Tag: lawmakers

Abortion on the ballot? Not if these Republican lawmakers can help it

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Legislatures in Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio and Oklahoma are debating bills this session that would hike the filing fees, raise the number of signatures required to get on the ballot, restrict who can collect signatures, mandate broader geographic distribution of signatures, and raise the vote threshold to pass an amendment from a majority to a supermajority. While the bills vary in wording, they would have the same impact: limiting voters’ power to override abortion restrictions that Republicans imposed, which took effect after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year.
After watching the pro-abortion rights side win all six ballot initiative fights related to abortion in 2022 — including in conservative states such as Kansas and Kentucky — conservatives fear, and are mobilizing to avoid, a repeat.
“It was a wake-up call that taught us we have a ton of work to do,” said Kelsey Pritchard, the state public affairs director for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, which plans to spend tens of millions of dollars on ballot initiative fights on abortion over the next two years. “We’re going to be really engaged on these ballot measures that are often very radical and go far beyond what Roe ever did.”
In Mississippi, where a court order froze all ballot efforts in 2021, GOP lawmakers are advancing legislation that would restore the mechanism but prohibit voters from putting abortion-related measures on the ballot.
“I think it just continues the policy of Mississippi and our state leaders that we’re going to be a pro-life state,” said Mississippi state Rep. Nick Bain, who presented the bill on the House floor.
But in most states, the GOP proposals to tighten restrictions on ballot initiatives are not explicitly targeting abortion. The push to change the rules began years before the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade in June of 2022 — spurred by progressive efforts to legalize marijuana, expand Medicaid and raise the minimum wage in several red states — though it reached new heights over the past year as voters and elected officials clashed over abortion policies.
Still, some anti-abortion activists worry that the trend could backfire, preventing groups from using the tactic to pass their own constitutional amendments via popular vote.
“In Florida, it’s a double-edged sword,” said Andrew Shirvell, the leader of the group Florida Voice for the Unborn that is working to put an anti-abortion measure on the 2024 ballot. “So we’re conflicted about it, because there is a large contingent of pro-life grassroots advocates who feel our governor and legislature have failed us on this issue for far too long and want to take things into our own hands.”

Interest on the left in using ballot initiatives to protect or expand abortion access exploded in the wake of the 2022 midterm elections. Efforts are already underway in Missouri, Ohio and South Dakota to insert language restoring abortion rights into the states’ constitutions, while advocates in several other states are mulling their options.
The campaign is furthest along in Ohio, where abortion rights advocates began collecting signatures this week. A coalition of anti-abortion groups called Protect Women Ohio formed in response and announced a $5 million ad buy this week to air a 30-second spot suggesting the proposed amendment would take away parents’ rights to decide whether their children should obtain abortions and other kinds of health care.
At the same time, some Ohio lawmakers are pushing for a proposal that would raise the voter approval threshold for constitutional amendments from a simple majority to 60 percent.
In Missouri, where progressive groups have submitted several versions of an abortion-rights ballot initiative to state authorities for review, lawmakers are similarly weighing proposals to impose a supermajority vote requirement and mandate that the measure pass in more than half of Missouri House districts to take effect.
“It’s about making sure everyone has a voice, and that includes middle Missouri as well,” said Missouri Right to Life Executive Director Susan Klein. “We have known for some time that the threat to legalize abortion was going around different states and would ultimately come to Missouri. We’ve been hard at work preparing for this challenge and we’re ready.”
In Idaho, lawmakers are trying to require backers of initiative petitions to gather signatures from 6 percent of registered voters to qualify for the ballot.
“I call these bills ‘death by a thousand cuts,’” said Kelly Hall, the executive director of the progressive ballot initiative group The Fairness Project. “When you hear about each one in isolation, they seem like not that big a deal. But taken together, they have an exclusionary effect on people’s participation in democracy.”
Conservative lawmakers and advocates pushing the rule changes say they reflect their beliefs about how laws should be crafted and are not solely about abortion — but they are upfront about wanting to make it harder to pass the kind of broad protections voters in California, Michigan and Vermont enacted last year.
“I did not start this out due to abortion, but … Planned Parenthood is actively trying to enshrine a lack of protections for the unborn into constitutions,” said North Dakota state Sen. Janne Myrdal, who heads the state legislature’s Pro-Life Caucus. “You can sit in California or New York or Washington and throw a dart, attach a couple million dollars to it, and you change our constitution.”
The resolution Myrdal is sponsoring, which passed the Senate last month and is awaiting a vote in the House, would require proposed constitutional amendments to pass twice — during the primary and general elections — and bump up the signature-gathering requirement from 4 percent to 5 percent of residents. If approved, the proposed changes would appear on the state’s 2024 ballot.
Major national anti-abortion groups say they’re not formally endorsing these efforts, but support the GOP lawmakers behind them.
“It starts to diminish the importance of a constitution if it can be changed by the whim of the current culture,” Carol Tobias, the president of the National Right to Life Committee, said.
Even in states that have not yet taken steps to put an abortion-rights measure on the ballot, conservative fears of such a move are driving some surprising legislative action.
In Oklahoma, the anti-abortion leader Lauinger is arguing to lawmakers that polling shows overwhelming support for rape and incest exceptions — as one lawmaker has proposed in a bill that cleared its first committee last month — and overwhelming opposition to leaving the state’s ban as-is.
If the state didn’t have a ballot measure process, he said, he wouldn’t support exceptions. But since that threat exists, he argued, “We must not allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good.”
“The abortion industry has the weapon to defeat what we regard as the ideal policy,” Lauinger told the lawmakers. “The initiative petition is their trump card.”
Lauinger did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Yet National Right to Life, the parent group of his organization, told POLITICO it backs his argument that it’s better to make exceptions for rape and incest than risk a sweeping ballot initiative enshrining the right to abortion in the state constitution.
“This isn’t a betrayal,” insisted Tobias. “If you really look at what we’re facing, we could either save 95 percent of all babies or we could lose everything and all babies could be subject to death. It’s kind of hard to not see the reality.”
Advocates on both sides of the abortion fight stress, however, that a ballot initiative fight in Oklahoma is still possible — even likely — whether the state approves exceptions for rape and incest or not.
“They’re probably going to try to do one anyway, regardless of what we do,” said Oklahoma state Rep. Jim Olsen, a Republican who launched an effort with other conservative lawmakers in the state to defeat the exceptions bill. “The fight hasn’t even come and we’re already backing away.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 19, 2023
Yellen seeks to calm lawmakers amid banking turmoil

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The Biden administration’s Sunday rescue plan for the Northern California bank’s customers, along with those of Signature — a New York institution that was shuttered that day — were essential for stemming a possible contagion that put “community banks across the country at great risk of runs,” Yellen said.
In her prepared testimony, the former Federal Reserve chair assured lawmakers that the banking system remains sound and that “Americans can feel confident that their deposits will be there when they need them.”
Still, lawmakers from both parties sounded alarms over the many failures that contributed to Silicon Valley Bank’s downfall.
“Nerves are certainly frayed at this moment,” Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said at the start of the hearing.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen shakes hands with Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) after a hearing on President Biden’s fiscal year 2024 budget request on Capitol Hill March 16, 2023.
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Francis Chung/POLITICO
Markets have been jittery over the last week amid fears the crisis could spread beyond regional banks. Investors dumped shares of institutions that may be facing a financial crunch with rising interest rates. Moody’s earlier this week downgraded its outlook for the entire U.S. banking industry, citing a “rapid and substantial decline in bank depositor and investor confidence.”
The bank run that sparked Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse on Friday left thousands of depositors — an overwhelming majority of whom weren’t covered by the FDIC’s deposit insurance limit of $250,000 — panicked that they wouldn’t be able to access their funds when banks opened on Monday morning.
Republicans who have scrambled to chart a united response to the Biden administration’s handling of the crisis criticized regulators for failing to intervene.
Sen. Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican and possible 2024 presidential candidate, said a “lax regulatory environment” and deficient bank examiners allowed the failures of the SVB’s management team to slip through the cracks. Others, like Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), said the implosion was a byproduct of a Biden-era economy that’s been stymied by soaring inflation and rising interest rates.

Yellen bristled at questions from Sens. James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) about the potential long-term consequences of the rescue plan. The plan backstopped the banks’ uninsured depositors and made cash loans from the Fed available to lenders in exchange for safe collateral — an action that in theory would allow banks to handle deposit withdrawals of any amount for up to a year.
While Democrats are also urging federal agencies to examine regulatory shortfalls, many have also seized on the crisis as an opportunity to toughen standards around capital requirements and oversight.
“We certainly need to analyze carefully what happened to trigger these bank failures and reexamine our rules and supervision and make sure they’re appropriate for the risks banks face,” Yellen said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 16, 2023
There’s a new push to create a Space National Guard. Lawmakers say the price is right.

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Lawmakers from seven states and one U.S. territory that contain National Guard units with military space missions are banking that this year they’ll sway the administration and skeptical senators that a Space National Guard is the best way to provide part-time forces to the fledgling Space Force. But they still have a high hurdle to clear.
Advocates are aiming to convince cynics the true cost is much lower than administration estimates that drove the initial opposition. They’re also banking on a long-delayed report from the Air Force that outlines how to best structure the space guard and reserve mission. And one top proponent is making the case directly to the Space Force’s top officer.
“I think momentum is building,” Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) said in an interview. He argued that the current structure, in which members of the Air National Guard with space-related duties would stay in the Air Guard, is “not workable in the long term.”
The Space Force has a complex mission, which includes keeping an eye on missile warnings, monitoring space launches and detecting nuclear detonations. So it will likely rely heavily on part-time personnel, who bring high-tech experience from their day jobs and who don’t want to commit to the military on a full-time basis. But those weekend warriors are now in the Air National Guard, an arrangement that proponents of a new outfit argue complicates training and staffing of the Space Force.
Several prominent lawmakers from both parties support creating a separate Space Guard. Crow and Colorado Republican Doug Lamborn, who chairs the House Armed Services panel that oversees military space issues, are reintroducing a Space Guard bill, while Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) are spearheading legislation in the Senate. National Guard brass are also on board. Several state Guard leaders have publicly called for the shift and Guard Bureau Chief Gen. Daniel Hokanson supports the move.
The White House and the Pentagon aren’t sold, however, and neither is much of the Senate, as many prefer to wait and see what Air Force and Space Force leaders propose.
Crow plans to make his case directly to Space Force brass. The Colorado Democrat said he’s spoken to Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman about the issue several times, including at the Munich Security Conference last month.
“We’re going to follow up,” Crow said. “He agreed to take a meeting with me to discuss it.”

Fear of a budget blowup
The biggest hurdle for proponents — which includes space-heavy states such as Colorado, Florida, California and Hawaii — is convincing the Biden administration that creating a new Guard branch out of the current space missions housed in the Air National Guard won’t be as expensive as they fear.
Administration officials “strongly oppose” creating a separate Space National Guard, the White House declared last July, citing the “additional overhead” that would come with a new component.
The Congressional Budget Office assessed the costs of creating smaller and larger models for a Space National Guard in a 2020 report.
A smaller Space Guard — based on transferring 1,500 personnel from existing Guard units with space missions in Alaska, California, Colorado, Florida, Guam, New York, Ohio and Wyoming — would result in $100 million in additional annual operating costs, the nonpartisan scorekeeper assessed.
The CBO also examined a larger model in which a Space National Guard is a size proportional to the Air National Guard relative to the active-duty Air Force, and could have a presence in every state and territory. CBO estimated doing so would balloon the hypothetical organization to 5,800 personnel.
The nearly $500 million annual price tag is a figure that OMB cited when arguing against creating the organization. The nonpartisan analysis group is not currently working on an update to the 2020 report, a spokesperson said in a statement.
That sticker shock is a concern that mired a push to create an active-duty Space Force years ago. But Space Guard advocates say the hefty price tag doesn’t accurately capture their plans.
“I think there is a substantial misunderstanding about what it is we’re trying to achieve here. We’re simply trying to grandfather in the existing states and territory that have Space Guard and reserve components into a Guard,” Crow said. “We’re not trying to create a new Guard infrastructure in every state. And that seems to be what OMB thinks we’re trying to do.”
Proponents, including the National Guard Bureau of the United States, argue the costs are wildly overstated, with some advocates arguing the actual cost could even be as low as $250,000 and would not require any new facilities.
‘Organizational disconnect’
Supporters contend that, just like other branches, the Space Force needs its own part-time cadre to draw the personnel it needs to fully carry out its mission.
Lawmakers also argue that the Space Force won’t truly be on par with other military branches while its Guard personnel continue as part of the Air National Guard, which they warn would undermine training, recruiting and funding.
Feinstein said doing so will fix an “organizational disconnect” between active-duty and Guard personnel in the Space Force.
“A Space Force National Guard would save money because otherwise we will eventually have to replace the capabilities we have in the Guard today with new units created from scratch inside the Space Force,” Feinstein said in a statement. “A Space National Guard should have been created when Space Force was created.”
Air National Guard units that are conducting space missions have an unusual relationship with the Space Force. While they fall under the Air Force’s command structure, the personnel receive operational tasking orders from the Space Force.
The arrangement makes it difficult for these Air National Guard personnel to get appropriate training because that is overseen by a different service, said Lt. Gen. Michael Loh, head of the Air National Guard and former Colorado adjutant general.
“I can’t right now send them to basic military training with the Space Force [the service] they would actually be going off to combat with,” Loh told reporters last year at the Air & Space Forces Association annual Air Warfare Symposium.
But opponents consider the move a power play by Guard and state leaders, and even some leaders who see a Space Guard as inevitable aren’t convinced it’s needed just yet.
On top of the potential cost, they contend a Space Guard would mean extra bureaucracy and overhead when the Space Force was intended to be as streamlined and cost-effective as possible when it was created.
Space Force brass, meanwhile, haven’t publicly endorsed the concept, instead floating a hybrid model that draws on both active-duty and reserve guardians.
Senate skeptics
Some on the Armed Services Committees are waiting to see the Space Force’s proposal before choosing sides. The service is expected to submit a proposal for a reserve component as part of the fiscal 2024 budget request.
“There’s a little bit of hesitancy without a solid, solid plan to impose the entirety of the [National Guard Bureau] structure on top of such a small and agile service,” said one congressional aide, who was granted anonymity to discuss the debate.
Plan or none, the debate is expected to play out again in annual defense policy legislation. Senate Armed Services Chair Jack Reed (D-R.I.) — whose support is needed for a Space Guard proposal to pass the upper chamber — isn’t swayed yet. Instead, Reed says he’s waiting to see what Saltzman and Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall recommend.
“I don’t sense the movement,” Reed said of senators supporting a Space Guard. “But we really haven’t brought it up.”
Only one of Feinstein and Rubio’s eight cosponsors, Florida Republican Rick Scott, sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
House Armed Services is likely to approve a Space Guard as part of its version of the National Defense Authorization Act, as it has done with little controversy over the past two years. But even House leaders who support the concept aren’t sure the time is right for a full-fledged Guard.
Decorating the Christmas tree
House Armed Services Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) said he’s “fine” with Crow and Lamborn’s proposal being included when the committee considers the defense bill in the spring, but said congressional leaders would ultimately make a call based on whether the Space Force agrees.
“This is one of those things that I want the Space Force to have what they need, but I’m gonna let them do it at their pace,” Rogers said. “I think it’s inevitable that it’s going to happen. I just don’t think it’s gonna happen right away.”
It’s unclear so far what the Pentagon will recommend or if top brass will ultimately come around to agree with a standalone Guard branch.
Saltzman stuck to the Pentagon line that a dedicated Space National Guard isn’t currently needed during his Senate confirmation last September. He reiterated the service’s stated goal of a hybrid model that includes full and part-time guardians in a “single component.”
And the argument over how best to train, equip and supply part-time talent to the Space Force may get overshadowed by other more heated space debates on Capitol Hill. The Colorado and Alabama delegations are engaged in a political slugfest over the fate of the permanent headquarters of the U.S. Space Command.
But a slow and steady buildup could win again if the most vocal advocates of the newest military branch aren’t anxious to move ahead with a separate Guard.
“It’s like a Christmas tree. You start with just the tree. Then you start adding lights and then you start adding decorations,” Rogers explained. “We just put the tree up that first year and what we have done subsequently has just been layering on things. And that’s always the way I’ve envisioned the Space Force growing.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 8, 2023
Hispanic lawmakers are getting a briefing from Alejandro Mayorkas about reports the Biden administration was considering reinstituting a family detention policy.

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Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) said he thought the policy might have only been “internally floated for discussion.”

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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 7, 2023
China continues to block efforts to determine Covid’s origins, lawmakers say

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Other U.S. agencies, though, have said they think it was probably due to natural transmission from animals to humans.
“We have so few facts that, inevitably, different agencies are going to arrive at different conclusions,” Himes said.
Himes is the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. His view was shared by the panel’s chair, Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio).
“There’s no direct evidence, we don’t have China admitting it, we don’t have Wuhan Lab handing these things over,” Turner said, referring to the city that is home to several laboratories and where the virus first circulated in late 2019.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) also blamed China’s refusal to be open and honest about Covid-19 for continuing questions about its origin.
“If this virus had originated virtually anywhere else, we would have had world scientists there,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”
He also told host Shannon Bream: “You know, at the end of the day, we’ve got to keep looking, and we’ve got to make sure, in terms of future pandemics, that we can have access to where the source of these diseases originate a lot earlier on.”
Debate over Covid-19’s origins has political implications, with the latest reports fueling demands in conservative circles for China to be punished in one way or another for unleashing it. More than a million deaths in the United States have been attributed to the coronavirus; the worldwide total is approaching 7 million.

National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said last Monday that the U.S. government still had not reached a consensus on how the pandemic started. President Joe Biden did not address the subject last week.
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the Energy Department report supported the view he took back in 2020 when he was part of the Trump administration.
“Make no mistake, this is a Chinese virus that came from the laboratory,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”
Pompeo also asserted that U.S. funding for international research might have played a part in the development of the virus — a theory that Anthony Fauci, the now-retired top pandemic medical adviser, rejected when it first surfaced — and that China’s leadership had made it difficult to know “the full scope” of what occurred by destroying documents and censoring journalists.
A different perspective on the various origin theories came from Leana Wen, former health commissioner of the city of Baltimore and a professor at George Washington University.
“I think at this point there is circumstantial evidence on both sides,” she said on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS,” “but there is one thing that the intelligence community has found and, in fact, has been unanimously saying since early on, which is that this was not intentional. This was not a bio weapon or something that China or scientists or whatever politicians or political leaders were trying to do.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 6, 2023
DeSantis is championing medical freedom. GOP state lawmakers like what they see.

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DeSantis’ attention to the issue is having real-world impact — and not just in Florida. GOP lawmakers across the country, in some cases emboldened by DeSantis’ ramped-up rhetoric, have introduced hundreds of bills this year under the medical freedom banner, including proposals to put lawmakers in charge of immunization requirements, ban the government from creating non-school-based vaccine mandates and allow citizens to challenge public health disaster declarations.
“Governor DeSantis has been leading the way,” said Texas state Rep. Matt Schaefer, chair of the Texas Freedom Caucus, who sponsored his state’s public health disaster declaration bill. “A lot of people are looking to DeSantis to see what he’s doing at this point, and it gives cover to other governors, I think, to step out there.”
DeSantis’ spotlight on medical freedom, which grew in popularity during the pandemic, comes as routine childhood vaccine rates are dropping and trust in government and science is low. Public health experts fear the entrenched political polarization around vaccinations and public health will lead to eliminated diseases, such as polio and measles, gaining footholds in communities and diminish the nation’s ability to respond effectively to future health crises.
The momentum also highlights one of DeSantis’ biggest strengths heading into the 2024 election cycle: his handling of Covid-19 in the third-most populous state. Conservatives across the country have praised DeSantis’ rejection of vaccine mandates and masking students in schools, fueling the governor’s popularity.
“If he runs, it’s just going to bring more prominence to this ideology, and that’s my concern,” said Rupali Limaye, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “This idea of — we are going to reject, essentially, anything that is science-based because that’s part of our identity. The government can’t tell us what’s true, what’s not true. We make our own decisions. We make our own truth.”
Most of the medical freedom bills introduced in statehouses this year aren’t likely to go anywhere, observers say, but their volume speaks to the backlash federal pandemic policies engendered and how DeSantis’ proposals could be the inevitable result of so many Americans losing trust in local, state and federal health officials.
“I think he’s presenting an alternative. Is the alternative being presented in a political way? Yes. That doesn’t make it less valid,” said Brian Miller, a non-resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “Taking a different approach in public health requires a lot of guts. The public health community has historically not done a good job in integrating centrist, conservative and libertarian viewpoints.”
Jeremy Redfern, DeSantis’ deputy press secretary, said that recent research raising questions about the efficacy of masks in preventing infection indicates that when it comes to getting rid of mask mandates, “Governor DeSantis was right all along.”

And while state lawmakers around the country who have been committed to medical freedom since before the pandemic see DeSantis as a relative newcomer to the movement, they welcome the national attention he brings.
“I definitely appreciate his effort to do that,” said Indiana GOP state Rep. Becky Cash. “Quite honestly, if he’s going to run for president, I like what I see.”
DeSantis’ adroitness at positioning himself as a national leader in a series of high-profile culture war issues has helped secure him a spot as one of the country’s most popular governors — and most powerful Republicans.
He’s used funds linked to Covid-19 relief to transport migrants on airplanes from Texas to the liberal enclave of Martha’s Vineyard, traveled to blue states to talk about rising crime, undermined Disney’s special tax status after the company rebuked Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, restricted abortion rights, targeted gender-affirming care and barred high school students from taking a new advanced placement course on African American studies.
The stance that DeSantis, a leading skeptic of masks and lockdowns, has taken on “protecting Floridians from the biomedical security state” and his attacks on former White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci, have earned him wide acclaim on the right and plenty of leeway from Florida’s GOP supermajority legislature which, during a 2021 special session, passed a law banning Covid vaccine mandates.
“He’s never been wrong,” said Florida House Health and Human Services Committee Chair Randy Fine, a Republican. He added that DeSantis’ policy will have no problem clearing the Republican-controlled House. “What would make anyone think he’s wrong now?”
Some Florida physicians worry DeSantis’ efforts are putting Floridians at risk. Routine vaccinations among Florida kindergartners have been dropping, with fewer kids being immunized against measles, polio, chickenpox and diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis.
“We have an incredible amount of vaccine hesitancy that has only grown worse,” said Greg Savel, a pediatrician in Clearwater, Fla. “Whatever Governor DeSantis says goes around here.”
And while DeSantis is garnering most of the attention, the positions he espouses have been quietly gaining ground outside of Florida.
Between January 2021 and May 2022, legislators enacted 65 laws in 25 states that now limit public health authorities’ power to react during an emergency, according to research by Temple University.
This year, state lawmakers have introduced more than 400 bills promoting a small-government vision for public health, according to the National Academy for State Health Policy. Some are Covid-specific, such as a bill in Indiana that would prohibit employers from requiring routine testing for the virus, and a bill in Idaho that would prevent the government from mandating the Covid vaccine to receive government services, enter a government venue or work for the state.
Other proposals would make significant changes to the mandate-driven approach to public health.
Schaefer’s bill in Texas, for instance, would allow individuals to challenge any disaster, public health disaster, public health emergency or control measure order issued by the governor “if the provision is alleged to cause injury to the person or burden a right of the person that is protected by the state or federal constitution or by a state or federal law.”
“It is the historical legal tradition of the United States of America that when your rights are infringed, there’s some way to get into a court and get a hearing, even a preliminary hearing. There’s some due processes that’s involved. But in Texas, and I’m sure in many other states as well, no one could get standing,” Schaefer said. “A lot of this is just simply restoring due process.”
Two bills in Mississippi, meanwhile, would require state health officer orders to be approved by the governor. Legislation in Iowa would prohibit health officials from conducting contact tracing; a proposal in Wyoming would prohibit the use of CDC and WHO requirements, mandates, recommendations, instructions or guidance to justify mask, vaccine or medical testing requirements and a bill in Idaho would make it a misdemeanor to administer any mRNA-based vaccine.
Several states — Indiana, Missouri, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Texas — have also introduced bills that would take the power to set school-based immunization requirements away from state health officials and put it in the hands of the legislature.
Lawmakers who have long been involved with the medical freedom movement say they’re starting to see more interest from their GOP colleagues in embracing the issue.
“We’re trying to do what Governor DeSantis is doing there,” Cash said. “God bless Governor DeSantis for what he’s doing, but it’s coming from the executive branch, and we really need legislative branches, that are elected by the people, to make the laws to do this.”
The question of individual freedom versus federal and state power to impose measures to protect the public’s health has also shown up in court. In most cases, public health authorities were upheld, but there were a series of high-profile and potentially influential wins for supporters of religious liberty and those who seek to limit the scope of health authorities, including in the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Florida, and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Those wins would not have escaped DeSantis’ attention, said Wendy Parmet, faculty co-director at the Center for Health Policy and Law at Northeastern University. But, she added, he’s playing “a precarious game.”
“You don’t know how serious the next problem is going to be,” she said. “You don’t know how it’s going to be transmitted. You don’t know the groups who will be most affected. You want to say the health department can’t close schools, but what if the next pandemic has a 50 percent fatality rate for kids, but adults are fine?”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 1, 2023
Top Arab lawmakers’ Syria visit ‘positive step’ toward greater solidarity: Iran

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Tehran: Iran said on Tuesday that the visit of senior Arab lawmakers to quake-ravaged Syria is a step toward greater “solidarity” in the region.
Making the remarks in a tweet, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said the visit of the Arab Inter-Parliamentary Union (AIPU) delegation on Sunday represented fresh “breakthroughs” in relations between Syria and other Arab countries, Xinhua news agency reported.
Headed by the Speaker of the Arab Parliament Adel Abdel-Rahman Al-Asoomi and Iraqi parliament Speaker Mohammed al-Halbousi, the delegation’s Sunday visit was aimed at “expressing solidarity” with Syria following the deadly quakes that jolted the country on February 6, Kanaani noted.
These breakthroughs are also proof of greater “realism” in the region and in the Muslim world, he added.
If the regional countries can adopt “realistic and independent” national approaches and resist the demands of any hegemonic power, they will resolve their problems through dialogue and regional mechanisms, the spokesman said.
After the tragic earthquakes, Arab countries have sent many aid shipments to Syria amid signs of a wide-scale diplomatic detente.
The AIPU is a regional parliamentary organisation composed of parliamentary groups representing the Arab Parliament, the legislative body of the Arab League. Syria’s membership in the Arab League was suspended in 2011 after the war broke out in the country.

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February 28, 2023
Top Arab lawmakers visit Syria

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Damascus: A delegation of the Arab Inter-Parliamentary Union visited Damascus, underscoring the importance of bringing Syria back to the Arab fold.
Syria’s membership in the Arab League was suspended in 2011 after the ongoing civil war broke out, reports Xinhua news agency.
The president of the Arab Inter-Parliamentary Union and Iraqi Parliament Speaker Mohammed al-Halbousi headed the high-ranking delegation to Damascus on Sunday.
The eight Arab lawmakers held a meeting with President Bashar al-Assad and then went to the Syrian Parliament to meet lawmakers.
Among the visitors was Egypt’s Parliament Speaker Hanafy Ali El-Gebali, the first top official from the African nation to visit Syria during the 11-year war.
Speaking to reporters in Damascus, al-Halboosi said the Arab Inter-Parliamentary Union determined to work on all levels to bring Syria back to the Arab fold to assume its role in the Arab, regional, and international arena.
“Syria is indispensable, and we, as the parliamentary union representing our people, are pushing our governments to achieve more rapprochements to reach our goal of serving these countries are their dignified people,” he said.
For his part, El-Gebali said he and the other lawmakers came to Syria to show solidarity with the Syrian people.

“We don’t wait for Syria to come to us, we come to Syria because it’s our country also,” the Egyptian said.
El-Gebali revealed that their visit to Syria wasn’t on the schedule of the recent Arab Inter-Parliamentary Union mini-summit in Baghdad.
He said that it is al-Halboosi’s idea, noting that the Iraqi lawmaker took care of the travel arrangements for the visit to Syria.
According to Syria’s state news agency SANA, President Assad stressed that the delegation’s visit to his country means a lot to the Syrian people as it indicates support for them.
He said the visit affirms that there are effective Arab institutions capable of taking the initiative in various circumstances and moving in the interest of the Arab people.
He also thanked Arab countries for the rapid response shown at the popular and official levels to help the Syrian people overcome the impacts of the earthquake.
After the tragic earthquakes that jolted Syria on February 6, Arab countries have sent many aid shipments to the war-torn nation amid signs of a wide-scale diplomatic detente.
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( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

February 27, 2023
With Congress out of Washington, lawmakers are traveling to global hot spots, including India, Taiwan and Mexico.

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That’s in addition to the large group at the Munich Security Conference last week.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 21, 2023
The head of the House GOP’s campaign arm and other members are blasting the improper access of Republican lawmakers’ military records as “beyond disgusting.”

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It’s not certain whether Due Diligence was the only outside entity that obtained access to the military records.

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#House #GOPs #campaign #arm #members #blasting #improper #access #Republican #lawmakers #military #records #disgusting
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 21, 2023