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      Attack of the Right-Wing Thought Police

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      Americans like to think of their nation as a beacon of freedom. And despite all the ways in which we have failed to live up to our self-image, above all the vast injustices that sprang from the original sin of slavery, freedom — not just free elections, but also freedom of speech and thought — has long been a key element of the American idea.Now, however, freedom is under attack, on more fronts than many people realize. Everyone knows about the Big Lie, the refusal by a large majority of Republicans to accept the legitimacy of a lost election. But there are many other areas in which freedom is not just under assault but in retreat.Let’s talk, in particular, about the attack on education, especially but not only in Florida, which has become one of America’s leading laboratories of democratic erosion.Republicans have made considerable political hay by denouncing the teaching of critical race theory; this strategy has succeeded even though most voters have no idea what that theory is and it isn’t actually being taught in public schools. But the facts in this case don’t matter, because denunciations of C.R.T. are basically a cover for a much bigger agenda: an attempt to stop schools from teaching anything that makes right-wingers uncomfortable.I use that last word advisedly: There’s a bill advancing in the Florida Senate declaring that an individual “should not be made to feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race.” That is, the criterion for what can be taught isn’t “Is it true? Is it supported by the scholarly consensus?” but rather “Does it make certain constituencies uncomfortable?”Anyone tempted to place an innocuous interpretation on this provision — maybe it’s just about not assigning collective guilt? — should read the text of the bill. Among other things, it cites as its two prime examples of things that must not happen in schools “denial or minimization of the Holocaust, and the teaching of critical race theory” — because suggesting that “racism is embedded in American society” (the bill’s definition of the theory) is just the same as denying that Hitler killed six million Jews.What’s really striking, however, is the idea that schools should be prohibited from teaching anything that causes “discomfort” among students and their parents. If you imagine that the effects of applying this principle would be limited to teaching about race relations, you’re being utterly naïve.For one thing, racism is far from being the only disturbing topic in American history. I’m sure that some students will find that the story of how we came to invade Iraq — or for that matter how we got involved in Vietnam — makes them uncomfortable. Ban those topics from the curriculum!Then there’s the teaching of science. Most high schools do teach the theory of evolution, but leading Republican politicians are either evasive or actively deny the scientific consensus, presumably reflecting the G.O.P. base’s discomfort with the concept. Once the Florida standard takes hold, how long will teaching of evolution survive?Geology, by the way, has the same problem. I’ve been on nature tours where the guides refuse to talk about the origins of rock formations, saying that they’ve had problems with some religious guests.Oh, and given the growing importance of anti-vaccination posturing as a badge of conservative allegiance, how long before basic epidemiology — maybe even the germ theory of disease — gets the critical race theory treatment?And then there’s economics, which these days is widely taught at the high school level. (Full disclosure: Many high schools use an adapted version of the principles text I co-author.) Given the long history of politically driven attempts to prevent the teaching of Keynesian economics, what do you think the Florida standard would do to teaching in my home field?The point is that the smear campaign against critical race theory is almost certainly the start of an attempt to subject education in general to rule by the right-wing thought police, which will have dire effects far beyond the specific topic of racism.And who will enforce the rules? State-sponsored vigilantes! Last month Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, proposed a “Stop Woke Act” that would empower parents to sue school districts they claim teach critical race theory — and collect lawyer fees, a setup modeled on the bounties under Texas’ new anti-abortion law. Even the prospect of such lawsuits would have a chilling effect on teaching.Did I mention that DeSantis also wants to create a special police force to investigate election fraud? Like the attacks on critical race theory, this is obviously an attempt to use a made-up issue — voter fraud is largely nonexistent — as an excuse for intimidation.OK, I’m sure that some people will say that I’m making too much of these issues. But ask yourself: Has there been any point over, say, the past five years when warnings about right-wing extremism have proved overblown and those dismissing those warnings as “alarmist” have been right?The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Republicans Want New Tool in Elusive Search for Voter Fraud: Election Police

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      Republicans in three states have proposed strike forces against election crimes even though fraud cases remain minuscule.WASHINGTON — Reprising the rigged-election belief that has become a mantra among their supporters, Republican politicians in at least three states are proposing to establish police forces to hunt exclusively for voter fraud and other election crimes, a category of offenses that experts say is tiny at best.The plans are part of a new wave of initiatives that Republicans say are directed at voter fraud. They are being condemned by voting rights advocates and even some local election supervisors, who call them costly and unnecessary appeasement of the Republican base that will select primary-election winners for this November’s midterms and the 2024 presidential race.The next round of voting clashes comes after the apparent demise of Democratic voting rights legislation in Washington on Thursday. It is a reminder that while the Democratic agenda in Washington seems dead, Republican state-level efforts to make voting harder show no sign of slowing down.Supporters say the added enforcement will root out instances of fraud and assure the public that everything possible is being done to make sure that American elections are accurate and legitimate. Critics say the efforts can easily be abused and used as political cudgels or efforts to intimidate people from registering and voting. And Democrats say the main reason Republican voters have lost faith in the electoral system is because of the incessant Republican focus on almost entirely imagined fraud.The most concrete proposal is in Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis asked the State Legislature last week for $5.7 million to create a 52-person “election crimes and security” force in the secretary of state’s office. The plan, which Mr. DeSantis has been touting since the fall, would include 20 sworn police officers and field offices statewide.Gov. Ron DeSantis asked the Florida Legislature for $5.7 million to create a 52-person “election crimes and security” force in the secretary of state’s office.Chris O’Meara/Associated PressThat was followed on Thursday by a pledge by David Perdue, the former Georgia senator who is a Republican candidate for governor, to create his own force of election police “to make Georgia elections the safest and securest in the country.” Mr. Perdue, who lost his Senate seat in 2020, claimed that Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican who is seeking re-election, weakened election standards and refused to investigate claims of fraud following President Biden’s narrow win in the state.And in Arizona, a vocal supporter of former President Donald J. Trump’s lies about a stolen election, State Senator Wendy Rogers, has filed legislation to establish a $5 million “bureau of elections” in the governor’s office with the power to subpoena witnesses and impound election equipment.Ms. Rogers’s bill probably faces an uphill road in the Legislature, where Republicans are only narrowly in control and have been battered for their support of a widely ridiculed multimillion-dollar inquiry into 2020 election results. Prospects for the Florida and Georgia proposals are less clear.The proposals are the latest twist in a decades-long crusade by Republicans against election fraud that has grown rapidly since Mr. Trump’s election loss in 2020 and his false claim that victory was stolen from him.Mr. DeSantis took a tough line in November when he unveiled his proposal, saying that the new unit would chase crimes that local election official shrug at. “There’ll be people, if you see someone ballot harvesting, you know, what do you do? If you call into the election office, a lot of times they don’t do anything,” he said at an appearance in West Palm Beach.“I guarantee you this,” he added. “The first person that gets caught, no one is going to want to do it again after that.”None of the three states — and for that matter, none of the other 47 and the District of Columbia — reported any more than a minuscule number of election fraud cases after the 2020 races. Mr. DeSantis said after the 2020 vote that his was “the state that did it right and that other states should emulate.” The only notable hint of irregularity in Florida was the recent arrest on fraud charges of four men in a retirement complex north of Orlando. At least two of them appeared to be winter Floridians accused of casting ballots both there and in more frigid states to the north.Trump supporters gathered outside the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office in downtown Phoenix as ballots were counted in November 2020.Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesBut Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Perdue say their strike forces are still needed to root out other election irregularities and to bolster their constituents’ sagging faith in the honesty of the vote. The same rationale has powered so-called audits of election results and clampdowns on election rules by Republican-run legislatures across the country.Sweeping election-law revisions enacted by Florida and Georgia legislators last spring sharply limit the use of popular drop boxes for submitting absentee ballots, require identification to obtain mail-in ballots, make it harder to conduct voter-registration drives, and restrict or ban interactions — such as handing out snacks or water — with voters waiting in line to cast ballots.Mr. Trump comfortably won Florida by about 370,000 votes in 2020, and his narrow losses in Arizona and Georgia were confirmed by expert audits, recounts and even the notorious Cyber Ninjas inquiry into the vote in Maricopa County.“We don’t need further investigations into elections that are freely and fairly conducted,” said Alex Gulotta, the Arizona director of the advocacy group All Voting Is Local. “We’ve established that again and again and again. This is more pablum to the people who believe in fraud and conspiracy theories and lies that the last election was stolen.”Neither the new laws nor election autopsies appear to have shaken the conviction of many Trump supporters that the election system is suspect. Some scholars say they see the police forces as the latest bid by politicians to scratch that itch.Bids to curb so-called fraud are becoming standard for Republican candidates who want to win over voters, Barry Burden, the director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in an interview. “Whoever is the nominee in 2024, whether it’s Trump or anyone else, it will likely be part of their platform,” Mr. Burden said.The idea of an election police force is not new, even in the states where they are being proposed. In Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger already oversees 23 investigators whose purview includes election irregularities, and an assistant state attorney general exclusively prosecutes crimes in elections, the judiciary and local governments. The Arizona attorney general manages a relatively new “election integrity” investigative unit, and Florida election violations are prosecuted by both state and local authorities, as is true in most states. More

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      Voting Fraud Charges for 3 in Florida's Villages

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      All were residents of the famed, sprawling retirement community northwest of Orlando. Two were Republicans, and one had no affiliation.Three residents of a sprawling Florida retirement community were arrested over the last two weeks on charges of voting more than once in the 2020 general election, according to the authorities.The residents, Jay Ketcik, 63, Joan Halstead, 72, and John Rider, 61, lived in The Villages, a planned community northwest of Orlando where former President Donald J. Trump held a campaign rally shortly before the 2020 election.The three were each charged with casting more than one ballot in an election, according to arrest records from the office of the state attorney in the Fifth Judicial Circuit in Florida.Each charge is a third-degree felony and punishable by up to five years in prison, said Bill Gladson, the state attorney for the Fifth Judicial Circuit in Ocala, Fla. Citing rules of professional conduct, Mr. Gladson said on Wednesday that he could not comment on pending cases. Ms. Halstead declined to comment on Wednesday. Mr. Rider and a lawyer for Mr. Ketcik did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Court records did not say for whom the three voted in the 2020 general election or in what other elections they voted out of state. Voting records in the Florida Department of State list Mr. Ketcik and Ms. Halstead as registered Republicans. Mr. Rider has no party affiliation on record.About a 45-minute drive northwest from Orlando, the community was built in the 1960s as a collection of tracts and grew in popularity in the 1980s and 1990s with retirees from Northern states as its organizers added amenities such as movie theaters, shopping and other leisure activities. With more than 130,000 residents, the community of adults 55 and older, which stretches into three counties, has become one of Florida’s fastest-growing metro areas.The disputed votes had no effect on the 2020 election. Mr. Trump won Florida by about 51.2 percent and by an even far greater margin in The Villages, although Joe Biden had energetic supporters there as well. After residents who supported Mr. Trump held a golf cart rally amid counterprotesters, he tweeted a video of the event, writing, “Thank you to the great people of The Villages.” Then came his rally in October.Following his defeat in the 2020 election, Mr. Trump made baseless claims of rampant voter fraud, which failed to gain any traction in courts across seven states. But the former president and his allies have continued to repeat the false allegations, and Republican legislators have used the claims to justify new restrictions on voting.But election officials in dozens of states representing both political parties have said that there was no evidence that fraud or other irregularities played a role deciding the presidential race. In general, voter fraud is extremely rare in the United States, and cases that do occur are often isolated and unlikely to affect an election.Mr. Ketcik and Ms. Halstead turned themselves in to the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office Detention Center on Nov. 29 and Dec. 8, according to the sheriff’s office. Mr. Rider was arrested by Brevard County deputies at a cruise ship terminal at Port Canaveral on Dec. 3, according to prosecutors.It was not clear whether the three residents knew each other. Each was booked into a detention center or jail and released the same day of their arrest, records show.A probable cause affidavit said that, in addition to casting more than one vote in Florida in October 2020, Ms. Halstead and Mr. Rider also cast second ballots in New York through an absentee ballot. Mr. Ketcik was also accused of voting through mail in Florida and casting a second, absentee ballot in Michigan.The investigation into allegations of voter fraud by Mr. Ketcik, Ms. Halstead and Mr. Rider was initiated by the office of the Sumter County supervisor of elections, Bill Keen, according to arrest records. His office did not immediately respond to an inquiry for comment about the charges.Even though voter fraud is extremely rare, Republican leaders in several states, including Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, have cited isolated cases to pursue tougher rules around voting in the wake of the 2020 election. On Wednesday, Christina Pushaw, a spokeswoman for Mr. DeSantis, said, “Multiple voting is unlawful.”She added, “It isn’t a crime to be registered to vote in more than one state, as long as you only vote in one.”Ms. Pushaw said that in 2019, the state joined the Electronic Registration Information Center, a nonprofit group that helps states improve the accuracy of voter rolls. By joining the system, she said, state officials could crosscheck voter registration data to find duplicate registrations and outdated records.“Though the system is not perfect, it does help ensure election integrity and deter potential fraud,” she said. More

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      Voting Battles of 2022 Take Shape as G.O.P. Crafts New Election Bills

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      Republicans plan to carry their push to reshape the nation’s electoral system into next year, with Democrats vowing to oppose them but holding few options in G.O.P.-led states.A new wave of Republican legislation to reshape the nation’s electoral system is coming in 2022, as the G.O.P. puts forward proposals ranging from a requirement that ballots be hand-counted in New Hampshire to the creation of a law enforcement unit in Florida to investigate allegations of voting fraud.The Republican drive, motivated in part by a widespread denial of former President Donald J. Trump’s defeat last year, includes both voting restrictions and measures that could sow public confusion or undermine confidence in fair elections, and will significantly raise the stakes of the 2022 midterms.After passing 33 laws of voting limits in 19 states this year, Republicans in at least five states — Florida, Tennessee, South Carolina, Oklahoma and New Hampshire — have filed bills before the next legislative sessions have even started that seek to restrict voting in some way, including by limiting mail voting. In over 20 states, more than 245 similar bills put forward this year could be carried into 2022, according to Voting Rights Lab, a group that works to expand access to the ballot.In many places, Democrats will be largely powerless to push back at the state level, where they remain overmatched in Republican-controlled legislatures. G.O.P. state lawmakers across the country have enacted wide-ranging cutbacks to voting access this year and have used aggressive gerrymandering to lock in the party’s statehouse power for the next decade.Both parties are preparing to use the issue of voting to energize their bases. Democratic leaders, especially Stacey Abrams, the newly announced candidate for governor of Georgia and a voting rights champion for her party, promise to put the issue front and center.But the left remains short of options, leaving many candidates, voters and activists worried about the potential effects in 2022 and beyond, and increasingly frustrated with Democrats’ inability to pass federal voting protections in Washington.“What we are facing now is a very real and acute case of democratic subversion,” Ms. Abrams said in an interview, adding that the country needed a Senate willing to “protect our democracy regardless of the partisanship of those who would oppose it.”Democrats and voting rights groups say some of the Republican measures will suppress voting, especially by people of color. They warn that other bills will increase the influence of politicians and other partisans in what had been relatively routine election administration. Some measures, they argue, raise the prospect of elections being thrown into chaos or even overturned.Republicans say the bills are needed to preserve what they call election integrity, though electoral fraud remains exceedingly rare in American elections.“This is going to be one of the big political issues for at least the next year,” said Jason Snead, the executive director of the Honest Elections Project, a conservative group that has helped craft voting legislation. He said the group wanted lawmakers to “stop thinking of election-related policies as something that only comes up once in a blue moon,” adding that “it should instead be something that comes up in every legislative session — that you take what you just learned from the last election.”G.O.P. lawmakers in at least five states have put forward legislation to review the 2020 election and institute new procedures for investigating the results of future elections.Many of the other bills are similar to those passed this year, which aim to limit access to mail-in voting; reduce the use of drop boxes; enact harsher penalties for election officials who are found to have broken rules; expand the authority of partisan poll watchers; and shift oversight of elections from independent officials and commissions to state legislatures.It remains unclear how new voting bills might affect turnout, and some election experts say that any measures designed to suppress voting carry the potential to backfire by energizing voters of the opposing party.Gov. Ron DeSantis is pushing for Florida to create an election law enforcement unit that would “have the ability to investigate any crimes involving the election.”Eve Edelheit for The New York TimesIn Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, is pushing for changes to election laws that build on the major bill his party passed this year, including a special force to investigate voting crimes. In New Hampshire, Republicans are proposing to require that all ballots be counted by hand and may try to tighten residency requirements. In Georgia, G.O.P. lawmakers are trying to restructure the Democratic-led government of the state’s most diverse county.The biggest potential changes to voting could come in Florida, which had just one prosecuted case of voter fraud in the 2020 election.Mr. DeSantis, who had been facing pressure from conservatives to greenlight a review of the 2020 election results in the state, has urged state lawmakers to send new election measures to his desk. One proposal would increase the penalty for the collection of more than two ballots by a third party from a misdemeanor to a third-degree felony. Another calls for more routine maintenance of voter rolls, which voting rights advocates say would lead to more “purges” of eligible voters.The governor said last month that the prospective election law enforcement unit would “have the ability to investigate any crimes involving the election” and would include sworn law enforcement officers, investigators and a statewide prosecutor. Critics argued that such a unit could intimidate voters and be prone to abuse by politicians.In New Hampshire, where Senator Maggie Hassan, a Democrat, faces a potentially challenging re-election bid, Republicans have proposed to scrap the ballot-scanning machines that the state has used for decades in favor of hand-counting.That bill — introduced by Mark Alliegro, a Republican state representative who declined to comment about it — has drawn opposition from Democrats, who say that a lengthy delay between Election Day and the results would create an opening for those who want to challenge the election’s legitimacy.“Republicans are trying to sow distrust and discord in the process,” said Matt Wilhelm, a Democratic state representative. “If they’ve got an additional window of time of hours, days, weeks when Granite Staters don’t know the results of the election that they just participated in, that’s going to cast doubt on our democratic institutions.”A separate G.O.P. bill in New Hampshire introduced in the legislature’s prefiling portal contained a brief description: “Provide that only residents of the state may vote in elections.”Republicans have long tried to tighten residency requirements in New Hampshire, whose small population means that the elimination of even relatively small numbers of college students from the voter rolls could help give the G.O.P. an edge in close elections. This year, the state’s Supreme Court unanimously rejected a 2017 state law requiring proof of residence to vote.A spokeswoman for Regina Birdsell, the Republican state senator who introduced the bill, said that it was “currently in draft form” and that Ms. Birdsell would not comment until the language had been finalized.Ballot-counting machines used in New Hampshire’s 2020 election were transported in May for a review of the results. A Republican proposal would scrap the machines in favor of hand-counting.Josh Reynolds/Associated PressIn Georgia, a plan by Republicans in the state legislature to restructure the government of Gwinnett County would effectively undercut the voting power of people of color in an increasingly Democratic area.Gwinnett, which includes northeastern suburbs of Atlanta, has swung from full Republican control to full Democratic control over four years, culminating last year with the selection of the first Black woman to oversee the county commission. President Biden carried the county by 18 percentage points last year.But last month, Clint Dixon, a Republican state senator, filed two bills that would allow the G.O.P.-led legislature to roughly double the size of the county’s Democratic-led board of commissioners and redraw new districts for the school board — moves that Democrats and civil rights leaders said would essentially go over the heads of voters who elected those officials.The changes would keep the county in Democratic control, but would most likely guarantee multiple safe Republican districts, including some that would be predominantly white despite the county’s diversity.After an outcry on the left, Republicans pushed the bills to the January session.Nicole Hendrickson, the Democratic chairwoman of the county’s board of commissioners, said the proposal “removes our voice as a board of commissioners and disenfranchises our citizens who did not have a say in any of this.”Mr. Dixon defended the bills, asserting that with more commissioners, voters would have more representation and elected leaders would be more accountable.“I don’t see any kind of swing back to a Republican majority; it has nothing to do with a power grab,” he said in an interview. “I think at that local level, local governance is intended at lower populations.”Investigating the 2020 election also remains a focus of many Republican state lawmakers.At least five states are pursuing partisan reviews of the 2020 election, and Republicans in states including Oklahoma, Tennessee and Florida have introduced bills to begin new ones next year.“There was suspiciously high voter turnout that broke all projections,” said Nathan Dahm, a Republican state senator in Oklahoma who sponsored a bill to review the results. “That alone is not enough to say that there absolutely was fraud, but it was suspicious enough to say that maybe there are some questions there.”Lawmakers will be aided in writing new voting bills by conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation, which helped craft some of the 2020 legislation. A spokeswoman for the group said it would continue to push for measures including more maintenance of voting rolls; increased authority for poll watchers; reductions in the use of absentee ballots; more power for state legislatures in the election process; and additional voter identification regulations.Republicans around the country have highlighted polling that shows broad bipartisan support for some voter identification requirements.Jay Ashcroft, the Republican secretary of state of Missouri, has called for the state’s legislature to pass a bill that would require a state or federal photo ID to vote.“The idea that the voters of my state are too stupid to follow a simple photo ID requirement like this is ridiculous and ludicrous,” he said in an interview.Mr. Ashcroft noted that the Missouri bill would not ban people without IDs from voting; they would be allowed to vote provisionally and their ballots would be validated through signature matching.Voting rights leaders like Ms. Abrams, meanwhile, have sought to frame the issue as one that should transcend politics.“This isn’t simply about who wins or loses an election,” she said. “It is about what type of nation we intend to be. And are there consequences for undermining and breaking our system of government?” More

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      Florida’s governor celebrated his anti-mandate Covid laws. Now Omicron is here

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      Florida’s governor celebrated his anti-mandate Covid laws. Now Omicron is hereRon DeSantis struck ‘a blow for freedom’ with his lax measures, but those could allow the new variant to circulate faster Barely one month ago, Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis was on a victory lap. The state’s average rate of new Covid-19 infections was the lowest in the nation, and a lapdog legislature was about to sign into law his sweeping new coronavirus measures, including the outlawing of mask and vaccine mandates in pursuit of “striking a blow for freedom”.There was no mention of the 61,500 Floridians who have lost their lives to the virus.Now, with the highly transmissible Omicron variant gaining a foothold in the US and likely already present in Florida, doctors say, the robustness of the governor’s controversial steps could be about to receive a first real test.Seven doctors contract Covid after attending Florida anti-vaccine summitRead moreAnd while health experts and DeSantis’s political opponents agree it is too soon to know exactly how the state could be affected by any spread of the variant, they are worried. The rigidity of the DeSantis anti-mandate laws, including the removal of local authorities’ power to enact community protection measures based on conditions in their own areas, they say, could allow Omicron to circulate at a faster rate than it otherwise might.Evan Jenne, co-leader of the Democratic minority in the Florida house of representatives, accused DeSantis of fitting Florida with “concrete shoes”.“At the beginning of the pandemic a lot of free rein was given to local governments, because they were the ones with boots on the ground, they were the ones seeing what was happening and a lot of people were saved an untimely death because of actions of local governments,” he said.“By hamstringing them, by putting their hands behind their back and lacing up concrete shoes, it’s just going to make it that much more difficult. When you have a government the size of Florida’s, covering 22 million people, it’s going to be less nimble and less agile than the smaller, local governments and our local health departments.“Having an executive branch take all of that authority and power away from them is just not going to be a good move for public health into the future.”Jenne and his Democratic colleagues were vocal opponents of the measures, but outnumbered by Republicans almost two to one during last month’s special legislative session convened by DeSantis, a Donald Trump protege who is tipped for a presidential run in 2024.Since the summer, a period in which his state recorded its highest coronavirus death rates since the start of the pandemic, DeSantis has also battled with and fined school districts and local authorities over vaccine and mask mandates, offered $5,000 payments to unvaccinated police officers to work in Florida, and appointed the tendentious Dr Joseph Ladapo, a fellow skeptic of vaccine and mask mandates, as Florida’s new surgeon general.“If Donald Trump says I’m not running to be president again, Ron DeSantis will be the Republican nominee for president without question, and a lot of the stuff that you’re seeing him doing is buoying that idea and reaching out to his base and a particular segment of society that loves this stuff,” Jenne said.“Politically, I think it’s a wise move. For public health I think it’s dangerous.”Other elected officials, healthcare professionals and parents have also accused the governor of putting politics ahead of science.The notoriously prickly DeSantis, meanwhile, continues to present himself as a defender of the Florida economy, and citizens’ freedoms against the perceived tyranny of the Biden administration’s efforts to implement national mandates or lockdowns.At a press conference this week defending the new laws, the governor was asked about the Omicron variant, and lashed out at a familiar target: what he sees as “corporate media” controlling the conversation around Covid-19.“We are not, in Florida, going to allow any media-driven hysteria to do anything to infringe people’s individual freedoms when it comes to any type of Covid variants,” DeSantis said, before turning his attention to Biden and the chief White House medical adviser, Dr Anthony Fauci, a familiar sparring partner.“In Florida, we will not let them lock you down,” he said. “We will not let them take your jobs, we will not let them harm your businesses, we will not let them close your schools.”Jay Wolfson, distinguished professor of public health, medicine and pharmacy, and associate vice-president for health law at the University of South Florida, sees little prospect of DeSantis backing down if Omicron takes hold in the state.“I don’t expect the governor nor the Florida legislature are going to change their position, unless, God forbid, the death rate increases,” he said. “People will get sick, the hospitals might get crowded, but unless people are dying, it’s unlikely that the policies are going to change.”Wolfson noted that with DeSantis’s measures now enshrined in law, rather than executive orders that can more easily be challenged, there appears little appetite to defy him. All of the Florida school districts that once implemented strict mask mandates for students and staff have now terminated them, although many said it was because classroom coronavirus cases have fallen.Meanwhile Disney, one of the state’s largest employers, dropped its requirement for cast members to be vaccinated.“There’s no exemption for venues where there’s a higher risk of contact, such as theme parks, or a hospital, so you’re creating an environment where it’s increasingly likely that unvaccinated people will be exposed and get sick, and people whose vaccinations have declined efficacy could be exposed to those people and others and they could get sick,” Wolfson said.“But we just don’t know yet to what degree the Omicron variant is both more contagious and more virulent. We’re rolling the dice.”TopicsFloridaCoronavirusRon DeSantisRepublicansUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Carrie P. Meek, 5-Term Florida Representative, Dies at 95

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      She was the first Black person to represent the state in the House since Reconstruction, and she fought for programs to create jobs.Carrie P. Meek, who was spurred by memories of childhood discrimination and inspired by her heritage as she rose to political power in her native Florida and later in Washington, died on Sunday at her home in Miami. She was 95. Her death was confirmed by Adam Sharon, a family spokesman. He did not specify a cause.In 1992, Ms. Meek became the first Black person elected to Congress in Florida since Reconstruction. Her election was assured when the 10-term Democratic incumbent, Bill Lehman, decided to retire and Ms. Meek captured the Democratic nomination for the newly reapportioned district. She ran unopposed in the general election.She soon made it clear that she had no desire to take the “go along and get along” path followed by some Washington newcomers. She lobbied for and won a coveted seat on the Appropriations Committee, a highly unusual achievement for a freshman lawmaker.She used that seat to push for federal aid for the section of her district devastated by Hurricane Andrew in 1992. She also lobbied for money for job-creating programs and to encourage African Americans to open their own businesses.“My first priority in Congress is to develop job-producing programs,” she said in an interview with The Washington Post weeks after her election. “Whenever I’m out in the community, people first thing they come up to me, Carrie, what about jobs, when are we going to get jobs?”Ms. Meek and Ron Brown, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, meeting residents of the Liberty City area of Miami in 1989. Ms. Meek lived in Liberty City during her tenure in Congress.Kathy Willens/Associated PressHer 17th Congressional District covered much of Miami, and her constituents included many Black people and immigrants from Haiti, Jamaica and the Bahamas, as well as Koreans and Arabs. The district included the Liberty City area of Miami, the epicenter of a race riot that left scores of people dead after white police officers killed a Black man. Ms. Meek lived in Liberty City during her time in Congress.While pushing for money for her district, she remained skeptical, even cynical, about many Washington programs aimed at helping poor Black people. She complained that too much money was siphoned off by white-owned companies that bailed when federal dollars dried up. She was also disdainful of some Black administrators (“ghetto hustlers,” she called them) who exploited programs while doing little to help those who needed help.After Republicans captured the House in 1994, Ms. Meek was ousted from the Appropriations Committee. In early 1995, she attacked the new speaker, Newt Gingrich of Georgia, who had accepted a $4.5 million advance for two books from a publishing company owned by the media magnate Rupert Murdoch.After much criticism, including some from fellow Republicans, Mr. Gingrich announced late in 1994 that he was giving up the advance. But Ms. Meek still seized on the episode.“How much the speaker earns has grown much more dependent upon how hard his publishing house hawks his book,” Ms. Meek said on the House floor. “Which leads me to the question of exactly who does this speaker really work for … Is it the American people or his New York publishing house?”Republicans hooted her down and struck her remarks from the Congressional Record.Ms. Meek railed against tax cuts that the Republican-controlled House approved in June 1997, asserting that Republicans were trying to balance the budget “on the backs of America’s working poor, elderly and infirm.”“Today the House voted to rob from the poor so that tomorrow the majority can help the rich,” she said.She was willing to reach across the aisle on some issues. For instance, she worked with Republicans to change warnings on cigarette labels to reflect the fact that more Black people than white people suffer from smoking-related diseases. She also worked with some Republicans to increase spending for research on lupus and for grants for college students with poor reading skills because of learning disabilities.Before going to Washington, she served in the Florida House of Representatives from 1979 to 1983 and in the State Senate from 1983 to 1993. She was the first Black woman elected to that chamber.Richard Langley, a conservative Republican state senator whose politics were the polar opposite of hers, once called Ms. Meek “a nice, well-meaning Christian lady.” But a moment later, as though regretting his kind remarks, he called her “another tax-and-spend liberal” and a big mouth.“If you opposed her, you were a racist,” Mr. Langley told The Washington Post. “She saw everything in terms of Black and white.”If indeed she saw the world that way, she had good reason.Ms. Meek introducing Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton at a campaign event in Miami in 2007.Lynn Sladky/Associated PressCarrie Pittman was born on April 29, 1926, in Tallahassee, Fla., the youngest of 12 children of Willie and Carrie Pittman. Her parents began their life together as sharecroppers. Her father later became a caretaker and her mother a laundress and owner of a boardinghouse. Her grandmother had been a slave in Lilly, Ga., known as Miss Mandy.Years later, Ms. Pittman said that growing up as the baby in her family was “just a great life, the best you could imagine.”“The only shadow in my life was the segregation,” she said. “The worst kind of segregation.” That meant not being allowed to try on shoes in a shoe store, and playing with other Black children in a vacant lot while white children had a park with ball fields and a pool.She was a sprinter in high school and played basketball both in high school and at Florida A&M, a historically Black college in Tallahassee, where she earned a degree in biology and physical education in 1946.At the time, Black students were banned from Florida graduate programs, so she enrolled at the University of Michigan, where she received a master’s degree in public health and physical education.Before entering politics, Ms. Meek taught at Bethune Cookman, a historically Black college in Daytona Beach, and at Florida A&M. In 1961, she moved to the newly opened Miami-Dade Junior College, which initially had separate campuses for Black students and white students. She taught health and physical education and remained at the college for three decades in teaching and administrative posts.In 2000, the presidential race was undecided weeks after Election Day because of the excruciatingly close popular vote in Florida. Ms. Meek complained that numerous African Americans and Haitian Americans among her constituents had tried to vote but were turned away. Some were told they did not have valid identification, while others said they felt intimidated, Ms. Meek said.“They are frustrated Black people who worked so hard for the right to vote, they died for the right to vote,” Ms. Meek said. “And we have seen a presidential election here where people had that right denied, through intimidation. Some Haitians are saying this is worse than an election in Haiti. What kind of superpower has an election like this?”In the end, George W. Bush won the presidency over Vice President Al Gore when the United States Supreme Court halted the recount of the popular vote in Florida, giving Mr. Bush Florida’s 25 Electoral College votes.Ms. Meek with her son Kendrick Meek when he ran for a United States Senate seat in 2010.  He succeeded Ms. Meek in Congress and served four terms.Wilfredo Lee/Associated PressMs. Meek’s two former husbands, both of whom she divorced, are dead. Survivors include a son, Kendrick, who served in the Florida House of Representatives and the State Senate and was elected in 2002 to the congressional seat being vacated by his mother. He served four terms before giving up his seat in an unsuccessful run for the Senate.She is also survived by two daughters, Sheila Davis Kinui and Lucia Davis-Raiford; seven grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.In announcing in 2002 that she would not run for a sixth term, Ms. Meek emphasized that she had not grown tired of Congress.“I love it still,” she told The Miami Herald. “But at age 76, understandably, some of my abilities have diminished. I don’t have the same vigor that I had at age 65. I have the fire, but I don’t have the physical ability. So it’s time.”David Stout, a reporter and editor at The New York Times for 28 years, died in 2020. Vimal Patel contributed reporting. More

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      Florida lawmakers’ special session aims to thwart Covid vaccine mandates

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      Florida lawmakers’ special session aims to thwart Covid vaccine mandates
      Governor Ron DeSantis promises to ‘strike a blow for freedom’
      Republican seen as contender for 2024 presidential nomination
      LA has one of the strictest vaccine mandates: will it work?
      Florida lawmakers will meet on Monday for a week-long special legislative session called by the Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, with the goal of thwarting coronavirus vaccine mandates imposed by businesses or government agencies.Conservative judges block Biden’s vaccine requirement for businessesRead moreDeSantis recently announced he is running for re-election in 2022 but is seen by many as a potential presidential candidate in 2024 – particularly if Donald Trump decides not to run again.The special legislative session will be about “a combination of policy and politics”, said Aubrey Jewett, a political science professor at the University of Central Florida, adding that DeSantis is following Trump’s lead in being staunchly against mask and vaccine mandates.According to an agenda released by the governor’s office, a body of legislators dominated by Republicans will consider four bills to impose penalties on businesses and local governments that require workers to be vaccinated against Covid-19.“No cop, no firefighter, no nurse, nobody should be losing their job because of these jabs,” DeSantis said in a media release, echoing a previous plea for first responders from other states to relocate to Florida if they do not wish to be vaccinated by mandate.“We’re going to be striking a blow for freedom,” DeSantis said.Resistance to vaccine mandates and other public health measures to combat Covid-19 has spread in Republican states and among Republican politicians using it to buttress their pro-Trump bona fides and attack the Biden administration.By Sunday, the US had recorded nearly 763,000 deaths from Covid-19, out of more than 47m cases. Florida has recorded the third-highest state death toll, with more than 62,600, behind only California and Texas. Around 58% of the population is fully vaccinated. On Friday, a conservative federal court in New Orleans refused to lift a stay it imposed on a Biden administration rule which says businesses with 100 or more employees must insist on vaccinations or masks and regular testing from 4 January.The administration has said it is confident the rule is legal and will ultimately prevail.DeSantis has railed against vaccine mandates but is vaccinated himself, according to media reports. The governor “knows that Trump supporters don’t like masks or this vaccine”, Jewett told Reuters. “There’s no denying it’s politics with an eye not only on the governor’s race, but an eye toward the White House.“If passed into law, the new Florida bills considered in the special legislative session will impose fines on private businesses that do not allow employee exemptions to Covid-19 vaccine requirements.“This is something that his base will love,” Jewett said. “[DeSantis] is establishing himself as a freedom fighter.”TopicsCoronavirusFloridaUS politicsRepublicansUS elections 2024Donald TrumpUS domestic policynewsReuse this content More