Mother's for Liberty are misguided about banning books Governor Tim Walz says "ban hunger" instead!

Minnessota Governor Tim Walz:  "While others were banning books, we were banishing hunger!" -VP Walz #DNC2024 (I still can't believe folks don't want the children to have free lunch.)

Echo opinion letter published in the Orlando Sentinel

Right now, Florida students are learning distorted versions of African American history and civics and studying literature devoid of many of our greatest authors.

As a writer, editor and former teacher, I have made the fight against censorship a big part of my life’s work. 

Contrary to wrongminded beliefs within the (Mothers for Liberty🙅⚠️) MFL crowd, I do not advocate assigning books for classroom discussion that are sexually explicit for the sake of being so. 

Instead, my mandatory reading must be literature first, not a test case for cultural debate. Many students will tell you such specificity makes them uncomfortable. At the same time, this is why we must not ban Shakespeare, Toni Morrison and other authors whose inclusion of sexuality is a necessary part of the literary narrative.

However, all books 📕📗📙should be available to students in the school libraries where they have the freedom to read what they choose.

Until we end this assault on education, we are graduating students with honors in propaganda.

From:  June S. Neal Delray Beach
June S. Neal is the president of Read Banned Books.

Donald Trump chicanery- Republicans fall victim to former guy's fake news and false accusations

 Echo opinion published in the Orlando Sentinel newspaper:

You cannot fool all of the people all of the time by David McGrath: 

Trump trickery!

Reading one of the many postings written by the former guy Donald Trump on his Truth Social network, he had (fakenews❗) seized upon the phrase “lethal force,” commonly used in FBI (agent safety❗) paperwork, authorizing searches, to falsely accuse Joe Biden of sending agents to “assassinate” him at Mar-a-Lago. 

That, of course, is classic Trump chicanery: to dangle an outrageous accusation in a Truth Social post, in order to distract voters from focusing on the alleged possession of classified documents in his Florida home (found hidden in a bathroom).

Likewise, a couple of weeks earlier, he claimed that he was not allowed to testify in his own defense during the Manhattan jury trial, because of the gag order imposed by the judge. 

This, too, is a falsehood, obvious to any fan of the TV show “Law and Order,” but intended by Trump to obscure the fact that he was avoiding the witness stand, and he didn’t want to be perceived as “chickening out” by his supporters. (Stormy Daniels alert: In a tweet perceived to be aimed at former guy Donald Trump, which has since garnered significant attention, Ms. Daniels wrote, 'Real men respond to testimony by being sworn in and taking the stand in court. Oh...wait. Nevermind'."

Stormy Daniels-American pornographic film actress, director and former stripper. She has won many industry awards and is a member of the NightMoves Hall of Fame

Predictably, for the previous six weeks, whenever a court session in his hush money trial was adjourned for the day, Trump walked up to the media microphones to introduce conspiracy theories. He said the judge was a “devil,” his indictment a “sham,” and the trial a “persecution” by President Biden. He wanted to flood the airwaves with baseless accusations, in hopes that voters would forget the signed checks, witness testimony, and audio tapes that manifested his felonious falsification of business transactions.

And while there certainly may have been people in the jury who liked or even voted for the former president, they were intelligent adults, not 11-year-old children. So it did not take long for them to issue 34 guilty verdicts after careful deliberation, while withstanding efforts by Trump’s attorneys to cast doubt on the facts by vilifying and seeming to put Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels on trial, in order to occlude their client’s crimes.

And though the verdict is in, and the sentencing is July 11, the distraction and decoying persists, as Republican leaders, either loyal to Trump or fearful of him, criticize his conviction as “persecution” and a “kangaroo court,” while excusing the crime Trump committed to fool voters into electing him president. Such a level of hypocrisy is astonishing, even for politicians.

In fact, the 12 adult jurors in New York who were not bamboozled have set an example going forward for the rest of the country on how to stand up for truth and the American justice system.

David McGrath is a former English professor at Florida Southwestern State College.

Donald Trump owns chaos he created and supported during his administration

Trump’s final year in office proves incompetence an echo opinion letter published in Florida's Orlando Sentinel: 

We don’t examine the effectiveness of the presidency of Abraham Lincoln by excluding the Civil War. We don’t look at George W. Bush’s effectiveness by excluding the financial market meltdown in 2008. Why do supporters of Donald Trump disregard his (chaotic!) fourth year in office?

Since George Washington’s time in office, we have judged a president’s effectiveness based on what shape they left the country in upon exiting the Oval office. Bottom line is, virtually no one was better off four years ago than they are today.

Whether you believe that Trump was a victim of circumstances or a poor administrator, he owns everything that occurred under his presidency. The tax cuts for the rich, the riots, the pandemic. He owns it all. That is what you sign up for when you choose to run for this country’s highest office.

In 1993 (after George H.W. Bush), 2009 (after George W. Bush), and in 2021 (after Trump) the elected presidents (Clinton, Obama and Biden) inherited a country in economic shambles and each of these Democratic presidents had to focus their first years of service restoring the economic wellbeing of this country.

Trump inherited a robust economy but couldn’t successfully drive the car for four short years.  #Vote Blue 2024  #VoteBidenHarris2024

Dan McGarvey in Orlando, Florida

Republicans have no scruples but blame all the world problems on conspiracies

The moment the MV Dali smashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge, MAGAlomaniacs knew where to assign blame. Echo opinion by Fred Grimm published in the Orlando Sentinel in Florida. 

The Dali container ship entangled in the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Md., March 29, 2024. Clearing the debris from the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge will be a complex but urgent task, officials said. And rebuilding it may take several years, they cautioned. (Erin Schaff/The New York Times)

“DEI did this,” former Florida state representative and failed congressional candidate Anthony Sabatini tweeted Tuesday, as the Coast Guard searched for six maintenance workers lost when the span’s severed superstructure collapsed into the Patapsco River.

From 900 miles away, Sabatini could ascertain that a deadly combination of diversity, equity and inclusion had done to the container ship what an iceberg did to the Titanic.

The website of Laura Loomer, another Florida wingnut and wannabe member of Congress, was festooned with posts this week blaming the tragedy on the “high priority” Synergy Marine, the Singapore-based company that manages the Dali and 670 other cargo ships, assigns to “a diverse workforce” and “an environment where everyone feels they belong.”

So much for the prevailing theory that after a sudden loss of power, wind and river currents pushed thefoundering cargo ship into a support pillar. Today’s far right knows that nothing quite predicts a marine disaster like a diverse workforce. 

The horrors of DEI have become all the rage — and I do mean rage — in right-wing politics. MAGA politicians complain that DEI steals jobs from deserving white workers (despite a national unemployment rate of only 3.9%) and that DEI makes white students feel sad about their racial legacy. (Like how politically correct liberals tried to guilt-trip Sabatini for donning blackface back in his university days.)

Last May, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill prohibiting the expenditure of state or federal money to promote DEI at state colleges and universities. DeSantis said the bill would “prevent woke ideologies from continuing to co-opt” state schools.

In January, the Florida Board of Governors told universities and colleges that they could no longer support programs or campus activities that “advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion” or “promote or engage in political or social activism.” (One wonders how white students survived before Ron DeSantis cleansed state schools of racial and ethnic sensitivities.)

Like Sabatini, Utah Republican congressman and gubernatorial candidate Phil Lyman charged that DEI has sabotaged American infrastructure. “This is what happens when you have governors who prioritize diversity over the well-being and security of citizens,” Lyman posted on X after Tuesday’s disaster.

Ideologues pushing a racial explanation can’t quite articulate exactly how diversity toppled the Francis Scott Key Bridge. 

The Washington Post reported that the Dali’s not-so-diverse 21-man crew were all Indian nationals. The six maintenance workers who lost their lives Tuesday were all Central Americans.

But apparently, diverse simply means “not white.” 

MAGA logic argues that if Caucasians had manned the Dali, maintained the span and controlled Baltimore City Hall, the Key Bridge would still be intact.

A post on X that generated 25.7 million views and 6,000 reposts blamed the tragedy on “Mayor DEI.” As if Brandon Scott, the Black mayor elected in 2020, with 70% of the vote, had been foisted on Baltimore by the likes of George Soros, Anthony Fauci and Joe Biden.

Of course, other MAGA grievances were also blamed for the mangled metal trusses blocking the Patapsco River. 

Marjorie Taylor Greene, the loony Georgia😼😵😳 congresswoman who blamed California’s 2018, spate of wildfires on lasers from space,👽 suggested on X that the bridge had come under “an international attack.” 

(She added that the collision could have been avoided if the Biden administration had not frittered away money on Ukraine.)

Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo and thousands of X posters blamed the crash on Biden’s border policies.

Alex Jones, the scurrilous peddler of conspiracy theories from whom the families of Sandy Hook mass shooting victims extracted $1.5 billion in court for his lies about their dead children, warned that this calamity was no accident. “WW3 has already started,” Jones said.

Matt Schlapp of the American Conservative Union told Newsmax the wreck was another sign of a “drug-addled” workforce.

But the MAGA consensus blames the wreck on DEI, this political season’s all-purpose liberal scapegoat. If the Baltimore tragedy had occurred in 2023 or 2022 or 2021, MAGA constituents would have claimed the bridge had been torpedoed by drag queens or liberal prosecutors or Black Lives Matter protestors or Trump-hating judges or whatever the far-right’s latest imagined menace might have been at the time.

But we’ve learned in the age of MAGA that disgrace and mendacity no longer disqualify politicians. Anthony Sabatini still has stature in the GOP, despite calling Disney World “pedo world,” the U.S. capitol police “the gestapo” and the Iraq-born wife of his 2022 primary opponent “anti-Christian.” (Sabatini is running again, this time against three-term incumbent Daniel Webster.)

Same with Laura Loomer, who won 44% of Republican congressional primary vote in 2022 against Webster, despite her assertions that Parkland survivors had been paid actors in a faked massacre. (She hinted Monday on Twitter that she was considering running against incumbent Laurel Lee in a Tampa-area district.)

Marjorie Taylor Greene livestreamed her 2019 ambush of Parkland survivor David Hogg on Facebook, chasing him down the street, uttering unhinged accusations, which turns out to be admired behavior in MAGA politics. Her cruelty💀😈
was rewarded by two terms in Congress and influence in party politics.

But, never mind the lies and lunatic conspiracy theories espoused by MAGA leaders. If something goes awry, the party can always blame Black Lives Matter critical race theory DEI.

Fred Grimm, a longtime resident of Fort Lauderdale, has worked as a journalist in South Florida since 1976.

President Joe Biden provides highly respectful support Gold Star families

Biden treated fallen service members with dignity

Echo opinion letter published in the Orlando Sentinel:

Let us compare our current and the former guy citizen Trump's feelings towards our military service members who were killed while serving in hostile areas.

Concerning the three servicemen recently killed by an enemy drone, NSC spokesman John Kirby reported President Biden’s communication with the families of the fallen: “He was grateful for their time. He expressed how proud we all are of their service.” Kirby said of Biden’s calls with the families, “We mourn and feel sorrow for their loss.”

Compare those compassionate words to Trump’s (callous and idootic) remarks about servicemembers buried at the Aisne-Marne World War One American Cemetery in France in 2018, calling them “losers” and “suckers.” 

Or, the former guy's statement to his chief of staff, retired Marine General John Kelly, as they were standing at Kelly’s son’s graveside in the Arlington National Cemetery, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?”  At this point, I am simply beyond words. 

Carter (Curley) Bowman Maitland

Florida Republicans special election ran a "no woke" agenda but their campaign flopped- Vote Blue!

Democrat Tom Keen is the new State Representative-Elect for Florida House District 35, which represents parts of Orange County and Osceola County.

Echo opinion by Scott Maxwell published in the Orlando Sentinel:

Something weird is happening in Florida. Democrats are winning. For the first time in years.😀😇

When Navy veteran Tom Keen surprised the political establishment Tuesday, flipping a legislative district from red to blue, it was huge.

How huge? Well, the last time voters cast ballots in this district, Republicans won by 11 points. On Tuesday, they lost by 3. That’s a big swing — especially in a race where Republicans massively outspent their opponents.

More significantly, from a big-picture standpoint, this Democratic flip in Central Florida comes on the heels of other big, surprising Democratic swings.

In Jacksonville — Gov. Ron DeSantis’ home turf, where a former head of the Republican Party of Florida had been mayor for years — voters also switched allegiances last year, putting a Democrat in the mayor’s office instead.

And in South Florida, Democrats barely lost a special election last month in a legislative district where Republicans had dominated by 30 points just a year before.

As one who has covered politics in this state for more than a quarter of a century, I can tell you this is not normal. 

For years, Florida Democrats have racked up one loss after another. Sometimes by wee margins. Often by landslides. But almost always consistent losses.

Yet now — after a few years of a GOP supermajority in Tallahassee fuming about Disney, drag queens and rainbow flags while insurance rates skyrocketed and SAT scores dropped — voters seem ready for a course correction.

It’s way too early for Democrats to start predicting a blue wave in November. They’ve done so many times before, only to be proven wrong, often in painfully embarrassing fashion.

But these recent results show a markedly different trend, possibly for two main reasons:

One is that, for the first time in recent memory, Democrats seem to have their act together. Instead of spending all their time carping on social media, they actively worked on get-out-the-vote initiatives.

The other is that middle-of-the-road voters — NPAs and moderate conservatives — seem to have finally had enough of the culture wars. They’ve seen too many books pulled from school libraries, too many laws passed trying to tell parents how to raise their kids and too many votes for clearly unconstitutional laws that were later overturned by the courts.

Screaming about Pride flags isn’t all that amusing to people who have seen their home-insurance jump 102% over just three years.

Yet Keen’s GOP opponent, Erika Booth, leaned heavily into the culture-war agenda. Literally, the No. 1 priority listed on her website was to “Fight Joe Biden’s woke agenda.” 

Booth did not talk about improving education or courting better-paying jobs. But fighting “Sleepy Joe” and “trans-education.” The homophobic boogeyman tactic seems pretty played out.

Interestingly, even Republicans seem to know their own culture-war crusades are backfiring. In one of the oddest, underhanded tactics in this race, Republicans set up a bogus campaign committee where they pretended to be Democrats and bashed Keen for supporting Gov. DeSantis’ signature “Don’t Say Gay” legislation. (Yes, that’s the phrase the Republicans used to refer to their own bill❗😳😧)

Another tactic that backfired was the scheme that led to this special election in the first place, giving Democrats the opportunity to steal the seat in Orange and Osceola counties. 

It never needed to happen. It only did because DeSantis decided to give the district’s former Republican rep a position running a state college. The gift was part of a trend of DeSantis handing out cushy higher-ed jobs to political buddies who have about as much higher-ed experience as my cat, Leona.

It was obvious cronyism. But Republicans figured: Who cares? We always win the seats anyway.

Only this time, they didn’t. This time, they faced an electorate that seemed fed up with the histrionics. So, while Booth ducked debates and put out missives about transgender issues, Keen focused on property insurance, affordable housing and reproductive rights.

Keen wasn’t originally backed by the establishment Democrats in the primary. But he campaigned alongside their progressive stars in the general, including Maxwell Alejandro Frost and Anna Eskamani, while continuing to stress his interest in the serious issues that mattered to all Floridians.

And it apparently resonated, not just with Democrats, but with moderate Republicans and NPAs. We know this because, while only 7,300 Democrats cast ballots in Orange County Tuesday, Keen fetched more than 9,400 votes.

Democrat Tom Keen won because people who weren’t Democrats wanted him in office. And that’s why Republican operatives all over Florida were quaking Tuesday night. They threw everything they had at this race and only managed to turn voters off.

Again, I still think it’s way too early to predict a blue wave in Florida in 2024. It’s hard to overstate the money-advantage Republicans will have. Democrats haven’t unseated a Republican from statewide office in more than three decades. If Trump is on the ballot in November, he’ll energize the Republican base in a way few other candidates can. And it’s worth re-emphasizing that Democrats still aren’t turning out at the polls the way Republicans do. A slightly higher percentage of Republicans still cast ballots Tuesday.

But for now, we’re seeing a trend that says moderate voters have had enough of the culture chaos and are looking to balance the scales a bit — which is something Florida hasn’t seen in a long, long time.

#VoteBlue

Florida book banning is sweeping The Diary of Ann Frank out of school libraries

Book bans are an excuse for antisemitism.
Book banning in Florida

Escambia County, on Florida’s westernmost end, has pulled around 1,500 books, citing a new law that went into effect over the summer that targets novels with depictions of “sexual conduct.” Those removed have included multiple dictionaries and thesauruses and multiple issues of "Ripley's Believe It or Not!"

Anne Frank's "The Diary of a Young Girl" also was pulled.

Annelies Marie Frank was a German-born Jewish girl (b. Frankfurt Germany 1929) who kept a diary in which she documented life in hiding under Nazi persecution during the German occupation of the Netherlands.

In Central Florida’s Orange County, more than 600 books have been removed from classroom libraries for the same reason, according to data provided by the school district.

Echo opinion letters published in the Orlando Sentinel Florida newspaper:

Dear Editor: I was incensed after reading about the decision by the Orange County School Board to remove many Jewish books from the district. It is disheartening to read that Holocaust literature, such as “The Diary of Anne Frank,” is included in the “cleanout,” as well as other books of Jewish identity. 

It is crucial to every generation post-World War II to read authentic, classic literature which exemplifies life from this period.  The justification mentioned, that these books included references to human sexuality, sounds like an excuse to practice antisemitism. 

They will ensure that young American students grow up without tolerance for people who are not like them. #antisemitism

From Miriam Benkoe in Boynton Beach

Antisemitism extends into dangerous extremist views about all minority groups

The eruption of neo-Nazism and White Supremacy across the country has exposed the public to symbols, terms, and ideology drawn directly from Nazi Germany and Holocaust-era fascist movements. (More information at this site here.)

Neo-Nazis surge in Florida. Don’t you dare act surprised | Commentary.

The leaders of today’s Neo-Nazi and White Supremacist organizations are not Adolf Hitler, and America is not Germany, but, in order to understand their agenda, it is vital to understand the history of these code words, symbols, and ideologies.

Echo opinion by Scott Maxwell published in the Orlando Sentinel Florida has been full of Nazi news lately.

Neo-Nazi groups have staged demonstrations near Disney and in Altamonte Springs. They’ve blanketed neighborhoods with flyers, urging others to “protect the purity of the white Aryan woman.”

One neo-Nazi was arrested for criminal mischief Sunday. Another was arrested a few days earlier.

A man used a rifle with a swastika on it to slaughter three people in Jacksonville.

Rolling Stone assessed the stories, root causes and reactions, concluding: “Neo-Nazis Gloat as Florida Becomes a Magnet for Hate”

CAM is a global coalition engaging more than 700 partner organizations and three million people from a diverse array of religious, political, and cultural backgrounds in the common mission of fighting the world’s oldest hatred. We act collaboratively to build a better future, free of bigotry, for Jews and all humanity.

This may make you mad. Or sad. It should. But don’t you dare act surprised.

Because this is an ugly, natural extension of the divisive culture wars that have been celebrated in Florida in recent years. You can’t demonize gay people and Black people and then go: Gee, I wonder why some folks are also demonizing Jewish people?

Besides, neo-Nazi groups don’t just preach hate against Judaism. They also demonize people of color and different sexual orientation.

As Mike Igel, chairman of the Florida Holocaust Museum, said in a recent Sentinel story: “You don’t meet a bigot, a neo-Nazi who says, ‘I hate Jewish people but I sure do love the gay community or the Black community.’ ”

Hate doesn’t happen in a vacuum. If love is love is love, then hate breeds hate breeds hate.

So when you see a politician who responds to a group that targets black people, gay people and Jewish people by saying only: “But I love the Jewish people,” they’re showing themselves.

I don’t lay this rise in extremism and extremist-related incidents — an 80% increase in Florida over the last two years, according to the Anti-Defamation League — at the feet of any single politician. 

Nor do I believe all members of any one party are to blame. I’ve found that neither bigotry nor compassion is limited to any one political party.

But there’s a growing segment of politicians on the right who’ve decided the easiest way to build a rabid following is by vilifying already marginalized communities. So they peddle a nonstop narrative of you-vs.-them:

THEY are coming for your job. Or your kid’s spot on the swim team. Or your freedom of religion.

THEY want to make you feel guilty about your past. And to recruit your children.

You are a victim, a target. Let us protect you … from them.

It’s all music to the ears of neo-Nazi recruiters.

Reasonable people can certainly have different opinions on sensitive topics, whether it’s affirmative action or transgender competitors in sports.

But too often, we don’t see reasonable. Instead, we see transgender people labeled as freaks, Black protestors labeled as animals and gay citizens and their allies being called “groomers.” Not by rogue, swastika-toting Nazis, but by top state officials, state legislators or even from inside the governor’s office.

Volusia County Republican Rep. Webster Barnaby referred to LGBTQ citizens who had testified against a proposed bill in Tallahassee as “demons” and “mutants.”

If you don’t understand why that’s not OK, listen to Volusia Sheriff Mike Chitwood, who said comments like that “put a target” on the backs of transgender citizens, adding: “It’s not OK to dehumanize people who aren’t hurting anyone.”

You think comments like Barnaby’s don’t embolden neo-Nazis?

Or from Rep. Randy Fine, a Brevard County Republican who is quick to decry antisemitism even as he disparages other marginalized groups.

Fine has targeted LGBTQ citizens with both legislation and rhetoric, accusing them of “grooming” children and mocking their requests for dignity. “I was just asked my pronouns,” Fine said on Facebook last year. “For future reference, they are: You / Are / A / Fu&$ng / Moron.”

This from a guy who claims he’s been approached about leading a state university.

A lot of people don’t understand why it’s OK to vilify one minority group but not others. I don’t. Neither do many kids.

So while there’s a surge in neo-Nazi incidents among in Florida, there shouldn’t be any surprise that we’re also seeing it among our youth — with swastikas showing up on bathroom and school walls at high schools in Orange and Volusia counties. Even at a K-8 school in Seminole.

The kids are watching the adults. And they’re learning — not only how to hate, but how to feel emboldened about doing so out loud.

So if you’re appalled by Hitler salutes and White supremacist talk, good. You should be.

But don’t you dare act surprised. Especially if you keep supporting the people who are serving up this divisive, toxic stew.

smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com

Nazi propaganda is hate speech

Florida has been full of Nazi news lately. Echo opinion published in the Orlando Sentinel newspaper by Scott Maxwell:

Residents of a Florida town received dozens of antisemitic flyers  prompting police warnings for them to discard the hate speech.

Neo-Nazi groups have staged demonstrations near Disney and in Altamonte Springs. They’ve blanketed neighborhoods with flyers, urging others to “protect the purity of the white Aryan woman.”

One neo-Nazi was arrested for criminal mischief Sunday. Another was arrested a few days earlier.

A man used a rifle with a swastika on it to slaughter three people in Jacksonville.

Rolling Stone assessed the stories, root causes and reactions, concluding: “Neo-Nazis Gloat as Florida Becomes a Magnet for Hate”

This may make you mad. Or sad. It should. But don’t you dare act surprised. 😞😢

Because this is an ugly, natural extension of the divisive culture wars that have been (wrongly😡) celebrated in Florida in recent years. You can’t demonize gay people and Black people and then go: Gee, I wonder why some folks are also demonizing Jewish people?

Besides, neo-Nazi groups don’t just preach hate against Judaism. They also demonize people of color and different sexual orientation.

As Mike Igel, chairman of the Florida Holocaust Museum, said in a recent Sentinel story: “You don’t meet a bigot, a neo-Nazi who says, ‘I hate Jewish people but I sure do love the gay community or the Black community.’ ”

Hate doesn’t happen in a vacuum. If love is love is love, then hate breeds hate breeds hate.

So when you see a politician who responds to a group that targets black people, gay people and Jewish people by saying only: “But I love the Jewish people,” they’re showing themselves.

Stop hate speech!

I don’t lay this rise in extremism and extremist-related incidents — an 80% increase in Florida over the last two years, according to the Anti-Defamation League — at the feet of any single politician. Nor do I believe all members of any one party are to blame. I’ve found that neither bigotry nor compassion is limited to any one political party.

But there’s a growing segment of politicians on the right who’ve decided the easiest way to build a rabid following is by vilifying already marginalized communities. So they peddle a nonstop narrative of you-vs.-them:

THEY are coming for your job. Or your kid’s spot on the swim team. Or your freedom of religion.

THEY want to make you feel guilty about your past. And to recruit your children.

You are a victim, a target. Let us protect you … from them.

It’s all music to the ears of neo-Nazi recruiters.

Reasonable people can certainly have different opinions on sensitive topics, whether it’s affirmative action or transgender competitors in sports.

But too often, we don’t see reasonable. Instead, we see transgender people labeled as freaks, Black protestors labeled as animals and gay citizens and their allies being called “groomers.” (Former Guy tRumpzi calls the media "vermin") 

Not by rogue, swastika-toting Nazis, but by top state officials, state legislators or even from inside the governor’s office.

Volusia County Republican Rep. Webster Barnaby referred to LGBTQ citizens who had testified against a proposed bill in Tallahassee as “demons” and “mutants.”

If you don’t understand why that’s not OK, listen to Volusia Sheriff Mike Chitwood, who said comments like that “put a target” on the backs of transgender citizens, adding: “It’s not OK to dehumanize people who aren’t hurting anyone.”

You think comments like Barnaby’s don’t embolden neo-Nazis?

Or from Rep. Randy Fine, a Brevard County Republican who is quick to decry antisemitism even as he disparages other marginalized groups.

Fine has targeted LGBTQ citizens with both legislation and rhetoric, accusing them of “grooming” children and mocking their requests for dignity. “I was just asked my pronouns,” Fine said on Facebook last year. “For future reference, they are: You / Are / A / Fu&$ng / Moron.”

This from a guy who claims he’s been approached about leading a state university.

A lot of people don’t understand why it’s OK to vilify one minority group but not others. I don’t. Neither do many kids.

So, while there’s a surge in (evil 👿💀) neo-Nazi incidents going on in Florida, there shouldn’t be any surprise that we’re also seeing it among our youth — with swastikas showing up on bathroom and school walls at high schools in Orange and Volusia counties. Even at a K-8 school in Seminole.

The kids are watching the adults. And they’re learning — not only how to hate, but how to feel emboldened about doing so out loud.

So if you’re appalled by Hitler salutes and White supremacist talk, good. You should be horrified❗

But don’t you dare act surprised. Especially if you keep supporting the people serving up this divisive, toxic stew.

Republicans must dump Donald Trump because he is too dangerous to run for office

 Calling foes ‘vermin’ shows Trump unfit to serve

Echo opinion letter published in the Orlando Sentinel:

Donald Trump has a dangerous affection for using dictatorship language, like Mussolini and Hitler preferred.

At least seven times (❗)in recent months, Donald Trump said his 2024, opponent for president is not Joe Biden, it’s Barack Obama, according to Forbes magazine. 

Earlier this week, he said at a campaign rally that his opponents and non-supporters in the current administration are “vermin.” 

Donald Trump is using the derogatory language of Mussolini and Hitler

This is serious, game-changing sad behavior. By calling non-supporters “vermin,” Trump’s also forgotten, or perhaps doesn’t know, he now parrots Hitler and Mussolini, who used “vermin” and other derogatory terms to de-humanize their opponents and encourage violence against them.

With Trump facing the loss of his license to do business in New York, his financial fortune, and the real possibility he could be incarcerated for 93 felonies, there’s no sane justification to nominate him for president or even worse, vote for him. 

Republicans need to face reality and let Trump go quietly, before he makes a fool of himself and the Republican Party.

William Higgins New Smyrna Beach

Antisemitism requires outrage from courageous community leaders

My heart is racing just writing this. "Even when it happens in Orlando, Florida. Even when it’s 2023," echo opinion by Mark Freid published in the Orlando Sentinel. 

When hate becomes commonplace 😞

You see, most days I try not to think about the prevalence of antisemitic incidents, despite the fact that they are happening everywhere, even right here in The City Beautiful, a community that I still believe is one of incredible compassion, inclusion and love. 

Yet,  every week there is an incident, sometimes as brazen, overt and threatening as what happened this Labor Day weekend at Disney Springs and Altamonte Springs. 

Indeed, I am not exaggerating when I say that the threat was real. And while we’re supposed to call the perpetrators neo-Nazis, I’m not actually sure what that means. An organized march by goose-stepping men wearing uniforms and carrying flags emblazoned with swastikas and shouting things like “White Power!” “Jews will not replace us!” and “We are everywhere!” sure sounds like Nazis to me. Even when it happens in Orlando, Florida. Even when it’s 2023.

And I’m scared.

I’m scared for me and my family and my community, and if I’m being honest, I don’t know what to do. I’m scared even though I know that’s exactly how they want me to feel, and I hate the fact that I’m giving them what they want.

I’m scared because I’m not the only one who doesn’t know what to do. Some local leaders speak out and shout down this abhorrent behavior that is an affront to the values of our community. They speak out, just as I’m doing now, but it doesn’t seem to have much effect. And then there are those so-called leaders who don’t speak out at all. And that is a painful truth that hurts me to the bone. 

Frankly, I’m afraid that some don’t speak out because they’ve decided that it’s politically disadvantageous for them to speak out. Against Nazis. Who are threatening the safety of me and my family.

It’s important to acknowledge that there are some things being done. On both the state and national level, legislation has been proposed and passed that broadens the definition of and increases the penalties for hate crimes. I’m grateful for these efforts. But in our society, free speech is, understandably, one of our most valued and protected rights, so these laws, in my opinion, accomplish little. Our laws don’t protect us from their verbal abuse.

There are also important efforts being made by local and national organizations to educate our community about Judaism and Jewish history and culture. We believe that if people understood us better, if people knew more about our values, our beliefs and our myriad contributions to society, they’d be less likely to believe the lies and conspiracy theories. Furthermore, respected organizations like the Anti-Defamation League are publishing reports about the alarming rise in antisemitism, ensuring that people know that these are not isolated incidents. These aren’t anomalies. Every act of antisemitism, whether a public, coordinated effort like the marches in Central Florida last weekend, or the distribution of antisemitic literature placed on people’s doorsteps (which also happened last weekend in Central Florida), contributes to a larger effort to frighten and marginalize me, my family and my Jewish community. I appreciate what these organizations are doing. But someone tell me how things are improving. Tell me that I don’t need to be scared anymore.

What’s not being done is that no one is talking to us about what we should do. Should we march or not march in counterprotest? Should we confront these groups, and if so, how? Should we publicize these activities and shine a light on this frightening trend? Should we ignore them and deprive them of the attention they crave? And most importantly, for me, what should I tell my children? What would you tell yours? How would you convince them that, despite this evil that has become omnipresent in our community, they are safe, they are valued, and they should be proud of who they are? How would you explain to your smart, compassionate, peaceable children that if, or rather when, they are confronted on a street corner in Orlando or on their college campus by someone hurling the most vile, disgusting insults about their heritage, their culture and their ancestors that they should not — must not — react? How would you tell your children not to defend themselves and their people in that scenario because if they did, the worst thing possible might happen?

Now do you understand why I’m scared?

Mark Freid is the CEO of Think Integrated marketing firm.

Warning about Governor Ron DeSantis and Mafia vengeance against Monique Worrell

Echo editorial opinion published in the Orlando Sentinel newspaper:

Time and again, Florida's Governor Ron DeSantis has gotten away with actions that few other governors would even consider. Among them: Vendettas against other elected officials that he pursues with the lethal enmity of a Mafia don.

"Weak, small and reckless: how Ron DeSantis, Republican Napoleon, met his Waterloo," Sydney Blumenthal in The Guardian.

When he set his sights on 9th Judicial Circuit State Attorney Monique Worrell, he’d already ejected one duly elected prosecutor — Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren —from office. 

Monique Worrell defeated Jose Torroella in the general election for Florida Ninth Judicial Circuit State Attorney on November 3, 2020.

It was a move that a federal judge decried as blatantly illegal (but said he was powerless to stop).

The governor’s lengthy justification of Worrell’s suspension was tailored to address many of the issues U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle listed in that fiery, despairing order and even the challenge Warren filed at the Florida Supreme Court level.

But now Worrell has fired back with a lawsuit that exposes the many factual inconsistencies in the governor’s suspension order. 

In fact, Worrell takes devastating aim at the central assumptions DeSantis uses to buttress his wobbly argument. And, she elbows aside the weak reasoning the Florida Supreme Court used as it shuffled Warren’s complaint aside.

When DeSantis first suspended Worrell, we said she was well-capable of defending herself. She’s proven that beyond the shadow of a doubt.

A prosecutor’s job: DeSantis’ order reels off a procession of statistics that he uses to accuse her of “neglect of duty” and “incompetence,” including conviction rates for homicides, sexual batteries and other serious violent crimes. In each of those categories, there are other circuits where prosecutors post lower rates, Worrell said in a Thursday press conference. 

Meanwhile, DeSantis failed to cite specific policies Worrell enacted, or how they relate to those conviction rates.

That’s because there are none, she says. Her office evaluated each case on its own merits. But the parade of statistics is irrelevant, because Worrell’s prime duty as a prosecutor is not to maximize convictions. It’s to seek a just outcome in every case her office handles —

....one that considers the strength of the evidence in each case (❗), the potential that an accused person’s rights have been violated and other factors.

That’s where her argument hits hardest. In blasting her decisions, DeSantis is taking aim at a core component of a state attorney’s job: A concept known as “prosecutorial discretion.”

This requires a basic review of arrests that require prosecution, including all felonies and some misdemeanors. Prosecutors have the sole power to determine which charges should be formally pursued. They are also responsible for evaluating the strength of the evidence behind each case, because while police only have to establish probable cause to arrest someone, the prosecutor will eventually have to prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt. This review is critical to the American system of justice, because while prosecutors often work closely with law enforcement, their discretion allows them to be a critical backstop against abuse of police power.

That sets up an inevitable conflict. It’s not uncommon for police agencies to disagree with prosecutors’ decisions. DeSantis has adroitly exploited that, setting local law-enforcement leaders against both of the suspended prosecutors. From what we can see, that tactic is working. But DeSantis operatives have been caught lying before, and it would not surprise us to learn that strategic falsehood has played a significant role in those apparently fractured alliances.

My way or the highway:  The bottom line is this: Voters who elected Worrell to head the Circuit 9 prosecutor’s office (which includes Orange and Osceola counties) knew she favored a model of prosecuting that puts a heavy emphasis on rehabilitation and violence prevention, with alternatives such as diversion for less-serious offenders and careful consideration of decisions to move juvenile offenders into adult court. With experience as the former head of the Ninth Circuit’s Conviction Integrity Unit, Worrell came into office understanding the factors that could lead to the worst outcomes of all — cases where an innocent person ends up in prison for a crime they did not commit.

“As state attorney, I promised to seek justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly — and that is exactly what I have and will continue to do,” she says.

Voters who were paying attention knew all this, and made it overwhelmingly clear that they wanted Worrell in office — she won election with more than 66% of votes cast. DeSantis may disagree with her style of prosecution. In fact, he seems to take issue with the idea that she should exercise any discretion at all. But Worrell doesn’t work for him, and her failure to adopt his prosecutorial philosophy doesn’t meet the legal requirement for removing her from office.

In essence, DeSantis suspended Worrell, just for doing her job. That’s such a ridiculous over-reach that the most biased observers should be able to see it.

It’s ‘governor,’ not ’emperor’: DeSantis seems increasingly convinced that his wishes and whims should govern each decision that every elected official in Florida makes — starting with the Florida Legislature.

That imperious arrogance has also breached the revered independence of Florida’s judicial branch.




Which is why Worrell’s complaint might be doomed anyway. The state Supreme Court is packed: Five of the seven justices are DeSantis nominees, most of whom were elevated to the court despite a glaring lack of experience. Of the remaining two, one (Charles Canady) has proven to be one of the governor’s staunchest allies. While DeSantis routinely loses cases at the federal level, the state court has been far more indulgent of his whims.

In this case, however, the DeSantis's abuse is so egregious, so obvious that even his hand-picked acolytes will (may) have trouble denying it. Even if they do, Worrell’s ultimate fate is in the hands of voters. She’s already filed for re-election.

For now, however, she’s offered an excellent illumination of just how far DeSantis is willing to go. In that, she retains the status she always claimed: That of public servant, defending the rights of Ninth Circuit residents just as capably as she defends herself.

There are words for times like these, words crafted by one of this nation’s most revered poets.

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Worrell may be out, for now. But she is not down. This time, finally, DeSantis may have picked the wrong fight.

Above excerpt is from the poem “And Still I Rise,” copyright 1973,by Maya Angelou.

Florida's dictator "dah" Santis is drunk on his own power

Echo editorial opinion published by the Orlando Sentinel:

State Attorney Monique Worrell has been living in the shadow of the headsman’s axe for months, with Gov. Ron DeSantis hinting, threatening, sometimes even joking about removing her from office. He’s rallied his allies to attack her, sent accusatory demands for data to discredit her, trampled clear legal boundaries meant to keep politics out of criminal justice and twisted the truth to justify the games he’s been playing.

Wednesday, that axe fell. At 8:30 a.m., DeSantis called a press conference to announce that he was suspending Worrell, effective immediately. 

For "dah" Santis, it was a practiced performance of political theater, one that — by now — because the Florida dictator governor has learned to execute almost convincingly. He’s certainly had plenty of practice: From the start of his governorship, DeSantis has arbitrarily been removing officials from offices in ways that far exceeds his actual authority.

So, when "dah" Santis stood up at his now-familiar podium, flanked by sheriffs and echoed by his best supporting actress, Attorney General Ashley Moody, Floridians might have been tricked into believing that DeSantis was duly exercising the authority voters vested in him as governor, and that he took that duty seriously.
Spoiler alert: He wasn’t – and doesn’t❗

Let us walk through the ways the governor hoodwinked Florida voters, once again. You’ll be surprised to find that his actions have little to do with the facts or the law — or even with how good, or bad, a prosecutor Worrell has been.

Monique Worrell

Instead — as usual — it’s all about DeSantis.

1. Does the governor really have the authority to remove duly elected officials based on his whims and policy differences? The answer is

   

   NO!

   DeSantis’ powers are restricted to removing elected officials who are guilty of “malfeasance, misfeasance, neglect of duty, drunkenness, incompetence, permanent inability to perform official duties, or commission of a felony.” Even if the carefully selected (dare we say cherry-picked?) data DeSantis included in the 40-page press release 

   

   A 40 page press release?

   
   ....is true and a fair reflection of Worrell’s performance, it all boils down to a difference in policy.
   
   Discrepancies don’t prove incompetence. Prosecutors, in particular, are supposed to have wide discretion in how they handle the criminal cases that are brought to their offices by local police agencies. That discretion provides a critical firewall against abusive behavior by law enforcement, and a way to ensure that punishments really fit crimes.
2. Are DeSantis’ accusations against Worrell true? Answer is unclear. The Orlando Sentinel staff hasn’t had a chance to go through them properly yet, but we do know that on numerous occasions we’ve caught the governor bending the truth to the breaking point. For example, when he suspended State Attorney Andrew Warren last year, he included allegations that were clearly deceptive — including an assertion that Warren had neglected his duty, or showed incompetence, for not prosecuting under laws that weren’t even in effect when Warren was removed from office, and for which no arrests had been made. Even if the statistics he provided are correct, it is already apparent that DeSantis is blaming Worrell for some things that are largely outside her authority (such as how juvenile justice officials process cases, or decisions judges make in setting bail for criminal defendants).

Nevertheless, the editorial board finds it telling that neither of the sheriffs playing the role of backup singers at Tuesday’s press conference actually works in her circuit, which includes Orange and Osceola counties. In a terse statement to press, Orange County Sheriff John Mina said he wasn’t invited to speak. (Worrell has, in the past, implied that Mina was working with DeSantis to undermine her. We’ve seen no evidence of that, either — just that Mina seems to be staying in his lane and continuing to work with Worrell even when they disagree.)

        3. Does DeSantis care that he’s established a clear pattern of retaliating against elected officials in a nakedly partisan, self-advantageous way? Answer is "apparently not". This is the same governor, after all, who looked the other way for nearly two years as former Seminole County tax collector Joel Greenberg abused his office in increasingly blatant ways, including using taxpayer equipment to mine bitcoin and make fake driver licenses for underaged girls. That trash finally took itself out when Greenberg resigned — a week after his first federal indictment. DeSantis also left his legislative ally, State Rep. Joe Harding, in office after Harding had been indicted for money laundering, wire fraud and making false statements Harding also resigned. DeSantis’ attacks almost always focus on officials that he thinks will burnish his hard-conservative bona fides, often based on cases that stir public emotion — such as the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland (the prelude to DeSantis’ removal of Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel) or this weekend’s shooting of two Orlando Police officers by a man released on bail.

4.  Does the will of the voters who evaluated these candidates mean anything to him? Answer is "it doesn’t seem to". We’ve never observed the governor to have any concern for any vote that wasn’t cast directly for him. In the cases of Warren and now Worrell, he’s gone after prosecutors who openly campaigned on the need for criminal justice reform, better community-based solutions against violence and a willingness to challenge the status quo. Orange and Osceola voters knew who they were voting for when they chose Worrell.

What happened to Worrell Tuesday was an outrage and a disgrace, a clear abuse by a governor drunk on his own power. But Worrell was not the real victim: The voters who put her into office were the ones DeSantis really betrayed, as he has so many times before. In the weeks to come, we expect that to become even more clear. Stay tuned.

The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Krys Fluker, Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. Contact us at insight@orlandosentinel.com