#DeSantis administration

[zinniajones]

FLORIDA HRT CRISIS: SB 254, effective May 17 2023, banned nearly all new HRT prescriptions and refills of existing prescriptions for trans adults, for up to 6 more weeks or until “emergency” state-mandated consent forms are published by the Boards of Medicine.

Trans care bans were never about “protecting children” — they were about making all trans existence completely impossible. See for yourself.

(Full quality version)

Please share to help Florida's trans community survive SB 254!

[meteorologistaustenlonek]

" “Courses with a curriculum based on unproven, speculative, or exploratory content are best suited as [electives].” However, being a truly informed citizen requires awareness of current events, movements, and perspectives. In a high-quality science course, students should learn the latest scientific literature and understand the ways novel findings upend older ones. Scientific advancement requires speculation, so students need to discern trustworthy data and build strong hypotheses based on observations not yet solidified as fact. "

[onlytiktoks]

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Erin Reed at Erin In The Morning (04.25.2024):

On Friday, the Biden administration released its final Title IX rules, which include protections for LGBTQ+ students by clarifying that Title IX forbids discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The rule change could have a significant impact as it would supersede bathroom bans and other discriminatory policies that have become increasingly common in Republican states within the United States. As of Thursday morning, however, officials in at least four states — Oklahoma, Louisiana, Florida, and South Carolina — have directed schools to ignore the regulations, potentially setting up a federal showdown that may ultimately end up in a protracted court battle in the lead-up to the 2024 elections.

Louisiana State Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley was the first to respond, decrying the fact that the new Title IX regulations could block teachers and other students from exercising what has been dubbed by some a “right to bully” transgender students by using their old names and pronouns intentionally. Asserting that Title IX law does not protect trans and queer students, Brumley states that schools “should not alter policies or procedures at this time.” Critically, several courts have ruled that trans and queer students are protected by Title IX, including the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals in a recent case in West Virginia. In South Carolina, Schools Superintendent Ellen Weaver wrote in a letter that providing protections for transgender and LGBTQ+ students under Title IX “would rescind 50 years of progress & equality of opportunity by putting girls and women at a disadvantage in the educational arena,” apparently leaving transgender kids out of her definition of those who deserve progress and equality of opportunity. She then directed schools to ignore the new directive while waiting for court challenges. While South Carolina does not have a bathroom ban or statewide Don’t Say Gay or Trans law, such bills continue to be proposed in the state.

[...] Florida Commissioner of Education Manny Díaz Jr. also joined in in instructing schools not to implement Title IX regulations. In a letter issued to area schools, Díaz stated that the new Title IX regulations were tantamount to “gaslighting the country into believing that biological sex no longer has any meaning.” Governor Ron DeSantis approved of the letter and stated that Florida “will not comply.” Florida has notably been the site of some of the most viciously anti-queer and anti-trans legislation in recent history, including a Don’t Say Gay or Trans law that was used to force a trans female teacher to go by “Mr.” State Education Superintendent Ryan Walters of Oklahoma was the latest to echo similar sentiments. Walters has recently appointed the right-wing media figure Chaya Raichik of Libs of TikTok to an advisory role “to improve school safety,” and notably, Chaya Raichik has posed proudly with papers accusing her of instigating bomb threats with her incendiary posts about LGBTQ+ people in classrooms.

At least four states-- Oklahoma, Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana-- are telling schools to ignore President Biden's new trans-friendly Title IX rule changes that protect trans students and staff.

[iww-gnv]

(Reuters) - Florida sued the Biden administration on Wednesday, accusing it of threatening to withhold more than $800 million of funding for transportation infrastructure because of a new state law that some public sector unions have viewed as anti-labor. Signed by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis on May 9, Senate Bill 256 prevents unions representing transportation workers, teachers and other public sector employees from having dues deducted from paychecks, and would instead have employees pay dues to their unions. Other provisions require employees who want union representation to sign authorization forms, and require unions seeking certification as bargaining agents to show that at least 60% of eligible employees are paying dues. Florida said the White House is conditioning transportation funding on the state's agreement not to enforce provisions that the Secretary of Labor believes undermine collective bargaining.

[s1eepingsapphic]

Is this a joke?

Thursday, November 14th, 2024

Hi friends, this is a (occasional) daily segment where I share with you the most baffling headlines out of the Trump Administration. I will also accompany sources to provide the level of threat and if possible, background on what this means for all of us.

Matt Gaetz

Yesterday I posted about the Trump Administration selecting Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz as the pick for Attorney General. After his nomination, Matt Gaetz resigned effective immediately. Friends, they are trying to paint this as he is confident he will receive the position and assisting the house in having a filled seat by Jan. 3rd. However, as many news sources are reporting, this is very convenient timing for the senator who is an alleged pedophile and has faced human sex trafficking investigations, with a report from the Ethics Committee to be released sometime this week.

What does his resignation mean?

The Ethics Committee investigation will likely end, as he is no longer a member of congress.

With resignation, Florida will have a special election to replace. This number could increase with Trump selecting Marco Rubio and Mike Waltz.

Will he become attorney general?

“Republican senators have already expressed doubts that Gaetz could get confirmed as attorney general, as the pick gets fierce pushback across the party.” (X)

“Gaetz's combative style has earned him enemies in Congress, and his reputation could prove an obstacle to his confirmation in the Senate. Some senators greeted his nomination with surprise.” (X)

Who would replace Matt Gaetz?

Call To Action:

We simply can’t afford to assume that all of this will fail on its own. Email your senators. Show them YOU know the facts and that someone like Matt Gaetz can not be the AG for an already corrupt elect-administration.

[nando161mando]

[tomorrowusa]

Republicans are like 4-year-olds who just learned a bad word and can’t stop saying it.

All Republicans do nowadays is scream “WOKE!” whenever they see something they don’t like. It’s true that woke is a dumb sounding word – that may be why most progressives haven’t used it much since this SNL fake commercial from 2017.

The Trump administration indulged in an orgy of deregulation which led to disasters like the four recent derailments in Ohio to the recent failure of the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). Screaming “WOKE!” is their way of evading responsibility without having to provide explanations for their deregulation policies.

As soon as it was clear that Silicon Valley Bank would not survive the weekend, conservative influencers and Republican politicians had a culprit in sights.

Wokeness.

“They were one of the most woke banks,” Representative James Comer, the top Republican on the House Oversight Committee, said during a segment on Fox News.

The governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, also spoke to Fox about the collapse of the bank, and he also blamed the bank’s diversity programs. “I mean, this bank, they’re so concerned with D.E.I. and politics and all kinds of stuff. I think that really diverted from them focusing on their core mission,” he said.

 Being Republican means you never have to back up your claims.

It is unclear whether these conservatives are working from the same memo or just share the same narrow obsession. Regardless, there is no evidence that D.E.I. or any other diversity initiative is responsible for the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. It is nonsense. And while it shouldn’t be taken seriously on its own terms, this deflection is worth noting for what it represents: the relentless effort to mystify real questions of political economy in favor of endless culture war conflict.

The real story behind the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank has much more to do with the political and economic environment of the previous decade than it does with “wokeness,” a word that signifies nothing other than conservative disdain for anything that seems liberal.

The failure of the SVB was essentially caused by poor bets by the bank.

“Flush with cash from high-flying start-ups,” my newsroom colleague Vivian Giang explains, Silicon Valley Bank “did what most of its rivals do: It kept a small chunk of its deposits in cash and it used the rest to buy long-term debt like Treasury bonds.” As long as interest rates stayed low, those bonds promised safe returns.

Interest rates did not stay low. To fight inflation and reduce the price of consumer goods, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates seven times in 2022. With each increase, Silicon Valley Bank lost money on its bonds. Worse, the interest rate surge affected venture capital firms and the entire world of tech start-ups, harming the bank’s portfolio as those companies shed value and reduced deposits. Clients started to withdraw money to meet their liquidity needs, and last week, in order to fund these redemptions, Silicon Valley Bank announced it had sold $21 billion in bonds, at a loss of $1.8 billion. The bank then let it be known that it would sell $2.25 billion in shares to cover the loss.

Worried clients began to withdraw more money, which spooked investors, a development that pushed more clients to withdraw even more money. (Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund reportedly called for its start-ups to pull their cash while they still could.) On Friday, as the bank run gained steam, California’s financial regulatory agency announced that it had taken possession of the bank and placed it under the receivership of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

Remember how in the aftermath of the Bush financial collapse of 2008 the Obama administration under Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner initiated stress tests on banks to see if they were financially viable? Donald Trump and the GOP 115th Congress did away with those tests.

It’s not as if no one thought this collapse could happen. “The failure of Silicon Valley Bank is a direct result of an absurd 2018 bank deregulation bill signed by Donald Trump that I strongly opposed,” Senator Bernie Sanders said in a statement on Sunday. Senator Elizabeth Warren made a similar point in an essay published in The Times on Monday, in which she also mentioned the failure of New York-based Signature Bank in the immediate aftermath of S.V.B.’s collapse: “Had Congress and the Federal Reserve not rolled back the stricter oversight, S.V.B. and Signature would have been subject to stronger liquidity and capital requirements to withstand financial shocks.”

You’ll never guess which Florida congressman voted for bank deregulation.

[I]f you want to understand the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, you have to understand the political environment that led Congress to loosen regulations on regional banking institutions. You have to understand the interests involved, the ideologies involved and the personalities involved, like DeSantis, who voted for the deregulation bill as a congressman.

😮 😳 🙀

The people who blame “wokeness” for the collapse of a bank do not want you to understand or even think about the political economy of banking in the United States. They want to deflect your attention away from the real questions and turn it toward a manufactured cultural conflict. And the reason they want to do this is to obscure the extent to which they and their allies are complicit in — or responsible for — creating an environment in which banks collapse for lack of appropriate regulation.

Yep, as a House member, Ron “Choke on Woke” DeSantis voted to weaken safeguards on the banking system. If he keeps screaming “WOKE! WOKE! WOKE!” constantly then he thinks he won’t have to answer for his vote back in 2018.

So if you hear GOP MAGA zombies and others on the far right screaming “wokeness” about some disaster, don’t argue with them – they don’t care anyway. Just scream back, “DEREGULATION!” instead. Put them on the defensive. Nobody wins by playing defense 100% of the time.

[haute-lifestyle-com]

President Biden, who is nearing the end of his presidency, has continued to solidify his legacy, commuting 1500 sentences, in what presidential scholars are calling the largest number of presidential pardons granted in modern history

[latestnews-now]

President-elect Trump considers Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for Defense Secretary as Pete Hegseth's nomination faces backlash. Learn about the latest developments, political implications, and what this means for the Pentagon and Florida's leadership.

[zinniajones]

Florida, SB 254, total HRT ban for adults: 5/25/2023 update

FLORIDA HRT CRISIS DAY 8

Note that in the span of two days, we have had to revise this policy map from including one last way (green) for adults in Florida to get refills (no new prescriptions) from an MD/DO, to removing the one last green endpoint, and replacing it with red/yellow stripe. It actually is unknown whether even refills can be prescribed by MDs/DOs; and because of that unknown, MDs and DOs are choosing not to provide refills either.

There are now NO ways for trans adults in Florida to even obtain refills of their established HRT prescriptions.

This is based on the reports we're receiving of trans people's current experiences attempting to fill their established prescriptions since 5/17/2023 - in a complete vacuum of any information for patients who just lost access to their medication, whether from state agencies or even from the state LGBT organizations that were supposed to protect us from exactly this happening to us.

This shouldn't come down to us alone. WE NEED YOU TO STEP UP.

TRANS ADULTS IN FLORIDA ARE NOT ABLE TO GET THEIR HRT PRESCRIPTIONS FILLED OR REFILLED ANYWHERE.

WE HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO DO SO SINCE WEDNESDAY MAY 17

IT HAS BEEN 8 DAYS

THE CLOCK IS RUNNING

The next in-person meeting of the Boards of Medicine, to draft highly restrictive "emergency rules" further regulating adult HRT, is next week!

Florida Board of Medicine/Board of Osteopathic Medicine Joint Rules/Legislative Committee

THURSDAY, JUNE 1 - 2:45 PM The Westshore Grand 4860 West Kennedy Boulevard Tampa, FL 33609

And by the way? DESANTIS HIRED THE FLORIDA HATE GROUP THAT WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR A LAW FIRM'S $15,000 HIT JOB ON WPATH SOC

DESANTIS APPOINTEES ON THE BOARDS OF MEDICINE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR PROMOTING CONVERSION THERAPY AND INVOLUNTARY PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITALIZATION OF TRANS PEOPLE

The Florida GOP and the DeSantis administration are directly responsible for a crime in progress against thousands of transgender Floridians!

GIVE US BACK OUR PRESCRIBED MEDICATIONS NOW

[grayheartart]

Disney's case against DeSantis and the CFTOD has been DISMISSED

The Motion to Dismiss was granted against Disney and their fraudulent claim their first amendment rights were some how violated because they lost their special district status.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Nick Visser at HuffPost:

President-elect Donald Trump reportedly plans to name Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as his secretary of state, The New York Times and Reuters reported Monday night. The Times, citing people familiar with Trump’s plans, said his decision could still change but appears to have firmed up after he considered naming Rubio his running mate before settling on Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio). Rubio was a fierce and loyal backer of Trump during the 2024 campaign. If confirmed, he will be the first Latino to serve in the role. Rubio would enter the Trump administration with a full plate as the U.S. continues to deal with crises in Ukraine and Israel. The senator told NBC in September that the only way Russia’s war with Ukraine will end would be a “negotiated settlement.” And he voted against military aid package to help the besieged nation in April, Reuters noted.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (R) is set to tapped as the Secretary of State for Don The Con’s 2nd term.

This will result in Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) making an appointment to fill the seat until a 2026 midterm special election to serve the remainder of Rubio’s term.

[socialistexan]

Some things I think people are overlooking in the tiktok ban bill, because it's not just a tiktok ban:

It gives the US government the ability to ban *any* app, website, or company they believe to be "controlled" by an "adversarial power" which can change whenever they want

It allows the President and the Administrative branch almost unilateral power to designate *any* app, website, or company to be under the control of an "adversarial power" (and just think about how that can be used un the hands of, say, Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis)

They have to offer little to no evidence for this. For example, tiktok - a Singaporean-headquartered and ran company, partially owned by US interests, incorporated in the Cayman Islands, and whose userdata is stored Austin, TX - is apparently controlled by the Chinese government

It also gives the Federal Government the ability to investigate and shut down any provider who gives access to these banned websites or services, including VPN. They will have unilateral power to dismantle VPNs through outrageous fines what will essentially force them to not operate in the US

A lot of the Congressional Representatives who supported this bill have large donors and/or stock in US Tech companies like Meta, Google, or Palantier who would benefit from the downfall of tiktok or the ability to purchase it and monopolize the market

Those same tech companies which sell our data constantly anyway, including to "adversarial powers"

This is so much more than just a tiktok ban.

[cyarsk52-20]

The hew is mad lol

[nando161mando]

Police oversight in Florida is already weak and the state just gutted it further. “They’re making it seem un-American to question policing, which should be a huge red flag to everybody."