Book banning in Red States is becoming commonplace. Last year Texas schools banned 801 books at the direction of elected officials. Florida under Gov. Ron DeSantis wants to erase books including references to systemic racism and definitions of gender.
State government politicians who just wanted Roe v Wade overturned are now firing up laws that make abortion a felony for the woman and any physician who she turns to.
Republican politicians who just a few years back included drag shows in their repertoire of fundraising tactics are now looking to ban such displays and close down businesses who present them.
Returning to Florida, in addition to removing books like one about baseball legend Roberto Clemente –one incident in one chapter describes discrimination he faced early on– the Governor is supporting legislation requiring universities and colleges to “require colleges and universities to "remov[e] from its programs any major or minor" in Critical Race Theory, Gender Studies, or Intersectionality, along with "any derivative major or minor of these belief systems." (The prohibited topics are not "belief systems" but areas of academic study.) h/t Judd Legum at Popular Information.
A substitute teacher in Florida who posted a video of bare classroom library shelves was fired. The wannabe presidential candidate is sending a message to anyone else who dares criticize his “truth.”
Since educators in the Sunshine state are looking elsewhere for employment, House Bill 999 will significantly devalue educational credentials from Florida, especially for students hoping to find jobs in workplaces that value employees who can function in diverse environments, or those seeking additional educational training from skeptical institutions outside of Florida.
Montana is, via SB 458 'Define Sex in MT Law,' looking to bring back a ban on gay weddings.
Despite the fact that all extremist mass killings in 2022 were linked to the far right, the Atlanta Police Department has decreed that protesters who came from another state fall under the definition of "Domestic Terrorism."
A case accepted by the Supreme Court for next year is technically about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), but has implications for all parts of government existing under an ongoing funding mechanism. Hey gang, how would you feel about Social Security and Medicare benefits would then be required to be blessed by Congress every year?
Those are just the high profile bad things going on as Republicans march toward their dream of an authoritarian theocracy.
Child labor and lots of it is one way companies who provide contract labor to some of the biggest brands in the US milk incoming migrants. The New York Times has a horrific story on this subject.
These workers are part of a new economy of exploitation: Migrant children, who have been coming into the United States without their parents in record numbers, are ending up in some of the most punishing jobs in the country, a New York Times investigation found. This shadow work force extends across industries in every state, flouting child labor laws that have been in place for nearly a century. Twelve-year-old roofers in Florida and Tennessee. Underage slaughterhouse workers in Delaware, Mississippi and North Carolina. Children sawing planks of wood on overnight shifts in South Dakota…
…Migrant child labor benefits both under-the-table operations and global corporations, The Times found. In Los Angeles, children stitch “Made in America” tags into J. Crew shirts. They bake dinner rolls sold at Walmart and Target, process milk used in Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and help debone chicken sold at Whole Foods. As recently as the fall, middle-schoolers made Fruit of the Loom socks in Alabama. In Michigan, children make auto parts used by Ford and General Motors.
The “little things” that are presented as unsolvable, like incarceration and homelessness are neatly wrapped up in benign neglect, or fall behind the thin Blue Line, meaning they know better than the rest of us about what’s best for society.
For all the grief that local politicians everywhere take about the nexus between cops and people on the street, there’s an army of law and order warriors just waiting to ruin an elected official’s career.
The biggest tragedy of all is what’s happening with jails around the country. Here’s a quick rundown of stuff from just last week, via The Watch:
According to a lawsuit, Louisville jailers locked a mentally and physically woman in a small room that lacked running water, ventilation, a toilet, or a bed for 18 hours. She eventually hung herself with her soiled underwear in view of other prisoners — whose pleas for help were ignored.
In Alabama, after a prisoner died just a few days before he was to be released, prison officials buried him without first informing his family. It took weeks for them to learn what they had done.
Elsewhere in Alabama, a lawsuit alleges that a man froze to death after jailers left him strapped to a restraint chair in a walk-in freezer. By the time he arrived at the hospital, his body temperature was 72 degrees.
This comes just a couple months after another lawsuit alleged that another prisoner was “baked to death” in a hot cell. His body temperature at death was 109 degrees.
Finally, in New Jersey, a lawsuit and multiple complaints allege that guards at a rehab housing unit were staging their own “fight club,” in which they pitted incarcerated people against one another.
And I would be remiss not to mention that San Diego County jails have in recent years had the highest number of jail deaths of any major county in California. Many of those deaths have been due to drug overdoses, including Fentanyl. Reforms instituted mostly involve screening prisoners; guards –even after a Deputy was caught with cocaine in his car recently– are not.
I’ll close out today with an appropriate quote from Paul Krugman:
So now we know what many conservatives mean by being woke: It means showing any concern for, and offering any help to, Americans who are victims of adverse circumstances.
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