Ron DeSantis Is Going After the Railroads—Well, the Disney Monorail …

Florida Republicans have passed a transportation-related bill with one key provision: subjecting Disney World’s monorail system to state inspections.

The amendment does not mention Disney by name, but the carefully worded language applies specifically to it.

The bill, which passed the House on Wednesday evening, calls for state oversight of “any governmentally or privately owned fixed-guideway transportation systems operating in this state which are located within an independent special district created by a local act which have boundaries within two contiguous counties.” Disney World is located within such a special district that stretches across two contiguous counties.

DeSantis certainly could have called for universal regulatory standards over rail companies. But the bill’s specificity in targeting the exact makeup of Disney’s monorail system tells you how concerned the Florida governor is with actually holding the private sector accountable.

The move comes, of course, while DeSantis has launched an all-out assault on Disney, not in response to any accusation of greed or environmental degradation or the like, but out of retaliation against Disney’s opposition to DeSantis’s notoriously unpopular “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Since then, Disney has become catch-all target practice for the Florida governor’s routines against “wokeness.”

A parallel bill, Senate Bill 1604, would cancel a long-standing development agreement that has allowed Disney to largely govern the land it holds. Both bills now await DeSantis’s signature. In the meantime, Disney has filed a lawsuit against DeSantis and his allies on the grounds that such retaliatory attacks from the governor on the company amount to a First Amendment violation.

The targeted regulation comes alongside DeSantis suggesting a new regulatory regime specifically over Disney World rides—but not those of any of its competitors, like Universal Orlando or SeaWorld—again reiterating the governor’s sole focus not on actual corporate accountability or public safety but on fulfilling his dumb pledge to “never back down from a fight” (perhaps because he can’t really fulfill that pledge in the upcoming Republican primary, or even when he’s talking to the media).

The Florida legislature passed a bill Thursday that will let the state take transgender minors away from their families if they are receiving gender-affirming care.

The bill passed the Senate by a vote of 26–13, mainly along party lines, and the House shortly after by a vote of 83–28, again along party lines. The measure now goes to the desk of Governor Ron DeSantis, who has previously expressed support for it and will likely sign it into law.

If he signs it into law, the measure will allow the state to take custody of a child if they have been “subjected to or [are] threatened with being subjected to” gender-affirming care, which includes puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy. Florida courts could modify custody agreements from a different state if the minor is likely to receive gender-affirming care in that second state. The text refers to gender-affirming care as “sex-reassignment prescriptions or procedures” and qualifies this care as a form of “physical harm.”

Medical facilities would have to give the state Department of Health a signed attestation that they neither provide gender-affirming care to any patients under the age of 18 nor refer people to providers that do. Their medical license renewal is contingent upon sending in this attestation.

But the bill also targets trans adults: Only physicians are allowed to offer gender-affirming care (not nurse practitioners). Anyone who violates the law could be charged with a misdemeanor.

Minors who have already begun transitioning will be allowed to continue to do so, but they are no longer allowed to receive care via telehealth, including for prescriptions. Their doctors have to tell them about the “risks” of gender-affirming care, and patients will have to sign an informed consent form, which the ACLU has pointed out often contains misinformation. Doctors who violate any of these new rules could be charged with a felony.

“This is not the body that practices medicine, although we love to believe that we can,” Representative Kelly Skidmore said during the debate. “This is the wrong thing to do.”

“This is a bad bill that interferes with parental rights, that interferes with health care rights, and it puts people in danger of not being able to get the care that they need.”

Republicans across the country have introduced bills targeting gender-affirming care, insisting that by doing so, they are protecting children. Instead, lawmakers are criminalizing LGBTQ people of all ages and putting them at risk of real harm.

Florida seems to be leading the charge. The measure passed Thursday is one of the cruelest yet. State Republicans have openly admitted they “hate” LGBTQ people and are comfortable with “erasing” the community from existence.

Democrats won the Senate. That enabled them to chair important committees, like the Senate Judiciary Committee, which gives Dick Durbin the power to hold the Supreme Court accountable when its justices act corruptly, like say, Clarence Thomas. Yet somehow the Illinois senator has been hard set on maintaining the illusion that he has as much power to hold Thomas accountable as we do.

“I hope that Chief Justice Roberts reads this story this morning and understands something has to be done,” Durbin said Thursday of ProPublica’s report that billionaire and Republican megadonor Harlan Crow has paid the tuition for a child Thomas was raising “as a son.”

Durbin added that the massive and continually piling reports of Thomas’s shady relationship with Crow do not rise to the level of concern that would prompt a Department of Justice probe, according to CNN.

Instead, hope seems to be Durbin’s main course of action. “I hope that the Chief Justice understands that something must be done—the reputation and credibility of the Court is at stake,” he also said.

“Someone should do something,” says the someone with the power to do something.

Durbin is also using Senator Dianne Feinstein’s absence as an excuse for why he simply can’t do anything about ethics legislation.

“It’s difficult, particularly because the Republicans have basically taken the position that they are opposed to this,” he said Thursday.

Nevermind that Democrats can still introduce legislation and force Republicans to vote on it. Durbin and the Democrats can still pursue more formal inquiries into the justices’ misdealings.

As Senate Judiciary chair, Durbin has left much to be desired. Just over a week ago, Durbin said that since Thomas would likely refuse to testify in front of the Judiciary Committee, he decided not to call for his presence at all.

“I think I know what would happen to that invitation. It would be ignored,” he said, simply.

The shocking deference and abdication of responsibility has extended to the entire court, of which is rife with shady dealings.

For weeks, he has continued passing the buck to Chief Justice John Roberts to lead reform on ethics standards for the court. But Roberts himself has refused to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee about court ethics. And how could we expect him to? After all, Roberts is implicated in ethical quandaries, as his wife has been revealed to have been paid more than $10 million by an array of high-class law firms—at least one of which has argued before her husband in the Supreme Court.

Given how much Democrats purport to care about protecting the integrity and sanctity of democracy, you’d hope that they’d jump at the five-foot-putt presented to them when a third of the Supreme Court is revealed in rapid succession to be wrapped up in varying degrees of ethical mishaps.

Sure, Durbin’s point that Republicans are the main source of blame here is good and fine. But how Democrats respond is what matters. Their job is to fix the issues in our society, not simply point them out. Every single Democrat should be rallying behind investigations into the court, using every mechanism of power at their disposal to force reform.

Republicans are already being obstructive—why not challenge them to be as obstructive in full view of the public? At worst, they continue their corrupt intransigence, and Democrats benefit electorally. At best, Democrats still benefit electorally, and actually change the course of America’s future. A simple request, Democrats: do your job.

Four members of the far-right Proud Boys were found guilty of seditious conspiracy Thursday for their role in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, while the man accused of encouraging them enjoyed a golf trip.

The Proud Boys are a far-right, neofascist one known for promoting chauvinist views. Group chairman Henry Tarrio, as well as Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, and Zachary Rehl were all found guilty of seditious conspiracy, conspiracy to obstruct Congress, and obstruction of Congress. A fifth defendant, Dominic Pezzola, was found guilty of obstruction of Congress, but the jury is deadlocked on whether he is also guilty of seditious conspiracy and conspiracy to obstruct Congress. The judge has ordered them to keep deliberating on the last two charges.

Donald Trump notoriously told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” during the September 2020 presidential debate, which prosecutors argued the extremist group took as a call to action. The former president has been on a tour of his golf courses in Scotland and Ireland, although he said he is cutting the trip short to appear at his rape trial in New York. Trump’s lawyer denied that he would appear.

The Justice Department cited hundreds of messages exchanged by Proud Boys in the days ahead of January 6. Group members pushed former President Donald Trump’s lie that the election was stolen from him.

Prosecutors said that Proud Boys led the mob into the Capitol, riling them up and gesturing to them to enter the building. Justice Department lawyers said Pezzola in particular stole a police riot shield and used it to break open a window, which rioters used to enter the Capitol.

Tarrio wasn’t in Washington for the attack because he had been arrested two days earlier in a separate case and ordered to leave the city. But he encouraged the mob on social media and in a Proud Boys group chat.

Tarrio is now the second leader of an extremist group who has been convicted of seditious conspiracy, a major win for the Justice Department. Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes was convicted of seditious conspiracy in November for his role in the January 6 attack.

There have now been 14 convictions of seditious conspiracy on January 6—proof the attack on the Capitol was exactly what it looked like.

This story has been updated.

Another Clarence Thomas scandal, another terrible defense for it.

A ProPublica report released Thursday found that the Supreme Court justice sent his grandnephew, whom he was raising, to private boarding school, and Republican billionaire megadonor Harlan Crow paid the tuition. A bill showed Crow paid $6,000 for one month, and a school administrator told ProPublica that Crow paid for four years of tuition, including at another school. ProPublica estimated that the total cost could have been more than $150,000. Thomas disclosed none of it, of course.

Mark Paoletta, a lawyer who is also friends with Thomas and Crow (he was in that weird painting of Crow’s lodge), stepped in with what he probably thought was a slam-dunk of a defense: he essentially admitted the report was true, but insisted Thomas didn’t break any rules in the process.

Paoletta also represented Thomas’s wife, Ginni, before the January 6 committee last year.

Thomas is already under fire following two other ProPublica reports, the first one that revealed the extent of his relationship with Crow, and another that found Crow also bought Thomas’s childhood home, where his mother still lives, which similarly went unreported.

Democrats are demanding that Thomas resign, or at least be investigated, and that the Supreme Court implement a formal code of ethics. But so far, Republicans don’t seem all that interested in holding the court—or Thomas—accountable.