Ron DeSantis
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Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch is set to headline the Federalist Society’s annual conference in Florida over the weekend. It’s closed to the press. And while it may not be a great look for a sitting Supreme Court justice to speak at an ideological event, it’s not uncommon. Gorsuch has spoken at Federalist Society events in the past. In fact, all of the conservative justices on the Court currently have ties, in some form or another, to the conservative organization.
But part of what makes this year’s confab so intriguing are the prominent conservative names he will be sharing the program with.
Read MoreBut some Republicans are already using the Biden administration’s new, common sense decision to pour gasoline on their baseless federal overreach fights.
The Food and Drug Administration removed two monoclonal antibody therapies from its list of approved treatments for COVID-19 this week, at least temporarily. Citing clinical data, the FDA said in a statement that it has found two of the treatments “are highly unlikely to be active against the omicron variant, which is circulating at a very high frequency throughout the United States.” HHS sent out a letter to state officials this week, alerting them that the federal government would stop handing out the treatments made by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and Eli Lilly to states for now, according to the Washington Post which obtained a copy of the letter.
Read MoreIt is hard to accept when you might actually be the real snowflake.
But that’s the bitter pill Florida Republicans find themselves having to swallow.
The latest news: Florida state Republicans just passed a bill — pushed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) — that piles on an already-cemented state policy that bans the teaching of Critical Race Theory, and systemic racism-related issues, in Florida public schools.
This latest bill goes even further. It passed out of the Florida state legislature’s Republican-controlled Senate Education Committee this week by a 6-3 vote, per Orlando Weekly.
Read MoreSchool district officials who oversee hundreds of schools in Virginia are actively defying their new Republican governor’s efforts to tamp down COVID-19 mitigation measures in the state.
The backlash is similar to what we saw play out in Texas and Florida when Republican Govs. Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis enacted similar executive orders late last year, attempting to block individual schools and municipalities from creating their own policies for combatting the pandemic.
Read MoreIt’s a predictable move for the red state governor with 2024 aspirations and one who has built his national profile on, essentially, pretending that COVID is just Not A Thing in Florida, despite the state’s staggering death rates from the virus.
Just hours after the White House’s new vaccine mandate officially went into effect – formalizing the Biden administration’s earlier promises to require that employers with 100 or more workers must mandate vaccines or ensure their workers undergo weekly COVID testing – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced his intention to sue over the new rule. The vaccination and weekly negative testing rules for 100-plus employee workplaces will be enforced by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and will impact about 84 million employees around the U.S., according to the White House.
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