The hearing became the latest flashpoint for the FBI, which Republicans criticized for investigating participants at school board meetings or censoring social media posts. Democrats accused Republicans of trying to protect former President Donald Trump, who faces federal charges related to possession of national security documents after an FBI search of Mar-a-Lago 18 months after he left the White House. A White House spokesman said Republicans are attacking law enforcement.
In his opening salvo, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, cited a federal court decision in Louisiana eight days earlier that found the government suppressed First Amendment rights of people posting on social media posts about the COVID-19 pandemic vaccines and mask requirements, under a policy the ruling compared to an “Orwellian ministry of truth.”
The ruling found the FBI failed to alert social media companies that a story about Hunter Biden’s laptop was real rather than Russian disinformation days before the 2020 presidential election. Jordan and Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., said that deprived millions of voters of information before the election.
“When the court said the FBI misled, that’s a nice way of saying they lied,” Jordan said.
Wray said he has reviewed the decision and the FBI would comply with the court’s prohibition against influencing social media companies. But he declined to comment further because the case is subject to further litigation.
“Our focus is on malign, foreign disinformation – that is, foreign malign information, that is foreign hostile actors who engage in covert actions to confuse our social media platforms,” Wray said. “The FBI is not in the business of moderating content or causing any social media company to suppress or censor.”
Christopher Wray, Director of the FBI, testifies in front of the House Judiciary Committee in Washington on July 12, 2023.
GOP vows to oppose extension of intelligence surveillance policy
Jordan said Republicans and potentially Democrats would oppose the reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which is scheduled to expire at the end of the year, because of 204,000 episodes of “illegal scrutiny” of U.S. citizens.
Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., said a court found that the illegitimate queries included several people linked to the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021.
“The FBI has broken so bad that people can go and engage in queries that when you come before the Congress to answer questions, you’re blissfully ignorant,” Gaetz said. “The court has smacked you down, ruling FBI personnel apparently conducted queries for improper personal reasons.”
Wray said staffers had been disciplined for improper queries, but he couldn’t go into details.
Wray’s prepared statement said he is concerned about “profound risks” with proposals to require either a search warrant or court order before conducting a “U.S. person query” under Section 702 of the act. Wray said such a change would become a ban because applications either wouldn’t meet court standards or would take too long.
“That would be a body blow to the FBI, which relies on this longstanding, lawful capability to rapidly uncover previously hidden threats and connections, and to take swift steps to protect the homeland when needed,” Wray said.
Democrats have also questioned extending Section 702 without changes. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., said
“The committee will need to look into warrant requirements,” Lofgren said.
“We have bipartisan support around the concerns we have about FISA reauthorization and unless we really understand what measures the FBI is taking to ensure that people’s privacy is protected, I think it’s going to be a very difficult reauthorization process,” added Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash.
Wray agrees with Durham report on FBI missteps in Russia investigation
Christopher Wray, Director of the FBI, testifies in front of the House Judiciary Committee in Washington on Wednesday, July 12, 2023.
A rare point of agreement arose in a discussion of former special counsel John Durham’s report on the origins of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, which was called Crossfire Hurricane.
Rep. Ben Cline, R-Va., questioned why the FBI failed to consider information beneficial to suspects during Crossfire Hurricane. Cline also questioned whether the FBI abused its authority under the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act.
“The American people are outraged” about agents who undermined the FBI’s reputation, Cline said.
“Certainly there were violations that were totally unacceptable and in my view cannot be allowed to happen again,” Wray said.
Cline also criticized the FBI’s warrantless queries on 3.4 million Americans in 2021 and 200,000 last year.
“It looks like a framework that enables the FBI to spy on countless Americans,” Cline said.
Wray: accusation he’s against conservatives ‘insane’
Rep. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyo., called the Durham report and Russia investigation evidence of an unfair justice system and asked Wray how he would reform law enforcement.
“The American people fully understand that there is a two-tiered justice system that has been weaponized to persecute people based on their political beliefs and that you have personally worked to weaponize the FBI against conservatives,” Hageman said.
Wray disagreed with her description, but said the FBI already adopted changes such as a new leadership team and by removing people from the chain of command.
“The idea that I am biased against conservatives seems somewhat insane to me given my own personal background,” Wray said.
Jordan proposes to reduce FBI funding
Christopher Wray, Director of the FBI, testifies in front of the House Judiciary Committee in Washington on Wednesday, July 12, 2023.
On Tuesday, Jordan recommended slashing the agency’s funding, including money for a proposed new headquarters building in the D.C. region. He also proposed to thwart Biden administration immigration policies, gun regulations and what he termed abusive law enforcement. Any spending changes will eventually be negotiated with Senate Democrats.
“The Committee and Select Subcommittee have received startling testimony about egregious abuses, misallocation of federal law-enforcement resources, and misconduct within the leadership ranks of the FBI,” Jordan said in a letter to Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Kay Granger, R-Texas.
Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., noted that some Republican House members have called for defunding and dismantling the FBI. Lieu asked Wray what that would mean.
“We would have hundreds more violent criminals out on the street, dozens more violent gangs terrorizing communities, hundreds more child predators on the loose, hundreds more kids left at those predators’ mercy instead of being rescued, scores of threats from the Chinese community party being left unaddressed,” Wray said.
White House: House GOP attacking law enforcement
White House spokesman Ian Sams said “extreme House Republicans” have decided to attack law enforcement rather than support the FBI.
“Instead of attacking federal law enforcement for political purposes, House Republicans should join President Biden to stand up for law enforcement and put the rule of law and the safety and security of the American people ahead of themselves.”
Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH) prepares to gavel in the committee before Christopher Wray, Director of the FBI, testifies in front of the House Judiciary Committee in Washington on Wednesday, July 12, 2023
The top Democrat on the committee, Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York, accused Republicans of trying to protect Trump for his campaign in 2024 and called the hearing “little more than performance art.”
House Republicans questioned Wray’s priorities in investigating the Biden administration.
Gaetz asked Wray point blank whether he was protecting the Bidens, which Wray denied. “Absolutely not,” said Wray, who was appointed by Trump.
Gone in 60 seconds: At FBI director hearing, Republican conspiracies about Biden go ‘POOF!’
Rex Huppke, USA TODAY – July 12, 2023
House Republicans are convinced the FBI and the Department of Justice and basically any law enforcement agency that hasn’t found President Joe Biden guilty of being a global criminal mastermind is corrupt – CORRUPT, I TELL YOU! – and in cahoots with Democrats.
But the steaming hot conspiracy bubbles belching up from the right-wing fever swamps are occasionally pierced by facts, and a rather thunderous bubble-popping took place Wednesday during a House Judiciary Committee hearing featuring FBI Director Christopher Wray.
‘Are you protecting the Bidens?’ and other really dumb questions
Rep. Matt Gaetz railed at Wray and the FBI for not finding greater criminality in the actions of the president’s son, Hunter Biden, and for not linking Joe Biden in with the hysterical, evidence-free allegations Republicans have cooked up.
“You seem deeply uncurious about it don’t you? Almost suspiciously uncurious?” asked Gaetz, R-Fla., sounding like a cartoon villain, only dumber. “Are you protecting the Bidens?”
FBI Director Christopher Wray listens to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, during a hearing on July 12, 2023.
It was all just a giant load of nonsense, which makes sense, as the House Republicans’ current motto is: “A giant load of nonsense.”
OK, who let a Republican ask a smart and relevant question? THAT’S NOT HOW THIS WORKS!!
But then, in less than a minute, one line of questioning made the GOP’s entire line of hooey about the FBI having it in for Republicans and being in the bag for Biden go poof.
Buck said: “You were nominated by Republican President (George. W.) Bush for the position of assistant attorney general in the criminal division at the Department of Justice and you were confirmed by a Republican Senate?”
Buck continued: “And you were then nominated by Republican President Donald Trump to be the FBI director and again confirmed by a Republican Senate for that position?”
“Yes,” Wray said. “I think there were only five votes against me and they were all from Democrats.”
Buck concluded: “According to Wikipedia, you’re still a registered Republican, and I hope you don’t change your party affiliation after this hearing is over.”
So the Republicans who want to defund and discredit the FBI, the ones who eagerly dragged the FBI director through the mud Wednesday with absurd allegations grounded in zero facts, want you, the American people, to believe this: The nation’s premier law enforcement agency has been weaponized against Republicans under a director who is a lifelong Republican and who reached his current post by being selected and confirmed to positions by two Republican presidents and two Republican-led Senate bodies.
Even as a conspiracy theory the GOP’s anti-FBI theory doesn’t make sense
Forget that all this is in defense of former President Donald Trump, a one-term, twice-impeached lifelong con artist who now faces more than 70 felony charges in two cases, with more indictments on the horizon.
Before you even get into details of the conspiracies, you have to believe the FBI director at the center of it all is corrupt. And he was appointed first by President Bush and then again by President Trump! This conspiracy is now an unusually large footprint shy of Bigfoot.
DeSantis Says No Thanks to $377 Million in Federal Energy Funds
Ari Natter – July 11, 2023
DeSantis says no to federal energy funds
(Bloomberg) — Florida Republican Governor and 2024 presidential contender Ron DeSantis quietly rejected hundreds of millions of dollars in federal energy funding, as the Biden administration touts the benefits of its marquee climate law on the campaign trail in battleground states.
The funding, totaling about $377 million, included hundreds of millions of dollars for energy-efficiency rebates and electrification as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, as well as money from the bipartisan infrastructure legislation that became law in 2021.
The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services’s Office of Energy notified the Energy Department last month it was “respectfully” withdrawing applications for the funds after DeSantis issued a line-item veto for a $5 million federal grant for the state to set up programs to distribute the rebates.
The move comes as US President Joe Biden and others have taken to the road to show how funding from the Inflation Reduction Act and other administration policies are helping Republican states, even as every single Republican voted against approving his signature climate law – which included some $374 billion in funding for clean-energy programs and tax credits.
It also comes amid Republican backlash against “woke” energy-efficiency standards, including from DeSantis himself who has proposed spending millions of dollars to enact tax credits for gas stoves.
A Florida government official, speaking on background, said the $5 million in funding was earmarked to hire people to administer the money for the energy efficiency home-rebate program, including a website and other necessary planning to distribute the funds. The official, who wasn’t authorized to speak on the record about the matter, characterized the decision as surprising.
DeSantis also rejected a $24 million federal grant from the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that would have been used to upgrade rural waste-water systems. These grant funds were among some $511 million in line-item vetoes made by DeSantis before signing the state’s $116.5 million budget into law last month.
Following the governor’s move, applications for grant funding totaling some $377 million were withdrawn, according to the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. That included nearly $174 million set aside for rebates for energy-efficiency improvements and another $173 million for a rebate program for the purchase of energy-efficient home appliances. Another $7 million was poised for a training program for electrification contractors.
“These programs directly benefit home owners and renters and these rebates mean that people in Florida would get lower utility bills and healthier and more comfortable homes as well as lower greenhouse gas emissions,” said Lowell Ungar, director of federal policy for the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. “The federal money will help pay for that so it will be a real loss if they don’t implement these programs.”
A DeSantis spokesman declined to comment.
An administration official said Florida still has the option of applying for the funding at a later time.
DeSantis’ rejection of the funds was first reported by The Capitolist, a blog with ties to NextEra Energy Inc.’s Florida Power & Light Co., a state utility.
In surreal scenes on Capitol Hill on Tuesday – that featured representatives of 9/11 victim groups sat behind PGA Tour executives as they were grilled in a Senate hearing – it also emerged that the Tour asked for Greg Norman to be sacked as LIV Golf chief executive after the framework agreement was completed.
As well as this ouster, there were bizarre proposals from the Public Investment Fund for Yasir Al-Rumayyan – the PIF governor who is chairman of Newcastle United as well as LIV – to be granted membership of Augusta National and the R&A.
It must be stressed that these were all merely suggestions proffered in the build-up to last month’s hastily-announced alliance that shook the sport to its core following two years of bitter infighting between the revel circuit and the traditional powers.
The PGA Tour’s Ron Price and Jimmy Dunne were sworn in before the Senate committee – AP Photo/Patrick Semansky
The PGA Tour told Telegraph Sport that it summarily rejected the McIlroy-Woods idea and refused to assist in Al-Rumayyan joining perhaps the two most august clubs in the game.
Yet at the very least the 276-page trove of documents released by the Senate sub-committee on Tuesday, highlight the extraordinary levels of horse-trading that could take place as the parties attempt to reach a solution that unifies the game and, just as pertinently, satisfies each of the two sides in terms of finance and power.
The proposals from Amanda Staveley – the English financier who oversaw PIF’s purchase of Newcastle – inevitably command the headlines, despite PGA Tour executive Jimmy Dunne’s admission to the politicians that “if LIV takes five players a year for five years, they can gut us”. Goodness knows what McIlroy and Woods will make of Staveley’s “Best of both worlds” presentation which was made in the first phase of the peace talks in late April.
It featured several bullet points, the first of which stated that Woods and McIlroy should have their own LIV teams and play “in at least 10 LIV events’’. Even if he agreed, the chances of Woods playing in that many LIV tournaments after a car crash two years ago that almost saw him lose his right leg are negligible to the point of being impossible.
It will be interesting to see if Woods was told anything about being named in the early negotiations, because a few weeks ago, he claims to have been completely in the dark about intentions that came to light of the Tour having him railing against LIV to his fellow pros in the midst of the civil war.
The same applies to McIlroy. The Northern Irishman was the most vocal opponent of LIV and expressed his anger at being used as “a sacrificial lamb” by the Tour after Sawgrass HQ’s remarkable about-turn. He was in a dark mood after discovering – at the same time as everyone else – about the amalgamation and reiterated that he still detested the breakaway league.
“I still hate LIV – hate it,” he said. “I hope it goes away”. McIlroy refused to play in Saudi Arabia when it became a venue on the DP World Tour, citing concerns about “the source” and although his attitude has since softened – “if they are going to invest money in golf it is better than it is on the PGA Tour” – it must be highly doubtful that, after he has said, that he would ever play under the LIv brand. Norman or no Norman.
The Australian’s future at the LIV helm was under speculation months before the merger was unveiled, with both McIlroy and Woods insisting that he had to leave the role before peace could break out.
It was known that Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, wanted him out after so many criticisms and his desire is laid bare in emails between him and his negotiators. In a side letter to the agreement, the firing of Norman was billed as a necessity, although the PGA Tour revealed on Tuesday that it was never signed. Norman remains in the job. For now.
Whether he can trust his paymasters, however, is a moot point, regardless of the chairman’s attendance at both the LIV events in the Costa del Sol and in Hertfordshire over the last two weeks. At Valderrama and the Centurion Club, Al-Rumayyan assured LIV players and staff that the league will continue, despite the fact the framework agreement states that Monahan will have the right to terminate the circuit if an agreement is finalised.
In the event of an ultimate deal, Staveley is seemingly determined to make sure that as well as being chairman of the new company, Al-Rumayyan is also installed as the president of the International Golf Federation and is welcomed as a member at Augusta and the Royal and Ancient. This proposal was also in her presentation, though she actually asked for him to be a member of the R&A, which is not a club.
An R&A insider revealed “this is the first we’ve heard of this”. On another jaw-dropping day in the LIV saga, uncertainty still reigns supreme.
Dirty Socks and Rotting Bodies: What Russians Left Behind in the Trenches
Andrew E. Kramer – July 11, 2023
Ukrainian soldiers making their way through Novodarivka, a village formerly occupied by Russian forces. (NYT)
NOVODARIVKA, Ukraine — A bottle of syrup made from Siberian berries, legions of dirty socks and a military-issued tea bag stamped with “For Victory!”
For Ukrainian soldiers, one advantage of achieving at least creeping advances in the now month-old counteroffensive in southern Ukraine is appropriating ready-made fortifications from the retreating Russians, who in months of preparations dug deep, well-protected trenches.
For the Ukrainians, eerily enough, it also means living and fighting in positions long held by the Russians — with a huge sprawl of military debris and personal items of Russian soldiers scattered about.
“It’s not very pleasant,” said Pvt. Maksim, a soldier with Ukraine’s 36th Marine Brigade, who has collected a number of curiosities, including what he thinks was a talisman: several bullets covered in sparkles and attached to a key ring.
“It’s our land but it’s not very comfortable to be here,” said the private, who like the other soldiers gave only his first name and rank for security reasons. “It doesn’t feel like home.”
In early June, Ukrainian troops, including thousands of soldiers trained and equipped by the United States and other Western allies, began a counteroffensive aimed at driving a wedge through Russian-occupied southern Ukraine. Lying in wait were thousands of Russian troops stationed in miles of trenches and other fortifications amid tank traps and thousands upon thousands of mines.
The Ukrainian forces are attacking in at least three locations on the Russian defensive front. At their farthest point of advance, they have pushed south to form a bulge about 5 miles into the defensive lines.
Ukrainian commanders want to reach the Sea of Azov, about 55 miles away across open plains that offer little cover. If they succeed, they will divide the Russian occupied south into two zones, cutting the land bridge from Russia to the occupied Crimean Peninsula and greatly compromising Russia’s ability to resupply its forces farther west.
As they have advanced, the Ukrainians have seized Russian trench lines, bunkers and firing positions in abandoned buildings, but under continual artillery bombardment they have had little time to clear the refuse and abandoned clothing, body armor, ponchos, bedding and leftover military rations of their enemy.
Take, for example, the village of Novodarivka, on the plains of the Zaporizhzhia region in southern Ukraine, south of the city of Orikhiv. A month after soldiers with Ukraine’s 110th Territorial Defense Brigade and other units reclaimed it, the village is still littered with the detritus of the occupying forces.
In the baking sun on a recent day, the village appeared deserted, with the occasional military vehicle rumbling along the single dirt road between destroyed, abandoned houses, kicking up dust.
Amid the boom of artillery shelling, Ukrainian soldiers hunkered down in the captured Russian trenches. On the village’s main road lay an incinerated Russian tank; in a field nearby, two blown-up American-provided mine-resistant vehicles called MaxxPros.
One grim task has been retrieving the remains of Ukrainian soldiers who died defending the village in the first months of the war as the Russian forces were advancing rapidly.
Seven bodies had been lying in the vicinity since April 2022, said one of the soldiers, Lt. Volodymyr.
The Ukrainians had occasionally flown drones over the village while it was occupied, to make sure the Russians had not moved the bodies. On Wednesday, they finally had the chance to retrieve them. “They were just skeletons” that would have to be identified by their DNA, Volodymyr said.
As for the Russian dead, he added, the Ukrainians retrieved those that could be removed without risk and are covering others in heaps of dirt, to try to control the foul odor. Nevertheless, an awful stench wafted about the trenches, and swarms of flies buzzed everywhere.
In an abandoned house, Russian soldiers had scraped into the plaster walls the names of their hometowns or regions: Vladikavkaz, a city in southern Russia, and Primorye, a region on the Pacific coast, near Japan.
Maksim, interviewed in the trenches, had collected a small pile of curiosities left behind, including the cowberry syrup made in Yakutia, a region in northern Siberia. Gesturing to the “For Victory!” brand of Russian tea, he said of its former Russian owner, “he didn’t have time to drink it.”
Speaking of the back-and-forth nature of the fighting, Maksim said, “We push them back, they push us back, we push them, they push us, and so on,” adding: “They had a lot of time to dig.”
Soldiers said in interviews that the slow progress was to be expected, given the minefields, trenches and open countryside.
The 110th Territorial Defense Brigade, in contrast to the newly trained and equipped units deployed specifically for the counteroffensive, has been fighting in southern Ukraine for more than a year.
One soldier with the 110th, who identified himself as Sgt. Igor, said his unit has been crawling forward to the relative safety of tree lines between fields to assault Russian trenches, moving in small bursts of a few dozen or hundred yards at a time. Such slow advances were preferable to all-out assaults, he said.
“We need to creep forward bit by bit, with infantry, and break them in this way,” Igor said. “Crawl forward, fight them, then dig in again.”
Time must pass, he said, for the advancing Ukrainian soldiers trained by Kyiv’s Western allies to become skilled at fighting in the open farmland.
Soldiers deployed in the area develop a finely tuned ear for the whistles and booms of outgoing and incoming artillery, he said, adding, “You hear it and should understand in a second whether to fall down or not.”
Soldiers must steel themselves to maneuver in the trenches and fire their guns at enemy troops approaching in an assault, even if bullets are zipping overhead, he said.
“Training abroad is not the same as real combat,” he said. “They are gaining combat experience now,” he added, and as they do, the pace of the advance could pick up. American officials have said the Ukrainian commanders are reassessing tactics after the offensive’s slow start and soldiers’ harrowing forays into minefields.
Green recruits are demoralized when fellow soldiers are wounded or killed, Igor said. “Their morale is affected quickly,” he said.
“The soldiers will learn,” he added. “It’s complicated. And yes, it’s going slowly. But importantly, it’s going.”
Investigation Uncovers More of Clarence Thomas’ Undisclosed Freebies from Wealthy Pals
Peter Wade – July 9, 2023
Clarence Thomas’ connections to wealth and expensive vacations run deeper than billionaire businessman and Nazi-enthusiast Harlan Crow. The New York Times reports that Thomas has milked relationships with the rich he made through the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, a scholarship association, to benefit himself and his wife.
Because of their Horatio Alger connections, Thomas and his spouse, Virginia, have been invited to join luxurious vacations and parties in addition being granted V.I.P. access to sports events. Thanks to the association, Thomas also rubbed elbows with the likes of Oprah Winfrey and Ed McMahon during a lavish three-day Montana birthday party for billionaire industrialist Dennis Washington.
But the connections Thomas made through Horatio Alger have benefitted him beyond lavish trips. Thomas’ Horatio Alger contacts — including Washington as well as investor David Sokol, formerly of Berkshire Hathaway — helped fund a documentary that painted him in a heroic light after the premiere of an HBO movie that depicted Anita Hill during his confirmation hearings making sexual harassment allegations against Thomas. The Sokol family also hosted Thomas and his wife at their Montana ranch and their waterfront Florida estate. According to the Times, Thomas has not reported many of the benefits and gifts he has received from his rich and well-connected allies. The justice also declined to answer questions from the paper about the matter.
Early in his SCOTUS tenure, Thomas did report a number of personal gifts he received, including flights on private planes, cigars, and clothing. But after 2004, when TheLos Angeles Times reported on his disclosures, Thomas ceased reporting to the court certain gifts and benefits he received. A ProPublica investigation in 2023 uncovered the justice’s close relationship with Crow, a GOP megadonor with a large collection of Nazi memorabilia and Hitler paintings, including trips on Crow’s private jet and yacht totaling tens of thousands and Crow’s purchase of the house where Thomas’ mother lived. Crow even paid tuition for Thomas’ nephew, who the Thomases were raising. After his relationship with Crow came to light, Thomas justified his lack of disclosures, claiming that “colleagues and others in the judiciary” advised him he did not need to report trips of “personal hospitality” from friends.
Thomas has not only accepted benefits that granted him access to places he otherwise may not have gone, he also hosts the Horatio Alger Association’s induction ceremony for new members in the Supreme Court’s courtroom, which the Times notes is “unusual access” for an outside group. The association has parlayed the access Thomas gives them to fundraise for scholarships and events, per fundraising records reviewed by the Times.
The court this year updated its disclosure rules to mandate justices report private jet travel and comped stays at hotels and resorts, but there is an exception for “personal hospitality,” meaning food, accommodations, or entertainment that is not related to business.
“The Horatio Alger Association has been a home to Virginia and me,” Thomas said when he received the association’s highest honor in 2010, adding that the association “has allowed me to see my dreams come true.”
If his dreams were of undisclosed fancy vacations and V.I.P. access, then that’s probably the case.
Lawsuit seeks to end new law signed by Greg Abbott banning water breaks after Texas heat wave deaths
Tatyana Tandanpolie – July 7, 2023
Greg AbbottBrandon Bell/Getty Images
Officials in Houston, Texas, filed a lawsuit on Monday looking to keep the state from enforcing an oppressive law critics have dubbed the “Death Star” bill.
House Bill 2127 is set to go into effect on Sept. 1 after Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed it into law on June 6, according to MSNBC’s “The ReidOut” blog. The new law restricts local governments by preventing them from passing certain ordinances if they contradict state laws in eight key areas: agriculture, finance, business and commerce, insurance, local government, labor, natural resources, property or occupations.
In the newly filed lawsuit, lawyers representing the city argue that, in broadly pre-empting local laws, the bill violates the state Constitution, and ultimately call the measure “hopelessly vague.” The city, thus, asks the court to make the law “void and unenforceable.”
“Because of HB 2127’s vagueness, Houston will not know with any certainty what laws it may enforce, and its residents and businesses will not know with certainty what laws they must obey,” the suit reads. “This high level of uncertainty and confusion concerning the validity of virtually all local laws in important regulatory areas and those concerning health and safety themselves constitutes a concrete injury.”
Arguing that the bill will incite confusion, the lawsuit cites the so-called Death Star law’s lack of a requirement for local legislation to actually conflict with state laws in order for it to be prevented from taking effect.
“Under HB 2127, if the State regulates anything in an unspecified ‘field,’ local regulation is arguably entirely precluded in the undefined area unless there is express legislative authorization,” according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit also comes after a deadly heat wave wracked the state last month, resulting in a public health crisis, the deaths of 11 people between the ages of 60 and 80 in Webb County since the bill was signed, and a surge in emergency department visits related to the record-breaking, 100-degree temperatures.
In Texas prison facilities without air conditioning, at least nine incarcerated people, including two men in their 30s, died last month from heart attacks or unknown causes. Another harrowing incident saw a teen and his stepfather die after the 14-year-old lost consciousness during a hike in Big Bend National Park and the stepfather crashed his car while racing to find help. Plus, at least four workers have died in the state after collapsing in three-digit heat, the Texas Observer reports: a Dallas post office worker, an East Texas utility lineman and two Houston construction workers.
While the nature of the worker deaths is still under investigation, the Observer notes that hyperthermia is likely the cause. Considering climate scientists told the Tribune that heat waves will become increasingly severe and common due to climate change, the risk to public health will only rise.
Once HB 2127 goes into effect in September, local ordinances mandating water breaks for workers outdoors in cities across the state, which the Observer writes contributed to a “significant decrease in annual heat-related illnesses and heat deaths,” will be overturned and localities will be barred from passing new ones.
A spokesperson for Abbott said that “ensuring the safety of Texans is a top priority as our state experiences high summer heat,” in a statement, noting that overriding local laws won’t keep workers from taking breaks under the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) standards.
But some workers fear that the lack of local protections will mean bosses hoping to increase production will eliminate breaks, the Observer said.
The city of Houston’s lawsuit also calls out the possibility of widespread, city deregulation sparked by individuals and businesses pursuing their own interests and justifying the acts under the law.
“Houston will have to defend against a likely barrage of lawsuits brought by trade associations or individuals essentially to deregulate their industries or businesses at the local level,” the suit claims, adding an accusation that Texa’ Republican legislators are creating “a public/private enforcement regime that will penalize and raise the risk of Houston’s exercising its clear and expansive constitutional authority.”
If successful, the suit will protect the water mandates and other measures like the Houston program providing 30,000 uninsured people with healthcare, Mayor Sylvester Turner noted.
“HB 2127 reverses over 100 years of Texas constitutional law without amending the Constitution,” Turner said in a public statement. “Because Texas has long had the means to preempt local laws that conflict with State law, HB 2127 is unnecessary, dismantling the ability to govern at the level closest to the people and therefore punishing all Texas residents. Houston will fight so its residents retain their constitutional rights and have immediate local recourse to government.”
‘Woke’ isn’t going to die in DeSantis’ Florida. It’s just taking its dollars elsewhere | Opinion
The Miami Herald Editorial Board – July 7, 2023
Katie Goodale/USA TODAY NETWORK
Think of a dystopian, polarized country, where Americans are not only divided based on political beliefs but also on where they live and shop, what beer they drink, what doctors they visit, whether they are vaccinated, where they go on vacation and attend professional conferences.
This is what politicians who want to inject extremism (from the right or the left) into governing seem to want to accomplish: to reshape their communities so that only like-minded people feel comfortable co-existing.
Gov. Ron DeSantis has made no secret that his approach to governing is “You’re either with me or get the heck out.” He has signed laws and used state power against: teachers; transgender people; African Americans; women’s bodies; teachers and unions; university professors and academic freedom; universities that want to diversify their student body; immigrants; LGBTQ people and drag queens.
Most recently, DeSantis defended a bizarre and homophobic video his campaign shared on Twitter, calling it “fair game” to attack Donald Trump for past statements in support of LGBTQ rights. Not surprising coming from the governor of the state “where woke goes to die.”
The governor probably doesn’t lose sleep over the few conferences that Florida has lost recently as professional organizations take their dollars and thousands of attendees to states with less extreme policies. That blue parts of the state, Broward and Orange counties, lost the opportunity to host those events fit right into the governor’s strategy. DeSantis’ motto is to “own the libs.”
Two organizations canceled events that were planned in the Orlando area in coming years. AnitaB.org, a group of women and nonbinary tech workers, canceled a 2027 event that normally draws about 16,000 visitors. The group told the Orlando Sentinel it will no longer hold events in the state after this year’s conference at the Orange County Convention Center. The reasons are Florida’s abortion ban, its easing of gun regulations and the state’s efforts “to erase the identities and dignities of people from historically marginalized and excluded groups, including Black, Brown, LGBTQIA+, and Indigenous people.”
Broward County has lost more than half-dozen conferences, thanks to Florida’s political climate, organizers told the county’s tourism agency Visit Lauderdale, as the Sun Sentinel reported Friday. Among them is the 2024 National Family and Community Engagement and Community Schools Conference, which would have needed more than 2,000 hotel rooms. The organization “decided to pull out of Florida due to concerns about what the Governor is doing in the education/schools and that he will likely run in 2024. They do not want to lose attendees due to this,” according to a list of cancellations Visit Lauderdale put together.
The governor’s office told the Sun Sentinel the cancellations are “nothing more than a media-driven stunt.” His administration recently released numbers that show the number of tourists visiting the state is up compared to last year. Florida also welcomed nearly 320,000 new residents from other states between 2021 and 2022, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. DeSantis claims credit for those new residents but Florida benefits from a series of factors, such as the longstanding lack of state income taxes and the rise of remote work during the pandemic
Have DeSantis’ policies caused widespread financial ruin in Florida? No, though the hotels and conference centers that lost business might see it differently.
The bigger question is who DeSantis thinks Florida is for. Nonbinary tech workers are not his intended demographic. Neither are college professors, who have warned that the state’s crackdown on what they can teach regarding race is causing a brain drain. Nor are the undocumented workers who are leaving the state after DeSantis signed into law one of the most draconian immigration laws in the country (it requires, among other things, that immigrants disclose their citizenship status at hospitals).
Are these people leaving in big enough numbers to make a difference? We bet that’s the governor’s goal.
The Florida Blueprint he’s trying to sell to presidential primary voters doesn’t concern itself with having a diverse workforce, attracting the best and brightest or ensuring that Florida’s agriculture has enough people to work its fields. Its myopic focus is fighting the outsider — and there are more and more of those — and rewarding those who fall in line.
The Supreme Court is on a mission to ensure the US assumes the form that the Republican Party wants
Chauncey DeVega – July 5, 2023
Clarence Thomas; John RobertsPhoto illustration by Salon/Getty Images
Last week, the United States Supreme Court issued a series of decisions that ended race-based affirmative action programs at colleges and universities, voided President Biden’s student loan forgiveness program, and made it legal for people to cite sincere “religious objections” as a reason for discriminating against the LGBTQ community (and presumably other marginalized individuals and groups as well) in ways that violate civil rights laws.
The Washington Post bizarrely described the Supreme Court’s last term as “restrained.” The reality is very much the opposite: it was a political and judicial bloodletting, a collective act of radical right-wing judicial activism that will have serious negative implications for the American people and the country as a whole for decades to come. These decisions by the “conservative” majority on the Supreme Court are part of a decades-long project to return American society to a time period before the civil rights movement(s) of the 1960s and 1970s and back to the Gilded Age (if not before) when white men and moneyed interests – a true tyranny of the minority —were able to exercise dominion over American society, largely uncontested.
In an attempt to make better sense of the Supreme Court’s recent decisions about race-based affirmative action and its broad implications for American democracy, the law, and society, I recently spoke with Khiara M. Bridges. She is a Professor of Law at UC Berkeley School of Law whose scholarship examines race, class, reproductive rights, and the intersection of the three. Professor Bridges is the author of three books, the most recent of which is Critical Race Theory: A Primer.
This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
How are you feeling given the Supreme Court’s decisions this week, in particular the decision to ban the consideration of race in university and college admissions?
I’m tired – even though none of this is surprising. All of this was perfectly predictable. We knew that decisions such as the one gutting affirmative action were almost inevitable after Kavanaugh and Barrett joined the court. The decisions this week are the realization of a long-term project by the Republican Party to use the federal judiciary to shape the nation into its vision of what the country ought to be.
It has been an exhausting week.
How do we connect the dots between the affirmative action decision and the decision to allow “religious objections” to be used as a justification for discriminating against gays and lesbians — and presumably other groups as well?
“I think that what we are seeing is just how hellbent the Supreme Court is on ensuring that the U.S. assumes the form that the Republican Party wants it to assume.”
Those two decisions represent a backlash against people of color and LGBTQ people. Both groups have realized substantial gains in terms of being conceptualized as equal and valuable members of the body politic. Many people want to reverse those gains. They want to return LGBTQ people and Black and brown people to second-class citizenship. The court is doing the bidding for those folks.
The Republicans, “conservatives” and other members of the larger white right are joyous and celebrating the end of affirmative action. Black and brown folks, white folks and others who believe in multiracial democracy and equality are hurting and lamenting this decision and what it symbolizes and means for our society and the harm it does to real people. How are you reconciling those divergent responses?
I understand these celebrations as consistent with a right-wing effort to erase America’s brutal history of racial subjugation and to deny the consequences that history has on society today. Conservatives are celebrating the myth that America is “post-racial” and the lie that events like chattel slavery, Jim Crow, redlining, “urban renewal,” etc. really have no effect on contemporary society. And most of all, they are celebrating the fact that there is a Supreme Court that is willing to affirm those fictions.
In the most basic sense, what are the competing visions of the law and its role in society that we are seeing play out with the Supreme Court this week, and of course the Age of Trump these last few years?
I think that what we are seeing is just how hellbent the Supreme Court is on ensuring that the U.S. assumes the form that the Republican Party wants it to assume. It is important to keep in mind that the Court creates its own docket; it selects the cases that it wants to hear. And it is no coincidence that the Court is deciding to hear cases that touch on all of these hot button issues: affirmative action, abortion, guns, religious freedom, LGBTQ rights. And of course, it is no coincidence that the Court is deciding these cases in ways that are consistent with the Republican Party’s platform.
It is also important to keep in mind that it is really hard to reconcile these decisions with one another in terms of an overarching theory of law. So, the government can force people to carry pregnancies to term, but the government cannot forbid people from carrying firearms outside of the home. Institutions cannot consider race when making college admissions decisions, but they can consider their customers’ sexual orientation and gender identity when deciding whether to sell products and services to them. Those decisions cannot be reconciled with one another very easily in terms of law. It’s all politics.
In simple terms, how do we explain what “affirmative action” is or isn’t and how it’s been distorted by the right wing and its propaganda machine for the general (white) public?
In order to understand what affirmative action is in the context of university admissions, one has to understand how decisions traditionally have been made about who is admitted to a school. This generally has consisted of evaluating a student’s GPA and performance on standardized tests. Affirmative action moves beyond just grades and standardized testing. It insists that those measures are not the totality of an individual. We actually know empirically that grades and standardized testing only imperfectly predict success in college. For example, a student that has had to raise their younger siblings while they’re in high school probably has the determination and grit to succeed in a four-year university. We might guess that a student who has managed to learn and succeed in an underfunded school lacking in resources will likely learn and succeed at a university or college that has lots of resources.
Race-based affirmative action specifically says that we ought to be conscious of a student’s race when making admissions decisions, because a student’s race might help us understand their grades and standardized test scores. Race contextualizes those numbers. Despite what conservatives say about it, affirmative action is not some type of “handout” like “welfare” for lazy and unqualified Black and brown people.
Of course, the right-wing members of the court did not mention legacy admissions or how the children of big money donors get preferential treatment — what is a de facto type of white privilege and white unearned advantage, an “affirmative action” program for unqualified white people. Likewise, the majority did not object to how at most universities a decision is made to admit more “unqualified” male students as a way of achieving gender parity in a given cohort.
There is a conservative argument about so-called “mismatch,” where students of color are imagined to be admitted through affirmative action into institutions where they supposedly do not have the skills and preparation to succeed. Clarence Thomas mentions this theory repeatedly. But the science is not there to justify mismatch theory. It has been debunked time and time again, which Justice Sotomayor mentions in her dissent. Interestingly, the right-wing justices who claim to be concerned about mismatch in terms of students of color going to competitive colleges and universities do not have the same level of concern about mismatch in terms of legacy admits.
“It is really hard to reconcile these decisions with one another in terms of an overarching theory of law.”
Your dad and granddad having graduated from college does not prove that you have the academic chops, or discipline, or determination to succeed in the school. Similarly, your family having donated millions of dollars to the university does not translate into academic ability and intelligence. Students who lack the highest SAT scores and GPAs, but who are admitted because they are athletes, would fall into that category as well. The court was not concerned about those students either.
For me, this reveals that the justices who signed on to these opinions are not really worried about whether Black and brown students are going to do well in elite institutions; it is just that they do not want Black and brown students to “take the seats” of white and Asian students who they believe actually deserve to be at these elite institutions.
In their decision to end affirmative action at the nation’s colleges and universities, the right-wing justices summoned up Brown v. Board of Education. This is part of a larger project by the “conservative” movement and white right to weaponize, distort, abuse, and misrepresent the victories of the long Black Freedom Struggle and civil rights movement as a way of undermining and ultimately reversing them. Please help me process their twisted readings of Brown v. Board and the Equal Protection Clause.
Brown v. Board looms over these debates about affirmative action. Those who oppose race-based affirmative action and those who support it both say that their position is faithful to Brown v. Board. In 1954, the court decided in Brown that racially separate schools were inherently unequal and that they were a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Brown is subject to many interpretations. One interpretation is that Brown mandated colorblindness; it forbade school districts from taking into consideration students’ races when assigning them to schools.
Another equally plausible interpretation of Brown is that the court was concerned with anti-subordination. In this view, segregated Black and white schools were unconstitutional because they functioned to subordinate Black people; they functioned to subjugate Black people vis-à-vis their white counterparts. So, which is the better understanding of Brown? Was Brown about colorblindness, or was it about antisubordination?
In my opinion, Brown was about antisubordination. And I get there because I think that we have to pay attention to the motivations behind the Equal Protection Clause, which was added to the Constitution after the Civil War. The 14th Amendment, which contains the Equal Protection Clause, was proposed and ratified in order to make formerly enslaved Black people equal citizens.
“The conservative majority on the court does not care; they are very comfortable with subjugating non-white people in America.”
The Equal Protection Clause was designed to undo slavery. And the problem of chattel slavery was not that white people weren’t being colorblind. The problem of chattel slavery was that white people thought that Black people were an inferior race of humans and treated them accordingly. The Equal Protection Clause was ratified not to make white people colorblind, but rather to ensure that Black people were no longer treated as subhuman. Race-based affirmative action programs are consistent with what the 14th Amendment requires because it is interested in real racial equality, not just colorblindness.
A Supreme Court justice made the intervention not too long ago that to get past racism one must take account of race.
That guy’s gone, right? It’s really just a numbers game with the Supreme Court today. Before Justice Kennedy retired, conservatives on the court just didn’t have the votes to instantiate this view that the Constitution mandates colorblindness. Now they do. It’s not that those arguments make more sense today than they did 10 years ago. It’s not that there is more evidence to support that right-wing view. It is most certainly not true that we as a country are closer to a multiracial democracy than we were ten years ago. Ultimately, the only thing that has changed is the composition of the court.
As a factual and historical matter, the United States Constitution is not “colorblind.” In reality, it is a document that represented the interests of the white slave-owning class and was one of the bedrock documents of a herrenvolk racial state. Serious historians and other scholars have repeatedly documented how as a group the framers and other white elites saw little if any contradiction between white on Black chattel slavery, white supremacy, and their vision of (white) democracy. Yet, the right-wing justices insist on the Constitution somehow being “colorblind” and then reasoning from that incorrect premise to whatever conclusion they want to reach. Taking them seriously, how is such a view of the Constitution structured?
I think they believe that if you keep saying it, somehow it becomes true. But reality does not work that way. The Constitution is very much aware of race. The document literally contemplates race. The 3/5th clause is an obvious example. The majority opinion in the court’s recent affirmative action decision repeats “colorblind” so many times that an uninformed person may actually think that if you read the Constitution, you would see the words “colorblind” or “colorblindness.” But it doesn’t say that. What it does say is that no person shall be denied “equal protection of the laws.” Conservatives insist that those words mean “colorblindness.”
What the conservative majority will say is that during those lamentable and tragic moments in our nation’s racial history, the court was not interpreting the Constitution to be colorblind. They would say that the problem was that the court was allowing people to think about race. However, in my view, the problem of separate but equal, for example, wasn’t that people were thinking about race. The problem was how people were thinking about race. And they were thinking about race in order to conserve the existing racial hierarchy and to protect white supremacy. The conservative majority pretends that it cannot see the difference between those divergent uses of race. These conservative justices—all of whom got the finest educations from competitive universities—supposedly cannot see the difference between thinking about race in order to subjugate somebody and thinking about race in order to attempt to undo that subordination. Of course, they can see the difference. They know better.
The distinction here is important. Do the right-wing justices, like Clarence Thomas for example, actually believe in the factually wrong version of history and the Constitution (and reality) that they are articulating in the decision to end affirmative action, and more generally in terms of their legal theories? Or are they just ideologues and operatives, zealots, who don’t really care about the substance of the law and the Constitution and are just using it to advance a larger political and societal project?
I don’t know. And I don’t think it matters. What I do know for sure is that they are very comfortable signing on to decisions and handing down interpretations of the Constitution that will hurt people of color. In the end that is all I need to know. They won’t lose any sleep at night thinking about how students of color are going to be even more underrepresented in the nation’s colleges and universities. They don’t care about the real world implications of striking down affirmative action; they don’t care that, quite literally, lives will be lost, as Justice Jackson so compellingly and brilliantly demonstrated in her dissent when she talked about the effect that doctor-patient racial concordance has on reducing Black infant mortality. The conservative majority on the court does not care; they are very comfortable with subjugating non-white people in America.
The law, signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) in May, makes it a third-degree felony for people to use a false identification to get hired for work. Any business that is found to knowingly employ those unauthorized workers could have its license revoked and face daily fines. Additionally, hospitals that accept Medicaid are now required to question a patient’s immigration status, driver’s licenses given to undocumented immigrants in other states are invalid, and it’s a third-degree felony to knowingly transport undocumented immigrants into the state.
An estimated 772,00 undocumented immigrants lived in Florida in 2019, with many working on construction sites, farms and packaging facilities. Migrant workers began leaving the state once DeSantis signed the new law in May, The Wall Street Journal reported, including those who are authorized to work but are married to someone who isn’t. A spokesperson for DeSantis defended the law, saying that businesses that hire undocumented immigrants “instead of Floridians will be held accountable.”
At multiple construction sites in Miami, workers shared with the Journal that they have lost about half of their crews; one man said he knows people who went to Indiana, where they could make $38 an hour instead of $25 and not have to worry about running afoul of the immigration law. Tom C. Murphy, co-president of Coastal Construction, told the Journal there was already a labor shortage before the law went into effect, and while “we fully support documentation of the immigrant workforce, the new law is aggravating an already trying situation.”
Immigration is usually a federal area of law, immigration lawyer Daniela Barshel told the Journal, and it will be difficult to give guidance to clients when there are differing state and federal rules. “It’s kind of extreme that Florida passed a law like this,” she said. Companies cannot be advised to stop hiring noncitizens, since that could be discrimination on the basis of race or national origin, leaving businesses with no easy path forward. “You don’t want to be fined by the government, and you also don’t want to be sued by someone because they were authorized to work and you didn’t hire them,” Barshel said.
