On Thursday, the House passed a Democratic-sponsored bill to cap the price of insulin at $35 a month for most Americans, an effort to crack down on price-gouging by drug makers who have raised the price of a lifesaving product used by millions of Americans by almost 500 percent in recent years. Some people now pay more than $1,000 a month for insulin to treat diabetes, even with insurance. Democrats had been seeking a way to rein in drugs prices overall in a broader policy proposal, but it had little chance of passing the Senate. Hoping for bipartisan compromise, they siloed the insulin price control as its own measure. Still, only 12 House Republicans voted in favor of a bill that’s wildly popular with the American public.
Among those voting “no” was Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), the GOP’s leading troll, who has come up with perhaps one of the most offensive justifications for GOP opposition to the popular bill. In his newsletter Friday, Gaetz told his constituents that he opposed the bill because fat people, not Big Pharma, are responsible for driving up the cost of insulin. He suggested that Type 2 diabetes, which is often linked to obesity, could be cured if only people would workout more and lose weight, at which point they wouldn’t need insulin anymore and the drug costs would fall without government intervention. Gaetz wrote:
While Democrat posturing of H.R. 6833 victimizes insulin payees as people with an uncontrollable disease that are being taken advantage of and need Big Brother to throw them a raft, lifestyle changes en masse would expeditiously lower demand and the subsequent prices of insulin. 90-95% of people with diabetes have type 2 diabetes, which “can be prevented or delayed with healthy lifestyle changes, such as losing weight, eating healthy food, and being active.” Arbitrary price controls are no substitute for individual weight control. Since 2000, the number of diabetes cases in the U.S. has nearly doubled. The demand for insulin has increased and the requisite price increase has followed suit. In other words, the price of insulin increases as waistlines increase.
More than a quarter of Florida residents are obese, including Gaetz’s favorite Palm Beach resident, former president Donald Trump. And more than 10 percent of the state’s population suffers from diabetes, not all of which is caused by lifestyle factors. Gaetz’s attempt to sympathize with them was probably not very convincing. “While I empathize with all Americans suffering from disease and will continue to fight Big Pharma, I voted against H.R. 6833,” he wrote. “I will not see a reemergence of FDR price controls and join the Democrats in their attempt to pave the Road to Serfdom.”
This isn’t the first time Gaetz has shown real scorn for overweight people. In January, on his podcast “Firebrand,” he decried Twitter’s banning of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) for “telling the truth” about the relationship between Covid and obesity. After a segment about his advocacy for medical marijuana, he warned that legal weed was “not an excuse for America to sit home fat and high.” He decried “woke” culture for “cheerleading for the chubbies.”
“I’m not here to fat shame anyone,” he said. “I’d have no room to talk. I know personally how challenging issues of weight can be. I’m frequently way behind in my own goals. But society has now gotten to the point where it’s considered verboten to consider that a daily salad might make you more resilient to all kinds of disease than the vax of the month pushed by Big Pharma. Where’s Michelle Obama when you need her?” He expressed nostalgia for the former First Lady’s “Let’s Move!” campaign and puzzled over how the country had gone from her push for a better diet to the current “obesity-embracing woketopia,” where people are accusing “the Body Mass Index of being a tool of white supremacy.”
Even his own colleagues are not immune from Gaetz’s obesity scorn. He once took a potshot at Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), who has openly discussed his struggle with obesity and went through weight-loss surgery in August 2002, suggesting that Nadler should be put in charge of the “congressional weight loss program.”
While Gaetz may claim to empathize with people struggling with weight issues, he clearly doesn’t think he’s one of them. In August, he declared that he didn’t “fit in” with other members of Congress because most of them are old, obese people.
Matt Gaetz says today that the reason he doesn’t “fit in” well with other Members of Congress is because most of them are old and obese. pic.twitter.com/4k8MinxYUE
“If we get back the Senate and we’re in charge of this body and there is judicial openings, we will talk to our colleagues on the other side. But if we were in charge, she would not have been before this committee. You would have had somebody more moderate than this. So, I want you to know right now, the process you started to go to a simple majority vote is going rear its head here pretty soon when we’re in charge. Then we’ll talk about judges differently.” – Sen. Lindsey Graham, this afternoon.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) attempts to explain voting ‘no’ on Judge Jackson's Supreme Court nomination despite voting to confirm her in the past:
“If you win an election, I expect you to pick somebody I wouldn’t support on the court.” pic.twitter.com/kh2C9bZT0N
Sen. Lindsey Graham claims he only previously voted to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the D.C. Circuit because it was the ‘game’ he was expected to play following an election pic.twitter.com/bs7CYWWK3V
“I didn’t actually see the details of the legislation but the whole thing seems like a crazy fight. DeSantis is always talking about, that he was not demanding businesses do things but he was telling the cruise lines what they had to do, he was telling schools what they had to do. Mandating!
“And now wants to criticize Disney for expressing how they feel about the bill I mean, they have every right to. We have a thing called freedom of speech. They can come out and say what they think.
“I think the bill was kind of absurd and not something that would have happened in our state.” – GOP Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, today on CNN.
Gov. Larry Hogan (R-MD) calls out the basic hypocrisy of Ron DeSantis, "He was not demanding businesses do things but he was telling the cruise lines what they had to do, mandating, and now wants to criticize Disney for how they feel about the bill." pic.twitter.com/9yXwoEeko6
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) on Sunday avoided answering questions from Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum about former President Trump’s past praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying it was not “a conversation worth having.”
MacCallum asked Cornyn if he thought Trump’s previous positive comments about Putin, who faces international revulsion over his war in Ukraine, would help or hurt the former president if he decides to run for reelection.
She noted that Trump had previously called Putin’s pre-war strategy “genius” and had also called on the Russian leader to turn over information on Hunter Biden, President Biden’s son, that Trump claimed he may be aware of.
“I wouldn’t trust Vladimir Putin any farther than I could throw him,” Cornyn said.
“I think that’s really … that’s really the answer. Because Putin is a killer, he’s a thug, he has a vision of restoring the Russian Empire, the fall of which he said was the greatest geopolitical tragedy in the last 100 years. So I wouldn’t trust Vladimir Putin for a minute,” Cornyn added.
MacCallum then further pressed Cornyn on what he thought of Trump’s past comments, asking if he was acknowledging that they were “unwise.”
Cornyn responded that he didn’t think it was “a conversation worth having.”
Last week, Trump publicly called on Putin to release any information he may have on Hunter Biden on the basis of unsubstantiated claims that the Bidens had received millions of dollars from Elena Baturina, the wife of Moscow’s former mayor.
Putin has previously said that he was unaware of any connections between the Bidens and Baturina.
Trump’s request for assistance from Putin elicited some pushback from Republican lawmakers, with GOP Sens. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and Mitt Romney (Utah) saying Putin was not someone who should be asked for favors.
Parents and political groups lodged complaints against nearly 1,600 books in more than 700 libraries and library systems across the country in 2021, a new record of conservative activism that largely targeted tomes involving race, gender and the LGBTQ community, a new report has found.
The American Library Association (ALA) said in its annual assessment that twice as many “challenges” to books were made over the course of one three-month period — from September to November of last year — than in the entirety of 2020. The 330 challenges in that period compared to 377 made in all of 2019.
“Gender Queer,” a graphic memoir of author Maia Kobabe’s life as a nonbinary queer person, was challenged more often than any other book, according to the group’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. Five of the 10 most frequently challenged books are about the LGBTQ community, the association found.
Also among the books most likely to be attacked are novels that contain sexually explicit references or content, including “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie and Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye.”
“We support individual parents’ choices concerning their child’s reading and believe that parents should not have those choices dictated by others,” said Patricia Wong, the ALA’s president. “Young people need to have access to a variety of books from which they can learn about different perspectives. So, despite this organized efforts to ban books, libraries remain ready to do what we always have: make knowledge and ideas available so people are free to choose what to read.”
The new push to ban certain books also came as conservatives focused campaigns against critical race theory, a legal theory taught in some law school and graduate school settings. Conservatives in states like Idaho, Iowa, Arkansas, Tennessee and Florida have approved legislation banning teaching of some concepts of race in schools, bans that are so broad that some teachers have warned they risk running afoul of the new laws if they teach about the Holocaust.
In Wyoming, a group of parents filed a criminal complaint against public library officials over sex education books. In Texas, a state lawmaker proposed a list of 849 banned books.
The true number of banned and challenged books is likely much higher than the library association could document. The group said its list relies on media reports and self-reporting by library systems across the country, and that as much as 90 percent of challenges to books go unreported.
— American Library Association (@ALALibrary) April 4, 2022
Complaints about books at public schools and libraries more than doubled in 2021, the American Library Association says. The association counted more than 700 complaints last year, the most since it began keeping records more than 20 years ago. https://t.co/KKYYtwm6mU
The University Intellectual Freedom and Viewpoint Diversity student survey mandated by the Republican-led Legislature during the 2021 Session was distributed to college students across the state Monday morning.
There are 13 total questions on the student survey that ask whether students feel their university or campus is a place where free political or belief expression can take place, and whether their professors create that environment and to what degree express their own political opinions.
The first section includes questions ranging from whether there is an environment of free speech on campus to whether professors allow room for “free and welcomed” expression in the classroom.
The Board of Governors and State Board of Education will be required to compile and publish the results. The proposal also mandates that students be exposed to a variety of political viewpoints and that they not be “shielded” from those arguments. Supporters of the legislation accused universities of drowning out conservative student voices.
A federal judge last week denied an emergency request to stop the survey, though opponents can still file an appeal. In a letter to its members, the United Faculty of Florida urged faculty, staff and students to ignore the survey, saying it would create a chilling effect on free speech and freedom of association on campuses.
First look at questions asked in controversial Florida university viewpoint diversity survey
The massive digital billboards will be up for eight weeks in five major Florida markets, including Fort Lauderdale, Jacksonville, Orlando, Tampa and West Palm Beach
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NYC Mayor Adams says he is putting up billboards in Florida to try and convince gay residents to move to New York City in response to the Parental Rights in Education law that makes it illegal to teach sexual orientation to K-3rd graders. https://t.co/QVuK0IyCma
New York City, where the Stonewall Inn riots ignited what many consider to be the birth of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement, has long voiced its support for that community. Now it wants its message heard in one place, especially: Florida.
Starting Monday, Mayor Eric Adams is wallpapering the Sunshine State with digital billboards espousing New York City’s vociferous opposition to the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law, he said Monday.
The GOP legislation, which has drawn intense national scrutiny, bars instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade, which the mayor called a “targeted attack on the LGBTQ+ population.”
The billboards, Adams said from City Hall, will be up for eight weeks in five major Florida markets, including Fort Lauderdale, Jacksonville, Orlando, Tampa and West Palm Beach, and are expected to deliver an estimated 5 million impressions.
“This is the city of Stonewall. This is the city where we are proud to talk about how you can live in a comfortable setting and not be harassed, not be abused — not only as adults but also as young people,” Adams said.
The campaign started Monday and runs through May 29. Creative content was donated by major ad agencies including WPP Companies, WMLY&R, BCW, H+K Strategies and Kinetic, Adams said. Kinetic secured the ad space.
The mayor displayed some billboard samples as he made the announcement.
After a two-year absence, the Gridiron Club hosted its 137th dinner Saturday night with the profound desire that the pandemic, two presidential impeachment trials and an attack on the U.S. Capitol have not permanently ruptured this country.
So there was both shock and relief when New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, the Republican speaker for the night, weighed in on Donald Trump.
“He’s fucking crazy,” Sununu said to laughter and applause — and, notably, no booing. “I don’t think he’s so crazy that you could put him in a mental institution,” he added. “But I think if he were in one, he ain’t getting out.”
On Ginni Thomas’ now-infamous text messages to Mark Meadows: “We know she may be extreme, but let’s face it: when it comes to texting, she’s no Anthony Weiner. And you guys thought we forgot about that freakshow.”
And Ted Cruz hanging out with the People’s Convoy: “Nobody really knows why [the Convoy protesters are] in Washington in the first place — which pretty much describes Ted himself, right? … What is with Ted? You see that beard He looks like Mel Gibson after a DUI or something.”
On Trump ally and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell: “This guy’s head is stuffed with more crap than his pillows. And by the way, I was told not to say this, but I will: His stuff is crap. I mean, it’s absolute crap. You only find that kind of stuff in the Trump Hotel.”
Only two other Republicans attended this year’s event, Sen. Susan Collins and Sen. Roy Blunt.
In today's Playbook, we take you inside the annual Gridiron Club dinner on Saturday night, where New Hampshire Republican Gov. CHRIS SUNUNU stole the show, saying out loud what most Republicans in Washington privately whisper about DONALD TRUMP: https://t.co/6X8O8ONhcN
Scottie's Playtime 