Republicans are dismantling the right to vote. But they’ve enshrined the right to infect.
Opinion by
Dana Milbank
Columnist WAPO
July 13, 2021|Updated today at 7:32 p.m. EDT
In the United States in the year 2021, you, as an American citizen, do not necessarily have the right to vote.
You do not necessarily have the right to teach or to learn about matters of race, gender or anything else state lawmakers consider “divisive concepts.”
But you do have one absolute, sacrosanct, inviolate, God-given, self-evident and inalienable right: the right to refuse a coronavirus vaccine — and to infect as many people as you can.
With the blessing of the Roberts court, legislatures in Republican-run states are rushing to impose new voting restrictions, particularly on non-White voters. A tally by the Brennan Center finds that, as of June 21, 17 states had enacted 28 new laws restricting the ability to vote since the start of this year.
At the same time, 10 states have enacted, and 26 states are weighing, restrictions on classroom discussions of racism and sexism, according to an Education Week count. Ostensibly, these restrictions combat critical race theory, an academic notion turned into a boogeyman by Republican politicians and sympathetic groups.
But while curtailing freedoms for some, red states are simultaneously extending civil rights to a previously unprotected class: the anti-vaxxers. A count by the Husch Blackwell law firm lists at least 17 Republican-run states that have enacted laws or orders protecting the rights of those who refuse coronavirus vaccines, with more such laws in process.
If there is a philosophy behind this selective approach, it’s this: Rights for me but not for thee. The red states are protecting the liberties of their political supporters — and taking liberties with everybody else’s.
“These are Republicans who believe in the right to infect as a fundamental right,” Rep. Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat, observed of the “very selective” approach to liberty in the red states.
I spoke to him outside the Capitol on Tuesday morning before he escorted three dozen Democratic Texas legislators to a news conference to decry the egregious attempt by Gov. Greg Abbott and the GOP-controlled legislature to suppress the votes of Black and Latino Texans. More than 50 Democrats fled the state to deny Republicans a quorum as they tried to ram through a law that would abolish the drive-up voting and 24-hour voting used heavily by minority voters in 2020.
“We are always going to push back against these sort of bigoted, racist, Jim Crow 2.0-style voting laws,” Rep. Marc Veasey, a Texas Democrat who is Black, said at the news conference with the legislators.
Texas Republicans have been at the forefront of the nationwide effort to bestow freedoms on political allies while curtailing them for others. In addition to its voter suppression effort, Texas also enacted a law prescribing in detail how teachers can discuss race. Slavery and racism may not be portrayed as “anything other than deviations from, betrayals of, or failures to live up to, the authentic founding principles of the United States, which include liberty and equality.” No credit may be given for internships “involving social or public policy advocacy.”
Contrast these highly detailed restrictions with the sweeping freedoms granted to vaccine refusers. Abbott issued an order suspending part of the Texas health code so that “no governmental entity can compel any individual to receive a COVID-19 vaccine.” And a law enacted last month decrees that “a business in this state may not require a customer to provide any documentation certifying the customer’s COVID-19 vaccination” to receive services.
The pattern holds throughout red America. Republican-run states are racing to restrict voting by mail and in-person voting hours and locations, and to implement voter purges and voter ID requirements that disproportionately disenfranchise non-White voters, all to combat the (largely imaginary) problem of voter fraud. Georgia banned giving food or water to voters waiting in long lines — lines caused by reduced polling access in Black precincts.
The new education edicts, likewise, propose a modern equivalent of book banning to mitigate the (fabricated) threat of critical race theory. Montana has declared that students may not be “forced to ‘reflect,’ ‘deconstruct,’ or ‘confront’ their racial identities.” Ohio is one of several states considering laws directing that “no school district shall teach, instruct, or train any divisive concepts.” Arizona will fine school districts if teachers don’t obey.
But the right to catch and spread covid-19 shall not be infringed.
As Axios’s Caitlin Owens wrote on Monday, Republican state legislators would “give unvaccinated people the same protections as those surrounding race, gender and religion.” In Montana, for example, a law requires that restaurants and other public accommodations must admit the unvaccinated. One law professor called the Montana law a “civil rights statute” akin to banning discrimination against the Irish.
Nonsense. Civil rights, as we knew them, prohibited discrimination “on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.” Now, Republicans are trashing those rights in favor of a new protected class — on the basis of political views.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... ht-infect/
The Right's new Civil Right: The Right to Infect
Re: The Right's new Civil Right: The Right to Infect
From WAPO today:
Fox News host Tucker Carlson suggested that he should be criminally investigated. Republican members of Congress introduced a “Fire Fauci Act” to remove his salary.
Now White House medical adviser Anthony S. Fauci — a polarizing figure in the U.S. response to the coronavirus — is also part of a rising GOP star’s political branding.
“Don’t Fauci My Florida,” read drink koozies and T-shirts that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s campaign team rolled out just as his state sees some of the highest coronavirus hospitalizations, new infections and deaths per capita in the country. It’s the latest example of Republicans running on their opposition to virus-fueled shutdowns and mask mandates. A pandemic hero to some and villain to others, Fauci has become a high-profile target.
While the merchandise is focused on Florida before the 2022 gubernatorial race there, DeSantis is seen as a potential front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024. A key part of his pitch: He resisted public health experts’ calls for stricter measures against the spread of the coronavirus, spurring criticism on the left and praise from the right for keeping his state’s schools and economy comparatively open.
While discussing the Florida budget this summer, DeSantis said his state’s rosy financial outlook would not have been possible “if we had followed Fauci.”
“Instead we followed freedom,” he said.
His campaign’s “Team DeSantis” Twitter account announced the new merchandise Monday. The Fauci items are listed alongside “Keep Florida Free” hats and red koozies that take aim at face coverings with a DeSantis quote: “How the hell am I going to be able to drink a beer with a mask on?”
The campaign team did not respond to The Washington Post’s questions Tuesday, and Fauci did not respond to a request for comment.
New coronavirus infection numbers plummeted in Florida after vaccinations became widely available, but they have ticked up in recent weeks. The state is reporting daily cases close to four times the national average — 26 new infections per 100,000 residents, the second-highest number in the country. The state’s latest covid-19 death rate is almost double the national figure, and it ranks fourth for current hospitalizations.
Fauci has been a vocal proponent of mask mandates and other measures to mitigate covid-19, the illness the novel coronavirus causes, though he and other federal health officials encouraged schools to open with safety precautions. As a coronavirus adviser to the Trump administration, Fauci criticized some of Florida’s decisions: In the fall, he called the state’s move to fully reopen restaurants and bars “very concerning.”
“When you’re dealing with community spread, and you have the kind of congregate setting where people get together, particularly without masks, you’re really asking for trouble,” Fauci said at the time on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “Now’s the time actually to double down a bit, and I don’t mean close.”
DeSantis avoided statewide mask requirements even as leaders across the political spectrum embraced them amid growing evidence of their effectiveness. This spring, he suspended all virus-based local rules for businesses and individuals.
The governor has encouraged people to get vaccinated but also banned businesses from requiring proof of vaccination, arguing that such measures are a form of discrimination against people who refuse vaccines for medical or religious reasons. He also successfully sued the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to keep it from enforcing its coronavirus rules on cruise ships in Florida, a major part of the state’s tourism industry.
With the new merchandise, DeSantis is trying to cash in on a growing conservative backlash toward Fauci, a longtime government scientist who has advised seven presidents and directs the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Throughout the pandemic, Fauci has drawn ire from the right for advocating restrictions and changing stances on whether the general public should wear masks. Fauci says he and other public health leaders flipped positions as they learned more about the effectiveness of face coverings and after initially fearing that the public would snap up masks needed for health workers.
But the focus on Fauci intensified after BuzzFeed News and The Post recently obtained some of his early pandemic emails. The doctor was a target of criticism and derision at last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas, where ominous black-and-white video clips of Fauci talking drew loud boos from crowd.
Resistance to shutdowns, masks and vaccine promotions came up often at the conservative gathering. “We’ve got Republican governors across this country pretending they didn’t shut down their states … that they didn’t mandate masks,” said South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem (R), another leader seen as a potential 2024 presidential contender.
Fauci has called criticisms from high-profile Republicans “bizarre.”
“I’ve become sort of, for some reason or another, a symbol of anything they don’t like” related to anything “contrary to them or outside of their own realm,” he said this spring.
Florida has seen more coronavirus cases than most states, recording nearly 11,300 infections per 100,000 people to date. It ranks roughly in the middle for deaths per 100,000, according to data tracked by The Post, while early East Coast hot spots such as New York and New Jersey have the highest fatalities per capita, followed by some Southern and Sun Belt states hit hard as the pandemic’s U.S. epicenters shifted.
About 47 percent of Floridians are fully vaccinated, and the state is projected to reach 70 percent vaccination — the Biden administration’s original nationwide goal for July 4 — in late August, according to a Post analysis. Most covid-19 deaths are occurring among the unvaccinated.
To critics, DeSantis spurned medical experts in a public health crisis that overwhelmed hospitals and has led to nearly 39,000 deaths in his state. But others have cheered DeSantis for prioritizing the economy.
In May, Florida ranked roughly in the middle of states on unemployment, according to the latest federal data, and averaged 7.7 percent in 2020, slightly below the national average of 8.1 percent.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson suggested that he should be criminally investigated. Republican members of Congress introduced a “Fire Fauci Act” to remove his salary.
Now White House medical adviser Anthony S. Fauci — a polarizing figure in the U.S. response to the coronavirus — is also part of a rising GOP star’s political branding.
“Don’t Fauci My Florida,” read drink koozies and T-shirts that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s campaign team rolled out just as his state sees some of the highest coronavirus hospitalizations, new infections and deaths per capita in the country. It’s the latest example of Republicans running on their opposition to virus-fueled shutdowns and mask mandates. A pandemic hero to some and villain to others, Fauci has become a high-profile target.
While the merchandise is focused on Florida before the 2022 gubernatorial race there, DeSantis is seen as a potential front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024. A key part of his pitch: He resisted public health experts’ calls for stricter measures against the spread of the coronavirus, spurring criticism on the left and praise from the right for keeping his state’s schools and economy comparatively open.
While discussing the Florida budget this summer, DeSantis said his state’s rosy financial outlook would not have been possible “if we had followed Fauci.”
“Instead we followed freedom,” he said.
His campaign’s “Team DeSantis” Twitter account announced the new merchandise Monday. The Fauci items are listed alongside “Keep Florida Free” hats and red koozies that take aim at face coverings with a DeSantis quote: “How the hell am I going to be able to drink a beer with a mask on?”
The campaign team did not respond to The Washington Post’s questions Tuesday, and Fauci did not respond to a request for comment.
New coronavirus infection numbers plummeted in Florida after vaccinations became widely available, but they have ticked up in recent weeks. The state is reporting daily cases close to four times the national average — 26 new infections per 100,000 residents, the second-highest number in the country. The state’s latest covid-19 death rate is almost double the national figure, and it ranks fourth for current hospitalizations.
Fauci has been a vocal proponent of mask mandates and other measures to mitigate covid-19, the illness the novel coronavirus causes, though he and other federal health officials encouraged schools to open with safety precautions. As a coronavirus adviser to the Trump administration, Fauci criticized some of Florida’s decisions: In the fall, he called the state’s move to fully reopen restaurants and bars “very concerning.”
“When you’re dealing with community spread, and you have the kind of congregate setting where people get together, particularly without masks, you’re really asking for trouble,” Fauci said at the time on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “Now’s the time actually to double down a bit, and I don’t mean close.”
DeSantis avoided statewide mask requirements even as leaders across the political spectrum embraced them amid growing evidence of their effectiveness. This spring, he suspended all virus-based local rules for businesses and individuals.
The governor has encouraged people to get vaccinated but also banned businesses from requiring proof of vaccination, arguing that such measures are a form of discrimination against people who refuse vaccines for medical or religious reasons. He also successfully sued the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to keep it from enforcing its coronavirus rules on cruise ships in Florida, a major part of the state’s tourism industry.
With the new merchandise, DeSantis is trying to cash in on a growing conservative backlash toward Fauci, a longtime government scientist who has advised seven presidents and directs the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Throughout the pandemic, Fauci has drawn ire from the right for advocating restrictions and changing stances on whether the general public should wear masks. Fauci says he and other public health leaders flipped positions as they learned more about the effectiveness of face coverings and after initially fearing that the public would snap up masks needed for health workers.
But the focus on Fauci intensified after BuzzFeed News and The Post recently obtained some of his early pandemic emails. The doctor was a target of criticism and derision at last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas, where ominous black-and-white video clips of Fauci talking drew loud boos from crowd.
Resistance to shutdowns, masks and vaccine promotions came up often at the conservative gathering. “We’ve got Republican governors across this country pretending they didn’t shut down their states … that they didn’t mandate masks,” said South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem (R), another leader seen as a potential 2024 presidential contender.
Fauci has called criticisms from high-profile Republicans “bizarre.”
“I’ve become sort of, for some reason or another, a symbol of anything they don’t like” related to anything “contrary to them or outside of their own realm,” he said this spring.
Florida has seen more coronavirus cases than most states, recording nearly 11,300 infections per 100,000 people to date. It ranks roughly in the middle for deaths per 100,000, according to data tracked by The Post, while early East Coast hot spots such as New York and New Jersey have the highest fatalities per capita, followed by some Southern and Sun Belt states hit hard as the pandemic’s U.S. epicenters shifted.
About 47 percent of Floridians are fully vaccinated, and the state is projected to reach 70 percent vaccination — the Biden administration’s original nationwide goal for July 4 — in late August, according to a Post analysis. Most covid-19 deaths are occurring among the unvaccinated.
To critics, DeSantis spurned medical experts in a public health crisis that overwhelmed hospitals and has led to nearly 39,000 deaths in his state. But others have cheered DeSantis for prioritizing the economy.
In May, Florida ranked roughly in the middle of states on unemployment, according to the latest federal data, and averaged 7.7 percent in 2020, slightly below the national average of 8.1 percent.
Re: The Right's new Civil Right: The Right to Infect
DeSantis is considered a front-run challenger to the former guy in 2024. Do ya think this will help his chances against a democratic challenger in that year? 
Re: The Right's new Civil Right: The Right to Infect
Unfortunately,yes.
From Axios PM today, a pretty good summation of the good, the bad, the ugly and the criminals:
As the delta variant continues to spread in Europe, France and Greece have said vaccines are no longer optional for health care workers — they must get immunized. French President Emmanuel Macron, addressing the country, said: “The equation is simple. The more we vaccinate, the less space we leave this virus to circulate.” Proof of immunity will also be requested at cafes and other venues in France, prompting residents to book vaccine appointments in huge numbers.
Some U.S. organizations are making increasingly loud calls for vaccine mandates for health-care workers, like those new rules in France and Greece. “COVID-19 vaccination should be a condition of employment for all healthcare personnel,” seven medical groups said in a new statement. It’s especially important for workers to get immunized if they are employed at children’s hospitals, experts told The Washington Post, because patients there may be too young to have had the vaccine.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is gambling that a rise in coronavirus cases, what his office is calling an “exit wave,” will pave the way for a reopened England. Britain currently has the second-highest rates of infection in Europe. But Johnson confirmed in a recent news conference that next week, on “Freedom Day,” England will remove pandemic restrictions. Infectious-disease researchers said the plan places the country in unknown territory.
The director of immunization programs in Tennessee said she was fired because her department was promoting ways for teenagers to get vaccinated against the coronavirus.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R) campaign is selling merchandise with the slogan “Don’t Fauci My Florida.” The state's daily coronavirus case counts are roughly four times the national average.
A primetime host on the conservative network Newsmax said vaccines were “against nature” and mused whether viruses are “supposed to wipe out a certain amount of people.”
Re: The Right's new Civil Right: The Right to Infect
As one commentator observed, he'd rather "Fauci My Florida " than " Die with DeSantis."Rach3 wrote: ↑Wed Jul 14, 2021 5:18 pm
The director of immunization programs in Tennessee said she was fired because her department was promoting ways for teenagers to get vaccinated against the coronavirus.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R) campaign is selling merchandise with the slogan “Don’t Fauci My Florida.” The state's daily coronavirus case counts are roughly four times the national average.
A primetime host on the conservative network Newsmax said vaccines were “against nature” and mused whether viruses are “supposed to wipe out a certain amount of people.”
Good to see at least one elected official recognizing that the extreme Right are criminals.But, sad to see humanity is still largely a clown show. From WAPO Coronavirus Newsletter tonight:
"World Health Organization epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove recently observed that “the world needs a reality check.” She meant the pandemic is far from over, despite how people may be acting. That's true even in the United States, where vaccines are far easier to come by compared with the rest of the world. Officials said Friday that cases in the U.S. rose 70 percent in one week. Infection spikes are especially pronounced in the Sun Belt.
As cases rise, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy said that local mask mandates may need to return as well. Murthy told ABC News on Sunday that Los Angeles County's renewed mask mandate was a “very reasonable” measure. But the L.A. mask mandate has not received support from the Los Angeles County sheriff's office. Sheriff Alex Villanueva said his department will not expend “limited resources" to enforce it, instead asking residents for "voluntary compliance” with the mandate.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R) railed against vaccine misinformation among conservatives at a news briefing Thursday. “It’s dangerous, it’s damaging, and it’s killing people,” Cox said of anti-vaccine campaigning on the political right. He said some right-wing leaders are promoting rhetoric that is “literally killing their supporters.” President Biden, meanwhile, further explained his recent comments on the harms of anti-vaccine claims on Facebook, pointing a finger at the sources. The president appeared to refer to the “disinformation dozen,” the small group of people identified by the Center for Countering Digital Hate who contribute an outsize share of vaccine hoaxes.
Abroad, several countries are loosening their restrictions. Beginning Aug. 9, Canada will admit nonessential travelers from the U.S. without quarantines. Monday was “Freedom Day” in England. England has removed virtually all of its pandemic precautions, shedding masks and capacity limits at venues such as nightclubs and stadiums. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson spent Freedom Day in quarantine after exposure to the British health secretary, who recently tested positive.
The Tokyo Olympics are about to begin. The virus is already there. Three members of South Africa's soccer team tested positive from within the Olympic Village, requiring dozens of their teammates to quarantine. A gymnast, an alternate on the U.S. women’s team, has tested positive too. So has 17-year-old U.S. tennis competitor Coco Gauff, who withdrew from the games after her diagnosis."
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