April 14, 2023

Friday, April 14,2023. Annette’s News Roundup

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Joe is always busy.

The President spoke at the Irish Parliament on Thursday. Touch 👇 to watch.

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Kamala is always busy.

Wednesday, Vice President Harris convened the Interagency Task Force on Reproductive Healthcare Access. This is what she said.

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  Good afternoon, everyone.  I want to thank the members of the President’s Cabinet for the work that has been happening for the last two years.  But in particular, on this one issue, we meet again to discuss and reaffirm our administration’s commitment to fight for the reproductive rights of the American people.
 
And in particular, on this issue, I’ve said before and will restate: I do believe that America is facing a healthcare crisis after the Dobbs decision and then given what has happened most recently in the court in Texas.
 
So, we meet yet again, we convene yet again to discuss the work that our administration has done and will continue to do to stand for the rights of all individuals to make decisions about their own bodies and their lives, and the importance of maintaining the integrity of systems that have been proven to work in the best interests and the health and wellbeing of the American people. And by that, I mean the FDA, in particular, as it relates to the most recent court case. 
 
So, since we were last together, many of us have been traveling the country.  I’ll speak for myself, I’ve now, I believe, met with at least 18 different states’ legislatures and thousands of people to talk about the experiences that they’ve had after the Dobbs decision. 
 
And sadly, it is what we anticipated it would be.  We are having an experience where the women of America in particular have been in a state of fear about what this means for them, what this means for the people they love. 
 
We are looking at a situation in our country where healthcare providers — most of whom have had a calling to do the good and important work of taking care of other people — are in fear of losing their licenses and, worse, even being prosecuted and criminalized for the work that they do that is about providing healthcare for people in our country.
 
I have met, for example, with a woman by the name of Amanda, who talked with me — I met with she and her husband — about how when she was pregnant, she then had suffered a miscarriage and three times went to seek medical care and was denied because of the healthcare provider’s fear that they would be prosecuted or in some way penalized for helping her through her miscarriage, and only helped her when she got to the point where she had sepsis — a life-threatening situation. 
 
I have met with and talked with doctors who are in fear of losing their license, of being prosecuted, and of this situation actually having an impact on the relationships of trust that they have with their patients. 
 
This indeed is a healthcare crisis in America.  And we have to acknowledge and understand it to be just that. 
 
And then, five days ago, a district court in the state of Texas ruled to block access to abortion medication in every state in the country — in effect, if this ruling stands, creating what could very righteously be considered a nationwide ban, at least as it relates to what we believe to be half of the women who when seeking abortion care, receive it through abortion medication.
 
So we have, in effect, a situation where politicians and politics have driven lawyers to go to a court of law where a judge who is not a medical professional is making a decision to undo the ruling 20 — over 20 years ago of the FDA that declared a specific medication safe and effective for the American people.
 
So, one must appreciate that when we think about the integrity of our healthcare delivery systems and attacking the very credibility of the FDA on this one matter for the sake of politics and a political agenda, the wide-sweeping ramifications this can have. 
 
And I’d ask every person who is aware of this to understand the implications of this ruling by just opening your medicine cabinet, because it is very likely that you rely on some type of medication prescribed by a doctor, approved by the FDA, to alleviate your health concerns and to improve your condition in life.
 
So, the ramifications of this decision five days ago are wide-sweeping and, for that reason, require, we do believe, a very serious response.
 
And again, I will state that our administration and our President, Joe Biden, has been very clear that we will stand to protect the integrity of the healthcare system in America and we will stand to protect those who have a right to be able to make decisions about their own body and their own life.
 
Also on this issue is the real risk of damage to and attacks on patient privacy. 
 
So let’s think about that.  Twenty-six years ago, in 1996, our country agreed that we needed this thing called HIPAA because we all agreed that that when it comes to our medical records, there are just certain things that should be private. If you choose to share it, you can, but it’s your private business.  It’s the business between you and your healthcare provider, and nobody else’s business.
 
So, we passed HIPAA to say that medical records would be private.  There was an exception in HIPAA that said that if law enforcement needs it in pursuit of a criminal matter, an investigation, if they had a court order, they may have access to those records. 
 
Well, what’s the connection between that and where we are now?  Since the Dobbs decision in particular, many states have proposed and passed laws that are now going to criminalize healthcare providers for providing reproductive healthcare.  It’s going to be a crime, which means that it is very likely if law enforcement requests your personal and private medical records, they may be entitled to receive them.
 
So, part of the conversation that we are having today is what we can do — and Secretary Becerra will talk about that, in particular — to reinforce protections for patients’ privacy as it relates to their records and their communications with their physician. 
 
So, again, I will say our administration is fighting on every front to do what we can and what we must to protect the American people and the integrity of the healthcare system in our country.
 
And with that, I’m going to now pass the mic, as it were, to Attorney General Merrick Garland to give us an update on litigation and the actions that the Department of Justice has taken in this regard.

Thursday, Vice President Harris to announce overhaul of D.C.’s 14th Street Bridge.

Vice President Harris is scheduled to appear at D.C.’s 14th Street Bridge on Thursday to announce a $72 million grant to overhaul one of its aging spans over the Potomac River, part of nearly $300 million in new federal bridge spending directed to urban and rural communities.
The 73-year-old northbound bridge carrying Interstate 395 from Arlington handles more than 88,000 vehicles a day, despite its poor condition, according to federal and local officials. (Washington Post).

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The new Judges on mifepristone are no Solomons, as they split the baby.

The judges blocked the drug from being sent to patients through the mail and rolled back other steps the government had taken to ease access.

A federal appeals court ruled late Wednesday that the abortion pill mifepristone could remain available, but the judges blocked the drug from being sent to patients through the mail and rolled back other steps the government had taken to ease access in recent years.

In its order, a three-judge panel for the Fifth Circuit partly overruled Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk of the Northern District of Texas, who last week declared that the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone in 2000 was not valid, in essence saying that the drug should be pulled from the market.

The appellate court said its ruling would hold until the full case was heard on its merits.

In its order, the appellate panel said the F.D.A.’s approval of mifepristone could stand because too much time had passed for the plaintiffs, a consortium of groups and doctors opposed to abortion, to challenge that decision. The court also seemed to take into account the government’s view that removing a long-approved drug from the market would have “significant public consequences.”

In the decision, which came just before midnight on Wednesday, two Trump-appointed judges voted to reimpose some of the restrictions that the F.D.A. had eased. The third judge, appointed by President George W. Bush, said she would essentially have granted the full request. All of those restrictions were temporarily reinstated.

The Justice Department is likely to appeal the order to the Supreme Court. The plaintiffs may also appeal to the Supreme Court and ask it to invalidate the initial approval of mifepristone. (New York Times).

Thursday, the Associated Press reported this - In response Thursday, the Justice Department said it will ask the U.S. Supreme Court for an emergency order to put any action on hold.

“We are going to continue to fight in the courts, we believe the law is on our side, and we will prevail,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Thursday, speaking to reporters from Dublin during a visit by President Joe Biden.

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Violence is now a Republican tool, so is overturning elections.

The Republican Strategists Who have Carefully Planned All of This.

“They are America’s GOP Leninists.”

Republican leaders are now adopting increasingly autocratic measures, using the police powers of government to impose moralized regulations, turning private citizens into enforcement officers and expelling defiant elected Democrats just as county Republican parties, particularly in Western states, are electing militia members, Christian nationalists and QAnon believers to key posts.

Here’s one example. Last November, the Republican Party of Clackamas County in Oregon chose a new vice chairman, Daniel Tooze, a Proud Boy from Oregon City, and Rick Riley, the head of the county chapter of Take Back America, which denies the results of the 2020 presidential election, as chairman. Oregon Public Broadcasting reported that in central Oregon’s Deschutes County, the local Republican Party chose Scott Stuart, “a member of the county chapter of People’s Rights, a nationwide network of militia groups and anti-government activists founded by conservative firebrand Ammon Bundy.”

In June 2022, two of my Times colleagues, Patricia Mazzei and Alan Feuer, reported that “at least a half-dozen current and former Proud Boys” had secured seats on the Miami-Dade Republican Executive Committee, including two facing criminal charges for participation in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol:

The concerted effort by the Proud Boys to join the leadership of the party — and, in some cases, run for local office — has destabilized and dramatically reshaped the Miami-Dade Republican Party that former Gov. Jeb Bush and others built into a powerhouse nearly four decades ago, transforming it from an archetype of the strait-laced establishment to an organization roiled by internal conflict as it wrestles with forces pulling it to the hard right.

“On the right, support for violence is no longer a fringe position,” Rachel Kleinfeld, a senior fellow in the democracy, conflict and governance program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote in a November 2022 Politico essay, “How Political Violence Went Mainstream on the Right.”

Those joining violent political events like the Jan. 6 insurrection, Kleinfeld continued, are more likely to be married middle-aged men with jobs and kids. Those most likely to support violence on the right feel most connected to the Republican Party. This is not a marginal movement: It is people who see violence as a means to defend their values, an extension of their political activity.

… Republican leaders are showing a growing willingness to disempower both Democratic officials and cities run by Democrats if they defy Republican-endorsed policies on matters as diverse as immigration, abortion and gun control.

Other observers of American politics are more pessimistic. Theda Skocpol, a professor of political science and sociology at Harvard, contended that many of the developments in states controlled by Republicans are a result of careful, long-term planning by conservative strategists, particularly those in the Federalist Society, who are developing tools to build what she called “minority authoritarianism” within the context of a nominally democratic system of government.

These organized, richly resourced actors, she wrote, have figured out how to rig the current U.S. system of federalism and divided branches, given generational and geographic realities on the ground, and the in many ways fluky 2016 presidential election gave them what they needed to put the interlock in place. They are stoking and using the fears and resentments of about half or so of the G.O.P. popular base to undo American democracy and enhance their own power and privileges. They are doing it because they can, and they believe in what they are doing. They are America’s G.O.P. Leninists.

Skocpol did not pull her punches:

This situation, locked in place by a corruptly installed Supreme Court majority and by many rotten-borough judicial districts like the one in Amarillo, means that minority authoritarians, behind a bare facade of “constitutionalism,” can render majority-elected officials, including the president and many governors, officials in name only. The great thing from the minority authoritarian point of view is that those visible chief executives (and urban mayors and district attorneys) can still be blamed for government nonfunction and societal problems, but they cannot address them with even broadly supported measures (such as simple background checks for having military assault weapons).

There are a number of factors that confirm Skocpol’s analysis.

First and foremost, the Republican Party’s commitment to democratic values and procedures has been steadily eroding over the past two decades — and the momentum has accelerated. The brakes on extremism are failing, with Donald Trump gaining strength in his bid for renomination and the continuing shift to the right in states like Tennessee and Ohio….

Second, in bright-red states, the embrace of far-right positions on such issues as abortion, guns, immigration and election denial is now a requirement rather than a choice for candidates seeking office.

The 2024 presidential election, if it is close, will test the viability of a mainstay of Republicans’ current antidemocratic strategy: a drive to empower state legislatures to overturn election results. In August 2021, ABC News reported that eight states (Arizona, Georgia, Texas, Florida, Arkansas, Kansas, Montana and Kentucky) have enacted legislation shifting power over determining election results to legislatures or partisan boards.

The ability of state legislatures to determine the winners and losers of elections now hangs on the outcome of a pending Supreme Court case, Moore v. Harper, which will determine the constitutionality of a fringe legal theory promulgated by the right, the so-called independent state legislature doctrine.

What’s at stake?

In a 2021 essay, “Trump Is Planning a Much More Respectable Coup Next Time,” Richard Hasen, an election expert who is a law professor at U.C.L.A., wrote:

A state legislature dominated by Republicans in a state won by Democrats could simply meet and declare that local administrators or courts have deviated from the legislature’s own rules, and therefore the legislature will take matters into its own hands and choose its own slate of electors.

Put another way, according to Hasen:

The Jan. 6 insurrection, and Trump’s actions trying to change the Electoral College votes in five states, was an attempted coup built on the Big Lie of voter fraud. But the potential coup next time will come in neatly filed legal briefs and arguments quoting Thomas Jefferson and wrapped in ancient precedents and purported constitutional textualism. It will be no less pernicious.

(Thomas Edsall, New York Times).

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Schumer and Warnock Call On Department of Justice To Investigate Tennessee Expulsions.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — On Wednesday, April 12, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) in light of the Tennessee General Assembly’s recent expulsions of two Democratic state representatives. The lawmakers called on U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to “use all available legal authorities” to decide whether the Tennessee House violated federal civil rights laws or the U.S. Constitution when it expelled two young Black lawmakers from the legislative chamber last Thursday. Sens. Chris Murphy (D-C.T.), Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) also signed onto the letter.

On April 6, Tennessee Republicans ousted Reps. Justin Pearson (D) and Justin Jones (D), who represent parts of Memphis and Nashville, respectively, for breaking decorum while protesting at the state capitol in favor of gun safety laws following a deadly mass shooting in Nashville. The Assembly did not expel Rep. Gloria Johnson (D), a white woman, even though she protested as well. Jones has been reinstated by the Nashville Metro Council and the Shelby County Board of Commissioners — which governs Memphis —  is expected to vote on Pearson’s fate this afternoon. 

“[W]e do not believe that breaking decorum is alone sufficient cause for employing the most draconian of consequences to duly-elected lawmakers,” the senators wrote before referencing Bond v. Floyd (1966), a U.S. Supreme Court decision that condemned the Georgia House of Representatives for refusing to seat a newly-elected Black legislator for his pacifist views. Schumer and Warnock also cite potential constitutional violations the expulsions may implicate: Article IV’s guarantee to a republican form of government, the 14th Amendment or civil rights statutes’ protections against race discrimination or the First Amendment’s protections for speech and assembly.

“We are deeply concerned that without immediate action by the U.S. Department of Justice, antidemocratic actors will only be emboldened, and we will see more troubling and more frequent incidents meant to unravel our democratic fabric,” the letter concludes.

Read the letter here.

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More questions of Clarence Thomas corruption.

Breaking 💥⚡️⚡️.

New ProPublica’s investigative reporting reveals - in 2014, Clarence Thomas got direct payment from Harlan Crow who bought Thomas’ share of CT’s mother’s house.

Clarence Thomas Didn’t Disclose Harlan Crow Real Estate Deal.

In 2014, one of Texas billionaire Harlan Crow’s companies purchased a string of properties on a quiet residential street in Savannah, Georgia. It wasn’t a marquee acquisition for the real estate magnate, just an old single-story home and two vacant lots down the road. What made it noteworthy were the people on the other side of the deal: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his relatives.

The transaction marks the first known instance of money flowing from the Republican megadonor to the Supreme Court justice. The Crow company bought the properties for $133,363 from three co-owners — Thomas, his mother and the family of Thomas’ late brother, according to a state tax document and a deed dated Oct. 15, 2014, filed at the Chatham County courthouse.

The purchase put Crow in an unusual position: He now owned the house where the justice’s elderly mother was living. Soon after the sale was completed, contractors began work on tens of thousands of dollars of improvements on the two-bedroom, one-bathroom home, which looks out onto a patch of orange trees. The renovations included a carport, a repaired roof and a new fence and gates, according to city permit records and blueprints.

A federal disclosure law passed after Watergate requires justices and other officials to disclose the details of most real estate sales over $1,000. Thomas never disclosed his sale of the Savannah properties. That appears to be a violation of the law, four ethics law experts told ProPublica.

The disclosure form Thomas filed for that year also had a space to report the identity of the buyer in any private transaction, such as a real estate deal. That space is blank.

“He needed to report his interest in the sale,” said Virginia Canter, a former government ethics lawyer now at the watchdog group CREW. “Given the role Crow has played in subsidizing the lifestyle of Thomas and his wife, you have to wonder if this was an effort to put cash in their pockets.”

Thomas did not respond to detailed questions for this story.

In a statement, Crow said he purchased Thomas’ mother’s house, where Thomas spent part of his childhood, to preserve it for posterity. “My intention is to one day create a public museum at the Thomas home dedicated to telling the story of our nation’s second black Supreme Court Justice,” he said. “I approached the Thomas family about my desire to maintain this historic site so future generations could learn about the inspiring life of one of our greatest Americans.”

Crow’s statement did not directly address why he also bought two vacant lots from Thomas down the street. But he wrote that “the other lots were later sold to a vetted builder who was committed to improving the quality of the neighborhood and preserving its historical integrity.”

ProPublica also asked Crow about the additions on Thomas’ mother’s house, like the new carport. “Improvements were also made to the Thomas property to preserve its long-term viability and accessibility to the public,” Crow said.

Ethics law experts said Crow’s intentions had no bearing on Thomas’ legal obligation to disclose the sale.

One more thing. Yesterday, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) asked the Department of Justice to open an investigation into Thomas’ lack of disclosure for potential violations of government ethics law.
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Happening in Florida in 2023.

California Governor Gavin Newsom went to New College in Florida.

Touch 👇 to watch the 1 minute video on what he found.

Florida GOP passes 6-week abortion ban; DeSantis supports it.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — The Republican-dominated Florida Legislature on Thursday approved a ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, a proposal supported by GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis as he prepares for an expected presidential run.

DeSantis is expected to sign the bill into law. Florida currently prohibits abortions after 15 weeks.

A six-week ban would give DeSantis a key political victory among Republican primary voters as he prepares to launch a presidential candidacy built on his national brand as a conservative standard bearer.

The policy would also have wider implications for abortion access throughout the South in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last year overturning Roe v. Wade and leaving decisions about abortion access to states. Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi have banned abortion at all stages of pregnancy, while Georgia forbids the procedure after cardiac activity can be detected, which is around six weeks.

“This ban would prevent four million Florida women of reproductive age from accessing abortion care after six weeks — before many women even know they’re pregnant,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement issued after Thursday’s vote. “This ban would also impact the nearly 15 million women of reproductive age who live in abortion-banning states throughout the South, many of whom have previously relied on travel to Florida as an option to access care.”
(Associated Press).

'Florida May Not Be a Safe Place to Move or Visit' Warns Top LGBTQ Org in 'Unprecedented' Travel Advisory.

A top LGBTQ equal rights organization has issued an extensive and wide-ranging travel advisory for anyone considering moving or traveling to Florida.

Calling it an “unprecedented step,” Equality Florida says their travel advisory “comes after passage of laws that are hostile to the LGBTQ+ community, restrict access to reproductive health care, repeal gun safety laws and allow untrained, unpermitted carry, and foment racial prejudice.”

Equality Florida also warns that Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has “weaponized state agencies to impose sanctions against businesses large and small that disagree with his attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

The advisory notes that “Florida has recently adopted a slate of hateful laws, and is fast-tracking additional measures that directly target the rights of LGBTQ+ individuals and basic freedoms broadly. Already, those policies have led Florida parents to consider relocating, prospective students to cross Florida colleges and universities off their lists, events and conferences to cancel future gatherings, and the United States military to offer redeployment for service members whose families are now unsafe in the state.”

The newspaper also notes Equality Florida’s warning comes “days after Rep. Webster Barnaby, R-Deltona, compared transgender people to ‘mutants’, ‘demons’ and ‘imps,’during discussion of legislation that requires people to use public restrooms that correspond with their sex assigned at birth. It would effectively bar transgender people from facilities that match their gender identity. It also came a day after Senate lawmakers voted to amp up regulations on drag shows, something advocates fear could impact Pride festivals.”

Florida NAACP members last month “unanimously voted to ask the group’s national board to issue a travel advisory,” which Gov. DeSantis at the time labeled a “joke.”

Equality Florida notes that the “Florida Immigrant Coalition, a statewide immigrant rights coalition of 65 member organizations and over 100 allies, also issued a travel advisory today.” (The New Civil rights Movement).

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One more thing, Harvard just announced it is renaming its Graduate School of Arts and Sciences for Ken Griffin, the hedge fund man who is the Republican Party’s largest donor.

Ken Griffin is Florida’s authoritarian governor Ron DeSantis’s largest donor.

Griffin is also a major investor in guns.
https://ildems.com/icymi-ken-griffin-expands-his-investments-in-guns-and-ammunition

So far I have written to Harvard’s President Lawrence Bacow twice, asking him to rescind this name change and tell Mr. Griffin and the world that Harvard does not share his values.

The Harvard President can be reached at President@Harvard.edu.

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TIME100:The Most Influential People of 2023.

Each entry is explained by a few paragraphs by another notable person. (See sample in photo above.Olena Zelenska by Jill Biden👆).

The President, Cindy McCain, Hakeem Jeffries and Bo Igor of Disney made the list. No Republicans, unless you count Samuel Alito, did.

And yes, there are many artists and stars and a past and a current Russian Political Prisoner too. Check it out here.

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