Alabama Farmers Federation announces newest round of legislative endorsements
The Alabama Farmers Federation (ALFA) announced its 11th slate of endorsements for candidates seeking election to the Alabama House of Representatives, Yellowhammer News reported. FarmPAC, ALFA’s political arm, helps determine who to endorse. ALFA is Alabama’s largest farm organization representing agricultural and associate members in all 67 Alabama counties. State reps. Phillip Pettus (R-Killen), Jeremy Gray (D-Opelika), and Prince Chestnut (D-Selma) are all incumbents now endorsed by FarmPAC. ALFA also announced its endorsement of Helena City councilwoman Leigh Hulsey for House District 15. “Rep. Pettus is a good public servant for our district,” commented Lauderdale County Farmers Federation president Joe Dickerson. “He cares about the needs of his constituents and represents them well in Montgomery.” Jamie Lazenby, Lee County Farmers Federation president, praised Gray’s work ethic. “Rep. Gray is a leader in the House of Representatives, and we appreciate his service to our district,” advised Lazenby. “He works hard to make sure our needs are represented in Montgomery.” Dallas County Farmers Federation president Jimmy Holliman commented, “Rep. Chestnut is a hard-working representative, and he does a fine job for us at home and in Montgomery representing our needs. We are honored to support his reelection bid.” John DeLoach, president of the Shelby County Farmers Federation, praised Hulsey’s leadership skills, stating, “Leigh Hulsey is a strong business leader who understands the needs of the people of this district. She is also a strong conservative who will work hard representing the needs of our district in the Legislature.”
Tim James campaign releases new ad critical of Kay Ivey’s mask mandate decisions
Tim James has released a new campaign advertisement for his 2022 gubernatorial campaign. The 30-second spot is called “What have we done,” and emphasizes Gov. Kay Ivey’s decisions on mask mandates. In the ad, James comments, “What have we done to our little ones? Shutdowns and masking have caused untold damage to our children. They’ve fallen behind. We’re starting to see mental health issues. Parents, you’ve been right—the whole time. Governor Ivey could have stopped this by executive order. She refused.” James goes on to say, “Masks are a parent’s choice. It’s your decision. I’m Tim James. As Governor, I’ll stop forced masking. It’s time to fight back.” “As Governor, Tim will never tolerate unconstitutional mandates and shutdowns. Freedom and liberty must be preserved at all costs,” James’ campaign stated. “Our children’s future is at stake, and Tim has the principle and strength of character to fight back.”
Tommy Tuberville introduces legislation to streamline 9/11 GI Bill benefits
Sen. Tommy Tuberville joined Senators John Thune and Marco Rubio to introduce legislation that will require the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to modify the language used on official VA and DoD forms to clarify the information required when a service member elects to have their GI Bill benefit transferred to a dependent. Representatives Greg Murphy, M.D., Cindy Axne, and David Trone introduced the companion bill in the U.S. House of Representatives. Historically, service members have had issues with the GI Bill benefit transfer forms. If the information requested is written incorrectly, the mistake leads to eligible dependents being barred from rightfully earned educational benefits. These errors could be easily amended, however, the VA and DoD cannot amend the information on the form without this statutory authority. One such error that happens frequently is the “end date” error. Part of the transfer form requires the service member fill out a field labeled “end date.” This field refers to the date on which the benefit is no longer available to the dependent. Since this field is the cause of many incorrectly completed transfer forms, this bill would remove the “end date” to prevent further issues. The benefit would then naturally expire on the dependent’s 26th birthday. “Our service members and their families sacrifice greatly for our freedoms, and it isn’t right that confusing paperwork can get in the way of a dependent receiving education benefits after the tragedy of losing a loved one,” stated Tuberville. “This legislation provides a simple fix that can make a big difference to our service members and their families in Alabama and across the nation. It fulfills the wish of those who have honorably served and guarantees this earned benefit is preserved.” “We owe veterans and their families more than we’ll ever actually be able to repay,” said Senator Thune. “I am happy to join Senators Tuberville and Rubio in supporting this common-sense legislation that would cut through red tape and make it easier for veteran families to receive the benefits they so rightly deserve.” This legislation is supported by the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, a national organization focused on providing care for families grieving the death of a military loved one. “TAPS is grateful to Senator Tuberville for introducing legislation to ensure surviving spouses and children who are using transferred entitlement are not disqualified due to a technicality. This much-needed legislation will give the Department of Veterans Affairs the authority to remove the end date on transferred entitlement and strengthens benefits for surviving families,” said Bonnie Carroll, President and Founder Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS). According to the bill, a service member may transfer their Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits to a spouse or child so long as the service member has done the following: Completed at least 6 years on the date the service member requests to transfer the benefit, and Agreed to add 4 more years of service, and The individual receiving the benefits has enrolled in the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System (DEERS).
Under pressure to ease up, Joe Biden weighs new virus response
Facing growing pressure to ease up on pandemic restrictions, the White House insisted Wednesday it is making plans for a less-disruptive phase of the national virus response. But impatient states, including Democratic New York, made clear they aren’t waiting for Washington as public frustration grows. Gov. Kathy Hochul announced that New York will end its COVID-19 mandate requiring face coverings in most indoor public settings — but will keep it for schools. Illinois announced the same. Earlier this week, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Delaware all disclosed plans to join states that have lifted or never had mask requirements for their schools, and Massachusetts will follow suit at the end of the month. All but Massachusetts have governors who are Democrats, like President Joe Biden. Biden, who has long promised to follow to “follow the science” in confronting the pandemic, is hemmed in, waiting for fresh guidance from federal health officials, who so far still recommend that nearly all Americans wear masks in most indoor settings. Defending Biden, press secretary Jen Psaki acknowledged that while people are tired of masks and “we understand where the emotions of the country are,” the administration is following the advice of medical experts who rely on scientific evidence. “That doesn’t move at the speed of politics; it moves at the speed of data,” she said. Clearly feeling the pressure, the White House, for the first time, acknowledged movement in its planning, saying conversations have been underway privately to develop plans for guiding the country away from the emergency phase of the pandemic. Federal COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients said officials are consulting with state and local leaders and public health officials on potential next steps. But as governors and local officials press for clearer federal guidelines for easing or ending restrictions, states, cities, and school boards are adopting an awkward patchwork of policies that differ widely from one place to the next. “We are working on that guidance,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said in a White House teleconference Wednesday. “As we’ve been encouraged by the current trends, we are not there yet.” The White House offered no timetable for the review or an indication of what it will recommend. And some critics say that’s not good enough. “The tragic thing is that these are governors that would probably have followed the White House’s guidance,” said Dr. Leana Wen, a former Baltimore health commissioner. “They wanted CDC input and asked for it, but without a clear timeline, at some point, they had to decide that they couldn’t wait any more. The fault is not theirs, but the CDC’s and by extension, President Biden’s, which, with each passing day, is making itself less and less relevant.” Asked whether Biden appears to be out of touch with the country, Psaki defended his caution. “As a federal government, we have the responsibility to rely on data on science, on the medical experts,” she said. Pressed on whether Americans should follow less-restrictive state or local rules or the stricter federal guidance, she repeated the White House’s daily counsel: “We would advise any American to follow the CDC guidelines.” New York’s Hochul and others aren’t waiting. They are ending or easing many broad mandates, though her state will keep masking rules in schools and health facilities. “Given the declining cases, given the declining hospitalizations, that is why we feel comfortable to lift this, in effect tomorrow,” Hochul said Wednesday. Even allies of the administration have argued that Biden should at least lay out a roadmap for moving back toward normalcy. He has been hesitant, aides say, in part because of the sting of his fleeting “declaration of independence” from the virus last summer, which proved premature in the face of the delta and then omicron strains. Now, though, cases and hospitalizations from COVID-19 have dropped markedly since they peaked earlier this year amid the spread of the highly transmissible omicron variant, and the vast majority of Americans are protected against the virus by effective vaccines and boosters. Still, more than 2,000 people infected with the virus die in the U.S. each day, and there is concern within the administration about letting up while deaths remain high. And Psaki noted that many Americans support continued mask-wearing. Some in the White House point to the consternation that was voiced in December after the CDC shortened the isolation time for Americans who test positive. While Biden and other administration officials emphasize that the threat from the virus is far diminished from a year ago, before the wide roll-out of vaccines and booster shots and the approval of rapid at-home tests and highly effective therapeutics, administration officials acknowledge that most federal guidelines have been slow to keep up. The CDC continues to recommend indoor mask-wearing in places of “substantial or high transmission” of the virus, which as of Wednesday was all of the U.S. but 14 rural counties. State and local leaders, nevertheless, have announced plans to ease virus restrictions in the coming weeks as omicron cases fall, citing the protections offered by vaccines as well as the increased availability of at-home testing kits and therapeutics for those who do catch the virus. Many of the restrictions eased last year, only to be reinstated as omicron swept the country. After more than a year of a top-down federally driven response, the emerging shift marks a return to the historical norm, where states have typically had the first say in how they handle public health emergencies. The CDC can advise them and issue general guidance for the nation, but in most situations, it cannot order them what to do. While the Biden administration has pushed back strongly against efforts by GOP governors to prohibit mask-wearing requirements, it is indicating that it will take a more flexible approach to jurisdictions that make their own choices. Policies lifting mask requirements “are going to have to be made at the local level” depending on case rates, Walensky said. Despite the encouraging reports in the Americas, Western Europe, and some
Jewish student reprimanded for revealing class Nazi salute
A Jewish high school student said he couldn’t believe what was going on when a history teacher in a wealthy Alabama school system had classmates stand and give a stiff-armed Nazi salute during a lesson on the way symbols change. Once he shared a video and photos of the incident on social media, Ephraim Tytell said, he received a reprimand from school administrators in Mountain Brook, a suburb of Birmingham. “They proceeded to tell me that I’m making Mountain Brook look bad for uploading the video and sharing it and asked me to apologize to my teacher, which I refused to,” he told WIAT-TV. “The day after, he made our class, and our class only, put up our phones, and he moved me from sitting in the back of the class to right next to him.” First reported by the Birmingham-based Southern Jewish Life, the incident last month gained traction on social media. On Tuesday, the school system issued a statement saying the video and photos shared online “are not representative of the lesson,” and no one tried to teach students how to do a Nazi salute. “Understanding the sensitive nature of this subject, Mountain Brook Schools has addressed the instructional strategy used with the teacher and does not condone the modeling of this salute when a picture or video could accurately convey the same message,” the statement said. A system spokesman did not immediately return an email Wednesday seeking additional comment. The point of the lesson, Tytell said, was that something very similar to what’s now widely known as a Nazi salute was used before World War II to salute the U.S. flag. Called the “Bellamy Salute” for decades, it was ditched in 1942 for the now-familiar right-hand-over-the-heart gesture after the United States’ entry into the war. “He explained to us that in America we used to do that before WWII and everything, and then he proceeded to show us, ask us to stand up to salute the flag, and he and everyone else did the Nazi salute,” Ephraim said. “I felt upset, unsure of what’s going on —just kind of shocked.” Mountain Brook Listens, a group that works to promote diversity in the virtually all-white city of 22,000, issued a statement saying the incident showed the need for more resources, education, and training on understanding implicit biases, building empathy, and acting with more compassion. “And our entire community, including our school system, must foster an environment where people feel safe to report behavior that they are concerned about and certainly not create an environment that cultivates any ‘fear of reprisal,’” it said. The controversy comes just months after Mountain Brook’s school system responded to community complaints about a diversity program produced by the Anti-Defamation League, which combats anti-Semitism by dropping the lessons. Schools had begun using the material after anti-Semitic events, including a video of a student with a swastika drawn on his body, but opponents claimed the lessons focused too heavily on race and gender and were produced by a group they considered controversial politically. Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
GOP scrutiny of Black districts may deepen after court move
For decades, Democratic Rep. Al Lawson’s Florida district has stretched like a rubber band from Jacksonville to Tallahassee, scooping up as many Black voters as possible to comply with requirements that minority communities get grouped together so they can select their own leaders and flex their power in Washington. But the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, is taking the unusual step of asking Florida’s Supreme Court whether Lawson’s plurality-Black district can be broken up into whiter — and more Republican — districts. That type of request might typically face steep hurdles under state and federal laws that are meant to protect representation of marginalized communities in the nation’s politics. But the ground rules may be shifting after the U.S. Supreme Court sided this week with Republicans in Alabama to block efforts to ensure that Black voters are adequately represented in Congress by adding a second majority-Black district in the state. The ruling stunned civil rights groups, who have watched the court’s conservative majority steadily eat away at the Voting Rights Act for decades. While the law’s rules governing how to draw legislative lines based on race still stand, advocates worry the justices are prepared to act with renewed fervor to eliminate remaining protections in the landmark civil rights legislation. That, some worry, could embolden Republicans in places like Florida to take aim at districts like Lawson’s and ultimately reduce Black voters’ influence on Capitol Hill. “That has had an effect, as we’ve seen, on Black political power at all levels of government,” Kathryn Sadasivan, an NAACP Legal Defense Fund attorney who worked on the Alabama case, said of prior erosions of the Voting Rights Act. Republicans argue that the Alabama case is about providing clarity on redistricting rules. As it stands, mapmakers can be sued if they consider race too much but also if they fail to consider it the way the Voting Rights Act mandates and omit districts with certain shares of a minority population. “In the last 15 years, the court has said if race predominates, your map is going to be struck down, but if you don’t look” at race properly, you violate the Voting Rights Act, Jason Torchinsky, general counsel to the National Republican Redistricting Trust, said on a call with reporters on Wednesday. “The court has been very inconsistent with its guidance to legislators here, and we hope the Alabama decision brings some clarity.” Torchinsky is representing DeSantis in his case before the Florida Supreme Court and would not comment on the case. Republicans contend it is legally different from Alabama. The first hurdle is not the Voting Rights Act but rather Florida’s own state redistricting law, which prioritizes racial equity in similar ways. Torchinsky and other lawyers for DeSantis have argued that courts have to provide a clear legal standard for whether mapmakers can contort district lines in a quest for racial fairness. “After all,” Desantis’ attorneys wrote to the Florida Supreme Court of the rationale for Lawson’s district, “governmental actions based on race are presumptively unconstitutional.” The Florida case is becoming the latest test of how states’ court systems handle the politically charged redistricting battle. A decade ago, Florida’s Supreme Court struck down maps drawn by the state’s GOP-controlled Legislature because they violated the state’s ban on partisan redistricting. This cycle, the state Senate proposed maps that mostly kept the status quo in the state’s current 27 congressional seats while adding a 28th district that should favor Republicans. But, with Democrats doing better than expected in redistricting nationwide, DeSantis, a possible 2024 presidential contender, pushed for a more aggressive approach that could net the GOP three seats. But the state’s Supreme Court a decade ago was overwhelmingly Democratic. Now it’s dominated by Republican appointees. The question in Florida, said David Vicuna of the anti-gerrymandering group Common Cause, is “will courts put aside whatever are their own personal party preferences and adhere to the law?” Similar questions swirl around the nation’s highest court and its 6-3 conservative majority. Under the 1965 Voting Rights Act, mapmakers are required to draw districts with a plurality or majority of African Americans or other minority groups if they’re in a relatively compact area with a white population that votes starkly differently from them. For decades, the GOP went along with this approach because it led to states, particularly in the South, having a handful of districts packed with Democratic-leaning African American voters, leaving the remaining seats whiter and more Republican. But a series of adverse legal decisions over recent decades and increased Democratic aggressiveness have turned the tables. “Now we see kind of a flipping of this, where Democrats and voting rights plaintiffs are saying, ‘You have to create more majority-minority districts,’ and Republicans are saying, ‘Then we’re taking race too much into account,’” said Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California-Irvine. The issues came to a head in Alabama, where civil rights groups and Democrats joined forces to argue that the state’s GOP-drawn maps were unconstitutional because they packed most Black voters into only one of seven congressional districts. A three-judge panel agreed, potentially opening the door to similar new plurality-Black districts in states with similar demographics like Louisiana and South Carolina. But the Supreme Court on Monday stayed that order in a 5-4 decision, saying it would hear full arguments in its fall term and issue a ruling after that, presumably next year. Justice Elena Kagan, writing for two other dissenting liberal justices, warned that the court was already reinterpreting the Voting Rights Act by stopping the lower court’s order. Civil rights attorneys, while hopeful they can persuade the court’s six-justice conservative majority to maintain the standards they’ve used for decades, acknowledge that the Voting Rights Act has been hollowed out over the years. In 2013, the court ruled the federal government could no longer use the VRA to require certain states with a history of discrimination to run voting and map changes by the Justice Department first to ensure they’re not discriminatory. Two of the states that
