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with Jen Perelman The Activist Life with Jen Perelman The Activist LifewithJen Perelman Wednesday, May 26, 2021 at 9pm ET/6pm PT Register Here Click here to register for the webinar Real Progressives and Real Progress in Action invite you to our national outreach call with Jen Perelman on Wednesday, May 26th, at 9pm ET/6pm PT. Jen Perelman …
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Officials in Palm Beach, Florida, are reportedly preparing for the possibility that an out-of-state extradition request for former President Donald Trump may be issued in the next year. But there’s one huge caveat: They’re unsure how Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, a staunch supporter of the former president, may impede such a request.
Reporting from Politico details how officials in Palm Beach, near Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago, are making specific preparations for the event that he may be charged with crimes in New York, once an investigation by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. is completed. Vance is looking into whether Trump and/or the Trump Organization committed a myriad of possible financial crimes, including tax, banking and insurance fraud, using a process of inflating or deflating Trump’s assets to serve his interests.
An extradition request could come from Vance sometime this year. The Manhattan district attorney is retiring after 2021, and it’s largely assumed that, if he plans to issue indictment charges against Trump, he will do so before leaving office.
The U.S. Constitution requires a state to extradite any person within its jurisdiction to the state where that person is being charged with committing a crime. Federal law also stipulates that the “executive authority” of a state that receives an extradition request must “arrest and secure” the person being sought.
But a Florida statute may make things difficult. Under that state’s laws, the governor is allowed to order officials under their purview to “investigate or assist in investigating the demand,” and to report back to them the situation, after which the governor may determine “whether the person ought to be surrendered.”
In other words, DeSantis — whom Trump has floated as a possible vice presidential running mate in 2024, and who is also the first choice among Republican voters to run for president if Trump opts out of doing so — could look at the evidence Vance puts forward, and decide it is not compelling enough for him to comply. Such a move would likely be viewed as political posturing, as trying to appease the GOP base, which is adamantly pro-Trump.
Should DeSantis decide against extraditing Trump, the matter would undoubtedly go before the U.S. Supreme Court, which would then have to decide who is right in the matter as it’s the arbiter in disputes between states. If that happens, it could play out to Trump’s advantage in two ways.
First, it would delay the process, as the court would have to schedule a time to hear the case, consider the merits as presented by each side, and arrive at a decision. That would give Trump more time to consider other legal options before he ever has to make an appearance in New York to answer for potential charges.
The other advantage Trump would have is the current makeup of the Supreme Court, which is six to three in favor of conservatives, with 50 percent of the conservative bloc made up of Trump appointees (although they have ruled against Trump on other occasions).
Beyond Vance’s investigations in New York, Trump faces at least four other investigations, including one in Georgia led by a Republican, which may also result in extradition requests — giving DeSantis more opportunities to intervene on Trump’s behalf.
Another inquiry in New York, by state Attorney General Letitia James, is also looking into potential financial crimes Trump may have committed. Two inquiries are happening in Georgia, at the state level and in Fulton County, where investigators are looking into whether the former president unlawfully sought to influence officials into changing election results there. And in Washington, D.C., Trump may face future charges relating to his incitement of a mob of his supporters to attack the U.S. Capitol building on January 6.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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Texas House Republicans passed a voter suppression bill early Friday morning despite a tough fight put up by Democrats, who offered over 130 amendments from late Thursday into the night.
Democrats were able to water down the bill, SB 7, and cut into some of the most punitive proposals, but the final vision retained restrictive proposals like limiting ballot drop boxes and prohibiting counties from sending unsolicited absentee ballots.
The House voted at 3 am to advance the bill, which contained 20 of the provisions proposed by Democrats, who had slim chances of outright stopping the bill. Texas’ House is controlled by Republicans by a wide margin; the bill passed 81-64.
The bill will head to committee to reconcile the differences with the version passed by the Texas Senate and clear another vote in both chambers before it goes to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk. Abbott, a Republican, is expected to sign the bill.
Previous versions of SB 7 had many restrictions that raised alarms for racial justice and disability advocates, including a ban on drive-through voting, restrictions on early voting hours, and limits on polling places in areas with larger populations of Black and Latinx residents.
It also contained language plucked straight out of Jim Crow which was eventually removed from the bill. The original text written by Republicans stated that the bill’s purpose was to “preserve the purity of the ballot box,” which Democratic Rep. Rafael Anchía pointed out was explicitly racist.
“You may have missed it then — and this would’ve been very obvious I think to anyone who looked at that language — that provision was drafted specifically to disenfranchise Black people, Black voters in fact, following the Civil War,” Anchia said, per the Texas Tribune. “Did you know that this purity of the ballot box justification was used during the Jim Crow era to prevent Black people from voting?”
Unfortunately, reconciliation in committee could end up removing the Democrats’ amendments, and much of the restrictions could be put back in place in the final bill. Former federal Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas), through Twitter, encouraged Texans to call their representatives and urge them to vote down the ultimate version of the bill.
He also encouraged residents to call their federal senator and voice their support for Democrats’ For the People Act, which could help undo some of the harmful voter suppression legislation that Republicans have been putting forth in states across the country.
“This bill would not only stop voter suppression efforts in Texas, but would do so in Georgia, Arizona, Kansas, etc,” tweeted O’Rourke. “This is the most important thing we can do for voting rights in America.”
Florida was the latest state to pass Republican-led restrictions on elections, joining Georgia in imposing racist voter suppression laws. On Thursday, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Florida) signed a bill acutely limiting ballot drop boxes, banning handing out food and water in voting lines, and empowering partisan poll watchers to challenge ballots.
DeSantis locked out all media except for Fox News when he signed the bill that would affect the millions of voters in his state. Democrats balked at the decision.
“The bill signing of a voter suppression bill by our Governor is a ‘Fox Exclusive’ — when did public policy become an exclusive to any media company, let alone a hyper conservative one?!” wrote Florida Democratic State Rep. Anna Eskamani on Twitter. “This is how fascism works y’all — and if you’re proud about the bill let people see you sign it!”
Several groups have filed lawsuits over the Florida bill. The League of Women Voters of Florida and Black Voters Matters Fund have alleged that the bill is unconstitutional. The NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and Common Cause soon followed with a lawsuit against the Florida secretary of state, saying that the bill causes undue restrictions on voting. And the League of United Latin American Citizens is suing the state and asking the U.S. Justice Department to investigate the Republicans who sponsored the bill.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill into law on Thursday imposing new restrictions on voting, such as making it harder to vote by mail and criminalizing the handing out of food and water to people in voting lines.
The governor made the signing of the bill, which would affect millions of voters in his state, a “Fox exclusive,” as a spokesperson said, according to South Florida Sun-Sentinel columnist Steve Bousquet, allowing only the conservative media outlet to show the signing. DeSantis claimed in an interview with “Fox & Friends” that the bill was about “integrity and transparency” even though voting rights advocates have decried the measures that make it harder to vote, especially for nonwhite voters.
The bill, SB 90, adds new ID requirements for those requesting an absentee ballot and requires those requesting an absentee ballot to file a request before each election, rather than allowing them to remain on an absentee voter list. It also limits the number of ballot drop boxes, places restrictions on who can drop off ballots and requires drop boxes to be monitored by an election official.
Democrats and voting advocates have criticized the law, saying that it places undue restrictions on a voting process that had shown no evidence of widespread fraud.
The League of Women Voters of Florida, Black Voters Matters Fund and Florida Alliance for Retired Americans filed a lawsuit against SB 90 on Thursday, saying that multiple elements of the bill, such as banning the handing out of food and water, are unconstitutional and a violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Voters from every county in the state also joined the suit.
“SB 90 is a bill that purports to solve problems that do not exist, caters to a dangerous lie about the 2020 election that threatens our most basic democratic values, and, in the end, makes it harder to vote without adequate justification for doing so,” reads the groups’ complaint. “SB 90 does not impede all of Florida’s voters equally. It is crafted to and will operate to make it more difficult for certain types of voters to participate in the state’s elections” — especially nonwhite, older and young or first-time voters.
The bill isn’t about election integrity for Republicans, say the bill’s opponents, but about the continuation of an attack on voting started by former President Donald Trump.
“We are not here because we have a problem with our elections,” said Democratic State Rep. Omari Hardy. “We are here because the Republican former president lost his re-election in November, and, rather than admitting his defeat, he spun a web of lies, radicalized those lies, in an attempt to explain away the loss.” Hardy also described the bill as “the revival of Jim Crow in this state.”
The oppressive nature of the bill was underscored by the fact that the governor wouldn’t allow local news outlets to show the bill’s signing.
“It’s extremely telling that DeSantis claims new Florida voter suppression law intended to boost ‘election integrity’ but barred all media except Fox News from covering bill signing,” wrote Mother Jones reporter Ari Berman on Twitter.
“This isn’t a story about the press being locked out of an event. It’s about Floridians who had their eyes and ears in that room cut off,” wrote Jay O’Brien, a reporter for CBS 12 in West Palm Beach. “Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a law today that will impact ALL Floridians. And only some viewers were allowed to see it. That’s not normal.”
Texas is up next for voter suppression bills. The Republican-led HB 6, which would make it a felony for election officials to mail an absentee ballot to a voter who didn’t request one, among other restrictive provisions, advanced to a floor vote on Thursday. Republicans control the House in the state by a wide margin.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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If you’re not a Republican, you probably spent the morning grinding your teeth around your coffee. The census data is finally in, and the results as offered are galling for the current majority party. The combination of a raging pandemic and, it seems, some surprisingly deft meddling by the Trump administration has delivered five new House seats to bright red states, all of which came from blue states.
Adding insult to injury, according to FiveThirtyEight, is this: “With legislatures and commissions all over the country about to draw new congressional maps, states where Republicans have full control of the redistricting process added two seats on net (four seats gained, two lost). Meanwhile, the few states where Democrats wield the redistricting pen subtracted one seat on net (one gained, two lost).”
There is, of course, no guarantee that those new red-state seats will go to a Republican, but with GOP legislatures in those states in charge of drawing the district maps, odds of a Democratic pickup are fantastically long. Mr. Gerry, your mander is waiting.
Overall, state-lever Republican legislatures will have control over the redrawing of 187 congressional districts nationwide, more than twice as many as the Democrats, who will control the redrawing of 75 districts. The redrawing of 167 districts will be controlled by neither party, and six districts will not be redrawn at all. With House Democrats already clinging to a tiny majority, these numbers make the ’22 midterms fraught with electoral peril.
The top page of the political fallout report is straightforward: Power has once again shifted to the South, along with the population growth that brings new seats to a state. Texas and Florida won big — Texas picked up two seats from this census, and Florida gained one. New York State narrowly lost one seat, and California lost a seat for the first time in its 170-year history. States with diminishing populations such as West Virginia also lost representation.
How did this happen? Three reasons stand out.
First, and by the available numbers, the U.S. over the last decade saw the lowest overall population growth since the Great Depression, at 7.4 percent. “Experts say that paltry pace reflects the combination of an aging population, slowing immigration and the scars of the Great Recession more than a decade ago,” reports the Associated Press, “which led many young adults to delay marriage and families.”
A movement of workers to Sun Belt cities also played a part, and may be a thread of good news for Democrats: These are the voters who made the ’18 and ’20 contests so close in suburban areas like those surrounding Houston and Phoenix.
The second reason was COVID, period. As with every other aspect of life over the last 14 months, the pandemic threw a whole bag of monkey wrenches into the census process. Some people complete the census online, others fill out the mailer that got sent to their homes, but millions of people are best reached by census workers knocking on doors in poor, rural and immigrant communities and counting noses. The pandemic made reaching many marginalized communities difficult at best, and dangerous at worst. Note well that COVID became overwhelming because the Trump administration refused to take the necessary steps to contain it.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, former President Donald Trump and his administration labored mightily to disrupt and destroy the census process at every turn. For an administration noted for its aversion to hard work, they sure put the hours in trying to blow up the count.
There was the attempted addition of a citizenship question to the census, a flatly racist and illegal move made clear by the fact that the Constitution requires an accounting of “residents,” not “citizens.” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross interfered with the census deadline dates with some help from a right-leaning Supreme Court, which allowed the Commerce Department to end the census earlier than planned.
Did former senior policy adviser Stephen Miller or someone like him get in Trump’s ear and convince him a COVID-disrupted census would serve him and his party? We will likely never know, but even the most cursory examination makes it clear Trump’s nihilistic reaction to the pandemic was at least partly intentional.
“Make no mistake, this is not simply a malicious and undemocratic move ahead of an election,” CEO of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service Krish O’Mara Vignarajah told NBC News as this fight was unfolding in early August. “Its impact is real and will be felt devastatingly so for a decade by communities that have been marginalized since the dawn of the nation. Immigrants are people and must be afforded the opportunity to be counted. We cannot go back to the time in our country where people were not counted as full human beings.”
Here, again, is evidence that the influence of the Trump administration will echo down the halls of history far longer than the four years they spent tearing the place up. Between then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s court-packing and Trump’s disruption of the census, a Trump-devoted minority in this country will continue to wield a level of influence belied by its size.
Then again, 74 million people looked over the wreckage of Trump’s four years and said, “More, please,” last November. Compounding that grim fact, Republicans at the state level have done a far better job at bunkering into their power bases than Democrats over the last 20 years, and moments like this are when those efforts yield fruit. There is, however, some cold comfort in the fact that a number of experts expected GOP gains from this census to be far more significant.
These are the numbers a corrupted and disrupted census process has delivered. These numbers reveal the vast influence of authoritarians, racists and a virus deliberately left unchecked. They are also numbers that reflect a far more right-leaning country than we knew, after those 74 million voters raised their hands. It is entirely dispiriting, but perhaps after everything we have seen, not so terribly surprising in the end.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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Republican Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt has signed a new law that would grant protections for drivers who hit and kill protesters while attempting to drive away from a protest and implements harsher penalties on people who block roads or highways during a protest. Democrats and activists decried the law as stifling protest and citizens’ First Amendment rights.
HB 1674, which Republican legislators passed earlier this week, grants civil and criminal immunity for drivers who “unintentionally” harm or kill protesters while “fleeing from a riot,” as long as there is a “reasonable belief that fleeing was necessary.”
“This legislation is not about safety,” said Nicole McAfee, director of policy and advocacy at the Oklahoma American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), in a statement. “It is about centering the convenience of people who already have the power and protections of the law. It is about responding to calls for transparency by protesters and the media with the criminalization of those transparency efforts.”
Broad language in the law may allow for clashing interpretations on how protections are granted. Without a definition in the bill for what circumstances would be deemed “necessary” or “unintentional,” the bill leaves the language up to potentially broad interpretation.
Brandon Tucker, policy director of the ACLU in Tennessee, noted the danger of laws with such broad language on CNN when talking about similar legislation being considered by legislators in Tennessee that would grant immunity to drivers who “unintentionally” kill a protester and criminalize certain forms of protest. “This vague and troubling suppression of free speech can easily be abused, leading to the criminalization of protesters’ words and beliefs,” Tucker said.
The bill also increases penalties for protesters who block roadways during a protest. It makes blocking a roadway a misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in prison and a hefty $5,000 fine. In the wake of nationwide protests for Black lives, many have said the bill is racist and seeks to push harsher penalties on oppressed people who often need to protest in order to make their voices heard.
Oklahoma State Sen. Kevin Matthews, a Democrat, denounced the bill. It’s not right “that we’re trying to … keep people from protesting when African Americans are killed unarmed,” Matthews told The Oklahoman.
“In this state, it is oftentimes the marginalized voices that aren’t oftentimes heard, and these are why they do the protests that they’ve done,” Young Democrats of America President and Oklahoman Joshua Harris-Till told Public Radio Tulsa last month.
The bill comes as Republicans are pushing through a wave of anti-protest legislation across the country. Just in this legislative session, the GOP has filed 81 anti-protest laws in 34 states as backlash against the growing movement for Black lives. Many, such as the bill just passed in Florida, similarly grant protections to drivers who harm protesters. Others seek harsh penalties on protesters and widen the definition of the word “riot” in order to target demonstrators.
“These bills talk about ‘riots,’ but the language that they use is so sweeping that it encompasses way more than what people imagine,” Elly Page, legal adviser for International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, told USA Today. Many bills, Page said, criminalize “legitimate First Amendment-protected protest.”
Some bills also target low-income protesters by making them ineligible for government aid like student loans and food stamps if they’re convicted with protest-related charges. “It’s so devious, selectively silencing people,” Page told USA Today. “This is the kind of penalty that really impacts certain communities and not others.”
Republicans are likely passing these bills with the knowledge that right-wing protesters are much less likely to face violence and hostility from law enforcement than left-wing protesters are. Many of the states considering anti-protest laws already have punishments for rioting, so activists have been left to speculate about what Republicans are actually trying to achieve.
“These anti-freedom policies are passed with a veil over their true intentions,” said Tamya Cox-Touré, executive director of the Oklahoma ACLU, in a statement about the recently passed law, adding that the laws aim “to chill speech, criminalize accountability, and let us all know that a majority of the legislature cares more about protecting the deadly power of the state than they do about rights and liberties, or even public safety.”
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Florida) signed a controversial bill into law on Monday that diminishes First Amendment speech and protesting rights. The bill increases civil penalties for those participating in demonstrations, potentially causing those engaged in uprisings or protests to lose their voting rights if they are convicted under its provisions.
The legislation, billed as an “anti-riot” measure by its Republican proponents, would create new crimes, including making “aggravated rioting” a felony and “mob intimidation” a misdemeanor. The latter makes it illegal for a group of three or more individuals to confront others and intimidate them into changing their views — a provision that has the potential to be broadly interpreted, say critics.
During the signing ceremony for the bill, DeSantis tried to justify that specific provision using questionable rationale while recalling a viral video in order to make his point.
“We saw images of people just sitting outside eating at a restaurant,” DeSantis said. “Then you have this crazed mob circle around them and start screaming and really intimidating. I’m sorry that’s unacceptable. You’re gonna be held accountable.”
The video to which the Florida governor is referring, however, involved protesters who were walking up the street and restaurant patrons, not demonstrators, being the aggressors as they shouted anti-Semitic slurs at the protesters. The video of the incident went viral in right-wing circles because it omitted actions of those at the restaurant and focused solely on a few peoples’ responses to their hateful conduct.
It is possible, under a broad interpretation of the new statute, that the individual in that video and others defending themselves against hate speech could be charged with mob intimidation.
DeSantis also tried to justify provisions of the law that limit local municipalities from defunding their police departments and using those funds for social services projects, claiming that places that have already done this in Florida have “seen crime go up.” A fact-check from WMNF Community Conscious Radio, however, found that “there has been no reported evidence linking spikes in crime to reductions in police budgets,” contradicting DeSantis’s claims.
Beyond those new laws, the bill also goes on to establish stiffer penalties for already existing statutes, including making it a felony crime (rather than a misdemeanor) to block traffic on a highway during an uprising. Individuals arrested for “riot” related crimes will also not be able to post bail until their first court appearance.
Because of a federal circuit court opinion last year, those convicted of a felony crime under this new law could face serious repercussions, including losing their right to vote even after completing their sentence.
The law is dangerous in other ways, too, in that it grants protections to people who use violence against demonstrators engaged in uprisings or protest events. Under the law’s provisions, those driving on a road or highway while a protest is occurring are granted civil immunity protections if they drive their vehicles into the crowd, causing harm to those taking part in the demonstration. This is similar to an Oklahoma law that was recently passed by the state legislature, which also provides protections for drivers who use their vehicles to harm groups exercising their First Amendment rights of speech and assembly.
There has been widespread criticism of the new law over its many controversial provisions.
DeSantis has “made it more dangerous for the people here in our state, who want to stand up against injustice, and make changes to society,” Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, a potential challenger to DeSantis, said.
In a tweet on Monday, Fried added that the new law signed by the governor “is a flagrant assault on freedom that criminalizes peaceful protests.”
“This will move Florida backwards on social justice, silencing voices only asking that their lives be valued the same as other Americans,” she wrote.
Adora Obi Nweze, President of NAACP Florida State Conference, also described the law as being “racist, discriminatory, unwise, unlawful, and unjust.”
“The Governor put his stamp on this discriminatory law filled with criminalization and civil rights disenfranchisement aimed at Black and Brown Floridians,” she added. “We won’t sit silent on this issue and we won’t let this stop peaceful protests across the state of Florida.”
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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Tallahassee, Fla. – This morning, just days after the Republican-led Florida Senate voted to pass an unprecedented, costly and racially charged bill (House Bill 1) to censor protest, preempt local policing budgets and preserve symbols of white supremacy, Governor DeSantis is signing it into law. The bill passed despite widespread opposition by Floridians of all political ideologies and diverse sectors, after Governor DeSantis made it his number one legislative priority and lobbied behind doors to make sure it passed both Chambers as early as possible. The new law, which does nothing more than silence dissent and criminalize peaceful protestors, will disproportionately censor, incarcerate, and kill Black Floridians simply exercising their constitutional rights, setting a dangerous precedent of criminalization and repression.
The post Governor DeSantis Signs Unprecedented Anti-Protest And Anti-Public Safety Law appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
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Florida workers over the weekend rushed to prevent the collapse of a reservoir wall containing hundreds of millions of gallons of wastewater from a defunct phosphate mine, a looming environmental catastrophe that prompted mandatory evacuation orders and a declaration of emergency by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.
A leak in the Piney Point reservoir was first reported late last month, sparking fears of a complete breach and possible upending of stacks of phosphogypsum, a radioactive waste product of fertilizer manufacturing. During a briefing on Saturday, a public safety official for Florida’s Manatee County warned that “structural collapse” of the storage reservoir “could occur at any time.”
To prevent a full-fledged breach and contain spillage, local work crews on Sunday continued actively pumping tens of thousands of gallons of toxic wastewater per minute into Tampa Bay. As The Guardian reported Sunday, Manatee County officials “warned that up to 340 million gallons could engulf the area in ‘a 20-foot wall of water’ if they could not repair” the leak.
Let’s be clear. This “mixed saltwater” is industrial wastewater. Acidic, full of nitrogen and phosphorus and oh yeah, radioactive! #PineyPoint https://t.co/8vYu1mIXsE
— Dr. Jayne Gardiner (@GardinerLab) April 3, 2021
Justin Bloom, founder of the Sarasota-based nonprofit group Suncoast Waterkeeper, said in a statement Sunday that “we hope the contamination is not as bad as we fear, but are preparing for significant damage to Tampa Bay and the communities that rely on this precious resource.”
“It looks like this is turning out to be the ‘horror’ chapter of a long, terrible story of phosphate mining in Florida and beyond,” Bloom added.
Aerial footage posted to YouTube by a local news outlet shows the leak at the Piney Point reservoir as of Sunday morning:
The Environmental Protection Agency said late Sunday that it is “actively monitoring the ongoing situation at Piney Point” and has “deployed an on-scene coordinator” to work with local officials.
Jaclyn Lopez, Florida director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said Sunday that the crisis was “entirely foreseeable and preventable” and cries out for immediate intervention by the federal government.
“With 24 more phosphogypsum stacks storing more than one billion tons of this dangerous, radioactive waste in Florida, the EPA needs to step in right now,” Lopez said. “Federal officials need to clean up this mess the fertilizer industry has dumped on Florida communities and immediately halt further phosphogypsum production.”
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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Hello! Hello out there! Hello? (knocks on mic) Is this thing on? Can you hear me in the back? Ready?
IT’S NOT OVER YET.
There were more than 65,000 COVID-19 cases reported on Friday, and almost 60,000 cases reported on Saturday. The seven-day average for infections stands at 56,348, with a national total soon to top 30 million. Almost 1,000 people are dying per day, and more than 542,000 are already gone. All of those numbers are incredibly awful. It’s not over yet. Not even damn close.
Cases have spiked in 21 states, most significantly in New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Rhode Island and Michigan. Overtopping all is Florida, where scenes of beaches, bars and streets packed with unmasked Spring Break revelers make for a galling counterpoint to the experts on TV split screens pleading with viewers to locate a molecule of responsibility. Most of those party people are not from Florida, and when they return home, at least some will almost certainly take COVID with them wherever they go.
Cognitive dissonance abounds in Michigan, too. The state reported 2,660 more new cases and 47 more deaths as of Friday, a spike that momentarily leads the national pack. Several regions in the state have been moved back up to the highest measurement level of risk. “We may be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, but we’re still in the tunnel,” Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said on Friday. “The only way out is to move forward and to do it together.”
An odd declaration, that, since it was Governor Whitmer who on the same day announced that Michigan stadiums and arenas can begin allowing people inside as of Monday (albeit at 20 percent capacity). For a state standing at the highest risk level in many places, with infections and deaths spiking, the cognitive dissonance of Whitmer’s warning in combination with her stadium/arena decision is bewildering. Unfortunately, Whitmer is not alone.
“The concern is that throughout the country, there are a number of state, city, regions that are pulling back on some of the mitigation methods that we’ve been talking about: the withdrawal of mask mandates, the pulling back to essentially non-public health measures being implemented,” COVID expert Anthony Fauci said at a Friday briefing. “So it is unfortunate but not surprising to me that you are seeing increases in number of cases per day in areas — cities, states, or regions — even though vaccines are being distributed at a pretty good clip of 2 to 3 million per day. That could be overcome if certain areas pull back prematurely on the mitigation and public health measures that we all talk about.”
It has been a year of COVID-19, and still there are leaders who refuse to see this situation as it is: 1 to 0. Either we manage this thing properly or we don’t. It is not 1.1, a little give and take because we’re tired of the restrictions. COVID has proven every day that it will take that 0.1 and run up our noses with it, and it is happening again.
Beyond the basic fact of saving lives and protecting health, the need to knuckle up and crush this thing is pressing because of what happens when we don’t: variants. An unchecked virus like this allowed to breed and breed will eventually mutate, and mutate again, until it becomes something our science has not seen. This is already taking place.
“The highly contagious variant first identified in the U.K. likely accounts for up to 30% of Covid infections in the U.S. Health officials say the variant could become dominant,” reports CNBC. “The variant is seen as the cause of Europe’s third coronavirus wave. Several countries including France and Italy have imposed new lockdown measures to mitigate virus spread as cases surge.”
Thus far, vaccines have proven to be effective against the variants, according to experts like Fauci. CNN reports that, regarding the U.K. variant, “vaccines appear to protect well against B.1.1.7 and treatments such as monoclonal antibodies also appear to work against this particular variant, Fauci said. That makes it more important than ever to get people vaccinated quickly, he said.”
If we lose the vaccination footrace with COVID, however, those vaccines could become little more than vials of tap water in the fight against an onslaught of highly contagious, highly lethal variants. In no small part, the crashing negligence of the previous administration has us already in a place where variants have happened. Keeping more from becoming active is one of our most important tasks as a species right now.
The task is daunting, because it is not just COVID in the United States we must reckon with. Two known variants have already risen from the United Kingdom and South Africa, and Brazil has become a horrifying petri dish for more, including a ruthless variant designated as P1.
“Brazil is experiencing a historic collapse of its health service as intensive care units in hospitals run out of capacity, its leading health institute, Fiocruz, has warned,” reports the BBC. “Covid-19 units in all but two of Brazil’s 27 states are at or above 80% capacity, according to Fiocruz. In Rio Grande do Sul state there are no intensive care beds available at all. The warning came as the country registered its highest daily death toll yet with 2,841 dying within 24 hours…. The latest surge in cases has been attributed to the spread of highly contagious variants of the virus.” (Emphasis added.)
“PAY ATTENTION,” comes the Twitter warning from noted epidemiologist and health economist Eric Feigl-Ding. “There is one crisis we all needs to pay attention to — and that is the unprecedented Brazil surge of the P1 variant, overloaded hospitals, & sharp mortality spike. If more contagious P1 out of control worldwide, we are all endangered.”
P1, first discovered in Brazil, is much more contagious than the original COVID-19. According to Forbes, “To date, at least 48 cases of the variant have been reported in over 16 states, and is now present in at least 25 other countries.” P1 is present in Florida, right alongside all those Spring Breakers, and has most recently been found by Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York. The New York patient is a resident of Brooklyn with no travel history.
This is the last thing folks want to hear right now, but it is the truth and must be spoken at top volume from all the rooftops: We must stay the course.
Now, when the sun is coming back and the vaccines are flying. Now, even as your head is filled with wind and straw from the desolation of this year. Now, though your children are climbing the walls and gnawing on the furniture. Now is the hardest part, because of all that, and because it is not over yet.
Not only must we stick to the dreary business of COVID self-defense in all its grinding forms. We must, as a nation, become an ambassador of those vaccines. We must give them away by the millions to other nations, particularly those acutely afflicted, as soon as we are able. If we do not, nations like Brazil, the U.K., South Africa, and others will keep introducing COVID variants into the global slipstream, and we could wind up all the way back to where we started, but with a million dead to contemplate in the obsidian darkness of another long winter.
Please do not choose that fate.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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Gov. Ron DeSantis and some other Florida Republicans are worked up over a perceived threat to the freedom of speech of politicians, but they’re ignoring a more significant threat to the public’s right to speak.
They’re upset that Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms have begun to suppress posts they deem flagrantly false or socially offensive, particularly those from their favorite ex-president.
But that isn’t a First Amendment issue. Those are private corporations, not government entities.
The legitimate First Amendment threat they are ignoring is the misuse of Florida’s courts to suppress and punish attempts by citizens to influence government agencies on issues involving public versus private interests.
The post The Real Threat To Free Speech? Florida’s Courts appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
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Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis announced late last week that he would soon order flags in his state to be lowered to half-mast to recognize controversial conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh, who died on Wednesday. But at least one executive branch official is planning to buck such an order.
Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, a Democrat who oversees several government properties, said she wouldn’t comply with the governor’s decree to honor Limbaugh.
“Lowering to half-staff the flag of the United States of America is a sacred honor that pays respect to fallen heroes and patriots. It is not a partisan political tool,” she said in a statement.
All parts of state government under Fried’s purview — which include around two dozen inspection stations, nine licensing offices, and over three dozen state forests — will “disregard the Governor’s forthcoming order to lower flags for Mr. Limbaugh — because we will not celebrate hate speech, bigotry, and division,” she explained.
DeSantis had originally announced his intention to lower flags in the state for Limbaugh during a press briefing on Friday. He described the honor as something that the state does for important figures “when there’s things of this magnitude.”
DeSantis also said Limbaugh was “an absolute legend, he was a friend of mine and just a great person.”
But in an interview regarding the matter, Fried explained that Limbaugh was not a deserving recipient of the honor.
“My concern is that the governor is bending over backwards to honor a radio host who has consistently made racist, polarizing and conspiracy comments,” Fried said on Monday.
I will not lower the flags at my Department’s state offices for Rush Limbaugh. Lowering our flag should reflect unity, not division — and raising our standards, not lowering them. https://t.co/HqtzeoUHkr
— Nikki Fried (@nikkifried) February 22, 2021
Other elected officials, including St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman, have also said they wouldn’t acknowledge DeSantis’s order.
“In St. Pete we don’t honor hatred, racism, bigotry, homophobia, or anything else he has spewed over the years,” Kriseman explained.
Limbaugh was indeed a giant in talk radio, but not necessarily in ways that many would deem to be positive. His radio program was frequently light on policy discussion and heavy on personal attacks toward others or toward groups of people, including feminists, members of the LGBTQ community, and communities of color.
Upon his death last week, several users on social media logged on to remind the world of the many ways he spread hatred and vitriol on the radio, including calling a proponent of birth control a “slut” and a “prostitute” for her advocacy on the subject in front of Congress; promulgating conspiracy theories based on lies, such as “birtherism,” which alleged that former President Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States (and was therefore an illegitimate president); and producing a regular segment on his show where he played celebratory music while reveling in the deaths of LGBTQ individuals who had succumbed to HIV/AIDS.
Florida’s flag protocol would not ordinarily allow for an individual like Limbaugh to receive the honor of their being flown at half-mast. The governor is generally allowed to only lower flags “in the event of the death of a present or former official of the Florida State government or the death of a member of the Armed Forces from Florida who dies while serving on active duty,” per the state’s policy.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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In September 2020, Robert DuBoise walked free after spending almost 37 years in a Florida prison for a 1983 rape and murder he did not commit. He was exonerated after new DNA testing of the crime scene evidence that was thought to have been destroyed excluded him as the assailant. However, under the current state law, Ms. DuBoise is ineligible to receive compensation for the nearly four decades he was stripped of his freedom.
Support Robert with a gift to his personal fundraiser.
After his exoneration, Tampa Bay Buccaneers players read about Mr. DuBoise and were moved and outraged by his story of injustice. When these players, who also serve on the team’s Social Justice Initiative Board, learned that Mr. DuBoise is considered ineligible for compensation under Florida’s incredibly restrictive law, they stepped up to help him rebuild his life. This week, NFL360 released a powerful segment highlighting their efforts to team up in support of Mr. DuBoise and shine a light on the broken compensation system in Florida.
Help fix Florida’s compensation law in 2021.
The generosity and commitment of the Buccaneers has uplifted Mr. DuBoise, but there are more wrongfully convicted people like him who have received nothing from the State of Florida. Only five of Florida’s 31 exonerees have received any compensation. This means the majority of exonerated Floridians had nothing to pay for the most basic necessities upon reentry, such as clothes, food, housing and medical services. While Florida is one of the 35 states that do compensate the innocent, the law is deeply flawed. A strict filing deadline for compensation claims and a “clean hands” provision bar many individuals from receiving the reparations to which they should be entitled. Without legislative change in Florida, Mr. DuBoise and dozens of other exonerees may never receive compensation for the injustice they survived.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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In September 2020, Robert DuBoise walked free after spending almost 37 years in a Florida prison for a 1983 rape and murder he did not commit. He was exonerated after new DNA testing of the crime scene evidence that was thought to have been destroyed excluded him as the assailant. However, under the current state law, Mr. DuBoise is ineligible to receive compensation for the nearly four decades he was stripped of his freedom.
After his exoneration, Tampa Bay Buccaneers players read about Mr. DuBoise and were moved and outraged by his story of injustice. When these players, who also serve on the team’s Social Justice Initiative Board, learned that Mr. DuBoise is considered ineligible for compensation under Florida’s incredibly restrictive law, they stepped up to help him rebuild his life. This week, NFL360 released a powerful segment and feature highlighting their efforts to team up in support of Mr. DuBoise and shine a light on the broken compensation system in Florida.
Watch
The generosity and commitment of the Buccaneers has uplifted Mr. DuBoise, but there are more wrongfully convicted people like him who have received nothing from the State of Florida. Only five of Florida’s 31 exonerees have received any compensation. This means the majority of exonerated Floridians had nothing to pay for the most basic necessities upon reentry, such as clothes, food, housing and medical services. While Florida is one of the 35 states that do compensate the innocent, the law is deeply flawed. A strict filing deadline for compensation claims and a “clean hands” provision bar many individuals from receiving the reparations to which they should be entitled. Without legislative change in Florida, Mr. DuBoise and dozens of other exonerees may never receive compensation for the injustice they survived.
The post Tampa Bay Buccaneers Team Up With Robert DuBoise on NFL Network appeared first on Innocence Project.
This post was originally published on Innocence Project.
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Quickly delivering donated organs to patients waiting for a transplant is a matter of life and death. Yet transportation errors are leading to delays in surgeries, putting patients in danger and making some organs unusable.
This episode originally was broadcast Feb. 8, 2020.
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This post was originally published on Reveal.
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The federal government’s early failures to manage the coronavirus shifted a heavy burden to local officials. We look at how decision-makers in two states, California and Florida, found their way to shutdown and beyond.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
This post was originally published on Reveal.
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Across the country, criminals are arming themselves in unexpected ways. In Florida, they’re stealing guns from unlocked cars and gun stores. In other places, they’re getting them from the police themselves, as cash-strapped departments sell their used weapons to buy new ones. On this episode of Reveal, we learn where criminals get their guns and what cars can teach us about gun safety.
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To explore more reporting, visit revealnews.org or find us on fb.com/ThisIsReveal, Twitter @reveal or Instagram @revealnews.
This post was originally published on Reveal.