And right at the top of that editorial piece, it says:

"The opinions expressed in this editorial are the personal views of the authors (S.E. Kahn, C.A.M. Anderson, J.B. Buse, and E. Selvin) and do not represent those of the American Diabetes Association or the authors’ employers..."

So, the bottom of this seems to be that a journal was hijacked by editors who are interested in doing politics instead of research, used their power to publish political opinion pieces and have them show up with what is apparently the ADA stamp of approval (although the text has to state that's not really the case... but who reads the little text anyway?) and then, not being happy with all that, they still tried to hijack a research conference to do political stunts.