April 30, 2023

Sunday, April 30, 2023. Annette’s News Roundup.

I think the Roundup makes people feel not so alone.

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Joe is always busy.

The White House Correspondents’ Dinner, 2023.

The President.

Other of Washington’s finest were at WHCD too.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

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Happening in the States.

Colorado Governor Signs Bills Strengthening Gun Laws.

Gov. Jared Polis signed the bills five months after an assailant killed five people and injured more than a dozen others in an L.G.B.T.Q. nightclub in Colorado Springs.

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Jared Polis signed three bills into law on Friday that tighten restrictions on gun purchases and possession, as well as a fourth that makes it easier for victims of gun violence to sue firearm companies.

The new laws will raise the age to buy any firearm to 21 from 18, and make it illegal to sell any gun to someone younger than 21; mandate a three-day waiting period between buying and receiving a gun; and expand the state’s red flag law.

Doctors, mental health professionals and teachers will now be allowed to petition judges to temporarily remove people’s firearms, if they pose a threat to themselves or others. Before, only law enforcement officers and family members were able to file such requests.

The fourth law makes it easier to sue gun manufacturers by eliminating the requirement that plaintiffs automatically pay the legal fees of gun-industry defendants when cases are dismissed. The law also will allow manufacturers to be sued under the Colorado Consumer Protection Act, which applies to all other businesses in the state.

A fifth bill, which would have banned semiautomatic firearms, failed to make it out of the House Judiciary Committee.

(New York Times).

South Carolina Democrats elect first Black woman to head state party.

Christale Spain was elected to lead the South Carolina Democratic Party on Saturday, becoming the first Black woman to hold the position in the state that will host Democrats’ first-in-the-nation primary in 2024.

“South Carolina – we did it! I am honored to be the first Black woman to ever chair our party,” Spain’s campaign tweeted. “We made history, and our work is just getting started.”

Spain also had the backing of longtime South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn (D), whose district office she previously worked in. (The Hill)

One more thing. Remember - under the new Democratic Primary calendar for 2024, the South Carolina Primary will be the first and Democrats will vote in SC on Feb. 3, 2024.

Texas Republicans want Ten Commandments in every classroom.

In 2005, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, then the state’s attorney general, discusses a Supreme Court decision to allow a Ten Commandments monument to be displayed outside the state capitol.

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This month, Texas Senate Republicans passed three bills about religion in schools that have historians feeling déjà vu.

The first, SB 1515, would require public schools to display the Ten Commandments in a “conspicuous place” in classrooms. The other bill, SB 1396, would permit public schools to set aside time for students and staff members to pray or read the Bible and other religious texts. The third, SB 1556, would give employees the right to pray or “engage in religious speech” while on the job. The bills are on their way to the Texas House for approval. These bills follow Texas’s SB 797, which took effect in 2021 and requires schools to display “In God We Trust” signs.

The school culture wars have been burning hot in the past three years. Parents and school boards have fought over critical race theory, social-emotional learning, African American studies, the books on library shelves, and more. But unlike past controversies about what is taught in schools, these fights have not been explicitly religious. The Texas bills are, in that sense, throwbacks — and some historians are shocked by the reemergence of a culture war that reached its peak decades ago.

“I had believed that these religion wars had mostly cooled and even gone away,” said Jonathan Zimmerman, historian of education at the University of Pennsylvania and author of several books including, Whose America?: Culture Wars in the Public Schools. “But it’s different now because we’re battling over nation and nationhood, and who’s an American, not battling over God and prayer.”

But in 2022, the Supreme Court decided in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District that a football coach’s prayer at football games constituted protected speech. The bill’s authors and conservative supporters said the court’s ruling represents a “fundamental shift” for religious liberty much in the way that “the Dobbs case was for the pro-life movement.”

The lawmakers see a signal that they can rethink the separation of church and state, the long-standing idea embedded in the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” (Vox).

Montana transgender lawmaker Zooey Zephyr is silenced by Republicans after comments on anti-trans bill.

The Montana House voted 68-32 to silence Democratic Rep. Zooey Zephyr on Wednesday, after she criticized a Republican bill that would ban gender-affirming care for minors in the state. As a result of the vote, Zephyr will not be allowed on the House floor or the gallery, and will have to participate in votes remotely.

Zephyr is the first trans woman elected to the Montana legislature, and the GOP attacks on her come as Republicans across the country have pushed a swath of anti-trans bills. By limiting her participation in House bills to a remote vote, Republicans are effectively taking away her ability to engage in debates on legislation or speak out against proposals she disagrees with.

House Republicans have pushed for Zephyr’s censure by arguing that she used “hateful rhetoric” when she said last week she hoped lawmakers saw the “blood on [their] hands” as they considered legislation to curb gender-affirming care for minors. Additionally, Republicans argued that she breached decorum by signaling support for protesters who came to the House on Monday and chanted “let her speak” when GOP leaders refused to recognize her. (Vox).

Minnesota Votes to Legalize Marijuana as Democrats Press Liberal Policies.

Democrats, who took control in St. Paul, have moved forward with a long list of plans, including expanding abortion rights and offering driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants.
MINNEAPOLIS — Minnesota lawmakers on Friday voted to legalize recreational use of marijuana, the latest in a string of policy moves to the left after Democrats took full control of the Statehouse after nine years of divided government.

Despite having only a one-seat majority in Minnesota’s Senate, Democrats have moved swiftly to push through a pile of liberal legislation that made this year’s lawmaking session among the most productive and polarizing in recent history.

Minnesota legislators have codified abortion rights, funded school meals for all children, set a goal to transition entirely to clean energy by 2040 and allowed unauthorized immigrants to get driver’s licenses.

Lawmakers expanded voting rights by allowing an estimated 55,000 felons the ability to cast ballots and by automatically registering people to vote when they get a driver’s license or sign up for government programs. (New York Times).

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Maybe Americans should vote for moral candidates, not drinking buddies.

When you read this, you see the “stuff” our 39th President was made of. He should have been #40 too.

Political prisoners share how Jimmy Carter saved their lives.

“So much was done in Haiti because of him. He managed to force the regime to open up,” Award-winning Haitian broadcaster Michèle Montas said.
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ATLANTA (AP) — Jimmy Carter tried like no president ever had to put human rights at the center of American foreign policy. It was a turnabout dictators and dissidents alike found hard to believe as he took office in 1977. The U.S. had such a long history of supporting crackdowns on popular movements — was his insistence on restoring moral principles for real?

After Carter, now 98, entered hospice care at his home in Georgia, The Associated Press reached out to several former political prisoners, asking what it was like to see his influence take hold in countries oppressed by military rule. They credit Carter with their survival.

Michèle Montas witnessed the impact from the control room of Radio Haiti-Inter, which carefully began challenging the dictatorship of Jean Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier after Carter said U.S. aid would depend on the growth of a civil society.

“So much was done in Haiti because of him. He managed to force the regime to open up,” Montas said.

Haitians listened on their radios as Macoutes destroyed the station and imprisoned the staff, along with students, intellectuals, lawyers, human rights advocates and political candidates. “Everyone who could move in Haiti was suddenly arrested, and the country fell into complete silence,” Montas said.

But Carter wasn’t out of office yet. Montas was put on a plane to Miami, one of a list of prominent Haitian prisoners U.S. diplomats presented to the dictator’s staff.

“We were expelled because there was a strong protest on the part of the Carter administration,” said Montas, who later became the U.N. secretary-general’s spokeswoman.

Other dictators across Latin America also released political prisoners and hastened transitions to democratic elections, a transformation Carter encouraged without sending Americans into combat. He noted proudly that no bombs were dropped nor shots fired by U.S. troops under his watch. Aside from the eight service members who died in an accident trying to rescue hostages in Iran, no one was killed.

Carter had been briefed by outgoing Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, whose “realpolitik” approach meant covertly cozying up to autocrats as they terrorized their citizens. But Carter sought a new approach to winning the Cold War.

“We are now free of that inordinate fear of communism which once led us to embrace any dictator who joined us in that fear,” he announced four months into his presidency. “For too many years, we’ve been willing to adopt the flawed and erroneous principles and tactics of our adversaries, sometimes abandoning our own values for theirs.”

Carter then sent his wife Rosalynn on a “goodwill” mission around Latin America to show the dictators he meant what he said, according to “President Carter,” the White House memoir written by one of his top aides, Stuart Eizenstat.

Carter also expanded the State Department’s report on human rights in each country, an annual document authoritarians loathed and feared. His Foreign Corrupt Practices Act aimed to abolish bribery by multinational corporations. And his embassies welcomed victims of state terror, documenting 15,000 disappearances in Argentina alone.

Years later, Carter described his finger-wagging treatment of the Argentine dictator Jorge Videla at a Carter Center event, where he was introduced to some of the people he saved.

“I said, ‘These are innocent people and I demand they be released.’ And they were,” Carter recalled.

Declassified documents eventually confirmed Kissinger’s secret encouragement of Operation Condor, an effort by South America’s dictators to eliminate each other’s political opponents. Carter’s presidential daily memos, by contrast, included names and numbers of people kidnapped, imprisoned or killed.

Fernando Reati was a 22-year-old Argentine college activist when his whole family was arrested. Although his parents were released and fled into exile, he and his brother were tortured — waterboarding, beatings and stress positions — and narrowly escaped being shot by prison guards.

“They came to the cells, they called the names, and we never saw them again. And later on we learned from other people that they had been killed outside. That took place throughout 1976. And at the end of the year, they no longer killed people that way,” said Reati.

The U.S. government’s sudden insistence on respecting human rights came as a complete surprise to political prisoners and must have been “very mind-boggling” for Argentina’s military, said Reati.

“They didn’t believe that he was serious, because it was so hard to believe it after decades of U.S. support for all kinds of military dictatorships in Latin America,” said Reati, whose testimony helped convict his torturers of crimes against humanity. He now leads Georgia State students on tours of dirty war sites in Buenos Aires.

Carter hadn’t focused on human rights until it proved to be a potent campaign issue. As president, he framed it in terms of civil and political rights, avoiding the more difficult rights to food, education and health care, and applied its principles selectively, reflecting pragmatic calculations about U.S. interests, according to historian Barbara Keys, who wrote “Reclaiming American Virtue – the Human Rights Revolution of the 1970s.”

So while Carter was personally committed to Latin America, he maintained a hands-off approach in Southeast Asia after the U.S. pullout from Vietnam — and his record there suffered for it.

Despite emerging evidence of brutality, Carter waited until 1978 to declare that Cambodia’s bloodthirsty Khmer Rouge was “the worst violator of human rights in the world.” Their nearly four-year reign of terror, from 1975-79, ultimately killed more than 1.7 million people.

Carter also stuck with his predecessors’ support for Indonesia’s authoritarian President Suharto, who used U.S. weapons and aircraft to crush an independence movement in East Timor. Hundreds of thousands died there in a quarter-century of conflict.

In Africa, however, his post-presidential Carter Center helped transform societies by fostering grassroots activism and social justice through public health initiatives, said Abdullahi Ahmed An-Naim, a former director of Africa Watch who taught human rights law at Emory University in Atlanta.

An-Naim was a University of Khartoum professor advocating for a Sharia that guarantees women’s equality when the dictator of Sudan, Jaafar al-Nimeiri, decreed a draconian version of Quranic principles. To stifle dissent in the religiously diverse country, al-Nimeiri detained An-Naim and 50 colleagues for 18 months without charges.

At another scholar’s request, Carter wrote a personal appeal. Al-Nimeiri became extremely angry and screamed about traitors and enemies, but “we were released without charge, without trial, without a word,” An-Naim said. “It is Carter the human being who did this.” (Associated Press).

One more thing. President Carter was always an astute politician.

President Carter also has great taste in musicians.

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A man who risked all to support women’s choice has died.

Thank you, kind and brave man, for being there, “After Tiller.”

Outspoken abortion provider LeRoy 'Lee' Carhart dies at 81.

LeRoy “Lee” Carhart, who emerged from a two-decade career as an Air Force surgeon to become one of the best-known late-term abortion providers in the United States, has died. He was 81.

Carhart died Friday, according to Clinics for Abortions & Reproductive Excellence in Bellevue, Nebraska, where he was the medical director. His cause of death was not released by the clinic.

Carhart began focusing on abortions after retiring from the Air Force in 1985. He was one of only a handful of late-term abortion providers in the U.S. and was among the most vocal.

“Lee had a very simple belief that patients know what is best for their life plan and was there to support them,” the clinic’s statement said. “His lifelong commitment to serving patients seeking abortion services will be continued by his staff and doctors at both Maryland and Nebraska CARE locations.”

He founded his first clinic specializing in abortion in 1992 with a mission to provide abortion care in a compassionate, comfortable and personal environment, according to the statement. Carhart had specialized in vasectomies previously and said he wanted to offer women reproductive freedom. He defended the procedure as a way for women to control their fertility.

Carhart drew attention for twice taking his fight for abortion rights to the U.S. Supreme Court, after the May 2009 killing of friend and colleague Dr. George Tiller and when he expanded his practice outside of Nebraska after a 2010 state law limited it there. (Associated Press).
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King Charles’ Coronation expands what England is. Britain is now a multi-faith nation.

King Charles III coronation will recognize ‘people of all faiths’ - will feature Jews, Muslims, Hindus, too.

LONDON — The upcoming coronation of Charles III, which will attract a global audience, will not be the “woke” mash-up some conservatives feared but will be unprecedented in its inclusivity.
The new king wants to present himself not only as the “Defender of the Faith,” meaning the Church of England, but all faiths, here and across the realm.


In a remarkable twist, at the urging of Charles, the coronation will acknowledge that Britain is no longer an exclusively Christian country, but is in fact a multifaith nation, including many who believe in no deity at all.



Details of the coronation service were released on Saturday by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and contain many moments that seek to embrace the 21st-century realities of both Britain and the far-flung nations of the Commonwealth.


For the first time, members of other faiths will play an active role in what has been, over the past four centuries, an almost exclusively Protestant service. (Washington Post).
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