? You might, because it is an objectively spectacular idea and it’d be a damn shame if nobody followed up on that.