At least 18 dead after tornadoes rake Midwest, South

WYNNE, Ark. — Storms that dropped possibly dozens of tornadoes killed at least 18 people in small towns and big cities across the South and Midwest, tearing a path through the Arkansas capital, collapsing the roof of a packed concert venue in Illinois, and leaving people throughout the region bewildered Saturday by the damage.

Confirmed or suspected tornadoes in at least seven states destroyed homes and businesses, splintered trees, and lay waste to neighborhoods across a swath of the country home to some 85 million people. The dead included seven in Tennessee's McNairy County, four in the small town of Wynne, Arkansas, and three in Sullivan, Indiana.

Other deaths were reported in Alabama, Illinois and Mississippi, along with one near Little Rock, where the mayor said more than 2,000 buildings were in a tornado's path.

Stunned residents of Wynne, a community of about 8,000 people 50 miles west of Memphis, Tennessee, woke Saturday to find the high school's roof shredded and its windows blown out. Huge trees lay on the ground, their stumps reduced to nubs. Broken walls, windows and roofs pocked homes and businesses.

Debris and memories of regular life lay scattered inside the damaged shells of homes and strewn on lawns: clothing, insulation, roofing paper, toys, splintered furniture, a pickup truck with its windows shattered.

“I’m sad that my town has been hit so hard,” said Heidi Jenkins, a salon owner. “Our school is gone, my church is gone. I’m sad for all the people who lost their homes.”

Recovery was already underway, with workers using chain saws to cut fallen trees and bulldozers moving material from shattered structures. Utility trucks worked to restore power. Groups of volunteers gathered to plan their day.

Seven people died in McNairy County, east of Memphis along the Mississippi border, said David Leckner, the mayor of Adamsville.

“The majority of the damage has been done to homes and residential areas,” Leckner said, adding that although it appeared all people had been accounted for, crews were going door to door to be sure.

In Belvidere, Illinois, some of the 260 people attending a heavy metal concert at the Apollo Theatre pulled a man from the rubble after part of the roof collapsed; he was dead when emergency workers arrived. Officials said 28 other people were injured at the theater, some severely.

“They dragged someone out from the rubble, and I sat with him and I held his hand and I was (telling him) ‘It’s going to be OK.’ I didn’t really know much else what to do," concertgoer Gabrielle Lewellyn told WTVO-TV.

The venue's Facebook page said the bands scheduled to perform were Morbid Angel, Crypta, Skeletal Remains and Revocation.

Crews worked Saturday to clean up around the Apollo, with forklifts pulling away loosely hanging bricks. Business owners picked up shards of glass and covered shattered windows.

Three people died in Indiana's Sullivan County, near the Illinois line about 95 miles southwest of Indianapolis.

Sullivan Mayor Clint Lamb said at a news conference that an area south of the county seat of about 4,000 “is essentially unrecognizable right now" and that several people were rescued from rubble overnight. There were reports of as many as 12 people injured, he said, and search-and-rescue teams combed damaged areas.

“Quite frankly, I’m really, really shocked there isn’t more as far as human issues,” he said, adding that recovery “is going to be a very long process.”

In the Little Rock area, at least one person was killed and more than two dozen were hurt, some critically, authorities said. Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott said that 2,100 homes and businesses were in the tornado's path, but that no assessment had been done on how many were damaged.

Joanna McFadden was at a nail salon with two other people when the tornado struck.

“The only way we knew the tornado was coming, the leaves were swirling, that’s the only way we knew, it looked like it was standing still,” McFadden said. She and the others took shelter in the back.

Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders activated 100 members of the National Guard to help local authorities respond.

A suspected tornado killed a woman in northern Alabama’s Madison County, said county official Mac McCutcheon. And in northern Mississippi's Pontotoc County, officials confirmed one death and four injuries.

The storms struck just hours after President Joe Biden visited the Mississippi community of Rolling Fork, where tornadoes last week destroyed parts of town.

In western Tennessee, Tipton County Sheriff Shannon Beasley wrote on Facebook early Saturday that there was “much devastation” and “some severe injuries" but no reports of deaths yet. But he said many families “lost homes that were leveled to the ground.”

Tornadoes also caused sporadic damage in eastern Iowa, including one just west of Iowa City, home to the University of Iowa. Television footage showed toppled power poles and roofs ripped off buildings and homes in the area.

It could take days to determine the exact number of tornadoes, said Bill Bunting, chief of forecast operations at the Storm Prediction Center. There were also hundreds of reports of large hail and damaging winds, he said.

“That’s a quite active day. But that’s not unprecedented,” he said.

Tens of thousands lost power because of the sprawling storm system that also brought wildfires to the southern Plains and blizzard conditions to the Upper Midwest.

The number of customers in Arkansas without electricity fell from nearly 90,000 to about 52,000, according to Poweroutage.us. There were 69,000 without power in Indiana, 33,000 in Illinois and 1,300 in Oklahoma. Outages were also reported in Iowa, Missouri, Tennessee, Wisconsin and Texas.

Hail broke windows on cars and buildings northeast of Peoria, Illinois. And blizzard conditions whipped parts of Minnesota, the Dakotas and Wisconsin, cutting power to tens of thousands in the Twin Cities area. Parts of Interstate 29 were closed.

Nearly 100 new wildfires were reported Friday in Oklahoma, according to the state forest service, and firefighters hoped to gain ground against them Saturday. Fires were expected to remain a danger through the week.

Crews battled several blazes near El Dorado, Kansas, and some residents were asked to evacuate, including about 250 elementary school children who were relocated to a high school.

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/0LpcUNw
via IFTTT

Read More

Trump Wants to Lead a ‘Third World Nation’

If the facts are against you,the old legal adage says, hammer the law. If the law is against you, hammer the facts. If the facts and the law are against you, hammer opposing counsel.

To that timeless judicial wisdom Donald Trump has added this codicil: If the facts are against you and so is the law and your opposing counsel survives all your doubletalk, start calling your prosecution something out of a “third world nation.” That’s precisely what the former president posted to his Truth Social account Thursday evening when news of his indictment was confirmed by the Manhattan district attorney. “The USA is now a third world nation, a nation in serious decline. So sad!” Trump wrote in all caps.

Other members of the Trump family seconded their paterfamilias’ charge. “This is third world prosecutorial misconduct. It is the opportunistic targeting of a political opponent in a campaign year,” tweeted son Eric. “The ruling party is trying to jail the opposition leader like a third world dictatorship!” repeated son Don Jr. Defeated Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake joined in, issuing a supporting statement: “Jailing your political opponents based on frivolous politically-motivated accusations is something that you’d expect to see out of third-world dictatorships or banana republicans.” Trump’s super PAC chief Taylor Budowich was only slightly off message, calling the grand jury vote the “indictment of a failed nation.”

Stating simply that he was innocent might have been the more prudent — and accurate — alternative. But prudence and accuracy have never been in Trump’s toolkit, nor has respect for the court. Ever since he appeared on the political horizon — hell, ever since he grew out of short pants — Trump has scorned and degraded practically every democratic institution that has limited or challenged him.

When elections go against him, he bashed the election as corrupt. When the courts defied him, he torched the judges as “so-called” or having “an agenda” or making political judgments rather than judicial ones or of “disgracing the judiciary.” In 2020, he demanded, with little rationale, that Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg recuse themselves from any case involving him. In Trump’s hermetically sealed world, the only evidence needed to declare corruption or banana republichood was that a ruling had gone against him.

Other presidents have clashed with the judiciary, the intelligence community, federal law enforcement and the civil service, but never to the Trumpian extreme of challenging the institutions’ legitimacy. If there is anything remotely “third world” about the United States, the malicious odor of Donald Trump cannot be distant from the stink. The unfounded slurs Trump flings at the courts and the election processes are the sort of acts that “third-world dictators” commit. Trump isn’t the victim of third-worldism, he’s the cause.

In fact, that Trump now faces potential accountability for his actions proves the United States is not a failed state after all.

Trump proved his absolute allegiance to third-worldism and his desire for dictatorial powers in December 2022 when he famously took to Truth Social to call for the “termination” of the U.S. Constitution to undo what he called the “massive & widespread fraud & deception” of the 2020 election. No matter what the country’s faults — and they are many — the Constitution has prevented a Mussolini or worse from taking absolute power. This demand for the termination of the Constitution and his egging on and tolerance of the Jan. 6 Capitol rioters only proves his ambition to wreck the nation if it will save his hide.

In his 2016 inaugural address, Trump exhibited his demagogic mindset by describing our nation as engulfed in “carnage” to further his personal political gain. In 2018, he ran down Haiti and the nations of Africa as “shithole” countries while discussing his opposition to immigration.

Today, with prosecutions unfolding in Manhattan and perhaps soon to come in Georgia and beyond, he’s playing a similar word game in hopes of discrediting the courts for his personal gain. In Trump’s view, America is a ruined and backward country — “third world,” as he and his clan put it — not because it resembles any such country in the world but solely because the wheels of justice have rolled up to his address. In Trump’s mind, everything has always been about him. You can’t get more “third world” than a president who instigates a riot to stall the orderly transition of power.

In a democracy, nobody is above the rule of law, not even former presidents. We see through all of his rationalizations, including his latest, which holds that if the justice system prosecutes him, America is just another shithole.

******

“Johnny’s playroom/ Is a bunker filled with sand/ He’s become a third world man.” Please listen to Steely Dan’s “Third World Man.” Send your favorite Dan tracks to Shafer.Politico@gmail.com. No new email alert subscriptions are being honored at this time. My Twitter feed grew up in Indonesia, the one-time capital of the Third World. My Mastodon account has a vacation home in Mali. My Post account is currently seasteading. My RSS feed belongs to the yet-to-be-explored Fourth World.

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/v9LDeTB
via IFTTT

Read More

Far-right influencer convicted in voter suppression scheme

NEW YORK — A self-styled far-right propagandist from Florida was convicted Friday of charges alleging that he conspired to deprive individuals of their right to vote in the 2016 presidential election.

Douglass Mackey, 33, of West Palm Beach, Florida, was convicted in Brooklyn federal court before Judge Ann M. Donnelly after a one-week trial. On the internet, he was known as “Ricky Vaughn.”

In 2016, Mackey had about 58,000 Twitter followers and was ranked by the MIT Media Lab as the 107th-most important influencer of the then-upcoming presidential election, prosecutors said. He had described himself as an “American nationalist” who regularly retweeted Trump and promoted conspiracy theories about voter fraud by Democrats.

Mackey, who was arrested in January 2021, could face up to 10 years in prison. His sentencing is set for Aug. 16.

His lawyer, Andrew Frisch, said in an email that the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan will have multiple reasons to choose from to vacate the conviction.

“We are optimistic about our chances on appeal,” Frisch said.

U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said in a release that the jury rejected Mackey’s cynical attempt to use the First Amendment free speech protections to shield himself from criminal liability for a voter suppression scheme.

“Today’s verdict proves that the defendant’s fraudulent actions crossed a line into criminality," he said.

The government alleged that from September 2016 to November 2016, Mackey conspired with several other internet influencers to spread fraudulent messages to Clinton supporters.

Prosecutors told jurors during the trial that Mackey urged supporters of then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to “vote” via text message or social media, knowing that those endorsements were not legally valid votes.

At about the same time, prosecutors said, he was sending tweets suggesting that it was important to limit “black turnout” at voting booths. One tweet he sent showed a photo of a Black woman with a Clinton campaign sign, encouraging people to “avoid the line” and “vote from home,” court papers said.

Using social media pitches, one image encouraging phony votes utilized a font similar to one used by the Clinton campaign in authentic ads, prosecutors said. Others tried to mimic Clinton's ads in other ways, they added.

By Election Day in 2016, at least 4,900 unique telephone numbers texted “Hillary” or something similar to a text number that was spread by multiple deceptive campaign images tweeted by Mackey and co-conspirators, prosecutors said.

Twitter has said it worked closely with appropriate authorities on the issue.

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/Q2fmZFN
via IFTTT

Read More

Judge sends Dominion lawsuit against Fox News to trial

In a blow to Fox News, a Delaware judge ruled Friday that a jury should decide a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit claiming that the channel broadcast numerous false statements about voter fraud after the 2020 election.

Judge Eric Davis concluded that Dominion Voting Systems, which makes election equipment, had proven that Fox aired a series of false claims about the company, but that depositions, internal emails and text messages had not established whether Fox acted with “actual malice” by carrying statements on its air that it knew were false or likely so.

The evidence is “CRYSTAL clear that none of the Statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true,” Davis wrote. Fox’s false statements included assertions that the company was controlled by Venezuela and implemented a bizarre algorithm to boost Democrats’ vote count under certain conditions, the judge said.

Some uncertainty remained about who at Fox authorized specific broadcasts and what those people knew or believed at the time, Davis continued.

“The Court does not weigh the evidence to determine who may have been responsible for publication and if such people acted with actual malice – these are genuine issues of material fact and therefore must be determined by a jury,” the judge wrote in his 81-page ruling.

Fox reacted to the ruling by insisting that the company is standing up for free-speech principles.

“This case is and always has been about the First Amendment protections of the media’s absolute right to cover the news. Fox will continue to fiercely advocate for the rights of free speech and a free press as we move into the next phase of these proceedings,” the company said.

A spokesperson for Dominion welcomed Davis’ ruling. “We are gratified by the Court's thorough ruling soundly rejecting all of Fox's arguments and defenses, and finding as a matter of law that their statements about Dominion are false. We look forward to going to trial,” the firm said.

Davis has set jury selection for April 13 and the trial to begin in April 17 in Delaware Superior Court in Wilmington, assuming that the sides don’t reach a financial settlement in the meantime.

The trial is expected to feature testimony from top Fox personalities including Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and others. The pre-trial litigation has already uncovered documents showing that the hosts and anchors did not believe many of the charges being leveled on their programs and that, in the wake of President Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 race, the company was desperately looking for ways to keep its Trump-supporting viewers from defecting to rivals like Newsmax and One America News.

Dominion filed the suit in 2021, contending that Fox gravely damaged the voting company’s reputation by repeatedly airing false charges about it even after being given details about the misstatements.

In recent court filings, Fox’s attorneys argued that the network wasn’t endorsing the claims leveled by Trump and allies like Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, but was simply conveying newsworthy statements being issued by important public figures. The judge rejected those arguments.

“Fox dedicates little to its argument on falsity. It claims that ‘[t]he question is whether the press reported the “true” fact that the President made those allegations,’” Davis wrote. “However, falsity refers to the content of the statement, not the act of republishing it. Therefore, the question of falsity is whether the content of the allegations was true, not whether Fox truthfully republished the allegations.”

Davis also said Fox’s reports and interviews often aired the claims without rebuttal or context, further undercutting the network’s arguments.

“The evidence does not support that FNN conducted good-faith, disinterested reporting….FNN’s failure to reveal extensive contradicting evidence from the public sphere and Dominion itself indicates its reporting was not disinterested,” the judge wrote.

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/ZvS2GDw
via IFTTT

Read More

‘Annoying’: Trump rivals hunker down for the indictment primary

If there was ever room for a Republican critical of Donald Trump in the 2024 GOP field, it all but disappeared on Thursday night.

Within a matter of hours following Trump’s indictment, his rivals and the nation’s most influential, once-Trump-wary conservative news outlet, Fox News, rallied to his defense. Even Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Trump’s most prominent Republican opponent, came to heel, pledging to refuse any extradition request ahead of what is expected to be Trump’s likely surrender next week.

By Friday morning, even Trump’s most ardent detractors acknowledged how little ground could be gained by siding against the party’s embattled former president.

“As bad as it was for Trump, it was worse for DeSantis and everyone else,” said Mike Madrid, the Republican strategist and co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. “It rallies the base—there’s this rally around the flag effect for Trump. Second, probably most importantly, it just completely sucks the oxygen out of the room.”

In a less polarized political climate, an indictment from a grand jury targeting a primary frontrunner would create an opening for another candidate, let alone an indictment that remains under seal and its specifics unknown—never mind a general election.

So far that isn't happening, even in a GOP increasingly obsessed with electability following the loss of the White House in 2020 and disappointing midterm elections in 2022.

Across the field on Friday, GOP strategists said their candidates were hunkering down, wish-casting the news away.

“This news cycle will last days, not months,” said a senior adviser to a prospective candidate granted anonymity to discuss their camp’s political calculus, conceding the development does thrust Trump to the center of the primary.

“Annoying,” carped another 2024 hopeful’s strategist, granted anonymity for the same reason.. “We’ve already been talking about this for two weeks because Trump cried wolf,” the strategist said.

A third strategist working on a different potential GOP competitor’s campaign, also granted anonymity to discuss the dynamics of the race, acknowledged there is no way to beat Trump in the primary by cheering on the Manhattan prosecution. This person likened the indictment Thursday to news last year of the Supreme Court reaching a decision in the Dobbs case: “There was a big surprise when this came down, but you’ve been lying in wait, expecting it for a little bit.”

The GOP’s circling of the wagons is the surest sign yet that the coming months of the primary will orbit solely around the party’s standard-bearer. Every court proceeding, every new twist in the case will represent a litmus test other candidates in the field will either pass or fail.

It also underscores the narrowness of the path Trump’s opponents have to navigate: While the Never Trump movement has always consisted of an ineffectual sliver of the broader GOP—a sideshow to Trump’s main event— the movement hit rock bottom Thursday.

From former Vice President Mike Pence to Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, would-be Trump challengers castigated Democratic Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s decision to indict Trump. As Pence had it: “outrageous.” “Beyond belief,” Youngkin tweeted. Even Ohio State Sen. Matt Dolan, the U.S. Senate candidate who had not previously bowed to kiss Trump’s ring, called Bragg’s actions “politically motivated.”

And former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who vowed earlier this week to never back Trump again and who appeared to be carving a lane for himself in the GOP primary as Trump’s critic in chief, has been conspicuously silent since news of the indictment broke.

New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, who’s called for the party to move on from Trump in 2024 but said he would still support him if he’s the nominee, wouldn’t distance himself too much from the former president in an interview with POLITICO last week. “You have to hold everyone to the rule of law,” Sununu said, “but clearly there’s been some hesitation on whether they could really find anybody guilty on this.”

Former New Hampshire GOP Chair Fergus Cullen said, “Never blame a politician for acting like a politician, whether you’re Chris Sununu or Nikki Haley or even Mike Pence, you’re not trying to alienate the 75 percent of primary voters” who still support Trump or remain open to him as the nominee. “Maybe someone would have the decency to not defend [Trump], or point out that this is a behavior that gives them concerns, but that’s asking a lot.”

Though the Republican field is siding with Trump in the early days of the primary, it doesn't foreclose the possibility they will pivot when and if future criminal cases are brought against him.

In a previously booked interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Thursday evening, Pence left perhaps the most wiggle room of any possible challenger in his response about whether Trump, if convicted, should drop out of the race.

“It’s a long way to that decision,” Pence said, “I promise to answer that question if it approaches.”

Still, just one likely, longshot GOP candidate so far, Asa Hutchinson, has said Trump’s indictment should be disqualifying, evidence of a dearth of Republicans willing to endure the attendant slings and arrows of attacking Trump first. Especially not after the blowback DeSantis received by criticizing Trump on moral grounds, saying at a press conference last week he didn’t “know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star.”

The former Arkansas governor, who has yet to show signs of gaining any traction with the Republican electorate, said earlier this month Trump should drop out of the presidential race if indicted. Hutchinson seems undeterred that his stance on Trump is unpopular with the base: he has continued to prepare for an announcement next month. On Wednesday, he called a Trump donor to seek a meeting ahead of his planned campaign launch, according to a copy of the voicemail obtained by POLITICO.

“There is an opportunity for somebody who’s really good at this,” said Sarah Longwell, the Republican political strategist and publisher of the Never-Trump Bulwark. “We just don’t have that person.”

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/vK4tyJM
via IFTTT

Read More

Florida House passes parental rights bill restricting pronouns in schools

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — House Republicans in Florida passed a wide-ranging education bill Friday targeting how teachers and students can use their pronouns in schools, building on the state’s parental rights law that critics call “Don’t Say Gay.”

The proposal tightens restrictions on school lessons about sexual identity and gender orientation, which lawmakers say should happen at home. It also would require libraries pull books from shelves within five days if someone objects to the content in a change opponents contend amounts to censorship.

The measure is part of the push by Florida conservatives to uproot what they say is “indoctrination” in schools and is one of several bills taken up this session focusing on the LGBTQ community and transness.

With the 77-35 vote that saw House Democrats in opposition, the legislation is on the cusp of passing the Legislature but is awaiting a final committee hearing in the Senate. Two Republicans — State Rep. Demi Busatta Cabrera (R-Coral Gables) and Rep. Will Robinson (R-Bradenton) — crossed party lines and voted against the bill.

“For those who think our schools should be some sort of social justice experiment, I challenge you this: I don’t agree with any of it, but when 100 percent of our children are proficient in reading, and 100 percent of our children are proficient in math, then there is time for all of this silliness,” said state Rep. Randy Fine (R-Palm Bay). “You want to know what hurts children? It’s the fact that they can’t read, it’s the fact that they can’t do math.”

The bill, FL HB1069 (23R), would broaden the state’s prohibition on teaching about sexual identity and gender orientation from kindergarten through third grade to pre-K through eighth grade. This was a key piece in the Parental Rights in Education bill, known nationally as “Don’t Say Gay,” that was one of the more controversial policies passed by state lawmakers in 2022.

It also targets how school staff and students can use pronouns on K-12 campuses. Specifically, the legislation stipulates that school employees can’t ask students for their preferred pronouns and restricts school staff from sharing their pronouns with students if they “do not correspond” with their sex. Under the bill, it would be “false to ascribe” a person with a pronoun that “does not correspond to such person’s sex.”

As lawmakers voted on the bill, scores of LGBTQ advocates protested outside the House chamber, chanting in opposition of Gov. Ron DeSantis, who supports the parental rights expansions, and Republicans who passed it.

Most Florida Democrats have joined them in fighting the legislation, arguing the policies equate to sex discrimination and are disrespectful to LGBTQ students and families. They contend that the bill disregards the rights of parents who support their children being LGBTQ for the sake of others.

“In this body, our duty to our constituents is to make sure that every single constituent is seen and heard in our legislation,” said state Rep. Ashley Gantt (D-Miami). “And this bill does nothing but tell certain parts of our community in Florida that they don’t exist.”

Republican legislators, who hold a supermajority, maintain that expanding the parental rights law is necessary to ensure the state’s youngest students learn about adult topics like sexual orientation and gender identity from their parents instead of at school. Similar to last year when the parental rights bill was introduced, conservatives say the controversy over the proposal is a “manufactured narrative” and criticize advocacy groups and some school districts for politicizing the issue.

The legislation tackles an issue central to the parental rights polices lawmakers approved in 2022, which was inspired by a case in Leon County where parents claim that school officials helped their child transition to a different gender without informing them.

“I’m very concerned when I hear this bill being correlated with another bill, the Parental Rights in Education bill,” said state Rep. Fabián Basabe (R-Miami Beach). “And we’re still calling it the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill when I know we’ve all spoken … on how much work has been put into that bill to change any words that may be interpreted as targeting.”

HB 1069 also adds to legislation passed by Republicans last year to increase transparency about what books are available to students.

The bill aims to expand Florida law to require that books facing objections for being pornographic, harmful to minors, or describe or depict sexual activity must be pulled within five days and remain out of circulation for the duration of the challenge.

It also expands school board jurisdiction to classroom libraries. The bill would allow a parent who disagrees with a district's ruling on a book challenge to appeal the state education commissioner to appoint a special magistrate to hear the dispute.

This comes as DeSantis, along with other Florida conservatives, seek to remove books with graphic content from schools, taking aim at specific titles such as "Gender Queer: A Memoir" by Maia Kobabe, which depicts sex acts. Another measure in the bill stipulates that the Florida Department of Education must approve all materials for sex education classes, breaking from current policy of having local school boards pass them every year.

Democrats argue that the bill is too vague and could lead to parents challenging a large number of books that would then be kept off the shelves. They pointed to challenges to media that have played out across the state such as the Ruby Bridges movie being called out by a parent in Pinellas County, where it remains unavailable to other students in the district.

“This bill has given a ticket for racist, homophobic people — that this chamber does not support – to pull books that matter to our children,” said state Rep. Robin Bartleman (D-Weston).

The Senate parental rights bill, FL SB1320 (23R), is slated for a second and final hearing before the chamber’s Fiscal Policy committee, although no date has been set as of yet.

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/9QsyVJ8
via IFTTT

Read More

Lost in translation: Washington and Brussels face pushback on effort to patch trade rift

The United States and European Union are racing to settle their dispute over tax credits for electric vehicles, but their attempted fix is creating new problems for each of them back home.

Lawmakers on both sides of the Atlantic complain leaders are circumventing the standard approval process for free trade agreements in their attempt to heal the rift. The potential deal between the Biden administration and the EU would qualify European automakers for some of the taxpayer subsidies embedded in the Inflation Reduction Act, the $369 billion climate and tax legislation that the U.S. Congress passed last year.

Those negotiations will set a precedent, the lawmakers worry, that could cut Congress and the EU’s member countries out of decisions that carry major political and economic consequences. In the U.S., lawmakers said this week they are weighing action to reclaim their authority.

“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again so there is no confusion: Congress will not, under any circumstance, forfeit our constitutionally mandated oversight responsibility of all trade matters,” Rep. Adrian Smith (R-Neb.), chair of the House Ways and Means trade subcommittee, said in a statement Friday. “This is unacceptable and unconstitutional, and I intend to use every tool at my disposal to stop this blatant executive overreach.”

According to a proposed rule the U.S. Treasury Department released Friday, the term “free trade agreement” as it applies to the Inflation Reduction Act includes deals in which the U.S. and other countries reduce, eliminate or refrain from imposing tariffs and export restrictions, and aim to raise standards in areas such as labor rights and environmental protection. That’s a broader definition than has traditionally been used.

Under those criteria, a critical minerals agreement the Biden administration signed with Japan this week, as well as the one the U.S. and EU soon hope to sign, will qualify as “free trade agreements,” even though they have not received congressional approval. That would clear the way for electric vehicles made with minerals from Japanese and European companies to receive additional U.S. tax breaks.

Members of Congress are likely to protest that interpretation in their comments to Treasury, and some have hinted they may take legal action or attempt to pass new legislation in response.

The tug of war between the White House and Congress over trade policy is not new, but it has become more acute under the Biden administration, said Kathleen Claussen, a Georgetown University law professor who specializes in international economic law. She anticipates the administration’s definition of “free trade agreement” could wind up in court.

“At stake is the sort of future of how we think about what a trade agreement is,” said Claussen, a former associate general counsel at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. “It's important for Congress to decide sooner rather than later where it is going to draw the line.”

The Inflation Reduction Act — a crucial element of President Joe Biden’s climate agenda — provides a tax credit worth up to $7,500 for consumers who purchase electric vehicles produced in North America, which members of Congress who voted for the law say is critical to spurring the domestic clean tech manufacturing sector.

“We intentionally structured tax credits to not just decarbonize the U.S. economy, but to erase the lead that China and other countries have in manufacturing green infrastructure,” Democratic Sens. Bob Casey and John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Sherrod Brown of Ohio wrote in a letter to the Treasury Department sent Thursday.

To qualify for the full IRA tax credit, the vehicle must include a battery made with critical minerals from the U.S. or a “free trade agreement” partner.

That creates a semantic imperative for the U.S. and EU to call any minerals deal a “free trade agreement,” even though such pacts would traditionally require the approval of Congress and, in the European Union, its member countries as well as the European Parliament.

“This is procedurally just very, very complicated,” said one EU diplomat, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing deliberations. “We want to call it a non-binding instrument, but we have to think about the American domestic context as well. So, it’s better to call it an FTA-light.”

The view from Washington

American presidents have long negotiated “free trade agreements,” but the term is not technically defined in U.S. law. It is commonly understood to be a pact designed to lower tariffs and open foreign markets after winning the approval of Congress, a concept that has been forged through decades of practical experience.

The Biden administration appears to be breaking from that tradition. While the Trump administration did not seek congressional approval for trade deals it brokered with China and Japan, stoking the ire of lawmakers, it did not attempt to define those pacts as equivalent to comprehensive free trade agreements.

USTR has inked sector-specific agreements in the past without seeking the approval of Congress. And the Treasury Department asserts it has the authority to designate a “free trade agreement” in the context of the Inflation Reduction Act because Congress did not define the term when it wrote the text. The definition Treasury released Friday is slated to take effect April 18.

But this week, the U.S. Trade Representative’s office updated its online roster of U.S. free trade agreements to include a new category of deals. There are the “comprehensive free trade agreements” that already exist with 20 other countries, and then there is the new “agreement focusing on free trade in critical minerals” with Japan, which USTR signed earlier this week. Both are designated as “free trade agreements.”

U.S. lawmakers on both sides of the aisle flatly condemned the pact with Japan, not only for the terms of the deal but for how the administration went about negotiating it.

Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and House Ways and Means ranking member Richard Neal (D-Mass.), who also happens to have been U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai’s former boss when she was a congressional staffer, declared the agreement “unacceptable” in a joint statement.

“It’s clear this agreement is one of convenience,” the two senior Democrats said. And they warned that Tai had exceeded the power given to her by Congress. “The administration does not have the authority to unilaterally enter into free trade agreements.”

Wyden and Neal’s Republican counterparts, Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.), were also quick to skewer the deal. Smith offered perhaps the most colorful language, saying the administration is “distorting the plain text of U.S. law to write as many green corporate welfare checks as possible.”

Meanwhile, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), one of the key negotiators on the IRA, threatened legal action over the Treasury Department’s interpretation of the electric vehicle tax credit on Wednesday. But he also suggested partners like Japan and the EU should qualify for the perks. His office declined to clarify his position.

In response to lawmaker criticism over the process for finalizing a similar critical minerals deal with Japan, a USTR spokesperson pointed to Tai's recent congressional testimony in which she said "further enhancements" would make it easier for congressional staff to review negotiating text, make text summaries available to the public and hold more meetings with the public.

The view from Brussels

In Brussels, four EU diplomats, who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak freely, told POLITICO they are increasingly nervous about the critical minerals negotiations because the legal format of the final deal remains unclear.

The EU’s trade chief Valdis Dombrovskis said at an event earlier this week that “we are currently discussing with the U.S. the exact content and the potential legal procedures.”

Two EU officials, who spoke to POLITICO on the condition of anonymity to discuss the unfinished deal, insist the European Commission needs to secure a mandate from member countries for any free trade agreement, even if it’s limited in scope. What’s more, such deals typically require the approval of the European Parliament and EU countries, a process that usually takes several months.

Miriam García Ferrer, a spokesperson for the European Commission, declined to say whether the deal requires a mandate from EU countries. “This will be a specific and targeted arrangement to ensure that EU companies are treated the same way as the U.S. companies under the IRA,” García Ferrer said.

Not all EU members share the same concerns about a mandate. Some EU countries in Brussels are keen to move quickly and avoid distractions that tend to arise in trade negotiations, saying it’s best to keep the end goal in sight of getting concessions from Washington on the Inflation Reduction Act.

Three of the EU diplomats said it would make more sense to wait until the end of the negotiations to determine the legal process on the EU side. “It’s too soon to discuss this,” one diplomat said. “Let’s wait and see what the Commission actually comes up with.”

Another diplomat added that “form should follow substance” and that most EU countries just want the European Commission to come up with a good result.

Moens reported from Brussels. Jakob Hanke Vela and Sarah Anne Aarup also contributed reporting from Brussels.

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/o4FOC9K
via IFTTT

Read More