DISNEY

Florida Gov. DeSantis Pulled in $4 Million in July, Opponents Far Behind

By Grant Holcomb

The Florida Capital Star

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis pulled in $4 million during July, expanding on his already large war chest.

The July financial report shows over 18,000 contributions during July, which is over 63 percent of total contributions Friends of Ron DeSantis has collected since January 2018.

DeSantis’ opponents are vastly trailing in dollar amounts. During July, Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried raked in just over $130,000, according to the Florida Department of State’s Division of Elections. Similarly, U.S. Congressman Charlie Crist (D-13) raised just shy of $270,000 during the month of July.

DeSantis has continued to garner national support for taking on the larger COVID narratives surrounding the pandemic’s policies. This includes getting into a back-and-forth with President Joe Biden over the issue of mask mandates in Florida’s schools. The federal government has been warning against Ron DeSantis’ executive order banning mask mandates, and DeSantis responded saying he did not want to hear from the Biden administration.

“So why don’t you do your job?” DeSantis said. “Why don’t you get this border secure, and until you do that, I don’t want to hear a blip about COVID from you. Thank you.”

Other political voices, namely CNN’s Jim Acosta, said Americans should start referring to the Delta variant as the “DeSantis variant.”

“Perhaps it’s time to start naming these new variants that may be coming out after them,” Acosta said. “Instead of the delta variant, why not call it the DeSantis variant?”

Despite being called out by Democrats at the federal and state levels, and from the mainstream media, DeSantis’ insistence on refusing to impose regulations and burdens infringing on the rights of the people is part of the appeal.

“People around the country are tired of government lockdown politics, illegal immigration, and big government eroding our individual freedoms,” said Nick Iarossi, a Republican lobbyist and DeSantis adviser. “Governor DeSantis is the tip of the spear in the fight against these Biden administration politics and a warrior for individual freedom.”

Florida Unemployment Ticks Up in July

By Casey Owens

The Florida Capital Star

The Florida Department of Economic Opportunity (DEO) released statewide unemployment data on Friday, showing a slight increase in the unemployment rate from June to July.

As stated in the DEO release, Florida’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 5.1 percent in July 2021, up 0.1% from the June 2021 rate, and down from 6.4% one year ago.

At this time last year, businesses that had either scaled back or shut down in the wake of the pandemic were just starting to benefit from Governor DeSantis’ efforts to re-open the state.

“When you look at June and July (this year), we actually saw a higher uptick of people joining the labor force. So, that’s probably an indication of positive impacts there,” DEO Chief Economist Adrienne Johnston said in a conference call. “Things are continuing to increase. We are continuing to see people move back into the labor force. They are encouraged to find work, and it just takes a little bit of time for those connections to be made.”

According to the data, in July 2021, Florida’s seasonally adjusted total of nonagricultural jobs or employment was 8,756,300, up 68,100 jobs from June.

Compared to July 2020, the number of jobs in July 2021 is higher by 11.3%. Over the year, the total number of jobs the state gained was 356,700, up 4.2% from July 2020. Nationally, the year-toyear total number of jobs in the month of July increased by 5.2%.

Overall positive job growth in Florida comes as a result of nine of the ten major industries experiencing positive year-to-year job growth in July. The nine industries are listed below from highest to lowest increase:

“Leisure and hospitality (+137,800 jobs, +14.6%); professional and business services (+63,200 jobs, +4.7%); trade, transportation, and utilities (+58,000 jobs, +3.3%); education and health services (+41,100 jobs, +3.2%); other services (+30,900 jobs, +9.9%); financial activities (+22,000 jobs, +3.7%); construction (+12,400 jobs, +2.2 percent); manufacturing (+9,600 jobs, +2.6%); and information (+6,700 jobs, +5.3%).”

The only major industry that did not experience positive job growth was total government, which recorded a decrease of 23,200 jobs or -2.5%.

Additionally, the data highlights the four counties with the lowest unemployment rates in Florida – as well as the seven counties that share the three highest unemployment rates.

The four lowest unemployment rates were 3.1%, 3.6%, 3.9%, and 4.0%, belonging to Monroe, St. Johns, Okaloosa, and Nassau Counties, respectively. The highest unemployment rate was 7.6% and belonged to Hendry County. The next highest was 6.8% and was shared with Highlands County, Putnam County, and Hardee County. The third highest was 6.5%, shared with Miami-Dade County, Citrus County, and Sumter County.

The national unemployment rate for July 2021 was 5.7%.

DeSantis Press Secretary Suspended from Twitter Over Spat with AP

By Grant Holcomb

The Florida Capital Star

Last week, the Associated Press (AP) published a story regarding Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his push for monoclonal antibody treatment, which is sold by Regeneron. In the wake of the article, DeSantis’ press secretary, Christina Pushaw, found her Twitter account suspended for allegedly “harassing” the reporter who broke the AP story.

In the original article, Brendan Farrington, who wrote the piece, noted Citadel, a Chicagobased hedge fund, owns over $15 million of Regeneron. The CEO of Citadel, Ken Griffin, is a multi-million-dollar donor to the DeSantis campaign.

DeSantis has been previously touting the monoclonal antibody treatments for patients with earlyonset symptoms and said hospitalizations have been reduced by as much as 70 percent during clinical trials.

As a result of the article, Pushaw, criticized the framing of the article as it made it sound like a “cheap political innuendo”

“The issue is that most people only read the headline,” Pushaw said to Fox News. “I have an issue with the headline because it frames it up as though there's pay to play going on or a conflict of interest when there is not, and he admits as much in the article.”

Pushaw then posted a series of tweets in response to Farrington’s article. "Hey @bsfarrington. Sad to see this cheap political innuendo from AP,” Pushaw said. “Should be ‘DeSantis & Biden Agree Monoclonals Save Lives.’ You KNEW this isn’t a story. You KNOW you can’t defend it. You said your ‘boss’s boss’ wouldn’t change the headline—& you refused to tell me his name.”

Pushaw issued a statement to Fox News saying Farrington received info for the new treatment and the Griffin connection from her, but said he was pressured to write the story.

After the series of tweets, Pushaw found her Twitter account suspended and “has been locked for 12 hours for violating the Twitter Rules on abusive behavior.”

Fox News reporter Joseph Wulfsohn noted that Twitter declined to comment when asked what specific violations Pushaw participated in.

After Pushaw’s suspension, the AP sent a letter to DeSantis calling on him to “eliminate this attack strategy from your press office” after Pushaw’s “direct effort to activate an online mob to attack.”

The DeSantis administration and Pushaw both said they did not condone the threats toward Farrington.

Pushaw responded to her suspension by saying she felt the AP politicized an opportunity for Floridians to get help for COVID treatment using the monoclonal antibody therapy. "They got caught publishing misinformation that could endanger the lives of Floridians by making them unduly trust a life-saving treatment … over a governor they've decided they don't like," Pushaw said. "They got called out for it in part because of me, in part because the story was so obviously wrong … They brought this on themselves by publishing this kind of dangerous misinformation."

Dan Sweeney, a Deputy Opinions Editor at the South Florida Sun Sentinel, who self-described his editorial board at the Sun Sentinel as DeSantis critics, noted the AP story “doesn’t really add up.”

Governor DeSantis Appoints Three New Members to Elections Commission

By Casey Owens

The Florida Capital Star

Governor DeSantis appointed Nicholas Primrose, Marva Preston and Carlos LopezCantera to the Florida Elections Commission on Friday, with Primrose being the designated Chair.

DeSantis' appointments are subject to confirmation by the Florida Senate and are the first in over a year to replace all current members of the FEC whose terms have expired but are still serving.

Commissioners Kymberlee Smith and J. Martin Hayes' terms expired on December 31st, 2020, while Commissioners Joni Poitier and Jason Allen's terms expired on December 31st, 2019.

All three of DeSantis' appointments are Republican, with two formerly serving under former Republican Governor, Rick Scott. Lopez-Cantera served under Scott as Lieutenant Governor from 2014 to 2019, while Primrose served in the Executive Office of the Governor as the Deputy General Counsel, and General Counsel to the Florida Division of Emergency Management.

Currently, Lopez-Cantera is President of a company known as Pan American Consulting, and Primrose is the Chief of Regulatory Compliance for the Jacksonville Port Authority.

While all three appointees represent the Republican party, it is important to note that no more than five Commissioners can be from the same political party at any one time.

The Commission is under the wing of the Department of Legal Affairs run by the Office of the Attorney General, but is not "subject to the control, supervision, or direction of the Department of Legal Affairs or the Attorney General in the performance of its duties," according to The Commission's website.

Furthermore, the official duty of the ninemember Commission is to secure and regulate transparency regarding elections, as well as handling complaints or cases dealing with election codes and regulations established in Florida Statutes.

Florida Faculty Union Demands Mask Mandate in Colleges and Universities

By Grant Holcomb

The Florida Capital Star

The United Faculty of Florida is demanding Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis impose a mask mandate on all of Florida’s colleges and universities.

The basis for the request is rooted in the guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in July, which said everyone should wear masks indoors. The group called on the governor through a letter that said Florida’s colleges and universities should “follow CDC recommendations, including universal masking indoors and other common-sense measures, to limit severe illness and keep our colleges and universities open for learning.”

Despite the CDC’s recommendations and the insistence from the union, there are studies that indicate masks are ineffective regarding the prevention of the transmission of COVID-19 and its variants.

The University of Louisville published a study in May saying masks may be used as a “rallying symbol” for the pandemic, but masks were inconsequential, and the effects of wearing masks for prolonged periods of time could have adverse effects.

“Our findings do not support the hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 transmission rates decrease with greater public mask use,” the study said.

The study continued by pointing out the potential adverse effects of mask use:

“Prolonged mask use (>4 hours per day) promotes facial alkalinization and inadvertently encourages dehydration, which in turn can enhance barrier breakdown and bacterial infection risk. British clinicians have reported masks to increase headaches and sweating and decrease cognitive precision. Survey bias notwithstanding, these sequelae are associated with medical errors. By obscuring nonverbal communication, masks interfere with social learning in children. Likewise, masks can distort verbal speech and remove visual cues to the detriment of individuals with hearing loss; clear face-shields improve visual integration, but there is a corresponding loss of sound quality.”

DeSantis has been insistent on not implementing mask mandates, lockdowns, or vaccine requirements and has had to issue letters to local school districts warning them of financial punishments for implementing mask mandates despite DeSantis’ mask mandate ban.

DeSantis has said if governmental bodies are going to infringe on the rights of Floridians regarding masks and COVID-related restrictions, he was going to stand in their way.

“If you’re trying to restrict people, impose mandates, if you’re trying to ruin their jobs and livelihood, and their small business, if you’re trying to lock people down, I’m standing in your way, and I’m standing for the people of Florida,” DeSantis said.

Disney to Require Vaccinations for Bahamas Cruises

DISNEY, From Front Page

to require passengers to show documentation that they have been vaccinated — an issue known as requiring “vaccine passports.”

DeSantis signed a law this spring to prevent businesses, including cruise lines, from requiring vaccine passports. But Norwegian filed a lawsuit challenging the ban, as it wanted to require passengers to prove they have been vaccinated.

A federal district judge this month sided with Norwegian and granted a preliminary injunction against the ban. The state has challenged that ruling at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Appearing on Yahoo Finance last week, Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings President and CEO Frank Del Rio called it “beyond bizarre” and “shameful” that his company has had to fight DeSantis to keep people healthy.

“Here’s a state that relies on tourism. It’s his number one industry. And the number one priority of any hospitality business is to keep their customers safe. I mean, that’s de rigueur,” Del Rio said. “You would expect that government, again, would do everything possible to support that. Instead, we had to go to court.”

Minnis’ order will require the captain or master of any cruise ship to provide “a crew and passenger manifest to the port medical officer” to receive permission to enter a Bahamas port, including a private stop.

Report: CDC Downplayed Scientific Finding that Masks are Not Effective in Schools

By Steve Stewart

An analysis by the New York Magazine (NYM) of a recently published Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) large-scale study of COVID transmission in U.S. schools found little scientific support for masks in schools.

More troubling, the analysis by the NYM found that CDC failed to mention in the summary of the study the findings that indicated little support for some of the most common COVID mitigation measures in schools, including masks for students.

According to the NYM, the study published by the CDC covered more than 90,000 elementary-school students in 169 Georgia schools from November 16 to December 11. The study, according to the CDC, was the first of its kind to compare COVID-19 incidence in schools with certain mitigation measures in place to other schools without those measures.

The study found that masking then-unvaccinated teachers and improving ventilation with more fresh air were associated with a lower incidence of the virus in schools.

What was not included in the summary was the finding that many of the most common mitigation measures in schools were not effective. These measures included distancing, hybrid models, classroom barriers, HEPA filters, and requiring student masking.

The NYM spoke with scientists who” believe that the decision not to include the null effects of a student masking requirement (and distancing, hybrid models, etc.) in the summary amounted to ‘file drawering’ these findings, a term researchers use for the practice of burying studies that don’t produce statistically significant results.”

“That a masking requirement of students failed to show independent benefit is a finding of consequence and great interest,” says Vinay Prasad, an associate professor in University of California, San Francisco’s Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics.

“It should have been included in the summary.” “The summary gives the impression that only masking of staff was studied,” says Tracy Hoeg, an epidemiologist and the senior author of a separate CDC study on COVID-19 transmission in schools, “when in reality there was this additional important detection about a student-masking requirement not having a statistical impact.”

“A year ago, I said, ‘Masks are not the end of the world; why not just wear a mask?’” Elissa SchechterPerkins, the director of Emergency Medicine Infectious Disease Management at Boston Medical Center, told me. “But the world has changed, there are real downsides to masking children for this long, with no known end date, and without any clear upside.”

She continued, “I’m not aware of any studies that show conclusively that kids wearing masks in schools has any effect on their own morbidity or mortality or on the hospitalization or death rate in the community around them.”

With regards to the Delta variant, Schecter-Perkins said, “I don’t think that Delta changes the calculus because it still seems clear that it doesn’t cause more severe disease, so it still doesn’t change the fundamental question of ‘What are we trying to achieve by masking kids when they are still extremely unlikely to suffer from severe illness or death if infected?’ And the adults in their lives have the opportunity to be vaccinated and also protected so we don’t need to worry about transmission.”

The pediatric immunologist said, “Even with a new variant, the onus is on those who recommend masking kids to robustly demonstrate a meaningful benefit, especially when the pre-Delta study of the Georgia schools did not find one, and when there are obvious socio-emotional and educational harms from masking children for this unprecedented duration of time.”

Florida Legislators and American Public Showing Concern Over President’s Ability To Govern

By Karen Murphy

The Capitolist

Florida’s Republican U.S. Senator Rick Scott is questioning the competency of the President of the United States and Republican U.S. Representative Byron Donalds, also of Florida, is flat-out calling for his resignation.

Their lack of confidence in President Joe Biden seems to be reflected by the American people, according to several recent polls by nationally recognized pollsters.

Last week, as the news of the collapse of Afghanistan began breaking, Donalds called for the President’s resignation on Twitter. He said in a statement, “President Joe Biden has completely failed at this vital role as the leader of the free world. The Taliban sat back and waited to take advantage of this Administration’s weak and fickle leadership, not just at home but abroad. In the past 24 hours, the security of American diplomatic personnel and the stability of the Afghan region have unilaterally been handed over to the Taliban savages. Under the BidenHarris Administration, America is leading from the shadows of Camp David and Wilmington, Delaware, and our nation, troops, and the world are witnessing the consequences.”

Scott, in an opinion piece for Fox, said Biden’s Afghanistan disaster calls into question the president’s fitness to lead and his failed leadership on the world stage has damaged America’s reputation.

He called for a “bipartisan and bicameral investigation” into the U.S.’s “rapid and chaotic exit from Afghanistan that has left thousands of American citizens – and tens of thousands more Afghans who risked their lives for us for years – at the mercy of the Taliban.”

He said, “the way Biden chose to do it, his failed withdrawal, leaves the United States reeling from its most stunning, unforced, and humiliating defeat in decades.”

“We must discern whether this is incompetence on the part of his administration, or something far more serious,” Scott said. “The American people deserve answers and, frankly, to know whether this president is truly fit to still lead the United States.”

He repeated a comment he made earlier in the week saying, “the vice president, and cabinet must consider the 25th Amendment” which lays out the process of removing a sitting president from office.

Scott said, “I do not say this lightly. The Office of President of the United States is the most powerful in the world and it demands total accountability. If President Biden can no longer competently lead, the president, his cabinet, and the American people know what must be done.”

The majority of the American public are also worried based on recent polling by CBS and Rasmussen.

In a CBS poll taken late last week, only 49 percent of those polled think the president is competent, only 48 percent think he’s focused and only 47 percent think he’s effective. All of these percentages are down seven to eight points since just April.

On the topic of Afghanistan, 44 percent of all polled believe the removal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan is going very badly. Even though 63 percent of those polled supported the troops leaving, 53 percent disapprove of Biden’s way of handling the withdrawal from Afghanistan and 67 percent think he has no clear plan for evacuating U.S. Civilians.

CBS reporter Ed O’Keefe asked the president about the CBS News poll. Biden responded he hadn’t seen the poll. Later, a colleague of O’Keefe tweeted the poll, asking White House staff to show it to the president.

A couple of new Rasmussen Reports polls had similar findings.

One Rasmussen poll found 59 percent of those polled believe the Biden administration is not doing enough to evacuate Americans from Afghanistan.

The Rasmussen Reports’ daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 44 percent of likely U.S. voters approve of President Biden’s job performance, fifty-five percent disapprove. Only 26 percent strongly approve of the job Biden is doing and 47 percent strongly disapprove.

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