Republican States Vie for Most Horrible Legislation in 2022
Unfortunately for Republicans, the war in Ukraine has disrupted efforts to further divide the country through their “solutions in search of a problem.”
That hasn’t stopped them from trying, as low turnout and rejected mail in ballots in last week’s Texas primary generated promised results following legislation premised on myths about voter fraud.
Speaking of voter fraud, one of the Former Guy’s point men on the issue turns out to have some explaining to do.
Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff who helped former President Donald J. Trump spread false claims of voter fraud in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election, is facing questions about his own voting record, following a report that he registered to vote from a North Carolina mobile home where he did not live.
,,,Voters are not required to notify a state’s election officials about a move. Mr. Meadows, in fact, is currently registered in both North Carolina and Virginia.
Virginia voter registration forms obtained by The New York Times show that nearly a year after registering at the mountain mobile home, on Sept. 13 and Sept. 15, 2021, Mr. Meadows and Ms. Meadows registered to vote at a condominium in the Old Town neighborhood of suburban Alexandria, Va. Property records show that Mr. and Ms. Meadows purchased the unit in July 2017.
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Today I’ll present a round up of cultural war efforts from around the country. Nobody should be surprised about the targets of these executive and legislative efforts: women, people of color, immigrants, LGBTQ humans, and public education..
Florida
Florida’s Ron DeSantis is running for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024 by positioning himself as Trumpier than Trump AND capable of delivering the goods.
Check it out.
DeSantis signed a controversial bill banning transgender athletes from participating in women's and girls' scholastic sports on June 1, the first day of Pride Month.
Then, days before the five-year anniversary of the Pulse shooting, the Florida Governor vetoed $150,000 in state funds providing counseling for Pulse survivors and another $750,000 to create housing programs for homeless gay and transgender youths.
Florida’s Don’t Say Gay legislation has received significant news coverage and triggered student walk outs across the state. The legislation, which was tacked on to a bill about parental rights, is the only law in Florida dictating which topics schools cannot teach.
The bill would also allow parents to sue schools or teachers that engage in these topics. Language like this is appearing in culture war legislation across the country, following the Supreme Court’s ruling on Texas SB8, which privitizes enforcement of anti-abortion laws.
This week Florida became the first state advising against giving COVID-19 vaccine to healthy children, despite the CDC’s recommendation. It just the latest move by DeSantis to discredit, deny, or defy public health measures based on anti-vaxxer mythology and the ridiculous notion that those guidelines are somehow “tyranny.” I’m sure the 44 million people living in Ukraine would argue otherwise.
You can’t have a culture war with mentioning immigration, and DeSantis has indicated he’s eager to sign legislation banning transport companies from doing business with the state if they can be shown to have carried passengers considered to be illegal immigrants. This bill is actually aimed at keeping the Biden administration from continuing the Trump administration’s policies. In other words, planes carrying unaccompanied minors, people protected under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or those with Temporary Protected Status would be treated as “smugglers.”
Georgia
Not willing to be outdone by its neighbor to the south, Georgia’s legislature is cooking up a Don’t Say Gay bill (SB613) the includes mandates for private schools.
The Georgia Senate has passed legislation prohibiting Facebook and Twitter from deleting posts or removing users based on the views they express. The bill stems from complaints about conservative views deleted for promoting false or misleading information, especially on the topics of election fraud and COVID-19.
Russia, by the way, has enacted similar legislation aimed at media outlets daring to tell the truth about the invasion of Ukraine. It says violators face a 15 year jail sentence.
Alabama
The Alabama Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act (HB 150 and SB 5) makes providing gender affirming therapies a felony, and threatens doctors who follow the advice of American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics with a ten year prison sentence. Like other bills around the country aimed at transgender humans, it requires school administrators to out transgender students without their consent.
Texas
Governor Greg Abbott has political aspirations of his own, and has been at the forefront of supporting measures designed to tell teachers what they can teach, ban books from school libraries, criminalizing abortion, and allowing nutcases to carry guns just about anywhere they please.
He’s signed an executive order directing the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate parents of children who underwent gender conversion therapy, since he considers it child abuse. This isn’t some pie-in-the-sky wannabe program on the books to impress the rubes; the raids on people’s homes have already begun.
Here’s a quote from some parents who are already having their home inspected to prove they can feed and clothe their kids:
The Texas government has launched an effort to round up transgender children and send them off to a broken, overcrowded, and dysfunctional foster care system. A system in which 23 children have died since 2019, due to actual abuse and neglect. We are in the midst of that roundup process right now. Yes, it seems unbelievable, but we need you to see that it is really happening.
Idaho
In the race to see who can come up with the most cruel laws concerning the care of transgender youth, Idaho has taken the lead in advancing legislation (HB 675) making providing care to them a felony with a life sentence.
The legislation, passed as an amendment to a bill addressing involuntary female mutilation, exempts male circumcision. Leaving the state with a trans teen including moving elsewhere is also a felony.
Idaho’s laws include a "faith healing" exemption protecting parents from prosecution if they let their kids die from a lack of medical treatment. Another law allows the purchase and open carry of firearms for children as young as 12 with written parental consent.
Missouri
Missouri, whose anti-abortion laws are rendered largely ineffective because of willing health care facilities in nearby Illinois and Kansas, is working on legislation incorporating Texas-style lawsuit vigilantism. Litigants could be rewarded with cash for suing anyone even tangentially involved in an abortion performed on a Missouri resident, including hotline staffers making appointments, marketing representatives who advertise out-of-state clinics, and doctors who handle the procedure. It would also make it illegal to manufacture, transport, possess or distribute abortion pills in Missouri.
There is no word on whether checkpoints at the state line are in the works
Tennessee
Not to be left behind, Tennessee is also moving Texas style legislation forward.
Also in the works is Tennessee's "Divisive Concepts" bill, which seeks to silence higher ed discussions, and analyses, etc. of uncomfortable subjects. Under this law It will only take two student complaints to terminate a tenured faculty member at the University of Tennessee.
Michigan
Here’s a GOP-quality candidate from Michigan, whose own family has taken up campaigning against him.
Oklahoma
The Sooner State’s SB 1142 would criminalize any school official or librarian having any books that “make as their primary subject the study of sex, sexual preferences, sexual activity, sexual perversion, sexual identity, or gender identity.
It also adds Texas-style vigilantism to the mix, saying any person can sue a school stating they have a book that violates the policy. If the school librarian does not remove the book, the school is fined a minimum of $10,000 a day, and the offending school official or librarian will be barred from working in any school for a period of two years.
But wait! There’s more! This bill is in conjunction with SB 1470, which seeks to penalize teachers for a minimum of $10,000 if they teach something that goes against a student’s religious belief. Another companion bill, SB 1654, seeks to ban LGBTQ books, as well as books about “recreational sexualization”, i.e. books that discuss “non-procreative sex”.
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I’m sure I could come up with more state level culture war horror stories if I did more than 90 minutes of research, but I hope readers get the point. Horrible people are doing horrible things hoping to make people’s lives miserable enough so an authoritarian style of governance becomes common.
Friends don’t let friends vote Republican.
Speaking of horrible people,
Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com
Lead image credit: Yarek Waszul