Story here: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/25/florida-governor-desantis-signs-bill-creating-election-police-unit-.html

The law creates an Office of Election Crimes and Security under the Florida Department of State to review fraud allegations and conduct preliminary investigations. DeSantis is required to appoint a group of special officers from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement who would be tasked with pursuing the election law violations.

Existing state law allowed the governor to appoint officers to investigate violations of election law but did not require him to do so.

The law also increases penalties for the collection of completed ballots by a third party, often referred to as ballot harvesting, to a felony. It raises fines for certain election law violations and requires that election supervisors perform voter list maintenance on a more frequent basis.

DeSantis signed the bill days after the Florida legislature, meeting in a special session called by the governor, passed a congressional redistricting map drawn up by the governor and expected to reduce the number of districts in which Democrats are competitive- especially black candidates supported by black voters.

"First, do no harm."

Florida Surgeon General nominee, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, refused to say that vaccines are effective against Covid in a Senate Health Policy Committee meeting last week.

DeSantis continues to advocate his "freedom" talking point and goes out of his way to minimize the importance of vaccination for individual health and as a public health tool. In a dazzling display of arrogance, he is threatening to sue everyone in the world for failing to continue to provide free ($2100/dose, actually, but free to Florida) monoclonal antibody treatments that the makers themselves admit are useless in the treatment of the Omicron variant. The governor also continues to evade answering the question of his booster status. Even TFG says OMFG. God forbid that the governor should use his own behavior to set a good example.

What scares me even more than the unnecessary disease and deaths that DeSantis and Ladapo are willing to tolerate is the obvious calculation that they do not expect to pay any personal or political price for sociopathic behavior. Recent Florida history does not discourage that belief.

edit: replaced "authoritarianism" with "autocracy."

Biden's commission on Supreme Court expansion is expected to issue a report that offers no conclusion about the need to expand the Supreme Court. The current Supreme Court needs to be recognized for what it is- a partisan force supporting the Republican Party's agenda, including the drive for minority rule and support for evangelical whims. Recent decisions such as Citizens United and Shelby County v Holder have crippled the ability of Americans to maintain a government that prioritizes equity and the well-being of the citizenry as a whole. The expansion discussion needs to be changed from "court packing" to "court unpacking" in recognition of the fact that the current court was successfully packed by McConnell and the forces supporting the Federalist Society.

I posted a sanitized version of this graphic a couple days ago here:https://www.democraticunderground.com/100216059857

I took my original "FREE AS FUCK" text out of the image because it sounded harsh and bitter. Also, I'm an old guy and grew up in an era when fuck was one of the seven dirty words you couldn't say on television. I am not entirely free of that sensibility.

Words are not sticks or stones- or bullets. The real obscenity is the reckless, casual, and uncaring murder. Worse yet is the mountainous garbage heap of Americans who condone the killing and the even larger group of Americans who will tolerate it without evident concern.

For those who might have missed some of the gory details- the last picture is Rittenhouse, after the killings and before the trial, in a bar with Proud Boys wearing a shirt that says FREE AS FUCK. One of the things the judge excluded from presentation as evidence to the jury.