Courts, including the SCOTUS, have long held that congress gets to set its own rules. Period. They just upheld that with the fines for not wearing masks. So the idea that a court in Texas can invalidate a law because during covid the Speaker of the House allowed voting by remote or proxy is crazy. But more than that, stop and look at what part of the bill that the Texas Attorney General is fighting, fair pay and equality for pregnant women. Yes protections for pregnant women is something Texas is against! What happened to much vaunted and talked about wanting women to get pregnant and forced to have babies, but they don’t want to protect them in the workforce. Oh now I get it, … The work force. This is about them wanting pregnant women at home dependent on their husband. By my dogs that love gravy, this is right back to Christian men ruling the home and working with women waiting at keeping the house, raising the man’s issue, having meals ready, and being ready to please the man. Talk about wanting to return to the 1950s. I know I say that about their stance on LGBTQIA to wipe us out of society, but now I realize they intend that for women also. Hugs. Scottie.
Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the Biden administration over a pregnant worker protection law that he said was unconstitutional because it passed mostly by proxy vote.
he U.S. Capitol during sunrise in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 15, 2020. Credit: REUTERS/Al Drago
A federal court in Lubbock ruled Tuesday that proxy voting in Congress doesn’t count toward a quorum, weakening a law to protect pregnant workers that was passed with proxy votes.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the Biden administration last year over a massive government funding package that passed largely by proxy votes because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The funding package, passed in December 2022, included the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which protects accommodations for pregnant employees in the workplace and allows workers to sue employers for failing to do so. It prohibited employers from denying employment opportunities or forcing pregnant workers to go on leave if alternative accommodations were possible.
Paxton argued the Constitution requires a physical majority of members in the U.S. House to pass legislation. Since a majority of members of the House voted on the funding package by proxy, Paxton said it was unenforceable.
Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi allowed members to vote by proxy due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Members of both parties took advantage of proxy voting for a range of reasons, from meeting with lobbyists to promoting books. The funding package came to a House vote in late December when many members had already left Washington for the holiday recess.
Judge James Wesley Hendrix of the Northern District of Texas agreed with Paxton’s understanding of a quorum.
“Based on the Quorum Clause’s text, original public meaning, and historical practice, the Court concludes that the Quorum Clause bars the creation of a quorum by including non-present members participating by proxy,” Hendrix wrote in his opinion.
Paxton took issue with the PWFA in particular in his original lawsuit, asserting it put undue burden on the state government to accommodate its pregnant employees. He wrote Texas already has provisions to accommodate pregnancy and that the law unconstitutionally opened the state to lawsuits over the federal law.
Hendrix ruled the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act unenforceable against the state government and its agencies. It does not nullify the entire $1.7 trillion spending package. Doing so would jeopardize programs across the federal government, including defense spending, health care and veterans programs.
Hendrix gave the federal government a week to appeal.
It was not the first legal challenge against proxy voting. Former House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy sued to end proxy voting in 2020, but a federal court in Washington ruled it did not have the authority to rule on the House’s procedures. The Supreme Court declined to take the case.
U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Austin, led an amicus brief last year supporting Paxton’s lawsuit. Roy was one of the fiercest opponents of the spending package, which he said amounted to government waste without appropriate oversight.
“The Constitution was made for times such as this, when government may claim emergency powers or special privileges to respond to extraordinary circumstances,” Roy wrote in the amicus brief. “But affording the government such powers undermines our structure of government, and ultimately imperils American citizens even more than infectious disease does.”
I don’t think it is cognitive dissonance; I think it’s deliberate. They clearly want fewer women in the workforce, and will exploit any avenue they can to push them out. With this, they get the added benefit of weakening a federal law for the whole country.
It looks like this judge views this differently than the House Parliamentarian. The wiki page for this Fed judge had this note:
This contradicted the opinion of the House Parliamentarian, who had determined that rules allowed members to vote remotely and that their presence counted toward a quorum.
More attacks on women and reproductive rights. Forcing pregnancy and denying rights to pregnant people puts us back in the 1930s. Undoing all the gains of the Civil Rights era is the point to these people.
Once again, a direct assault on women. I wonder if it’s even possible for women to rise up out of their second class citizen mindset and vote these people out of office.
The hardest thing to understand is that many women AGREE with being controlled by men. How that attitude made it through the 20th century is unfathomable.
WTF? This violates the Enrolled Bill Doctrine. If Congress says a bill was properly passed procedurally & sent to the president, a court cannot look behind it.
Flat out, I love this show. The show runs Monday to Friday, with Emma running the show on Thursdays, which is Sam’s day off. The show is about three hours long, divided into two parts. The free half is mostly news and interviews, and the fun half is with calls and IMs. Now don’t panic, if you are poor like me you can still see the entire show. There are two ways. First if you can not afford it they give free memberships if you need one. Or do what I do. The way I do it can be a pain in the butt, but it works. Wait until the show starts on YouTube. Open the live broadcast, then in the description box they include the link to the fun half. Click that and it switches to the entire show. Now as long as you don’t close the browser you have the link to the entire show for free. You don’t have to watch it all then, like any YouTube video or live stream, you can pause it and go do things, often I will start watching it and finish in the morning, leaving the computer tab open all night. Anyway, here are the clips. I especially like the ones that showed how clearly Israel was lying and got caught, and how the republicans had to admit that they did not have anything on Biden. Plus the one of right wing media correcting tRump’s claims of winning the election was fun to watch. Hugs. Scottie
Now we move to the horrible lies Israel has told. Hugs. Scottie
I recently posted about this interview. It shows that Raichik is incredibly stupid, uninformed, and loves the attention she is getting. She feels important right now, something it is clear she did not have before. She is a troll, feeling good only when tearing others down, she is not interested in educating her self or becoming a better person. She may have been a kid ignored in school or been the bully to fit in with the group of lowlifes, but she clearly is unfit to be on any library or school book banning boards. Also clear from the interview she is a white supremacist. Yes she thinks whites have a better culture than others do. She doesn’t seem to value anything but her fundamentalist world view and her white privilege. She clings to lies because she doesn’t want to believe or take the effort to learn the truth. Hugs. Scottie
Libs Of TikTok creator Chaya Raichik is livid after this weekend’s Washington Post interview revealed her to be an admitted and unrepentant liar who revels in accusations of having incited terrorism, which Raichik says makes her feel “important.”
Today she writes this about the reporter:
Just to summarize my interview with Taylor Lorenz:
– she’s not at all concerned about our open border and millions of people invading our country – she’s pro mutilation and castration of minors – she wants p*rn in schools – she wants the media to be allowed to defame me with impunity – she wants me to be responsible for all reactions, comments, and actions that happen after I post a tiktok but doesn’t want to take responsibility for what happens after her reporting on me – she’s a lizard person – she’s scared of people knowing her age – she’s still wearing a mask outdoors in 2024
Lorenz has said she is immuno-compromised. Of note, “lizard person” is a common QAnon claim about people they accuse of pedophilia. Many of them actually believe in literal so-called “reptilians.”
Just to summarize my interview with Taylor Lorenz:
– she’s not at all concerned about our open border and millions of people invading our country – she’s pro mutilation and castration of minors – she wants p*rn in schools – she wants the media to be allowed to defame me with…
I think the most charitable thing you can say about Chaya Raichik is that she’s not very bright and is just a stupid person who managed to become famous for also being a psychopath.
I ask myself who is worse, her, or her supporters. But, I think as rotten and disgusting as that piece of trash is, it’s her supporters that are worse, because they are so low they take their cues from someone like her. Without them, she’d be nothing, or in a mental-care home.
Person who sics terrorists against LGBT and other innocent folks around the country with one post is upset that she didn’t come out looking so good in the newspaper? Oh how sad for her. She’s lucky our side doesn’t do stochastic terrorism.
The republicans admit it openly what they have been showing the public for years. They can’t govern and do not want to. They want fame, fortune, and power to rule over others. They are not willing to do the hard work of keeping the country running. That is why they would rather have an authoritarian strongman government with a dictator at the top. They would turn the country over to businesses and simply order the masses to live according to the rules of the fundamentalist Christian church. He is basically saying if they can’t have their own way on everything they won’t play and will keep everyone else from playing. Bratty little kids. Read what this asshat wrote. Hugs. Scottie
“The more this government does, the worse it is for the American people. We shouldn’t be joining hands with Democrats just to show we can govern, or we can get things done, no matter how harmful to the American people.
“While a government shutdown is not ideal, but it’s not the worst thing. It would be worse to exacerbate the problem, to further increase our debt and our spending, to make our fiscal situation, which is unprecedented as it is — as you know.
“To continue to fund a government that’s facilitating the border invasion, why would we give Biden and Mayorkas billions and billions of dollars to keep doing this to the American people?
“The only leverage we have when we have one house of one branch is to be willing to say no, to be willing to walk away.” – Freedom Caucus chair Bob Good, speaking to Fox News.
Rep. Bob Good (R-VA): We shouldn’t be joining hands with Democrats just to show that we can govern or get things done no matter how harmful to the American people
The House also wants to disinvite the President from presenting the SOTU. All that means is he’ll do it from the Oval Office, it will still be on every single channel in the country–and none of you will be able to heckle or howl at him during an uninterrupted presentation.
“We shouldn’t be joining hands with Democrats just to show we can govern, or we can get things done, no matter how harmful to the American people…because we think it will benefit us politically.“
The Freedumb Caucus is mostly composed of Tea Party nihilists & MAGA chuds. They didn’t run to make the government work. In fact, quite the opposite. They ran to undermine the government. “See how it doesn’t work (after I’ve sabotaged it.) Clearly, it needs to be shrunken & dismantled, except in imposing nationwide Christian sharia laws.”
The truth is the US has a big problem with the human body and seeing it. It was not always this way. The modesty at all costs movement is what is harmful and should have warnings. The problem with porn is not that people see it, it is not even that minors see it. It is the way the right and even some on the left fetishize it to be some grand high point of evil. By doing that, going to such lengths to show kids we are hiding it from them we are making it seem so much more than it is. It is nude people showing their bodies and doing mostly normal acts. In most porn it is acting, and if people could see all the behind the scenes stuff it would take any joy out of it, just as watching a movie being made would ruin the fun of it. What we need to do is be honest with minors about their bodies, the bodies of the sexes / genders, and human sexuality. Treat it normally, don’t freak them out over seeing a booby or a butt. Seeing a penis will not rot the mind of any kid, freaking out over them seeing it will. Plus it helps cut down child abuse if a kid feels comfortable talking with another adult about what someone is doing to them or making them do. So many survivors never told because they were too ashamed and felt it was taboo to talk about. Look at a quote from the article below, do these people really believe this garbage? Harmful to brain development? Never proven, no medical data. I am sorry, I think they have confused fundamentalist religion with fun porn. Besides be honest, does anyone watch the entire porn movie? Really? But they do sit through the entire sermon and give the preacher money. You be the judge as to which one “is associated with low self-esteem and body image, eating disorders, impaired brain development, and other emotional and mental illnesses.” I can not stand these constant attempts to push their extreme fundamentalist church doctrine idea of calling normal things obscene and pushing their hyper regressive ideology on every one else. Look if they don’t want to see people nude, don’t want to see people having sex, then don’t watch it. Just don’t go to those websites! Why force everyone to live by your rules, to live just like you do. People in lockstep marching together. What a horrible place to live. Hugs. Scottie
It also orders such websites to post controversial health warnings that pornography “weakens brain function,” “is proven to harm human brain development” and “is associated with low self-esteem and body image, eating disorders, impaired brain development, and other emotional and mental illnesses.”
The lawsuit comes after the Fifth Circuit last year reversed a lower-court injunction blocking the law.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton speaks in Washington at a rally in support of then-President Donald Trump on Jan. 6, 2021, prior to the U.S. Capitol insurrection. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton this week sued a major online porn distributor in an effort to enforce a new state law mandating age verification and purported health warnings on adult websites.
The lawsuit, filed in state court in Austin on Monday, accuses the adult-entertainment company Aylo of violating House Bill 1181, a new state content-warning law for websites. A Montreal-based company, Aylo runs a number of major online porn brands, including Pornhub.
Among other rules, HB 1181 requires that porn websites “use reasonable age verification methods” to “verify that an individual attempting to access the material is 18 years of age or older.” It also orders such websites to post controversial health warnings that pornography “weakens brain function,” “is proven to harm human brain development” and “is associated with low self-esteem and body image, eating disorders, impaired brain development, and other emotional and mental illnesses.”
According to the lawsuit, minors who visit Aylo’s pornographic websites are either “immediately presented with sexual material” or “are asked to complete the trivial step of clicking an ‘enter’ button.” As a result, the suit says, Aylo has completely failed to comply with HB 1181.
The suit seeks an injunction forcing Aylo to use age verification and display the required health warnings. Texas also wants hefty fines, including $1.6 million in civil penalties plus $10,000 per day dating back to Sept. 19, 2023 — the day when the Fifth Circuit first greenlit the law.
In a news release announcing the suit, the Texas attorney general’s office accused Aylo of not imposing “reasonable age verification measures to protect minors from being exposed to obscene materials.”
“Texas has a right to protect its children from the detrimental effects of pornographic content,” AG Paxton stated in the news release. “I look forward to holding any company accountable that violates our age verification laws intended to prevent minors from being exposed to harmful, obscene material on the internet.”
Aylo declined to comment on the lawsuit.
The lawsuit comes amid a broader push in Texas and other Republican-controlled states to restrict content that lawmakers deem obscene. During the state legislative session last year, Texas also passed restrictions on drag shows and books it calls “sexually explicit.”
Last year, a coalition of porn-industry insiders — including a free-speech group focused on pornography — won an injunction blocking the law.
Their original suit, filed in federal court in Austin, described HB 1181 as part of a “long tradition of unconstitutional — and ultimately failed — governmental attempts to regulate and censor free speech on the internet.” Rather than imposing new content restrictions, “Texas could easily spread its ideological, anti-pornography message through public service announcements and the like,” the suit argued.
U.S. District Judge David Alan Ezra, a Reagan appointee, ultimately found those arguments persuasive. Among other factors, he determined that rules requiring health warnings in 14-point font were overly burdensome and ambiguous, as “text size on webpages is typically measured by pixels, not points.”
In his ruling from August, Ezra also cited Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act — a longstanding standard that protects online publishers from liability for content produced by third-parties. Without explaining its reasoning, the conservative Fifth Circuit overruled that injunction, including with a one-page administrative stay in September. Those orders paved the way for Texas to enforce the law, including with this latest suit.
Clearly the man speaks from personal experience and exhibits the signs of “impaired brain development” to this day. He doesn’t even have the brain power to keep both eyes open at the same time.
Pornhub has added North Carolina and Montana to its block list as both states implemented age-verification laws on Jan. 1. A similar ban was imposed in Arkansas in August, joining Mississippi, Virginia, and Utah.
Now hold on there, bubba louie! I live in texas…and how am I supposed to spend my golden years with no porn??? Paxton is just doing shit so the christians will vote for him.
More BS pseudoscience clap-trap from a state with no cognitive functionality. Just ban it in Texas and be done with…though I suspect a lot of those cowpokes will start livin’ up to that name if you do.
This surgeon general is totally unqualified for his position. He was picked for his political stance and willingness to lie and edit official studies to shore up DeathSatnis’s political positions. When DeathSantis tried to force the state University to make give him a position and a high salary, the school refused saying he was totally unqualified. For those that don’t know, measles is extremely dangerous, leading to lifelong illnesses and medical issues such as losing your ability to hear, along with death. Measles also kills your immune system so you lose all prior immunities and can make it so your system struggles to gain the immunity to other diseases. Below I listed some of the things that can happen. Measles are not a joke, you do not want your child exposed to the real thing, get them vaccinated. Hugs. Scottie
Long-term effects of measles
For every 10,000 children infected with measles, 2,000 will be hospitalized; 1,000 will develop ear infections with the potential for permanent hearing loss; 500 will develop pneumonia; and 10 to 30 will die, said Hotez, who is also dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine.
Measles often leaves patients vulnerable to secondary bacterial infections, such as pneumonia, one of the most common causes of death in measles patients, said Patricia Stinchfield, president of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases.
Measles also causes “immune amnesia,” in which the immune system loses its ability to fight infections that a patient was previously immune to, Cherry said. The virus wipes out 11% to 73% of a person’s antibodies — both those acquired through infection and vaccination — which can leave patients at increased risk from viruses such as the flu and bacteria that cause pneumonia and skin infections. A devastating long-term complication of measles called subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, which is more common in countries where the virus remains endemic. The fatal condition can cause memory loss, irritability, disturbances in movement, seizures and blindness, and can develop six to eight years after a child has apparently recovered from measles. Although anti-seizure drugs can sometimes ease symptoms, they don’t cure the disease. Encephalitis. About 1 child out of every 1,000 who get measles will develop encephalitis (swelling of the brain) that can lead to convulsions and can leave the child deaf or with intellectual disability. Death. Nearly 1 to 3 of every 1,000 children who become infected with measles will die from respiratory and neurologic complications.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz held a press conference on school safety measures Tuesday and called for the replacement of Florida’s surgeon general — as the measles outbreak in South Florida continues to expand.
She called for the termination of Dr. Joseph Ladapo and for Governor DeSantis to replace him with a public health expert, following the surgeon general’s controversial handling of the outbreak.
Ladapo told parents of unvaccinated children that it is their choice whether their students attend class — a contravention of federal guidelines calling for their mandatory exclusion. “Surgeon General Ladapo is a misinformation super-spreader,” Rep. Wasserman Schultz said during the press conference.
The measles outbreak has made its way to Central Florida. Over the weekend, the Florida Department of Health confirmed a tenth case out of Polk County.
The case is travel-related, and the patient is between 20 and 24 years old, making them the first Florida adult to be infected with the virus this year.
It comes after nine children and teens were infected with measles in Broward County. Measles is extremely contagious. Unvaccinated people have about a 90% chance of being infected if exposed.
I’m hosting a press conference alongside @FIU's Dr. Mary Jo Trepka and PTA leader Latha Krishnaiyer to share measles vaccination safety measures. I will also call for new leadership in Florida’s top health position. Join us: https://t.co/B3zQfhUBdz
if kids go deaf, or they die, or are sick for a month, it’s a small price to pay for freedom from an overreaching dictatorship of democratically elected government.
As Surgeon-General, Ladapo would be the one to sign off on any revocations. He is not going to quit this sweet gig that pays well and gives his quackery a veneer of legitimacy.
The reality is the majority of FL voters have made clear they’re okay with having this quack and the party that enables him in charge. Until that changes, he won’t be going anywhere.
I fail to understand republicans anymore. They have all the money in the world to waste on stunts like operation lone star which sent Texas State Police to the border to search vehicles already searched by the border patrol. They are wasting 2.5 million every week on that stunt alone. They so far have found nothing. But it looks good, looks tough on border crime right? How many millions to take over a park, run reams and reams of razor wire on land and in the water, wire that has been found illegal, yet they keep doing it. What they are not willing to do is feed kids! They are willing to let poor kids go hungry and starve. There is no money for feeding them they claim. Or is it that they don’t want to feed the poor non-white kids? Is the skin tone of the parents or kids what the issue is? Or is it that hungry kids can be forced to work cheaply, even illegally for people. I know what a hungry child will do for food, god save their souls. One church leader said if the government would stop helping poor people it would force them to join churches and turn to the lord for help. Great reasoning there. Starve them until they join the gang. It seems to be epidemic in red states, and I am really tired of it. Feed the kids damn it, or admit you are unfit to run a government. Hugs. Scottie
Millions of Texas children would have been able to use this service, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
TEXAS, USA — For some children in the U.S., school lunchtime might be the only meal they eat all day.
This year, 35 states are joining the Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer program – but Texas is not one of them.
According to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, the state would not have enough time to organize the program before summertime begins.
Now, the USDA says approximately 3.8 million children in Texas will miss out on the chance for $120 worth of food, per person, from grocery stores, farmers markets and other locations.
Approximately 21 million children across the country will receive a total of $2.5 billion benefits, in areas including Hawaii, New York, Guam, American Samoa, the Osage Nation and more.
Children 18 years old or younger are eligible to join the program free of charge, with a specific emphasis on low-income families.
Each month, families will receive $40 per child, available on a pre-paid card and the government plans to cover half of the administrative fees for participating schools.
According to the USDA, the program can help lower food insecurity among children by 33%, or one-third. Children utilizing the program are said to have higher access to whole grain, dairy, fruits and vegetables, with an emphasis on healthier living.
Last summer, Austin ISD and the Central Texas Food Bank partnered to provide more than 5,000 free meals to children under 18 years old through a separate program.
Ma was an elementary school teacher assigned in the mid-60s, at the start of her career, to one of the poorest schools in Rochester, NY. She quickly learned many of her majority Black students were so poor their families could not afford both breakfast & lunch, but were embarrassed about it, so would send the kids to school with a bag lunch, but on an empty stomach. The kids ended up eating their lunches on the way to school and had nothing for the rest of the day, often falling asleep in the afternoons.
Ma had an extra toaster that was a wedding present, and brought it in, insisting every student in her class got a 1/2 piece of peanut butter toast to start the day, no matter how much breakfast they claimed to have eaten. Her kids stopped eating their lunches on their way to school. Test scores skyrocketed. Her principal called her in to ask how she’d done it. “I fed them,” was all she replied.
Far too many teachers do things like this. With their own money. On their own time. I’m not saying it wasn’t good that they did it, but it shouldn’t be necessary. We underpay workers and they are doing the best that they could. What kind of monster wants to keep hungry children from eating. CHILDREN. Sometimes I wished I believed in heaven and hell. All those teachers like your mom. (She sounds great but she’s also one of thousands who also went above and beyond.) They would be queens in an afterlife and all the selfish bastards would be tortured for all eternity.
What kind of monster wants to keep hungry children from eating.
The kind of monster who doesn’t care whether these children grow up healthy and hopes they live short, miserable lives and it’s a big bonus if they don’t reproduce.
But if you feed them, and test scores improve, who will want to fill all those minimum wage positions? They’ll have to cut back on Social Security and put all the lazy seniors to work! /s
I always had bulk amounts of granola bars and cup-of-soups available in my classroom, and my school’s food program was very active in providing breakfast, lunch and snacks to ALL students. I often brought in fresh watermelon, pineapple, and cherry tomatoes. So many kids had never eaten a fresh cherry tomato. I made a lot of converts! (Edit to add: I worked with a fundie who was so grateful to his father-in-law for unexpectedly bringing him some cold pizza on a day he’d forgotten his lunch box…he just knew God had sent him. I asked, “Did your father-in-law also bring food for all the kids who didn’t have lunch and won’t have dinner?” He just looked at me.)
Rethugs are all about the cruelty. They get their rocks off abusing the powerless. I truly wish I could believe there was a Hell for them to rot/burn in, but alas, I cannot.
Multiple other red states have refused to accept federal grants meant to feed those lazy unemployed children.
And after Republicans went to all the trouble of lowering the working age, so they could get jobs. Little ingrates. Serves them right. If they were really hungry, they’d get jobs.
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/73c586efa3e9a3c02a1a017be6a2f89a/US%20Capitol%20DC%20REUTERS%20TT.jpg)
Scottie's Playtime 