The Gloves Come Off: Biden Takes Aim At GOP Guvs’ Anti-Mask Mandate Crusade

Posted on by Cristina Cabrera

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things.

Enough Is Enough

Biden has directed Education Secretary Miguel Cardona “to take additional steps to protect our children” as Republican governors fight to bar local authorities from requiring students and school employees to wear masks, the President announced yesterday.

  • Those steps include “using all of his oversight authorities and legal actions, if appropriate, against governors who are trying to block and intimidate local school officials and educators,” Biden said.
  • The President repeated that governors who aren’t trying to fight the pandemic need to “at least get out of the way of everyone else who is trying.” “You know, we’re not going to sit by as governors try to block and intimidate educators protecting our children.”

  • Cardona will have his department’s civil rights office investigate states like Florida and Texas that are banning school mask mandates, the senior administration official told the New York Times yesterday.
  • “What we’re dealing with now is negligence,” Cardona said.
  • The Education secretary sent a letter to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis informing him earlier this week that the administration could use federal monies to make up for any funding and salaries the state may withhold from school districts and superintendents who defy DeSantis’ mask mandate ban.

Manchin And Sinema Are Secretly Boosting House Moderates’ Attempted Flex

Conservative Democrats Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) have been privately advising the nine House moderates who are trying to pressure House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) into holding a vote on the bipartisan infrastructure proposal before the $3.5 trillion budget resolution, according to Axios.

  • That assistance has strengthened the moderates’ resolve, Axios reports, even though Pelosi shrugged off their gambit as “amateur hour” earlier this week.
  • The House is slated to take up the budget resolution next week.

Time To Go Big

The overall popularity of Democrats’ sweeping $3.5 trillion infrastructure proposal stays about the same when the price tag gets lowered to $2.5 or $1.5 trillion, according to a new poll by HuffPost and Data for Progress.

  • The extent of that popularity varied between Democrats, Republicans and self-identified independents in the poll. Less than half of Republican supporters supported the legislation with each price tag.

Must Read

“What We Owe the Victims of America’s Failed Wars” – Viet Thanh Nguyen

There is neither power nor glory in the stories of civilians killed or maimed or forced to flee or orphaned by war. It is in civilian experiences, similar to what many Afghans are now going through, that we truly find war stories. We keep hearing that Americans are suffering from war fatigue — but how many stories do we read or hear or see about American soldiers at war compared to stories of refugees created by wars led by the United States? Civilian war stories disturb our mind-set of conducting perpetual warfare as an unquestioned American privilege.

A Proud Boys Supporter Pleads Guilty To Threatening Warnock

Eduard Florea, a supporter of the Proud Boys, pleaded guilty this week to posting death threats against then-Senate candidate Ralph Warnock (D-GA) before and during the Capitol insurrection.

  • “Warnock is going to have a hard time casting votes for communist policies when he’s swinging with the fish,” Florea wrote on Parler the day before the insurrection (Florea was not present during the attack).

Tearing Down The Scott Pruitt Legacy

The Biden administration has banned the use of chlorpyrifos, a pesticide that scientists have found causes neurological damage in kids, on food.

  • Then-Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt refused to ban the chemical in 2017.

In Case You Missed This Incredible Moment

John Cox, one of California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) GOP rivals in the recall election, was served with a subpoena in the middle of a debate on Tuesday night:

  • Cox carried on with the debate even after the papers were flung at him on stage, according to the Los Angeles Times.
  • The subpoena arises from a dispute over payment due from Cox’s doomed 2018 campaign to a vendor.

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The Threats Aren’t Working: More School Districts Defy GOP Guvs’ Orders Against Mask Requirements

GOP-controlled states are taking a carrot-and-stick approach in the face of school districts and local authorities defying Republican governors’ ban on mask mandates.

Over with the stick, Florida Board of Education voted yesterday to investigate two counties that’ve implemented mask mandates despite Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R) ban. Tom Grady, the chair of the board, hinted that funding for school districts in those counties may be withheld, even though earlier this week DeSantis’ office softened its stance on pulling funds from schools, suggesting that officials implementing the mask mandates should opt to dock their own salaries.

Meanwhile, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) is offering a carrot to schools that haven’t issued a mask mandate by announcing he’d grant them $163 million in funding from the federal COVID-19 relief package Congress passed earlier this year for playing along.

It’s the crux of the latest culture war we’re seeing play out in courts and school board meeting rooms in at least eight states across the U.S. Earlier this week, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) issued a ban on school mask mandates, joining Florida, Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Iowa, and Utah as states that have all prohibited school districts from requiring students and school staff to wear masks.

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Why Did Hungary’s Strongman Hire An American Strong Man?

Posted on by Josh Kovensky

A south Florida bodybuilder with a “pugilistic” Twitter presence secured a contract last year to spearhead a campaign by Hungary as the central European nation sought to ingratiate itself with the MAGA right.

Continue reading “Why Did Hungary’s Strongman Hire An American Strong Man?” →

Important New COVID/Vax Data

Posted on by Josh Marshall

Over the last few days I’ve been collecting information and thinking through a few more posts on the progress of the Delta-driven 4th COVID wave. One of the conclusions I’ve been ruminating on is that the CDC has been doing a pretty good job in 2021 on what the CDC is designed to do. (It is important to remember, and bewildering to remember, that the CDC actually wasn’t posting COVID case, testing or mortality data through 2020. It fell to a DIY journo collaborative.) But it’s clear that we need an entity that is capable of and empowered to do a lot more. In the current moment there is just a lot of data about the current shape of the pandemic that we simply do not have. We do have that data, or a lot of it, for the UK and Israel because they have centralized health care systems that have all the data. We will come back to that. But for the moment I wanted to flag for your attention this week’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) from the CDC. It contains three new studies which go directly to the most critical questions we’re facing.

Continue reading “Important New COVID/Vax Data” →

Sic Transit

Posted on by Josh Marshall

A sign of the times update. Politico Influence, Politico’s newsletter on the lobbying industry, is reporting that the US Chamber of Commerce is now requiring proof of vaccination for anyone who enters their DC offices. The National Association of Manufacturers and the Business Roundtable are also instituting vaccine mandates.

Governor Abbott’s COVID

Posted on by Josh Marshall

You have seen the news that Gov. Abbott of Texas has tested positive for COVID. It adds a new element of drama to the battle he’s currently waging to ban school masking and vaccine mandates in Texas. But there’s another element I wanted to mention. Because when I saw it yesterday it confused me.

The governor’s office reports that he tested positive after one of the tests for the infection he takes each day. They report he is fully vaccinated, in good health and as yet has no symptoms of the disease. At 63 he is approaching the age when people start to have more adverse outcomes. But fully vaccinated there’s every expectation he will have a mild course of the illness if he has any symptoms at all and probably not need to do more than do the duties of office in quarantine.

But the statement from the Governor’s office also noted that he has begun taking the Regeneron antibodies treatment.
Continue reading “Governor Abbott’s COVID” →

Mask-Mandate Foe Abbott Has COVID-19

Posted on by Cristina Cabrera

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things.

Rolling In The Deep Irony

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has tested positive for COVID-19, per a video announcement he posted yesterday.

  • Abbott is vaccinated and isn’t experiencing any symptoms.
  • The governor, a paraplegic, received a third booster shot, according to NBC News. The Federal Drug and Food Administration has authorized booster shots for immunocompromised people.
  • Abbott seemed to encourage Texans to get the vaccine by noting that he wasn’t experiencing any symptoms.
  • Abbott has been a fierce opponent of vaccine and mask mandates while hospitals in his state are getting slammed with COVID-19 cases.
  • It’s not clear when the GOP governor became infected, but he has attended numerous public and private events in recent days where, photos show, masking was virtually nonexistent:

That fundraiser at the Republican Club at Heritage Ranch sure looks busy. What else has been on his agenda lately?

Weird, none of the hoards of infected migrants that Abbott accuses of exposing “our communities” to COVID-19 are in any of these pictures!

Arizona Governor Is Trying To Bribe Schools Into Letting Kids Get Exposed To COVID-19

Arizona district and charter schools that are “following all state laws” will receive extra funding from money allocated to the state through Congress’ last COVID-19 relief package, Gov. Doug Ducey (R) announced yesterday as several local officials defy his mask mandate ban.

  • The governor made it explicitly clear that this is about rewarding local governments that don’t require masks at schools, claiming in his announcement that mandates “place more stress” on families (presumably ones that aren’t stressed about their child getting sick).
  • Ducey’s announcement comes as the Florida Board of Education voted to potentially withhold funds from school districts that have refused to comply with Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R) mask mandate ban.
  • Florida’s announcement hasn’t deterred the Alachua County School Board from upholding its mask mandate, however:

Key Analysis

“‘Breaking point’: Why the red state/blue city conflict is peaking over masks” – CNN

FBI Investigates Election Data Leak To QAnon Circles

The FBI in Denver is joining the investigation into a leak of Mesa County’s election data to an infamous QAnoner that was allegedly assisted by county clerk Tina Peters.

  • The feds are working with the Mesa ​County district attorney “on the forensic review and analysis of county voting systems to determine if there was a potential federal criminal violation,” a FBI spokesperson told CNN.
  • Peters went to MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s “Cyber Symposium” circus last week and accused the Colorado secretary of state of victimizing her “because I am a Republican, I’m a conservative and she’s not.”

Let The Georgia GOP’s Election Hijacking Begin

The Georgia State Board of Elections will appoint a panel to review Fulton County’s elections process at Republicans’ request today.

  • It’s the next step in Georgia Republicans’ efforts to take control of the county’s elections process after its heavily blue majority helped flip the state to Biden.

Earthquake Devastation In Haiti

The death toll of Haiti’s enormous earthquake this weekend is at nearly 2,000, and more than 9,000 people have been injured.

Thoughts And Prayers

New York Attorney General Letitia James is moving forward with her bid to dissolve the National Rifle Association (NRA).

  • The corruption running rampant within the organization has “continued unabated,” James wrote in a new court filing this week.

Saluting The Taliban To Own The Libs

Conservatives have offered weird takes on Taliban ideology over the last couple of days:

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FL Board Of Education Votes To Probe Districts Defying DeSantis Ban On Mask Mandates

Posted on by Summer Concepcion

The Florida Board of Education on Tuesday voted unanimously to approve investigations into two school districts in the state that defied Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R) order banning mask mandates. Continue reading “FL Board Of Education Votes To Probe Districts Defying DeSantis Ban On Mask Mandates” →