POLITICUSUSA
Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker in Tallahassee blocked Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s anti-protest bill, saying that the backlash from officials to people celebrating Juneteenth and engaging in peaceful protest mirrors the racist backlash to protests against Jim Crow laws during the 1960s.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, slammed Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for being “completely wrong” about Covid-19 vaccines.
Fauci’s comments came after DeSantis insisted that whether or not a person gets a Covid-19 vaccine comes down to “personal choice.”
On Friday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) insisted that whether or not a person gets a Covid-19 vaccine comes down to “personal choice.”
“It’s about your health and whether you want that protection or not. It really doesn’t impact me or anyone else,” he said at the time.
Donald Trump, thankfully is out of office. And some may have hoped the the COVID situation would get better with him gone. Except it hasn’t gotten better at all.
Governors in red states had tried their best to emulate Trump by fighting any kind of COVID mitigation. And Ron DeSantis has fought harder than any others. This has resulted in Florida becoming the epicenter of COVID-19.
In Florida, the Covid-19 pandemic is worse than it’s ever been.
A sobering New York Times report finds that Floridians are “being hospitalized and dying of Covid-19 now than at any previous point in the pandemic, underscoring the perils of limiting public health measures as the Delta variant rips through the state.”
For decades, Florida was the ultimate swing state. It regularly alternated from Red to Blue. And the presidential candidate who won Florida typically won the presidency.
The state, though, has become increasingly red. Democrats still managed to win the White House in 2020 losing Florida because Joe Biden won big in the mid-West.
Joe Biden recently ended America’s involvement in Afghanistan. And for a number of reasons, many of them not his fault, he is having a difficult time.
Ron DeSantis couldn’t be happier about cable news spending much of its airtime on Afghanistan. The Florida governor is getting a pass on the fact that the COVID surge in his state is getting worse, not better.
Ron DeSantis has helped his state of Florida to become the epicenter of the Delta variant in the United States. But he doesn’t seem at all concerned about stopping the surge.
Instead, DeSantis has focused on the COVID culture war. He has threatened to stop paying school administrators who instituted mask mandates (a number of districts have chosen to defy him.) And instead of urging vaccinations, the governor is instead pushing a treatment that people can’t access until they contract COVID and that costs $1200.
Ron DeSantis seemingly has bigger ambitions than just being the governor of one of the largest states in America. The Florida governor looks to be pushing for the 2024 Republican nomination.
In order to capture the nomination, DeSantis needs to appeal to Donald Trump supporters. He’s trying to do so by becoming a mask mandate culture warrior.
Back in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Donald Trump, Republican lawakers and Conservative media relentlessly pushed the drug hydroxychloroquine. And despite their repeated claims about the drug, it turned out to be pretty much useless.
Florida, right now, is experiencing a severe COVID-19 surge. You wouldn’t know it, however, if you listened to Ron DeSantis. The governor is much more concerned fighting a culture war then keeping his people safe.
The office of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) has confirmed that the governor has walked back his threat to slash the salaries of school officials who impose mask mandates in defiance of his executive order.
Ron DeSantis doesn’t seem to care much about what happens in Florida right now. The state is in crisis mode thanks to the Delta variant of COVID-19. But the state’s governor seems more interested in fighting culture wars than combating the virus.
Speaking to CNN, Broward County Public Schools Interim Superintendent Vickie Cartwright said that her school board will defy Governor Ron DeSantis, who threatened to withhold school officials’ salaries if they defy an executive order forbidding schools from implementing mask mandates to curb the spread of Covid-19.
The Delta variant is raging in Florida. And the state is nearly setting daily records for cases of COVID-19. One might never know how bad it is, though, if they paid attention to governor Ron DeSantis.
Ron DeSantis would really like to be the next president of the United States. And the Florida governor has decided that the best way to endear himself to GOP voters is to push culture war issues.
At this moment, a quarter of new COVID cases are occurring in Florida. But DeSantis has done absolutely nothing to stop the spread. During a recent podcast, comedian Bill Burr tore the GOP governor apart.
Scarborough’s logic is exactly that which also enables the anti-vaccination movement and, frankly, movements to undermine democracy.
Joe Biden came into the White House on a mission to get the COVID-19 pandemic under control. And for the most part, he has done that. Over 70% of Americans have already taken at least their first shot.
But things are a little tougher where GOP governors are in charge. During a recent presser, Biden called out Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott for their poor performances in Florida and Texas.
The president said of the two men, “If you’re not going to help, at least get out of the way of people trying to do the right thing.”
DeSantis shot back today, “
Let me tell you this: if you’re coming after the rights of parents in Florida, I’m standing in your way, I’m not gonna let you get away with it. If you’re trying to deny kids a proper in-person education, I’m gonna stand in your way…If you’re trying to lock people down, I’m standing in your way, and I’m standing for the people of Florida. Why don’t you get this border secure? Until you do that, I don’t want to hear a blip about Covid from you.”
The Southern region of the United States largely votes for Republican politicians. And with the GOP now being the party of Trump, those lawmakers are fine with putting their constituents in danger to spare the former president’s feelings.
So those governors have turned the pandemic into a culture war issue rather than a health concern. And according to Dr. Peter Hotez, that has set up the South the be a COVID powder keg.
The doctor told host Jonathan Capehart:
“We are seeing a very worrisome surge across the southern states, and it’s going in a giant shape of a “U” starting in Missouri, down to Arkansas, Louisiana, cutting across east into Florida and then going up into the Carolinas. And it has a different flavor from the surge that we saw last summer. It’s true that we have a lot more older Americans who are vaccinated, so the deaths are nothing like what we saw before. But what we’re seeing in its place is lots and lots of young people getting sick. And lots of hospitalizations for young people. We’re even starting to see now pediatric intensive care unit admissions. I don’t think this virus is selectively targeting kids, I just think pretty much anyone that’s not vaccinated is getting swept up in this. And the big worry is in August here in the south, schools start early. They start earlier than they do up in the north. And I think this is really going to act as an accelerant for this epidemic. What I’m holding my breath about, given the fact that except for Louisiana we don’t have mask mandates, we certainly don’t have vaccination mandates for COVID vaccines, we have fewer than 20% of adolescents vaccinated in most southern states, this is a powder keg.”
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Ron DeSantis has spent much of the last year congratulating himself on how he has handled COVID-19. The Florida governor has leaned in hard to the culture war aspect of the pandemic.
Not only has he made a huge deal of fighting against mask mandates, he went as far as fundraising off shirts that slammed infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci.
According to DeSantis, he has done all of this in an effort to keep businesses humming in his state. But are they? Economist Paul Krugman did a deep dive into Florida’s economy and found that the governor hasn’t done well at all.
Krugman laid out his findings in a tweetstorm. He began, “DeSantis has been touting the FL economy — although how well will that economy hold up as potential visitors realize that the Sunshine state has become extremely dangerous and its hospital system is in overload crisis?”
DeSantis has been touting the FL economy — although how well will that economy hold up as potential visitors realize that the Sunshine state has become extremely dangerous and its hospital system is in overload crisis? 2/