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Would You Choose Freedom or the Republican Alternative?

Sheila Markin

There are two model states in the country that have created blueprints for other states to follow. One is Tim Walz’s blue state of Minnesota and the other is Ron DeSantis’ red state of Florida. Which one would you choose to live in?

Let’s start with Minnesota. Tim Walz is the Democratic governor of Minnesota. The state house is led by Democrats.

 Barack Obama tweeted recently: “If you need a reminder that elections have consequences, check out what’s happening in Minnesota.”

After the Democrats won the majority in the Minnesota house by electing enough Democrats to have a ONE VOTE MAJORITY, they went to work to codify a progressive wish list of measures.

“Democrats codified abortion rights, paid family and medical leave, sick leave, transgender rights protections, drivers licenses for undocumented residents, restoration of voting rights for people when they are released from prison or jail, wider voting access, one-time rebates, a tax credit aimed at low-income parents with kids, and a $1 billion investment in affordable housing including for rental assistance.”

 “Also adopted were background checks for private gun transfers and a red-flag warning system to take guns from people deemed by a judge to be a threat to themselves or others. [Democratic] lawmakers banned conversion therapy for LGBTQ people, legalized recreational marijuana, expanded education funding, required a carbon-free electric grid by 2040, adopted a new reading curricula based on phonics, passed a massive $2.58 billion capital construction package and, at the insistence of Republicans, a $300 million emergency infusion of money to nursing homes.” The mix of tax cuts and increases, by the way, will make the state’s revenue system more progressive.
There’s a lot more, including laws strengthening workers’ rights and unemployment insurance for hourly workers previously left out of the system; a refundable child credit for lower-income Minnesotans; and free breakfast and lunch for all Minnesota K-12 students. (Washington Post EJ Dionne)
Wow! If people in Minnesota don’t experience this as government that is working for them after these legislative wins, they are either asleep, in a coma or dead.

Now let’s see what is happening in De Santis’ Florida where the Republican led state house is totally compliant with DeSantis’ wishes

The political career of Florida governor Ron DeSantis is the epitome of Orbán’s “Christian democracy” come to the United States. DeSantis has imitated Orbán’s politics, striking at the principles of liberal democracy with attacks on LGBTQ Americans, abortion rights, academic freedom, and the ability of businesses to react to market forces rather than religious imperatives. Last week he told an audience that “the woke mind virus represents a war on the truth so we will wage a war on the woke. We will fight the woke in education, we will fight the woke in the corporations, we will fight the woke in the halls of congress. We will never, ever surrender to the woke mob. We will make woke ideology leave it to the dustbin of history; it’s gone.” (Heather Cox Richardson)
De Santis usurps Churchill’s inspirational rhetoric that celebrated rights and freedoms in a war against Nazi repression to support the opposite: his war ON our rights and freedoms. Trump does this too. So does Tucker Carlson and others on the right. In the guise of fighting a war on “woke” (woke=bad), the war being waged is in fact a war ON our freedoms and against progressive tolerance and acceptance of others who are different.
These guys are flipping the script.
It is something autocrats do to win elections. It is also a con job. It is also fear mongering.  And this is also how democracy dies. The right wing pretends they are the ones who are fighting for rights and freedoms. Once elected they repress rights and freedoms. This is the underlying mission and goal of Christian Nationalism. Florida is not in fact the state where woke goes to die. It is the state where our rights and freedoms go to die.
What about guns? The Second Amendment? Some people might argue that having total unfettered access to guns in the state of Florida that you don’t need to know how to use, don’t need to register, and cannot be taken away if you are suicidal or homicidal is freedom. But the truth is that unfettered access to guns, including weapons of war and mass shootings like AR-15s means the suppression of the right to be safe on the streets in Florida. If we are not safe from guns in the hands of desperately unhappy, angry, hateful, deranged or self-destructive people, then we are not free. Living in fear of being shot is not freedom.
Some might argue that a 6-week abortion ban is necessary if you believe Christian ideology about when fetuses become babies, but not everyone believes that. What DeSantis is doing with a 6-week abortion ban is forcing women and girls to go through pregnancy and give birth against their will whether or not they share the Christian ideology about when fetuses turn into babies. That is not expanded freedom. That’s the Handmaid’s Tale.

TALE OF TWO STATES

The current Supreme Court with its radical, extreme right over-representation (Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Barrett, Kavanaugh, and sometimes Roberts) is dismantling national power to the extent that it can. This Supreme Court is granting states more and more rights and powers to make for their citizens, weakening the power of national government. This means that states are becoming more like countries. They are creating very different cultures and lifestyles with rules that apply to the citizens living within that states’ boundaries. These rules limit or grant rights through legislation that helps or hurts its population. Our state houses have always been important because they determine how federal funds are spent, as well as laws and policies affecting our lives very directly.  State houses and governors as well as state supreme courts are even more important these day because the power of the federal government is being limited and the power of states is being expanded.

America is being reshaped by this shift in power.

Recently the Supreme Court limited the power of the EPA.  That forces states like Illinois to step up to protect the wetlands and curb pollution since the federal government will not be able to engage in a whole of nation approach anymore. This is a disastrous development brought to you by our hyper partisan, extreme Supreme Court.  The removal of Roe v Wade, which had been our national standard for abortion, has created knock down drag ’em out fights in every state in the nation over the laws governing abortion. People these days need to think first before moving to another state. You need to assess the state before moving there or you might need to leave the state if you are living there. Or you might need to fight back if you want to stay there. In Florida, DeSantis’ so-called war on woke is causing people with children undergoing sex change operations to leave the state to avoid discrimination and to get the medical care they need. Young women are making decisions about where to go to college based on the abortion laws of the state. Other women are deciding to leave red states and work elsewhere if the state limits their reproductive rights.

DESANTIS AND THE WOKE MIND VIRUS IS GETTING SLAPPED DOWN BY OUR COURTS

This “war on woke” serves as the central justification and argument for DeSantis’ bid for the GOP nomination. By challenging the supposed liberal tilt in American culture as expressed in schools, the media and the corporate workplace culture, this “war,” and the legislation behind it, shows DeSantis as a culture fighter who gets things done.

But there’s one big problem for DeSantis’ war: the U.S. Constitution.

Broad swathes of DeSantis’ anti-woke agenda — from restrictions on the teaching of social science about race in colleges and universities, to bans on corporate diversity training to limits on public protests — have been temporarily suspended by judges who found them very likely to be in violation of the first and 14th amendments.

In suspending these laws, federal judges called them “positively dystopian” and the defenses presented in court “wholly at odds with accepted constitutional principles.” The suspended provisions of the laws may yet be upheld as they move through appeals courts and, possibly, U.S. Supreme Court review, but, at the moment, DeSantis’ offensive against the “woke mind virus” has been partially reversed.

These multiple losses in court put a constitutional blemish on DeSantis’ claims of success as a culture warrior who can deftly enact the social conservative agenda. (Paul Blumenthal- Huffington Post)

Elections have consequences. We have two very different blueprints for states going forward. Blue state Minnesota. And red state Florida. Where would you want to live, work, and raise a family?

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