see vax info by state (freebie)
Nov 11, 2021
Yes - We Are Slouching
We've arrived at a place where the ever-more radicalized rubes are being manipulated in a way that will - if unchecked - lead to bloodshed.
‘I think we should throw those books in a fire’: Movement builds on right to target books
Perhaps the most infamous quote of the 2021 Virginia governor’s race — and indeed of any 2021 race — belongs to Democrat Terry McAuliffe: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”
What many people might not have fully processed is that the quote stemmed from a debate about books in schools. Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin (R) had attacked McAuliffe for, as governor, vetoing a bill to allow parents to opt their children out of reading assignments they deem to be explicit. The impetus was a famous book from Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, “Beloved,” about an enslaved Black woman who kills her 2-year-old daughter to prevent her from being enslaved herself.
While that effort took place years ago, it was rekindled as a political issue at a telling time. Not only are conservatives increasingly targeting school curriculums surrounding race, but there’s also a building and often-related effort to rid school libraries of certain books.
The effort has been varied in the degree of its fervor and the books it has targeted, but one particular episode this week showed just what can happen when it’s taken to its extremes. Shortly after the election result in Virginia, a pair of conservative school board members in the same state proposed not just banning certain books deemed to be sexually explicit, but burning them.
As the Fredericksburg Free-Lance Star reported Tuesday:
Two board members, Courtland representative Rabih Abuismail and Livingston representative Kirk Twigg, said they would like to see the removed books burned.
It’s easy to caricature a particular movement with some of its most extreme promoters. And there is a demonstrated history of efforts to ban books in schools, including by liberals. Such efforts have often involved classics such as “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Of Mice and Men” for their depictions of race and use of racist language more commonly used at the time the books were written. More recently, conservatives have often challenged books teaching kids about LGBTQ issues.
But advocates say what’s happening now is more pronounced.
“What has taken us aback this year is the intensity with which school libraries are under attack,” said Nora Pelizzari, a spokeswoman at the National Coalition Against Censorship.
She added that the apparent coordination of the effort sets it apart: “Particularly when taken in concert with the legislative attempts to control school curricula, this feels like a more overarching attempt to purge schools of materials that people disagree with. It feels different than what we’ve seen in recent years.”
Even as the news broke Tuesday in Virginia, another school board just outside Wichita, announced that it was removing 29 books from circulation. Among them were another Morrison book, “The Bluest Eye,” and writings about racism in America including August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Fences,” as well as “They Called Themselves the K.K.K.,” a history of the white supremacist group. The books haven’t technically been banned, but rather aren’t available for checking out pending a review.
“At this time, the district is not in a position to know if the books contained on this list meet our educational goals or not,” a school official said in an email.
The day before, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) issued an executive order calling on state education officials to review the books available to students for “pornography and other obscene content.” Abbott indicated before the order that such content needed to be examined and removed if it was found. He reportedly did not specify what the “obscene content” standard for books should be.
Abbott added Wednesday that the Texas Education Agency should report any instances of pornography being made available to minors “for prosecution to the fullest extent of the law.”
The effort builds upon a review launched last month by state Rep. Michael Krause (R), who is running for state attorney general. Krause is targeting books that “contain material that might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of their race or sex or convey that a student, by virtue of their race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”
Krause doesn’t say what he intends to recommend about such books, but he accompanied his inquiry with a list of more than 800 of them, including two Pulitzer Prize winners: “The Confessions of Nat Turner” by William Styron and “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates.
There has also been an effort by Republicans in Wisconsin not focused on books, but broadly on the use of certain terminology in teaching students. As the Hill’s Reid Wilson reported about the state GOP’s particular effort to ban critical race theory from schools:
[State Rep. Chuck] Wichgers (R), who represents Muskego in the legislature, attached an addendum to his legislation that included a list of “terms and concepts” that would violate the bill if it became law.
Among those words: “Woke,” “whiteness,” “White supremacy,” “structural bias,” “structural racism,” “systemic bias” and “systemic racism.” The bill would also bar “abolitionist teaching,” in a state that sent more than 91,000 soldiers to fight with the Union Army in the Civil War.
The list of barred words or concepts includes “equity,” “inclusivity education,” “multiculturalism” and “patriarchy,” as well as “social justice” and “cultural awareness.”
Back in September, a school district in Pennsylvania reversed a year-long freeze on certain books almost exclusively by or about people of color. A similar thing happened in Katy, Tex., near Houston, where graphic novels about Black children struggling to fit in were removed and quickly reinstated last month. Many such fights have been concentrated in Texas.
There has also been a recent effort by a conservative group in Tennessee to ban books written for young readers about the civil rights struggle. Supporters cite the anti-critical race theory law the state passed earlier this year. And school officials in Virginia Beach recently announced they’d review books, including ones about LGBTQ issues and Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye,” after complaints from school board members.
Indeed, oftentimes the books involved are the same.
As the Los Angeles Times reported this week, such battles are part of a much larger debate over excluding books that has been injected with new intensity amid the anti-critical race theory push and now, apparently, with the demonstrated electoral success of that approach.
The Spotsylvania County, Va., example is an important one to pick out. While the two members floating burning books have aligned with conservatives, the vote was unanimous. It was 6-0 in favor of reviewing the books for sexually explicit content. School officials expressed confidence in their vetting process but acknowledged it’s possible certain books with objectionable content got through that process.
The question, as with critical race theory, is in how wide a net is cast. Sexually explicit content is one thing; targeting books that make students uncomfortable or deal in sensitive but very real subjects like racial discrimination is another.
There is clearly an audience in the conservative movement for more broadly excluding subjects involving the history of racism and how it might impact modern life. And while it’s difficult to capture the targeting of books on a quantitative level nationwide, this is an undersold subplot in the conservative effort to raise concerns about what children might learn in school.
The Good Germans have to stand up to this shit or we'll be going over the edge fairly soon.
We need more than a few August Landmessers.
WaPo: (pay wall)
‘I think we should throw those books in a fire’: Movement builds on right to target books
Perhaps the most infamous quote of the 2021 Virginia governor’s race — and indeed of any 2021 race — belongs to Democrat Terry McAuliffe: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”
What many people might not have fully processed is that the quote stemmed from a debate about books in schools. Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin (R) had attacked McAuliffe for, as governor, vetoing a bill to allow parents to opt their children out of reading assignments they deem to be explicit. The impetus was a famous book from Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, “Beloved,” about an enslaved Black woman who kills her 2-year-old daughter to prevent her from being enslaved herself.
While that effort took place years ago, it was rekindled as a political issue at a telling time. Not only are conservatives increasingly targeting school curriculums surrounding race, but there’s also a building and often-related effort to rid school libraries of certain books.
The effort has been varied in the degree of its fervor and the books it has targeted, but one particular episode this week showed just what can happen when it’s taken to its extremes. Shortly after the election result in Virginia, a pair of conservative school board members in the same state proposed not just banning certain books deemed to be sexually explicit, but burning them.
As the Fredericksburg Free-Lance Star reported Tuesday:
Two board members, Courtland representative Rabih Abuismail and Livingston representative Kirk Twigg, said they would like to see the removed books burned.
“I think we should throw those books in a fire,” Abuismail said, and Twigg said he wants to “see the books before we burn them so we can identify within our community that we are eradicating this bad stuff.”Abuismail reportedly added that allowing one particular book to remain on the shelves even briefly meant the schools “would rather have our kids reading gay pornography than about Christ.”
It’s easy to caricature a particular movement with some of its most extreme promoters. And there is a demonstrated history of efforts to ban books in schools, including by liberals. Such efforts have often involved classics such as “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Of Mice and Men” for their depictions of race and use of racist language more commonly used at the time the books were written. More recently, conservatives have often challenged books teaching kids about LGBTQ issues.
But advocates say what’s happening now is more pronounced.
“What has taken us aback this year is the intensity with which school libraries are under attack,” said Nora Pelizzari, a spokeswoman at the National Coalition Against Censorship.
She added that the apparent coordination of the effort sets it apart: “Particularly when taken in concert with the legislative attempts to control school curricula, this feels like a more overarching attempt to purge schools of materials that people disagree with. It feels different than what we’ve seen in recent years.”
Even as the news broke Tuesday in Virginia, another school board just outside Wichita, announced that it was removing 29 books from circulation. Among them were another Morrison book, “The Bluest Eye,” and writings about racism in America including August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Fences,” as well as “They Called Themselves the K.K.K.,” a history of the white supremacist group. The books haven’t technically been banned, but rather aren’t available for checking out pending a review.
“At this time, the district is not in a position to know if the books contained on this list meet our educational goals or not,” a school official said in an email.
The day before, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) issued an executive order calling on state education officials to review the books available to students for “pornography and other obscene content.” Abbott indicated before the order that such content needed to be examined and removed if it was found. He reportedly did not specify what the “obscene content” standard for books should be.
Abbott added Wednesday that the Texas Education Agency should report any instances of pornography being made available to minors “for prosecution to the fullest extent of the law.”
The effort builds upon a review launched last month by state Rep. Michael Krause (R), who is running for state attorney general. Krause is targeting books that “contain material that might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of their race or sex or convey that a student, by virtue of their race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”
Krause doesn’t say what he intends to recommend about such books, but he accompanied his inquiry with a list of more than 800 of them, including two Pulitzer Prize winners: “The Confessions of Nat Turner” by William Styron and “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates.
There has also been an effort by Republicans in Wisconsin not focused on books, but broadly on the use of certain terminology in teaching students. As the Hill’s Reid Wilson reported about the state GOP’s particular effort to ban critical race theory from schools:
[State Rep. Chuck] Wichgers (R), who represents Muskego in the legislature, attached an addendum to his legislation that included a list of “terms and concepts” that would violate the bill if it became law.
Among those words: “Woke,” “whiteness,” “White supremacy,” “structural bias,” “structural racism,” “systemic bias” and “systemic racism.” The bill would also bar “abolitionist teaching,” in a state that sent more than 91,000 soldiers to fight with the Union Army in the Civil War.
The list of barred words or concepts includes “equity,” “inclusivity education,” “multiculturalism” and “patriarchy,” as well as “social justice” and “cultural awareness.”
Ed Note: If a law makes it illegal to mention words and phrases like "woke" and "social injustice" and "systemic racism", then it becomes illegal to teach anyone about that law.
And don't dismiss this as dumbass politicians who don't know what they're doing. They know. It's all part-n-parcel of Daddy State conditioning.
There has also been a recent effort by a conservative group in Tennessee to ban books written for young readers about the civil rights struggle. Supporters cite the anti-critical race theory law the state passed earlier this year. And school officials in Virginia Beach recently announced they’d review books, including ones about LGBTQ issues and Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye,” after complaints from school board members.
Indeed, oftentimes the books involved are the same.
As the Los Angeles Times reported this week, such battles are part of a much larger debate over excluding books that has been injected with new intensity amid the anti-critical race theory push and now, apparently, with the demonstrated electoral success of that approach.
The Spotsylvania County, Va., example is an important one to pick out. While the two members floating burning books have aligned with conservatives, the vote was unanimous. It was 6-0 in favor of reviewing the books for sexually explicit content. School officials expressed confidence in their vetting process but acknowledged it’s possible certain books with objectionable content got through that process.
There is clearly an audience in the conservative movement for more broadly excluding subjects involving the history of racism and how it might impact modern life. And while it’s difficult to capture the targeting of books on a quantitative level nationwide, this is an undersold subplot in the conservative effort to raise concerns about what children might learn in school.
Beau Of The Fifth Column:
"We have moved on to the literal book-burning portion of the show."
BTW - If great-great-great grandpa was hanged as a horse thief in Oklahoma 140 years ago, and I tell that story as part of the family lore sitting at dinner on some random Sunday, I'm not teaching my kids to hate their family. I'm telling them the truth about something that actually happened.
Nov 10, 2021
The Pandora Papers
Putin's baby mama.
Kristi Noem's money laundry in South Dakota.
The King of Jordan.
and
and
and
Dirty money is everywhere, and it's making us very sick - intellectually, politically, emotionally, spiritually - just all kinds of sick.
The Pandora Papers
We have to burn this whole plutocratic mess to the ground.
Something Wrong With Some Of The Cops
Maybe the Vermont cops wanted to stay quiet about tracing the guy's phone number because they want more of these assholes to show their hands(?)
But knowing what we know about certain events - not exclusive to Jan6 and cops murdering black people - and knowing the tendency of way too many cops to close ranks and protect their own, I'll proceed with an increased sense of skepticism about parts of a Law Enforcement establishment that seems a little too willing to get a lot too cozy with the bad guys.
Rachel has a rundown:
And here's the Reuters piece:
Nov 9 (Reuters) - In Arizona, a stay-at-home dad and part-time Lyft driver told the state’s chief election officer she would hang for treason. In Utah, a youth treatment center staffer warned Colorado’s election chief that he knew where she lived and watched her as she slept.
In Vermont, a man who says he works in construction told workers at the state election office and at Dominion Voting Systems that they were about to die.
“This might be a good time to put a f------ pistol in your f------ mouth and pull the trigger,” the man shouted at Vermont officials in a thick New England accent last December. “Your days are f------ numbered."
The three had much in common. All described themselves as patriots fighting a conspiracy that robbed Donald Trump of the 2020 election. They are regular consumers of far-right websites that embrace Trump’s stolen-election falsehoods. And none have been charged with a crime by the law enforcement agencies alerted to their threats.
They were among nine people who told Reuters in interviews that they made threats or left other hostile messages to election workers. In all, they are responsible for nearly two dozen harassing communications to six election officials in four states. Seven made threats explicit enough to put a reasonable person in fear of bodily harm or death, the U.S. federal standard for criminal prosecution, according to four legal experts who reviewed their messages at Reuters’ request.
These cases provide a unique perspective into how people with everyday jobs and lives have become radicalized to the point of terrorizing public officials. They are part of a broader campaign of fear waged against frontline workers of American democracy chronicled by Reuters this year. The news organization has documented nearly 800 intimidating messages to election officials in 12 states, including more than 100 that could warrant prosecution, according to legal experts.
The examination of the threats also highlights the paralysis of law enforcement in responding to this extraordinary assault on the nation’s electoral machinery. After Reuters reported the widespread intimidation in June, the U.S. Department of Justice launched a task force to investigate threats against election staff and said it would aggressively pursue such cases. But law enforcement agencies have made almost no arrests and won no convictions.
In many cases, they didn’t investigate. Some messages were too hard to trace, officials said. Other instances were complicated by America’s patchwork of state laws governing criminal threats, which provide varying levels of protection for free speech and make local officials in some states reluctant to prosecute such cases. Adding to the confusion, legal scholars say, the U.S. Supreme Court hasn’t formulated a clear definition of a criminal threat.
For this report, Reuters set out to identify the people behind these attacks on election workers and understand their motivations. Reporters submitted public-records requests and interviewed dozens of election officials in 12 states, obtaining phone numbers and email addresses for two dozen of the threateners.
Reuters was able to interview nine of them. All admitted they were behind the threats or other hostile messages. Eight did so on the record, identifying themselves by name.
In the seven cases that legal scholars said could be prosecuted, law enforcement agencies were alerted by election officials to six of them. The people who made those threats told Reuters they never heard from police.
All nine harassers interviewed by Reuters said they believed they did nothing wrong. Just two expressed regret when told their messages had frightened officials or caused security scares. The seven others were unrepentant, with some saying the election workers deserved the menacing messages.
Ross Miller, a Georgia real-estate investor, warned an official in the Atlanta area that he’d be tarred and feathered, hung or face firing squads unless he addressed voter fraud. In an interview, Miller said he would continue to make such calls “until they do something.” He added: “We can’t have another election until they fix what happened in the last one.”
The harassers expressed beliefs similar to those voiced by rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, trying to block Democrat Joe Biden’s certification as president. Nearly all of the threateners saw the country deteriorating into a war between good and evil – “patriots” against “communists.” They echoed extremist ideas popularized by QAnon, a collective of baseless conspiracy theories that often cast Trump as a savior figure and Democrats as villains. Some said they were preparing for civil war. Six were in their 50s or older; all but two were men.
They are part of a national phenomenon. America’s federal elections are administered by state and local officials. But the threateners are targeting workers far from home: Seven of the nine harassed officials in other states. Some targeted election officials in states where Trump lost by substantial margins, such as Colorado – or even Vermont, where Biden won by 35 percentage points.
“These people firmly believe in the ‘Big Lie’ that the former president legitimately won the election,” said Chris Krebs, who ran the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency at the Department of Homeland Security. Krebs was fired by Trump last year for declaring that the 2020 election had been conducted fairly. By terrorizing election officials, he said, they’re effectively acting as Trump’s “foot soldiers.”
A Trump spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.
Representative John Sarbanes, a Maryland Democrat, introduced legislation in June to make it a federal crime to intimidate, threaten or harass an election worker. The bill, which has not come up for a vote, followed a Reuters investigation into such threats published the same month.
“I think we’re on a dangerous path,” Sarbanes said last week when told the threats were continuing with little law enforcement intervention. “We want there to be some effective and sustained push back on this kind of harassment.”
YOU'RE 'ABOUT TO GET F------ POPPED'
Only one of the nine harassers Reuters interviewed wouldn’t reveal his identity: the man threatening Vermont officials. Before reporters started examining him, law enforcement officials had decided against investigating, as many other agencies have done in similar cases nationwide.
Late last year, between Nov. 22 and Dec. 1, he left three messages with the secretary of state’s office from a number that state police deemed “essentially untraceable,” according to an internal police email obtained through a public-records request. The man identified himself as a Vermont resident in one voicemail.
Police didn’t pursue a case on the grounds that he didn’t threaten a specific person or indicate an imminent plan to act, according to emails and prosecution records. State police never spoke with the caller, according to interviews with state officials, a law enforcement source and a review of internal police emails.
Reuters did.
Reporters connected with him in September on the phone number police called untraceable. In five conversations over four days spanning more than three hours, he acknowledged threatening Vermont officials and described his thinking.
He soon grew agitated, peppering two Reuters reporters with 137 texts and voicemails over the past month, threatening the journalists and describing his election conspiracy theories.
The man telephoned the secretary of state’s office again on Oct. 17 from the same phone number used in the other threats. This time he was more explicit. Addressing state staffers and referring to the two journalists by name, he said he guaranteed that all would soon get “popped.”
“You guys are a bunch of f------ clowns, and all you dirty c---suckers are about to get f------ popped,” he said. “I f------ guarantee it.”
The officials referred the voicemail to state police, who again declined to investigate. Agency spokesperson Adam Silverman said in a statement that the message didn’t constitute an “unambiguous reference to gun violence,” adding that the word “popped” – common American slang for “shot” – “is unclear and nonspecific, and could be a reference to someone being arrested.”
Legal experts didn’t see it that way. Fred Schauer, a University of Virginia law professor, said the message likely constituted a criminal threat under federal law by threatening gun violence at specific individuals. “There’s certainly an intent to put people in fear,” Schauer said.
After Reuters asked Vermont officials about the October threat, the Federal Bureau of Investigation began an inquiry into the matter, according to two local law enforcement officials.
The FBI declined to confirm or deny any investigation into that threat and others reported in this story. In a statement, the bureau said it takes such acts seriously, working with other law enforcement agencies “to identify and stop any potential threats to public safety” and “investigate any and all federal violations to the fullest."
'I'M A PATRIOT'
Many of the harassers have been radicalized by a growing universe of far-right websites and other sources of disinformation about the 2020 election. Like Trump, they bashed mainstream news outlets and cast them as complicit in an elaborate scheme to steal the election.
Jamie Fialkin of Peoria, Arizona, talked of a grand conspiracy of those controlling the media, the banking system and social media companies. “When you have those three things, you can get away with anything – you can tell people, ‘black is white, white is black,’ and people go, ‘OK,’” Fialkin said.
On the surface, nothing about Fialkin’s biography suggests extremism. A former stand-up comedian from Brooklyn, New York, Fialkin said he has a degree in actuarial science, the study of insurance data. In 2017, he self-published a book marketed as a “survival guide” for first-time older parents. The 54-year-old said he spends most days taking care of his two young daughters and driving part-time for Lyft.
At a 2006 comedy show, he poked fun at his “professional bowler” physique, balding head, and inability to play golf. The self-described Orthodox Jew also took aim at Palestinians and described his political views as “a little more to the right.”
Fialkin said in an interview that he’s no longer in a joking mood.
He believes America is headed for civil war. He endorsed Trump’s false claims that millions of fraudulent votes swung the election to Biden. He said he’s convinced that former President Barack Obama, a Democrat, and progressive philanthropist George Soros bought fake ballots from China, another debunked theory promoted by Trump’s allies.
Fialkin blamed one person in particular for Trump’s Arizona loss: Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, the state’s top election official. On June 3, Fialkin called Hobbs’ office and left a message saying she’d hang “from a f------ tree.”
“They’re going to hang you for treason, you f------ bitch,” Fialkin said.
Minutes later, Fialkin left another voicemail in which he recommended a “good slogan” for Democrat Hobbs’ campaign for governor: “Don’t vote for me, for one reason. Back in December, I got hung for treason.”
Fialkin said he never intended to harm Hobbs, but was unapologetic.
“I’m not denying anything,” he said, “because I’m a patriot.”
Fialkin said he changed his Republican voter registration to independent because the party didn’t fight hard enough for Trump.
“I’m like most Americans,” he said. “We’re just waiting to see when the civil war starts.”
Fialkin’s messages were part of a barrage targeting Hobbs. Two others came from Jeff Yeager, a 56-year-old self-employed electrician from Los Angeles, California. Yeager, too, called for her execution.
“When Katie the c--- is executed for treason, what are you f------ traitors going to be doing for work?” Yeager said in a June 17 voicemail left for Hobbs and her staff. Months later, on Sept. 8, he left another voicemail warning she’d be executed.
Yeager acknowledged leaving the messages and said he didn’t care if Hobbs felt threatened. “If she thinks that I’m a threat to her, I’m not,” he said. “But the public is going to hang this woman.”
Yeager said he sees the mainstream media as full of disinformation; he called Reuters “one of the most evil organizations on the planet.” He said he gets his news from “alternative websites that are not censored,” including social network Gab and Bitchute, a video-sharing site known for hosting far-right figures and conspiracy theorists.
“Everything we’re being told is a lie,” he said.
In an interview, Hobbs said the threats by Fialkin, Yeager and others have been “emotionally draining” for her and her staff. The messages from Fialkin and Yeager were sent to the FBI, her spokesperson said. Some threats triggered a security detail, Hobbs said.
Jared Carter, a Cornell University law professor specializing in constitutional free-speech issues, said the threats by both men could be prosecuted under federal law. “In light of the multiple voicemails from the same person, and the overall tone of the messages, a court could find them to be true threats,” Carter said.
Election administrators such as Hobbs are part of a broader array of public officials targeted by Trump supporters. The day before Yeager spoke with Reuters in September, he said, two FBI agents visited him at his Los Angeles home to discuss threats he made to two national politicians: Republican Senator Mitt Romney and Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, both of whom denounced Trump for inciting the January 6 insurrection. He said the FBI agents produced transcripts of his calls to Pelosi and Romney. Yeager said the transcripts quoted him as saying “we will kill you.”
The agents instructed him how to lawfully express his political views, Yeager said, and left without arresting him. “I’m not making any more calls to anybody,” he said. “I may have crossed the line in one sentence, but I’m no danger to anybody.”
Spokespeople for Romney and Pelosi declined to comment on Yeager’s threats.
INSPIRED BY TRUMP
Others who threatened election officials told Reuters they were directly inspired by Trump or his prominent allies, who have denounced specific election offices nationwide for allowing voter fraud, turning them into targets.
Eric Pickett, a 42-year-old night staffer at a youth treatment center in Utah, said his anger boiled over after watching an Aug. 10 “cyber symposium” held by pillow magnate Mike Lindell, a Trump ally who has pushed false election conspiracy theories.
Pickett said he paid close attention as one of the symposium’s speakers, Tina Peters, a Republican clerk in Colorado’s Mesa County, criticized Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat. Griswold has been leading an investigation into Peters over a voting-system security breach in Mesa, one of the state’s most conservative counties. At the symposium, Peters, an election-fraud conspiracy theorist, claimed Griswold “raided” her office to produce false evidence and “bully” her.
None of that was true, according to state officials. Nonetheless, Pickett snapped. He got on Facebook and sent Griswold a message.
“You raided an office. You broke the law. STOP USING YOUR TACTICS. STOP NOW. Watch your back. I KNOW WHERE YOU SLEEP, I SEE YOU SLEEPING. BE AFRAID, BE VERRY AFFRAID. I hope you die.”
A Griswold spokesperson said the August message was promptly referred to state and federal law enforcement. The threat was reported by Reuters in September.
Pickett said in an interview that he “got wrapped up in the moment.” He was surprised Griswold found the message threatening and expressed regret for causing alarm.
“I didn’t know they would take it as a threat,” he said. “I was thinking they would just take it as somebody just trolling them.”
Colorado State Patrol, in response to a records request, said they had no investigative reports on the threat. A spokesperson, Sergeant Troy Kessler, said the State Patrol reviewed all messages it received from Griswold’s office and that no one had been arrested.
Three legal experts said the message met the threshold of a threat that could be prosecuted under federal law. “The whole purpose of the threats doctrine is to protect people from not only a prospect of physical violence, but the damage of living with a threat hanging over you,” said Timothy Zick, a William & Mary Law School professor.
Lindell and Peters did not respond to requests for comment.
TARRED AND FEATHERED
Trump’s stolen-election claims about Georgia, traditionally a Republican stronghold, have sparked some of the most serious election threats.
In a Dec. 10 hearing organized by Georgia Republican lawmakers, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani played a short snippet of surveillance footage from Atlanta’s State Farm Arena, which was used as a tabulation site. He claimed it showed Fulton County election workers pulling out suitcases full of fraudulent ballots in Biden’s favor. State investigators and county officials have said the “suitcases” were standard ballot containers and the video shows normal vote-counting.
Ross Miller, the real-estate investor in Forsyth County, Georgia, saw the video. He left a Dec. 31 voicemail for Fulton County Elections Director Richard Barron, saying he “better run” and that he’ll be tarred and feathered and executed unless “ya'll do something” about voter fraud. Barron forwarded the threat to police, according to a county email.
However, Fulton County Police Chief Wade Yates said his agency did not contact Miller after concluding the message did not constitute a threat under Georgia law.
In an interview, Miller acknowledged making the call.
“I left the message because I’m a patriot, and I’m sick and tired of what’s going on in this country,” he said. “That’s what happens when you commit treason: You get hung.”
Miller, who said he was in his sixties, said he’s been kicked off Twitter seven times for his views. He follows “Tore Says,” a podcast popular with QAnon adherents whose host, Terpsichore Maras-Lindeman, has called for a “revolutionary movement.”
“You've got to stand up,” said Miller. “You're either a patriot for the freedom of this country or you're a communist against it.”
'YOU'RE ALL F------ DEAD'
Some Vermont officials questioned why the man intimidating state officials wasn’t investigated or prosecuted, highlighting a broader national debate over how to respond to post-election threats. In a pattern seen across America, Vermont law enforcement officials decided this man’s repeated menacing messages amounted to legally protected free speech.
The threatener focused on one of the central conspiracy theories promoted by Trump and his allies: That officials had rigged vote-counting technology from Dominion Voting Systems to flip millions of votes to Biden.
“Just let everybody know that their days are f------ numbered,” he said in a Dec. 1 voicemail. “There are a lot of people who are going to be executed.”
Around that time, officials at Dominion’s headquarters in Colorado received three unsettling voicemails. “You’re all f------ dead,” said one message. “We’re going to f------ kill you all.” The caller’s telephone number and voice matched those on the Vermont threats.
The threats to Dominion were referred to the Denver Police Department and the FBI. Denver police failed to identify the caller, a department spokesperson said.
The Vermont secretary of state’s office is located in a historic 19th-century brick Queen Anne-style house in the capital of Montpelier. The staff helps register voters and administer elections in a state with one of America’s lowest rates of violent crime. The voicemails terrified some staffers.
“I had to try to calm people down,” Secretary of State Jim Condos said in an interview. “We were all on edge.”
After the Dec. 1 threats, Vermont Deputy Secretary of State Chris Winters expressed astonishment that police wouldn’t pursue the caller, according to emails between secretary-of-state officials and police obtained through a records’ request.
“I am trying to make sense of this,” Winters wrote in an email to Daniel Trudeau, the criminal division commander of the Vermont State Police. “If someone makes a veiled threat to come to the Secretary of State’s office and execute only the guilty ones on the election team, without naming names, they’ve not broken the law?” Winters added that he wanted to know “who we’re dealing with.”
Trudeau replied that he had consulted with other officers and didn’t see a crime, because the caller did not specify that he would come to the secretary of state’s office and did not say that he personally would execute anyone.
Vermont’s state police intelligence unit tried but failed to identify the caller. Police examined the number, which bore a Vermont area code, but said it was untraceable, according to an email between state police officials. The unit’s commander, Shawn Loan, wrote to Trudeau saying that the threats could be part of a “larger campaign” and the calls “may have been scripted.” He added that the caller used voice-over-internet technology. Two former FBI agents said such calls can be harder to trace than those made from landlines or cellular phones.
Loan was not immediately available for comment, a spokesperson said.
Vermont State Police didn’t pursue the threatener. Rory Thibault, the state’s attorney in Washington County, which includes Montpelier, supported Trudeau’s decision in a four-page Dec. 15 memo to state police. The messages were “protected speech,” Thibault wrote, because they were not “directed at a single person or official.” They were “conditional” on a “perception of malfeasance in the election process,” and the caller didn’t indicate he would personally inflict harm, he said.
Zick, the William & Mary professor, said a threat doesn’t necessarily have to single out a specific individual to be prosecuted under federal law. If someone calls in a bomb threat to Congress rather than to a specific senator’s office, for instance, “that’s still a threat.”
In an interview, Thibault said Vermont laws pose unique challenges for pursuing such cases because they offer greater protections for individual rights than federal laws. He added that the threats and the rise of extremist rhetoric are leading to a push for tougher anti-harassment laws.
Vermont State Representative Maxine Grad said she plans to introduce a bill in the January session aimed at broadening protections for people who have received criminal threats, such as election workers.
On Dec. 16, a day after the state’s attorney ruled out an investigation, the unidentified caller taunted Vermont election officials in a new voicemail. “All the traitors will be punished” in the “next few weeks,” he said. “Kill yourself now.”
This time, the caller used a different number that appeared to be a pre-paid “burner” phone.
Montpelier Police Chief Brian Peete was concerned. “Very disturbing,” he wrote to state police, security and secretary of state officials after reviewing the Dec. 16 threat. “Fits profile of someone who may act.”
Again, state police declined to investigate because the caller didn’t threaten a specific individual, according to police emails.
The phone numbers used by the caller left few clues about his identity. One reverse phone lookup service linked his number to Bennington, a town of about 15,000 people in southwest Vermont. Denver police couldn’t identify the caller, but found “decent information” linking the number to Bennington, according to a Denver Police Department report on the threats to Dominion.
Surrounded by the Green Mountains, the Bennington area is known for its picturesque farm houses, a towering Revolutionary War battle monument and blazing autumn foliage. Less known is that the rural, mostly white town and other parts of southern Vermont have seen a rise in Trump-inspired militia activity in recent years, residents and state officials say.
In April, the town agreed to pay a $137,500 settlement to Kiah Morris, the state legislature’s only black female elected official, who resigned in September 2018, following complaints that Bennington police failed to properly investigate racially motivated harassment against her. Morris declined to comment for this story.
The calls from the still-unidentified man threatening election officials and reporters were referred to the FBI, according to police emails.
Reuters first reached the man on Sept. 17. In a brief interview, he referenced the Dominion conspiracy theory. Asked for his name, he swore and hung up.
A week later, the journalists contacted him again on the same number. He admitted leaving the voicemails to express his “absolute dissatisfaction” in the election. In three subsequent phone interviews on Oct. 6 and 7 that spanned a total of two and a half hours, he opened up about his views.
The man said he believed thousands of fake ballots were cast in Arizona, repeating debunked claims. He said members of the media would face tribunals and be executed like the Nazi leaders who were hung after the Nuremberg trials in the 1940s and that perpetrators of election fraud would be sent to military prison.
He said he lived “in the woods,” and worked in construction. He didn’t own a gun, but said he had “a baseball bat and a machete.” He shared videos from the far-right website Bitchute and said he watched “all kinds of stuff that definitely needs to be investigated.”
Then he turned on the Reuters journalists.
In an Oct. 11 voicemail, he threatened to sue the reporters for obtaining his telephone number from state records. Over the next 25 days, he texted them 91 times, sharing misinformation on the origins of the coronavirus and other conspiracy theories. On Oct. 17, he left the new voicemails at the Vermont secretary of state’s office, including the one threatening that the reporters and election staffers would get “popped.”
The next morning, the caller followed up with more texts to the journalists. “I am going to destroy you and that is a threat.” In multiple texts, he said he would “ruin” the life of one of the reporters. On Oct. 30, he left two more voicemails for them. “You are all going to f------ hang. I’m going to make sure of it,” said one. “Bad s--- is gonna to happen to you,” said the other. “Your days are f------ numbered.”
He also sent the reporters four messages with the same picture: a grainy black-and-white photograph of a public execution that has been shared widely in far-right social media, with a caption claiming it showed “members of the media” hanging in “Nuremberg, Germany.” (In fact, the photo was taken in Kiev, Ukraine, depicting Nazi officers being hung for war crimes.)
The man’s threats and the rise in extremism in Vermont and nationwide since the election are a concern for Peete and his small staff in the Montpelier Police Department.
“It’s something that keeps me and all of us here up at night,” the police chief said.
COVID-19 Update
As of Monday, the 7-Day Rolling Average was still up over 1,000 dead Americans.
A thousand dead every day.
If that holds, we'll be at 800,000 dead Americans well before Christmas.
It could drop by 20-30% and we'd still hit 800,000 by mid-January.
WaPo:
Biden Administration to invest another $785 million in communities hardest hit by pandemic
The Biden administration plans to announce Wednesday that it will invest an additional $785 million into efforts to stymie the spread of the coronavirus in communities that have been hardest hit and are at highest risk of death and disease – people of color, people with disabilities, those living in rural areas and low-income communities.
This new infusion of money builds on billions of dollars invested in equity-focused programs, such as expanding access to vaccines at community health centers and supporting health workers, that have helped decrease disparities in death rates and closed racial and ethnic gaps in vaccination rates among adults.
“It’s just remarkable. We’re some place different than we were at the beginning of the pandemic ,” said Marcella Nunez-Smith, chair of President Biden’s COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force and associate dean for health equity research at Yale University. “The work of the task force from the beginning has been thinking just about how to disrupt that predictability … who’s going to get harmed first, who’s going to get harmed worst.”
The pandemic hit with an unequal impact, with Black, Latino and Native American people twice as likely to die of the coronavirus as White people. But a recent analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation shows that at different points in time, including this current phase of the delta wave, disparities in deaths and infections have narrowed for Black and Latino people compared to White people.
That was not the case for American Indian and Alaska Native peoples during this most recent wave of the pandemic, said Samantha Artiga, vice president and director of the racial equity and health policy program at Kaiser Family Foundation.
“For American Indian and Alaska Native people, that disparity widened again and has not come back down the way we’ve seen” for other groups, Artiga said, adding that more research is needed to better understand why.
The task force issued its final report to the White House Office on COVID-19 Response on Wednesday, and the additional funding is a direct response to its recommendations to help eradicate health disparities and support underserved communities.
Missing race and ethnicity data, mistrust of a medical establishment that has a legacy of mistreatment, and practical barriers such as a lack of pharmacies, hospitals, providers and transportation have all hindered the pandemic response and helped fuel the disparities that have become a hallmark of the American health-care system.
The task force, over the past 10 months, has tackled the issues in hundreds of interim recommendations that focused on equitable access to vaccines, personal protective equipment, testing, therapies and treatments. The proposals have considered what the pandemic will leave behind, ensuring people of color have access to resources to combat long-haul covid, mental and behavioral health needs, as well as discrimination and xenophobia in health care.
More than 80 percent of the interim recommendations have been fulfilled, according to the administration, and the final report groups the remaining recommendations into five priorities that include strengthening the data ecosystem, increased accountability and access, and ensuring the health care workforce looks like the communities it serves.
“There’s more work to do. We’re still in a pandemic,” Nunez-Smith said. “I fear complacency. Things can change so quickly, and they have before.”
David Pakman points up the growing difference now in the effects of the disease between Red Voters vs Blue Voters:
Today's Tweet
Are you suffering from #ElectileDysfunction?🥀@MarkRuffalo, @JonathanScott, and Jake Johnson have the cure for more satisfying elections: https://t.co/d70ILsgNWm 🍆
— RepresentUs (@representus) November 10, 2021
FTVA bans gerrymandering, makes Election Day a holiday, and makes voting more secure. ASK FOR IT TODAY! 👍 pic.twitter.com/bcsnXcI0D3
Nov 9, 2021
Today's Tweet(s)
A very interesting thread, although it's not all tied up and tied together - plenty of solid reporting, but there's a scant bit of direct evidence.
BREAKING: EXCLUSIVE: THREAD: Pence, his aides, and staff were locked out of their offices in the capitol complex during the insurrection because their access badges had been DEACTIVATED the morning of the attack, according to sources familiar with the incident 1/
— Mueller, She Wrote (@MuellerSheWrote) November 9, 2021
COVID-19 Update
WaPo: (freebie)
A federal court has ruled that United Airlines can put employees who are unvaccinated against the coronavirus on unpaid leave, even if the workers had received medical or religious exemptions from the company, according to Leslie Scott, a spokeswoman for the carrier.
The Monday ruling allows the airline to proceed with enforcing the mandate, which doesn’t allow unvaccinated employees to submit to regular testing in lieu of getting vaccinated. About 2,000 workers have received medical or religious exemptions, Scott said. They will be offered non-customer-facing roles, and those who don’t accept will be put on leave, she said.
U.S. District Judge Mark T. Pittman of the federal court in Fort Worth rejected claims that the strict mandate had put workers in an “impossible position” by forcing them to choose between a vaccine or unpaid leave, according to Reuters. He said human resources policies are up to the company.
As a federal contractor and an employer with more than 100 workers, United faces a federal deadline of Jan. 4 to vaccinate its workforce. The company has said that 99.7 percent of its workers have been vaccinated, when excluding those who sought exemptions, earning it praise from President Biden.
The airline industry’s employee vaccine policies have been closely watched during the pandemic. Several other major carriers announced staff vaccine requirements on the heels of Biden’s mandates.
Analysis: GOP often ignores testing option in Biden’s vaccine-or-testing mandate.
Here’s why:
Politics is a business that rewards simplicity — and often deliberate and vast oversimplification. That’s on full display now on the right.
Investigating threats against school board members is cast as labeling parents who would dare to complain as “terrorists.” “Critical race theory” has become a catchall for virtually any academic discussion of the impacts of racism. Potential federal settlements with families separated at the border is described as though it’s handing out money to undocumented immigrants willy-nilly, rather than people (often those using the legal asylum process) who had their children taken from them.
But another much more consequential debate continues to exemplify the dumbing-down of our collective political discourse: President Biden’s vaccine-or-testing mandate for large employers.
Last week, 41 Republican senators issued a lengthy news release signaling they would formally oppose the rule, which Biden officially announced Thursday and which a federal judge later suspended. The release ran more than 2,600 words and included quotes from 28 of the senators. Only in two of the quotes and some background at the end was the weekly testing option even acknowledged. Much of it suggested the choice was a binary one between vaccination and termination for everyone involved.
Politics is a business that rewards simplicity — and often deliberate and vast oversimplification. That’s on full display now on the right.
Investigating threats against school board members is cast as labeling parents who would dare to complain as “terrorists.” “Critical race theory” has become a catchall for virtually any academic discussion of the impacts of racism. Potential federal settlements with families separated at the border is described as though it’s handing out money to undocumented immigrants willy-nilly, rather than people (often those using the legal asylum process) who had their children taken from them.
But another much more consequential debate continues to exemplify the dumbing-down of our collective political discourse: President Biden’s vaccine-or-testing mandate for large employers.
Last week, 41 Republican senators issued a lengthy news release signaling they would formally oppose the rule, which Biden officially announced Thursday and which a federal judge later suspended. The release ran more than 2,600 words and included quotes from 28 of the senators. Only in two of the quotes and some background at the end was the weekly testing option even acknowledged. Much of it suggested the choice was a binary one between vaccination and termination for everyone involved.
- more - (pay wall)
That Stochastic Thing
There's something to be said for the standard rebuttal that gets thrown around every time someone puts up a social media post that "seems" to promote violence.
Yes, it may be that people are overreacting as a means of politicking the situation.
But when there's a pattern to it, over a period of years, and when a big majority of it comes from one side of our political spectrum in particular, then we have to recognize it as a real danger.
Paul Gosar is the latest Repub Congress Critter to get caught up in this shit. He tweeted an altered version of an anime clip that depicts him killing AOC and attacking Biden.
via The Independent:
This is a basic strategy of Stochastic Terrorism, though it goes a step further because it gets pretty specific - along the lines of, "Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest!?"
Paul Gosar is a poster boy for the GOP's version of it, which they've deployed for quite a while, and have, in the last coupla decades, ratcheted up considerably.
What they're doing:
Republicans do all manner of shitty things, and provide themselves some cover with barely veiled, plausibly deniable threats. It's intended to normalize violence - and not just for their followers, but for everyone. The rubes are conditioned to react violently when instructed, and the rest of us become conditioned to expect that violent reaction.
It's all aimed at making all of us less willing to stand up against them, and to accept whatever dictates they care to issue, for fear of retribution.
WaPo: (pay wall)
Rep. Paul A. Gosar (R-Ariz.) shared an altered, animated video that depicts him killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and swinging two swords at President Biden, prompting condemnation and calls for his Twitter and Instagram accounts to be suspended.
Ocasio-Cortez responded Monday night after arriving in Glasgow, Scotland, as part of a congressional delegation. Gosar, she said, will probably “face no consequences” because House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) “cheers him on with excuses.”
A Gosar staffer defended the video Monday night, dismissing claims that it glorifies violence.
“Everyone needs to relax,” Gosar’s digital director, Jessica Lycos, said in a statement.
A Twitter spokesperson said late Monday that a “public interest notice” had been placed on Gosar’s tweet because it violates the company’s policy against hateful conduct.
Gosar has long drawn criticism for his extremist views, including his spreading of conspiracy theories about the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob and the deadly white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville in 2017. In February, he appeared at an event whose organizer called for white supremacy. Gosar later distanced himself from the organizer’s remarks.
The congressman’s Sunday night post — which he shared on Twitter and Instagram — appeared to go further than his previous contentious remarks and social media posts, raising the specter of political violence in a manner similar to former president Donald Trump’s frequent allusions to armed revolution.
“Any anime fans out there?” Gosar said in the tweet in which he shared a link to the video.
The 90-second clip appears to be an altered version of the opening credits of the Japanese animated series “Attack on Titan.” The show revolves around a hero who sets out to destroy the Titans, giant creatures that have devoured nearly all of human civilization. In recent years, Internet users have turned the show’s opening credits into a popular meme.
Paul Gosar was a beloved dentist. Now he’s a MAGA congressman. His former patients need a spit bowl.
In the video Gosar posted, the congressman is depicted fighting the Titans alongside Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) and Lauren Boebert (Colo.). In one scene, Ocasio-Cortez’s face is edited over one of the Titans’ faces. Gosar flies into the air and slashes the Titan in the back of the neck, killing it.
In another scene, Gosar swings two swords at a foe whose face has been replaced by that of Biden.
The animated scenes of the video are interspersed with real-life footage of Border Patrol officers, some standing shoulder-to-shoulder and others on horseback rounding up migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border.
In one scene, footage of migrants crossing the Rio Grande is overlaid with what appears to be splattered blood. In another, the words “drugs,” “crime,” “poverty,” “money,” “murder,” “gangs,” “violence” and “trafficking” flash across the screen. The video also features shots of Gosar, the Capitol and migrant caravans.
Ocasio-Cortez responded Monday night, noting that while she was traveling to Glasgow, “a creepy member I work with who fundraises for Neo-Nazi groups shared a fantasy video of him killing me.”
In June, Gosar denied that he planned to attend a fundraiser with a group that promotes white-nationalist ideas, despite an invitation for the event that featured him alongside Nick Fuentes, a far-right operative who leads America First.
The congressman will “face no consequences bc @GOPLeader cheers him on with excuses,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted, without naming Gosar.
“Fun Monday! Well, back to work bc institutions don’t protect woc,” she said, referring to women of color.
In a follow-up tweet, Ocasio-Cortez listed several times she was accosted or harassed at the Capitol by GOP members of Congress, including Greene and Rep. Ted Yoho (Fla.).
“All at my job,” she tweeted, along with an upside-down smiley face. “[And] nothing ever happens.”
Twitter spokesperson Trenton Kennedy said late Monday that the company has “placed a public interest notice on this Tweet as it violates our hateful conduct policy.”
“As is standard with this notice, engagements with the Tweet will be limited. People will be able to Quote Tweet the Tweet, but will not be able to Like, Reply or Retweet it,” Kennedy said in an email.
The message placed on Gosar’s tweet reads: “This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about hateful conduct. However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible.”
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) criticized Gosar in a tweet Monday morning in which he also tagged McCarthy.
Rep. Gosar denies knowledge of fundraiser with group that promotes white-nationalist ideas despite invitation for the event
“Happy Monday in America, where @GOPLeader McCarthy’s colleague just posted a video of himself swinging two swords at President Biden,” Swalwell said in the tweet. “These blood thirsty losers are more comfortable with violence than voting. Keep exposing them.”
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) also denounced the video, arguing that “in any workplace in America, if a coworker made an anime video killing another coworker, that person would be fired.”
“This is sick behavior from Rep. Paul Gosar,” Lieu tweeted.
Scores of Twitter users also flagged Gosar’s tweet as a potential violation of the social media service’s rules, which prohibit violent threats and the glorification of violence. Instagram’s community guidelines prohibit “credible threats of violence, hate speech and the targeting of private individuals.”
Lycos, Gosar’s digital director, dismissed the criticism in a statement Monday night.
“We made an anime video,” she said. “Everyone needs to relax. The left doesn’t get meme culture. They have no joy. They are not the future. It’s a cartoon. Gosar can’t fly and he does not own any light sabers. Nor was violence glorified. This is about fighting for truth.”
Spokespeople for McCarthy and Facebook, which owns Instagram, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
After tweeting about the lack of repercussions for lawmakers who harass or threaten their colleagues, Ocasio-Cortez added her personal thoughts about Gosar.
“This dude is a just a collection of wet toothpicks anyway,” she said. “White supremacy is for extremely fragile people & sad men like him, whose self concept relies on the myth that he was born superior because deep down he knows he couldn’t open a pickle jar or read a whole book by himself.”
Leni Riefenstahl ain't got nuthin'
on these GOP assholes
Nov 8, 2021
COVID-19 Update
Axios:
Surgeon general: Biden administration "prepared to defend" vaccine mandate
Surgeon General Vivek Murthy took to ABC's "This Week" on Sunday to defend the Biden administration's plan to institute a vaccine mandate for companies with more than 100 workers, calling the measure "appropriate and necessary," and adding that the administration is prepared to fight legal challenges to implementation.
Why it matters:
Surgeon general: Biden administration "prepared to defend" vaccine mandate
Surgeon General Vivek Murthy took to ABC's "This Week" on Sunday to defend the Biden administration's plan to institute a vaccine mandate for companies with more than 100 workers, calling the measure "appropriate and necessary," and adding that the administration is prepared to fight legal challenges to implementation.
Why it matters:
- The vaccine mandate is already facing a plethora of such legal hurdles. A three-judge panel on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Saturday stayed enforcement of the private-employer vaccine mandate in an unsigned order that cited “grave statutory and constitutional issues.”
- In addition, more than 15 states across the country have filed lawsuits against the Biden administration over the vaccine mandate.
- Last week, the administration announced that employers with more than 100 employees must ensure their workers are fully vaccinated or tested weekly by Jan. 4 or face federal fines starting at nearly $14,000 per violation.
- "The president and the administration wouldn't have put these requirements in place if they didn’t think that they were appropriate and necessary, and the administration is certainly prepared to defend them," Murthy said.
- Murthy added that vaccine mandates to protect the population have a long historical precedence.
- "It's important we take every measure possible to make our workplaces safer," he added. "It's good for people's health, it's good for the economy, and that's why these requirements make so much sense."
Let's review, shall we?
- Come to work naked, and I fire your ass
- Threaten your co-workers, and I fire your ass
- Break my rules - or the law - and I fire your ass
Yes, it's a personal choice -
You don't have to get vaxxed
And you don't have to work here
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