Editorial Roundup: Florida
South Florida Sun Sentinel. October 8, 2023.
Editorial: Fighting censorship in Florida: The true fight for freedom
In Florida’s book-banning boom, too much attention has been paid to marathon porno-thons by Moms for Liberty chapters at school board meetings.
It would be comedy gold if it weren’t so dangerous to democracy.
Ultra-right wingers rattle off lists of naughty words or read steamy prose in robotic tones: “… we’re kissing … tugging, pulling, and we lay down, and she peels off my shirt…” said one Moms for Liberty member, reciting a passage.
Suspiciously, but not surprisingly, most did not provide titles of the offending books they claimed were in school libraries.
It is shameful that so much of America sees Florida as an example of what happens when bigotry blocks young minds from exploring the voices of anguish, trauma, racism and sexual pressure that many face in real life.
Banned Books Week ended Saturday. But the fight against banning books cannot end as we resist this horribly repressive chapter in Florida history, as people raise vague objections to restrict what others can read.
‘That’s a good thing’
“Banning is about looking at the faces of authors and telling them that their story doesn’t matter. That they don’t matter, because they’re different. They don’t matter because their color might be different, their sexual orientation might be different, they might be gender non-conforming or not identify with gender at all,” said Renee Davis, a Brevard County resident. “Their viewpoint on life is different, and that’s a good thing.”
This, too, is a good thing: Bookstores in Florida proudly advertise “We sell banned books.” Churches create safe spaces for readers. High school journalists document censorship by school boards. Public interest law firms are in court fighting the “censorship agenda” of Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Legislature, who passed HB 1467 in 2022 despite Democratic opposition.
None of this should be necessary in the place DeSantis laughably refers to as “the freest state.”
Floridians should be proud of those who have stepped forward to protest these attacks on intellectual freedom, such as the extensive documentation unearthed by the Florida Freedom to Read Project, which obtains public records to expose the dark agenda driving the Florida censorship movement.
While Moms for Liberty members mined naughty bits where they could find them, some from dime-store romance novels, their true targets have been obvious from the start.
It is classics such as “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison, which explores the Caucasian-focused beauty standard that undermines the confidence of young women while recounting shattering experiences such as incest and child molestation. Judy Blume’s classic “Forever” recounts the heated obsession of teens experiencing their first romance. Another target, “Milk and Honey” by Rupi Kaur, centers around sex and romance.
At a Broward School Board meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Moms for Liberty members and others initiated a shadow play of deception, pretending they were there to talk about a teacher union agreement and delving into steamy prose from these books — only to be cut off again and again.
Their goal was to spread as much smut on the record as possible, then claim martyrdom for being silenced. How ironic, given their blatant attempts to silence others.
Voters in Broward and Seminole counties can be proud of how their school boards stood up to the barrage.
Board Chair Lori Alhadeff in Broward shut down the steamy prattle as speakers veered off course, and Seminole board members sat impassively as Moms for Liberty members approached the podium.
LGBTQ ‘themes cannot exist’
The grip of censorship can be found everywhere in Florida.
In one especially chilling example, Charlotte County officials confirmed that books with LGBTQ characters should be purged from school shelves. “These characters and themes cannot exist,” a school district memo said, before the southwest Florida district backed off slightly.
In the end, this is not about parental choice. Besides, parents have many ways to control the materials their children read in public schools.
It’s about suppressing any mention of humans that a group of narrow-minded people believe are unworthy of a voice. It’s about reviving a culture where LGBTQ people could be arrested simply for being. Where sexual abuse, incest and bigotry were pushed into the shadows along with the immeasurable suffering they caused.
Banning books is not about literature. It’s about denial and repression, and every Floridian who believes in freedom has a duty to speak out against it.
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Tampa Bay Times. October 4, 2023.
Editorial: We must protect nursing homes against latest COVID surge
The new booster shots available for residents and staff are key in the fight to keep COVID from spreading through nursing homes.
Americans tired of hearing about COVID-19 may greet the latest vaccine with a collective yawn, but residents and staff at nursing homes cannot be as cavalier. With infections rising in these facilities, governments and industry must work to protect those living and working in group settings from this potential killer.
The rollout of the booster appears to be slow-going just as COVID presents a resurgent threat to America’s elderly, according to a report last week by KFF Health News, the national news organization formerly known as Kaiser Health News.
While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention approved the latest vaccine on Sept. 12, many nursing homes will not begin inoculations until this month or even November. The delays come as infections in nursing homes are rising steeply, to nearly 1%, or 9.7 per 1,000 residents, as of mid-September, more than quadrupling from a low of 2.2 per 1,000 residents in mid-June.
The holdup was caused in part by the formally declared end of the COVID public health emergency in May, which meant the federal government stopped purchasing and distributing COVID vaccines. That has created a logistics gap for the latest vaccine and confusion for distributors and nursing home operators alike as Americans seek the latest defense before the full start of the winter season.
Nationally, 62% of nursing home residents are up to date on their vaccines, meaning they received the second booster available before the new shot that’s becoming available. That reflects a deeper commitment among older Americans generally to keep current on their vaccines, but a troubling gap in that age group remains. In Florida, only 52% of nursing home residents report being up to date. That’s a problem, given Florida’s older population, which calls out for better public guidance.
The situation is worse among nursing home staff. Nationally, only 25% of nursing home employees are up to date. Again, the Florida figures are lower, with 19% of staff up to date. That threat is amplified in a group home setting, where staff provide meals, activities and other all-around care, and where employees often hold second and third jobs elsewhere, compounding the opportunity for infection.
While mandates are a thing of the past, the federal government and the states still have a leadership role to play. Public health authorities need to use their pulpits to urge people to get vaccinated, and officials need to provide whatever administrative and financial support possible to make supplies more readily available.
This is hardly unknown or ancient territory; industry, government and health providers already know how to get COVID vaccines to the public. More to the point, governors in states with older populations, such as Florida’s Ron DeSantis, also showed early on during the pandemic how to prioritize a limited supply by putting seniors and other vulnerable populations first. The same game plan should apply here. Even Florida’s narrow guidance on the latest vaccine recommends that those 65 and older talk to their doctor about getting inoculated.
The updated vaccines are available at no cost to most adults in the U.S. through their private health insurance, Medicare or Medicaid. The CDC has arranged for 25 million to 30 million adults lacking health insurance coverage to get free COVID shots at certain pharmacies and health centers. Now authorities need to talk up the boosters, and work hard, especially to increase vaccinations among nursing home residents and employees. Even one needless death is too many.
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Miami Herald. October 10, 2023.
Editorial: Florida finally has to reveal COVID data it wanted to hide. Too bad it took a lawsuit
Florida has been playing fast and loose with COVID data for years, stonewalling on public records requests and shifting the way it counts cases. Now, finally, Floridians will have a chance to see what’s really happening in our state.
A settlement in a lawsuit filed by the Florida Center for Government Accountability on behalf of former state Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith in August 2021 — and later joined by the Miami Herald, other news organizations and the First Amendment Foundation — means the state will have to let the public see the records it tried so hard to keep hidden as the Delta variant tore through the state.
Access denied
For the past two years — as Gov. Ron DeSantis laid the groundwork for a presidential run, relying heavily on his “free state of Florida” COVID response — Florida had denied that detailed COVID-19 data relating to 2021 infections and vaccines existed. On Monday, DeSantis and the state Department of Health agreed to disclose coronavirus data on the DOH website.
That means no more obfuscation. No more changing the way information is reported so no one can really keep track of cases or trying to deflect by accusing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on social media of publishing incorrect numbers. At long last, the state will have to let the public see the data, including case counts, vaccinations and deaths, broken down by county, age and gender. The settlement requires that the DOH provide the data for the next three years.
This is no small thing. Floridians have always needed to know what the state is doing — or not doing — in such an important public health fight. According to the New York Times, at least 87,000 people have died of COVID in Florida so far. That’s one in 246 residents, a shocking figure.
Smith, an Orlando Democrat, said the state’s actions resulted in downplaying the COVID threat, which cost lives. DOH spokesperson James “Jae” Williams III — who seems to have missed the point of the settlement — kept fighting: “It is unfortunate that we have continued to waste government resources arguing over the formatting of data with armchair epidemiologists who have zero training or expertise.’’
On our dime
And yet, why wouldn’t the state simply provide all the information to the public? Yes, it reports information to the CDC. But it also changed how it did that, making a surge look less serious, and then undermined the CDC’s number with an unfounded attack on Twitter.
The settlement also means the state will have to pay $152,250 in attorneys fees to those who filed the suit. Is DeSantis paying that money? No, of course not. We are. DeSantis has shown repeatedly that he’s more than happy to go to court and fight for any number of nonsensical ideas emanating from Tallahassee as long as we, the taxpayers, are footing the bill. That’s like gambling at the blackjack table using someone else’s money, except the people of this state didn’t sign up to be DeSantis’ sugar daddy.
This settlement never should have been necessary. If the state had been transparent, instead of attempting to circumvent state public-records laws, we would have known all along just how bad the outbreaks were. We also would have $152,000 to spend on some other need in the state.
Instead, Florida went to court.
And that happened right around the time that DeSantis became a serious contender for the GOP presidential nomination, based largely on his defiant attitude about COVID.
It’s no coincidence that the state settled now, either. DeSantis has learned — the hard way — that COVID is no longer the hot-button issue it was a couple of years ago. He tried to capitalize on it during his sinking campaign and saw that his freedom spiel no longer resonated with voters.
So now the state settles. Now we’ll start getting the data. Now we can better assess our own risks. That’s great. But it shouldn’t have taken a lawsuit, one that we will pay for, to get here.
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Orlando Sentinel. October 8, 2023.
Editorial: Don’t tolerate the pornographic push to ban books
In the latest developments of Florida’s book-banning boom, much attention has been paid to the hours-long pornothons organized by Moms for Liberty chapters at select School Board meetings across the state.
It’s comedy gold, to be sure. Ultra-right wingers rattling off lists and counts of naughty words, or reading steamy prose in robotic tones: “…and we’re kissing watering tongue springy lips tugging pulling and we lay down and she peels off my shirt…” chanted one Moms for Liberty member at the Sept. 19 school board meeting, reciting what sounds like a fairly poetic passage in the grim tones of a juror reading a guilty verdict. (Suspiciously, only a few of them provided the titles of the books they claimed were available in public school libraries.)
But it’s the other voices — the testimony of sex-abuse victims, memories of high-school friends struggling with issues no teenager should have to face, painful recitals of the fear and isolation felt by members of sexual minorities — that really resonate. During Banned Books Week, which wrapped up Saturday, it’s shameful that the nation is looking to Florida as an example of what might happen if narrow-minded bigotry is allowed to barricade young minds from voices exploring the trauma, racism, sexual pressure and anguish many are facing on a daily basis in real life.
The dirty truth
“Banning is about looking at the face of authors and telling them that their story doesn’t matter. That they don’t matter, because they’re different. They don’t matter because their color might be different, their sexual orientation might be different, they might be gender non-conforming or not identify with gender at all. Their viewpoint on life is different and that’s a good thing,” said Renee Davis, a Brevard County resident attending the Seminole meeting.
That’s the fundamental truth here. While Moms for Liberty clearly mined their “naughty bits” passages wherever they could find them — including some romance novels that probably didn’t possess all that much literary merit — their real focus has been clear from the start from the lists of books they’re going after. Books like “The Bluest Eye,” by Toni Morrison, which explores critical themes such as the Caucasian-focused beauty standard that undermine the confidence of many young women while recounting shattering experiences such as incest and child molestation. Judy Blume’s classic “Forever,” which recounts the heated obsession of teens in their first relationship. “Milk and Honey” by Rupi Kaur, a book of prose and poetry centered around sex and romance.
At a Broward County School Board meeting Sept. 20, Moms for Liberty members and others initiated a shadow play of mass deception, pretending they were there to talk about a teacher-union agreement but then delving into steamy prose from these books — only to be cut off again and again. This was their goal: To get as much smut on the public record as possible, then claim the martyrdom of the silenced. Ironic, given their blatant and brutal attempts to silence others.
Some defend, some cave
Voters in Broward and Seminole counties can be proud of the way their board members stood up to the barrage, even though they chose different methods — the chairman of the Broward board shut down the steamy prattle as soon as the speakers veered off-course, while Seminole County board members sat impassively as each Moms for Liberty member approached the podium.
But there are disturbing signs that these messages are taking hold — with one chilling example from Charlotte County in which the school board’s general counsel confirmed that books with LGBTQ characters should be stripped from school shelves. “These characters and themes cannot exist,” said a leaked “training document” obtained by Florida Freedom to Read and shared with a Florida news site. In Indian River County, where book-banners unleashed another steamy barrage of excerpts in late August, Treasure Coast newspapers reported that upwards of 120 books have been pulled from shelves. Both districts say they are following standards set by the Legislature in the name of parental rights.
That’s why it was good for school boards to hear from people who remember growing up and realizing they were different from other students — but had nowhere to turn to get a frame of reference for their experiences.
“I want to let you know you are not dirty. Your story is not dirty. You are powerful. You are loved and you are cared about,” one member of the anti-censorship group Women’s Voices said at the Seminole School Board meeting. “I found solace finding and figuring out that I was not the only one.”
Floridians can be proud of groups that are stepping forward to protest the attacks on intellectual freedom, particularly the dogged documentation provided by Florida Freedom to Read. That group has focused its firepower on digging out the real evidence, in the form of public record, that proves the agendas behind the salacious chicanery in public forums. Their work is a powerful rebuke against state lawmakers and local officials who are using vulnerable teens for target practice, heedless of the pain their bigotry provokes.
Don’t believe the hype: Parents have plenty of ways to control the materials their children read in public schools. It’s about suppressing any mention of humans that a group of narrow-minded people believe are unworthy of a voice. It’s about reviving a culture where LGBTQ people could be arrested just for being who they were. Where sexual abuse, incest and bigotry were shoved into the shadows, along with the immeasurable suffering they caused.
Banning books isn’t about literature. It’s about denial. Repression. Erasure. And every Floridian who believes this is wrong should speak out — and say that here, we no longer tolerate that.
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Palm Beach Post. October 10, 2023.
Editorial: Florida Republicans in Congress need to assert bipartisan leadership
Republicans in the Congressional Delegation of Florida should take the opportunity to help the House Republican Conference shrug off its budding Keystone Kops reputation and show the public something it hasn’t seen from House Republicans in a very long time — principled political competence that addresses real needs.
If there were ever a time for your father’s Republican Party to show up, this is it. An expanding war in the Middle East, the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and a still-looming government shutdown are just a few of the issues in need of adult leadership. So far, the House Republican Conference hasn’t risen to meet America’s challenges, let alone face them with diligence or dignity.
Launching an “impeachment inquiry” in President Joe Biden with no evidence, obsessing over son Hunter Biden, opposing a rudimentary vote to raise the nation’s debt ceiling, repeatedly failing to pass a temporary spending bill, the dubious inquiry into imagined federal-government bias against conservatives, stripping the pay of the U.S. Defense Secretary to a dollar — it all adds up to cheap theatrics and partisan distractions. And who can forget the 15-vote debacle that made California Republican Kevin McCarthy House Speaker and the one-man motion -to-vacate mess that took him out?
“This place is dysfunctional but, you know what? It’s dysfunctional because of the Republicans,” U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel, a longtime Democratic House member who represents a portion of Palm Beach County, told the Post. “They are the ones fighting. And we can’t really heal them. They have to heal themselves.”
America needs a Speaker of the House
The Constitution gives the power of the purse strings to the U.S. House of Representatives. It is the chamber that authorizes the budget the president uses to pay for government programs. Fortunately, the Biden administration has enough money in the short term to help Israel, thanks to an Obama-era agreement that provides Israel with an ongoing $3.8 billion annual defense assistance appropriation. That funding, however, can only go so far.
America needs a House speaker, the person who has the power to move bills through the lower chamber and negotiate with Democrats who control the U.S. Senate and the White House. Unfortunately, going as far back as former speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan, Republican speakers have had little success winning over hardliners in their party who opposed working with Democrats. McCarthy was ousted for his bipartisan short-term funding bill.
The perception of ineptness isn’t something Florida’s Republican representatives should want hanging over their heads. They represent the nation’s third-most-populous and fastest growing state. They are 20 members strong, second only to Texas in the number of GOP lawmakers in a state delegation. Most hold seats on key congressional committees important to Florida, like Agriculture, Appropriations, Energy and Commerce, and Science, Space and Technology and Ways and Means. Several have deep experience in government, having once served either in the Florida Legislature or as heads of state agencies. The numbers and potential clout are there. What’s missing is the will to make all that effective.
House Republicans need a political makeover
Governing and getting things done aren’t qualities typically associated with Republicans in Congress. Since winning the House majority in 2022, they have squandered their leadership, becoming increasingly strident and partisan as a feud festered between moderate representatives in their conference and a smaller but far more vocal group of right-wing hardliners, who exerted far more control over House Republican leadership than was warranted.
The potential for change is there. This week, House Foreign Affairs Chair Mike McCaul, R-Texas, called for a bipartisan congressional resolution condemning Hamas, and the House Republican Conference, apparently embarrassed by their members’ role in the removal of McCarthy, have vowed to select a new speaker this week without the drama of weeks past. Small steps but necessary ones to re-establish a fully functioning government.
Poll after poll shows a growing frustration with the inability of both Democratic and Republican parties to work together to address important concerns. Republicans in the Florida delegation should assert themselves to get their conference to re-establish its leadership and find ways to act more in a bipartisan basis to move our government forward. The alternative is ongoing political paralysis that threatens America’s prestige at home and abroad.
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