Florida Republicans Pass Bill Allowing Trans Kids to Be Removed From Their Families

Florida’s House of Representatives passed a bill Wednesday that would let the state take transgender minors away from their families if they are receiving gender-affirming care.

The measure passed by a vote of 82–31. A previous version of the bill passed the Senate earlier this month by a vote of 27–12, and the amended version now goes back to the other chamber for a final vote. Governor Ron DeSantis has previously expressed support for the bill and will likely sign it into law if it passes.

If it becomes law, the bill will allow the state to take custody of a child if they have been “subjected to or [are] threatened with being subjected to” gender-affirming care, which includes puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy. Florida courts could modify custody agreements from a different state if the minor is likely to receive gender-affirming care in that second state. The text refers to gender-affirming care as “sex-reassignment prescriptions or procedures” and qualifies this care as a form of “physical harm.”

Medical facilities would have to give the state Department of Health a signed attestation that they neither provide gender-affirming care to patients nor refer people to providers that do. Their medical license renewal is contingent upon sending in this attestation. Medicaid funds could not be used to pay for gender-affirming care, even though the majority of people do not use Medicaid to pay for such treatments.

Minors who have already begun transitioning will be allowed to continue to do so, but they are no longer allowed to receive care via telehealth, including for prescriptions. Their doctors have to tell them about the “risks” of gender-affirming care, and patients will have to sign an informed consent form, which the ACLU has pointed out often contains misinformation. Doctors who violate any of these new rules could be charged with a felony.

“We’re supposed to be working to keep Floridians healthy, safe, and prosperous. We are not supposed to be here to pass ambiguous bills and take away a child’s ability to be healthy and safe,” said Democrat Rita Harris during the debate.

“Florida ranks fortieth in health care for children. You want to protect children? … And yet here we are, taking away health care from children.”

Republicans across the country have introduced bills targeting gender-affirming care, insisting that by doing so, they are protecting children. Instead, lawmakers are criminalizing LGBTQ people of all ages and putting them at risk of real harm.

And Florida seems to be leading the charge. Republicans have introduced bill after bill targeting LGBTQ people and openly admitted their goal is to erase the community from existence. A little more than an hour earlier, the House passed a bill banning drag performances, which heads to DeSantis’s desk.

Republicans have introduced a debt ceiling plan that really just increases social, environmental, and financial costs.

On Wednesday, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy revealed a GOP debt ceiling bill that would instate work requirements for Medicaid and food stamps, reduce funding for the Internal Revenue Service, repeal green energy programs, and block President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan. 

The bill is not even guaranteed to pass the Republican-controlled House and has little chance of passing the Senate. But McCarthy’s bill is less about getting something done than trying to compel Democrats to join Republicans’ push to cut spending on services essential to hundreds of millions of people in this country.

On Medicaid, Republicans want recipients to fulfill certain income and work thresholds. If they don’t, states could kick them off their health insurance plans. A Congressional Budget Office report estimated that Medicaid work requirements would cause two million people to lose health coverage.

Republicans also want work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Adults without children must fulfill work requirements up to the age of 56, overturning current law that has the threshold at age 49. Not only are such cuts punitive in nature, but they effectively leave people more vulnerable to precarity. The less we support people preemptively, the higher the costs will be if they fall through the cracks.

On the proposed IRS cuts, the only thing conservatives would be “saving” is bloated tax evaders. A CBO analysis found that the IRS program would in fact reduce the deficit by $120 billion over the next decade (as in, the Republican proposal would add to the deficit).

The proposal also calls to repeal numerous green-related provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act, like tax credits for electric vehicles. And as we have seen, the more slowly we transition from fossil fuels to a greener economy, the more climate disaster we will face and, consequently, the more astronomical the human and financial cost will be. The conservative insistence on appeasing the fossil fuel industry and obstructing climate-friendly solutions is not only deeply crooked but fiscally irresponsible.

Such a dynamic is just as pressing when considering that the bill blocks Biden’s plan to relieve 43 million people from crippling student debt. These are millions of working people who are trying their best to bloom and live more whole and productive lives but are hindered by the burden of such soulless debt. In the short term, Republicans may frame their ideas as cost-saving, but in reality, such measures will increase medium- and long-term costs on society.

All this to say, the GOP proposal is unserious on a few counts. For one, it is self-evidently not concerned with coming to fruition; the primary conservative goal is to egg Biden and Democrats on to support cuts, lest the government default. But moreover, the bill is not about “saving” at all; it encourages money to be stolen from the government by tax-evading elites who flout the IRS, it promotes fiscal irresponsibility by way of encouraging wasteful and toxic fossil fuel reliance, and it further welcomes future social and economic costs by ways of leaving—and pressing—a boot on millions of people.

Florida passed a bill Wednesday that could stop all Pride parades and festivals in the state.

The measure passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 82–32 and is now headed to the desk of Governor Ron DeSantis, who is expected to sign it into law. The bill passed the Senate last week by a vote of 28–12.

If it becomes law, the measure would prohibit government entities and employees from issuing permits to organizations that may hold “adult live performances” in the presence of minors. Anyone that does can be charged with a misdemeanor.

The measure would also ban businesses from allowing minors to attend an “adult live performance,” which is defined as a show performed in front of a live audience that “depicts or simulates nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement, or specific sexual activities … lewd conduct, or the lewd exposure of prosthetic or imitation genitals or breasts.” Any business that breaks this law will face a fine of up to $10,000 and could lose its license.

“This bill is a blatant attack on free expression, parental rights, and choice,” said Democratic Representative Lavon Bracy Davis. “What are you afraid of? What is it about drag queens that terrify you? Pray tell, why are we censoring artistic expression?”

“I know this chamber has shown quite the concern for impersonation. Well right now, we are impersonating democracy.”

Democrat Fentrice Driskell pointed out that Florida already has laws in place to protect children from being exposed to obscene content, the main argument from the bill’s backers. “Even though the plain text of the bill may not say ‘drag’ ... there’s a greater context happening here, and we all know it,” she said.

Her colleague Daryl Campbell warned that Republicans may currently be targeting the LGBTQ community. But “for those watching, they will come after you when it’s in their interest.”

If DeSantis signs the bill into law, it will go into effect immediately, a little more than a month before Pride Month begins in June. Festivals such as St. Pete Pride in St. Petersburg, the state’s largest Pride celebration, could lose their permits.

The measure is so vaguely worded that Pride organizers in the state have already expressed concern. “We do believe that this might be the last Pride as you know it,” Patrick Gevas, one of the organizers of Miami Beach Pride, told NBC 6.

Critics have slammed the bill as being overly broad, which could have unintended consequences. Republicans backing it have admitted that the measure would prevent performances of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and the musical Hair.

But the measure will also have an intended consequence: “erasing” LGBTQ people from existence. Florida Republican Representative Randy Fine said last week that if passing the bill “means erasing a community because you have to target children, then, damn right, we ought to do it!”

The ACLU slammed the bill when it first passed the Senate as “an extreme governmental overreach of power.” “This is not democracy. This is not freedom,” the group said in a statement.

Florida is the latest state to advance a (vaguely worded, extreme) measure attacking drag performances, which have become a particular target for the right wing in recent years. In March, Tennessee became the first state to pass a law banning drag performances, but the measure was blocked by a judge before it could go into effect on the grounds that it was overly broad and violated free speech rights.

DeSantis has also set his sights on drag performances, revoking the liquor licenses for multiple businesses that have hosted drag shows—even though undercover agents sent to one show “did not witness any lewd acts.”

The maker of the generic version of the abortion pill mifepristone sued the Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday in an effort to keep the drug accessible nationwide.

A complicated legal battle over mifepristone is playing out in the U.S. judicial system. A Texas federal judge ruled two weeks ago that the drug, one of the medications used to induce an abortion, had been improperly approved by the FDA and should be yanked from the U.S. market. The Department of Justice appealed the decision, first to the Fifth Circuit Court, which only partially stayed the ruling. The Justice Department then appealed the case to the Supreme Court, which issued a temporary administrative stay.

The Fifth Circuit’s ruling, if upheld, will judicially nullify the Abbreviated New Drug Application, or ANDA, for the pills made by GenBioPro, which the FDA approved in 2019. GenBioPro says its pills are used in about two-thirds of the 500,000 medication abortions that happen in the United States each year.

GenBioPro sued the FDA for indicating in court filings that if the Supreme Court does not intervene, then the agency will abide by the lower rulings and pull GenBioPro’s drug from the market. The company argued that doing so would violate laws about the process for withdrawing a drug’s approval.

“In addition to the severe harm to GenBioPro’s commercial viability from suspension of its ANDA, catastrophic harm also results to members of the public, including doctors and patients, who have developed extensive reliance interests in the approval and availability of GenBioPro’s mifepristone,” the company said in the lawsuit.

GenBioPro also said that it has repeatedly asked the FDA for assurances that its approval status will be protected, but the FDA has not responded. “Because of the FDA decision and the enforcement threat and uncertainty it has created, GenBioPro is suffering irreparable financial and reputational harm, severely threatening its core business model and commercial viability,” GenBioPro said.

The GenBioPro lawsuit is an attempt to keep mifepristone available, regardless of whether the Supreme Court decides to stay or uphold the lower court rulings. The nation’s high court is expected to issue a decision Wednesday.

Medication abortions make up more than half of all abortions performed in the United States. These drugs can be ordered online and delivered via mail, making them a key resource for people who live in states that have cracked down on abortion access since Roe v. Wade was overturned last summer.

On Saturday night, a group of friends had driven up the wrong driveway as they were searching for another friend’s house. And as they turned their vehicles around, the owner of the home shot at them.

The 65-year-old homeowner, Kevin Monahan, fired two shots and killed 20-year-old Kaylin Gillis, authorities said—for the simple offense of being in the passenger seat of a vehicle that pulled into a wrong driveway before promptly turning around. The violent shooting occurred in upstate New York, in the district represented by Republican Representative Elise Stefanik.

On Tuesday, Stefanik tweeted a Notes-app-style statement that her “heart breaks for the tragedy of the loss of Kaylin Gillis’ young life” and that she fully supports efforts “to ensure justice is served.” But within the hour, Stefanik went back to her regularly scheduled programming of whipping up outrage about crime in New York City.

Stefanik has spent much of her career fearmongering about crime, all the more so amid the Manhattan district attorney’s indictment of twice-impeached former President Donald Trump. She, along with other Republicans, has attempted to discredit Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg by trying to frame New York City as a bastion of crime.

Stefanik, not even a member of the House Judiciary Committee, was invited to join a hearing Monday that falsely framed New York as awash in crime. The New York City crime narrative is a popular one, but as witnesses in the hearing pointed out, New York City is safer than many of the places House Republicans leading the smear campaign come from.

The campaign has been all the more vacuous given that Republicans have put forth no actual solutions to crime that may be taking place, other than building more jails and throwing more people in them. Seldom have they genuinely pursued a broader policy vision they pretend to care about, whether it be improving people’s mental health or combating social alienation.

Meanwhile, Stefanik and other Republicans have blocked any attempt to prevent shootings like the one in her district or in Kansas City, Missouri, where 16-year-old Ralph Yarl was shot after accidentally ringing the wrong doorbell. After the Nashville school shooting last month, Stefanik called the move for gun control “overly political.” Never mind that more than 160 mass shootings have taken place just this year in America.

Republicans have made it easier, again and again, to access guns in a country ravaged by mass shootings. They have fomented social distrust, in a society where hate and divisiveness have become as American as apple pie.

And in Stefanik’s weak-hearted chicanery, she embodies precisely how hollow it all is. Instead of confronting why our society has produced such anger and why that anger is allowed to so easily access weapons of killing, Stefanik and Republicans are instead inflaming that anger and making sure it is as armed as possible.