Two Republican lawmakers are proposing to permit Wisconsin school officials to decide whether to allow employees who are licensed gun owners to carry firearms on school grounds — a measure Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has already pledged to veto. Is this really the best answer?
It’s not often you find yourself rooting for Big Pharma, but here we are. Then we talk about the asinine behavior of the GOP Legislatures in North Dakota and Tennessee.
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In the wake of Nashville, two Wisconsin GOP lawmakers are proposing a bill allowing school boards to approve concealed carry for employees in their buildings. As you know we can’t trust our teachers to pick out curriculum for our kids but can trust them to carry an armed weapon to keep them safe.
For now, it’s a moot bill since Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has already pledged to veto it. But it’s worth talking about since there are so many other more popular common sense gun control measures that are more popular in Wisconsin.
And, despite the fact that hard numbers show more firearms do not keep people safe, and yet so many Americans still believe the opposite.
Check out some more Gun Lobby Myths debunked by the Center for American Progress.
We don’t often find ourselves on the same side as big pharma, but when we do, it seems like they might be a good friend to have.
Turns out, Pharma industry fatcats are not fans of a Texas federal judge’s ruling last week invalidating the FDA’s decades-old approval of the abortion medication mifepristone… Yesterday, over 300 biotech and pharma executives, signed an open letter calling for the decision’s reversal.
The letter states that if courts can revoke drug approvals “without regard for science or evidence, or for the complexity required to fully vet the safety and efficacy of new drugs, any medicine is at risk for the same outcome as mifepristone.” And if the industry can’t rely on the FDA’s approval, companies may be more reluctant to make investments in new drugs, the letter said. The pharma execs are not alone in seeing the potential for any drug to be unapproved by the courts. Legal experts have warned that controversial medicines—like the HIV preventative PrEP—could be next, and President Biden said Friday that if the ruling stands, no prescription “would be safe.”
Meanwhile, just in case, some Blue states are stockpiling the drug. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said California’s stockpiling up to 2 million pills of misoprostol (a drug that can end pregnancies on its own). Massachusetts announced that it already purchased 15,000 mifepristone pills to keep on hand — which is more than a year’s worth of doses. And last week, Washington state said it bought enough mifepristone for about three years. Meanwhile, some clinics said they’ll continue to prescribe mifepristone until the FDA tells them otherwise.
Last week, the North Dakota GOP-led chamber voted 26-21 to let state employees collect up to $45 a day to pay for meals while traveling within North Dakota, up from $35 currently. The bill, which would cost $1 million in taxpayer money over the next two years, now heads to the desk of Gov. Doug Burgum (R) to be signed into law.
But less than two weeks ago, the Senate rejected a separate bill that would have allocated $6 million over the next two years to provide free school lunches to all K-12 students living at or below 200% of the federal poverty level. This would expand on a federal program that already provides meals to students living below 130% of the poverty level. The bill failed by a single vote
Notably, 13 Republicans voted against the school meal proposal while also backing the reimbursement for state employees.
Some of the best quotes:
Highly recommend reading this from The Daily Beast: GOP’s Plan to Expel Tennessee Reps Backfires Spectacularly.
But the tl;dr is: Rep. Justin Jones made a pledge just after being booted from the Tennessee Assembly last week: “See you on Monday.” He kept his promise. After being expelled last Thursday, Rep. Jones was unanimously elected as the interim successor for the vacancy of Tennessee house district 52 on Monday in less than ten minutes.
You can see some of the footage from yesterday from ABC News:
