Ron just went and picked up his one month prescription of JARDIANCE . It cost him $522.00 because our insurance has a 420 dollar co-pay before they kick in. In two weeks I have to do the same. another $522.00 for a 30 day supply of medications. We can not afford a $1044.00 hit in one month just for one medication each on our fixed incomes. The drug companies are making record profits, the insurance companies are making record profits, all the costs are going up while the incomes are stagnate or going down as inflation rises. The people need help. The country is run by the wealthy and large corporations and they are sucking the very life out of the public. This is worse than any vampire movie. They are draining the country of its vitality, and the people of any resources to live. Scottie
Assuming this 14% holds across the whole Kroger workforce, that's around 65,000 people working at the fourth-largest private employer in the US — ranked 17th on the Fortune 500 — who've been homeless while keeping the country's grocery stores running, in a pandemic. https://t.co/9RWLYvduap
The painful truth. Concentrated wealth and power are tremendously unhealthy.
Kill the filibuster. Kill the legacy of white supremacy.
Kill the filibuster.
Projection. Every GOP accusation is an admission of guilt.
“As Trump’s team pushed its discredited voter fraud narrative, the National Archives received forged certificates of ascertainment declaring him and then-Vice President Mike Pence the winners of both Michigan and Arizona and their electors after the 2020 election. Public records requests show the secretaries of state for those states sent those certificates to the Jan. 6 panel, along with correspondence between the National Archives and state officials about the documents.”
Get them all under oath. Then send them to prison for treason.
If you are a Republican who cares about the Constitution, you should be outraged. #Arizona
These are forged documents used by Trump cronies, yet they will lie and say Biden stole the election. This is just disgraceful.
Ted Cruz is trying to blame the FBI for J6 when Trump was President on Jan 6.
[Ray Epps is Arizona Oath Keeper chapter president and massive Trump supporter.]
the fakes make up news
FOX has ratings based on predetermined narratives. Their hosts do one thing and say another, just to create resentment and fear.
Republicans attack the messenger. They have no policy insights or actual ideas.
My favorite Tony Fauci is the one who’s had it with Rand Paul’s bullshit.
Although studies claim Omicron to be mild, there is no plausible reason to think that the highly-transmissible variant will not cause long Covid conditions among survivors. Though much remains unknown about omicron, experts say the variant could lead to long Covid, even with a mild case. Patients with long-term symptoms can experience crushing fatigue, irregular heart rhythms and other issues months after their initial Covid infection. The highly infectious Omicron coronavirus variant causes less severe disease than the Delta strain but it remains a “dangerous virus”, particularly for those who are unvaccinated, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday. Scottie
Anti-transgender attitudes have long made bathrooms a dangerous place for trans men and women — a problem only made worse by the latest round of bathroom hysteria. But other women are also getting swept up by anti-trans discrimination, as bathrooms turn into places of harassment for anyone who doesn’t conform to rigid views of gender.
In a recent case that went viral, a cisgender (non-trans) woman was insulted while in a Walmart bathroom after another woman confused her for a trans woman, apparently because of her short hair. The incident, the woman said, led her to confront the kind of harassment and discrimination that trans people have faced in bathrooms for a long time.
That the current hysteria over bathrooms is leading to women, trans or not, getting harassed in bathrooms is, on top of plain awful, ironic. After all, harassment is one of the things those who oppose letting trans people use the bathroom for their gender identity supposedly want to prevent. They claim trans-friendly policies will allow men to disguise themselves as women, go into women’s bathrooms, and harass or assault women.
The claim is a myth: Multiple investigations have found states and schools that have had legal protections for trans people for years have never linked an instance of sexual assault or harassment in a bathroom to trans-friendly policies. (The only bathroom harassment historically related to trans people, in fact, seems to be harassment and discrimination against trans people.)
But it does seem like the bathroom hysteria is leading to some women getting harassed — not in the way opponents of trans rights worry about, but more along the lines of the discrimination and harassment trans people have faced for a long time while trying to use the bathroom. Here are a few examples.
Aimee Toms was washing her hands in the women’s bathroom at Walmart in Danbury Friday when a stranger approached her and said, “You’re disgusting!” and “You don’t belong here!”
After momentary confusion, she realized that the woman next to her thought — because of her pixie-style haircut and baseball cap — that she was transgender.
Toms, a 22-year-old from Naugatuck who works at a retail store in the Bethel-Danbury retail area around Walmart, posted a video “rant” about her experience on Facebook Friday that had been viewed more than 12,000 times by Sunday evening.
“After experiencing the discrimination they face firsthand, I cannot fathom the discrimination transgender people must face in a lifetime,” she said. “Can you imagine going out every day and having people tell you you should not be who you are or that people will not accept you as who you are?”
Case in point: the man who, um, heroically barged into a women’s restroom at Baylor Medical Center in Frisco on Thursday to make sure that Jessica Rush, who manages a local health-food takeout place, was peeing in the proper place.
She was, for the record, and her situation isn’t particularly complicated. Rush was born and identifies as female and has no plans to change that. “I look very much like a girl,” she says. “I’m not trying to transition, nothing like that.”
But Rush wears her hair in a bleached blond fauxhawk and dresses androgynously. On Thursday, she was wearing a T-shirt from her alma mater, Texas Tech, with basketball shorts. As the man at Baylor explained after walking into the restroom behind her, it’s all very confusing. …
“When I saw you enter I thought you was…” the man says.
“A boy?” Rush offers.
“Yeah, it was kind of confusing.” Certainly she can see why. “You dress like a man,” he says several times as he walks away.
In the video, the unnamed woman tries to convince the two male officers and one female officer present that she is a woman, her friends shout in her support “she’s a girl”, which the officers ignore.
The police then ask the woman for identification to prove her sex. She rejects their demand, offended. The male officers then manhandle her out of the restroom, whilst calling her “sir”.
The police eventually tell the woman’s friends, who are still vouching for her female identity, “you can all leave if you want”.
Trans women and men have faced harassment and violence in bathrooms for a long time
Back in 2011, Chrissy Lee Polis captured national attention when teenagers attacked her after she used an empty women’s bathroom at a McDonald’s in Maryland. The Baltimore Sun reported:
There was a time when it seemed people from all over the country were talking about the 24-year-old. Many wanted to help her; others condemned her.
Polis became an unwitting symbol of the transgender community and the struggle for transgender rights when she stepped into a Rosedale McDonald’s one April evening. Two teen girls beat her that night. When an employee caught the assault on his cell phone, the video went viral, making headlines nationwide.
In a more recent case, in May, a security guard at a Washington, DC, grocery store allegedly pushed a trans woman out of the business after she tried to use a bathroom. The guard was later charged with simple assault. NBC4 Washington reported:
Ebony Belcher, 32, said she went to the Giant in northeast D.C. with a friend to pick up a delivery from the Western Union.
While at the Giant, she asked a store employee to point her to the restroom and passed a female security officer standing in the hallway.
The officer came into the restroom and told her to get out, according to Belcher.
“She opened the door and came in and started calling me derogatory names,” Belcher said.
She said the officer put her hand on her shoulder and arm, grabbed her and pushed her out of the store.
These are just two examples of the discrimination trans people face in bathrooms on a regular basis.
A 2013 survey published by the Williams Institute, for example, found that 70 percent of trans and gender nonconforming respondents in the Washington, DC, area faced a negative reaction while trying to use a public bathroom, including 9 percent who reported physical assault. The 2011 National Transgender Discrimination Survey found that 26 percent of trans and gender nonconforming respondents across the country reported denial of access to gender-appropriate bathrooms in educational settings, and 22 percent faced such denial in the workplace.
The same surveys also show that trans people face a lot of discrimination, harassment, and violence more broadly — at home, work, and school. So the harassment cisgender women are now dealing with in bathrooms is just a small sample of the discrimination that has plagued the trans community for years and years.
Understand this is entirely about if someone thinks you look as they think a woman should look. Are you feminine enough to satisfy them? They demand others conform to their standards of male and female. It’s part of an entitlement feeling when someone can demand to know person’s genitals, their private body parts. What a weird violation of culture norms now excepted is that a person has the right to demand to know or verify someone else’s covered private reproductive organs. How is that not a sexual offence? Scottie
My spine shots were Monday. Yesterday and today my blood sugars are uncontrolled no matter how I try to control my food intake to minimize sugar intake. I have been trying to not sleep all the time. My blood sugar at 4 PM was 400. The doctor says that steroids keep the medications from removing the excess sugar from my system. If it stays high for a couple more days then I will go on insulin. In the meanwhile I will be struggling to think and to stay awake. The roundup may be late or missed entirely. Scottie
I repeat: The filibuster isn't in the Constitution. Arguably, it's unconstitutional. The Framers did not allow a minority of Senators to obstruct the majority. https://t.co/d1UW5rdL1c
Biden points out that 16 *current* Republican Senators voted to approve the last voting rights act and questions why so many of them seem to have lost their voices now.
Let’s get one thing straight: The changes in voting laws by Republican state legislatures aren't a response to voter fraud (which is non-existent) but to voter turnout (which they want to suppress).
My 12-year-old had appendicitis. The ER was overwhelmed with unvaccinated Covid patients and we had to wait 6+ hours. While waiting, his appendix ruptured and had to spend 5 days in hospital; just got hmo bill of $5000. So yeah, your decision to not vaccinate does affect others.
this is such an important point. the people who dismiss police killings of unarmed Black people as statistically insignificant ignore the fact that police abuse is a continuum of behavior. few people get shot, yes. but many do get hassled, harassed, pushed around, even beaten. https://t.co/DMoC2qvzfU
Quick anecdote about the trans bathroom moral panic: I used to look like the pictures below (very cool).70% of the time I’d pass as a guy depending on what clothes I was wearing. One time I was in Queens at a dive bar waiting to take a piss in the women’s bathroom and a woman 1/3 pic.twitter.com/dkhXK7fuUQ
accosted me. Screamed at me and grabbed me by the shoulder because I was allegedly a trans predator in the woman’s restroom. This scared me and I was also pissed the fuck off. Needless to say we had words and I was so shook up by the whole thing I left the bar. 2/3
You transphobic feminists think you’re all out here saving women but you’re hurting women, trans and cis. You’re actively making the world more unsafe for us and I fucking resent you for it! 3/3
I am once again reminded of the 1995 Alison Bechdel comic. People really have been gatekeeping bathrooms and not being feminine enough for what feels like forever pic.twitter.com/9SBs1CzLWu
— ?Jowmuni¿ | BLM – Defund the Police (@noj4888) January 12, 2022
I’ve literally saw this same scenario in a restaurant in Alabama. A butch woman was accosted for being trans in the women’s room. She wasn’t trans. This nonsense is another arm of patriarchy and it even affects little girls playing sports. This is harming all women.
Every medical expert in the field of Virology and immunology agreed this was not a gain of function that the US had anything to do with. The US / NIH did not fund a gain of function on a coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2. Rand Paul not only doesn’t have the medical qualifications to understand / address this issue, he has misrepresented it for political gain and profit. Every time he attacks Dr. Fauci he turns out a fund raising pitch and it works for him. All he is doing is trying to enrage his voting base. Just because I can do basic cooking doesn’t make me a chief nor a chemist. Scottie
Oh my great dogs, the stupidity of this cartoon plus the complete antisemitism to it is stunning. The right blames everything they don’t like as being paid for by George Soros. He is their big boogieman. Even as a billionaire there is no way he could pay for all the things the right claims he is paying for. What is the issue with the DA’s? Well both right wing and left wing DA’s have decided to implement reforms that have been in the works for years. They changes / improvements are needed because courts are over loaded, the DA’s are over worked, the prison system is crashing with over population all because many non-violent crimes were being prosecuted with long harsh prison sentences. Things that are not really crimes are being treated as civil tickets instead of major crimes. Others are not being prosecuted at all such as possession of minor amounts of cannabis. These are common sense changes the right wing media rails against because it curbs racism abuses and lowers the for profit prison slave system. The right insists they need to make a profit of the bodies of the poor and helpless. Other things these reforms do is fund the placing of the mentally ill in other treatment than simply jailing them. Scottie
He has no use for the Law Enforcement people who died later. One from a stroke due to injuries and others who killed themselves over it!! But hey Henry is only pro life if you are a few cells old. Five people died as a result of Jan. 6, not counting the four officers who subsequently died by suicide. I think we all know we were lucky the number wasn’t higher.
Our democratic republic almost died that day and was prevented from happening with a single bullet. If the traitor Ashley Babbitt made it through the broken window and dozens of her fellow traitors followed, what would have happened to the congress members down the hall.
The vaccines and boosters allow the ones who catch any of the Covid virus and its variants from getting so ill they need hospitalization and nursing care. Hospitals all over the country are overwhelmed and red state governors are begging Biden for medical personal from the military because of the overwhelming numbers unvaxxed . The healthcare system in the US is failing, crashing. People with other than Covid needs are dying because of lack of beds for them because hospital beds are full of ill anti-vaxxers. This is not about some mythical freedom or control of people lives talking points. It is about very real consequences of people’s behavior in not getting vaccinated that harms others in many ways including causing death to other people and causing economic problems country wide. Scottie
Jan 11 (Reuters) – The United States reported 1.35 million new coronavirus infections on Monday, according to a Reuters tally, the highest daily total for any country in the world as the spread of the highly contagious Omicron variant showed no signs of slowing.
The previous record was 1.03 million cases on Jan. 3. A large number of cases are reported each Monday due to many states not reporting over the weekend. The seven-day average for new cases has tripled in two weeks to over 700,000 new infections a day.
The record in new cases came the same day as the nation saw the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients also hit an all-time high, having doubled in three weeks, according to a Reuters tally.
There were more than 136,604 people hospitalized with COVID-19, surpassing the record of 132,051 set in January last year.
While the Omicron variant is potentially less severe, health officials have warned that the sheer number of infections could strain hospital systems, some of which have already suspended elective procedures as they struggle to handle the increase in patients and staff shortages.
The surge in cases has disrupted schools, which are struggling with absences of staff, teachers and bus drivers.
Chicago canceled classes for a fourth day as the district and teachers failed to agree on how to deal with increased infections.
New York City suspended service on three subway lines as a large number of workers were out sick, according to its Twitter account. Companies’ plans for workers to return to office have also been derailed.
Deaths are averaging 1,700 per day, up from about 1,400 in recent days but within levels seen earlier this winter.
A redesigned COVID-19 vaccine that specifically targets the Omicron variant is likely needed, Pfizer Inc’s (PFE.N) CEO said on Monday, adding his company could have one ready to launch by March.
The Spotsylvania County School Board wasted no time Monday making its mark in the at-times contentious first meeting of the year, which included fiery jabs at the new chairman and squabbles between members.
It began with a vote to name Livingston district member Kirk Twigg the new chair. Twigg supported banning and even burning some sexually explicit books from school libraries in November. His win gives conservatives a majority on the school board.
The move to appoint him drew the ire of the outgoing chair, Dawn Shelley, who delivered a scorching criticism of Twigg.
“He has spoken about confidential [human resources] matters in open session. He is constantly using his AOL account to send and read emails throughout school board meetings. He wants to burn books,” Shelley said.
The board voted 4-3 in favor of ousting Baker over protests of the minority members who said the action was taken illegally. It is still unclear who will serve in that role while the search for a replacement begins.
“You have not stated any justification or ability to fill the position. You cannot even properly chair a meeting, but yet you’re going to terminate a superintendent for no reason,” Nicole Cole, a member from the Battlefield District, said. “How is this good for the students, the children of Spotsylvania County? How does this make sense? Spotsylvania citizens please recognize that you have not been given any valid reason.”
While both Cole and Shelley spoke, other board members attempted to interrupt them and pushed back against their comments.
Even the ceremonial formality of the passing of the gavel from the outgoing chair to the new one was fraught with tension. Twigg appeared to want to take the seat from Shelley, who refused to yield it.
According to a parent who spoke at the meeting, the rancor was nothing new. She said she believes chaos is Twigg’s goal.
“It has been that way for several months. In this moment people are trying to shout me down, so I think people should be aware that that’s happening,” she said.
The Spotsylvania County School Board fired Superintendent Scott Baker without cause during an unruly meeting Monday.
The board voted to approve Baker’s termination without cause after coming out of a closed session that may have violated Virginia’s open meeting requirements.
Virginia Code states that no closed meeting shall be held unless the public body first approves a motion that states the subject matter and purpose of the meeting, as well as the applicable exemption from open meeting requirements.
“A general reference to the provisions of this chapter, the authorized exemptions from open meeting requirements, or the subject matter of the closed meeting shall not be sufficient to satisfy the requirements for holding a closed meeting,” Virginia Code states.
The closed session, during which Baker’s position was discussed, was the second closed session of the meeting and was not on the approved agenda.
Board members did not vote on a motion to enter the second closed session, as is required by Virginia Code.
Salem District representative Lorita Daniels asked for a legal opinion on whether the second closed session would violate the Freedom of Information Act, but Twigg did not respond to her request.
Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) went after Dr. Anthony Fauci during a Senate hearing on Tuesday, in which Paul accused Fauci of “using his salary to attack scientists” who disagree with him.
“Dr. Fauci, the idea that a government official like yourself would claim unilaterally to represent science and that any criticism of you would be considered a criticism of science itself is quite dangerous,” Paul said, setting the tone for his questioning of the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Paul declared that Fauci “rules by mandate” and later in his opening cited an email in which Paul claims Fauci agreed with a colleague to work to “create a quick and devastating published takedown of three prominent epidemiologists from Harvard, Oxford, and Stanford.”
Fauci, denying that the email says what Paul claims it does, shot back right away, saying that Paul is “incorrect as usual.”
“You are incorrect in almost everything you say,” Fauci continued before Paul interrupted him.
“Do you think words like a conspiracy theory should be in a scientific paper?” Paul shot back in a lengthy response.
“Senator, I never used that word when I was referring to it. You are distorting virtually everything,” Fauci hit back.
“You keep distorting the truth. It is stunning,” Fauci added.
Fauci moved on from the email and took to defending his motives as driven solely by protecting the public from Covid-19, arguing that “everything I have said has been in support of the CDC guidelines. Wear a mask, get boosted…” Paul spoke over Fauci as he continued, interjecting, “ And you’ve made it coercive and done by mandate. You’ve advocated your infallible opinion by dictated by law.”
The two continued to battle back and forth with Fauci eventually accusing Paul of a continued campaign of personal attacks against him as a tool for fundraising. Fauci pointed out that the “Fire Dr. Fauci” box on Paul’s website that solicits campaign donations.
“You are making a catastrophic epidemic for your political gain!” Fauci charged, holding up a photo of Paul’s website. Paul hit back saying, “You have politically attacked your colleagues in a politically reprehensible way.”
Dr. Fauci, in another contentious exchange with Sen. Rand Paul, says Paul's attacks against him "kindles the crazies out there, and I have threats upon my life, harassment of my family and my children."
"In usual fashion, senator, you are distorting everything about me … you keep distorting the truth. It's stunning" — Dr. Fauci and Rand Paul are going at it again.
Fauci: Why would a Senator want to do this? Go to Rand Paul’s website and you see fire Dr. Fauci with a little box that says contribute here. So you are making catastrophic epidemic for your political gain pic.twitter.com/8dvxZ5ELxp
Former President Donald Trump announced guest speakers today for his Saturday rally in Arizona, and most of them share a common trait: they led efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Why this matters: Trump, who remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party, is making his false claims about the 2020 election the centerpiece of the GOP platform.
Between the lines: Trump has made clear to all who seek his endorsement that if they want his blessing, they need to make overturning the 2020 election as much of a priority as subverting future elections.
The details: The guest list for Trump’s Arizona rally is a who’s who of election deniers.
The headliner, Kari Lake, who Trump endorsed for Arizona’s gubernatorial race, told OAN she wouldn’t have certified Biden as the victor if she’d been governor.
State Rep. Mark Finchem, Trump’s endorsed candidate to oversee Arizona’s elections as Secretary of State, not only denies the 2020 election result but attended “Stop the Steal” rallies in January.
Arizona Reps. Paul Gosar, Andy Biggs and Debbie Leskoall voted on Jan. 6 to object to the certification of Joe Biden’s victory.
Kelli Ward, chair of Arizona’s Republican Party, pushed the false conspiracy theory that foreign powers manipulated Dominion voting machines to secure Biden’s election victory.
Boris Epshteyn, who co-hosts Steve Bannon’s podcast, uses his platform to promote Trump’s claims about a stolen election.
And Mike Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow, is arguably even more committed than Trump is to overturning the 2020 election. He says he has spent $25 million so far on his campaign to undermine and subvert the election.
The one outlier in the speaking line-up is Alveda King, who is Martin Luther King Jr.’s niece. She is an outspoken Trump supporter, but unlike the other speakers, has not made it her mission to overturn the 2020 election.
The big picture: Trump is also working to install Republicans in election administration positions who could be well-positioned to overturn future elections.
And he is methodically driving out and destroying all Republicans who say President Biden legitimately won the 2020 election.
What we’re seeing: To enforce party-wide obedience, Trump is jumping on anyone who contradicts his claims about election fraud. He punishes even the smallest of deviations.
On Sunday, Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that after investigating the 2020 election they found no evidence of fraud that “would have changed the vote outcome in a single state.”
On Monday, Trump sent out an email statement blasting Rounds as “woke” and a “RINO” (Republican In Name Only) and promising to never again endorse him.
These attacks come at a high cost. Republicans who’ve contradicted Trump on the 2020 election — from the highest-profile like Liz Cheney down to obscure state officials — have been inundated with threats to themselves and their families from angry Trump supporters.
The bottom line: Trump’s goal, his advisers say, is to either make life so miserable for them that they quit or end their careers by backing a successful primary challenge.
Trump’s efforts are working. His few remaining opponents in the party are mostly either quitting out of exhaustion or choosing to keep their dissent to themselves.
The Justice Department is forming a new domestic terrorism unit to help combat a threat that has intensified dramatically in recent years, a top national security official said Tuesday.
Matthew G. Olsen, the head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, announced the unit in his opening remarks before the Senate Judiciary Committee, noting that the number of FBI investigations of suspected domestic violent extremists — those accused of planning or committing crimes in the name of domestic political goals — had more than doubled since the spring of 2020.
Olsen said the Justice Department already had counterterrorism attorneys who worked both domestic and international cases, and that the new unit would “augment our existing approach” to prosecuting those cases.
Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) addresses reporters during a press conference on Wednesday, October 20, 2021 following the closed-door House Democratic Caucus meeting.
The fourth-ranking House Democrat, Assistant Speaker Katherine Clark (Mass.), urged the sergeant-at-arms on Tuesday to force lawmakers who defy the chamber’s mask mandate to cast votes from enclosures in the gallery above to limit potential spread of COVID-19.
Clark said it’s clear that existing fines are not enough to deter certain lawmakers from repeatedly flouting rules requiring everyone to wear masks in the House chamber.
Two far-right Republicans, Georgia Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Andrew Clyde, have each been fined tens of thousands of dollars for repeatedly ignoring the requirement that everyone in the House chamber wear a mask during the pandemic.
And with the highly contagious omicron variant driving caseloads in the nation’s capital to record levels, Clark argued that pandemic safety rules need to be enforced.
She suggested using plexiglass enclosures in the gallery overlooking the House chamber, which were installed last year so that lawmakers subject to quarantine could still cast votes when proxy voting was temporarily unavailable.
“This callous disregard for House rules endangers the health of members of Congress and the professional staff whose physical presence is required to ensure continuity of government,” Clark wrote in the letter to House Sergeant-at-Arms William Walker.
“That is why, in addition to imposing fines, I am requesting that your office begin requiring members who fail to comply with this rule to attend the House floor from the isolation boxes in the House gallery,” Clark wrote.
“This commonsense step will not only protect our dedicated House staff from members who refuse to follow House rules, but it will also allow those members to continue to fulfill their constitutional duty to vote on matters before the House.”
The House mask mandate was first established in July 2020 because numerous GOP lawmakers refused to wear masks, including one who tested positive for COVID-19 after spending time in the chamber and at committee hearings.
The mask requirement applies to the House chamber, surrounding hallways in the Capitol and connected office buildings. The Senate side of the Capitol complex, meanwhile, does not have a mask mandate.
Walker testified before members of the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday that he’s had difficulty enforcing the mask mandate.
“I see people – members, staff – without masks. And I’ll walk up to them and I’ll ask them to put the mask on. And some just walk away from me. Some put it on,” Walker said.
House Democrats imposed fines to enforce the mask requirement shortly after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol in response to several Republicans who declined to wear masks while lawmakers were crowded in a secure space together during the riot. The fines start at $500 for the first offense and $2,500 for subsequent offenses.
Most Republicans have complied with the mask requirement in the House chamber to avoid the fines. But other GOP lawmakers and their staff have pointedly ignored the mask mandate everywhere else in the Capitol complex where they aren’t subject to fines.
And the fines haven’t deterred a handful of GOP lawmakers from refusing to wear masks altogether.
Greene told Newsmax last week that she has been fined close to $90,000 for repeatedly refusing to wear a mask on the House floor. Clyde, meanwhile, has accrued at least $58,000 in mask fines.
Nine other Republicans have also been fined at least once: Reps. Lauren Boebert (Colo.), Mariannette Miller-Meeks (Iowa), Bob Good (Va.), Mary Miller (Ill.), Chip Roy (Texas), Ralph Norman (S.C.), Brian Mast (Fla.), Beth Van Duyne (Texas) and Thomas Massie (Ky.).
House leaders, in consultation with the Capitol physician, are urging everyone to use higher-quality masks like N95s or KN95s and spend as little time as possible on the floor during roll call votes.
At least nine House members have tested positive for COVID-19 since the weekend.
The Capitol physician’s office disclosed last week – before the House and Senate returned to session in recent days – that the rate of positive cases at its COVID-19 testing site has shot up from less than 1 percent to 13 percent.
The House sergeant-at-arms says some maskless lawmakers & staff ignore him even if he tells them personally to abide by the mask rules.
A member of House Dem leadership has an idea: Force maskless lawmakers to vote from "isolation boxes" instead.https://t.co/d0glELTeC4
North Carolina’s new political districts do not violate the state constitution, a panel of three judges ruled unanimously Tuesday.
The GOP-drawn maps would give Republicans a built-in advantage in future elections — but none of the reasons why challengers said the maps are unconstitutional stand up to legal scrutiny, the judges ruled.
In other words, politicians may use the redistricting process to give their party an edge. Indeed, the judges wrote in their 260-page ruling, redistricting is an inherently political process and is meant to be that way.
“Redistricting and the political considerations that are part of that process do not impinge on the right to vote,” they wrote. “Nothing about redistricting affects a person’s right to cast a vote.”
The challengers immediately announced Tuesday that they plan to appeal the ruling. It’s possible that it could go straight to the Supreme Court, which has a Democratic majority.
The three superior court judges who ruled Tuesday were two Republicans, Wake County Judge Graham Shirley and Catawba County Judge Nathaniel Poovey, and one Democrat, Anson County Judge Dawn Layton.
Their ruling upheld both the congressional map — which is expected to give Republicans a 10-4 advantage among North Carolina’s 14 U.S. House of Representatives seats in a 50-50 election — and the maps for state legislature, which are expected to produce strong Republican majorities even if Democrats win the majority of the vote.
The judges wrote that there is no guarantee that the number of seats a political party wins in Congress or the state legislature should be proportional to how much of the statewide vote that party wins.
‘RESULT OF A DEMOCRATIC PROCESS’
The challengers in the case had put forward numerous expert reports that the maps were skewed far to the right — more Republican leaning than 99.99% of a set of billions of hypothetical maps that one expert created, for instance. And the judges sounded almost apologetic in parts of their ruling.
“Despite our disdain for having to deal with issues that potentially lead to results incompatible with democratic principles and subject our State to ridicule, this Court must remind itself that these maps are the result of a democratic process,” the judges wrote.
They added:“Judges, just like many of the citizens they serve, do not always like the results they reach.”
Republican leaders, however, ignored the thinly veiled critiques and focused on the big picture: Their maps will get to be used in every election through 2030, as long as Tuesday’s ruling stands on appeal.
“I am pleased the trial court has ruled in our favor, upholding the maps drawn by the General Assembly in the most transparent process in North Carolina history,” N.C. House Speaker Tim Moore said in a press release.
“Now that a bipartisan court unanimously validated the maps, the people of our state should be able to move on with the 2022 electoral process,” Sen. Warren Daniel, a Morganton Republican and top redistricting official, said in another news release.
HEADING TO THE SUPREME COURT?
Tuesday’s ruling, however, may not be the final word due to the imminent appeal.
The 2022 primary elections are in May. So if the Supreme Court decides to overturn Tuesday’s ruling and forces the maps to be redrawn, that decision would have to happen soon to take effect in 2022 rather than 2024.
“While this ruling is disappointing, all signs ultimately point to the N.C. Supreme Court resolving this case,” said Hilary Harris Klein, an attorney for some of the groups who challenged the maps, in a news release.
She added: “We remain confident that our conclusive evidence of partisan bias, obfuscation, and attacks on Black representation, from expert testimony to the mapmakers’ own admissions, will convince the state’s highest court to protect voters from nefarious efforts to entrench partisan power at the expense of free elections and fair representation.”
Republicans quickly criticized the Supreme Court’s Democratic majority as “conflict-riddled,” foreshadowing the legal battles that are to come over whether certain justices should recuse themselves. But potential conflicts abound on both sides of the court.
Republicans have already asked Democratic Justice Sam Ervin to recuse himself from hearing the case because he is up for reelection this year. And they have routinely criticized Democratic Justice Anita Earls. She is the founder and former executive director of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, one of the main law firms for the challengers in the case.
On the GOP side, there could be even more calls for recusals. Republican Justice Phil Berger Jr. is the son of the N.C. Senate leader who is a main defendant in the case, and fellow Republican Justice Tamara Barringer was herself a GOP lawmaker until 2019.
NC’S GERRYMANDERING HISTORY
States redraw their political districts at the start of every decade, after new U.S. Census data comes out. In North Carolina, that process has created near-constant controversy. Various courts, both state and federal, ruled the legislature’s maps unconstitutional in the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and 2010s.
Nearly all of those cases, however, were over racial gerrymandering. The lawsuits over the maps for the 2020s have been over partisan gerrymandering, which is a much less settled legal question.
A 2019 ruling in one of the lawsuits over last decade’s maps did find that extreme partisan gerrymandering is unconstitutional. But Republican lawmakers didn’t keep fighting after losing at trial — which means there’s no legal precedent from an appellate court to bind the judges who were hearing this new lawsuit.
And unlike the judges in 2019, who said that the N.C. Constitution’s guarantee of free elections means partisan gerrymandering is unconstitutional, the judges this year disagreed.
A panel of judges has ruled NC's new political districts aren't unconstitutional. The maps would give the GOP a big advantage in US House races. Will the ruling be appealed to NC Supreme Court? https://t.co/kAe2Q5x5aW
