Florida “Don’t Say Gay” Lawmaker Pleads Guilty in Covid Fraud Case

Joseph Harding, a leading Republican co-sponsor for Florida’s infamous “Don’t Say Gay” bill, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to wire fraud, money laundering, and making false statements—and faces up to 35 years in prison.

The former Florida state representative resigned in December, after being indicted by a federal grand jury for using inactive businesses to apply for emergency loans doled out to small businesses during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Harding stole some $150,000 from the Small Business Administration program meant to help struggling businesses serve their customers and pay their workers during the pandemic, according to a news release from the Justice Department.

Harding became a prominent voice among Florida Republicans after introducing and helping lead the passage of the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, one of many authoritarian legislative planks pursued under Ron DeSantis’s reign. The bill bans classroom instruction and discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity for students up to the third grade. Beyond the third grade, such instruction is only to be allowed so long as it is “age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate,” in “accordance with state standards,” vague guidelines that have led instructors and students alike to worry how the government will over-enforce an already repressive law.

Harding has entered a plea deal on one count of each of the charges, allowing the other counts against him to be dropped. Still, he faces a maximum of 20 years in federal prison for the wire fraud charge, a maximum of 10 for money laundering, and a maximum of five for false statements. The actual sentence to Harding will be doled out in July.

Beyond being one of the leading co-sponsors for the repressive and DeSantis-blessed “Don’t Say Gay” Florida law, Harding was also named vice chair of the state House Health and Human Services Committee and of the PreK-12 Appropriations Subcommittee before he resigned in December.

Since 2021, lawmakers in at least 22 states have introduced at least 42 bills that restrict education or discussion about gender and sexual orientation. While Florida’s is the only one to become law so far, at least 30 other bills are currently progressing through state legislatures.

Workers at more than 100 Starbucks locations across the country went on strike Wednesday to protest the company’s alleged union-busting tactics and demand a contract negotiation.

The strike was timed to fall on “Founder’s Day,” a holiday the coffee chain invented to honor three-time CEO Howard Schultz. Schultz announced Monday that he was stepping down from his post two weeks early. He has been replaced by Laxman Narasimhan.

“We are on strike today … to show Starbucks that we will no longer take the hour cuts, the lack of guaranteed hours. We will no longer settle for anything less than a real seat at the table, and also to show them that we have the power,” a woman named Lola, who works at a Starbucks store in St. Paul, Minnesota, told More Perfect Union.

Starbucks employees took to the streets in more than 40 cities. The first coffee store unionized in Buffalo, New York, almost a year and a half ago, and union efforts have prevailed at hundreds of other locations. At least 421 Starbucks locations nationwide have launched unionization efforts, 287 of which have been successful. Another 39 are currently ongoing.

But over the past year, Starbucks has shuttered multiple locations, some of which were either unionized or reportedly forming a union. The company fired more than 100 union leaders, some of whom were reinstated only after a federal judge ordered Starbucks to do so. And when Starbucks representatives finally met with union members in October, after months of delays, they walked out after just a few minutes because they disliked that some union members had called in over Zoom.

Schultz came under particular fire during his third tenure as Starbucks CEO for alleged union-busting tactics. His retirement announcement came a little more than a week before he was due to appear in front of a key Senate labor committee.

He had agreed to testify before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, just before the committee voted to subpoena him over the union-busting allegations. Schultz will still have to appear in front of the committee, even though he is no longer Starbucks’s CEO.

A top federal judge ruled that some of Donald Trump’s attorney-client privileges could be “pierced” after prosecutors for the special counsel investigating the former president found he intentionally misled his own attorneys about keeping classified materials when he left office. As a result, two of Trump’s lawyers could now be forced to testify against him.

Jack Smith was appointed in November as the special counsel to investigate Trump’s role in the January 6 attack and his keeping hundreds of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate. Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

U.S. Judge Beryl Howell wrote in a sealed court filing Friday that Smith’s team had found preliminary evidence that showed “the former president had committed criminal violations,” ABC News reported. Howell, who stepped down Friday as the chief judge for the D.C. district court, found prosecutors had “sufficient” evidence that Trump “intentionally concealed” many of the classified documents from his own legal team.

For now, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has temporarily stayed Howell’s order, but a final ruling could come at any moment.

Howell ordered Trump attorney Evan Corcoran to comply with a grand jury subpoena for testimony on six different lines of inquiry. She also ordered him to hand over records of Trump’s alleged “criminal scheme,” including handwritten notes, invoices, and transcriptions of personal audio recordings.

The judge also ordered Trump lawyer Jennifer Little to testify for unspecified reasons. Little is representing the former president in the Georgia investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the state.

Prosecutors will need to reach a much higher standard of evidence to seek charges against Trump and prove him guilty, Howell said. But her decision is “an indication that the government had presented some evidence and allegation that they had evidence that met the elements of a crime,” former national security official Brandon Van Grack told ABC.

Former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, who led the successful prosecution of former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort, said Howell’s order could be a “gold mine” for proving wrongdoing by Trump. Howell also presided over Manafort’s obstruction charges.

A Trump campaign spokesman, who sounded a lot like Trump publicist John Miller, hit back at Howell’s order. “Shame on Fake News ABC for broadcasting ILLEGALLY LEAKED false allegations from a Never Trump, now former chief judge, against the Trump legal team,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “The real story here, that Fake News ABC SHOULD be reporting on, is that prosecutors only attack lawyers when they have no case whatsoever.”

Trump and his supporters have repeatedly accused prosecutors of weaponizing their offices to attack the former president. The latest target is Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who is expected to indict Trump this week for his alleged role in hush-money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels.

Donald Trump wants to be put in handcuffs.

The twice-impeached former president currently facing four criminal investigations told his advisers that, if he is indicted by the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation into his role for paying hush money to porn actress Stormy Daniels, he wants to turn it all into a show.

As The Guardian reports, Trump seems more concerned with how to display strength and defiance amid the potential criminal charges than he is with the charges themselves. He has essentially told advisers that if he is going to be forced to surrender to authorities and have fingerprinting and a mug shot done at the courthouse, he may as well turn the whole process into a “spectacle.”

A perp walk of a visually unphased Trump, handcuffed and flanked by the police, all in front of flashing cameras and ardent protesters, is apparently Trump’s fantasy. Unfortunately for the daydreamer, reports indicate that authorities will likely work in tandem with the Secret Service to avoid such pandemonium.

Trump’s reinvigorated thirst for being the main character seems to be a bounce back from when he was on the way out of the White House. Per The New York Times, Trump was deep in the doldrums upon being impeached for the second time, after his supporters attacked the Capitol in a failed attempt to keep him in power. Trump reportedly had a “startling melancholy in his tone and hints of self-reflection as he sighed about his advanced age and expanding waistband,” reported the Times.

But since then, presumably buttressed by his formal entrance back into politics as the leading candidate for the 2024 Republican nomination, Trump seems to be more and more back in his brash, delinquent groove. His eagerness to turn his potentially unprecedented arrest—which would make him the first former president to be criminally indicted—into a spectacle mirrors an augmented egomania displayed in, for example, his insistence that the Secret Service drive him around in a limo after he tested positive for Covid-19 so he could project strength to his supporters.

The spectacle didn’t work then (he lost the election weeks after that, and he and Melania’s cases were a few of many in the White House Covid outbreak), and it likely won’t work now. Because while Trump revels in the showbiz aspect of being criminally charged—and while this could solidify him as a martyr for at least enough primary voters to crowd out any other challenger—he is still mired in three other criminal investigations.

And one indictment alone would be enough to turn off more voters than the ones who chose not to vote for him in 2020.

Lori VanWinkle seems to believe respecting students’ preferred pronouns is the same as committing murder.

The Republican representative in North Dakota made the claim during a state House judiciary meeting Monday on a Senate bill that would ban schools from adopting any policies or curriculum related to “expressed gender” and allow teachers to misgender students without facing penalty. VanWinkle supported the bill and seemed to argue that respecting someone’s preferred pronouns was tantamount to accepting murder.

“I mean this seems to be like we’re promoting them to make things up that aren’t true and then endorse that,” she said, suggesting that simply allowing students to use their preferred pronouns is instead encouraging them to lie about their gender. “I just don’t understand why we’re calling ‘lying’ protecting something, when we wouldn’t do it if [students] came to school and felt like they had the right to murder people,” she added.

The bill, which also bans schools from requiring staff training on gender, passed the Senate last month. Both chambers of the North Dakota legislature are controlled by the Republican Party, as is the governor’s office.

“Senate Bill 2231 only has one outcome for North Dakota,” North Dakota Student Association spokesperson Celeste McCash told local outlet KX News. “Economic losses. Individuals who are part of the LGBTQUIA+ community and their families will not consider moving to or continuing to live in our state.”

None of that is a problem for VanWinkle. “How does this even remotely fit into our constitutional obligation to promote a high degree of intelligence, patriotism, morality, and integrity for our students in the education system?” she asked earlier in the meeting.

Since entering office last year, VanWinkle has made a habit of reading Bible verses on the House floor and focusing on bills banning gender-affirming care and mask mandates. Last month, she cited a Covid-19 conspiracy theory while debating a bill on expanded workers’ compensation for firefighters and police officers, eliciting at least one audible groan from a fellow lawmaker.

Recently, VanWinkle joined Representative Brandon Prichard—known by local outlets as the “George Santos of North Dakota,” for reportedly lying about his education and even where he lives—to push a bill that would ban drag performances in the presence of minors or on public property. That bill, H.B. 1333, is also up for consideration.