#Texas Public Policy Foundation

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

A Republican lawmaker from North Texas filed a bill aimed at keeping children off social media.

State Rep. Jared Patterson’s HB 896 would require social media users to be 18 years old to create an account.

Patterson believes social media is harmful to children and compared it to the use of cigarettes before 1964.

"Once thought to be perfectly safe for users, social media access to minors has led to remarkable rises in self-harm, suicide, and mental health issues," he said.

Most sites like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter require users to be at least 13 years old to join but don’t require any proof of age.

Under HB 896, social media sites would also be forced to verify a user’s age with a photo ID and allow parents to request the removal of their child’s account.

"The harms social media poses to minors are demonstrable not just in the internal research from the very social media companies that create these addictive products, but in the skyrocketing depression, anxiety, and even suicide rates we are seeing afflict children," said Greg Sindelar, CEO of the Texas Public Policy Foundation. "We are tremendously grateful for Rep. Jared Patterson’s leadership on keeping this precious population safe, and TPPF is fully supportive of prohibiting social media access to minors to prevent the perpetual harms of social media from devastating the next generation of Texans."

Patterson represents District 106, which includes parts of Denton County.

[supportingeducation]

Texas Bill Bans Minors from Facebook

A Texas bill is aimed at banning all minors from social media, supposedly for their own good. State Representative Jared Patterson, a Republican from North Texas, has filed a bill meant to require all social media users to be at least 18 years old. “Once thought to be perfectly safe for users, social media access to minors has led to remarkable rises in self-harm, suicide, and mental health…

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Zoë Schlanger at The Atlantic:

In the United States, as in most other countries, weather forecasts are a freely accessible government amenity. The National Weather Service issues alerts and predictions, warning of hurricanes and excessive heat and rainfall, all at the total cost to American taxpayers of roughly $4 per person per year. Anyone with a TV, smartphone, radio, or newspaper can know what tomorrow’s weather will look like, whether a hurricane is heading toward their town, or if a drought has been forecast for the next season. Even if they get that news from a privately owned app or TV station, much of the underlying weather data are courtesy of meteorologists working for the federal government.

Charging for popular services that were previously free isn’t generally a winning political strategy. But hard-right policy makers appear poised to try to do just that should Republicans gain power in the next term. Project 2025—a nearly 900-page book of policy proposals published by the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation—states that an incoming administration should all but dissolve the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, under which the National Weather Service operates. Donald Trump has attempted to distance himself from Project 2025, but given that it was largely written by veterans of his first administration, the document is widely seen as a blueprint for a second Trump term.

NOAA “should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories,” Project 2025 reads. The proposals roughly amount to two main avenues of attack. First, it suggests that the NWS should eliminate its public-facing forecasts, focus on data gathering, and otherwise “fully commercialize its forecasting operations,” which the authors of the plan imply will improve, not limit, forecasts for all Americans. Then, NOAA’s scientific-research arm, which studies things such as Arctic-ice dynamics and how greenhouse gases behave (and which the document calls “the source of much of NOAA’s climate alarmism”), should be aggressively shrunk. “The preponderance of its climate-change research should be disbanded,” the document says. It further notes that scientific agencies such as NOAA are “vulnerable to obstructionism of an Administration’s aims,” so appointees should be screened to ensure that their views are “wholly in sync” with the president’s. The U.S. is, without question, experiencing a summer of brutal weather. In just the past week, a record-breaking hurricane brought major flooding and power outages to Texas amid an extreme-heat advisory. More than a dozen tornadoes ripped through multiple states. Catastrophic flash flooding barreled through wildfire burn scars in New Mexico. Large parts of the West roasted in life-threatening temperatures. Facing any of this without the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would be mayhem. And future years are likely to be worse.

The NWS serves as a crucial point of contact in a weather crisis, alerting the public when forecasts turn dangerous and advising emergency managers on the best plan of action. So far in 2024, the NWS has issued some 13,000 severe-thunderstorm warnings, 2,000 tornado warnings, and 1,800 flash-flood warnings, plus almost 3,000 river-flood warnings, according to JoAnn Becker, a meteorologist and the president of the union that represents NWS employees. NOAA is also home to the National Hurricane Center, which tracks storms, and the Office of Marine and Aviation Operations, whose pilots fly “hurricane hunter” planes directly into cyclones to measure their wind speed and hone the agency’s predictions. NOAA even predicts space weather. Just this past May, it forecast a severe geomagnetic storm with the potential to threaten power grids and satellites. (The most consequential outages never came to pass, but the solar storm did throw off farmers’ GPS-guided tractors for a while.) Privatizing the weather is not a new conservative aim. Nearly two decades ago, when the National Weather Service updated its website to be more user-friendly, Barry Myers, then executive vice president of AccuWeather, complained to the press that “we work very hard every day competing with other companies, and we also have to compete with the government.” In 2005, after meeting with a representative from AccuWeather, then-Senator Rick Santorum introduced a bill calling for the NWS to cease competition with the private sector, and reserve its forecasts for commercial providers. The bill never made it out of committee. But in 2017, Trump picked Myers to lead NOAA. (Myers withdrew his nomination after waiting two years for Senate confirmation.)

Funding for many of NOAA’s programs could plummet in 2025, and the agency already suffers from occasional telecommunications breakdowns, including a recent alert-system outage amid flooding in the Midwest. It is also subject to political pressures: In 2019, the agency backed then-President Trump’s false claim (accompanied by a seemingly Sharpie-altered map) that Hurricane Dorian was headed for Alabama. Private companies might be better funded and, theoretically, less subject to political whims. They can also use supercomputing power to hone NOAA’s data into hyperlocal predictions, perhaps for an area as small as a football stadium. Some, including AccuWeather, use their own proprietary algorithms to interpret NWS data and produce forecasts that they claim have superior accuracy. (Remember, though: Without NWS data, none of this would happen.)

[...] The NWS also has perks that a private system would be hard-pressed to replicate, including a partnership with the World Meteorological Organization, which allows the U.S. access to a suite of other countries’ weather models. International collaboration proved crucial in 2012, when Hurricane Sandy was still churning in the Atlantic Ocean. Initially, the American model predicted, incorrectly, that the storm would turn away from the East Coast. But the European model accurately forecast a collision course, which bought emergency managers in the U.S. crucial time to prepare before Sandy made ferocious landfall in New Jersey.

Project 2025 could have an impact on how accurate and precise weather forecasts are delivered, since NOAA and NWS could be significantly altered.

This is one of many reasons why we must vote Blue up and down the line.

See Also:

Daily Kos: Project 2025 will affect every part of life. Even weather updates

[posttexasstressdisorder]

If you want to see what the GOP has in store for the rest of America, visit the Old South

Thom Hartmann

June 27, 2024 5:42AM ET

Photo by Miltiadis Fragkidis on Unsplash

Today is the first Biden-Trump debate and many Americans are wondering how each will articulate their ideas for the future of America.

Republicans have a very specific economic vision for the future of our country, although they rarely talk about it in plain language: they want to make the rest of America look and function just like Mississippi. Including the racism: that’s a feature, not a bug.

It’s called the “Southern Economic Development Model” (SEDM) and has been at the core of GOP economic strategy ever since the days of Ronald Reagan. While they don’t use those words to describe their plan, and neither did the authors of Project 2025, this model is foundational to conservative economic theory and has been since the days of slavery.

The SEDM explicitly works to:

— Maintain a permanent economic underclass of people living on the edge of poverty, — Rigidify racial and gender barriers to class mobility to lock in women and people of color, — Provide a low-cost labor force to employers,

— Prevent unions or any other advocates for workers’ rights to function, — Shift the tax burden to the working poor and what’s left of the middle class while keeping taxes on the morbidly rich extremely low, — Protect the privileges, power, and wealth of the (mostly white and male) economic overclass, — Ghettoize public education and raise the cost of college to make social and economic mobility difficult, — Empower and subsidize churches to take over public welfare functions like food, housing, and care for indigent people, — Allow corporations to increase profits by dumping their waste products into the air and water, — Subsidize those industries that financially support the political power structure, and, — Heavily use actual slave labor.

For hardcore policy wonks, the Economic Policy Institute(EPI) did a deep dive into the SEDM last month: here’s how it works in summary.

Republicans claim that by offering low-cost non-union labor and little to no regulatory oversight to massive corporations, they’re able to “attract business to the region.” This, they promise, will cause (paraphrasing President Kennedy out of context) “a rising tide that lifts all boats.”

Somehow, though, the only people who own boats that rise are those of the business owners and senior executives. The permanent economic underclass is key to maintaining this system with its roots in the old plantation system; that’s why Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, and South Carolina have no minimum wage, Georgia’s is $5.15/hour, and most other GOP states use the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hour and $2.13/hour for tipped workers.

It’s thus no coincidence that ten out of the 20 Republican-run states that only use the federal minimum wage are in the Old South.

Anti-union or “right to work for less” efforts and laws are another key to the SEDM; the failed unionization effort last month at the Alabama Mercedes factory was a key victory for the GOP. Unions, after all, balance the power relationship between management and workers; promote higher wages and benefits; support workplace and product safety regulations; advance racial and gender equality; boost social mobility; and have historically been the most effective force for creating a healthy middle class.

Unionization, however, is antithetical to creating and maintaining a permanent economic underclass, which is why, as EPI notes, “while union coverage rates stand at 11.2% nationally, rates in 2023 were as low as 3.0% in South Carolina, 3.3% in North Carolina, 5.2% in Louisiana, and 5.4% in Texas and Georgia.”

Unions also make wage theft more difficult, essentially forcing government to defend workers who’ve been ripped off by their employers. That’s why Florida doesn’t even have a Department of Labor (it was dismantled by Republican Governor Jeb Bush in 2002), and the DOLs in Alabama, Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina no longer bother to enforce wage theft laws or recover stolen money for workers.

Another key to the SEDM is to end regulation of corporate “externalities,” a fancy word for the pollution that most governments in the developed world require corporations to pay to prevent or clean up. “Cancer Alley” is probably the most famous example of this at work: that stretch from west Texas to New Orleans has more than 200 refineries and chemical plants pouring poison into the air resulting in downwind communities having a 7 to 21 times greater exposure to these substances. And high rates of cancer: Southern corporate profits are boosted by sick people.

Between 2008 and 2018, EPI documents, funding for state environmental agencies was “cut [in Texas and Louisiana] by 35.2% and 34.8% respectively.… Funding was down by 33.7% in North Carolina, 32.8% in Delaware, 20.8% in Georgia, 20.3% in Tennessee, and 10% in Alabama.”

To keep income taxes low on the very wealthy, the SEDM calls for shifting as much of the taxpaying responsibility away from high-income individuals and dumping it instead on the working poor and middle class. This is done by either ending or gutting the income tax (Texas, Florida, and Tennessee have no income tax) and shifting to sales tax, property taxes, fees, and fines.

Nationally, for example, sales taxes provide 34.4% of state and local revenue, but in the SEDM states that burden is radically shifted to consumers: Tennessee, for example, gets 56.6% of their revenue from sales tax, Louisiana 53.3%, Florida 50.9%, Arkansas 49.6%, Alabama 48%, and Mississippi 45.5%. Fees for registering cars, obtaining drivers’ and professional licenses, tolls, traffic and other fines, and permits for home improvements all add to the load carried by average working people.

Republicans argue that keeping taxes low on “job creators” encourages them to “create more jobs,” but that old canard hasn’t really been taken seriously by anybody since Reagan first rolled it out in 1981. It does work to fill their money bins, though, and helps cover the cost of their (tax deductible) private jets, clubs, and yachts.

Another way the SEDM maintains a low-wage workforce is by preventing young people from getting the kind of good education that would enable them to move up and out of their economic and social class. Voucher systems to gut public education, villainization of unionized teachers and librarians, and increasing college tuition all work together to maintain high levels of functional illiteracy. Fifty-four percent of Americans have a literacy rate that doesn’t exceed sixth grade, with the nation’s worst illiteracy mostly in the Old South.

Imposing this limitation against economic mobility on women is also vital to the SEDM. Southern states are famous for their lack of female representation in state legislatures (West Virginia 13%, Tennessee 14%, Mississippi and South Carolina 15%, Alabama and Louisiana 18%), and the states that have most aggressively limited access to abortion and reproductive healthcare (designed to keep women out of the workplace and dependent on men) are entirely Republican-controlled.

Perhaps the most important part of the SEDM pushed by Republicans and Project 2025 is gutting the social safety net. Wealthy rightwingers have complained since FDR’s New Deal of the 1930s that transferring wealth from them to poor and middle-class people is socialism, the first step toward a complete communist tyranny in the United States. It’s an article of faith for today’s GOP.

Weekly unemployment benefits, for example, are lowest in “Mississippi ($235), Alabama ($275), Florida ($275), Louisiana ($275), Tennessee ($275), South Carolina ($326), and North Carolina ($350)” with Southern states setting the maximum number of weeks you can draw benefits at 12 in Florida, North Carolina, and Kentucky, 14 in Alabama and Georgia, and a mere 16 weeks in Oklahoma and Arkansas.

While only 3.3% of children in the Northeast lack health insurance, for the Southern states that number more than doubles to 7.7%. Ten states using the SEDM still refuse to expand Medicaid to cover all state residents living and working in poverty, including Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Florida, Tennessee, and Texas.

The main benefit to employers of this weak social safety net is that workers are increasingly desperate for wages — any sort of wages — and even the paltriest of benefits to keep their heads above water economically. As a result, they’re far more likely to tolerate exploitative workplace conditions, underpaid work, and wage theft.

Finally, the SEDM makes aggressive use of the 13th Amendment’s legalization of slavery. That’s not a metaphor: the Amendment says, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” [emphasis added]

That “except as punishment for crime” is the key. While Iceland’s and Japan’s incarceration rates are 36 for every 100,000 people, Finland and Norway come in at 51, Ireland and Canada at 88, there are 664 people in prison in America for every 100,000 people. No other developed country even comes close, because no other developed country also allows legalized slavery under color of law.

Fully 800,000 (out of a total 1.2 million prisoners) Americans are currently held in conditions of slave labor in American jails and prisons, most working for private prison corporations that profitably insource work and unfairly compete against normal American companies. Particularly in the South, this workforce is largely Black and Hispanic.

As the ACLU documented for the EPI, “The vast majority of work done by prisoners in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas is unpaid.” Literal slave labor, in other words. It’s a international scandal, but it’s also an important part of this development model that was, after all, first grounded in chattel slavery.

The Christian white supremacist roots of the SEDM worldview are best summed up by the lobbyist and head of the Southern Committee to Uphold the Constitution, Vance Muse — the inventor of the modern “right to work for less” model and advocate for the Southern Economic Development Model — who famously proclaimed in 1944, just days after Arkansas and Florida became the first states to adopt his anti-union legislation, that it was all about keeping Blacks and Jews in their places to protect the power and privileges of wealthy white people.

So, if you want to see what Republicans have in mind for the rest of America if Trump or another Republican becomes president and they can hold onto Congress, just visit the Old South. Or, as today’s MAGA GOP would call it, “the New Model.”

[havegaysex]

Why are you telling people to vote for the guy committing genocide :/

because voting is not an endorsement it's harm reduction.

Trump is going to be at best doing the same as Biden and likely much worse for Palestinians and all the countries suffering from American Imperialism than Biden is.

Republicans want to bring back child labor and get rid of social security, medicare, Medicaid. As someone who is surviving on Medicaid and social security I don't want those taken away. The Republican majority house already put a lot of limits on food stamps in this past term and I don't think we'll still have food stamps if we get a republican Congress and a Republican president.

They've made it pretty clear that if they get a republican Congress and a Republican president they're going to enact project 2025 and call a conference of states and try and take our rights back to the days when only wealthy white men had any rights when women and racial minorities had no rights, they want to make it illegal for LGBT+ folks to safely exist in public and get lifesaving healthcare.

In short

Do I support every single thing Biden has done as president?

No.

Do I like him?

Not particularly. But I'm still voting for him because apathy is not a choice.

Do I think that Joe Biden having another term means that we can actually make more progress for labor rights, trans healthcare, abortion access, advancement of the rights and protections for disabled people and so much more?

Yes absolutely.

Do I think that the genocide in Gaza needs to end and the United States needs to stop sending weapons to israel?

Yes, I think that un restricted flow of humanitarian aid into Palestine needs to happen, the siege needs to stop, and the country of Israel and the United States need to be held accountable at an international level. I think that the soldiers of the IDF/IOF need to be held accountable for their war crimes and pillaging that they continuously post evidence of on social medias. I'm trying to put a read more here so ce I've put a few linked articles and quotes from them.

A quote from the article below:

"While our map focuses solely on high school aged youth (age 13-17), some states, such as Oklahoma, Texas, and South Carolina, have considered banning care for transgender people up to 26 years of age. "

I've seen lawmakers in some states try to make it felony punishable by life in prison to get your trans child healthcare to keep them alive because they want to make it illegal for us to exist and a legal for anyone who helps us exist.

some quotes from the article above:

"Led by the long-established Heritage Foundation think tank and fueled by former Trump administration officials, the far-reaching effort is essentially a government-in-waiting for the former president’s second term — or any candidate who aligns with their ideals and can defeat President Joe Biden in 2024. With a nearly 1,000-page “Project 2025” handbook and an “army” of Americans, the idea is to have the civic infrastructure in place on Day One to commandeer, reshape and do away with what Republicans deride as the “deep state” bureaucracy, in part by firing as many as 50,000 federal workers. “We need to flood the zone with conservatives,” said Paul Dans, director of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project and a former Trump administration official who speaks with historical flourish about the undertaking. “This is a clarion call to come to Washington,” he said. “People need to lay down their tools, and step aside from their professional life and say, ‘This is my lifetime moment to serve.’” The unprecedented effort is being orchestrated with dozens of right-flank organizations, many new to Washington, and represents a changed approach from conservatives, who traditionally have sought to limit the federal government by cutting federal taxes and slashing federal spending. Instead, Trump-era conservatives want to gut the “administrative state” from within, by ousting federal employees they believe are standing in the way of the president’s agenda and replacing them with like-minded officials more eager to fulfill a new executive’s approach to governing. The goal is to avoid the pitfalls of Trump’s first years in office, when the Republican president’s team was ill-prepared, his Cabinet nominees had trouble winning Senate confirmation and policies were met with resistance — by lawmakers, government workers and even Trump’s own appointees who refused to bend or break protocol, or in some cases violate laws, to achieve his goals. While many of the Project 2025 proposals are inspired by Trump, they are being echoed by GOP rivals Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy and are gaining prominence among other Republicans. And if Trump wins a second term, the work from the Heritage coalition ensures the president will have the personnel to carry forward his unfinished White House business. “The president Day One will be a wrecking ball for the administrative state,” said Russ Vought, a former Trump administration official involved in the effort who is now president at the conservative Center for Renewing America. Much of the new president’s agenda would be accomplished by reinstating what’s called Schedule F — a Trump-era executive order that would reclassify tens of thousands of the 2 million federal employees as essentially at-will workers who could more easily be fired. Biden had rescinded the executive order upon taking office in 2021, but Trump — and other presidential hopefuls — now vow to reinstate it."

"There’s a “top to bottom overhaul” of the Department of Justice, particularly curbing its independence and ending FBI efforts to combat the spread of misinformation. It calls for stepped-up prosecution of anyone providing or distributing abortion pills by mail."

Personally I think that voting for Joe Biden is better than someone who wants to enact this stuff on day one. It's like they read handmaid's tale and want to make that the reality of this country.

"Chapter by chapter, the pages offer a how-to manual for the next president, similar to one Heritage produced 50 years ago, ahead of the Ronald Reagan administration. Authored by some of today’s most prominent thinkers in the conservative movement, it’s often sprinkled with apocalyptic language." Ronald Reagan is a big reason we have a lot of problems we have today with our economy and with a lot more things. The people that supported Ronald Reagan do not need another term in office.

A quote from the article linked below:

"Trump has given no indication that he would be more sympathetic to Palestinian claims, nor that he would place more pressure on Israel to agree to a ceasefire. “The approach of the United States would be that Israel needs to win this war, it was attacked brutally,” Trump’s ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, describing how Trump would act. Friedman is now a campaign surrogate for Trump."

Personally I think Trump telling Israel to finish the job is indicators that another Trump presidency doesn't mean that weapons would stop being sent to Israel from United States

I fail to see how another term of Donald trump will be any better for the victims of the ongoing genocide in Palestine than President Joe Biden.

i think our system is absolutely messed up and broken but I don't think abstaining from voting is going to actually help.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Madeleine Rowley

Published: Jun 25, 2024

The fragile facade of transgender ideology has cracked over the past year. Whistleblowers from within the medical profession have emerged to provide damning evidence that doctors are performing procedures based on shoddy scientific evidence under the label of “gender-affirming care,” as outlined in the WPATH Files and the Cass Review. Former patients who received “gender-affirming” care as adolescents have now detransitioned and are suing the doctors who cut off their breasts and put them on hormones that permanently damaged their bodies. Businesses ranging from Target to NFL teams are scaling back or eliminating Pride-themed merchandise and promotions. The public, too, is increasingly turning against transgender ideology. The tide is shifting.

The Left has adopted a new approach in response: political persecution of those speaking out against trans dogma. Earlier this month, the Department of Justice indicted Eithan Haim, a surgeon at Texas Children’s Hospital (TCH) who exposed the hospital’s secret continued use of irreversible sex-change procedures on minors after having publicly stated that it had stopped. By indicting Haim, the DOJ is seeking to silence future whistleblowers and to signal its disregard for the mounting evidence that gender-affirming care is harmful, and often irreversible.

Haim had anonymously sent City Journal’s Christopher Rufo documents proving that doctors at TCH were still prescribing hormone replacement therapy drugs and implanting puberty blockers in minor-age patients more than a year after the hospital announced it had stopped its pediatric gender-affirming care program. A month after Rufo published his article in May 2023, federal agents from the Department of Health and Human Services knocked on Haim’s door to let him know that he was a “potential target” in an investigation of alleged violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). This week, an unsealed indictment revealed that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas is charging Haim with four felony counts of violating HIPAA. A press release on the indictment alleges that Haim accessed patient information “under false pretenses and with intent to cause malicious harm to TCH.”

According to a letter written by Haim’s lawyers, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tina Ansari admitted that she hadn’t reviewed the purported evidence against Haim and was instead relying on what FBI agents told her. In the same discussion, Ansari insisted that the documents Haim sent to Rufo included children’s names, but nothing in the documents Rufo saw identified any individuals. All were redacted. The prosecutor then asked Haim to admit wrongdoing, telling him that he should apologize to the families of the children who received transgender medical interventions at TCH if he wanted her to help him avoid a felony prosecution. When this tactic failed, Ansari intimated that the families would sue if she didn’t bring criminal charges.

Roger Severino, vice president of domestic policy for the Heritage Foundation and a former HIPAA regulator at the Department of Health and Human Services, called Haim’s prosecution “outrageous.” As Severino notes, Haim blew the whistle in good faith in a state “where it’s illegal to do these experimental surgeries on minors.” (In September 2023, Texas attorney general Ken Paxton announced that SB 14, a new law banning gender-transition procedures for minors in Texas, had gone into effect.)

Ansari’s zeal to prosecute Haim is especially strange, given her lack of knowledge of HIPAA law, as noted in a letter from Haim’s lawyers. In the past, Ansari has prosecuted cases involving doctors who falsified patient-care documents to receive higher insurance payouts, a health-center owner who scammed Medicare out of millions based on fraudulent claims, and a pharmacist who submitted false claims to Tricare and other federal insurance programs while pocketing $22 million. Yet she moved to indict Haim in this case, despite his having no profit motive, and despite the Texas Attorney General’s Office declining to act on the case for six months.

Dan Epstein, vice president of America First Legal, a conservative public-interest law group, calls the Haim indictment an overreach of epic proportions. “The fact that Texas state attorneys decided not to bring action on this case says that there wasn’t much public concern over it,” Epstein said. “This is a policy matter, and as a prosecutor if you’re enforcing legal policy and statute, you have to exercise some level of discretion.”

Paragraph 19 of the indictment alleges that Haim’s disclosures to Rufo resulted in “financial loss” to TCH, and that Haim blew the whistle out of “malicious intent.” Haim, for his part, observes that he swore an oath to “do no harm” and believed he had a duty to disclose alleged TCH’s secret gender clinic to prevent further harm to children undergoing procedures for which there is a lack of long-term evidence of efficacy (or safety).

This week, Vanessa Sivadge, a former registered nurse at TCH, came forward as a second whistleblower, alleging not only that the hospital was running its gender clinic in secret but also that doctors were illegally billing Texas’s Medicaid program to pay for the transgender medical interventions. Sivadge had spoken with Rufo for an article last year as an anonymous whistleblower, denouncing TCH’s gender-affirming care treatments for minors. Shortly after she did that, two FBI agents knocked on her door and, according to Sivadge, told her that she was a “person of interest” in the investigation involving Haim. They threatened to “make her life difficult” if she tried to protect him.

Unfortunately, these examples of politically motivated prosecutions aren’t new and will likely continue. Case in point: the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia has chosen to prosecute cases like that of 75-year-old Paulette Harlow, recently sentenced to two years in prison for a demonstration at an abortion clinic. Meantime, pro-Hamas demonstrators who violated D.C. law by covering their faces with masks and keffiyehs and defaced statues near the White House run free, and anti-Israel protesters who barricaded themselves in Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall have seen criminal charges against them dropped.

Texas Children’s Hospital is a flashpoint. Haim faces up to a decade in prison and a $250,000 fine. What happens next could discourage future whistleblowers in the health-care industry.

“When it comes to health care fraud, you prosecute those that are going to have a strong deterrent effect and where prosecutorial resources justified spending taxpayer dollars on the matter,” says Epstein. “And here, I think, this is a clear case of prosecutorial overreach.”

[plethoraworldatlas]

Advocates for the separation of church and state said Thursday that they plan to take all necessary steps to stop Christian nationalists across the country "from trampling the religious freedom of public school children and their families" after Oklahoma school superintendent Ryan Walters became the latest right-wing leader to mandate Christian teachings in schools.

Walters announced Thursday that "immediate and strict compliance is expected" for a new policy mandating that public schools teach the Christian Bible as part of the state curriculum.

Including the religious text in class materials is necessary "to teach our kids about the history of this country, to have a complete understanding of Western civilization, to have an understanding of the basis of our legal system," said Walters. "We're talking about the Bible, one of the most foundational documents used for the Constitution and the birth of our country."

The announcement came days after Republican Gov. Jeff Landry of Louisiana signed into state law a new policy requiring all public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments by 2025.

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) endorsed the policy on Wednesday, saying, "I think there's a number of states trying to look to do the same thing, and I don't think it's offensive in any way." Last weekend, former president and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump also expressed support for the requirement, saying it could be "the first major step in the revival of religion, which is desperately needed in our country."

Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which has launched a legal challenge against the Louisiana law, said Thursday that Walters' policy is "textbook Christian nationalism" and "a transparent, unconstitutional effort to indoctrinate and religiously coerce public school students."

[readingsquotes]

At The 19th, we have been asking deep questions about what anti-LGBTQ+ bills mean for our transgender, nonbinary and gender nonconforming readers. We are also invested in understanding the toll they take on our wider world. Anti-transgender legislation and rhetoric is reshaping all of our lives, from bodily autonomy to education, privacy and the access and use of public spaces. Are we paying attention?

...

Then came 2020. 

Just before COVID shuttered statehouses, Idaho squeaked through two anti-trans bills. One barred trans girls from playing on sports teams. The other blocked trans people from updating their birth certificates. The Idaho laws were among more than 75 anti-trans bills to hit statehouses that year, an unprecedented number. 

The door had been cracked open. 

Within the next two years, Republican lawmakers and conservatives running for office would reach new extremes in anti-trans rhetoric. Schools started banning Pride flags as political speech. States like Texas and Florida became bellwethers for anti-LGBTQ+ policy nationwide. 

Anti-transgender bills flooded state legislatures. This time, these bills strategically did not reference transgender people, even while proposing ways to restrict their lives. Instead, lawmakers framed these measures as a means of protecting cisgender women from trans women — as if trans people were a threat or, worse, as if they did not exist at all. 

These state bills framed the idea of being transgender as unnatural or biologically impossible; a political “ideology” that contaminated  children — as opposed to being a normal part of life — and seeped into mainstream politics. In a second Trump administration, these once-fringe beliefs could well become tenets of the federal government. Project 2025, a policy blueprint created by the conservative Heritage Foundation, serves at once as foundation and guidepost for this effort, while the virulent language used to describe trans people during the Republican National Convention sets the tone for what may come.  

To understand how the anti-trans agenda could reshape all of our lives, our reporters have set out to examine how anti-trans laws are impacting the lives of Americans, whether or not they are trans. The goal is to connect the dots that will show how these laws, intended to target a small minority, are rewriting the future for all of us, and for generations to come. This is the Toll of America’s Anti-Trans War.

[kp777]

By Brett Wilkins

Common Dreams

Nov. 17, 2023

Seven of 12 proposed science textbooks for Texas 8th graders were rejected Friday by the Republican-controlled state Board of Education because they propose solutions to the climate emergency or were published by a company with an environmental, social, and governance policy.

The Texas Tribunereported that the 15-member board, which for the first time was required to include climate education for 8th graders, approved five of 12 proposed science textbooks, but called on their publishers to remove content deemed false or presenting a negative portrayal of oil and gas in the nation's biggest fossil fuel producer.

"America's future generations don't need a leftist agenda brainwashing them in the classroom to hate oil and natural gas," said Republican state energy regulator Wayne Christian, who had urged the board to choose books that promote planet-heating fossil fuels.

Some board members also objected to textbooks that did not include alternatives to the theory of evolution. One textbook was approved only after the removal of images highlighting that human beings—taxonomically classified as great apes—share ancestry with monkeys.

"Teaching creationism or any of its offshoots, such as intelligent design, in Texas' public schools is unlawful, because creationism is not based in fact," Chris Line, an attorney with the Freedom from Religion Foundation, said Friday. "Courts have routinely found that such teachings are religious, despite many new and imaginative labels given to the alternatives."

"Federal courts consistently reject creationism and its ilk, as well as attempts to suppress the teaching of evolution, in the public schools," Line added.

State standards approved by the board's conservative majority in 2021 do not include creationism as an alternative to evolution. The standards also acknowledge that human activities contribute to climate change.

Despite an overwhelming scientific consensus that human activity—primarily, the burning of fossil fuels—drives global heating, Republican board Secretary Patricia Hardy argued before the vote that such a stance amounts to "taking a position that all of that is settled science, and that our extreme weather is caused by climate change."

One textbook was rejected because its publisher has an environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policy. ESG frameworks account for workplace diversity, the treatment of employees, and preparedness for the climate crisis.

Democratic board member Marisa Perez-Diaz said during debate on the textbooks that "my fear is that we will render ourselves irrelevant moving forward when it comes to what publishers want to work with us and will help us get proper materials in front of our young people, and for me that's heartbreaking."

The National Science Teaching Association—a group of 35,000 U.S. science educators—on Thursday implored the board to reject "misguided objections to evolution and climate change [that] impede the adoption of science textbooks in Texas."

As in other GOP-run states, Texas officials have pushed book bans and other restrictions in schools and libraries, even as they portray themselves as champions of freedom. According to freedom of expression defenders PEN America, only Florida banned more books in schools than Texas during the 2022-23 academic year.

[grits-galraisedinthesouth]

Color me shocked.

Fox News is hosting the GOP debate in Wisconsin.  During this build up segment, Martha MacCallum introduces the “random Republican voters” in Wisconsin who will watch the debate.  Except, well… there’s a little problem.  MacCallum introduces Chris Lawrence as a “Wisconsin GOP voter” who seemingly supports Ron DeSantis.  However, MacCallum fails to mention that Chris Lawrence actually works for the Koch Network, who have recently pledged to spend $70 million to defeat President Trump.

@RaheemKassam

Hi I looked into “Wisconsin voter” Christopher Lawrence, why didn’t you tell people he’s a paid activist belonging to the open borders network that recently pledged $70M to stop Trump?

‘Globalist’ Koch Network Blows $70M of Donor Cash to ‘Stop Trump’.

From Sundance Treehouse Blog: "The ‘Koch network’ group Americans for Prosperity Action is dropping $70M+ on a bid to stop President Donald J. Trump becoming the 47th President of the United States, according to a new report which suggests the libertarian billionaire backed organization is campaign in the Republican primaries “for the first time in its nearly 20 year history”.

The money is in addition to a $200M+ fund established by corporate backers for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s campaign, and will likely be used for “digital advertising on the issue of electability in the presidential race,” in addition to direct mail. In such scenarios, high percentages of donor cash ends up in the pockets of campaign consultants and vendors.

The Koch network includes groups such as Americans for Prosperity, Stand Together, i360, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the State Policy Network, the CATO Institute, Americans for Tax Reform, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Atlas Network, the Heritage Foundation, the Independent Women’s Forum, the Manhattan Institute, the Reason Foundation, the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and many more.

 The organization’s LIBRE initiative even campaigns in favor of amnesty for illegal migrants.

 The co-option of the Tea Party movement was spearheaded by the Kochs, who turned it from a citizen-led organization into a pro-corporate, libertarian shell, before dumping it when press attention became too inconvenient.

“The globalist Koch Brothers, who have become a total joke in real Republican circles, are against Strong Borders and Powerful Trade,” Trump tweeted in 2018. “I never sought their support because I don’t need their money or bad ideas.”

Not only has Chris Lawrence worked for the Koch Network for the past 9 years, he is also the Senior Field Director for the Koch group Americans for Prosperity.  In essence, Lawrence is a political operative planted in the group by Fox News to support Ron DeSantis and make it appear like he is an innocuous voter.  Fox News and Martha MacCallum should be embarrassed, but they won’t be. 

Don’t forget, Ron DeSantis supporters Eric Erickson and Guy Benson sit on the Koch Network AfP Advisory Board (see here).

It’s all one big game of illusion, and Fox News is once again a big part of the Republican fraud.  Proving yet again, that everything in the Ron DeSantis orbit is astroturf, phony, manufactured and made up."

[maleswillbemale]

Are there any Lakota feminists you admire?

It's a little hard to compile a list of Lakota feminists specifically. While there are some, there aren't enough, and I'd like to broaden my answer to cover more than just Lakota women fighting for feminism for Indigenous women all over the world. I hope that's okay.

These are women I encourage anyone to look up and check out their work, we all come from different backgrounds so I might not agree with/have experienced everything shared by them but I think every Indigenous woman's voice is important!

Jihan Gearon - Navajo, feminist and artist

Tarcila Rivera Zea - Quechuan, feminist activist, founder of multiple organizations for Indigenous women

Debora Barros Fince - Waayu, activist and human rights defender and lawyer in Colombia

Rauna Kuokkanen - Sami, professor and Indigenous feminist activist

Aileen Moreton-Robinson - Goenpul, Indigenous feminist and author, Australia's first Indigenous Distinguished Professor

Sarah Eagle Heart - Lakota, author and co-founder of Return to the Heart Foundation

Madonna Thunder Hawk - Lakota, civil rights activist and co-founder of Women of All Red Nations

Mandeí Juma - Chief of the Juma

Ávelin Kambiwá - Kambiwá, specialist in public policies on gender/race, feminist in Brazil

Jodi Voice Yellowfish - Creek, Lakota, and Cherokee, founder and chair of the MMIW Texas Rematriate organization

Wilma Mankiller - Cherokee, first female principal chief of her nation

Annie Mae Aquash - Mi'kmaq, member of AIM, deserves justice for her murder

Jolie Varela - Paiute, led a hike with indigenous women across their cultural land as an expression of sovereignty, founder of Indigenous Women Hike

Lee Maracle - Stó꞉lō, feminist author

Tillie Black Bear - Lakota, activist for domestic violence towards Indigenous women

Other Indigenous women I look up to/admire, not necessarily feminist specific:

The Bearhead Sisters - Sister trio singing group, Wilhnemme

Acosia Red Elk - Umatilla, jingle dancer

Deb Haaland - Laguna Pueblo, Interior Secretary for the USA

Amelia Marchand - Colville, warrior against climate change

Lydia Jennings - Pascua Yaqui and Huichol, warrior against climate change

Roberta Tuurraq Glenn-Borade - Iñupiaq, warrior against climate change

Robin Wall Kimmerer - Potwatomi, fantastic author, please read her book Braiding Sweetgrass if you haven't already

Fawn Wood - Cree and Salish musician

Moving Robe Woman - Lakota warrior, fought against Custer in the Battle of Little Big Horn to avenge her murdered brother

Buffalo Calf Road Woman - Cheyenne warrior who was the one to knock General Custer off his horse during the Battle of Little Big Horn

Bernie LaSarte - Coeur d'Alene, program manager for the STOP Violence Program

Mary Jane Miles - Nez Perce, tribal vice chairman

Crystalyne Curley - Navajo, first woman to become Speaker of the Navajo Nation Council

Article about multiple Indigenous women in Mexico who run Indigenous women's centers

Lily Gladstone - Blackfeet and Nez Perce actress

Rebecca Thomas - Mi'kmaw poet and activist

Sacheen Littlefeather - Apache and Yaquim actress. Keeler is a horrible person and not worthy of listening to whatsoever, Sacheen Littlefeather did more activism for Indian Country than Keeler will ever accomplish in her miserable life

Brianna Theobald - Not Indigenous to my knowledge (I could definitely be wrong), but researched and wrote a wonderful book about the treatment of Indigenous women in regards to reproduction and sterilization

The brave woman at Standing Rock photographed by Ryan Vizzions. She has since passed away due to a car accident I believe, but I'm struggling to find her name. Once I find it, I'll update this post.

Honor the Grandmothers is a good book to hear Lakota and Dakota women elders share their experiences.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Republican lawmakers in Texas want to create a state security force to patrol the US-Mexico border that critics have characterised as a "vigilante death squad policy."

Dade Phelan, the Republican speaker of Texas' House of Representatives, told a meeting of the Texas Public Policy Foundation that he plans to introduce a bill that he says will "make national headlines and change the conversation on border security," according to The Intercept.

The bill — House Bill 20 — would allow Texas' Department of Public Safety to hunt, arrest, and deport undocumented migrants.

The group would be comprised of law enforcement officers and civilians under the direction of a governor-selected chief. The members of the group would also be extended immunity from criminal prosecution relating to their actions on the border. They will be directed to "arrest, detain, and deter individuals crossing the border illegally including with the use of non-deadly force."

The group will also apparently be authorised to "use force to repel, arrest, and detain known transnational cartel operatives in the border region."

A piece of companion legislation would make undocumented entry into Texas a state crime, with first-time offenders subject to a year in prison, two years in prison for second-time offenders, and life in prison for individuals with prior felony convictions.

Democrats in Texas are opposed to the bill, likening the legislation to a "vigilante death squads policy."

“This dangerous, radical, and unconstitutional proposal which empowers border vigilantes to hunt migrants and racially profile Latinos is going to result in the death of innocent people,” Victoria Neave Criado, the Democratic chair of Mexican American Legislative Caucus, said in a statement last week. “MALC is going to do everything in our power to kill this legislation just as Latino State Representatives for the past 5 decades have fought against Klan-like proposals.”

Mr. Phelan anticipated the opposition, and claimed he was prepared to take the matter to the conservative-majority Supreme Court if Democrats challenge the law.

This isn't the first time the state has tried to create a border protection force beyond the federal US Customs and Border Protection agency. In 2021 Republican Governor Greg Abbott initiated "Operation Lone Star" that placed National Guard troops at the border. However, the $4bn endeavor was met with numerous controversies, including the deaths of several National Guard members, some to suicide, and allegations of human rights violations that resulted in a Justice Department investigation.

The operation has shown no notable difference in the rate of undocumented border crossings or transnational drug trafficking.

If the case is challenged and successfully survives a Supreme Court ruling, it would change the way all border states could police the southern border.

[meret118]

Idaho legislators disbanded a state committee that investigated the root causes of maternal deaths, making it the only state in the nation with no such mortality review.

. . .

They allowed two bills to die that would have put Idaho on the same track as nearly every other state with abortion restrictions — including Florida, Kentucky and Texas — by extending postpartum Medicaid coverage to 12 months. Idaho’s Medicaid coverage ends two months after birth, the minimum under federal law.

They turned down $36 million in federal grants to support child care this summer, while other states with new abortion restrictions — Alabama, Louisiana and Missouri among them — made investments in early childhood education and day care. Idaho lawmakers at the time attributed the decision to a pending audit of a different batch of grants.

. . .

But Blaine Conzatti, president of the Idaho Family Policy Center and a leading anti-abortion lobbyist, is not bothered by the lack of government support. Pregnancies, births and child care are not the purview of the government, he said, but of families, communities, charities and, most of all, churches.

. . .

No action set Idaho apart from other abortion-ban states more than when the Idaho Legislature allowed its Maternal Mortality Review Committee to die this year. The committee had been granted unique powers to review private health care and other records of women who died during or within a year after pregnancy and draw conclusions about the root causes of those deaths.

Its budget of $10,000 a year came only from federal funds, so keeping the committee going seemed pro forma. Every single state, New York and Texas alike, had put one in place. But in Idaho, a lobbyist for an ultraconservative political nonprofit stood up and spoke against it at a hearing.

Fred Birnbaum, legislative affairs director of Idaho Freedom Foundation, said studying the causes of Idaho’s roughly 10 to 15 preventable maternal deaths each year risked inviting a push for more government support to help keep people from dying. And government support was anathema to his group.

Birnbaum’s assessment was partly correct. Idaho’s maternal mortality committee had made recommendations that could increase public spending, such as extending Medicaid coverage postpartum, expanding access to naloxone to prevent death from opioid overdose and providing better housing and child care support. But of the 52 recommendations in the committee’s final report, most called for no new government spending.

------

I doubt he has any problem with government money for farmers.

"They’re not pro-life. You know what they are? They’re anti-woman. Simple as it gets, anti-woman. They don’t like them. They don’t like women. They believe a woman’s primary role is to function as a brood mare for the state." -- George Carlin

[mightyflamethrower]

Study: Cost of ‘fueling’ an electric vehicle is equivalent to $17.33 per gallon

By Kenneth Schrupp | The Center Square

(The Center Square) – The complete costs of "fueling" an electric vehicle for 10 years are $17.33 per equivalent gallon of gasoline, a new analysis from the Texas Public Policy Foundation says.

The study authors say the $1.21 cost-per-gallon equivalent of charging a car cited by EV advocates excludes the real costs born by taxpayers for subsidies, utility ratepayers for energy investments, and non-electric vehicle owners for mandate-and-environmental-credit-driven higher vehicle costs, which they say total $48,698 per EV. Those costs must be included when comparing fueling costs of EVs and traditional gas-powered vehicles, TPPF maintains.

“The market would be driving towards hybrids if not for this market manipulation from the federal government. We’d be reducing emissions and improving fuel economy at the same time on a much greater scale,” study author Jason Isaac told The Center Square in an interview. He then cited Toyota estimates that the batteries from one EV can power 90 hybrids and reduce emissions 37 times more than that one EV. 

The study adds up the costs of direct subsidies to buyers of the car and chargers; indirect subsidies in the form of avoided fuel taxes and fees, as well as electric grid generation, transmission, distribution, and overhead costs for utilities; and regulatory mandates that include fuel economy standards, EPA greenhouse gas credits, and zero-emission mandates. 

Image courtesy of the Texas Public Policy CenterTexas Public Policy Center

The study also assumes EVs will be driven for 10 years and 120,000 miles, which the authors claim is a generous estimate. According to J.D. Power, EVs lose 2.3% of their range each year due to battery degradation, in part driving EVs to lose value faster than internal combustion cars.

With Ford losing an estimated $70,000 per EV and subsidies reaching $50,000 per EV, Isaac says the real cost of a vehicle such as a Ford Lightning is over $150,000, and those costs are carried by everyone, including non-EV owners and even Americans without cars. 

“The real cost of a Ford Lightning is closer to $172,00 and no one would buy them at that. I know their sales have tanked. The [electric] Silverado sold 18 electric trucks last quarter,” Isaac said. “Buying a car is more expensive today and people don’t understand why that is. I’m trying to help them understand if they buy a gas or diesel car they’re paying for an electric vehicle for a wealthy EV owner.” 

To reach the $17.73 per gallon equivalent figure, the authors created categories for costs borne by EV owners, taxpayers, utility ratepayers, and buyers of electric vehicles. For reference, the cost per gallon equivalent is computed by dividing the number of miles over a car’s ten year lifetime by the average new vehicle's fuel efficiency of 36 miles per gallon equivalent, and using that number to divide the total cost presented. 

EV owners only pay $1.21 for the cost of residential electricity and $1.38 for charging and metering costs per equivalent gallon, which makes charging still cheaper than gasoline in terms of costs paid by EV owners. However, taxpayers pay $2.72 per gallon in federal and state EV buyer tax credits and rebates ($8,984 over a vehicle lifetime), a cost of $0.40 per gallon ($1,318 over a vehicle lifetime) in avoided charging infrastructure costs split between taxpayers and utility ratepayers. Utility ratepayers then pay $3.18 per gallon ($10,515 over a vehicle lifetime) in increased costs to enable the grid to charge electric vehicles at mass scale through increased power generation, transmission and distribution. Lastly, buyers of non-electric vehicles face increased vehicle costs equating to $1.48 per gallon equivalent ($4,881 over a vehicle lifetime) due to requirements in many states that manufacturers sell a certain number of often money-losing EVs to continue selling other cars, $1.01 per gallon equivalent ($3,322 over a vehicle lifetime) due to EPA GHG emissions standards, while Corporate Average Fuel Economy Credits add a whopping $5.96 per gallon equivalent ($19,678 over a vehicle lifetime). 

CAFE standards are the single largest externalized cost of EVs, a cost that researchers attribute to the fact that automakers whose fleets do not meet the necessary average fuel economy must purchase credits from automakers with excess credits, with these credit markets worth billions of dollars per year and contributing $1.78 billion to Tesla’s bottom line in 2022. The average fuel economy of an average EV with a 300 mile range in 2021 was estimated to be 113 miles per gallon equivalent, making automakers strongly incentivized to build these often money-losing cars to meet CAFE goals. To increase the adoption of cars that don’t use diesel or gasoline, the federal government created a 667% multiplier in MPGe for vehicles that use alternative power. With a fleetwide CAFE standard of 37 MPG for 2021 and a 2021 EV rated at 113 MPGE, an EV is worth 507 MPG worth of credits, or more than what Ford loses directly on its EVs.

[usafphantom2]

NASA announces group of 16 people who will study UFOs

Fernando Valduga By Fernando Valduga 10/24/2022 - 08:13 in Space

What is behind all these UFO sightings? To find out, NASA announced the 16 people who will spend the next nine months studying unidentified aerial phenomena, also known as UFOs.

Using unclassified data, the team will "launch the foundation for future studies" of UFOs, examining how the data is collected by the public, local government and other sources. The goal is to have a roadmap for NASA data analysis on flying objects and determine which events are natural or not.

“Explore the unknown in space and the atmosphere is at the center of who we are at NASA,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA's Scientific Missions Board, in a statement. "Understanding the data we have around unidentified aerial phenomena is fundamental to help us draw scientific conclusions about what is happening in our skies. Data are the language of scientists and make the inexplicable, explainable."

Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security Ronald Moultrie, on the right, and Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott Bray talk to a UAP on a screen, during a hearing of the House Subcommittee on Intelligence, Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence and Counterproliferation on "Unidentified Air phenomena," at the Capitol, Tuesday, May 17, 2022, in Washington. (Photo: AP)

The announcement of the study participants occurs amid a renewed interest in UFOs. In June 2021, the office of the U.S. Director of National Intelligence released a highly anticipated report examining unidentified aerial phenomena, but it was not possible to draw "firm conclusions" in more than 140 cases.

Still, federal authorities continue to monitor UFOs because they are seen as a potential threat to national security, according to Congressman André Carson, Democrat of Indiana. The Department of Defense created the Synchronization of Identification and Management of Airborne Objects in November 2021 to track and analyze UFOs and, in May, Congress held its first public hearing on UFOs in more than 50 years.

Although UFOs are commonly associated with aliens, NASA does not think that the phenomena are of "extraterrestrial origin". But the agency says that the observations make it difficult to draw scientific conclusions.

Who will study UFOs for NASA?

The research group chosen by NASA includes astronomers, scientists, aviation officers, as well as a former astronaut, oceanographer and reporter.

Here are the people who will be part of the study:

David Spergel: President of the study, founding director of the Flatiron Institute of Computational Astrophysics at the Simons Foundation.

Anamaria Berea: Associate Professor of Computing and Data Science at George Mason University.

Federica Bianco: professor of physics and astrophysics at the University of Delaware, the Biden School of Public Policy and Administration and senior scientist at the Urban Multicity Observatory.

Paula Bontempi: biological oceanographer and dean of the Graduate School of Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island.

Reggie Brothers: Operational partner of AE Industrial Partners and former Undersecretary of Science and Technology of the Department of Homeland Security.

In this image released by NASA, NASA Expedition Commander 46 Scott Kelly is seen after returning to Ellington Field on March 3, 2016 in Houston, Texas, after his return to Earth the day before.

Jen Buss: CEO of the Potomac Institute of Policy Studies.

Nadia Drake: Freelance scientific journalist and collaborating writer at National Geographic.

Mike Gold: Executive Vice President of Civil Space and External Affairs at aerospace manufacturer Redwire.

David Grinspoon: Senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute.

Scott Kelly: Former NASA astronaut, test pilot, fighter pilot and retired U.S. Navy captain.

Matt Mountain: President of the Association of Universities for Research and Astronomy.

Warren Randolph: Deputy Executive Director of the Department of Accident Investigation and Prevention for Aviation Safety at the Federal Aviation Administration.

Walter Scott: Executive vice president and chief technology officer of the space technology company Maxar.

Joshua Semeter: Professor of electrical and computer engineering, director of the Center for Space Physics at Boston University.

Karlin Toner: Interim Executive Director of the FAA Aviation Policy and Plans Office.

Shelley Wright: Associate Professor of Physics at the Center for Astrophysics and Space Studies at UC San Diego.

The full team report is expected to be released to the public in mid-2023.

Tags: SpaceNASAUFO - Unidentified Flying ObjectUAP - unidentified aerial phenomena - unidentified aerial phenomenon

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Fernando Valduga

Fernando Valduga

Aviation photographer and pilot since 1992, he has participated in several events and air operations, such as Cruzex, AirVenture, Dayton Airshow and FIDAE. It has works published in specialized aviation magazines in Brazil and abroad. Uses Canon equipment during his photographic work in the world of aviation.

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[ivankahasbeentreatedsounfairly]

By Ken Bensinger and Richard Fausset

In July, two men went door to door at a sprawling apartment complex in Norcross, Ga., an Atlanta suburb that is a hub for the region’s fast-growing Latino population, asking residents if they were U.S. citizens and whether they were registered to vote.

Speaking in Spanish, often peeking from behind half-closed doors, seven people told the men that they were not citizens but that they were registered to vote.

Although the two men claimed to represent a company helping Latinos navigate the election system, they were actually working with the Heritage Foundation and carrying a hidden camera. Days later, the conservative think tank posted a video on the social media platform X containing some of the footage the men had captured, calling it “staggering” evidence that 14 percent of noncitizens in Georgia — which Heritage said extrapolated to more than 47,000 people — were registered to vote.

“Based on our findings,” the video concluded, “the integrity of the 2024 election is in great jeopardy.”

The video was reposted by Elon Musk, X’s owner, who called it “extremely disturbing.” It quickly went viral.

But under scrutiny, those claims do not hold up. Three of the seven people Heritage filmed later said they had misspoken. State investigators found no evidence that any of the seven people on the tape had ever registered to vote. A spokesman for Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, called the video “a stunt.”

It was one of several misleading videos that the Heritage Foundation has pumped into social media feeds this year. While the once-staid think tank has received attention recently for Project 2025, the right-wing blueprint for a future Trump administration that the group funded, it has also made its mark with an aggressive effort to shape public opinion, seeding falsehoods about the integrity of the 2024 election across social media and conservative news outlets.

At the center of that effort is the Oversight Project, an arm of Heritage that conducts what it describes as investigations into immigration policy, among other topics. Borrowing from covert tactics used by the group Project Veritas, the Oversight Project has published videos about the supposed threat of migrant voting in shelters on the Texas border, in New York City and in North Carolina.

The project says it is preparing to release investigations of other states, including what its executive director, Mike Howell, recently described in a livestream on X as “a pretty big thing” targeting voter registration at the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles.

“We view our role in this cause as breaking the bombshell news,” said Mr. Howell. The recording of the livestream appears to have been deleted after The New York Times contacted Heritage for this article, and the Oversight Project has so far not posted any videos about alleged noncitizen voting in Virginia.

Few groups have done more to propel the false, but snowballing, theory that noncitizens are preparing to vote in droves in November, threatening the integrity of the election.

Heritage’s most recent effort, the Georgia video, tallied more than 56 million views, according to X’s statistics, and has become fodder for discussion on dozens of right-wing talk shows and podcasts, as well as on Fox News. The day after it was posted, both Mr. Raffensperger and Georgia’s attorney general, Christopher Carr, released statements, apparently in response to the video, pledging to investigate “specific” claims of voter fraud.

But there is no evidence to support Heritage’s findings in Georgia, a critical swing state with a large immigrant population, or, for that matter, anywhere else in the country.

Voting by noncitizens is illegal in almost all jurisdictions except for a few scattered municipalities that allow residents who are not citizens to vote in local elections. Any noncitizen convicted of trying to vote in a federal election faces stiff fines, prison time and potential deportation.

A study by the Brennan Center for Justice, a policy group that focuses on voting and criminal justice issues, found that one ten-thousandth of 1 percent of votes in the 2016 election were cast by noncitizens. The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, has said that “noncitizens don’t illegally vote in detectable numbers.” The Heritage Foundation’s own analysis found just 23 documented cases of noncitizen voting across the country between 2003 and 2023.

Regardless of the evidence, critics say efforts like the Heritage investigation in Georgia could be used by former President Donald J. Trump and his allies to try to discredit the election results if he loses.

“The immigrant becomes the boogeyman,” said Richard L. Hasen, an expert on elections law at U.C.L.A. law school. “It provides a means of delegitimizing Democratic victories and creates a path for challenging them.”

Several election experts derided the Oversight Project’s methodology as deeply flawed. The group’s figures suggest it spoke to a total of 50 people — statistically, a tiny sampling — before coming to a determination that one in seven noncitizen residents of Georgia may be illegally registered to vote.

In an email to The Times last week, Mr. Howell stood by the group’s work in Georgia. “I am not surprised that when an individual admits to a crime on camera that they would later retract it when that video is made public,” he said.

Asked about research — including Heritage’s own data — showing how rare noncitizen voting is, he said: “The monumental number of noncitizens that have poured over our borders since 2021 have made any previous ‘study’ of noncitizens’ voting irrelevant.”

In a July interview on Real America’s Voice, a right-wing podcast network, Mr. Howell said that out of 40 people his investigators spoke to at an apartment complex in Charlotte, N.C., four said they were both registered to vote and not citizens. That led the Oversight Project to conclude that 10 percent of noncitizens in that state were most likely registered to vote.

Mr. Howell claimed the Biden administration was planning to “refuse a peaceful transition of power by relying on illegal aliens to vote for them, and that’s clear as day.”

In Georgia, Mr. Raffensperger's investigation into Heritage’s claims is continuing, according to Mike Hassinger, a spokesman for the secretary of state’s office. Mr. Hassinger said investigators had found no records suggesting that the people who appeared in the video had registered or voted, and “no pending or rejected voter applications from 2024” from the apartment complex.

The state investigators went to the apartment complex and spoke to two of those interviewed by the Oversight Project. One said she purposely gave the men at her door a fake name, and told them what she thought they wanted to hear “to get them away.”

Mr. Hassinger described the Heritage effort as “a stunt,” adding, “There’s no better word for it.”

The Times also spoke with a woman interviewed in the video. The woman, an immigrant from Honduras who asked that she be identified only by her first name, Marta, because she feared being deported, confirmed to the Times that she was not registered to vote and had never tried to register in the nine years that she had lived in the United States.

She had been surprised to see two strangers appear at her door and feared that if she told them the truth — that she was not registered to vote — they might try to register her and ask her to sign documents, potentially putting her at risk with immigration authorities.

Marta said that she had no idea she was being filmed until she was shown the video online and that the two men did not ask for her full name or address. “I just wanted them to go away,” she said.

The woman was first identified by Lead Stories, a private fact-checking group hired by social media platforms to verify content. The group also tracked down two other women who were shown in the video. Both denied having registered to vote.

On social media, the Oversight Project said it had tried to locate the seven people on state voter rolls but was “unable to find them,” adding that “non-citizens have shoddy address history records and often use fake documents and names.”

Founded in 1973, Heritage was long known as a policy shop, focused on promoting conservative, pro-business policies in Washington. In recent years, it has taken a sharp turn under the leadership of Kevin Roberts, an academic who said his goal for Heritage was “institutionalizing Trumpism.”

Mr. Roberts started the Oversight Project just a few months after arriving at Heritage, asking it to provide “aggressive oversight” of the Biden administration and “institutional support” to the conservative movement.

The Oversight Project partnered with an outside group, Muckraker, to produce both the Georgia and North Carolina videos. In April, they also teamed up to produce a video about a flier encouraging migrants to vote for President Biden. The groups said the paper was found in a shelter in Matamoros, Mexico, but the founder of the shelter denied being behind it. She said she had received death threats after the video was posted.

In March, the two groups used a hidden camera to film employees of a migrant aid group, La Jornada, that was providing documentation they said could enable noncitizens to register to vote. The executive director of that organization, which is based in Queens, N.Y., later said the document they had provided was not identification that could be used to register to vote.

Anthony Rubin, the founder of Muckraker, in a recent interview on InfoWars, the conspiracy spreading podcast hosted by Alex Jones, said that “anybody who claims this isn’t happening, they’re just burying their head in the sand.”

In March 2022, Mr. Raffensperger announced the results of a statewide audit that determined that 1,634 noncitizens had tried to register to vote among all of Georgia’s registered voters at the time, and had been blocked from doing so by existing state verification procedures. He also noted that none of them had cast ballots.

“So, my fellow Georgians asked me, ‘Are noncitizens voting in Georgia?’” Mr. Raffensperger said in May on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I can say, ‘No, they aren’t,’ because we’ve checked it.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/07/us/politics/heritage-foundation-2024-campaign-immigration.html