George Texs blog

More than a hundred activists supporting transgender rights marched and held a rally outside the Capitol on Wednesday in protest of a bill scheduled to go for a vote in the Florida House this week that would require driver’s licenses to display a person’s sex assigned at birth, rather than the gender identity. The bill ( HB 1639 ) also requires all health insurance plans in the state that provides transgender-related health care to provide coverage for treatment to detransition from such procedures for “an appropriate additional premium.” But an equivalent to the measure has never been introduced in the Senate, and Senate President Kathleen Passidomo said that with just a little over a week in the legislative session, it wasn’t going anywhere in her chamber. “That bill is still stuck in committee,” she said “and so, pursuant to our rules. We don’t take bills. We don’t … ever take bills out of committee.” Orlando Dem. Rep. Anna Eskamani in front of the Old Capitol on Feb. ...

The other day, because I was in a hurry, I swung through a McDonald’s drive-through and ordered one of their burgers. You know, the ones that seem less like cooked meat and more like a warm hockey puck. But it’s OK! I told myself that it was actually filet mignon from Bern’s Steak House in Tampa. It was mmm-mmm good! I learned this marvelous mind trick from our fine Legislature, which has been using it for some time now to persuade themselves that they’re effective when they are not. Remember four years ago, when they passed a “Clean Waterways Act” that doesn’t actually clean the waterways ? A more recent example: Rep. Jason Shoaf , R-Fantasyland, has sponsored a completely unnecessary bill to make it okay to kill bears, so long as it’s in self-defense . He contended it’s not for dealing with those regular old bears we have here in Florida, because they’re so shy. Instead, it’s to counter the threat of bears on crack. Yes, you read that right, BEARS ON CRACK. “When you run...

With Tallahassee’s political class in a tizzy over whether Gov. Ron DeSantis will veto House Speaker Paul Renner’s cherished social media ban for under-16-year-olds, the governor decamped to Naples to deliver a speech to a homeschool academy. The legislation ( HB 1 ), which cleared the Legislature last Thursday, would forbid social media platforms to allow younger teenagers to participate unless the platforms abandon the “engagement” tools, including algorithms, that keep users scrolling away. DeSantis has consistently emphasized that he wants parents to control whether their children use these platforms. But he didn’t bring up the subject during a 20-minute talk to students and others at the Freedom Institute of Collier County, or during a subsequent Q&A with Tom Grady, a board member who sat on the Florida Board of Education between 2015 and last year. The Institute provides instruction to homeschool students. The governor did cite his support for parental rights, ho...

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden huddled with top congressional leaders at the White House on Tuesday amid a crunch over government funding as well as a familiar stalemate over assistance to two major allies — and no solution immediately in sight. Lawmakers leaving the meeting, which lasted about an hour, said it was worthwhile, even though it didn’t lead to any agreements that would avoid a partial government shutdown from beginning this weekend, or clear a Senate-passed package of aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. “It was a productive meeting on the government shutdown, we are making good progress … (and) the speaker said unequivocally he wants to avoid a government shutdown,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said following the meeting, referring to House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican. Johnson faces tensions and demands in the House. Congressional leaders and the Biden administration have agreed to total spending levels for each of the dozen ...

Updated, 7:13 a.m., 2/28/24 President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump each won their respective primaries Tuesday in Michigan. The Associated Press  made the call  about an hour after polls in most counties closed at 8 p.m., with just over 10% of the votes tabulated. Four western Upper Peninsula counties in the central times zone close their polls at 9 p.m. The victories make it all the more likely that the two will face off against each other this November, in a repeat of the 2020 election in which Biden defeated Trump. However, the results aren’t all cut and dried for either candidate. Biden, who cruised to an 81% victory with 618,000 votes, according to unofficial returns with 99% reporting, has had to contend with a campaign to convince Democrats across the state to vote uncommitted on their ballot as a protest message over his support of Israel in its war against the militant group Hamas in Gaza. Unofficial results show more than 100,000 voters chose to...

The House and Senate sponsors of legislation to tighten Florida’s defamation law against media organizations conceded Tuesday that the measure is falling short as the regular session winds to a close. “Dead,” Republican Sen. Jason Brodeur said when asked about the bill’s prospects. Brodeur, representing Seminole and part of Orange counties, added a caveat: “As far as I know. But that’s going to be up to the presiding officer” — meaning Senate President Kathleen Passidomo. State Rep. Alex Andrade. Credit: FL House of Representatives. The House sponsor, Alex Andrade, a Republican whose district include parts of Escambia and Santa Rosa counties, also acknowledged the writing on the wall. “President Passidomo doesn’t want to hear it. It depends on how much anybody else cares about it. Like, I don’t negotiate with President Passidomo,” Andrade told the Phoenix. Additionally, “the speaker [of the House, Paul Renner] doesn’t want it. The governor doesn’t have the bandwidth t...

For more than a decade, victims who suffered from rapes and beatings while attending the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in North Florida have told their painful, gut-wrenching stories to state lawmakers about that abuse — but have never received compensation for their pain and suffering. That may now change, after a committee in the Florida Senate on Tuesday approved a bill that includes $20 million to provide compensation to approximately 400 still living victims of the abuse they suffered as young teens in the late 1950s and early 1960s. “I’m hoping that what we have gone through and the message that we have brought here to the Capitol, that all minds would come to fruition that whatever the amount of money, that we deserve it, “said Cecil Gardner, 77, after the vote. “But you can’t put a dollar amount on the suffering and the physical abuse that we have gone through. So, we’re hoping that with our presence and our testimony, that everything will work out in our favor.” G...

When campaigning in her home state of South Carolina earlier this month, former Gov. Nikki Haley  said  the words millions of women have longed to hear: “We will have a female president of the United States.” But then the Republican’s speech took a much darker turn, as she added, “But the hard truth is it’s going to be me or [Vice President] Kamala Harris.” That was met by boos from the GOP crowd, presumably not because it’s in poor taste to declare President Joe Biden is going to kick the bucket soon, but because the prospect of Harris ascending to the Oval Office is so distasteful. Former President Donald Trump, the current GOP frontrunner, managed to cram a whole lot of racist and sexist stereotypes into a  2020 rant  about Harris for grilling his Supreme Court pick accused of sexual assault, Brett Kavanaugh, while she served on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. “And now, you have — a sort of — a mad woman, I call her, because she was so angry and — such hatred with J...

Former President Donald Trump painted a bleak picture Saturday of what would happen to the United States should voters reelect Joe Biden to the Oval Office in November. The front-runner in the 2024 GOP presidential primary, who made similar predictions ahead of the 2020 presidential election, told attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference — known as CPAC — just outside Washington, D.C., that only he could provide America a better outcome. Trump spoke as voters in South Carolina went to the polls there in  the state’s presidential primary,  which Trump is expected to win over his last major challenger, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, though Haley has vowed to stay in the race through Super Tuesday. “They’ll soon have us losing World War III. We won’t even be in World War III, we’ll be losing World War III with weapons the likes of which nobody has ever seen before,” Trump told attendees at the conference, an annual gathering of conservatives. “These are...

Birmingham resident Hannah Miles has been trying to have a baby for more than three years, fighting obstacles like endometriosis, diminished ovarian reserve and cancer treatment that affected her husband’s sperm. The couple is already nearly $40,000 into the in vitro fertilization process after one failed transfer into her uterus in January. Their last embryo is scheduled to be transferred on March 19. She messaged her IVF nurse through tears earlier this week, asking if she should continue the medication injections that cost $800 per vial out of pocket to keep her endometriosis from flaring up. Her clinic, Alabama Fertility, indicated her transfer can move forward, she said, but it has paused any new treatments or transfers because of the Feb. 16 ruling from the Alabama Supreme Court declaring that  frozen embryos are equivalent to human children . The clinic made a post on its  Facebook page  Thursday addressed to patients. Hannah Miles, right, and her husband, Ricky, are...