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Category: florida

  • DeSantis Sent Planes of Migrants to Martha’s Vineyard. Residents Welcomed Them.

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday claimed credit for sending two planes carrying migrants to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts.

    DeSantis, apparently seeking to one-up Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, who have sent buses carrying migrants to Democrat-led cities that have expressed support for migrant protections regardless of their status, sent two planes carrying undocumented migrants to Massachusetts, which has a Republican governor. A spokesperson for DeSantis said the governor is targeting locations with “sanctuary” policies as part of a $12 million program the state authorized to remove undocumented migrants, according to Fox News, which first reported the stunt.

    “States like Massachusetts, New York, and California will better facilitate the care of these individuals who they have invited into our country by incentivizing illegal immigration through their designation as ‘sanctuary states’ and support for the Biden Administration’s open border policies,” DeSantis spokeswoman Taryn Fenske told the outlet.

    DeSantis, who is running for re-election and has been widely discussed as a potential 2024 presidential contender, previously threatened to send migrants to Democrat-led states and sued the Biden administration over immigration enforcement.

    About 50 migrants from Venezuela and Colombia traveling from San Antonio through Florida arrived at Martha’s Vineyard Airport on Wednesday, according to local news reports.

    Massachusetts state Rep. Dylan Fernandes, a Democrat, decried the stunt as “evil and inhumane” but touted local support for the new arrivals.

    “Many don’t know where they are. They say they were told they would be given housing and jobs,” he tweeted. “Islanders were given no notice but are coming together as a community to support them.”

    A spokesperson for Republican Gov. Charlie Barker told Axios that the governor’s office is “in touch with local officials regarding the arrival of migrants in Martha’s Vineyard.”

    “At this time, short-term shelter services are being provided by local officials, and the Administration will continue to support those efforts,” Baker spokesperson Terry MacCormack told the outlet.

    Fernandes said the migrants were “not met with chaos” but with “compassion.”

    “Our island jumped into action putting together 50 beds, giving everyone a good meal, providing a play area for the children, making sure people have the healthcare and support they need,” he wrote. “We are a community that comes together to support immigrants.”

    State Sen. Julian Cyr, a Democrat who represents Martha’s Vineyard, told CNN that officials scrambled to set up hurricane-style shelters after receiving no prior notice of the arrivals.

    “They set that up in a matter of hours and these families received a meal,” he said. “They were Covid tested and are spending the night in shelters at several churches on the island.”

    Rep. Bill Keating, D-Mass., whose district includes the island, tweeted that residents are called DeSantis’ “bluff and rising to meet the challenge because that’s what Americans do.”

    “History does not look kindly on leaders who treat human beings like cargo, loading them up and sending them a thousand miles away,” he wrote, blasting DeSantis’ decision to “prioritize cruelty & chaos over human dignity in today’s taxpayer-funded stunt.”

    Back home, a coalition of Venezuelan-American groups announced a Thursday press conference to condemn the stunt, accusing DeSantis of a “blatant disregard for human life” and of lying to Cuban and Venezuelan communities earlier this month when he vowed not to send migrants from those countries out of state, according to Florida Today.

    “Even for Ron DeSantis, this is a new low,” Florida Democratic Chairman Manny Diaz said in a statement. “There is nothing that DeSantis won’t do, and nobody that he won’t hurt, in order to score political points… Ron DeSantis is playing games with the lives of people who came here in search of freedom and opportunity in order to boost his campaign fundraising and Fox News ratings.”

    Former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, the Democratic nominee facing DeSantis in his re-election battle, condemned his opponent for “spending $12 million to fly innocent migrant children out of our state when that money could be spent on fighting to help Floridians and lower costs.”

    “Everything Ron DeSantis does is to score political points and feed red meat to his base in his thinly veiled attempt to run for President – but it’s really Floridians who pay the price,” he tweeted, adding that “this is just another political stunt that hurts our state.”

  • DeSantis’s Election Police Arrest 20 People Ahead of Florida’s Primary Election

    Ahead of Tuesday’s primary election in Florida, Republican Governor Ron DeSantis’s new Office of Election Crimes and Security made its first arrests of people it alleged engaged in voter fraud in the 2020 election. Almost all those charged were people who were formerly incarcerated and mistakenly thought they were eligible to vote. People of all political affiliations “are now being dragged from their homes in handcuffs because all they ever wanted to do was participate in democracy,” says Desmond Meade, president of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, who spearheaded an initiative to reenfranchise people with prior felony convictions, before it was overturned by Republicans.

    TRANSCRIPT

    This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

    AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

    We turn now to Florida, where the newly formed Office of Election Crimes and Security has made its first arrests of people it accuses of committing voter fraud tied to the 2020 election. The arrests come just as voters are set to go to the polls Tuesday in the state’s primary. The office was a pet project of Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, who announced the arrests Thursday.

    GOV. RON DESANTIS: The state of Florida has charged and is in the process of arresting 20 individuals across the state for voter fraud.

    AMY GOODMAN: Many of those arrested were people who were formerly incarcerated. The state said they did not have their voting rights properly restored or were ineligible due to their convictions.

    For more, we go to Orlando, Florida, to speak with Desmond Meade, president of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, which works with returning citizens on restoring their voting rights. They’re helping some first-time voters hitting the polls for the primary. He’s also chairman of the Floridians for a Fair Democracy, spearheaded Amendment 4, which reenfranchised more than 1.4 million Floridians, but then Republican lawmakers overturned that. His latest book is titled Let My People Vote: My Battle to Restore the Civil Rights of Returning Citizens.

    Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Desmond. If you could start off by explaining what is going on? Who were these people arrested? What message was being sent? And go back to when you really spearheaded this movement, that got overwhelmingly approved in Florida, that returning citizens, as you say, formerly incarcerated people, can be able to vote again.

    DESMOND MEADE: Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me on again, Amy. It’s always a pleasure to speak with you.

    You know, when I look at this situation, what I see more than anything is that we’re in dangerous times right now. And I do believe that we’re at a moment where we may have to just shift some of our dialogue — right? — and engage in a more holistic and a deeper conversation about what democracy really means to us. Right? What we’re seeing here with these individuals who were arrested was the state actually crossing a line, and a very important line, when you talk about democracy and when you talk about criminal justice reform.

    These individuals arrested was, in some way or another, given assurances by the state that they were in fact able to vote, able to register to vote. The onus is on the state to determine whether or not an individual is eligible or not. And when these individuals actually reached out to the state — or, in some cases, the state reached out to them to encourage them to register to vote — once they did that and they was able to participate in an election, guess what: Now they’re getting arrested.

    And it’s very disheartening. You know, we’re talking about, just like in Amendment 4, we led this effort to enfranchise people from all walks of life and all political persuasions. Right? We fought just as hard for the person who wanted to vote for Donald Trump as the one who wished they could have voted for President Barack Obama. In these arrests, we’re seeing Republicans, we’re seeing Democrats, we’re seeing NPAs, that are now being dragged from their homes in handcuffs, because all they ever wanted to do was participate in democracy.

    AMY GOODMAN: So, I want to just be very clear for people. You spearheaded Amendment 4, this historic ballot initiative that restored the right to vote to most state residents with felony convictions. Until then, Florida had been one of only four states — the others were Iowa, Kentucky and Virginia — where people who had committed felonies needed to petition the governor to have their voting rights restored — a grim 19th century legacy of, really, ultimately, slavery, of 19th century laws that passed after the 15th Amendment granted African American men the right to vote. But the Republican-dominated Legislature overturned that and said that people, like you, yourself, Desmond Meade, had to repay every penny of what was owed. Explain what that was and how this leaves — how do people even know what they owe?

    DESMOND MEADE: Yeah, that’s something that we’ve been talking about for quite some time, after the passage of Amendment 4. It was a major subject in a lawsuit that followed the enactment of the legislation, the fact that the state does not have a centralized database — right? — to be able to ascertain exactly how much a person may owe, or give someone assurances that, “Listen, you owe so much amount of money, and if you pay that, you’re good to go.” Right? But —

    AMY GOODMAN: And what do you owe it for?

    DESMOND MEADE: Well, for outstanding fines and fees, such as maybe court costs, restitution, and all various types of fees that the Florida Legislature have allowed the courts to use to collect revenue to keep the doors open. But, Amy, I think that this really speaks to a deeper issue. And the deeper issue is, at the end of the day, if a citizen cannot rely on the state to determine their eligibility, if a citizen cannot rely on the state to determine how much they owe, then that citizen should not be held criminally liable. That citizen should not be drug from their homes in the middle of the night — right? — in handcuffs in the middle of an election.

    And it’s very concerning not just to returning citizens, but over the last several days I’ve been receiving calls even from conservatives that are concerned about even the timing of this. You know, if there are people out there who are concerned about the raid on Mar-a-Lago two years from a presidential election, then they should definitely be appalled at what is happening in the middle of an election here in Florida.

    AMY GOODMAN: So, why did they think they could vote? If you could explain that? What role did the state play, as you said?

    DESMOND MEADE: They played a very important role. Let’s be clear: The burden is on the state to determine whether or not an individual is eligible to register to vote. If I believe that I am eligible to vote, I would go to the supervisor of elections, and I would fill out a voter registration form. The supervisor of elections would then take that form and send it to the secretary of state, where they conduct whatever investigations they need to conduct, they run it through whatever systems they need to run it through, and then make a determination as to whether or not I’m eligible to vote.

    In the case of Alachua County, you had an individual who was approached by the supervisor of elections office and said, “Hey, write your name on a piece of paper. We’re going to check to see if you’re eligible to vote. And if you are, we will send you a pamphlet, and then you can go and register to vote.” Well, guess what: This individual, days later, received the pamphlet from the supervisor of elections office saying that that person can vote, and that person registered to vote.

    At the end of the day, the burden is on the state. We go to the state, and we fill out an application, and the state needs to make those determinations prior, prior to issuing a voter identification card. And so —

    AMY GOODMAN: In the end, do you think these arrests are just going to be thrown out, but what matters is the message that’s sent for tomorrow’s, for Tuesday’s primary, making people, perhaps over a million people, terrified to dare to go to the polls, because what if they’re wrong? What if they somehow don’t have the right to vote?

    DESMOND MEADE: Amy, this is unprecedented. And what I’m concerned about is it’s a message that’s not only for Florida, but for this country. It’s a message that is really compelling us to have this conversation, right? And I’m talking about a conversation on both sides of the aisle. This is a time where we can’t be throwing innuendos back and forth, and really look at the deeper question: Is this how we want our democracy to be, where in the middle of an election American citizens are being drug from their home in handcuffs? Right? This is totally unacceptable. Right? And this is happening to both Republicans, it’s happening to Democrats, it’s happening to people that are registering NPA. And so the timing couldn’t be worse than what it is right now. And if it can happen in Florida, it can happen anywhere in this country. And every citizen, no matter what their political persuasions, needs to be very concerned.

    There’s also a criminal justice element here. Right? Removing someone from the roster requires the lowest burden of proof, right? And that is the preponderance of the evidence. But when you start talking about taking a citizen’s liberty, I mean, that’s the worst thing that you can do to an individual, is to take their liberty. The burden of proof, the standard of proof is at its highest, and that is beyond a reasonable doubt. Right? And a critical element to these charges is that a person knowingly and willfully registered to vote and voted. Right? In all of these cases, these individuals relied on the state to determine their eligibility, therefore there is no willingness or knowingly element that’s present. But yet these individuals are drug from their homes. Most of these individuals were interviewed by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and were not even aware that they were the subject of a criminal investigation.

    And here’s the kicker, Amy. This list that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement is relying on was given to them back in July of 2021. And so, if the state was given a list of people who may not have been eligible to vote or to register to vote over a year ago, why would they wait until the middle of a primary to start making arrests?

    AMY GOODMAN: Desmond Meade, we want to thank you for being with us, president of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition — congratulations on your 10th anniversary — and chair of Floridians for a Fair Democracy.

  • 10 Floridians Were Charged With Voter Fraud After Official Helped Them Register

    His last night as a prisoner in North Florida, Kelvin Bolton couldn’t sleep. Fifty-five years old, with a wispy goatee the same color as the gray flecks in his hair, he was about to get out after serving a 2 1/2-year sentence for theft and battery. The last time he’d seen his brothers and sisters at a big family gathering, he’d marched onto the dance floor ostentatiously, turned away and wrapped his arms around himself to caress his own back. As he swayed goofily to the music, everybody laughed.

    Now Bolton was so close to being free and seeing his family again. The next morning, a bright Wednesday in April, he was already dressed in his street clothes and cleared to go when the woman processing his paperwork stopped him.

    “The lady said, ‘Hold on, you can’t go anywhere,’” Bolton remembered in a recent phone call.

    Confused, he asked her what was going on, he recalled. There was a warrant out for his arrest for incidents in 2020, she explained gruffly. But that was impossible. He’d been in jail at the time, awaiting his prison stint.

    Guards loaded Bolton into a van, then drove an hour and a half south to deposit him in Alachua County Jail.

    There, he found out what he’d done wrong.

    He’d voted.

    In 2018, Florida voters overwhelmingly passed Amendment 4, in a historic ballot initiative that restored the right to vote to most state residents with felony convictions. Until then, Florida had been one of only four states — the others were Iowa, Kentucky and Virginia — where people who had committed felonies needed to petition the governor to have their voting rights restored. It was a grim legacy of 19th-century laws passed after the 15th Amendment granted African American men the right to vote.

    Supporters applauded the law as restoring voting rights to what experts estimate is over 1 million people in Florida, about 5% of the population of the state.

    But the state’s dominant Republican lawmakers quickly installed a financial hurdle to those new rights. The following year, they passed a law to clarify that people convicted of felonies could only vote if they first paid off any money they owed for committing their crimes. The penalty for registering or voting without doing so: a felony charge for voter fraud.

    On the surface, the mandate seemed reasonable: Even advocates for Amendment 4 agreed that requiring paying off fines and restitution to victims was just. In Florida, however, that task proved a sometimes insurmountable challenge — one that disproportionately hit Black people. Florida has no centralized database to allow people to figure out what legal financial obligations they owe to the state. Instead, its 67 counties and various state agencies each maintain their own databases. The state also does not track information for federal or out-of-state convictions, which people are also required to pay off before voting.

    On top of the fines and restitution, Florida layers on court fees that can run into the hundreds of dollars. Together, a voter’s debt can run into the thousands, a financial hole that some may never climb out of.

    “That’s kind of the bottom line of the absurdity of this — it’s Kafkaesque,” said Dan Smith, chair of the political science department at the University of Florida. “It’s very troubling that we would have state attorneys prosecuting individuals who did not know their status, and there was no way for them to determine their status.”

    Florida’s voting hurdles are part of a national pattern. For years across the country, Republican state lawmakers have been implementing new restrictive voting laws, including reducing access to vote-by-mail ballots, stricter voter identification rules and limits on early voting. These efforts have accelerated since Donald Trump promoted the false claims that Joe Biden stole the 2020 presidential election. Democrats, meanwhile, have pushed to expand voting access.

    Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis boasted that in 2020, Florida, a swing state with a history of contentious elections, “held the smoothest, most successful election of any state in the country,” while he also signed a flurry of voting law changes that he said would further strengthen the integrity of future votes. And DeSantis has tacitly endorsed prosecuting people convicted of felonies for voter fraud. In April, he signed a bill establishing the Office of Election Crimes and Security, which will investigate alleged election violations.

    Despite the increased scrutiny, voting fraud remains so rare in Florida that it hasn’t come close to altering election outcomes. The Florida Department of State in 2020 received 262 election fraud complaints, just 75 of which were referred to law enforcement or prosecuting authorities, according to the agency.

    “Florida is an outlier, because the intentional targeting of citizens with felony convictions as a way to undermine democracy has been a throughline in that state,” said Nicole Porter, senior director of advocacy for the Sentencing Project. “And the attempt to address that, by popular vote, has been undermined by the legislature.”

    In 2020, a representative of the Alachua County Supervisor of Elections conducted a series of outreach efforts at the local county jail to let inmates know of their new rights and offer to help them add their names to the voter rolls.

    During three visits to the jail, the official helped sign up at least 10 inmates, including John Boyd Rivers, Dedrick Baldwin and Bolton.

    Rivers, 44, felt a visceral thrill at the prospect. Sitting in his cell in February 2020 facing a battery charge for hitting his wife, he was told by the county representative that he could register to vote. The official, he said, told him that he could disregard the check box on the form that asks whether the applicant has a felony conviction because he didn’t have a disqualifying felony. That seemed odd to Rivers, since he had a previous felony conviction. (He subsequently was sentenced for the battery charge.) No one told him anything about needing to pay off his financial obligations before registering to vote, Rivers said, and the jail didn’t give him an accounting of those debts when he was later released.

    Back at home, Rivers was excited when his voter registration card arrived in the mail. He’d lost his right to vote at 18, he said, after voting just once. Now he could vote in a presidential election. He and his wife went to their polling place, and he cast his vote for Donald Trump.

    Bolton, too, was excited to sign up. He also said no one told him he’d need to pay off his debts before casting his ballot. Although he registered as a Republican, he said he decided to vote for Biden.

    In all, 10 of the men who the official helped register to vote have been charged with voter fraud on the grounds they were ineligible.

    Their alleged illegal voting was first spotted by a citizen who analyzed Florida’s voting rolls and then shared the information with the state. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement subsequently launched an eight-month investigation, after which it identified the 10 inmates.

    State investigators found that some jail employees remembered the elections official giving clear directions to inmates about having to pay off financial obligations, while others did not. The investigation concluded that the jail visits were “lacking in both quality and longevity” and “showed a haphazard registration of inmates.” But the state prosecutor nevertheless proceeded with charges, although not against county officials.

    Officials at the Alachua Supervisor of Elections office declined to comment to ProPublica. But Supervisor of Elections Kim Barton denied any wrongdoing in a statement released in June.

    Brian Kramer, the state attorney for the Eighth Judicial Circuit of Florida, defended his office’s prosecutions to ProPublica, saying he believed the 10 men knew they were committing fraud. “I’m not going to say I will prosecute or not prosecute because it’s politically popular or unpopular,” he said.

    Four of the 10 have pleaded guilty and have been sentenced to between 364 days and three years in prison. Bolton and three others have vowed to go to trial, while the remaining two await arraignment. They face charges that carry a penalty of up to five years in prison, five years of probation or $5,000 in fines. Eight of the men are Black, and two are white.

    Critics say the charges are unjust and, at a bare minimum, excessive. In nearby Lake County, the state prosecutor declined to bring charges against sex offenders who had registered to vote despite the law prohibiting voting rights restoration for those charged with sex offenses or murder. In April, two white men living in The Villages in Sumter County, an overwhelmingly white county in central Florida, pleaded guilty to each casting two ballots for Donald Trump during the 2020 election. Rather than face prosecution, they entered a pretrial intervention program, under which they must serve 50 hours of community service and attend an adult civics class, among other requirements. Because the men in Alachua County have prior felony convictions, they are ineligible for pretrial intervention and face harsher sentences.

    “I’m thinking I’m doing something good for the community, so that’s why I chose to try to do it,” Bolton said. “It was not malicious — I was not trying to commit a felony of voting fraud. I never would have voted.”

    Baldwin, 47, who is in prison on a manslaughter conviction, was sentenced to an additional 364 days. He felt “set up,” he said, since nobody told him he wasn’t eligible.

    “There’s no way Biden was that important to me to vote for him,” he said in an email to ProPublica from prison. “We were flat out tricked into voting.”

    The elections official who visited the jail denied telling the men that they could disregard the check box and said he warned them that they’d need to pay off their financial obligations, according to a person familiar with the matter who declined to be named because he feared reprisals. The elections official declined to comment to ProPublica on the record.

    The voter fraud charges were especially bitter for Rivers. By the time they were filed, Rivers said, he had already used part of his federal stimulus check to pay off more than $3,000 in costs related to his criminal record so he could reinstate his driver’s license and return to work.

    “I should have known there would be some kind of catch,” Rivers said.

    Florida’s history of felon disenfranchisement dates back to 1838, when the state’s first constitution prohibited people convicted of bribery or assorted “high crimes and misdemeanors” from voting. After the Civil War, faced with the prospect of formerly enslaved Black men voting, the state expanded the law so that anyone convicted of a felony lost the franchise. But in 2018, 64% of Florida voters approved Amendment 4, allowing people convicted of felonies, except for murder or sexual offense convictions, to vote.

    This embrace of new voters became more complicated the following year when the state legislature passed its law. It required that people convicted of felonies must determine their own eligibility before registering to vote. The Florida Department of Corrections and county detention facilities are required to provide notice to inmates at the time of their release of their outstanding financial obligations.

    But it is unclear if all of the facilities do so.

    Florida charges those convicted of crimes with an array of fines and fees, some of which statutorily cannot be eliminated or reduced. Defendants facing felony charges are assessed $100 to use a public defender, as well as a $100 prosecution fee. At least one person already sentenced in the Alachua County cases has been charged an additional $671 for his voting fraud charges on top of the financial obligations he already owed.

    Finding out what someone owes is time-consuming and expensive. An analysis led by Traci Burch, a political science professor at Northwestern University, tried to determine the legal financial obligations owed by a random sample of 153 Florida residents convicted of felonies and found consistent information for only three of them. Counties often keep poor records, have cumbersome websites and employ unhelpful clerks.

    What’s more, it can cost money merely to find out how much money you owe. Four in 10 Florida counties charged either a payment or processing fee to look at their databases, and 15% charged a fee to access certain records, according to Burch’s research.

    In 2020, Smith, the Florida political scientist, estimated that just over 1 million people would be eligible to vote under Amendment 4. Of that number, about 77% had outstanding legal financial obligations, rendering them ineligible to vote under Florida’s new law until they paid their debts. Four out of five Floridians with felony convictions owed at least $500 in fines and fees, Smith’s analysis found. More than 59% owed more than $1,000.

    The state legislature immediately disqualified about 750,000 people from being able to vote when it passed its law requiring people convicted of felonies to pay their debts first, Smith estimated. And the new law’s impact was felt much more harshly by Black people, who faced greater fines and fees: 26% of white Floridians with a felony conviction would be eligible to get their voting rights restored under the new requirement, but only 18% of Black people, according to Smith.

    In May 2020, a district court judge ruled that parts of the law were unconstitutional and that the law had established a pay-to-vote system. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the ruling the following September, saying it was in the state’s power to require the payoffs and the law didn’t violate people’s rights. The state Supreme Court has also issued an advisory opinion that deemed the law legitimate.

    Unsurprisingly, the number of people with felony convictions who have registered to vote has fallen far short of what supporters hoped. More than 85,000 such people registered in Florida ahead of the 2020 election.

    Supporters of the law say that it’s only fair to have people fulfill their full sentences, including paying any crime-related debts. Some state attorneys, including Kramer, the attorney prosecuting the Alachua cases, have also developed processes within their jurisdictions by which people with felony convictions can verify their voting eligibility or request to reduce their fines and fees.

    Felons who have not yet registered to vote can also appeal to the state to have certain fees reduced or eliminated, said Republican State Sen. Jeff Brandes, the sponsor of the law demanding the payoffs before voting rights restoration.

    “We truly believe there are people who are indigent that will just simply never be able to pay,” he said. “The court only collects a fraction of what is given out anyways. And so there should be a way for the state to grant some grace or for the court to grant some grace and provide people flexibility.”

    Kelvin Bolton has been sitting in the Alachua Council Jail since April, waiting for his case to proceed.

    He’s been in and out of the system since he was 16, piling up a long record of mostly nonviolent crimes, most recently for stealing a car, groping a woman in a store and taking cigarettes from a Dollar General.

    He aims this time to keep a vow he made to his family and himself to stay straight. He said he is frustrated that the prosecutor subsequently created a program for people convicted of felonies to check their voting eligibility while he and the others are still facing charges.

    “Why would they want to keep charging us for something that they’re in the wrong for?” he said. “The state is in the wrong for what they did to us.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Florida’s Repressive Laws Are Exacerbating a Growing National Teacher Shortage

    “Do you have a dog?” “Who’s your boyfriend?” “Are you married?”

    Anita Carson fielded questions from students about her personal life each year she taught for Polk County Public Schools in Florida, giving them a short presentation about her friends and family and asking them to do the same. But for the first time in 12 years, when school resumes this fall, the bisexual middle school instructor won’t be in a classroom. She resigned in May due to a combination of factors, chief among them Florida’s recent passage of laws, including “Don’t Say Gay” and the Stop WOKE Act, that limit what educators can say about issues such as sexual orientation, gender identity and race.

    The laws prevent educators, especially members of the LGBTQ+ community, from being authentic about their lives, covering important subject matter and meeting the socioemotional needs of students, Carson contends.

    “With the very blatant attacks on education and on marginalized communities, I just couldn’t teach anymore,” said Carson, who is now a community organizer for Equality Florida, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group. “I cannot fathom being in a classroom where I cannot support my kids to the fullest of my ability because there are now laws that tell me what I can and cannot do to support my kids; like, that’s heartbreaking.”

    Nationally, teachers have resigned in droves during the pandemic. A National Education Association poll released in February found that 55 percent of teachers plan to exit the profession sooner than planned, up from 37 percent last August. Shortages are difficult to track or compare nationally because states, counties and cities may use different methodology to determine their needs, including current openings, teacher polls and information about the number of students getting education degrees

    Florida has more than 9,000 school personnel openings, and roughly half are teacher positions, according to the Florida Education Association. In Virginia, there are as many as 2,500 teaching vacancies. In Illinois, there are over 2,000 such vacancies, and Georgia projects that it will need up to 8,000 teachers over the next few years.

    Teacher shortages disproportionately affect students of color, who are overrepresented in under-resourced schools where staffing issues are often more severe and leave students with instructors who are likely to be inexperienced and underqualified.

    While teacher shortages have left no region of the country untouched, Florida is a flashpoint because the state’s education policies, political climate and anti-teacher rhetoric contribute to the crisis.

    In Florida, about “450,000 kids started school last year without a permanent teacher,” said Norín Dollard, senior policy analyst and KIDS COUNT director at the Florida Policy Institute. “Of course, it’s going to have an effect on academic success.”

    A unique set of challenges is causing Florida educators to call it quits. In addition to passing laws that critics say target the LGBTQ+ community and people of color, political figures in the state have characterized educators as threats to students and parents. Tired of what they consider to be character assassination, low pay and a lack of job security, teachers in the Sunshine State are resigning in worrisome numbers. In 2010, for example, Florida had just 1,000 teacher openings, according to the Florida Education Association. Today, the organization warns there aren’t enough aspiring educators to fill openings that are at least four times as high. The Florida Department of Education did not specify how many teacher vacancies the state has but disputed that the figure is as high as the teachers’ union reports.

    Not only are an increasing number of people leaving the profession, a decreasing number of people are entering it. In 2010, there were about 8,000 students who graduated from Florida’s colleges and universities with education degrees, said Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association. This year, the association expects between 2,000 and 3,000 students to earn degrees in the field.

    “First and foremost, it’s just bad policies that have been passed in Florida that have had a huge impact on people deciding not to come into the profession and people leaving the profession who otherwise intended to stay,” Spar said. “The only thing the pandemic did was accelerate how quickly people left the profession.”

    Just a couple of years ago, quitting education had not crossed Carson’s mind. In 2020, she felt passionate enough about the profession to run for a seat on the Polk County Public Schools board. Although she lost the race, she managed to navigate virtual instruction during the first year of the COVID-19 crisis, a period that she and her colleagues found extremely stressful. Still, she appreciated the lawmakers in her state for thanking educators and other essential workers for their contributions during the pandemic. Then the rhetoric took a sharp turn. Political groups began portraying teachers as nefarious influences in students’ lives.

    “These right-wing extremist groups were talking about teachers indoctrinating kids with liberal [agendas] and saying that teachers are groomers and pedophiles if they ever support LGBTQ-anything in the presence of a minor,” Carson said. “I couldn’t take it anymore. I was like, ‘I have to get out of this. This is toxic. This is not the space that I want to be in anymore.’”

    The Sunshine State is the epicenter of Moms for Liberty, a conservative parent group co-founded by two former Florida school board members. Their movement for more parental oversight of curricula related to race, gender, sexuality or politics spread across the nation during the pandemic. The group holds such sway in conservative circles that Betsy DeVos spoke at its summit Saturday, garnering headlines for reportedly calling for an end to the Department of Education, the federal agency she led during former President Donald Trump’s administration.

    The so-called parents’ rights movement has led to the introduction of book bans, critical race theory bans and curriculum transparency bills in most states. Florida, however, has gone a step farther with the passage of “Don’t Say Gay” and the Stop WOKE Act. While the former prohibits educators from teaching lessons on sexual orientation or gender identity to children in grades K-3 — which Spar denies ever happened — the latter would allow parents to sue if they suspect that children are learning about critical race theory in class. In addition, last year Florida passed a “Parents’ Bill of Rights” law that prohibits government entities from infringing “upon the fundamental rights of a parent to direct the upbringing, education, health care and mental health of a minor child” without justification.

    Carson said this sort of legislation can lead to LGBTQ+ and other teachers from marginalized groups hiding themselves from students. Straight teachers, she added, will likely feel more comfortable answering questions from students about their personal lives than LGBTQ+ teachers will. Laws such as “Don’t Say Gay” also lead to confusion because neither teachers nor school districts know exactly how to interpret them, Carson said.

    “It was very purposely vague, so that they could continue pushing the concept that it’s not discriminatory,” Carson said, noting that SB 1557 does not actually include the word “gay.” “It doesn’t make it any less discriminatory because everyone knows what they were trying to accomplish, but it does make it a lot harder to implement and makes the job of educators 10 times more frustrating because the districts that we teach in…are trying to avoid lawsuits. So they’re either ignoring it entirely and giving no one guidance, or they are giving incredibly conservative guidance to try and stay away from lawsuits.”

    Although Carson taught science, she said the Stop WOKE Act caused her to question what she would be able to teach. She was uncertain if she could discuss current events with students, which they routinely bring up, even if she presented the topic in a way that was historically accurate and left out her personal politics. Plus, Carson said that she made a point in her classes to highlight the achievements of underrepresented scientists, such as the late Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai. In 2004, Maathai became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. The Stop WOKE Act indicates that she should not mention Maathai’s race, gender or country of origin, Carson said, even though the information could potentially inspire students.

    Spar said laws such as the Stop WOKE Act and “Don’t Day Gay” hurt educators. “Teachers are caring individuals who always want to do the right thing, and it’s very hurtful and very frustrating when you’re trying to do the job you’re hired to do and there’s constant regulation preventing you from doing that,” he said. “And then you have a governor going around the state saying things like, ‘Teachers are teaching kids to be gay, or teachers are teaching sex education in grades K-3. Teachers are teaching kids to hate White people, or teachers are teaching kids to hate cops,’ all of which is not true at all. It weighs on the profession.”

    The controversial legislation Florida has passed over the past year may lower teacher morale, but it is not the only factor causing educators to leave the profession. Spar said that the state’s policies on teacher pay and job security have contributed to the educator shortage. In March, Governor Ron DeSantis set aside $800 million in Florida’s budget to raise minimum teacher pay and increase veteran teacher salaries, the third consecutive pay hike he’s approved for teachers. But Florida ranks 48th nationally in teacher pay, with an average salary of $51,009 during the 2020-21 school year, according to the National Education Association. Also, recent salary increases there have largely benefitted newcomers to the profession, while veteran teachers lag behind their counterparts elsewhere in pay. Spar attributes this problem to Florida’s Senate Bill 736, which passed in 2011 and changed teacher pay, evaluations and job security.

    “The longer you’re teaching, the smaller your pay increases,” Spar said of the legislative change. “A teacher with 10, 15, 20, 30 years of experience today is making less money in Florida than what teachers with that exact same experience made 10 or 15 years ago. I had a teacher contact me. She has been teaching for 25 years, and she’s making $52,000 a year. She found a salary schedule from the 2008-2009 school year in her district, and a teacher with 25 years experience back then was making $59,000 — $7,000 more than she is today.”

    Spar said that Florida teachers also no longer have tenure, so they don’t know until the end of each school year if they’ll be invited back for the following year. Teachers who live geographically close enough to earn more pay as educators in the neighboring states of Georgia and Alabama are abandoning Florida schools to do so, said Dollard, of the Florida Policy Institute.

    By raising salaries, providing more job security and reversing laws that keep teachers from doing their best work, the state may be able to retain and attract the educators it needs, advocates say.

    Adam Lane, principal of Haines City High School in Polk County, Florida, has come up with some creative solutions to ensure that his school has the personnel it needs. A few years after he became principal in 2015, he began recruiting alums to join the staff. Today, nearly a quarter of his 247-member team are graduates of Haines City High, which has a student body of about 3,000

    “When seniors graduate, I work with them to be substitutes,” said Lane, who was named the 2022 Florida Principal of the Year by the National Association of Secondary School Principals. “Not only are they making money, they are getting experience as a teacher. In four years, they’re ready to go and they have a job waiting for them back at my school working with me.”

    Lane enjoys bringing on former students as teachers because they already know the school’s mission, vision, procedures and staff. The newcomers also appreciate a starting salary of about $48,000, but Lane acknowledged that mid-career teachers likely need financial incentives to keep them in the profession.

    As Lane ensures that his school has a pipeline of teachers, he is also making a concerted effort to foster relationships with parents during a time when the two groups are being positioned as opponents in the political sphere. With the help of the school guidance counselor, Haines City High launched an initiative called Parent University that connects parents to teachers, counselors, administrators and social workers at the school so they can see firsthand what the jobs entail.

    “There’s a lot of parents out there that want to be better parents, and they want to understand the educational process more, but how are they going to do it if they don’t have an invitation to come to a school?” he said. “The more parents you educate, the less friction or misguided information you’re gonna have.”

    As an organizer for Equality Florida, Carson is now educating people about Florida’s education policies and their potential ramifications. When she heard about the job on Facebook, she knew it was the right fit.

    “I was like, ‘That’s it. That’s what I need to do. That just fits really well as an LGBTQ educator and an advocate for kids,’” she said. “I am…organizing around these crazy moments that are happening in Florida in schools all across the state. Whether it’s [‘Don’t Say Gay’] or the Stop WOKE law, they’re having to come to terms with these laws without a whole lot of guidance…and with the knowledge that these laws are meant to be discriminatory.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Lost in Transplantation

    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 week, we look at weaknesses in the nation’s system for transporting organs and solutions for making it work better. 

    More than any other organ, donated kidneys are put on commercial flights so they can get to waiting patients. In collaboration with Kaiser Health News, we look at the system for transporting kidneys and how a lack of tracking and accountability can result in waylaid or misplaced kidneys.

    We then look at the broader issues affecting organ procurement in the U.S. with Jennifer Erickson, who worked at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy under the Obama administration. She says one of the system’s weaknesses is that not enough organs are recovered from deceased people – not nearly as many as there could be.

    We end with an audio postcard about honor walks, a new ritual that hospitals are adopting to honor the gift of life that dying people are giving to patients who will receive their organs. We follow the story of one young man who was killed in a car accident.

    This episode originally was broadcast Feb. 8, 2020. 

    Connect with us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • Florida’s 15-Week Abortion Ban Temporarily Blocked by State Judge

    A state judge in Florida has temporarily blocked a 15-week abortion ban that was set to begin this week but the injunction will likely not go into effect until after the July 4 holiday weekend.

    Though the decision will be appealed and more than likely lifted in the future, abortion rights leaders are heralding the move as granting persons in Florida currently seeking abortions a little more time before the highly restrictive ban takes effect.

    State circuit court Judge John C. Cooper ruled on Thursday that the law unduly violates the state Constitution’s provision on privacy rights – a constitutional amendment on a ballot measure that voters passed in 1980, and which has been used to block abortion bans and restrictive laws the state has tried to enact since then.

    That constitutional provision states, in part, that “every natural person has the right to be let alone and free from governmental intrusion into the person’s private life.” Cooper, in announcing his ruling, said that he found the 15-week statute “unconstitutional, in that it violates the privacy provision in the Florida constitution, and does not meet the standards” of previous Supreme Court cases relating to abortion.

    Prior to the enactment of the 15-week statute, Florida allowed for access to abortion services up to the 24th week of pregnancy.

    To take effect, Cooper must sign a formal injunction and submit the paperwork today or over the weekend. Because of the Fourth of July holiday, the injunction won’t actually go into effect until sometime next week, allowing the new law to be enforced for a few days before officially being blocked, at least for the time being.

    The state announced that it plans to appeal the ruling on the law, which was signed in April by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Florida) following the Republican-led legislature’s passage of the statute.

    The law restricts all abortions after a person reaches the 15-week mark of their pregnancy. Exceptions are made for the health of the pregnant individual, but no exceptions are granted for victims of rape, incest or human trafficking.

    The lawsuit seeking to overturn the law was brought forward jointly by multiple abortion rights organizations, including Planned Parenthood, the Center for Reproductive Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

    In a statement made after the lawsuit was filed last month, ACLU of Florida legal director Daniel Tilley said the statute “ignores the real life circumstances of people who need an abortion and deliberately puts them in harm’s way.” Florida Planned Parenthood Action also released a statement following Cooper’s announced injunction, recognizing that an appeal was imminent.

    “This is not the end — we likely have a long fight ahead of us,” the organization said.

    “In the wake of a cataclysmic Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, it is more critical than ever to protect abortion access in Florida… We will continue to stand by Floridians to protect their health and lives,” said Caroline Sacerdote, staff attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights.

    Abortion rights proponents lauded the ruling while noting that it was likely temporary and faced steep odds of being upheld, given the conservative makeup of the state Supreme Court. But at least for now, the ruling will allow a person to get an abortion after the 15-week deadline.

    “Will it be appealed? Absolutely. And it may even be overturned,” said Boston-based progressive commentator Jesse Mermell. “But tell that to the person in FL who needs #abortion care right now. They’ve just been helped. And that’s worth it.”

    “There are approximately 70 facilities that provide abortions in Florida,” said Tracy Weitz, a visiting scholar at the University of California, San Francisco, who specializes in reproductive health and abortion. “With the injunction set to be ordered, those clinics can “continue to meet patient needs.”

    “This is a good thing,” Weitz added.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Abortion Providers Ask for Protection as They Prepare for Post-Roe Harassment and Violence

    Kelly Flynn sits in the waiting room of the Florida abortion clinic she owns, A Woman’s Choice of Jacksonville.

    For more than a year, Kelly Flynn had to hire off-duty officers to provide security for her Florida abortion clinic, A Woman’s Choice of Jacksonville, after a local anti-abortion group moved into the vacant building next door and police calls related to harassment spiked.

    Now, though, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office is assigning an on-duty officer to the clinic every day “to ensure the safety of all parties,” spokesperson John Medina said in a statement, and expects to continue “for the foreseeable future.” The officers’ regular presence, Flynn said, has been reassuring to patients and staff: “We are a safe place.”

    The change in policy began soon after Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting spotlighted a surge in harassment, disturbances and violence at clinics around Florida amid a lack of state and local protections for abortion providers and patients. 

    The Jacksonville move reflects a growing awareness among local, state and federal authorities about the mounting risks that abortion providers and patients will face now that the U.S. Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade. The decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is expected to trigger a new wave of clashes as abortion is certain or likely to be banned in 26 states and the remaining open clinics will offer anti-abortion protesters and extremists fewer and clearer targets. 

    The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has been on alert for an increase in political violence following the Dobbs decision, according to a leaked memo. It was already happening even before the court’s ruling: On May 25, an arson was reported at a building set to become Wyoming’s only clinic providing surgical abortions. On New Year’s Eve, a fire destroyed a Planned Parenthood in Tennessee. A handful of crisis pregnancy centers – which are usually run by religiously aligned organizations and try to dissuade people from having abortions – also have been vandalized or set on fire across the country in recent weeks. 

    “We are about to face a sea change in this nation unlike anything we have ever seen, certainly when it comes to gender equality and reproductive health care,” said Andrea Miller, president of the National Institute for Reproductive Health, which advocates for legislation to protect abortion rights. “We would encourage states and localities to look at all of their options and to really be creative in this moment and also to really be proactive.” 

    Some lawmakers have been heeding the warnings. In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul recently announced that the state will dedicate $10 million toward security for abortion care providers and an additional $25 million to expand abortion access. Maine legislators passed a law in April that creates 8-foot “medical safety zones” around clinic entrances. 

    One of the most sweeping laws targets the use of cellphones and cameras as tools of harassment. Signed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom last year, it prohibits taking photographs or videos of abortion patients and staff within 100 feet of a clinic if the intent is to intimidate, establishes law enforcement training on crimes targeting providers, and requires reporting of those crimes to the state. 

    “We are really focused right now on what will the future of abortion look like and how do we as California remain a beacon of equity and access for every woman who needs it?” the bill’s main author, Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, a Democrat from the San Francisco Bay Area, told Reveal. “And the security (of providers) is a huge piece of it.” 

    Some cities are also taking action. The National Institute for Reproductive Health partnered with advocates in Louisville, Kentucky, to help pass legislation last year creating 10-foot safety zones for all health care facilities, including the city’s two abortion clinics. Those clinics have stopped providing abortion care now that Roe is gone, but the safety zone rule remains.

    Local Abortion Protection Efforts Fill the Federal Void

    State and local efforts take on added importance because the sole federal law aimed at protecting abortion clinics from violence doesn’t cover the new types of harassment and intimidation that have been skyrocketing, Reveal’s reporting found. 

    The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances, or FACE, Act, enacted in 1994, empowers the Justice Department to bring criminal charges or civil lawsuits against people who commit acts of “force” or “threat of force” or “physical obstruction” against patients and providers entering clinics. But the FACE Act was carefully tailored to avoid criminalizing free speech; anti-abortion protesters also have adapted their tactics to stay within the law. As Reveal found, the federal government has brought only 101 FACE Act cases in 28 years, an average of four per year. 

    The FACE Act “isn’t viable as an option in many instances,” U.S. Rep. Lauren Underwood, D-Ill., said in an interview.  Yet by passing tough anti-abortion legislation that emboldens protesters, “states have made a policy choice to increase the vulnerability of health care providers,” she said. Underwood, a nurse by training, is a co-sponsor of a new bill that would establish a federal grant program to help providers strengthen the physical security and cybersecurity of their facilities. The legislation would apply to all health care providers – including, for example, those targeted for providing care to the LGBTQ community.

    “Just as we protect the Supreme Court, we should protect health care providers, their patients and the people who go in and out of those facilities,” said Democratic U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar of Texas, the bill’s main author. 

    Abortion rights advocates applaud the grant approach, which leaves it to clinics decide how best to safeguard their employees and patients.  

    “Abortion providers know what they need and what works for them,” said Heather Shumaker, director of state abortion access at the National Women’s Law Center. For instance, some might choose to rely on private security guards or volunteer escorts because patients of color “may not feel safe when law enforcement is showing up,” she said. “Every clinic is very unique,” she added.

    A Lack of Protections for Abortion Clinics in Florida

    In Florida, West Palm Beach is one of the few cities with any clinic protections. A noise ordinance, in place since 2011, bars shouting or amplified sounds within 100 feet of any health care facility, including abortion providers. But so far, the state’s Republican-dominated Legislature has shown little interest in passing broader protections for the state’s 55 clinics. A Democratic bill to create a state law mirroring the federal FACE Act failed in 2018. The same thing happened last spring when Democrats tried to tuck protections for clinics into a GOP-sponsored ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. 

    “That has been a constant theme for us in the Legislature, of trying to put into place more protections for clinics,” said state Rep. Anna Eskamani, a Democrat from Orlando who was senior director of public affairs and communications at a regional Planned Parenthood before taking office. “It’s not something that we’re dramatizing. It’s real that people who work as abortion providers are specifically targeted for the work that they do.”

    But one new Republican-sponsored law could end up inadvertently helping providers. Inspired by high-profile protests outside the homes of Republican U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, among others, the measure makes it a second-degree misdemeanor to picket outside someone’s home “with the intent to harass or disturb that person in his or her dwelling.” 

    In signing the bill in May, Gov. Ron DeSantis pointed to the protests following the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion that had spelled out the end of Roe. “Sending unruly mobs to private residences, like we have seen with the angry crowds in front of the homes of Supreme Court justices, is inappropriate,” he said in a statement.

    The new law protects all Florida residents – including abortion clinic employees.

    “The question is, will it be equally applied?” said Eskamani, who voted against the bill. “We just don’t know.”

    This story was edited by Nina Martin and copy edited by Nikki Frick.

    Laura C. Morel can be reached at lmorel@revealnews.org. Follow her on Twitter: @lauracmorel.

    This article is available to republish. Read our republishing guidelines here.

    Abortion Providers Ask for Protection as They Prepare for Post-Roe Harassment and Violence is a story from Reveal. Reveal is a registered trademark of The Center for Investigative Reporting and is a 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization.

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • Florida Synagogue Sues State, Says New Abortion Law Violates Religious Freedoms

    A Jewish synagogue is suing the state of Florida over a new abortion law that would ban the procedure after 15 weeks of a pregnancy.

    According to its website, Congregation L’Dor Va-Dor, a synagogue based in Boynton Beach, practices “an all-inclusive, universal, and rational approach to Judaism.” The place of worship filed a lawsuit against the state last week in Leon County Circuit Court, asserting that the new law violates members’ constitutional provisions on privacy and religious rights enshrined in Florida’s state constitution.

    “In Jewish law, abortion is required if necessary to protect the health, mental or physical well-being of the woman, or for many other reasons not permitted under the act,” Congregation L’Dor Va-Dor asserts in its lawsuit. “As such, the act prohibits Jewish women from practicing their faith free of government intrusion and thus violates their privacy rights and religious freedom.”

    The suit further contends that the new abortion restrictions, which are set to be implemented on July 1, would promote certain Christian viewpoints in violation of the Florida Constitution, which states, “There shall be no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting or penalizing the free expression thereof.”

    Jews and other residents in the state who “do not share the religious views reflected in the act will suffer … irreparable harm,” the synagogue states.

    The lawsuit further stipulates that:

    This failure to maintain the separation of church and state, like so many other laws in other lands throughout history, threatens the Jewish family, and thus also threatens the Jewish people by imposing the laws of other religions upon Jews.

    Assertions of religious preference in passing the law may be relevant as Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Florida) signed the bill into law inside a Christian church in Kissimmee back in April.

    Beyond establishing a burdensome timeframe within which a person can obtain an abortion, the new law also provides no exceptions for rape, incest or human trafficking. It does allow abortion in cases where a pregnancy poses a “serious risk” to a person’s life or health.

    This is the second lawsuit filed against the state over the 15-week abortion law. Earlier this month, abortion rights groups and abortion providers, organized by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida, also filed a challenge to the law. It’s possible that the two lawsuits could be enjoined by the court system to create one joint challenge to the state law.

    The statute, sometimes known as HB 5, “ignores the real life circumstances of people who need an abortion and deliberately puts them in harm’s way,” said ACLU of Florida legal director Daniel Tilley in a statement after the lawsuit was filed.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • State Audit Reveals Florida Undercounted COVID Deaths by Thousands

    An audit released by the state of Florida on Monday suggests that information that the state released to the public during the early months of the coronavirus pandemic was inaccurate and incomplete.

    The report, conducted over the past year by the Florida Auditor General, examined the state’s COVID-19 response from March to October 2020.

    The audit reviewed a sample of tests from three separate state-run facilities in its investigation — and ultimately came to the conclusion that data on case and death counts frequently went unreported, and that the state often failed to adhere to protocols regarding the virus.

    State-contracted labs, for example, failed to return results for around 60 percent of the tests that were administered during that eight-month period. Of the results that were returned, many didn’t include critical demographic information, failing to record a person’s ethnicity 60 percent of the time and failing to account for their race more than half of the time.

    Auditors also found that the state didn’t conduct contract tracing for 23 percent of the positive cases it identified — put another way, close to one in four Floridians who tested positive for coronavirus during the early months of the pandemic were never told they had the virus in their systems, the audit concluded. Even when people were notified of their positive results, many weren’t alerted until well after they got tested — in some cases, more than a week later.

    The audit also found that Florida officials had undercounted deaths in the state. More than 3,000 additional COVID-19-related deaths were reported by physicians than were on the state’s official list of total deaths during the first eight months of the pandemic.

    The Florida Auditor General also said in the report that the state failed to conduct routine checks on data collection to ensure accuracy in their numbers. When discrepancies were found, there was no follow-up, the report said.

    The conclusions in the report confirm what many Floridians were warning about early on in the pandemic, when Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and other right-wing lawmakers were claiming that businesses and other entities were safe enough to reopen despite instituting few statewide precautionary measures to address the continued presence of coronavirus.

    In the first year of the pandemic, for example, the state restricted local medical examiners from publishing their own numbers on COVID-19 deaths after their numbers conflicted with the state’s official reports. A state employee named Rebekah Jones, who was in charge of updating infection numbers across the state, was fired after she alleged that the numbers were being manipulated.

    DeSantis frequently downplayed the dangers of the virus, and even made campaign materials that were critical of national health officials who implored people to take the pandemic more seriously.

    Florida is currently seeing an increase in case numbers, reporting nearly 10,000 new cases of COVID-19 per day over the past two weeks. More than 74,700 Floridians have died due to coronavirus since the pandemic began more than two years ago — a figure that’s equivalent to the entire population of Daytona Beach.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Weeks Before Abortion Ban, DeSantis Vetoes Millions in Birth Control Funding

    For the second time in two years, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Florida) has vetoed millions of dollars in funding that would have gone toward making birth control accessible to low-income Floridians.

    DeSantis vetoed a total of $3 billion out of the $110 billion budget that the state legislature sent him last month. Of the $3 billion he slashed, $2 million would have provided individuals with low incomes the opportunity to obtain long-acting, reversible forms of contraception, including intrauterine devices (IUDs), which are effective for up to 10 years, and Depo-Provera injections, which last for around three months, among others.

    DeSantis issued a similar veto last year when the legislature attempted to include funding for long-acting contraceptives in the state budget.

    The decision to veto such funding comes as the state is just a month away from implementing a 15-week ban on abortion.

    The funding for long-acting methods of birth control is a rare bipartisan measure that is supported by both Democrats and Republicans in the state legislature. The effort to include it in this year’s budget was promoted and supported by state Senate President Wilton Simpson, an anti-abortion Republican lawmaker who supports the expansion of birth control access, particularly when it benefits who would not ordinarily be able to afford it.

    “If you give those young women an opportunity not to get pregnant, then they have an opportunity to go to college or start a career,” Simpson said at the start of this legislative term.

    Reproductive rights leaders in the state decried DeSantis’s action last week, noting that it is particularly callous because it will harm people with modest to low incomes.

    “To take away health care from vulnerable people is just another example of his ongoing cruelty to Floridians,” said Stephanie Fraim, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida, in an email to The Tampa Bay Times.

    The contraceptives that could have been covered by the funding are more expensive than other forms of birth control, and thus not easily accessible for people with low incomes and those who cannot afford regular forms of insurance. Florida is also one of 12 states across the U.S. that hasn’t expanded Medicaid coverage since the Affordable Care Act passed more than a decade ago.

    Americans overall support expanding access to birth control, both for those with lower incomes and for the public at large, especially if the Supreme Court overturns the long-established right to abortion access in the U.S, as it has repeatedly indicated it will. According to an Economist/YouGov poll published in May, 91 percent of voters say that birth control should be free to whoever wants it, if abortion protections in the U.S. are overturned later this summer.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • DeSantis’s Next Move in War Against Trans Kids Is Banning Gender Affirming Care

    Far right Gov. Ron DeSantis’s administration is moving to ban transgender youth and Medicaid recipients from accessing gender affirming care in Florida in an extreme escalation of Republicans’ war on transgender people.

    On Thursday, state Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo sent a letter to the governing body that oversees doctors in Florida, requesting that it “establish a standard of care” that would implement anti-trans guidelines issued by state health officials earlier this year. The guidelines, which were nonbinding when they were first released, say that, despite the findings of major medical, psychiatric and pediatric groups, transgender children should not be able to access potentially life-saving gender affirming care — and that they should even be barred from “social” transitions like changing their hairstyles or pronouns.

    On the same day, the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) issued a report arguing that Medicaid should be banned from covering trans-related health care for children and adults alike, including treatments like puberty blockers, hormone treatments and gender affirming surgeries. Both the letter and the report allow DeSantis to implement the bans quickly without the support of the state legislature.

    These moves are an alarming escalation of Desantis’s attacks on transgender people in Florida — which now directly affect both children and adults’ access to health care. LGBTQ advocates say that the development makes it even more clear that actions like barring transgender children from participating in sports were never about sports, but about waging an all-out war on transgender people and their right to exist in society.

    “The new right wing angle of attack is that NO trans people should have access to hormone replacement therapy because it’s ‘experimental.’ Trans people have literally taken cross-sex hormones since at least 1918,” wrote Ari Drennen, the LGBTQ program director for Media Matters for America. “Governor DeSantis’ move is illegal, dangerous and based on lies.” Drennen also pointed out that many cisgender people regularly take hormones for health reasons, but face no pushback from Republicans.

    Indeed, gender affirming care is well-established within medical and psychiatric communities to be life-saving for trans people. While trans youth and adults experience high rates of depression and suicidal ideation, studies have found that gender affirming care has positive effects on trans kids’ mental health — effects that last well into adulthood.

    In his letter, Ladapo politicized the issue, claiming without evidence that medical professionals who support trans people’s right to gender affirming care are only doing so based on their political preferences. Ladapo, a DeSantis appointee, is also an anti-vaxxer.

    “The current standards set by numerous professional organizations appear to follow a preferred political ideology instead of the highest level of generally accepted medical science,” he wrote.

    LGBTQ activists say that it’s actually the April health department guidelines, prepared in part by Ladapo, that are a nakedly partisan move; such actions only serve to advance Republicans’ culture war and to normalize denying the public their bodily autonomy — in the form of restricting gender affirming care, abortion rights, contraception access, and more.

    After the guidelines were released, 300 medical professionals in Florida wrote an op-ed to express their firm opposition to the instructions, which they said were based on cherry-picked data and distorted recommendations from medical groups. “[T]he Florida Department of Health cites a selective and non-representative sample of small studies and reviews, editorials, opinion pieces and commentary to support several of their substantial claims,” they wrote in the Tampa Bay Times. “When citing high-quality studies, they make conclusions that are not supported by the authors of the articles.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • ‘Any number of rights could be next’ if Roe v Wade goes, says Buttigieg

    US transportation secretary says supreme court’s ruling could determine future generations’ freedoms

    Pete Buttigieg, the US transportation secretary and the first openly gay member of a US administration, has expressed his worry that the expected overturning by the supreme court of the 1973 landmark decision which made abortion legal, may be the start of a series of eliminations of other groundbreaking rights and protections.

    Earlier this month a leaked document showed that five conservatives on the nine-justice supreme court had voted to reverse their predecessors’ ruling in Roe v Wade nearly 50 years ago. The provisional ruling could lead to abortion being outlawed in more than half of US states unless it is changed substantially before becoming final.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Florida Teacher Fired For Speaking About Sexuality

    Lee County, Florida – Casey Scott, an elementary school art teacher at Trafalgar Middle School in Lee County, Florida, asked students to make flags to represent themselves as part of an art project. In their discussions about identity, several of her students expressed that they were gay, bisexual, and trans. Many of them wanted to represent themselves using the rainbow flag or the pink, blue, and white flag that represents trans rights. After she hung the flags up on her bulletin board, school administrators told Scott that it would be “in her best interest” to get rid of them immediately.

    When she got home, she was told her contract would not be renewed.

    This is one of the first examples of a teacher being fired under Florida’s new right-wing law attacking educators and LGBTQ+ folks.

    The post Florida Teacher Fired For Speaking About Sexuality appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Florida School Board Reverses Plan to Censor “Don’t Say Gay” Page in Yearbook

    A Florida school board has decided that photos depicting student-led protests against an anti-LGBTQ law in the state will not be censored from a high school yearbook, reversing an action from the county superintendent.

    A page of the Lyman High School yearbook, located within the Seminole County School District, showcased how students left classrooms earlier this year to voice their collective opposition against HB 1557. Opponents of the legislation called it the “Don’t Say Gay” to highlight how it stifled conversation in classrooms.

    The bill, which has since passed and become law (though it is not yet enforced), bans teachers from discussing any topics related to sexual and gender identity in younger elementary-aged classrooms, and puts heavy restrictions on lessons for older students, requiring discussions to be “age appropriate” — a vague definition that could result in costly litigation from anti-LGBTQ parents who believe their children’s schools aren’t in compliance if any lesson includes such discussions.

    Because the images in the Lyman High School yearbook depicted an event that wasn’t school-sanctioned, Superintendent Serita Beamon had initially planned to plaster stickers on that page in every copy of the yearbook, effectively making it impossible for anyone to view the images on that page.

    During a school board meeting on Wednesday, Beamon tried to defend her actions, saying they were not meant to censor student voices, but rather to communicate the district’s official stance that speech, which causes “substantial disruption” and “interferes with school activities or the educational process” is not condoned.

    Students vehemently disagreed with Beamon’s viewpoint, and ultimately, the school board sided with them.

    Initially, the school board appeared ready to uphold Beamon’s decision. But their minds were changed after testimony from students at Lyman High School, who pointed out that the yearbook is both published by students and funded by them, too.

    “Despite being school-owned and the technicalities of school policy, we can not take away that student right by not supporting the student press and student community as a whole,” yearbook editor Sara Ward told the board.

    Ward also noted that a sticker covering up an entire page documenting what had happened during the school year would be “silencing the LGBTQ plus community, and silencing the journalistic community.”

    Due to the students’ concerns and arguments, the board voted 5-0 to allow the page to be included in the yearbook without the proposed censorship. A small sticker from the district, however, explaining that the protest was not sanctioned by the school would be allowed, the board added.

    Directing her comments to students, board member Karen Almond commended them for fighting against censorship of images depicting the peaceful protest from earlier this year.

    “We all make mistakes. … We own up to it, and we try to do what we can to fix it,” Almond said. “As students, I am proud of you for bringing it to our attention.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • DeSantis’s Congressional Maps Deemed “Unconstitutional” by Judge He Appointed

    A state circuit court judge in Florida is set to block congressional maps drawn by the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), finding that they improperly and illegally diminished Black voters’ voices.

    In a statement on Wednesday regarding a lawsuit seeking to block the maps, Leon County Circuit Judge Layne Smith — who was appointed by DeSantis himself — signaled he would block the maps concocted by the governor’s office in a formal ruling later this week.

    Had the maps been allowed to remain in place, they would have reduced the number of Black-majority districts in the state by half, from four districts to two. Rep. Al Lawson, a Florida Democrat whose district would have been impacted by DeSantis’s maps, hailed Smith’s decision to strike down the governor’s boundaries as illegal.

    “The judge recognizes that this map is unlawful and diminishes African Americans’ ability to elect representatives of their choice,” Lawson said. “DeSantis is wrong for enacting this Republican-leaning map that is in clear violation of the U.S. and state constitutions.”

    In his statement, Smith noted that the two majority-Black congressional districts were dismantled in a blatantly unjust way. In one of those districts, Smith highlighted how hundreds of thousands of Black voters were shifted “between four different districts” in DeSantis’s maps, effectively removing their voices from being heard in Congress.

    “The African American population is nowhere near a plurality or a majority” in any of those four districts, Smith pointed out.

    Smith cited the state constitution’s Fair District amendment, which prohibits maps from being drawn if they disenfranchise marginalized communities or purposely favor one political party over another.

    “I am finding that the enacted map is unconstitutional under the Fair District amendment … because it diminishes African Americans’ ability to elect the representatives of their choice,” Smith said in his statement.

    Smith will likely replace DeSantis’s gerrymandered maps with one of two that the Republican-controlled legislature had previously passed, which the governor had vetoed earlier this year. Though still advantageous to the GOP, those maps are seen as somewhat better (though by no means perfect), in terms of respecting Black voters’ voices, than the ones DeSantis demanded be passed after his veto.

    DeSantis’s office said it plans to appeal the ruling, once it’s officially made later this week. Voting rights groups, meanwhile, praised Smith’s assessment of the maps, viewing his decision to block them as the right move.

    “The DeSantis’ enacted congressional map is a threat to the rule of law. … This preliminary injunction from the court is a start to ensuring that the laws of the sunshine state are followed and the voices of voters are fairly represented,” said Cecile Scoon, president of the League of Women Voters of Florida.

    Jasmine Burney-Clark, founder and consulting director of Equal Ground Education Fund, an organization dedicated to expanding voting rights, agreed.

    “No Floridian – including Governor DeSantis – is above the law,” Burney-Clark said in a statement regarding the ruling. “This is one step forward in the fight to protect Black voters, and we will keep doing everything in our power to ensure our voices are heard.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Crossing the Line: The Fight Over Roe

    As the Supreme Court is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, Florida is a case study in what can happen in states where abortion is easy to access. 

    Florida is an unexpected safe haven for people seeking abortions in the South. The state has 55 abortion clinics – more than seven other Southeastern states combined. But Florida is also increasingly an abortion battleground. Reveal found that calls to police from Florida abortion clinics for disturbances, harassment and violence have doubled since 2016.

    Reporter Laura C. Morel spent months investigating the anti-abortion movement there and observed what it’s like to be an abortion provider in Jacksonville, where one particular clinic is under siege by a local anti-abortion group that has figured out a way to be near the clinic’s front door. Protesters rented a room in the same office park as A Woman’s Choice and now can legally, without trespassing, hold daily protests and even religious ceremonies on the private driveway that leads to the clinic. “As abortion providers, we should not have to be harassed going to work every day,” clinic owner Kelly Flynn told Morel. “I mean, no one’s picketing the urologist that’s doing vasectomies.” 

    For doctors who perform abortions, threats of violence are not new. In the 1980s and ’90s, anti-abortion extremists bombed and blockaded clinics and murdered doctors. We hear from David Gunn Jr., whose father performed abortions and was murdered by a fundamentalist Christian in Pensacola in 1993. His death led to the passage of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which makes it illegal to intimidate patients and staff at abortion clinics through force, threat of force or physical obstruction. But Morel found that this federal law, known as the FACE Act, does little to protect against the kind of harassment and intimidation providers face today. At A Woman’s Choice, only one person – a man who called in a bomb threat – has been prosecuted under the FACE Act. 

    What qualifies as “intimidation” varies by state. In California, it’s illegal to photograph patients and staff outside abortion clinics. But at A Woman’s Choice, protesters regularly photograph and film videos of patients, which staffers say makes them feel frazzled and afraid. If Roe v. Wade crumbles, abortion rights advocates warn that  this kind of anti-abortion activism will spread, especially in places where abortion will remain legal.

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • Voting Rights Groups in Florida File Motion to Block DeSantis’s Racist Maps

    A number of voting rights groups in the state of Florida have filed a legal motion to stop the enforcement of congressional redistricting maps that were designed and signed into law earlier this month by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), saying that the maps will diminish the voting power of Black residents.

    The groups filing the motion include the League of Women Voters of Florida, Black Voters Matters Capacity Building Institute, the Equal Ground Education Fund, Florida Rising Together, and various state residents affected by the changes. They allege that the new maps are in violation of the “Fair Districts Amendment” in the state constitution, which prohibits political maps from being drawn and instituted if they disenfranchise marginalized communities or purposely favor one political party over another. They are asking a state judge to invalidate the maps for use in this year’s midterm elections.

    The maps have been widely criticized for cutting the number of Black-majority congressional districts in the state in half, from four districts to two under the new guidelines.

    The constitutional provision being cited in the lawsuit states that “no apportionment plan or individual district shall be drawn with the intent to favor or disfavor a political party or an incumbent.” It also prohibits the drawing of districts “with the intent or result of denying or abridging the equal opportunity of racial or language minorities to participate in the political process or to diminish their ability to elect representatives of their choice.”

    Cecile Scoon, president of the League of Women Voters of Florida, released a statement explaining why her group and others were filing the motion.

    “The League and the other plaintiffs have chosen to not stand by while a rogue governor and a complicit state Legislature make a mockery of Florida’s Constitution and try to silence the votes and voices of hundreds of thousands of Black voters,” Scoon said, adding that the “shameful refusal to protect” Black voters’ rights by the Florida Supreme Court also “harms every citizen in the state, regardless of race.”

    The motion, filed in a Leon County court earlier this week, notes that the governor’s reorganization of the Fifth Congressional District in the state “cracks Black voters among four majority-white districts, thus diminishing their voting strength.”

    Black lawmakers have previously spoken out against the new maps. Before the maps were signed into law, state Sen. Randolph Bracy, a Democrat who is running for Congress in one of the affected districts, decried DeSantis’s actions as blatantly racist.

    “The fact he has the gall to do something like this clearly shows what he thinks of minorities and Black voters,” Bracy said. “It’s stunning in this day and age he would try to wipe out Black representation.”

    U.S. Rep. Al Lawson, the Democrat who currently represents Florida’s Fifth Congressional District, similarly blasted the new maps drawn by DeSantis’s office.

    The proposed maps are “a continued scheme by DeSantis to erase minority access districts in Congress in order to create more seats for the Republican Party,” Lawson said.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Tampa’s Housing Crisis And The Fight For Rent Control

    The Tampa community has struggled for an end to the housing crisis since the eviction moratoriums ended last year. With this year’s midterm elections approaching, Tampa activists demand a rent control ordinance to stop the rise in rent prices. Enough public support can push the Tampa city council to address the housing emergency. Tampa is among the cities facing the worst of the national housing crisis. Tampa ranks ninth worst in the world for decrease in housing affordability. Renters in the city spend 42% of their income on housing, a 6% increase from 2017 during a time of rising inflation and stagnant wages. In 2022, affordable housing listings decreased by 46% while housing prices increased by 26%. More people in Tampa are at risk of losing their housing.

    The post Tampa’s Housing Crisis And The Fight For Rent Control appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Florida Man Demands Ban on Bible in Schools Using DeSantis’s Own Law Against Him

    A political activist and atheist in Florida is using a contentious law that allows residents to object to teaching materials in public schools to request that the Bible be banned from classrooms and school libraries throughout the state.

    Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed HB 7 (sometimes called the Stop WOKE Act) into law earlier this year. DeSantis and other right-wing lawmakers have pushed for the law and others like it as a means to ban LGBTQ content in schools as well as to restrict educators from teaching about racism throughout U.S. history in classrooms.

    More than 200 books have been removed from public schools in Florida so far. But after DeSantis’s administration rejected the use of more than 50 mathematics textbooks in classrooms, claiming that they contained material relating to critical race theory, Florida activist Chaz Stevens said that he had seen enough.

    This week, Stevens sent petitions to several public school superintendents across the state, demanding that they “immediately remove the Bible from the classroom, library, and any instructional material.” Citing the Stop WOKE Act, Stevens pointed out that the subject matter contained within the Bible certainly fits the standards that Republicans have deemed objectionable for children.

    Judicial rulings relating to the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution forbid the teaching of religious concepts for the purpose of indoctrination. But lessons can still be developed and taught on religion — including texts like the Bible — if they are approached in a secular way, and school libraries are allowed to contain such texts for students to reference.

    Stevens’s petition questioned whether passages in the Bible were age-appropriate for school children, highlighting portions of the religious text that “casually” referenced murder, adultery, sexual immorality, rape, cannibalism, and infanticide, among other items.

    “In the end, if Jimmy and Susie are curious about any of the above, they can do what everyone else does — get a room at the Motel Six and grab the Gideons,” Stevens said.

    Stevens also noted that certain passages in the Bible are anti-slavery, and that these portions of the text could cause students in Florida classrooms to feel guilty or uncomfortable — a complaint several conservatives in the state have used to justify their opposition to lessons about slavery in the U.S.

    “With the constant concerns about teaching Critical Race Theory, should we not take stock of the Bible’s position on slavery? I am concerned our young white students will read such passages and wake up to civilization’s sordid past,” Stevens said in his complaint.

    Stevens recognized in his complaint that not everyone would approve of his method of highlighting right-wing hypocrisy.

    “Don’t blame me,” he wrote. “I didn’t pass this ridiculous legislation, I’m merely using the law as provided by Tallahassee.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • DeSantis Signs Bill Banning Ranked-Choice Voting Option for All of Florida

    An elections bill that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed into law this week restricts municipalities from being able to determine how to organize their elections, and bans the use of ranked-choice voting.

    Senate Bill 524 creates a new police force that is tasked with aggressively investigating claims of voter fraud throughout the state — a move that experts have warned is blatantly fascist, as such fraud doesn’t happen on a scale that would warrant expanding surveillance.

    The bill also contains a number of additional, lesser-known provisions, including a ban on the use of ranked-choice voting in the state.

    Ranked-choice voting “makes democracy more fair and functional” by ensuring that voters are given “the option to rank candidates in order of preference,” the voting organization FairVote explains on its website.

    The ranked-choice voting process is a simple one: voters rank all candidates on the ballot in order of whom they most prefer. If no single candidate receives a majority of votes in the first round, the lowest-ranked candidate is eliminated. If you ranked the eliminated candidate as your first choice, your vote still counts — it’s simply redistributed to your second-choice candidate. The process is repeated until a single candidate receives a majority.

    Ranked-choice voting is frequently praised for allowing voters to pick whichever candidates they most prefer without worrying that doing so will be “throwing away” their ballots, a problem that arises under the “first past the post” system of voting. In both conservative and progressive areas of the country where ranked-choice voting is used, voters have reported being overwhelmingly satisfied with its implementation.

    But despite the popularity of ranked-choice voting, DeSantis and Republicans in Florida have now forbidden its use throughout the state.

    The bill prohibits the use of ranked-choice voting “to determine election or nomination to elective office,” and voids any “existing or future local ordinances authorizing the use of ranked-choice voting.” That means that no village, town, city or county can utilize the voting process from now on, and that any city that has already approved of ranked-choice voting can no longer employ such a system.

    One city in the state had previously passed an ordinance to implement ranked-choice voting, while another was exploring doing so. In 2007, the Sarasota city council voted to use ranked-choice in its elections, but the state never certified the software that would be needed to implement the process. In 2021, the city council of Clearwater moved to put the idea up for a vote among its residents in this year’s elections.

    Unless the new law is repealed, however, neither of those communities will be able to use ranked-choice voting going forward.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • DeSantis’s Attack on Disney Shows Desperation of Right-Wing Culture Warriors

    Even as the far right has consolidated its power, rallying sizable numbers to attack fundamental civil and human rights, it’s nevertheless noticeable how, in mainstream popular culture, certain norms of representation have shifted dramatically over the last four decades. It’s striking that when scanning the commercials on an average TV network in 2022, no matter what is being sold — cars, jeans, breakfast cereals, vacations, those ready-made dinner boxes, booze, pet food — the actors in the ads of late are often people of color, and sometimes include queer couples. It isn’t every ad, but it’s a hell of a lot of them, and it speaks to some larger shifts in mainstream culture.

    The fact that mixed race and LGBTQ couples and families are highly represented in TV ads does not mean that some sort of righteous plateau has been reached by American culture. George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and every other person of color murdered by the police remain dead. Racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia and ableism remain deeply ingrained within large swaths of the populace, as American as apple pie and the Ford Motor Company. A multiracial family peddling Cheerios has barely made a dent in the underlying systemic crisis.

    Yet the fact that some capitalist enterprises have had to make a show of being multiracial and LGBTQ-inclusive represents a long-term nightmare for right-wing culture warriors. See, the companies running these ads are not boldly forging ahead into a just and progressive future with such endeavors. They are chasing the money, and likely spent eleventy zillion dollars on experts and panel tests to determine one simple thing: Do we make more than we lose by running with these images? The prevalence of BIPOC and/or LGBTQ actors in these ads makes it clear that it is safe and lucrative in the U.S. to do just that.

    There’s nothing heroic about it. Advertisers generally follow the same morally bleak formula car companies do when deciding to issue a recall: Are lawsuits over crashes caused by this faulty part more expensive than the recall? If the recall is more expensive, they don’t do it, because they actually save money getting sued. This kind of thinking is how the word “business” became a slur in the mouths of millions: First, it’s all about the money. After that, it’s all about the money. In the end, yep, the money.

    Yet even this cynical view is cold comfort to the right-wing culture warriors, for they correctly see that trends become fixed in cement over a long enough span. Their long-smoldering racist nightmare of being “replaced” crashes headlong into their deep-seated confirmation bias every time one of these ads appears on their screen.

    This is why these people have taken to attacking large multinational corporations who have dared to hint that Black lives matter (generally, to turn a buck).

    I’m so old, I remember when conservatives were the defenders of big business. Now? Some of these same corporations have to pass some right-bent purity test, lest the dogs start barking in the yard.

    Enter Florida, where nothing strange ever happens. Chris Walker of Truthout explained the ground upon which the latest culture clash has erupted back in March:

    The Parental Rights in Education bill, which LGBTQ activists and allies have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, passed in the Florida Senate by a vote of 22 to 17. Two Republican senators crossed the aisle to join all Democratic lawmakers in the chamber in voting against the legislation.

    If the bill is signed into law, it would ban discussion on LGBTQ topics in primary school classrooms, and place strict limits on what can be taught or discussed in high schools. It would also allow parents to sue school districts if information about their children is withheld, or if instruction on LGBTQ topics is not “age-appropriate.”

    Disney Corporation, after some hemming and hawing, came out loudly against the bill when Gov. Ron DeSantis signed it into law, pledging among other things to cease donations to Republicans who support it. Florida’s congressional Republicans rose in high dudgeon, flashed a whole new bill meant to punish Disney through the legislative process, and slapped it on Gov. Ron DeSantis’s desk for final signature. Among other things, the anti-Disney bill ends that corporation’s decades-old virtual autonomy in Florida, and puts local residents on the hook for billions in taxes that would otherwise have been covered by the company.

    The culture warriors are not pulling their punches, either. The most bizarre and dangerous line of anti-Disney rhetoric casts the company as a giant corporate pedophile ring seeking to “groom” children for their inevitable sexual exploitation. It is no coincidence that this rhetoric matches the equally bombastic nonsense peddled by adherents of QAnon, the online conspiracy cohort that accuses pedophiles of running both the Democratic Party and Hollywood. This is not a bug; it’s a feature — the platform the GOP intends to run on in 2022.

    The complications surrounding this strange squabble are legion. Has DeSantis violated Disney’s First Amendment rights with this punitive attack? Does a First Amendment defense further buttress the legal fiction of corporate personhood? Will the courts uphold this legislation? Did DeSantis and the Florida GOP pass this bill from the grandstands, full in the knowledge that it will not survive legal challenge, and thus sparing DeSantis from having to explain why he just dropped more than a billion dollars in new taxes on a couple of his counties? Is there any concern about levying vicious attacks against a giant institution beloved by millions, with its own megaphone that is approximately the size of Jupiter?

    More ominously, is this now the new normal for the GOP? “Other members of that New Right movement recently told me they envision a ramped-up use of the state to impose a post-liberal moral order, justified by hyperbolic visions of the supposedly hegemonic power of the left over our institutions,” writes Greg Sargent for The Washington Post. “Meanwhile, GOP elected officials seem to be moving this way. Congressional Republicans have vowed retaliation against companies for opposing Georgia’s voter suppression bill and for cooperating with the congressional investigation into Trump’s coup attempt. And DeSantis is a front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.”

    The possibility of blowback against DeSantis and his crew is also very real. There’s a South Park episode DeSantis should have watched before putting ink to the anti-Disney bill, which he did on Saturday afternoon. In the episode, beloved cartoon character Mickey Mouse is revealed as a ruthless and violent tyrant who beats the boy-band Jonas Brothers bloody for refusing to wear “purity rings” onstage. When his will is ultimately thwarted in the end, Mickey swells to the size of a blimp and takes flight, raining fire and destruction down on people fleeing for their lives below.

    After DeSantis signed the bill, I wondered if he would meet the same version of Mickey Mouse that ran over the Jonas Brothers on South Park. Disney Corporation is no small wheel in Florida, the largest single-place employer in the U.S. at 80,000 workers, and the crown jewel of Florida’s vital multi-billion-dollar tourist industry. Companies like that don’t need to leave the building to destroy a governor who gets out of line, much less transform into a Cthulhu-like engine of destruction. A few phone calls usually do the trick.

    However, the right wing is its own giant institution in this country. And as the last several years have told us, ruthless and violent tyrants aren’t always thwarted in the end.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • DeSantis Ban on Math Books Financially Benefits Another Anti-CRT GOP Governor

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) recently rejected the use of a number of math books in Florida public schools because they supposedly contain material relating to critical race theory — but closer inspection of who benefits from the rejection of the textbooks reveals that another Republican governor is set to profit from the decision.

    Earlier this month, DeSantis rejected more than 50 mathematics titles for use in K-12 public schools in Florida, claiming that the books contained critical race theory, Common Core teaching concepts, and other materials he deemed inappropriate for children. But officials wouldn’t provide examples of how the content had violated state standards.

    In spite of not being forthright on why these decisions were made, the state agency overseeing the rejection of the textbooks declared that their process was a “transparent” one.

    Upon further investigation from news media, however, it became clear that certain individuals will financially benefit from DeSantis’s rejection of textbooks — including Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, another Republican lawmaker who has pushed an anti-critical race theory agenda.

    The only textbooks that the DeSantis administration approved for K-5 classrooms throughout the state were from a company called Accelerate Learning, The Tallahassee Democrat reported last week. That company, the progressive organization Blue Virginia has pointed out, was acquired by The Carlyle Group, a private equity company which Youngkin was the CEO of at the time of the acquisition.

    As a result of the reporting, the Virginia governor denied having anything to do with DeSantis’s decision-making process. “The governor left Carlyle two years ago and had no direct involvement with the partnership,” a spokesperson for Youngkin said.

    Still, DeSantis’s decision to use only Accelerate Learning books for K-5 classrooms will have a positive financial impact on Youngkin, as Youngkin still has hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stock in The Carlyle Group.

    It’s unclear whether DeSantis’s actions were made with the intention of increasing Youngkin’s profits, but because the state hasn’t been transparent about its process for rejecting books, the connection has raised a number of eyebrows.

    “It’s still unclear if this is all just a giant coincidence or if Republicans are using their efforts to censor ideas they don’t like in public schools to also steer contracts towards publishers they have relationships and investments with,” Occupy Democrats opinion columnist Thomas Kennedy said in a recent column. “To me, it’s highly suspicious that the only Math textbooks now available for Florida school districts in grades K-5 have a direct connection to a Republican governor who is also pushing the same censorship agenda.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Florida’s Gerrymandered Map Is Now Law — Practically Guaranteeing GOP Victories

    Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has signed into law a gerrymandered voting map that virtually guarantees Republicans four more seats in Congress while likely cutting the number of Black Democrats elected. The measure passed along party lines Thursday but was delayed when Black Florida lawmakers staged an impromptu sit-in protest. “Republicans cannot continue to disenfranchise Black voters,” says state Senator Shevrin Jones, a Democratic member of Florida’s Legislative Black Caucus who took part in the protest and who calls the gerrymandering part of a larger suite of “racist tactics” enacted by Republicans across the country.

    TRANSCRIPT

    This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

    AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

    In Florida, the Republican governor and possible presidential contender, Ron DeSantis, has signed into law a gerrymandered congressional voting map that virtually guarantees Republicans four more seats in Congress while likely cutting the number of Black Democrats elected. The measure passed along party lines Thursday during a special session called by the governor. But it was delayed when Black Florida lawmakers staged an impromptu sit-in.

    BLACK FLORIDA LAWMAKERS: Whose house? The people’s house! Whose house? The people’s house! Whose house? The people’s house!

    Show me what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like! Show me what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like!

    We are the people! We are the people! The mighty, mighty people! The mighty, mighty people! Fighting for justice!

    AMY GOODMAN: That was Florida state Representative Dianne Hart, a Democrat from Tampa, live-streaming video from the floor of the Florida House chamber as she joined the protest. She said DeSantis’s map is meant to disenfranchise Black voters.

    REP. DIANNE HART: We know that what the governor is doing with these maps is not fair. He is taking us from four representatives to two. That’s not fair. He should have allowed us, the Legislature, to draw maps. His job is to either accept them or veto them. But he’s not doing that. Instead, he’s sending his own map, and he’s saying, “If you don’t vote on my map the way I want my map to be, then guess what: You won’t get a map.”

    AMY GOODMAN: The governor signed the bill into law on Friday. The controversial plan immediately drew a legal challenge.

    Also last week, Governor DeSantis signed into law a measure approved by Republican state lawmakers to rescind Disney World’s self-governing status, after he and his allies blasted Disney for opposing Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law. We’ll talk more about that in a minute.

    But right now we go to Florida, where we’re joined in Miami Gardens by Democratic Florida state Senator Shevrin Jones, member of Florida’s Legislative Black Caucus. He is a Bahamian American, also Florida’s first openly gay state senator.

    Welcome to Democracy Now!, Senator Shevrin Jones. It’s great to have you with us.

    SEN. SHEVRIN JONES: Thank you, Amy.

    AMY GOODMAN: Why don’t you start off by talking about the walkout by the Black Caucus and why you walked out?

    SEN. SHEVRIN JONES: Yeah, well, the House Democrats, they did exactly what was on the heels and what was going to happen eventually, because in Florida we have been dealing with, for the past four years, this constant attack on the Black community and on marginalized communities at large. And so, the House Democrats, they did what was warranted. That was they shut the House down.

    Now, I will say that the House Democrats and how they — and what they’ve done, they made clear that if they are going to make laws like 1960, they will protest like it’s 1960. The Republicans cannot continue to disenfranchise Black voters, disenfranchise and take our voices away from us, and expect nothing to bring attention to what’s happening in Florida. If we can’t win inside the chambers, we have to bring attention one way or another. And so, the House Democrats, Black Caucus members felt that this was the best way to bring attention nationally to what Florida is doing.

    AMY GOODMAN: It so much reminded me of John Lewis sitting literally on the floor of the House with other congressmembers in that national protest that took place, what you all did in the Florida Legislature. And yet Governor DeSantis signed on Friday. Explain more what this means, not only for Florida, because it sure looks like, from this to “Don’t Say Gay,” we’re talking about as goes Florida, so goes, well, a number of other states in the nation.

    SEN. SHEVRIN JONES: Yeah, Amy. What we’re seeing right now, we’re seeing Florida is pushing our judicial system. They want to see how far they can take it, because the Republicans in Florida know good and well that what they did is unconstitutional. Since Reconstruction, we’ve only had 11 Black congressional members. Now we only have five Black congressional members, four which are actually access seats. Now with this new map that just went into place, we will only have two Black access seats.

    And what we are saying right now is that if other states are watching, that if Florida can do this, if Florida can go in this direction and they can get away with going totally against the people — which in 2010 we voted for the Fair District Act — if they can go along with this, that means other states can do the same.

    And so, this is exactly what’s happening. The governor is an attorney. He has very smart people around him. So they know exactly what they’re doing. This is to push the judicial system to the limit, all the way to the Supreme Court, which I believe is not only dangerous for the state but is dangerous for our democracy.

    AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to a clip of you on the floor of the state Senate, not sitting on the floor but when you addressed the governor last week.

    SEN. SHEVRIN JONES: And so, Governor DeSantis, I’m not going to call what you’re doing a culture war anymore. I’m going to call it just what it is: It’s a racist tactic that you’re doing, and you know what you’re doing.

    AMY GOODMAN: Actually, that was at a news conference that you held. How did he respond?

    SEN. SHEVRIN JONES: They didn’t respond at all, actually. And I think a lot of this, what we’re seeing, Amy, is all of this is just a distraction. Whether it’s Disney, whether it’s CRT, all of these things that’s happening is a distraction. But what we can’t allow to happen, we cannot allow the Black community to continue to be run over. Yesterday we had a call with over 300 people from across the state, that was put on by the NAACP. The Republicans have just awakened a sleeping giant.

    You know, we already — right now within the South Florida, particularly in Miami, Miami has become the most expensive place to live. A lot of these areas that we’re speaking about are Black communities. And so, the fact that we are going to go to Tallahassee, waste our time, waste taxpayers’ money to hold a special session to take a special district away from Disney, all because you want to punish them, while ignoring the fact that we have bigger issues that we need to deal with, this is lackluster leadership at its best.

    And I’ll end with this, that as we continue to move forward, that what we’re seeing right now in Florida, it is not just a culture war. It is racist tactics that is happening all across this country, that Republicans, they see that they are in distress, and they are going to great lengths to take power away from marginalized people, to pick on marginalized people. Why is that? It’s because they see their power slipping away from them. But what they’re doing is dangerous and can have long-lasting effect on the state and in this country.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • “Don’t Say Gay” Bills Aren’t New. Some States Have Had Them for Decades.

    Earlier this month, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed into law House Bill 322, colloquially dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, restricting public school teachers from discussing LGBTQ+ history or people in public elementary schools.

    It stood out for two reasons: Alabama was just the second state to pass such a law in 21 years, after Florida passed a similar measure in March. But more significantly, Ivey had just signed a repeal of a similar law the previous year.

    At least 20 states have introduced “Don’t Say Gay” laws this year, which have made waves around the country. But in a handful of states, versions of the legislation have existed for decades.

    Since 1992, Alabama’s education code stipulated that teachers emphasize “in a factual manner and from a public health perspective, that homosexuality is not a lifestyle acceptable to the general public and that homosexual conduct is a criminal offense under the laws of the state.”

    Ivey did not issue public statements when she signed the repeal, which was first passed by the legislature, but her signature seemed in step with the times. A year ago, “Don’t Say Gay” laws that had passed in the 1980s were considered archaic, LGBTQ+ advocates said, with many of them repealed over the years. After marriage equality became the law of the land in 2015, seven states passed laws mandating that curriculums include LGBTQ+ history and life.

    Republican lawmakers say the new spate of curriculum bills allow parents to decide what their children learn about sexuality at a young age; Florida’s new law bars discussions of sexual orientation or gender identity until after third grade, at which point parents must be notified if their kids might learn about LGBTQ+ issues. But this year, as 15 states now have anti-trans sports bans on the books, LGBTQ+ advocates say Republican lawmakers are aiming to one-up each other for political gain.

    “Republicans have to put a conservative point on the board, notch their anti-LGBT credentials, and say, ‘Look, I really campaigned on this.’ Or, ‘I really went to the mat for this anti-LGBT policy,’” said Adam Polaski, communications director for the Campaign for Southern Equality. “Unfortunately, opponents of LGBT equality have often taken their fight to the schools.”

    Texas lawmakers have expressed interest in pursuing a “Don’t Say Gay” bill like Florida’s and Alabama’s, even though the state has had a similar regulation on the books since 1991. In Texas, the state code still stipulates that educational materials for people under the age of 18 “state that homosexual conduct is not an acceptable lifestyle and is a criminal offense.”

    According to the Movement Advancement Project (MAP), which tracks LGBTQ+ policy throughout the country, 19 percent of the country lives in a state with an LGBTQ+ curriculum ban. Most are in states with laws that predate Florida’s and Alabama’s. Still, most Americans are largely unaware of the fact that Florida is not the first state to pass such a law, advocates said.

    Oklahoma passed the nation’s first bill banning teachers from talking about homosexuality in an AIDS sex ed measure in April 1987, and Louisiana followed suit that July. South Carolina passed a “Don’t Say Gay” bill in 1988. Texas and Arizona passed their own in 1991. In total, nine states passed laws banning schools from teaching about “homosexuality” from 1987 to 2001, when Utah adopted its version.

    Many of those were written into sex ed codes. For example, Louisiana still has a law on the books that states, “No sex education course offered in the public schools of the state shall utilize any sexually explicit materials depicting male or female homosexual activity.”

    However, that is not the case in every state, said Logan Casey, senior policy researcher and adviser for the MAP.

    “Many of these laws are written intentionally vaguely so that they can be applied even more broadly than the explicit letter of the law might suggest,” Casey said of the laws written up until 2001.

    Mississippi sex ed law requires that teachers simply teach current state law related to sexual conduct and lists “homosexuality” alongside sensitive topics such as “forcible rape, statutory rape, paternity establishment” and “child support.” Mississippi state law does not protect LGBTQ+ people from discrimination.

    Casey said the bills are relics of the AIDS crisis, when panic about homosexuality dictated school curriculum. It also dates back to the infamous “Save Our Children” campaign led by activist Anita Bryant in the 1970s to overturn anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ people in Miami, Florida.

    “Once the HIV epidemic came into the picture, then a bunch of states started considering and enacting laws that banned instruction on sexuality and homosexuality in public education, channeling this ‘Save Our Children’ campaign energy and the fear and prejudice during the HIV epidemic,” Casey said.

    Five states repealed their “Don’t Say Gay” bills between 2006 and 2021, when Alabama rescinded its law.

    Those familiar with the old curriculum laws expressed surprise that Florida’s latest bill has sent shockwaves across the nation. Advocates say part of that surprise is that “Don’t Say Gay” statutes have been revived after two decades. They also add that local groups have gotten smarter about fighting the measures.

    Vivian Topping, director of advocacy and civic engagement of the Equality Federation, a coalition of state LGBTQ+ organizations, said local Florida organizers worked overtime to sound the alarms about their “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

    “They created TV ads and really brought together national partners to make a big splash out of what was happening in Florida,” she said in a statement.

    Advocates say that the current push for “Don’t Say Gay” bills is political. Nadine Smith, executive director of Equality Florida, has claimed that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ decision to push the “Don’t Say Gay” bill in Florida is less about kids and more about the Republican’s presidential ambitions.

    “DeSantis has damaged our state’s reputation as a welcoming and inclusive place for all families, he has made us a laughing stock and target of national derision,” Smith said in a statement. “Worse, he has made schools less safe for children.”

    DeSantis has argued that his bill allows parents to decide what their kids learn.

    “Parents’ rights have been increasingly under assault around the nation, but in Florida we stand up for the rights of parents and the fundamental role they play in the education of their children,” said DeSantis in a statement.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Florida’s Anti-Trans “Guidelines” Are a Partisan Attack That Could Harm Youth

    Experts and activists say a nonbinding statement released by the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis in Florida on Wednesday urging medical providers to deny gender-affirming health care to young people is a baseless partisan attack that will have little impact on efforts to defend trans and LGBTQ rights in court. Although the statement doesn’t hold legal weight, it still has the potential to scare and intimidate trans youth and their families, activists said, and should be emphatically opposed.

    Florida state health officials released “guidelines” on Wednesday that say children and adolescents should not receive potentially lifesaving gender-affirming treatments for gender dysphoria, including so-called “social gender transitions” such as changing pronouns and hairstyles that do not involve medication or medical procedures.

    LGBTQ activists say the Florida Department of Health’s statement is a desperate and obviously partisan effort to spread lies about trans and nonbinary youth as Republicans attempt to whip their voters into an anti-LGBTQ frenzy ahead of the midterms. Legal experts stress that the so-called “guidelines” do not carry the force of law and are unlikely to impact legal challenges to any future anti-LGBTQ legislation passed in the state.

    Instead, the “guidelines” appear to be nothing more than an empty and scientifically inaccurate political statement issued by far-right ideologues within the Florida health department, according to Carl Charles, a senior attorney at the LGBTQ rights group Lambda Legal. Charles added said Florida’s constitution prevents state judges from deferring to opinions issued by state agencies in legal cases, and the statement would do little to bolster any future anti-LGBTQ laws passed under DeSantis and inevitably challenged in court.

    However, that doesn’t mean the health department’s “guidance” will have no impact. News about the statement could add to the heightened sense of fear felt by young people and their parents as the rights of trans and nonbinary youth come under attack in Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama and other GOP-led states, Charles said. Activists and journalists should approach far-right disinformation carefully.

    “I don’t think it’s responsible to scare vulnerable families and children who are already scared about what is going on and trans youth being targeted,” Charles said in an interview.

    The Florida statement is in direct response to a fact sheet and memorandum to state health agencies issued by the Biden administration on gender-affirming care for young people, which correctly states that trans and nonbinary youth face significant health care disparities and are at increased risk of mental health issues and suicide. Using cherry–picked data and rigorously debunked research, the Florida guidelines attempt to push back on federal health officials with what Charles called “off-the-cuff opinionating.”

    Gender-affirming care encompasses a range of psychological and medical services. Conservatives, fueled by viral misinformation, are laser-focused on the use of hormones to delay puberty and to promote physical development that is consistent with a child’s identity, which is recommended by the American Psychiatric Association and the American Academy of Pediatricians for transgender youth when they reach an appropriate age. However, these treatments are only one part of a much broader model of care for trans, nonbinary and gender-nonconforming people.

    Echoing experts across the country, the federal guidelines from the Department of Health and Human Services say that “social affirmation” of adolescents who adopt gender-affirming pronouns, hairstyles, clothing and restroom accommodations is critical for fostering better health outcomes. Social affirmation is used at any stage of a child’s development because social transitions are flexible, adapting to the child’s identity, wishes and expression as they grow.

    Indeed, a social transition is the most common form of gender transition for people of any age. Research shows that 73 percent of transgender men and 78 percent of transgender women experience gender dysphoria, or the realization that they were assigned the wrong gender, by the age of 7.

    Florida officials appear to conflate “social gender transitions” with medical and psychological treatment for young people diagnosed with gender dysphoria. However, acknowledging a social transition is crucial for providing adequate health care and is not a distinct medical intervention. It remains unclear whether the Florida Health Department is discouraging doctors from using the correct names and pronouns for their patients and respecting their identities.

    Jeremy Redfern, a spokesman for the department, said in an email that research on “social gender transitions” is “inconclusive.” Therefore the “precautionary principle” of medicine must be applied, and “the burden of proof falls on those claiming that there is a benefit,” Redfern wrote.

    However, affirming a social transition is indicated “across the board” for transgender and nonbinary children because it is not a medical intervention, according to Charles. Affirming a patient’s identity is central to providing gender-affirming health care for any type of medical issue, from treatment a sinus infection to healing a broken arm. It is, activists emphasize, a basic human right.

    When asked “yes or no” whether the Florida Department of Health is discouraging doctors from affirming a young patient’s social transition and gender identity in the course of medical treatment, Redfern deflected, saying the guidance and evidence “speak for itself.” The guidance says adolescents should be “provided social support from peers and family” and seek counseling from a licensed provider, but it does not clarify what type of “counseling” is encouraged.

    “I think this is really just a political talking point document that is not based in accurate and available science and data and was released to serve a partisan purpose,” Charles said, adding that civil rights attorneys are closely following anti-LGBTQ legislation in Florida and across the country.

    Serena Sojic-Borne, an organizer with the Real Name Campaign who works with queer and trans youth activists in Louisiana, said government advisories such as Florida’s anti-trans “guidelines” can be lethal considering the high rates of suicide and mental distress among trans and gender-nonconforming youth.

    “We know it doesn’t take much to recognize that young kids are going to be terrified by something like this, and we know that mental health issues are going to go up, and kids are going to be more afraid of getting the care they need,” Sojic-Borne said in an interview.

    However, Sojic-Borne said many young people are organizing rather than living in fear. In New Orleans, for example, student activists recently staged a walkout at a high school in protest of anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ copycat bills that mirror legislation introduced in Florida and other red states. Youth rallies are also planned outside of legislative offices.

    “The point here is that kids aren’t being passive, youth are responding and youth are fighting back for their rights,” Sojic-Borne said.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • DeSantis’s Education Department Bans 54 Math Books Over Supposed CRT Content

    The Florida Department of Education announced last week that it was rejecting the use of dozens of mathematics textbooks in K-12 public schools throughout the state, ostensibly because they contained content that discussed critical race theory.

    When asked to provide examples, however, neither the department nor Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) would do so, in spite of claiming that the process had been “transparent.”

    In a statement lauding the decision to reject the titles, DeSantis said that he was “grateful” that the department “conducted such a thorough vetting of these textbooks to ensure they comply with the law.” The department stated that it had engaged in a “transparent instructional materials review process” that “ensures the public has the opportunity to review and comment on submitted textbooks.”

    But critics noted that the titles of the books — and examples of why the books had been rejected — were not readily provided to the public.

    Fifty-four mathematics books were rejected by the state in total, amounting to 41 percent of the 132 titles that were submitted for review. The department did not include the names of the books that were rejected, leaving Floridians and news media unable to scrutinize the state’s decision to ban their use.

    “@EducationFL just announced they’re banning dozens of math textbooks they claim ‘indoctrinate’ students with CRT. They won’t tell us what they are or what they say b/c it’s a lie,” contended state Rep. Carlos Smith (D).

    Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association, blasted DeSantis and the state Department of Education for not being forthcoming about their decision-making process.

    “If elementary-level textbooks are rejected for critical race theory or social emotional learning how about further defining those terms, and giving examples of objectionable content?,” Spar asked in a series of tweets. “Who reviewed the textbooks, and what are their qualifications?”

    DeSantis’s spokesperson, Christina Pushaw, responded to the criticism by tweeting images of math homework that she said was inappropriate and worthy of rejection from the state. However, the homework she shared was from an unapproved assignment a teacher gave students in Missouri, not Florida.

    DeSantis claims his administration’s refusal to share the titles he deemed “indoctrinating” was because such material is “proprietary.” But Christopher Finan, executive director of the National Coalition Against Censorship, said that the lawmaker’s refusal to share the titles is troubling.

    “Textbook selection has always been a highly politicized area. It is not a surprise that textbooks are being attacked,” Finan said to The Miami Herald. “It just seems so bizarre that they managed to find [critical race theory] in math textbooks. It is direct from satire.”

    Conservative lawmakers across the nation have turned critical race theory — a collegiate-level set of studies that examines the intersection of race, racism and U.S. law — into a new election-year boogeyman, despite the fact that the framework rarely, if ever, makes its way into K-12 classrooms. But policies and legislation seeking to ban critical race theory have resulted in a chilling effect on teachers’ lesson plans — making it difficult for educators to effectively teach about the history of racism in the United States.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Abortion Bans Pass in GOP-Led Florida, Kentucky, Oklahoma & Tennessee as SCOTUS Set to Overturn Roe


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Republicans Refuse to Name Courthouse After Black Judge in Overtly Racist Move

    Congressional Republicans may eschew robes and burning crosses, but the party’s overt racism is increasingly on display beneath the Capitol dome. The appalling treatment of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson during her Supreme Court nomination hearings was last week’s example. This week belongs to a noted jurist who was set to have a building named after him until the long claws of bigotry dug in and ripped the posthumous honor away.

    When Justice Joseph W. Hatchett sat for the Florida bar exam in 1959, he was not allowed to stay in the hotel where the test was being administered because Jim Crow laws forbade it. A Black man born in Clearwater in 1932, Hatchett graduated from Howard University School of Law and undertook a legal career that included serving as assistant state attorney general, a judge for the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, a judge for the Eleventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, and a judge on the Florida Supreme Court. He was the first Black person to serve as a Florida Supreme Court judge.

    Hatchett retired from the court in 1999 and went into private practice. He passed away last year at age 88, a widely praised and highly admired jurist. “Joe Hatchett is a person who lives and has lived by the ethical precepts which have historically guided the conduct of truly great judges and lawyers of our past and present,” said former American Bar Association (ABA) President Chesterfield Smith when Hatchett was awarded the Florida Supreme Court Historical Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award. “Joe Hatchett to me exemplifies what is best in an American judge, one who is sometimes lonely, but one who never shirks standing alone.”

    Last month, Florida’s two Republican senators — joined by all 27 member of Florida’s House contingent — sponsored a bill to name a Tallahassee courthouse after Hatchett. The bill was expected to sail with enormous bipartisan support; naming things is among the easiest and most uncontroversial tasks performed by Congress, often happening on a fast-track basis with no debate or recorded vote. The Hatchett bill was set to join the thousands that had preceded it until GOP Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia stepped into its path.

    “Since being sworn in last year, Mr. Clyde has drawn attention for comparing the deadly Capitol attack to a ‘normal tourist visit’ and voting against a resolution to give the Congressional Gold Medal to police officers who responded that day,” reports The New York Times. “He also opposed the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act, which made lynching a federal hate crime and explicitly outlawed an act that was symbolic of the country’s history of racial violence. Mr. Clyde also voted against recognizing Juneteenth as a federal holiday.”

    Clyde’s “problem” with naming a building after Hatchett? A 1999 decision in which then-Judge Hatchett upheld long-established Constitutional protections against prayer in public schools. Like a pollinating bumblebee, Clyde buzzed from colleague’s ear to colleague’s ear brandishing an Associated Press article on that ruling. Republican “yes” votes began flipping to “no,” and before long it was a stampede. Among the stampeders were many who had initially co-sponsored the bill to begin with. Others merely acted when they saw the herd wheel and charge. “Asked what made him vote against a measure that he had co-sponsored,” reports the Times, “Representative Vern Buchanan, Republican of Florida, was brief and blunt: ‘I don’t know,’ he said.” (Later, a spokesman for the congressman said he’d made his decision “because of the judge’s position against prayer at graduation ceremonies.”)

    The Hatchett bill required a two-thirds majority to pass in the House. It was defeated with 187 “no” votes, a tally that included 89 percent of House Republicans.

    It would be easy to chalk this debacle up to the “tensions” of the moment, to the ongoing fight over the teaching of so-called “critical race theory,” itself a nonsense issue because no such theory is taught in any public school anywhere.

    Yet in the aftermath of the disgracefully racist Brown Jackson hearings, one would think Republicans would have sense enough to let the rhetoric cool down, let the bruises that were raised fade, lest the true nature of these endeavors become unavoidably exposed. Instead, what we have here is a doubling down, a dare-you-to-stop-me search for the next extreme act, and the next, and the next. Their racism is overtly on display, and they’re not backing down.

    The weaponizing of religion by the GOP’s evangelical base plays no small part in this; everything from Roe v. Wade to LGBTQ justice is passed through the evangelical prism to emerge as a threat against Christianity, which then justifies the most heinous forms of response.

    Worse, therefore — and certainly instructive on how mobs can be incited to do horrific things — was the lemming-like quality to this abrupt and cruel reversal. The fact that so many of Clyde’s fellow Republicans feared what would happen if they answered “yes,” feared what would happen if their racist and/or evangelical voter base got wind of their vote, speaks volumes on the state of play within that party.

    A few of them didn’t even need fear as a motivator: They saw a clot of Republicans in a stampede and leaped over the cliff to join them, no questions asked.

    No questions asked. Our history is rife with moments of gruesome violence and cruelty committed by individuals who fell into the gravity well of mob action. More often than not, members of those mobs would look at the blood on their hands in the aftermath and have no adequate answer to one question: “Why?” In this, Rep. Buchanan’s initial response to why he voted against an uncontroversial bill is instructive.

    Others, like Rep. Clyde, knew exactly what they were doing when they successfully wrecked the honoring of a Black man based on the most gossamer of justifications. They need no justification; when they do what they do, those who support them and their racism provide justification enough. They most devoutly believe their bleak star — bereft of light and promising only darkness — is on the rise. It has been for a long while now, but in the overtly racist wake of Donald Trump, they are no longer hiding in hushed corners.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Green Haven Project Is Nurturing Underserved Communities One Garden At A Time

    Three years ago, Jorge Palacios, David Roper and Josh Placeres came together with a shared vision to make a better world for communities of color in Miami. They wanted to create a space where Black and Brown families can access fresh produce and learn how to live a healthy lifestyle.

    Borne of their own social justice and community activism, the trio cultivated a food movement by transforming an empty land lot into a lush community garden in the heart of the historically Black Overtown neighborhood. Carrots, eggplant, garlic chive, kale, cranberry hibiscus, papaya, Thai basil, and moringa are in abundance for a community that has limited fresh produce options.   The three launched the Green Haven Project in 2019, to expand their efforts.

    The post Green Haven Project Is Nurturing Underserved Communities One Garden At A Time appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Betsy DeVos and Her Family Are Flooding Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis With Cash

    Former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and her family have donated more than $280,000 to back Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ re-election effort amid his crackdown on discussions of race and sexual orientation in schools.

    DeVos, who served four years as former President Donald Trump’s education chief, personally contributed $5,500 to a super PAC backing DeSantis’ re-election bid last month, according to state campaign finance records. Her husband, Dick DeVos, the former chief executive of Amway, contributed more than $80,000 to the Friends of Ron DeSantis super PAC last year. Their son, Rick DeVos, contributed $2,500 directly to DeSantis’ campaign, as did their grandson Dalton DeVos and niece Olivia DeVos. Dick DeVos’ brother Daniel and his wife Pamela also kicked in more than $70,000 to the Friends of DeSantis super PAC and his other brother Douglas also contributed more than $60,000. Dick DeVos’ sister Suzanne Cheryl DeVos added another $50,000.

    The DeVos family, which also owns the NBA’s Orlando Magic, donated more than $200,000 to the Friends of Ron DeSantis PAC during the Florida governor’s 2018 campaign. The Michigan-based DeVos clan, with their extensive conservative connections, have showered far-right Republicans with campaign cash for years, contributing more than $82 million to political causes since 1999, according to an analysis by the Michigan Campaign Finance Network, though some estimates put that number at closer to $200 million.

    The former secretary and other members of her family have been deeply involved in the “school choice” movement, pushing to shift public education funds to private and charter schools, and have promoted efforts to use the country’s schools to “advance God’s kingdom.” DeSantis, meanwhile, quickly pushed for a plan to use taxpayer money to fund private and religious school tuition to expand “school choice” options shortly after taking office in 2019. DeVos touted the plan while part of the Trump administration, tweeting that she “completely” agrees.

    DeSantis also appointed former state House Speaker Richard Corcoran, an ally of far-right Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who had no background in education, as the state’s education commissioner. Fedrick Ingram, the president of the Florida Education Association, a statewide teachers union, decried Corcoran as a “Betsy DeVos clone” after he spent his time in the legislature pushing school choice and charter school funding and decried teachers’ unions as “repugnant” and “evil” for objections to shifting taxpayer funds from private schools to charter schools. Critics also accused Corcoran of a conflict of interest because his wife Anne is the chief executive of a charter school who has worked with conservative groups like Hillsdale College to influence the state’s education curriculum.

    After the pandemic hit, DeVos and Trump pushed for a rapid reopening of schools in the summer of 2020. DeSantis and Corcoran jumped at Trump’s demand, issuing an order to keep all schools open five days a week. The state last year sought to punish school districts that required students to wear masks in the classroom.

    Critics say DeVos is seeking to expand her successful effort to shift money away from public schools to for-profit and private schools in Michigan, where her family has donated more than $58 million at the state level as the state’s education rankings have plummeted. John Austin, the former president of the Michigan State Board of Education, previously told Rolling Stone that the family’s efforts have done “tremendous damage to learning outcomes, particularly for poor and minority kids in Michigan.”

    Since then, DeVos has turned her focus to “parental rights” — a catchall that covers conservatives’ fight against “wokeness,” “critical race theory,” and the “1619 Project.” The effort has led to bans on books on race by authors of color and discussions of sexual orientation or gender identity in classrooms, as well as the firing of school administrators and librarians.

    DeSantis has been among the Republican Party’s leaders in pushing so-called “academic transparency” legislation touted by DeVos. The governor just signed into law legislation critics decried as a “Don’t say gay” bill, which bans schools from discussing sexual orientation or gender identity in some classrooms and allows parents to sue school districts over potential violations.

    Two LGBTQ advocacy groups, as well as students and parents, on Thursday filed a federal lawsuit arguing the Florida law is an “unlawful attempt to stigmatize, silence and erase LGBTQ people in Florida’s public schools.” The lawsuit alleges that the law violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments and Title IX protections.

    “It seeks to do so by imposing a sweeping, vague ban covering any instruction on ‘sexual orientation and gender identity,’ and by constructing a diffuse enforcement scheme designed to maximize the chilling effect of this prohibition,” the lawsuit says.

    This effort to control young minds through state censorship — and to demean LGBTQ lives by denying their reality — is a grave abuse of power,” the complaint said. “The United States Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed that LGBTQ people and families are at home in our constitutional order. The State of Florida has no right to declare them outcasts, or to treat their allies as outlaws, by punishing schools where someone dares to affirm their identity and dignity.”

    DeSantis’ office pushed back on the lawsuit, arguing that the complaint erroneously claims that a person has a right to instruct another person’s child about sexuality or gender and that state employees can craft their own unique curriculum for elementary school classrooms. DeSantis’ communications director Taryn Fenske said the law “does not chill speech — instead it returns speech on these topics to parents.”

    “This lawsuit is a political Hail-Mary to undermine parental rights in Florida. Unsurprisingly, many of the parties to this suit are advocacy groups with publicly stated political agendas,” Fenske said in an email to Salon. “This calculated, politically motivated, virtue-signaling lawsuit is meritless, and we will defend the legality of parents to protect their young children from sexual content in Florida public schools,” she added.

    DeSantis last year also signed a law further expanding the state’s school vouchers program, directing $200 million to allow tens of thousands of families with incomes upwards of $100,000 to qualify for income-based scholarships intended to help children living in poverty. The law also weakened oversight for the program. The Florida Education Association said after the signing that “draining money from public education to fund unaccountable private institutions is a betrayal of the 90 percent of students who are in public schools.” DeSantis defended the bill as a way for “working families” to “have the ability to get their kids into the school of their choices.”

    DeSantis is also pushing a bill titled the “Stop W.O.K.E. Act,” which aims to ban the teaching of so-called “critical race theory,” which DeSantis described as teaching “our kids to hate our country or hate each other.” Though there is little evidence that critical race theory, which examines systemic racism in law and society, is actually being taught in public schools in Florida or elsewhere, conservatives like Devos and others have sought to crack down on certain race-related education. DeVos last year decried critical race theory as “indoctrination.”

    Critics linked DeSantis’ education crackdown to donations from the DeVos clan and other deep-pocketed conservatives ahead of his re-election battle.

    “While millions of Floridians are struggling to make ends meet from rising costs and a pandemic that Ron DeSantis has ignored, he is focused on his quixotic presidential bid and pleasing his billionaire backers,” Aidan Johnson, a spokesperson for the Democratic PAC American Bridge, said in a statement to Salon. “He cares more about catering to extremists within the Republican Party than keeping Floridians safe.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.