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      in US Politics

      Pronoun fines and jail time for librarians: Republicans target LGBTQ+ rights with new laws

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      Pronoun fines and jail time for librarians: Republicans target LGBTQ+ rights with new lawsMore than 100 laws targeting LGBTQ+ communities have been filed across the US as attacks persist Several anti-LGBTQ+ laws are being passed or proposed across the US as political attacks against the communities continue.In North Dakota, conservative lawmakers have introduced at least eight laws targeting LGBTQ+ communities, many of which target transgender people.Republican legislators introduce new laws to crack down on drag shows Read moreOne bill, rejected on Friday, mandated people affiliated with schools or institutions receiving public funding having to pay a $1,500 fine for using gender pronouns other than those assigned at birth for themselves or others, the Grand Forks Herald reported.Many in the state’s senate judiciary committee that voted down the bill noted that they agreed with the bill’s intention to limit transgender rights, but they felt that the bill was poorly written and difficult to enforce, according to ABC News.Christina Sambor of the North Dakota Human Rights Coalition testified against the bill on Wednesday, noting that “its very purpose is gender-based discrimination”, ABC reported.In a separate proposal, Republicans lawmakers introduced a bill to ban “sexually explicit” materials from libraries, with possible jail time for librarians that do not comply.Under house bill 1205, public libraries could no longer provide books on a range of topics, including any on “sexual identity”, and/or “gender identity”, the LGBTQ+ magazine Them reported.North Dakota has long been problematic to LGBTQ+ communities. The state was among the last to recognizesame-sex marriage.In the US, several states have filed over 100 laws targeting LGBTQ+ rights, NBC News reported. Such bills have targeted almost all aspects of life, ranging from sports to healthcare to education.Texas has filed the most anti-LGBTQ+ laws, a total of 36. Missouri has introduced or passed 26 bills, followed by North Dakota, and Oklahoma with six.Several states have attempted to limit gender-affirmative healthcare options for transgender people.West Virginia lawmakers advanced a bill last Thursday that would ban doctors from performing gender-affirmative surgery on transgender youth, a proposal that many in the medical community and advocates have decried as transphobic and unnecessary.“This doesn’t help anybody,” the Democratic representative Mike Pushkin said to West Virginia’s state house health and human resources committee. “This is just an insult to people who are already marginalized.”In Mississippi, state house legislators passed a bill that bans physicians from administering gender-affirmative care to people under 18, the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal reported.Last year, Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, faced nationwide outrage after instructing the state’s child protection services to investigate any parents providing their children with gender-affirming care, accusing them of “abuse”.Florida has initiated a number of anti-LGBTQ+ laws since the passage of what has been coined as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which bans instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade.That state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, has targeted gender-affirmative healthcare at Florida universities. The DeSantis administration issued a blanket request to 12 Florida universities, asking for information on the number of students diagnosed with gender dysphoria or receiving on-campus treatments, Politico reported.His office has not elaborated on what will be done with the collected data but noted that it was for “governing institutional resources and protecting the public interest”.Republican lawmakers have also taken actions to crack down on drag shows.Lawmakers in at least eight states have taken steps to either restrict or ban drag shows, with at least 14 states introducing such bills.Drag show performances across the country have faced increasing violence from anti-drag protests. In December, an anti-drag protest with 500 participants targeted a public library in the Queens borough where drag queens were reading books to children, NBC News reported.Cities in Illinois and California reported protests, with participants shouting homophobic and transphobic slurs at drag queens participating in similar story times, according to the Associated Press.TopicsLGBTQ+ rightsUS politicsNorth DakotanewsReuse this content More

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      in Elections

      North Dakota Primary Guide: How to Vote, Poll Locations and What’s on the Ballot

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      Nervous that you forgot to register to vote? Don’t sweat it. North Dakota does not require people to register to vote.How to voteEligible voters can cast a ballot today by providing “acceptable identification,” at their polling site, according to North Dakota’s secretary of state. That includes a locally issued driver’s license, a state identification card or a tribal, government-issued identification card.If you used an absentee or mail ballot, check its status on this page. The deadline to return such ballots was Monday. Request an absentee or mail ballot for future elections here.Where to voteUse this site to find your voting place.What’s on the ballotRepublicans will pick a nominee for Senate, as well as secretary of state. Depending on where you live, you may also pick candidates for state legislative and local offices.This site will show you your sample ballot. More

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      ‘They don’t include Native voices’: tribes fight to ensure their votes count

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      The fight to voteNative Americans‘They don’t include Native voices’: tribes fight to ensure their votes countAs the Native American population grows to the largest in modern history, groups say it’s vital that they organize to make sure they’re not left out of the redistricting process The fight to vote is supported byAbout this contentK More

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      California bans state travel to Florida and four other states over LGBTQ+ laws

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      California added five states, including Florida, to its list of places where state-funded travel is banned because of laws that discriminate against members of the LGBTQ+ community.California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, on Monday added Florida, Arkansas, Montana, North Dakota and West Virginia to the list that now has 17 states where state employee travel is forbidden except under limited circumstances.“Make no mistake: we’re in the midst of an unprecedented wave of bigotry and discrimination in this country, and the state of California is not going to support it,” Bonta said.Lawmakers in 2016 banned non-essential travel to states with laws that discriminate against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. The 12 other states on the list are: Texas, Alabama, Idaho, Iowa, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Kentucky, North Carolina, Kansas, Mississippi and Tennessee.The five states newly added to the list have introduced bills in their legislatures this year that prevent transgender girls from participating in school sports consistent with their gender identity, block access to certain types of healthcare and allow the discrimination of the LGBTQ+ community, Bonta said.Florida, Montana, Arkansas and West Virginia passed laws that prevent transgender girls from participating in school sports that confirm with their gender identity. North Dakota signed into law a bill allowing certain publicly-funded student organizations to restrict LGBTQ+ students from joining without losing funding. Arkansas passed the first law in the nation to prohibit physicians from providing gender-affirming healthcare to transgender minors, regardless of the wishes of parents or whether a physician deems such care to be medically necessary.These lawmakers “would rather demonize trans youth than focus on solving real issues like tackling gun violence beating back this pandemic and rebuilding our economy”, Bonta said.The California law has exemptions for some trips, such as travel needed to enforce state law and to honor contracts signed before the states were added to the list. Travel to conferences or out-of-state training are examples of trips that can be blocked.It’s unclear what effect California’s travel ban will have. Bonta did not have information about how many state agencies have stopped sending state employees to the states on the list or the financial impact of California’s travel ban on those states. More

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      Covid cases increase across US as upper midwest sees rapid rise

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      Covid-19 cases are increasing across the United States and surging in the upper midwest, in what appears to be a third pandemic peak. In North Dakota, cases are increasing at a higher and faster rate per capita than in any other state throughout the pandemic so far.
      Experts have long predicted cooler weather and pandemic fatigue would increase the spread of Covid-19 this fall. That now appears to be coming to pass, coupled with the longer and higher levels of death and disease the US has seen throughout the pandemic compared to peer countries.
      “Everyone who knew anything about infectious disease and epidemiology predicted this six to eight months ago,” said Dr Ezekiel Emanuel, vice-provost for global initiatives at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
      “Yes, it will surge in the fall, and the reason it will surge is because we are moving indoors,” said Emanuel. “Our surge is much higher than the surges in general,” he said, because the US has started, “from a higher baseline”.
      Surges are especially pronounced in Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota, according to the Covid Tracking Project, but states from Wisconsin to Kentucky to Massachusetts are also seeing the curve bend upwards.
      Last week, the Democratic governor of Wisconsin, Tony Evers, activated a field hospital on state fairgrounds to expand treatment capacity. Kentucky’s Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, called increasing cases “grim” and said officials were now revisiting surge plans made last spring.
      “We are now going back to our plans about capacity in hospitals, looking if we have to at hotel options and the use of state parks,” Beshear said during a press briefing. “Ensuring that we have the operational plans to stand up the field hospital, if necessary.”
      In Massachusetts, Boston’s mayor, Marty Walsh, said children would return to virtual learning until the city’s positivity rate – the percentage of all Covid tests that come back positive – decreased for two weeks in a row.
      But far and away North Dakota leads in increasing Covid-19. The state has the highest per-capita rate of Covid-19 infections anywhere in the nation, at 1,350 cases per 1 million residents. That is nearly double the rate of the second hardest-hit state, Wisconsin, where there are 805 new cases per 1 million residents.

      The COVID Tracking Project
      (@COVID19Tracking)
      ND is reporting far more new cases per capita than any other state has over the course of the pandemic. pic.twitter.com/QqbrDluMEr

      October 20, 2020

      Nearly three weeks ago, the state loosened public health guidance, telling residents they no longer needed to quarantine for 14 days if they came into close contact with a person positive with Covid-19, as long as both were wearing masks.
      “There’s just no science to support that,” said Dr Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. Osterholm said that with “runaway” transmission in the upper midwest, “why would you be loosening up your recommendations, as opposed to [tightening]? Then it made no public health sense at all.”
      The decision was driven in part by spread inside schools, North Dakota’s governor, Doug Burgum, said at the time, because quarantining students was difficult for caregivers. The change would result in, “a more positive school experience”, Burgum said, according to the Grand Forks Herald.
      This week, Burgum called in the national guard to notify people who have tested positive, and abandoned contact-tracing, advising people to self-notify contacts. Burgum has resisted a statewide mask mandate.
      But even with increasing transmission across Europe, the United States has done worse on the whole than even “high-mortality” peer nations, studies have found.
      Emanuel recently co-authored a research letter published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, in which researchers examined how the United States had fared during the pandemic compared with 18 other high-income countries.
      “We’ve done worse,” said Emanuel. “I think it’s that simple.”
      Even compared to “high-mortality” countries such as Italy, the US has performed badly. If Americans had died at the same rate as Italians, for example, between 44,000 and 100,000 fewer Americans would have died.
      “We’ve had bad leadership that has resulted in inconsistent, haphazard implementation of public health measures,” Emanuel said. “That has led to migratory outbreaks you might say – first in the north-east, then in the south, then in the south-west, and now in the midwest.”
      European countries have also taken stricter measures to contain recent outbreaks.
      Like North Dakota, France has also experienced more than 1,000 new cases per million residents in the last seven days, according to the World Health Organization. But France imposed masks at all workplaces and recently imposed a curfew. Germany, also hard-hit, is tightening mask rules and closing some schools. Some regions of Italy are also closing schools.
      “It’s clear from the data that countries like Germany, France and others that have put into place clear health communication,” have been able to “manage the growth of the disease and the spread over time,” said Reginald D Williams II, vice-president of international health policy at the Commonwealth Fund. “Unfortunately, we have not put those policies into place in a uniform fashion across the country.”
      At the same time, official case tallies probably underrepresent the problem. This week, experts at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published research that aligned with independent analyses, finding the true death toll is probably far higher than official estimates. By October, researchers said, the death toll was closer to 300,000 rather than the widely cited 215,000.
      Osterholm compared the situation to a “coronavirus forest fire”.
      “I’ve been saying it for some time – I think the darkest weeks in this pandemic are just ahead of us,” he said. “Between pandemic fatigue, pandemic anger and indoor air, everything is going to get much worse.”
      Further, wide distribution of an approved vaccine is unlikely to take place before the middle or third quarter of 2021.
      “We have to figure out how we’re going to live with this virus, or not live with it, meaning some people will, obviously many people will, get seriously ill and some will die.” More