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Politics Surround Pandemic In Florida – WUFT

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No mask mandates in classrooms. No vaccination “passports.” And no more business shutdowns.

Gov. Ron DeSantis’ management of COVID-19 has boosted his countrywide cachet among fellow Republicans as he seeks re-election to the governor’s mansion next year and mulls a run for president in 2024.

But the governor’s insistence on staying the course amid a skyrocketing number of infections — as of Monday, Florida had the highest COVID-19 hospitalization rate in the nation — is drawing fire as Democrats point the finger at the Republican incumbent.

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Elected officials’ attitudes and actions about masks and vaccinations have become a flashpoint in the increasingly tribal nature of partisan politics. The ideological schism over preventive protocols in Florida has aided DeSantis’ rise as a national presidential contender and, at the same time, become a cornerstone of Democrats’ efforts to oust him.

“I think it’s gross politicization, and I think it’s shameful, and I think it’s based on a guy who’s got his eyes on the Republican nomination in ’24 instead of the governorship and the people of Florida in ’22. Clearly, that’s it,” Congressman Charlie Crist, a St. Petersburg Democrat who is running to try to unseat DeSantis next year, told The News Service of Florida during an appearance in Tallahassee. Crist served as governor as a Republican before becoming a Democrat and losing a 2014 gubernatorial bid.

DeSantis, however, isn’t backing down from his largely laissez-faire approach, even as the highly transmissible delta variant of the novel coronavirus tears through the Sunshine State.

“We are not shutting down,” DeSantis told reporters Tuesday. “We are going to have schools open. We are protecting every Floridian’s job in this state. We are protecting people’s small businesses. These interventions have failed time and time again throughout this pandemic, not just in the United States but abroad. They have not stopped the spread, particularly with delta.”

With DeSantis focused on an economic rebound, Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, who is running against Crist for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination next year, has assumed the mantle of the state’s chief COVID-19 information officer. She has been holding news conferences to discuss data on Florida’s infection rates and hospitalizations and using social media to blast DeSantis’ approach to the pandemic, such as his issuance of an executive order to block school districts from requiring students to wear masks.

“We stand in unity with our local school boards who have the constitutional power to protect our children and won’t be bullied or defunded by our wannabe authoritarian governor,” Fried tweeted on Wednesday.

DeSantis made national headlines last week when he issued the executive order, which came after he mocked federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations during an appearance at the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council’s annual meeting.

“We say no to lockdowns, no to school closures, no to restrictions, and no mandates,” DeSantis said at the Salt Lake City event, adding that people “should not be consigned to live … in a Faucian dystopia.”

DeSantis has made Anthony Fauci, a widely respected infectious-disease expert who has been part of the White House’s COVID-19 advisory team, a frequent object of scorn. The governor’s political committee, for example, is capitalizing on Republicans’ animosity toward the veteran public-health official through the sales of merchandise emblazoned with messages such as “Don’t Fauci My Florida.”

DeSantis’ wrath isn’t limited to the 80-year-old doctor, however. The governor has adopted a similarly combative stance with the CDC — he sued the federal agency for refusing to lift restrictions on cruises — and President Joe Biden’s administration.

But with Florida and Texas responsible for a third of the COVID-19 cases in the U.S. last week, the White House is punching back. Biden on Tuesday blamed DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for “bad health policy” amid the spikes in the two states.

“I say to these governors, please help,” Biden said. “If you aren’t going to help, at least get out of the way of the people who are trying to do the right thing. Use your power to save lives.”

Critics accuse DeSantis of pandering to GOP base voters — who turn out in large numbers for primaries — on issues such as face masks and his reliance on scientists and data considered to be outliers in the medical community.

But skepticism about masks and vaccines isn’t limited to Republicans, GOP political consultant Anthony Pedicini said in a phone interview with the News Service.

“Inherently, Americans don’t want the government to tell them to do anything,” Pedicini said. “Honestly, the very essence of who we are as Americans is manifest in this mask debate.”

Sentiment about the health-care precautions “doesn’t fall along party lines,” Pedicini added.

“It tears at the fundamental of who we are as Americans. We love freedom. The government shouldn’t ever tell us what to do.

The governor in Florida is not telling anybody they can’t wear masks. So if you feel uncomfortable or you feel like this is a life-threatening thing to you, put the mask on, put the mask on your kids and go about your day,” said Pedicini, who had COVID-19 in November, received a vaccination this year and is urging others to get the shots.

DeSantis has advocated for the use of vaccines but, unlike some other GOP governors in states experiencing increases in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, has not pushed Floridians to get the shots. Roughly half of eligible Floridians are not fully vaccinated.

“Should the governor of the state of Florida be an activist? Yeah. And I think he is, in that he’s taking the side of freedom,” Pedicini said. “I think that has served him fairly well politically.”

With most recent polls showing DeSantis the frontrunner in the governor’s race, the Republican leader “feels strongly that he’s going to win re-election” and is “looking to the next game, which is clearly the presidential game,” political consultant Steve Vancore, who advises Democrats, said in an interview.

“You’ve got to be the most conservative, the most pro-Trump Republican of the field, and as such, he seems to be sticking to a script that is custom-tailored for his far-right base. There’s no part of Ron DeSantis that’s playing to the middle. He’s playing to the base at every step of the way,” Vancore said.

COVID-19 health-care protocols are being “used as a political pawn because our governor and others have found that it’s a political tool, while Floridians are dying or getting sick and people all over the country are,” U.S. Rep. Val Demings, a Democrat who is trying to unseat Republican U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, said in an interview.

“Why can’t we just listen, our governor and others, be led by the science, be led by information coming from medical experts, follow their guidelines?” she said. “I really wish this issue would not be politicized, but it has been from the very beginning.”

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Opinion: Canada's foreign policy and its domestic politics on Israel's war against Hamas are shifting – The Globe and Mail

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The vote in the House of Commons last week on Israel’s war against Hamas represents a shift in both Canada’s foreign policy and its domestic politics.

The Liberal government is now markedly more supportive of the rights of Palestinians and less supportive of the state of Israel than in the past. That shift mirrors changing demographics, and the increasing importance of Muslim voters within the Liberal coalition.

Both the Liberal and Conservative parties once voiced unqualified support for Israel’s right to defend itself from hostile neighbours. But the Muslim community is growing in Canada. Today it represents 5 per cent of the population, compared with 1 per cent who identify as Jewish.

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Although data is sparse prior to 2015, it is believed that Muslim Canadians tended to prefer the Liberal Party over the Conservative Party. They were also less likely to vote than the general population.

But the Conservative Party under Stephen Harper deeply angered the community with talk about “barbaric cultural practices” and musing during the 2015 election campaign about banning public servants from wearing the niqab. Meanwhile, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau was promising to bring in 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada if elected.

These factors galvanized community groups to encourage Muslims to vote. And they did. According to an Environics poll, 79 per cent of eligible Muslims cast a ballot in the 2015 election, compared with an overall turnout of 68 per cent. Sixty-five per cent of Muslim voters cast ballots for the Liberal Party, compared with 10 per cent who voted for the NDP and just 2 per cent for the Conservatives. (Telephone interviews of 600 adults across Canada who self-identified as Muslim, were conducted between Nov. 19, 2015 and Jan. 23, 2016, with an expected margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points 19 times out of 20.)

Muslim Canadians also strongly supported the Liberals in the elections of 2019 and 2021. The party is understandably anxious not to lose that support. I’m told that Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly often mentions the large Muslim community in her Montreal riding. (According to the 2021 census, 18 per cent of the people in Ahuntsic-Cartierville identify as Muslim.)

This is one reason why the Liberal leadership laboured so mightily to find a way to support last week’s NDP motion that would, among other measures, have recognized the state of Palestine. The Liberal caucus was deeply divided on the issue. My colleague Marieke Walsh reports that dozens of Liberal MPs were prepared to vote for the NDP motion.

In the end, almost all Liberal MPs ended up voting for a watered-down version of the motion – statehood recognition was taken off the table – while three Liberal MPs voted against it. One of them, Anthony Housefather, is considering whether to remain inside the Liberal caucus.

This is not simply a question of political calculation. Many Canadians are deeply concerned over the sufferings of the people in Gaza as the Israel Defence Forces seek to root out Hamas fighters.

The Conservatives enjoy the moral clarity of their unreserved support for the state of Israel in this conflict. The NDP place greater emphasis on supporting the rights of Palestinians.

The Liberals have tried to keep both Jewish and Muslim constituencies onside. But as last week’s vote suggests, they increasingly accord a high priority to the rights of Palestinians and to the Muslim community in Canada.

As with other religious communities, Muslims are hardly monolithic. Someone who comes to Canada from Senegal may have different values and priorities than a Canadian who comes from Syria or Pakistan or Indonesia.

And the plight of Palestinians in Gaza may not be the only issue influencing Muslims, who struggle with inflation, interest rates and housing affordability as much as other voters.

Many new Canadians come from societies that are socially conservative. Some Muslim voters may be uncomfortable with the Liberal Party’s strong support for the rights of LGBTQ Canadians.

Finally, Muslim voters for whom supporting the rights of Palestinians is the ballot question may be drawn more to the NDP than the Liberals.

Regardless, the days of Liberal/Conservative bipartisan consensus in support of Israel are over. This is the new lay of the land.

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Recall Gondek group planned to launch its own petition before political novice did – CBC.ca

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The third-party group helping promote the recall campaign against Mayor Jyoti Gondek had devised plans to launch its own petition drive, as part of a broader mission to make Calgary council more conservative.

Project YYC had planned with other conservative political organizations to gather signatures demanding Calgary’s mayor be removed, says group leader Roy Beyer. But their drive would have begun later in the year, when nicer weather made for easier canvassing for supporters, he said.

Those efforts were stymied when Landon Johnston, an HVAC contractor largely unknown in local politics, applied at city hall to launch his own recall drive in early February. Since provincial recall laws allow only one recall attempt per politician per term, Project YYC chose to lend support to Johnston’s bid.

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“Now we have to try to do door-knocking in the winter, and there’s a lot of preparation that you have to contemplate prior to starting. And Landon didn’t do that,” Beyer told CBC News in an interview.

Project YYC has helped gather signatures, created a website and erected large, anti-Gondek signs around town. It has supplied organizational heft that Johnston admits to lacking.

Their task is daunting.

According to provincial law, in order to force a recall plebiscite to oust the mayor before the term is up, they have two months to gather more than 514,000 signatures, an amount equal to 40 per cent of Calgary’s population in 2019.

They have until April 4 to collect that many signatures, and by March 21 had only 42,000.

Beyer criticizes the victory threshold for recall petition as so high that it’s “a joke,” and the province may as well not have politician recall laws.

So if he thinks it’s an impossible pursuit, why is he involved with this?

“You can send a message to the mayor that she should be sitting down and resigning … without achieving those numbers,” Beyer said.

Project YYC founder Roy Beyer, from a Take Back Alberta video in 2022. He is no longer with that provincial activist group. (royjbeyer screenshot/Rumble)

He likened it to former premier Jason Kenney getting 52 per cent support in a UCP leadership review — enough to technically continue as leader, but a lousy enough show of confidence that he announced immediately he would step down.

Gondek has given no indication she’ll voluntarily leave before her term is up next year. But she did emerge from a meeting last week with Johnston to admit the petition has resonated with many Calgarians and is a signal she must work harder to listen to public concerns and explain council’s decisions.

The mayor also told the Calgary Sun this week that she’s undecided about running for re-election in 2025. 

“There used to be this thing where if you’re the mayor, of course you’re going to run for another term because there’s unfinished business,” Gondek told the newspaper.

“And yes, there will be unfinished business, but the times are not what they were. You need to make sure you’re the right leader for the times you’re in.”

The last several Calgary mayors have enjoyed multiple terms in office, going back to Ralph Klein in the 1980s. The last one-term mayor was Ross Alger, the man Klein defeated in 1980.

Beyer and fellow conservative organizers launched Project YYC before the recall campaign. The goal was to elect a conservative mayor and councillors — “a common-sense city council, instead of what we currently have,” he said.

Beyer is one of a few former activists with the provincial pressure group Take Back Alberta to have latched themselves to the recall bid and Project YYC, along with some United Conservative Party riding officials in Calgary. 

Beyer’s acknowledgment of his group’s broader mission comes as Premier Danielle Smith and her cabinet ministers have said they want to introduce political party politics in large municipalities — even though most civic politicians have said they don’t want to bring clear partisanship into city halls.

Although Beyer admits Project YYC’s own recall campaign would have been a coalition effort with other conservative groups, he wouldn’t specify which ones. He did insist that Take Back Alberta wasn’t one of them.

A man in a grey baseball cap speaks to reporters.
Calgary business owner Landon Johnston speaks to reporters at City Hall on March 22 following his 15-minute conversation with Mayor Jyoti Gondek. (Laurence Taschereau/CBC)

Johnston says he was approached by Beyer’s group shortly after applying to recall Gondek, and gave them $3,000 from donations he’d raised.

He initially denied any knowledge of Project YYC when documents first emerged about that group’s role in the recall, but later said he didn’t initially realize that was the organizational name of his campaign allies.

“They said they could get me signatures, so I said, ‘OK, if you can do it by the book, here’s some money.’ And it’s worked,” he said.

Johnston has said he’s new to politics but simply wants to remove Gondek because of policies he’s disagreed with, like the soon-to-be-ended ban on single-use plastics and bags at restaurant takeouts and drive-thrus.

He’s no steadfast conservative, either. He told CBC’s Calgary Eyeopener that he voted for Rachel Notley’s NDP because one of its green-renovation incentives helped his HVAC business.

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Larry David shares how he feels about Trump – CNN

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Larry David shares how he feels about Trump

“Curb Your Enthusiasm” star Larry David shares how he feels about former President Donald Trump and the 2020 election. Watch the full episode of “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace,” streaming March 29 on Max.


03:21

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CNN

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