Florida Passes Bill to Protect Billionaires if Their Exploding Rockets Kill People

Millions throughout America are trying alternative diets: plant-based, paleo, low carb. And now there’s a new group of people whose meals mainly consist of boots: practically the entire Florida legislature.

Florida lawmakers, on both sides of the aisle, have sent a bill to Governor Ron DeSantis that would expand legal immunities to protect private space companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX or Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin when workers suffer injuries or even die. The Spaceflight Entity Liability Bill broadens when space companies are exempted “from liability for injury to or death of a crew resulting from spaceflight activities.”

Florida’s move to expand liability protections comes as billionaires’ rockets keep exploding and more and more private companies are taking wealthy passengers on interstellar adventures. An analysis by the Florida state Senate admits outright what the entire point of the legislation is: “This bill has the potential to limit the cost of litigation to businesses engaging in spaceflight activities.”

The bill  mandates “crew” and participants alike fill out a waiver that grants legal immunities to space companies in cases of injury or death.

It also expands the definition of “spaceflight entity” to include any entity authorized to conduct spaceflight activities, beyond ones that are solely associated with the United States Federal Aviation Administration. It cuts out language ascribing liability to spaceflight entities for damage caused from “inherent risks” of spaceflight activity; instead, the bill broadens the scope of liability immunity to include all spaceflight activities.

Moreover, the bill amends language that orders entities to be liable for injury if they had actual knowledge, or reasonably should have known, of risks. The new language only orders legal liability for “actual knowledge” of risks, meaning there is no longer any expectation for companies to be responsible for damages from risks they “reasonably should have known” about.

The bill passed the state Senate 39–0 and the state House 107–5. The overwhelmingly bipartisan move to grant special legal protections to bloated companies run by some of the richest people in the world is mirrored by how much these entities donate to politicians of both parties.

Musk’s SpaceX has spent some $8 million in lobbying efforts since 2020 and donated another $1 million to members of both parties during the 2022 election cycle alone. Bezos’s Blue Origin has spent some $6.3 million in lobbying efforts since 2020, while sending just over half a million dollars to members of both parties during 2022.

Republican-majority legislatures in Nebraska, North Carolina, and South Carolina are all trying Tuesday to ram through extreme abortion bans at the last minute, despite recent failures.

Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, abortion has been legal in Nebraska until 20 weeks and in South Carolina until 22 weeks, although both states have multiple restrictions, such as a mandatory 24-hour waiting period and biased counseling aimed at running out the clock. Abortion is also currently legal in North Carolina until 20 weeks. If the bills pass, particularly the Carolinas’ measures, they will have wide-ranging negative consequences for abortion access.

The Nebraska legislature failed last month to overcome a filibuster against a six-week abortion ban after two anti-abortion senators voted “present.” Republicans are now pushing a 12-week abortion ban instead, as part of an anti-trans bill restricting gender-affirming care. One of the senators who helped kill the previous ban, Republican Merv Riepe, could once again prove to be the crucial swing vote.

A six-week ban also died in the South Carolina legislature in late April, after all of the female senators, who span the political spectrum, banded together to filibuster the measure. The bill had looked unlikely to make it back to the floor because there weren’t enough days left in the legislative session. But Republican Governor Henry McMaster called lawmakers back for a special session to consider multiple measures, including an abortion ban.

A new six-week ban has now made it through the state Senate and goes Tuesday before the House, where Democrats have filed 1,000 amendments to try and block the measure from reaching a final vote. If an amended bill passes the House, it will need reapproval by the Senate before it goes to McMaster for his signature.

The North Carolina state legislature will also convene Tuesday to vote to override a veto on a 12-week abortion ban. Democratic Governor Roy Cooper vetoed the bill over the weekend, cheered on by hundreds of abortion rights supporters.

But state Republicans have just enough votes to override the veto, after Representative Tricia Cotham switched parties. If they succeed, the bill will go into immediate effect. The measure technically bans abortion after 12 weeks, but in reality, the window could be much shorter. People would also only be allowed to get a medication abortion until 10 weeks of pregnancy, and to get one, they would have to go to three separate, in-person appointments that are 72 hours apart.

While any of the bills passing would be a huge blow to reproductive rights, the measures in the Carolinas would absolutely decimate abortion access in the South. North Carolina in particular has become a haven for people seeking out-of-state abortions. Taken in conjunction with Florida’s six-week abortion ban, abortion access could be practically wiped out for a huge swathe of the United States.

According to Rudy Giuliani, “Black guys hit women more than anybody else does … and so do Hispanic guys—it is in their culture,” and “Jews want to go through their freaking Passover all the time, man oh man. Get over the Passover. It was like 3,000 years ago.”

The comments are just the cherry on top of a vile ice cream sundae of allegations about the former New York City mayor and Trump lawyer. A new $10 million lawsuit accuses Giuliani of making these comments, as well as promising to pay a woman a $1 million annual salary to work as his associate, and instead raping and abusing her over the course of two years. The suit adds that Giuliani was constantly drunk, was open about efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and that he plotted to go in with Donald Trump on selling off pardons at $2 million a pop.

The 70-page lawsuit goes to great detail in explaining Giuliani’s alleged behaviors, down to specific dates and locations; the defendant and victim, Noelle Dunphy, reportedly has a trove of recorded conversations to back up her allegations.

From allegedly abusing Dunphy and being constantly drunk to making vile comments about public figures and pretty much every single culture, the lawsuit levels a slate of disturbing accusations against the longtime Trump lackey.

Here’s a taste of the scale and degree of what Giuliani is being accused of in the massive $10 million lawsuit, through word count:

• Abuse, abused, abusive, abusing: 33
• Alcohol, alcoholic, alcoholism: 11
• Drink, drinking, drinks, drinker, drunk: 16
• Force, forcing, forced, forcible: 21
• Harass, harassing, harassment, harassed: 47
• Intoxicated: 9
• Jew, Jewish: 3
• Pressure, pressuring: 11
• Rape: 4
• Scotch: 4
• Sex: 35
• Sexual, sexually, sexualize, sexual assault, sexual abuse, sexual harassment: 87
• Wage: 19

Elon Musk has gone all in on the classic conservative antisemitic trope of blaming George Soros for everything, seemingly all because the older billionaire sold his Tesla stock.

Soros’s family office, Soros Fund Management, bought up stock in the electric car maker over the course of 2022, holding a total of 132,000 shares by the end of the year. Then the fund capitalized on Tesla’s impressive 68 percent jump in value this year, selling off its entire Tesla stake in the first quarter of 2023, according to reports on Monday.

Soros Fund Management also sold some of its stake in electric vehicle start-up Rivian Automotive, but apparently Musk still took the sales personally. “Soros reminds me of Magneto,” he tweeted late Monday, referring to the X-Men villain.

When journalist Brian Krassenstein pushed back, arguing Soros has “good intentions” but gets attacked for his political affiliation, Musk came back with some full-throated antisemitism.

“You assume they are good intentions. They are not. He wants to erode the very fabric of civilization. Soros hates humanity,” said the outgoing Twitter CEO.

Soros declined to comment on the matter when contacted by The New Republic.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time that either a conservative has blamed Soros for something completely unrelated to him or that Musk has pushed antisemitism. Republicans love blaming Soros for anything and everything. One recent example is when they blamed him for former President Donald Trump being indicted.

As for Musk, he has let Nazis back onto Twitter, as well as Kanye West. Musk ultimately had to re-ban West, who now goes by Ye, after the musician proudly proclaimed that he loves Hitler. Musk himself also shared a Nazi photo while urging people to vote Republican in the 2022 midterm elections.

A Trump-era special counsel’s four-year-long investigation into the FBI over its probe of possible ties between Russia and Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign ended Monday with a whimper instead of the previously promised bang.

Special prosecutor John Durham was appointed in 2019 by then–Attorney General William Barr to look into possible misconduct by the FBI during its investigation of Trump-Russia ties. Trump promised at the time that Durham would uncover the “crime of the century.”

Instead, in a more than 300-page report released Monday, Durham sharply criticized the FBI but failed to bring about the raft of criminal convictions the previous administration had expected. Durham accused the FBI of launching its investigation based on “raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence.” He also said investigators relied on “confirmation bias” instead of considering evidence that would have cleared Trump.

Over the course of Durham’s entire investigation, his team only charged three people. A former FBI lawyer pleaded guilty to altering an email the bureau cited when applying to eavesdrop on an ex-Trump campaign aide. The other two defendants, a lawyer for Hillary Clinton’s campaign and an analyst for a Russian American think tank, were both acquitted of charges of lying to the FBI.

Barr appointed Durham shortly after special counsel Robert Mueller completed his investigation into allegations that Trump and Russia had colluded to rig the 2016 election. Mueller, by comparison, issued about 36 criminal charges, including for half a dozen Trump associates. He determined that Russia had intervened in the election for Trump, which the campaign welcomed, but that it had not actively colluded with Team Trump.

The FBI first began investigating the allegations of collusion in July 2016, but there were multiple revelations of flaws in the probe. Durham’s own investigation dug into these mistakes, but by the time he released his report on Monday, the Justice Department had already examined those issues and the FBI had made dozens of corrective actions.

This is not the first time the Republicans have touted an investigation that turned up a whole lot of nothing. House Republicans have been investigating President Joe Biden and his family for months but have been unable to provide any actual evidence linking Biden to any wrongdoing. And Monday morning, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer revealed that one of their top informants has gone missing.