Month: September 2021

On Wednesday, a Florida judge ordered that schools can issue mask mandates, ruling against Gov. Ron DeSantis while the appeals court sorts out the legality of the governor’s ban. Leon County Judge John Cooper ruled to vacate an automatic stay given to the state after it appealed his previous decision stating that DeSantis’s executive order banning school mandates is unconstitutional.

DeSantis’s order allowed parents to decide if they want their kids to wear masks to school rather than have local school districts make the decision, prompting a lawsuit brought by a group of parents in favor of school mask mandates. DeSantis said last week he believes the state will win in the 1st District Court of Appeal in Tallahassee because of a new state law, the Parents Bill of Rights, which he said gives parents the final authority on their children’s health. “We’ll end up getting it back,” the governor told reporters. “Obviously [Cooper’s ruling], it’s problematic.”

School boards in 13 districts in Florida have voted to defy the order and chose to require masks because of the virus resurgence; however they faced the possibility of having their salaries withheld. The Biden administration had promised federal funds for any district that lost money for requiring masks.

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Nancy Salzman, a former nurse who co-founded and once ran the cult-like NXIVM group, was sentenced Wednesday to 42 months in prison. Salzman, 67, the former president and co-founder of NXIVM, must also pay a $150,000 fine. Salzman has agreed to forfeit more than $500,000 in cash, several properties and a Steinway grand piano.

U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis ordered that Salzman must report to prison by Jan. 19; her lawyers said she has been caring for her ailing mother. Salzman’s crimes involved stealing identities of the group’s critics and hacking into their email accounts from 2003 to 2008, prosecutors said. She was also accused of conspiring to doctor videos showing her teaching NXIVM lessons before the recordings were turned over to plaintiffs in a New Jersey lawsuit against the group.

Speaking in Brooklyn federal court, Salzman said she fell under NXIVM leader Keith Raniere’s spell when they started working together 20 years ago and that she started rationalizing and overlooking the wrongdoing she saw around her. Salzman pleaded guilty in March 2019 to charges of racketeering conspiracy that involved conspiracy to commit identity theft and conspiracy to obstruct justice. She was one of the first in the group’s leadership to plead guilty to criminal charges. Raniere was sentenced last October to 120 years in prison for turning some women into sex slaves branded with his initials and sexually abusing a 15-year-old.

On Tuesday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill into law placing new restrictions on voting. The signing into law of Senate Bill 1 adds new restrictions to early voting and new identification requirements, which critics say will disproportionately impact voters of color. Abbott said at an event where he signed the bill: “It does make it easier than ever before for anybody to go cast a ballot. It does also, however, make sure it is harder than ever for people to cheat at the ballot box.”

“Reforms are needed to the election laws of this state to ensure that fraud does not undermine the public confidence in the electoral process,” the text of Texas’ SB 1 states. The law also creates new rules and penalties for assisting others who fill out a registration form or ballot, which could makes it harder for people with disabilities or language barriers to vote. It also requires large Texas counties that lean Democratic to live stream video at ballot-counting sites.

Texas is one of several Republican-leaning states that have pushed for new voting restrictions after former President Donald Trump’s allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 election. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed restrictive voting bill into law in May, and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp enacted sweeping changes to the state’s election rules in March. The new restrictions have prompted national attention and lawsuits in all three states.

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President Biden is expected this week to outline a new “6-pronged” strategy involving the public and private sectors in order to fight against the COVID-19 pandemic and the surge of the delta variant. Biden is set to deliver remarks on Thursday in hopes of controlling the resurgent pandemic, with positive cases and deaths increasing, while vaccination rates remain an issue.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said: “The president will speak to the American people about his robust plan to stop the spread of the delta variant and boost vaccinations. As (Biden) has said since Day 1, his administration will pull every lever to get the pandemic under control.” Biden will also likely address the issue of mask requirements in schools, with public health experts in agreement that school children, teachers and staff should all be ordered to wear masks to help prevent the additional spread of the virus. Psaki said Tuesday: “I will note that we’ve seen that there is a range of ways that we have increased vaccinations across the country, or vaccinations have increased. One of them is private sector companies mandating in different capacities that their employees get vaccinated. Or certain school districts mandate.”

Positive COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths are climbing nearly as high as they’ve been since the pandemic first surged in March 2020. Additionally, the full recovery of the economy is dependent on getting children safely back to school, adults back to work, and assisting retail businesses and restaurants.

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President Biden approved major disaster declarations in New York City and New Jersey following last week’s catastrophic flash flooding due to remnants from Hurricane Ida. The storm dropped historic rainfall on a large swath of the northeast stretching from Philadelphia to Massachusetts and hit the New York City metropolitan area particularly hard, with the entire region under a flash flood emergency for most of the night Wednesday. Flash flooding flooded homes, roads and apartments, and at least 41 people died in the storm, with officials still looking for some people who are still missing.

Biden is set to visit New York City and Manville, New Jersey on Tuesday to survey the damage of these hard-hit areas. The disaster declarations cover Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Westchester County in New York as well as Bergen, Gloucester, Hunterdon, Middlesex, Passaic and Somerset counties in New Jersey. The disaster declarations means that residents and business owners affected by flooding and other damage can apply for a bevy of Federal Emergency Management Administration programs to clean up, make repairs and get temporary housing.

On Sunday, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said Wednesday’s storm caused at least $50 million in damages. In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio, Sen. Chuck Schumer and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spent part of the morning touring of storm damage in Queens with Deanne Criswell, the former city emergency management chief who’s now administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. At least 17 people died in New York following Ida’s historic and devastating flooding last week.

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