“Florida school districts are spending tens of thousands of dollars to comply with a new state law that’s increased scrutiny — and removal — of books in K-12 school libraries.
The new law requires all campuses to digitally chronicle each book shelved and available for students in classroom libraries. Yet many schools, tight on staff with thousands of books to inventory, are outsourcing the arduous work of making all books searchable on local websites to a third-party company. Those services are costing districts between $34,000 to $135,000 annually, according to contracts reviewed by POLITICO.”
“First passed in 2003 under President George W. Bush, PEPFAR is a vehicle for distributing HIV/AIDS drugs to people in poor countries who wouldn’t otherwise have access to them. It has been astonishingly effective: The most recent US government estimates suggest it has saved as many as 25 million lives since its enactment. It is currently supporting treatment for over 20 million people who depend on the program for continued access to medication.
Given its success, PEPFAR has historically enjoyed bipartisan support. In 2018, Congress reauthorized PEPFAR for another five years without a fuss. But this time around, things look different. Some House Republicans, prodded by an array of influential groups, are threatening to block another five-year reauthorization. Their argument is pure culture war: that PEPFAR has become a vehicle for promoting abortion.
In reality, PEPFAR is legally prohibited from funding abortion services, and the argument against the program on anti-abortion grounds is very thin. But in today’s political climate, where the culture war reigns supreme on the right, this is enough to jeopardize the continued good functioning of a program that the Republican Party used to champion.”
“House Republicans narrowly passed their version of an annual defense bill 219–210, after stacking it with controversial amendments on social issues that are dead on arrival in the Senate.
The debate on the National Defense Authorization Act, or the NDAA for short, now heads to the Democrat-controlled upper chamber, which is set to consider its own take on the bill later this month. Eventually, the two chambers will work to reconcile their differences between the two in the hope of finding a compromise.
The NDAA, one of Congress’s must-pass bills, effectively lays out what the military’s budget could look like for the next year and which programs will be funded. This year’s House bill authorizes $886 billion in funding, including a 5.2 percent pay raise for service members and the appointment of an inspector general to oversee Ukraine funding.
Much like the debt ceiling legislation and annual spending bills, the NDAA is a prime opportunity for lawmakers to add unrelated amendments making policy changes to pet issues, since it has to pass every year. This week, Republicans capitalized on this opportunity to put forth controversial amendments favored by their right flank, including restrictions on abortion and LGBTQ rights. It’s a move that’s meant to send a message about their position on social issues, and it’s also one that makes what was a bipartisan bill much more contentious.”
“the Maine measure would institute what’s known as “asymmetrical criminalization” or the “Nordic Model” of prostitution laws, a scheme criminalizing people who pay for sex but not totally criminalizing those who sell it. This model has become popular in parts of Europe and among certain strains of U.S. feminists.
But keeping sex work customers criminalized keeps in place many of the harms of total criminalization. The sex industry must still operate underground, which makes it more difficult for sex workers to work safely and independently. Sex workers are still barred from advertising their services. Customers are still reluctant to be screened. And cops still spend time ferreting out and punishing people for consensual sex instead of focusing on sex crimes where someone is actually being victimized.
A recent study of prostitution laws in European countries found full decriminalization or legalization of prostitution linked to lower rape rates, while countries that instituted the Nordic model during the study period saw their rates of sexual violence go up.”
“Among the more controversial measures is a section authorizing another $12 million for the “Unauthorized Alien Transport Program,” which will fund stunts like last September’s migrant flights to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. Notably, it’ll authorize transport “within the United States”—nothing saying that relocation must begin in Florida, or even involve migrants present in the state.
The bill’s more mundane measures will affect far more people, however. Under S.B. 1718, private businesses with 25 or more employees will be required to use the federal E-Verify system to ensure that workers may legally work in the country. Once a business learns that an employee is unauthorized to work, it must fire him or her. Multiple violations in a 24-month period may result in the suspension of state-issued business licenses. Businesses may also lose their licenses based on the number of unauthorized people they employ: Employing between one and 10 will lead to a suspension of up to 30 days, escalating to full “revocation of all applicable licenses” for employing more than 50 unauthorized people.”
“Uganda is one of several African nations where it is illegal to be queer; the nation enacted its Anti-Homosexuality Act in 2014, which allowed for life imprisonment for some homosexual acts between consenting adults, and codified the repression of LGBTQ Ugandans. That legislation was annulled in court in 2014, though homosexuality was still illegal per previous law, according to a Human Rights Watch report.”
“Signed into law by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis in April 2022, the law prohibits private employers and university professors from endorsing certain concepts related to race and other categories of identity. The statute drew lawsuits almost immediately. A number of employers and a diversity consultant challenged a provision that says private employers may not require employees to attend a training or activity that promotes any of eight listed concepts.
Chief U.S. District Judge Mark E. Walker, writing for the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of Florida, Tallahassee Division, then issued an injunction against enforcing that provision. “Normally, the First Amendment bars the state from burdening speech, while private actors may burden speech freely,” Walker wrote. “But in Florida, the First Amendment apparently bars private actors from burdening speech, while the state may burden speech freely.”
In November, Walker issued another injunction, this one blocking a similar section of the law that applies to university professors. He accused the state of essentially arguing that “professors enjoy ‘academic freedom’ so long as they express only those viewpoints of which the State approves,” a position Walker described as “positively dystopian.”
“The First Amendment does not permit the State of Florida to muzzle its university professors, impose its own orthodoxy of viewpoints, and cast us all into the dark,” he concluded.
It is this November injunction the 11th Circuit just left in place.
“Conservatives who cheer on the Florida law should consider what liberal states—or, for that matter, a Democratic-controlled Congress—could do if allowed to engage in similar regulation,” Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University, warns at The Volokh Conspiracy. “The same powers that Florida uses to target ‘woke’ employer speech can just as easily be used against conservative employers.””
“Trump’s rule held that if two good investments graded equally on likely risks and potential returns, ESG factors could serve as a tiebreaker, but, like the vice president’s vote in the Senate, should have no deciding force absent a deadlock.”
…
“”The Biden Rule, like the Trump Rule, confirms the permissibility of ESG investing in pursuit of improved risk-adjusted returns in accordance with prudent investor principles without mandating such an investment strategy,” argue Northwestern’s Max M. Schanzenbach and Harvard’s Robert H. Sitkoff. “ERISA fiduciaries who did not use ESG factors prior to 2022 should feel no greater urgency to begin doing so now. And ERISA fiduciaries who are investing for collateral benefits continue to run the same fiduciary risk as before.””
…
“Nevertheless, politicians—the president among them—have exaggerated the new rule’s immediate policy impact. “It simply states that if fiduciaries wish to consider ESG factors—and if their methods are shown to be prudent—they are free to do so.””
“The Dickey Amendment, first attached to the 1996 omnibus spending bill, for example, famously prevented the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from funding gun violence studies for decades. A new interpretation of that amendment in 2018 changed that, but Dickey wasn’t the only thing making it hard to study gun violence.
Instead, the researchers told me, the biggest impediment to demonstrating whether gun control policies work is the way politicians have intentionally blocked access to the data that would be necessary to do that research.”