Daily Archives: May 22, 2023

DeSantis signs LGBTQ+ bills for kids into law

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed bills Wednesday that ban gender-affirming care for minors, target drag shows, restrict discussion of personal pronouns in schools and force people to use certain bathrooms. DeSantis has made anti-LGBTQ+ legislation a large part of his agenda as he prepares to seek the Republican presidential nomination. (May 18)

AP

The NAACP issued a historic travel advisory for Florida over the weekend, listing five laws that Gov. Ron DeSantis signed as policies that were undemocratic and "hostile to Black Americans."

The civil rights group said that Florida has engaged in an all-out attack on Black Americans, accurate Black history, voting rights, members of the LGBTQ+ community, immigrants, womens reproductive rights, and free speech, while simultaneously embracing a culture of fear, bullying, and intimidation by public officials, in the released advisory.

It added that these attacks include criminalizing protests, restricting the ability of educators to teach African-American history and engaging in a war against diversity and inclusion.

NAACP Florida travel advisory: NAACP posts Florida travel warning, warns DeSantis' policies 'hostile to Black Americans'

DEI in Florida: DeSantis' new law defunds DEI programs in Florida state universities. What does it mean?

What you need to know: NAACP says Florida is 'openly hostile' toward African Americans

Jeremy Redfern, the governor's press secretary, responded to the announcement by saying, "This is a stunt."

Here's a deep dive at the five laws the NAACP referenced in its announcement.

DeSantis signed the Combatting Violence, Disorder and Looting and Law Enforcement Protection Act into law in 2021, which created new criminal offenses and increased penalties for those who target law enforcement and participate in violent or disorderly assemblies.

This law was ruledunconstitutionalin a 90-page decision by U.S. District Judge Mark Walker in Tallahassee.

Whats in Combatting Violence, Disorder and Looting and Law Enforcement Protection Act:

New Criminal Offenses to Combat Rioting, Looting and Violence

Who's benefited, who's targeted? Ron DeSantis Florida power play fueling a presidential run

Increased Penalties

Citizen and Taxpayer Protection Measures

Florida immigration law: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signs sweeping immigration bill SB 1718 into law. Five takeaways:

What opponents said:

Before the law was ruled unconstitutional, opponents said that the law was unclear and overly vague. For instance, the law wasnt clear on whether a person needed to be participating in a violent act or within the vicinity while protesting to be charged.

This led to warnings that the law could be broadly interpreted by law enforcement. And there was ambiguity surrounding the laws definition of riot, leading to many saying that just participating in a peaceful protest could lead to severe criminal charges.

DeSantis signed HB 7 into law in 2022, and was meant to give businesses, employees, children and families tools to stand up against discrimination and woke indoctrination.

The bill included provisions to prevent discriminatory instruction in the workplace and public schools and defines individual freedoms based on the fundamental truth that all individuals are equal before the law and have inalienable rights, and was meant to take on corporate wokeness and Critical Race Theory in schools in one law.

What does 'woke' mean? What does 'woke' mean and why does Florida Governor Ron DeSantis want to stop it?

Whats in HB 7:

Medical conscience bill: DeSantis signs controversial medical conscience bill, touts Florida as 'Prescribe Freedom' state

What opponents say:

Heres what the ACLU says about the law:

DeSantis signed HB 543 into law in April. The new law strengthened Floridas Second Amendment rights by allowing Floridians to carry concealed weapons without a government-issued permit. It will go into effect on July 1.

Whats in HB 543:

HB 543 is a short bill that does exactly what it says: Allows Florida residents to carry concealed weapons without a government-issued permit.

To carry a concealed weapon or a concealed firearm without a license, the person must still be eligible for a Florida Concealed Weapon or Firearm License based on the outlined criteria in Section 790.06, however, the person is no longer required to complete training or pay a licensing fee.

Here are the criteria highlights:

Find the full listhere.

Florida anti-LGBTQ laws: Four new Florida laws target transgender, broader LGBTQ community. Here's what they do

In May, DeSantis signed HB 266, which prohibits institutions from spending federal or state dollars on discriminatory initiatives like diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs.

The bill prohibits programs, majors, minors, curriculum and general education core courses that violate Florida law regarding prohibited discrimination or that are based on theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States and were created to maintain social, political and economic inequities.

Whats in SB 266:

What opponents say:

Disney pulls plug on Florida: Yes, Disney pulled plug on $1 billion Florida project but not its future plans. What to know.

SB 7066 was signed into law in 2019 and addressed Amendment 4, which Florida voters passed in 2018, that restored voting rights for some convicted felons. The new law enumerated a uniform list of crimes that fall into the excluded categories and confirmed that Amendment 4 did not apply to a felon who had failed to complete all terms of their sentence.

This law required that people with past convictions must pay all of their outstanding legal fees, costs, fines and restitution before they could regain their right to vote, but U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle found that these requirements violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment by discriminating based on wealth.

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Florida's 'hostile' laws? Five laws NAACP listed in travel advisory. - St. Augustine Record

A top Iranian budget official has revealed that President Ebrahim Raisis administration'sfaces a huge budget deficitthis year, despite official assurances.

Rahim Mombeini, the deputy head of Irans Planning and Budget Organization, whose boss was recently sacked by President Ebrahim Raisi, said Saturday that Irans budget deficit for the previous Iranian year which ended on March 20 was about 8,000 trillion rials (about $16 billion in todays exchange rates).

The figure is twice as much as the budget deficit of previous years, despite claims by Raisi administration officials who kept reassuring the nation that the budget did not have a deficit.

According to Mombeini, the amount of the Iranian government debts has increased about 900-fold over the past decade to 30 quadrillion rials, or $60 billion. This would be as much as 850 million barrels, or two years worth of oil exports at normal market prices.

Rahim Mombeini, the deputy head of Irans Planning and Budget Organization

This amount of debt, which is equivalent to 31% of the GDP, includes government debts to banks, the Central Bank of Iran, pension and social security funds, public and private sector contractors, and bonds that have been issued in previous years.

This colossal debt prompts the government to force the Central Bank to print money, leading to further inflation, which in turn forces the government to borrow more money, leading to a vicious circle.

British-Iranian economist Mohammad Hashem Pesaran, a former professor at the Faculty of Economics at the University of Cambridge,has recently warned that the current unstoppable decline in the value of the national currency and haphazard policies of the government is very likelyto trigger mass hyperinflation in Iran.

The former head of the Planning and Budget Organization Masoud Mirkazemi, who was replaced in March, had reacted to reports about a deficit of 4,000 trillion rials, claiming that that those who say there is such a deficitare"wrong" and that "we do not have a deficit at all". Mirkazemiclaimed that 93 percent of the budget was fulfilled in the previous Iranian year that ended on March 20.

Irans currency rial has halved in value since early September and is now trading at more than 500,000 to the US dollar. This immediatelytranslates into higher consumer prices, which have seen double digit annual increases since 2018 when the United States withdrew from the JCPOA nuclear deal and imposed sanctions.

Last week, a news website in Iran quoted a central bank sourceas saying that inflation in the first Iranian month of the year (March 21-April 20) rose by 68.7 compared to the same period last year.

If true, this would representa nearly 20-percentjump compared to the inflation rate last reported by the government in early 2023. The Central Bank of Iran and the Statistical Center of Iran have not released figures on point-to-point inflation for the past two months, comparing prices to the same months in the past year.

The period in question coincides withpersisting low exchange ratesfor the rial. One year ago, the rial was trading at around 300,000 to the dollar, while in early May it dropped to as low as 550,000.

Even though Iran has one of the worlds largest, and most untapped, sources of oil and gas, Iran would need oil priced at $351.7a barrel to balance its budget next year, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said in its latest report released late last month.The current price of Brent Crude, which is way higherthan the OPEC basket, is about $70 per barrel. Add to this the handsome discount the regime has togive to buyers who risk US and international penalties to trade with heavily-sanctionedIran.

Another Iranian website compared the Islamic Republics economic situation to that of the Roman empire just before its collapse. The alarming comparison with the Roman Empire is not too far-fetched, as Iran faces a more immediate danger of rebellion by ever-impoverished masses.

Although large-scale anti-regime protests in the fall of 2022 were driven by social and political oppression, but the current economic crisis was also making hopeless young people restive. Also,labor unrest began to risein 2023, as workers real incomes declined.

See more here:

Iran Faces A Huge Budget Deficit It Tries To Conceal -

File photo (Image: Twitter/@SatyendarJain)

Jailed Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader and former Delhi minister Satyender Jain was taken to the Safdarjung Hospital on Monday from Tihar Jail after he complained of deterioration in his health, party sources said.

Jain was placed under arrest on May 30, 2022 by the ED under Section 19 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal prayed for better health of Jain and accused the Centre of oppression.

I pray to God for the better health of Satyendar Jain ji. The people of Delhi and the country are watching this arrogance and oppression of the BJP government very well. Even God will never forgive these oppressors. The public is with us in this struggle, God is with us, we are the disciples of Sardar Bhagat Singh ji. Our fight against oppression, injustice and dictatorship will continue, Kejriwal said in a tweet in Hindi.

Recently, Jain had consulted a psychologist inside the jail clinic who suggested that he should be around people and have social interactions after the AAP leader mentioned that he was depressed and feeling lonely.

The Supreme Court on Thursday had issued a notice on a bail plea by Satyendar Jain in a money laundering case.

Senior advocate AM Singhvi, representing Jain, submitted before a bench comprising AS Bopanna and Hima Kohli that his client has extreme health problems, he has lost 35 kgs and is a skeleton now.

The apex court issued notice on Jains plea and also gave him liberty to move the courts vacation bench seeking urgent listing of his plea against a Delhi High Court judgment denying him bail. The bench said, Issue noticeliberty to move vacation bencha. Additional Solicitor General SV Raju appeared for the Enforcement Directorate.

The ED had initiated a money laundering investigation on the basis of the FIR registered by the CBI in 2017 under Sections 13(2) read with 13(1)(e) of the PC Act, 1988 against Jain, his wife Poonam, and Ajit Prasad Jain, Sunil Kumar Jain, Vaibhav Jain, and Ankush Jain.

The CBI alleged that Satyendar Jain, while holding the office as a Minister in the Delhi government during February 14, 2015 to May 31, 2017, had acquired assets disproportionate to his known sources of income.

A charge sheet was filed by the CBI on December 3, 2018.

Earlier, the ED had provisionally attached immovable properties worth Rs 4.81 crore belonging to companies beneficially owned and controlled by Satyendar Jain on March 31, 2022.

See the original post:

Satyendar Jain taken to Safdarjung Hospital after losing 35 kgs - The Statesman

The deepening repression of the far-right Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is providing plenty of reasons for concern. The government has moved to further undermine the judiciary, threatening to leave government decisions entirely untethered from meaningful judicial oversight. It has pursued increasingly deadly raids and continues to expand illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

Yet the Western response to these dramatic and dangerous developments has been to recycle long-outdated talking points. Reacting to the latest settlement announcement, the German government, joined by France, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States, warned in March that the move might "undermine efforts to achieve a negotiated two-state solution."

The Israeli government's conduct certainly provides grounds for condemnation. But ritualistic invocation of the "two-state solution" cannot obscure the fact that for decades, the Israeli government has been expanding the settlements with the aim of making a Palestinian state impossible. It has largely succeeded. The settlements are war crimes, blatant violations of the prohibition in Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention on an occupier transferring members of its population to occupied territory.

At some point the International Criminal Court, which has opened an investigation, may prosecute some of the Israeli officials responsible. But the settlements are nonetheless a reality that cannot be wished away. In 2019, a former Israeli soldier from the group Breaking the Silence gave me a hilltop tour of the West Bank to better understand the layout of Israels settlements, outposts, bypass roads, and other obstacles to Palestinians moving freely within their territory.What is left is a Swiss cheese of Palestinian enclaves, with little hope of ever becoming a viable, contiguous state.

Kenneth Roth is the former long-standing executive director of Human Rights Watch.

After more than five decades of occupation and 30 years of the "peace process," it is no longer tenable to regard the repression of Israels occupation as a mere temporary phenomenon to be cured by a "peace process" without end. The "peace process"is moribund. While governments speak of a two-state solution, what we have today is a "one-state reality."Indeed, the main people still invoking the two-state solution seem to be Western officials desperately trying to avoid coming to terms with the unceasing nature of Israeli oppression.

Admittedly, the Palestinian Authority (PA) does not yet speak of a one-state reality. Its officials cling to the illusion of a peace process as the only way to maintain their position of power. Yet the PA has in effect become an Israeli government subcontractor with the task of keeping discontent with Israels repressive occupation in check. The credibility of the government of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is also limited by its failure to hold presidential or parliamentary elections since 2006. Along with the Israeli government, it fears that Hamas might win a new election, as it did last time parliamentary elections were held.

If Israel and Palestine are now bound together in a one-state reality, what is that reality? The leading Israeli human rights group, BTselem, and more than two dozen other Israeli groups; the leading Palestinian human rights group, al-Haq, and scores of other Palestinian rights groups; as well as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, United Nations experts, among others, have all concluded that it is apartheid.

This is meant not as an historical analogy to South Africa but as a careful analysis of the facts under the legal definition of apartheid contained in the United Nations convention on the crime of apartheid and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. That definition requires an intent to maintain a system of domination by one racial group over another, coupled with systematic oppression and specified inhumane acts, carried out on a widespread or systematic basis.

While there are differences in the scope of the various analyses, all agree that Israeli authorities are committing the crime of apartheid against millions of Palestinians. That has become the mainstream view of every serious human rights organization to have examined the issue. For example, Palestinians in the West Bank including East Jerusalem live with far fewer rights and far greater restrictions than their Israeli neighbors in the settlements next door.

Supporters of the Israeli government cannot avoid acknowledging this discrimination but have tended to dismiss its importance by arguing that it is temporarythat the "peace process" will resolve it. Given the endless "peace process,"with no serious talks in years, that response has long ceased to be credible.

Partisans of the Israeli government also cite Palestinian violence, but the challenge of meeting that violence does not explain building settlements that carve up the West Bankmaking Israelis more vulnerable, not lessstealing Palestinian water and land, or preventing Palestinians in Israeli-controlled parts of the West Bank from even adding a bedroom to their home.

Apartheid is not an easy label to apply, but it is the only fair one to describe the oppressive, discriminatory regime that the Israeli government imposesthe governments policy of privileging Jewish Israelis at the expense of Palestinians.

I understand that these are difficult truths for the German government especially to accept. It has understandably felt a special responsibility toward the Jewish people after the Holocaust. As the Federal Foreign Office puts it, "Germany has a unique relationship with Israel. This stems from Germanys responsibility for the Shoah, the systematic genocide of six million European Jews under National Socialism."

Or to put it in more negative terms, Israels far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said in March in response to mild criticism from German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, "The last ones who should be preaching to us are the Germans."

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and her Israeli counterpart Eli Cohen.

As the Jewish son of a father who grew up in Frankfurt and fled to New York as a 12-year-old boy in July 1938, I understand in a personal way the evil that the Nazi regime imposed. German reticence to speak of human rights to Israel is understandable, but today, it is wrong.

It is a mistake to equate the current Israeli government with the Jewish people. Jews took two very different lessons from the Holocaust, only one of which is represented by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his band of extremist ministers.

They believe that the Nazis persecuted the Jews because the Jews were weak. Netanyahu and his ilk have constructed a state that is strong, which is understandable, but also brutal, which is wrong. The message seems to be that if anyone messes with Israel, they will be not only stopped but also crushed. Palestinians under occupation are the main victims of that logic of repression.

The alternative perspective, which I share, is that power is never enough for protection, especially in a world where a single nuclear weapon in the hands of a hostile state could do terrible harm. Rather, we need to build a world in which norms of conduct are strong enough that governments never resort to the mass persecution, let alone mass murder, of people whom they dislike. We need a world in which global pressure against any temptation toward such persecution or slaughter is consistently and intensely applied.

That is why so many Jews have taken as their lesson from the Holocaust the importance of upholding human rights, especially for disfavored minorities. It is why a majority of American Jews disapprove of the Netanyahu governments repressive policies.

These alternative lessons drawn from the Holocaust are not wholly contradictory. Each has an element of truth. Yes, the Israeli government needs a strong military to protect itself. But it also needs strong human rights standards. The Netanyahu governments one-dimensional approach to Israeli securitypower without regard to human rightsis undermining those standards.

The German government should reassess the lessons that it takes from its Nazi history. Feeling a debt toward the worlds Jews should not mean writing a blank check to the Israeli government as it rips up the important rights lessons that should be taken from the Holocaust.

Persecuting Palestinians not only violates basic human rights principles that the German government and its Western partners regularly invoke in Ukraine, Syria and elsewhere, but it also is not good for the Jews of the world, most of whom live outside of Israel and depend on those norms. And it is not good for Israel, whose security cannot be enhanced by the permanent suppression of the Palestinians with whom it shares a small slice of land.

Apartheid is not a long-term solution. Western governments should say so. The lessons of the Holocaust, far from impeding such candor, compel it.

Read more:

Opinion: Reassessing the approach to Israel | DW | 22.05.2023 - DW

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No serious player really wanted it, so a special counsel gets the tap on the shoulder. Mostly unlimited in scope, budget, and remit, the office has about as long a leash as exists in the current environment. Years upon years of work later, the project releases its final report. One side finds the results indisputably damning. The other insists the damning part is how little was found.

Washington has played out this routine on a loop. First came the release of the Mueller Report. Then, this week, the Durham Report. Each focused on different aspects of the Trump orbits interactions with Russia and the FBI investigation that followed. Muellers report yielded convictions, plea deals, and jail time, but nothing that stuck to Trump. Durhams report yielded two acquittals, one plea deal, and a ton of second guessing. More than anything, both gave partisans fodder for hours of trolling. Taken together, they reveal how our self-perpetuating partisan outrage machinery makes it harder for Washington to get anything constructive done with the fruits of investigations that cost tens of millions of dollars.

Maybe its entirely our fault. We are a suppositioning sort. Where there are blanks, we fill them in, often in ways to match our existing biases. In fact, those vagaries allow many of us to arrive at book club meetings with very different interpretations of the same work based on the assumptions we brought to the plot and characters. The holes actually make for more compelling conversations than the agreed-upon facts.

Its no different in politics, which relies on storytelling as much as policy. The gray area can sometimes be the most colorful.

Special counsel John Durham, who then-Attorney General William Barr tapped to investigate those who had investigated his boss, released his much-awaited final report on Monday. Democrats largely shrugged off its 300 pages of findings as old news, recycled from reports from the Department of Justice inspectors general and three criminal cases that arose from the investigation. (Two of those cases ended in not guilty verdicts; a third defendant pleaded guilty to altering an email for a wiretap application.) Republicans, meanwhile, screamed bloody murder and political oppression so foul that one contender for the White House suggested it was time to dismantle the FBI.

The response has been an almost perfect reflection of the reaction to Robert Muellers two-volume report on the Trump campaigns interactions with Russia. In that case, Democrats spotted sin after sin committed by Trump and his crew while Republicans brushed it off as fake news that was, at best, old. The facts were damning, the indictments seemingly self-writing, the consequences manifestly missing.

None of this is new, and little of it will be surprising for those who have watched special prosecutors wield almost unlimited power to produce lackluster results, time and time again. (Did we learn nothing from the Bill Clinton era?) But that doesnt make the instinctive reaction to such findings any less a threat to society in which facts are ignored in service of a political agenda. While the timing was dodgy, the findings of the FBIs probe of Hillary Clintons private email server were as clear as the Durham and Mueller probesand carrying the same gaps that we tend to fill in with our own armchair indictments. Give us a gap, we will fill it with what we think we already know.

As Durham rightly notes early in his report, efforts to bring criminal charges against anyone based on his investigation would face an uphill trek: The law does not always make a persons bad judgment, even horribly bad judgment, standing alone, a crime, he writes. (Emphasis added.) Nor does the law criminalize all unseemly or unethical conduct that political campaigns might undertake for tactical advantage, absent a violation of a particular federal criminal statute. Finally, in almost all cases, the government is required to prove a persons actual criminal intentnot mere negligence or recklessnessbefore that persons fellow citizens can lawfully find him or her guilty of a crime.

In other words, poor choices alone dont automatically become legally criminal, no matter how much partisan outrage those choices may provoke. We can There Ought To Be a Law things to death, but absent a relevant law, sketchy decisions about doctored, damning, or deleted emails, often skirt by just fine. The wrongdoing can be spelled out as plainly as possible in these reports, but special counsels traditionally have been fairly unsatisfactory, especially when the missing pieces remain in desk drawers and off legislative calendars. Its as if the expired law that made special counsels possible has rotted on the vine, and incompetence seems to breed plenty of reasons to think this is sadly normalizing.

So, as yet another special counsel has found, peopleeven smart people in powerful positionsmake boneheaded decisions. Yet unless theyre explicitly against the law and the fool knows it, those actions dont rise to the level of crime. Add in the question of conviction, and its terribly tough for these special counsels to yield anything approaching anything resembling consequences. Which is why, yet again, partisans will reach for the PDFs of these final reports and sketch their own indictments in the blank spaces. It is a Choose Your Own Adventure approach to political realities, one that may feel good to everyone involved but bad for the larger system, to boot.

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Write to Philip Elliott at philip.elliott@time.com.

The rest is here:

Durham Report Is Latest Choose-Your-Own-Reality Adventure - TIME