Friday Politics Roundup | FL passes 6-week abortion ban; Air Force leaker arrested; Fort Lauderdale flooding; religious law firm infects PA schools; Temple ; DnD Movie, book recs; and, more!

Florida passed and Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed a 6-week abortion ban, thanks to a legislature dominated by Republicans. Florida’s current 15 week ban is held up in court, but if that ban is upheld, the 6-week ban will automatically go into effect. 

A Federal appeals court refused to suspend the FDA’s approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, but upheld a ban on patients being able to sent the pills by mail. That pretty much guarantees the case will be headed to the right-wing dominated US Supreme Court. 

A 21-year-old Air National Guardsman was arrested for his role in leaking on Discord classified documents related to the war in Ukraine. According to the New York Times, Jack Teixeira led a group of “20 to 30 people, mostly young men and teenagers, as they bonded over guns, racist memes, video games and international politics.”

Marjorie Taylor Green does the only thing she’s consistent on - inject reactionary bile into the public discourse. This time she comes out in support of the National Guardsman to leaked classified documents to Discord tweeting out, “Jake Teixeira is a white, male, christian, and antiwar. That makes him an enemy to the Biden regime. And he told the truth about troops being on the ground in Ukraine and a lot more. Ask yourself who is the real enemy?”

Mathias Döpfner, the CEO of Germany’s largest media company and new owner of Politico, is all in on a dystopian climate future. In a series of internal emails and messages published in Die Zeit this week, “I am all in for climate change, arguing that humans have always done better in warmer periods. “We shouldn’t fight climate change but adjust to it,” he said. For good measure, he also wrote in a longer message on his foreign policy views, “Free west, fuck the intolerant Muslims and all the other riff-raff.”

The Fort Lauderdale, FL area received more than two feet of rain over 12 hours on Wednesday, flooding the region and shutting down major airports. The rain amounts to about a third of Fort Lauderdale’s annual rainfall in one shot. The area’s previous record rainfall set in 1979 was 14.59 inches.

Chris Ullery and Bethany Rodgers published an explosive investigation in the Bucks County Courier Times on how the religious law firm, the Independence Law Center, is writing anti-LGBTQ policy for school boards all across Pennsylvania. 

Abortion rights and health care advocates urged state lawmakers and Gov. Shapiro to stop sending public money to support the anti-abortion organization, Real Alternatives, which uses deceptive practices to push patients away from having an abortion while posing as reproductive health clinics. The Wolf Administration allocated more than $7.2 million to Real Alternatives and Gov. Shapiro is continuing the practice, with $6 million in his proposed budget. 

Will Bunch makes the case for a state-takeover of Temple University. He argues, “The best way to restore Temple as a public good — once again serving Philadelphia and surrounding communities as an affordable and accessible way up the ladder — would be to make it (and, arguably, the three other state-supported schools) a fully public university.” 

And award-winning author, Jean Kwok, flew in from the Netherlands to address the Central Bucks School Board about their moves to ban her book. 

Amazon enters the AI race with “Bedrock.”

Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, rocked. 

Currently reading Rick Perlstein’s, “Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus,” and The Bone Shard Emperor, by Andrea Stewart, which is book #2 of the her Drowning Empire trilogy.

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