Future Timeline

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson extracted concessions from Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), helping the California Republican to get the votes he needed from MAGA members of his caucus to become Speaker of the House, according to text messages obtained by Insider.

On Jan. 3, as McCarthy struggled to corral the votes he needed on the first day of the new Congress, Carlson made two demands on his prime time Fox News show.

Carlson claimed McCarthy could win the speakership if he released footage from the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot — which the former anchor falsely and repeatedly alleged was a peaceful protest. He also believed that McCarthy could seize the gavel if he appointed Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) to lead the new Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.

More than a dozen far-right Republicans refused to vote for McCarthy for days and forced a historic 15 rounds of votes.

BREAKING: Arizona Supreme Court sanctions Kari Lake and her attorneys "ecause Lake’s attorney has made false factual statements to the Court."

The Arizona Supreme Court on Thursday ordered sanctions against former gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake's lawyers for "unequivocally false" claims made in court about 35,000 ballots added to last year's election vote count.

Attorneys for Gov. Katie Hobbs and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, both Democrats, sought sanctions against Lake for bringing what they called a frivolous and unfounded lawsuit.

The order signed by Chief Justice Robert Brutinel declined to award Hobbs and Fontes their attorneys fees and said Lake's lawyers must pay $2,000 to the court clerk for repeatedly claiming it was an "undisputed fact" that 35,563 ballots were added to the results at Maricopa County’s third-party ballot processor, Runbeck Election Services. Hobbs, Fontes and Maricopa County all disputed the claim.

Conservatives seem to agree that queer people are public enemy No. 1. So far, they’ve come for drag story hour,trans people in sports and now they’re dealing one of their lowest blows: Trying to ban high school theater productions that contain mildly gay themes.

This past January, a school in Ohio halted its production of “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” partly because one of the characters has two fathers, The Washington Post reported. Other high school productions with LGBTQ+ characters have been pulled all over the country — including the production of “Indecent” at a Florida school and “The Addams Family” in Pennsylvania.

Of course, banning school theater productions because of homophobia isn’t a new concept. In the early 2010s, “Rent” caused a moral panic all over the country, and high school productions of the play were canceled left and right. This time, though, the haters are being extra petty and going after plays with any sliver of queerness. This all feels like part of a larger and more concentrated push for queer erasure and an effort to blot out a space for young LGBTQ+ people.

In many places that do not accept LGBTQ+ people, high school theater programs can serve as the only space where they’re welcome and able to express themselves authentically and safely. To rob queer students of that community because of tangential characters who might or might not be gay is not only an unnecessary reach — it’s evil.

wjfox wrote: ↑Sat May 06, 2023 11:42 am

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Teachers and other government employees will have to write monthly checks if they want to stay in their union after Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill Tuesday banning automatic dues deductions from public employees’ paychecks,

The anti-union bill also gives employees the right to immediately quit a union for no reason and requires unions to recertify if the number of dues-paying members drops below 60% of those eligible to join.

“If you want to join, you can, but you write a check and you hand it over. That is gonna lead to more take-home pay for teachers,” DeSantis said at the bill-signing ceremony.

It was one of several bills that DeSantis signed that affect education, including new term limits for school board members, restrictions on student social media use and protections for teachers who report administrators they believe are violating state education policies.

Granny, get your gun. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) told a rapt Kayleigh McEnany Tuesday on Fox News that grandparents could join a force of armed military vets and retired police officers to protect schools from shootings. (Watch the video below.)

McEnany, Donald Trump’s former White House press secretary, was rapt as Blackburn promoted her SAFE Schools Act, which would supply $900 million to “harden schools” with more security. The proposal, which she introduced after a Nashville school shooting in March, does nothing to address the root of the problem: easy access to powerful guns.

“To have this grant pool and to allow local school systems and local law enforcement to work together to bring in veterans and retired law enforcement to serve as a security officer at a school — they know how to use weapons,” Blackburn said. “They know to de-escalate situations. I’ve talked to a lot of them. They like this idea. They are grandparents like we are — my husband and I are grandparents — and they want to be there to help protect children.”

Blackburn said she proposed something similar after the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that killed 19 students and two teachers. In that case, hundreds of law enforcement personnel were slow to act while the shooter carried out the massacre.

Just weeks ago, Ron DeSantis made it legal in Florida to conceal carry a gun without a permit, training, or even a background check.

And on Friday, he signed a bill to prevent credit card companies from tracking the sale of firearms and ammunition. The bill stops companies from helping track suspicious weapons purchases—an increasing concern while the United States is flooded with random shootings and mass shootings essentially every few hours.

Instead, DeSantis in rapid succession has made it easier for potentially violent people to conceal carry guns with no abandon, while making it more difficult for law enforcement to proactively respond when those carriers may have nefarious intentions.

Companies found in violation of the bill will be fined up to $10,000.

Credit card companies had expressed willingness to adopt the gun-tracking practice, which pretty much involves ascribing a distinct four-digit “merchant category code” for sales at gun businesses. Such codes are already used to distinguish purchases from oft-frequented places like grocery stores, gas stations, and restaurants.

Consequently, while DeSantis claims the bill to be a defense against big government, it really is just a stake he is laying on the issues of guns. If he was really so concerned about government overreach or mass data surveillance, he would ban the use of such codes outright. But the very limited purportment of principle is DeSantis’s entire brand. Also this week, he again escalated his war against Disney and its monorail, going not against universal corporate immunities or misdeeds, but just Disney specifically—because he doesn’t like that they spoke out against his infamous and repressive “Don’t Say Gay” bill.