Florida is Underwater. Where’s Ron DeSantis?

Parts of Florida are experiencing the heaviest rainfall in history, and Governor Ron DeSantis is on the scene to help his constituents.

Not really. He’s on a book tour in Ohio.

Fort Lauderdale, in southern Florida, had the rainiest day in its history Wednesday, sparking a flash flood emergency in Broward County, where the city is located. The region got more than a foot of rainfall, but Fort Lauderdale alone got about 26 inches of rain in a 24-hour period. A meteorologist for the National Weather Service described the rainfall as a “1-in-1,000 year event, or greater.”

During a press conference on Thursday, Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis was asked if DeSantis had been in touch with him about the flooding.

“Governor DeSantis has not yet called,” Trantalis said. “I’m not sure what’s going on, but I’m sure he’s very interested in what’s going on here, and we’re happy to work with his office.”

Trantalis said that state agencies were in contact to help with rescue and repair after the flooding.

DeSantis, however, is in Ohio. He is the keynote speaker at the Butler County Republican Party’s annual Lincoln Day Dinner Thursday evening, where guests who purchased tables will receive a copy of his new book about how Florida policies can serve as a blueprint for the rest of America.

The Florida governor is expected to announce that he’s running for president in 2024. DeSantis has been stepping up his appearances out of state, and he reportedly has called members of his state’s congressional delegation to ask them to stop endorsing Donald Trump.

Federal investigators on Thursday arrested an air national guardsman suspected of leaking classified intelligence documents about the war in Ukraine.

The man, a 21-year-old named Jack Teixeira, is a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard’s intelligence wing. He is believed to have shared the documents on a Discord server in early March.

The documents were confirmed to be real, although some were doctored before being posted online. They include information on Russian and Ukrainian strategies and issues in the ongoing war, as well as intelligence on Canada, China, Israel, South Korea, the Indo-Pacific military theater, and the Middle East.

Teixeira shared the documents to a group he led. The other members, about 20-30 of them in total, were mostly young men and teenagers who had bonded during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic over their shared interest in guns, racist memes, and video games.

Four members of the group spoke to The New York Times and insisted that Teixeira, whom they didn’t name, wasn’t a whistleblower. He shared the documents to inform his friends. The leak only gained attention when other members of the group posted some of the documents to a public forum.

The leak is unusual in that it is not as broad in scope as previous ones, such as WikiLeaks or the one orchestrated by Edward Snowden. But the information in the documents is much more timely, which has concerned White House and defense officials.

Some of the documents are less than two months old, and they contain previously unknown details about the state of Ukraine’s army as it tries to fend off the Russian invasion. The documents also revealed new information about how the U.S. gathers intelligence on adversaries and allies alike.

It’s unclear how Teixeira was able to access such highly classified intelligence. A U.S. official, speaking anonymously to The Washington Post, explained that National Guard units sometimes perform support services for active-duty units, including intelligence support for the Joint Staff. If Teixeira performed such support service, he could have been able to get ahold of the documents.

This post has been updated.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders just made it illegal for anyone in Arkansas under the age of 18 to use social media without consent from their parents. Except, it seems a lot of apps, like TikTok and Snapchat, are exempt.

The Arkansas governor signed the so-called Social Media Safety Act on Wednesday, amid her larger push to “save the children,” marked, for instance, by her bill making child labor easier.

“A social media company shall not permit an Arkansas user who is a minor to be an account holder on the social media company’s social media platform unless the minor has the express consent of a parent or legal guardian,” the bill reads.

Under the bill, which takes effect in September,  all users of a social media app must verify their age by submitting a “digitized” form of identification, like a driver’s license, to the company. If they are proven to be a minor, the company must confirm that the minor has a guardian’s consent.

If the company in question fails to perform proper age verification processes, they would be liable to a $2,500 fee per violation, plus any court costs or attorney’s fees and damages brought by the user and their family if they chose to pursue legal action.

It’s tough talk for a bill that doesn’t actually hold many companies to account, or seek to meaningfully improve young people’s relationship with the online world. Because while it’s difficult to imagine how exactly the bill would be enforced, what’s more difficult is to understand which companies will even be impacted.

The bill has numerous carve outs. Companies that offer “subscription content in which users follow or subscribe unilaterally” or “interacting gaming, virtual gaming, or an online service” (like Twitch or OnlyFans) are excluded. Companies that allow “a user to generate short video clips of dancing, voice overs, or other acts of entertainment” (like TikTok) are excluded. Companies that consist mainly of direct exchanges of messages, photos, or videos (like Snapchat) are exempted. And companies that offer services for K-12 schools or career development services to individuals (like LinkedIn) are excluded.

Moreover, the bill excludes companies that have generated less than $100 million, which would include any number of smaller websites, including far-right platforms like Parler and Truth Social.

Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter appear to be the most prominent websites seemingly not touched by the various exclusions. How exactly the state will work with these companies on an individual basis to set an identity verification process in motion is unclear.

There should be a concerted effort and intentional conversation surrounding the online world and our engagement with it—especially among young people. But Arkansas’s bill is mainly concerned with dictating what websites people under 18 can use without parental consent; there is little attempt to better people’s relationships with the internet more broadly.

In this way, the bill is almost a perfect embodiment of conservative governance: purporting to “empower” personal choice of children and families by instead limiting civil liberties—and then offering no material support to help either with, or after, that “personal choice.”

Donald Trump has been impeached twice. He has lost the popular vote twice. He has been found liable for sexual abuse and defamation. He is the first former president to be criminally indicted, and the first to be federally indicted. He is under at least two other criminal investigations.

And beyond every out-of-touch, offensive, or even blatantly wrong thing Trump has said, the former president’s legacy is also connected to many of the crises of our time. With disastrous train derailments coming one after another, we are reminded that Trump deregulated the railroad industry and defanged environmental protection agencies. Amid the crash of institutions like Silicon Valley Bank, we are reminded that Trump’s own rollback of Obama-era Dodd-Frank regulations helped widen the doors to such a collapse. And amid attacks on basic civil rights, we are reminded that Trump helped ratchet up such viciousness.

Nevertheless, despite all of this—the social disharmony, the material suffering, even just the fact that this all hurts Republicans electorally—scores of Republicans are already endorsing Trump’s third consecutive bid for the White House anyways. In basic terms, these Republicans are signing off on, and even encouraging, more of the above.

On Tuesday July 11, all six Michigan House Republicans came out to endorse Trump—members from a state Trump lost by nearly three points, and one that just re-elected a Democratic governor against a Trumpian candidate by nearly eleven points.

The six Michigan Republicans bring Trump’s endorsement count to 76.

Here is a list of every member of Congress or governor who has endorsed Trump’s 2024 bid for president:

Governor

• Henry McMaster (SC)

Senate

• Marsha Blackburn (TN)
• Ted Budd (NC)
• Steve Daines (MT)
• Lindsey Graham (SC)
• Bill Hagerty (TN)
• Cindy Hyde-Smith (MS)
• Markwayne Mullin (OK)
• Eric Schmitt (MO)
• Tommy Tuberville (AL)
• J.D. Vance (OH)

House

• Brian Babin (TX-36)
• Jim Banks (IN-3)
• Jack Bergman (MI-1)
• Andy Biggs (AZ-5)
• Mike Bost (IL-12)
• Lauren Boebert (CO-3)
• Josh Brecheen (OK-2)
• Vern Buchanan (FL-16)
• Michael Burgess (TX-26)
• Mike Carey (OH-15)
• John Carter (TX-31)
• Andrew Clyde (GA-9)
• Eli Crane (AZ-2)
• Mike Collins (GA-10)
• Byron Donalds (FL-19)
• Pat Fallon (TX-4)
• Chuck Fleischmann (TN-3)
• Russell Fry (SC-7)
• Matt Gaetz (FL-1)
• Lance Gooden (TX-5)
• Paul Gosar (AZ-9)
• Tony Gonzales (TX-23)
• Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA-14)
• Harriet Hageman (WY)
• Diana Harshbarger (TN-1)
• Clay Higgins (LA-3)
• Richard Hudson (NC-9)
• Bill Huizenga (MI-4)
• Wesley Hunt (TX-38)
• Ronny Jackson (TX-13)
• John James (MI-10)
• Carlos Giménez (FL-28)
• Jim Jordan (OH-4)
• John Joyce (PA-13)
• Mike Kelly (PA-16)
• Anna Paulina Luna (FL-13)
• Brian Mast (FL-21)
• Lisa McClain (MI-9)
• Dan Meuser (PA-9)
• Mary Miller (IL-15)
• Max Miller (OH-7)
• Cory Mills (FL-7)
• John Moolenaar (MI-2)
• Alex Mooney (WV-2)
• Barry Moore (AL-2)
• Troy Nehls (TX-22)
• Andy Ogles (TN-5)
• Scott Perry (PA-10)
• Guy Reschenthaler (PA-14)
• John Rose (TN-6)
• John Rutherford (FL-5)
• George Santos (NY-3)
• Pete Sessions (TX-17)
• Elise Stefanik (NY-21)
• Greg Steube (FL-17)
• Dale Strong (AL-5)
• William Timmons (SC-4)
• Jeff Van Drew (NJ-2)
• Beth Van Duyne (TX-24)
• Tim Walberg (MI-5)
• Michael Waltz (FL-6)
• Randy Weber (TX-14)
• Daniel Webster (FL-11)
• Roger Williams (TX-25)
• Joe Wilson (SC-2)

This story was last updated on July 11.

Two Trump-appointed judges on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decided late Wednesday that access to the abortion pill should be sharply curtailed, dealing a major blow to abortion access nationwide.

Last week, Texas federal Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, also appointed by Donald Trump, ruled that mifepristone, one of the medications used to induce an abortion, had been improperly approved by the Food and Drug Administration and should be yanked from the U.S. market. Another judge in Washington state filed a dueling injunction the same day to keep the drug available. The Department of Justice asked the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Monday evening to stay the ruling while the case is appealed and the lawsuit plays out completely.

The Fifth Circuit only stayed the part of Kacsmaryk’s ruling, which was set to go into effect this Saturday, that referred to mifepristone’s initial FDA approval in 2000, saying the plaintiffs were too late to challenge that decision. In other words, the abortion pill is still available for now.

But two members of the three-judge panel, both appointed by Trump, upheld the rest of Kacsmaryk’s decision rolling back changes that had made mifepristone more easily accessible. The third judge, who was appointed by George W. Bush, wanted to stay the entire Texas ruling and keep the pill available without restrictions.

Under the appellate court ruling, mifepristone is now only available up to seven weeks of pregnancy, before many people even know they are pregnant, as opposed to 10 weeks. Retail pharmacies can no longer dispense the drug, and people cannot buy the pill online or via telemedicine. Instead, they will have to visit a physician. Nonphysicians are not allowed to prescribe or administer mifepristone.

The ruling also suspends FDA approval of the generic version of mifepristone, which would take a more affordable option off the market.

Medication abortions make up more than half of all abortions performed in the United States. These drugs can be ordered online and delivered via mail, making them a key resource for people who live in states that have cracked down on abortion access since Roe v. Wade was overturned last summer. The Fifth Circuit’s ruling is a huge blow to nationwide abortion access.

The appellate ruling also conflicts directly with the injunction out of Washington, which orders that mifepristone’s status and the means to acquire it must remain unchanged. The only way the FDA can comply with both rulings is by exercising enforcement discretion—a legal tool it can also use if the lawsuit ultimately is decided against mifepristone and abortion rights.

A bigger issue at play, though, is that nonelected judges who do not have medical backgrounds are making decisions about medication. As Rachel Rebouché, the dean of Temple University’s law school, previously told The New Republic, “The question for appellate courts is not just about abortion but about deference to a federal agency’s expertise.”

Kacsmaryk’s ruling “undermined” the FDA’s authority, she said. “To take seriously that it ignored risks, risks unsupported by any credible evidence, suggests questions as to what federal courts might decide about other federal agencies’ decisions.”

The Justice Department has said it will “seek relief in the Supreme Court if necessary.”

If Kacsmaryk’s complete ruling went into effect, it “would thwart FDA’s scientific judgment and severely harm women, particularly those for whom mifepristone is a medical or practical necessity,” department lawyers argued in the filing.

“This harm would be felt throughout the country, given that mifepristone has lawful uses in every State,” the filing said. “The order would undermine healthcare systems and the reliance interests of businesses and medical providers. In contrast, plaintiffs present no evidence that they will be injured at all, much less irreparably harmed, by maintaining the status quo they left unchallenged for years.”

A Nebraska Republican state senator argued Wednesday for a six-week abortion ban by claiming there are too many foreigners living in the state, invoking a racist conspiracy theory.

Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, abortion is allowed in Nebraska up to 21 weeks and six days of pregnancy. But on Wednesday, the Senate began debating a bill that would ban abortion after six weeks, before many people even know they are pregnant.

Senator Steve Erdman decided that the best argument in favor of the ban was the “great replacement theory,” which the Southern Poverty Law Center defines as a “racist conspiracy narrative [that] falsely asserts there is an active, ongoing, and covert effort to replace white populations in current white-majority countries.”

“Our state population has not grown except by those foreigners who have moved here or refugees who have been placed here,” Erdman told the chamber.

Erdman also said that all of the aborted fetuses “could be working and filling some of those positions that we have vacancies.”

Erdman’s argument delivers a nice one-two punch of racism and misogyny. First, he thinks that abortions should be banned to force more white people to have babies. But it’s actually people of color who are hardest hit by abortion restrictions. Not all states report the racial and ethnic data of people who get abortions, but those that do found a disproportionately high number of people of color seek the procedure.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that in 2020, in 29 states and Washington, D.C., 39.2 percent of people who got an abortion were Black. Hispanic people made up 21.1 percent of people who got an abortion, and other nonwhite ethnicities made up 7 percent.

What’s more, if Erdman is actually worried about increasing the labor force, he definitely shouldn’t be banning abortions. Abortion gives people better control over their own lives and allows them more opportunities to join the workforce and move upward economically. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned the Senate Banking Committee in May last year, a month before the Dobbs ruling, that “eliminating the right of women to make decisions about when and whether to have children would have very damaging effects on the economy and would set women back decades.”

Six-week abortion bans are being considered across the country, including in Florida, which just passed such a bill on Thursday by a vote of 70-40, mainly along party lines. It now goes to Governor Ron DeSantis, who is expected to sign it into law.

This post has been updated.

“Do you know any kids who have been married at age 12? I do,” said Missouri Republican state Senator Mike Moon. “And guess what? They’re still married.”

Moon’s concerning comments came Tuesday during a debate on a bill he had been pushing to ban gender-affirming care for transgender people under the age of 18. Moon made the comments in response to Democratic state Representative Peter Merideth, who was attempting to highlight the hypocrisy of the Missouri Republican’s supposed concern for children.

“I’ve heard you talk about parents’ rights to raise their kids how they want. In fact, I just double-checked. You voted ‘no’ on making it illegal for kids to be married to adults at the age of 12, if their parents consented to it,” Merideth said to Moon. “You said, actually, that should be the law because it’s the parents’ right and the kids’ right to decide what’s best for them. To be raped by an adult.”

That was when Moon shared his anecdotal story on a successful child marriage.

Moon’s bill passed through the House 106–45 on Tuesday; a companion bill passed the Missouri Senate in late March. Missouri’s Republican Governor Mike Parson has supported limiting health care for trans kids.

As the Springfield News-Leader reports, Moon’s support for child marriage spans to at least 2018, when he voted against a bill that raised the minimum legal marriage age from 15 to 16 and required parental permission for older teenagers to marry. While the bill ultimately passed, Moon was steadfast in his opposition, even leaning on the same anecdote of a couple he had known who married at age 12.

At the time, he said the example was “something to ponder.”

Something else to ponder, of course, is Moon’s incredibly tenuous logic.

While Moon’s anecdote was ostensibly about two similarly aged minors getting married, Merideth’s broader point gets at the basic foolishness of it all. Moon is imposing his will to legislate banning children from accessing lifesaving and humanity-affirming treatment under the same vector of “saving the children” that ought to actually be used to legislate away the threat of exploitation in child marriages.

The Biden administration proposed expanding the main U.S. health privacy law Wednesday to add more protections for people who seek or provide an abortion.

The Department of Health and Human Services issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking through its Office for Civil Rights that prohibits health caregivers and insurers from giving information to state officials trying to investigate, sue, or prosecute someone for seeking or helping provide an abortion.

Under the new rule, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, would protect people who get an abortion in their home state or who cross state lines to get the procedure. It would also cover people who help someone access an abortion, such as the health care provider who conducts the procedure or a family member who provides transportation.

Under the rule, if an organization receives a request for private health information, it must also include a “signed attestation that the use or disclosure is not for a prohibited purpose.” The rule is open to public comment for 60 days, after which HHS will decide whether to implement it.

Abortion rights supporters, including lawmakers, have urged the Biden administration for months to expand HIPAA protections to cover abortion access. While Wednesday’s move is a step in the right direction, it may be too little, too late.

Kate Bertash, founder of the nonprofit Digital Defense Fund, which provides digital security for abortion access, pointed out that it’s unlikely law enforcement will signal that they are trying to prosecute someone for giving or getting an abortion.

“Trusting that a legal request for data will clearly be labeled as regarding an abortion feels like a tall order,” she tweeted, pointing out that most lawsuits about abortions are prosecuted under different laws. One such case occurred last summer in Nebraska, where abortion is banned after 21 weeks and six days. A young woman was charged with mishandling human remains after she got an abortion after that cutoff.

The proposed rule also comes amid increasing attacks on abortion access. A federal judge in Texas ruled Friday that the Food and Drug Administration improperly approved mifepristone, one of the drugs used to induce an abortion, and ordered it pulled from the market. The Department of Justice has requested the ruling be stayed pending appeal.

Also last week, Idaho’s Republican governor signed a law banning people from helping others access abortions out of state. Idaho is not the first Republican-led state to try to criminalize traveling out of state for an abortion, although it is the first to codify it into law.

On Wednesday, Florida Republican Representative Randy Fine vehemently defended a bill banning anyone under the age of 18 from being able to attend a drag show.

“If it means erasing a community because you have to target children, then, damn right, we ought to do it!” Fine said.

While Fine didn’t mention what community exactly he is in favor of erasing, the bill in question targets LGBTQ Floridians as a whole, not just drag performers.

Fine argued the bill’s language does not ban drag shows but rather uses language specifically geared toward protecting children. His logic goes, then, if opponents of the bill feel attacked, that’s because they’re in violation of targeting children.

Not so fast, however. On its face, the bill is worded so ambiguously in its focus on the term “adult live performance,” that it would prevent a high school kid from having the ability to watch The Rocky Horror Picture Show or even the musical Hair.

The bill defines “adult live performance” to include “any show, exhibition or other presentation in front of a live audience,” that in any form “depicts or simulates nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement, or specific sexual activities,” such as “lewd conduct, or the lewd exposure of prosthetic or imitation genitals or breasts.”

Consequently, the bill also targets Pride parades and celebrations, by preventing a government entity from issuing permits to organizations that put on such performances. Under the law, any establishment that violates the law would be subject to license suspension or revocation and liable to large fines and a misdemeanor charge. One violation would spur a $5,000 fine; subsequent incidents would spur $10,000 fines.

Ostensibly, authors of the bill are concerned with any conduct deemed “patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community of this state as a whole with respect to what is suitable material or conduct for the age of the child present.” Yet the bill leaves open the question of what those standards in the “adult community” even are.

Consequently, while Fine argues that the bill’s language is strictly concerned with shielding children, there’s no clear understanding of what the bill is shielding them from. Fine’s idea of what is “offensive” may be radically different from what millions of other people think. And it does not require any special imagination to foresee radical Florida Republicans using such a bill to target any range of activities related to or hosted by LGBTQ people.

After all, this is the same state party whose members have not been shy about attacking LGBTQ people. Governor Ron DeSantis stripped the Orlando Philharmonic Plaza Foundation of its liquor license for allowing children to attend a Christmas drag show; banned transgender women from playing women’s sports; fired a state attorney for saying prosecutors can’t criminalize personal medical decisions like abortion or transgender health care; and signed the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill, among other things.

Meanwhile, other Republican lawmakers have called trans people “mutants” and “demons,” while advancing legislation to ban gender-affirming health care and changing defamation law to make it easier to sue people criticizing bigotry.

The bill Fine was defending has already passed the Senate and is working its way through the House, where Republicans also hold control.

Fine, beyond passionately advancing anti-drag-show bills, is also known for threatening to cut off Special Olympics funding for a Florida community after he wasn’t invited to a Special Olympics fundraising event hosted by a city police department, while a school board member Fine has repeatedly attacked was invited. “I’m not going to jack [expletive] where that whore is at,” Fine said in response to a later invitation to the event. “You guys will have to raise a lot of money given that’s who you want to honor, not the person who got you money in the budget.”

Despite, or perhaps because of, it all, Fine is DeSantis’s leading pick to become the new president of Florida Atlantic University, amid the Florida governor’s efforts to hijack the university system with his friends and donors in order to impose radical conservative policies on college campuses.

It’s been less than a week since Tennessee Republicans expelled Democratic Representatives Justin Jones and Justin Pearson from the House. The Nashville Metro Council reappointed Jones on Monday, having the Democrat miss not even a moment of House business. And now, two days later, the Shelby County Commission has voted to send Pearson back along with him.

On Wednesday, the Shelby County Commission voted 7–0 to send Pearson back to represent the constituents who already elected him. The 13-member commission is made up of nine Democrats and four Republicans; only seven members were present for the vote, all Democrats.

Jones, Pearson, and their colleague Gloria Johnson were targeted by House Republicans last week in wake of the Nashville school shooting that left three children and three adults dead. The three Democrats were repeatedly silenced by Republican leaders, including House Speaker Cameron Sexton, as they tried to speak on the issue of gun violence. Finally, in solidarity with thousands of children, teachers, parents, and other residents protesting against gun violence outside the state Capitol, the trio interrupted House proceedings. The Republicans then led an effort to expel the three on grounds that they had broken “decorum.”

Johnson, who is white, survived an expulsion by just one vote. But Jones and Pearson, who are both Black, were expelled.

Other members with more severe offenses, such as child molestation, have not been expelled or charged with breaches of decorum in the same fashion the three Democrats were. Another member, Justin Lafferty, who once defended the three-fifths compromise, assaulted Jones on the House floor while Republicans advanced the expulsion votes. Lafferty was not found to be breaching decorum.

Both Jones’s and Pearson’s seats will still have special elections in the coming months, and both have expressed their plans to run and officially retake their seats.

Despite Jones’s and Pearson’s return, and massive public pressure both state- and nationwide, Republicans have still reportedly been trying to find a way to impose their anti-democratic desires on the process. Republican state lawmakers have allegedly been toying with taking away government funding for Memphis projects if Pearson is reappointed. The funds specifically are reported to have been set aside for schools and sports stadiums, like NBA team Memphis Grizzlies’ FedExForum or the University of Memphis’s Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium.

Attorneys representing Jones and Pearson sent a letter to Sexton on Monday, however, warning Republicans of potential constitutional violations if they dig in their heels.

“The world is watching Tennessee,” they wrote. “Any partisan retributive action, such as discriminatory treatment of elected officials, or threats or actions to withhold funding for government programs, would constitute further unconstitutional action that would require redress.”