Dear Commons Community,

The invasion of the Ukraine by Russia has dominated much of the news cycle for the past two months and has pushed aside reporting on COVID. Yesterday marked two years since the World Health Organization declared the Covid-19 outbreak a pandemic. Since then, official reports through the end of 2021 show that 6 million people worldwide have died directly because of this disease.. But researchers estimate in a new study that the global pandemic death toll is actually three times higher than that figure. Some of this excess mortality may have been missed in official counts due to the lack of diagnostic or reporting resources, the study says.

Most counties across the US have rolled back requirements or lifted mandates in some form. Only 2% of Americans – about 7 million people – live in a county where the CDC still recommends universal indoor masking.   More than a third of the people who live in these counties are in Texas and Kentucky. Hidalgo County in south Texas is the most populous county to still have a high community level. 

We need to keep alert to variants as we have seen this week in China where the highest number of daily new local symptomatic COVID-19 infections were reported in two years. The new outbreak is being caused by the highly transmissible Omicron variant.  China reported 214 domestically transmitted cases with confirmed symptoms, the majority in the provinces of Guangdong, Jilin and Shandong. It’s the highest daily caseload since early March 2020 when authorities began to count locally found infections and cases arriving from outside the mainland separately.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

It took 99 days of a contentious lockout, but baseball is back.

An agreement reached yesterday by Major League Baseball’s club owners and its players’ union after months of heated negotiations will allow for a full season, with opening day scheduled for April 7.

The five-year collective bargaining agreement will increase pay for young players and better incentivize teams to compete, among other provisions. Over the last two days, the deal was nearly derailed by a disagreement over creating a draft system for players overseas, but a compromise was struck that will be finalized later.

“Being back on the field is exciting for owners, players, fans as well,” Gerrit Cole, a Yankees star pitcher and a member of a union subcommittee that worked on the deal, said in a phone interview. “I think that’ll be the first step to maybe trying to mend some of the fences with some of the fans that have probably been upset with this process, and rightfully so.”

In a news conference soon after the owners of M.L.B.’s 30 clubs voted to ratify the deal, M.L.B. Commissioner Rob Manfred beamed as he announced the return of the sport. He then tried to strike a more conciliatory tone with players — and fans who watched the labor fight drag out in public and compromise spring training.

“I apologize to our fans,” he said. “I know that the last few months have been difficult. There was a lot of uncertainty at a point in time when there’s a lot of uncertainty in the world. Sort of the way the process of collective bargaining works sometimes.”

See you at Yankee Stadium!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

More than two dozen Americans whose lives were upended by the opioid crisis finally had their long-awaited chance yesterday to confront in court members of the Sackler family they blame for fueling it.

They were unsparing as they unleashed decades of frustration and sorrow on members of the Sackler family who own OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma over the course of a three-hour virtual hearing.

One woman played a recording from when she called 911 to get help for her overdosing son, then called one of the Sacklers the “scum of the earth.” Several displayed pictures of loved ones who died too soon because of their addictions. Many spoke about forgiveness, with some trying to find it — and others definitely not.  As reported by the Associated Press.

“I hope that every single victim’s face haunts your every waking moment and your sleeping ones, too,” said Ryan Hampton, of Las Vegas, who has been in recovery for seven years after an addiction that began with an OxyContin prescription to treat knee pain led to overdoses and periods of homelessness.

“You poisoned our lives and had the audacity to blame us for dying,” he said. “I hope you hear our names in your dreams. I hope you hear the screams of the families who find their loved ones dead on the bathroom floor. I hope you hear the sirens. I hope you hear the heart monitor as it beats along with a failing pulse.”

The unusual hearing was conducted virtually in U.S. Bankruptcy Court at the suggestion of a mediator who helped broker a deal that could settle thousands of lawsuits against Purdue over the toll of opioids, generating billions for the fight against the addiction and overdose crisis and giving Sackler family members protection from lawsuits.

Appearing via audio was Richard Sackler, the former Purdue president and board chair who has said the company and family bear no responsibility for the opioid crisis; he is a son of Raymond Sackler, one of the three brothers who in the 1950s bought the company that became Purdue Pharma. Attending on video were Theresa Sackler, a British dame and wife of the late Mortimer D. Sackler, another of the brothers; and David Sackler, Richard Sackler’s son.

Theresa’s and David’s expressions remained largely neutral as people spoke on video about the pain of losing children after years of trying to get them adequate treatment, about their own journeys through addiction, and about caring for babies born into withdrawal and screaming in pain.

Under court rules, the Sacklers were not allowed to respond to the victims, who were selected by lawyers for creditors in the case. Some victims spoke from a law office in New York; others were at their homes or offices around the country.

Jannette Adams told of her late husband, Dr. Thomas Adams, who was a physician and church deacon in Mississippi and a missionary in Africa and Haiti. He became addicted to opioids after pharmaceutical representatives pitched them, she said. After a terrible decline, he died in 2015.

“I’m angry, I’m pissed, but I move on,” Adams said. “Because our society lost a person who could have made so many more contributions. … You took so much from us, but we plan to, through our faith in God, move forward.”

Kristy Nelson played for the Sacklers a tense recording of a 911 call in which she summoned police to her home the day her son Bryan died of an opioid overdose. The dispatcher asked whether his skin had gone blue; she said it was white. She said she replays the call in her mind daily.

Thursday was Richard Sackler’s 77th birthday, according to public records. Later this month, Nelson said, she and her husband will visit the cemetery on what would have been Bryan’s 34th birthday.

“I understand today’s your birthday, Richard, how will you be celebrating?” she said. “I guarantee it won’t be in the cemetery. … You have truly benefitted from the death of children. You are scum of the earth.”

Her words echoed a 2001 email from Richard Sackler, made public during lawsuits over OxyContin, in which he referred to people with addiction as “scum of the earth.”

Jenny Scully, a nurse in New York, gave birth in 2014 while on OxyContin and other opioids prescribed years earlier when she was dealing with both breast cancer and injuries from an accident. She was told her baby would be healthy, Scully said, but the little girl has had a lifetime of physical, developmental and emotional difficulties.

“You have destroyed so many lives,” she said, pulling her daughter into view. “Take a good look at this beautiful little girl you robbed of the person she could have been.”

The forum was unconventional for the White Plains, New York, courtroom of Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain, who on Wednesday gave tentative approval to key elements of a plan to settle thousands of lawsuits against the company.

Other drugmakers and wholesalers and even a consulting company have also been settling lawsuits over the opioid crisis, which has been linked two more than 500,000 deaths in the U.S. over the past two decades. But Purdue’s case stands out because it was an early player with OxyContin and is privately owned.

The settlement is estimated to be worth at least $10 billion over time. It calls for the Sacklers to contribute $5.5 billion to $6 billion over 17 years to fight the opioid crisis. That’s an increase of more than $1 billion over a previous version rejected by another judge on appeal. Most of the money would be used for efforts to combat the crisis, but $750 million would go directly to victims or their survivors.

The overall settlement, which still requires actions by multiple courts to take effect, provides more than $150 million for Native American tribes and over $100 million for medical monitoring and payments for children born in opioid withdrawal.

The plan also calls for family members to give up ownership of the company so it can become a new entity, Knoa Pharma, with its profits dedicated to stemming the epidemic. In exchange, Sackler family members would get protection from lawsuits over opioids.

The family also agreed not to oppose any efforts to remove the Sackler name from cultural and educational institutions they have supported and to make public a larger cache of company documents.

Purdue Pharma starting selling OxyContin, a pioneering extended-release prescription painkiller, in 1996. At the same time, Purdue and other drug companies funded efforts to get doctors and other prescribers to think differently about opioids — suggesting they be used for some pain conditions for which the potent drugs were previously considered off limits.

Over the decades, there were waves of fatal overdoses, first associated with prescription drugs and then, as prescriptions became harder to obtain and some drugs became harder to manipulate for a quick high, from heroin. More recently, fentanyl and similar drugs have become the biggest killer.

Purdue has twice pleaded guilty to criminal charges, but no Sacklers have been charged with crimes. There are no indications any such charges are forthcoming, although seven U.S. senators last month asked the Department of Justice to consider charges.

The Sacklers have never unequivocally apologized. Last week, they released a statement saying in part, “While the families have acted lawfully in all respects, they sincerely regret that OxyContin, a prescription medicine that continues to help people suffering from chronic pain, unexpectedly became part of an opioid crisis that has brought grief and loss to far too many families and communities.”

Following the hearing, a spokesperson for Mortimer Sackler’s descendants said the family would not make a statement; a representative of Raymond Sackler’s side of the family did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The family of the other brother, Arthur, sold its share of Stamford, Connecticut-based Purdue before OxyContin was developed.

Several speakers noted the lack of an apology, and some called for prosecutors to pursue criminal investigations.

“When you created OxyContin, you created so much loss for so many people,” said Kay Scarpone, who lost her son Joseph, a former Marine, to addiction a month before his 26th birthday. “I’m outraged that you haven’t owned up to the crisis that you’ve created.”

The Sacklers are a greedy horrible family who created a plague in our country.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Conservatives in Florida were seeking to reshape higher education on Wednesday when the state’s Republican-controlled legislature approved a bill that allows the Board of Governors to call for post-tenure review every five years and requires public colleges to seek new accreditors.   

The legislation follows another bill, passed on Tuesday, that allows public colleges to conceal the names of presidential candidates until finalists are chosen. Both bills will now go to Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, who is expected to sign them into law.

Supporters in the Florida Legislature describe the measures as common-sense reforms meant to improve student outcomes, provide more accountability to tenured faculty members, and encourage quality applicants for leadership.  As reported by The Chronicle of Higher Education.

State Rep. Amber Mariano, a Republican, said the state’s public colleges should be able to find the accreditor that best fits their needs — as long as it’s not their current accreditor, the Southern Association of Schools and Colleges Commission on Colleges.

But national higher-education experts and faculty members in Florida say the legislation is part of an attack on bedrock principles that preserve the academic autonomy of faculty members and institutions.

Post-tenure review “undermines tenure and academic freedom when it can result in faculty members getting fired without normal due process that accompanies tenure,” said Gregory Scholtz, director of the department of academic freedom, tenure, and governance at the American Association of University Professors.

Kevin Carey, vice president for education policy and knowledge management at New America, said the narrow issues of accreditation and tenure in the bill fit with the larger issue of state legislators trying to undermine the core value of academic freedom.

In the past, lawmakers from both parties understood that college faculty might speak about things that elected officials didn’t personally endorse, said Carey. That understanding is crumbling, he said, and the emerging attitude is one that says: “I don’t like what these institutions have to say; I want to control them.”

The legislation comes after several contentious clashes between public colleges and state officials. In the fall, news accounts revealed that the University of Florida had prohibited several faculty members from serving as expert witnesses in voting-rights litigation against the state, telling the faculty that such testimony would be “adverse to UF’s interests.”

The emerging attitude is one that says: “I don’t like what these institutions have to say; I want to control them.”

The university quickly reversed its decision, but a federal judge later blasted the institution’s new policy on expert testimony, writing that it contained “myriad constitutional infirmities” and was nothing more than a “dolled-up version” of the previous policy.

Allowing universities to enforce stricter post-tenure reviews — potentially leading to discipline or dismissal — is part of a broader move to chill faculty member’s speech in the classroom, said Kelly Benjamin, a spokesman for the American Association of University Professors.

“It’s no coincidence that this is coming out after the scandal at the University of Florida,” he said.

Several other states have taken on the issue of tenure in recent years, including Iowa, where legislators considered bills over several years to abolish the policy at the state’s three public universities.

Instead of eliminating tenure, Georgia’s Board of Regents, whose members are all appointed by the state’s Republican governor, approved changes in the board’s post-tenure review policy. Those changes, faculty critics say, weaken the protections of tenure. Previously, tenured faculty members who had undergone post-tenure review and had not shown improvement could be fired. But the process for firing said professors closely mirrored what the AAUP recommends.

Now, those faculty members can be terminated “in accordance with the guidelines provided by the chancellor or the chancellor’s designee(s), as well as the institution’s post-tenure-review policies,” the new policy says. That, faculty critics say, opens the door to firing faculty members without appropriate due process.

In Florida, lawmakers’ renewed interest in tenure possibly prompted a proposal by administrators at the state’s public universities.

The system’s provosts have discussed “the essential need of framing a systematic and rigorous periodic review of faculty members who have successfully earned tenure at our universities,” Ralph C. Wilcox, provost of the University of South Florida, wrote in an October 3 email to the president of the faculty senate.

A draft document had been “developed by colleagues at the University of Florida,” Wilcox wrote in the email. It would require tenured faculty members to undergo a comprehensive periodic review every five years.

Faculty members criticized the policy as written, saying it hampered the protections of tenure and ceded too much authority to administrators. Faculty members were already amply reviewed under current procedures, they said.

The proposal seemed to be part of a “general attempt to control academics from outside the university,” Eric Chicken, Florida State University’s Faculty Senate president, told The Chronicle at the time.

During debate on the bill, a half-dozen Democratic lawmakers spoke against the measure, warning that the changes could politicize the tenure-review process and scare away top-quality researchers from the state’s universities. “This is a poor response to the political turmoil we have just lived through at the University of Florida, said Rep. Ben Diamond, a Democrat from Pinellas County.

Requiring the state’s public colleges to seek new accreditation is also seen by higher-education advocates as a response to academic-freedom issues at the University of Florida, as well as to the presidential search at Florida State University.

In November, the accreditor of Florida’s public colleges sent a letter to the University of Florida asking it to respond to reports that it had prevented several faculty members from serving as expert witnesses in a voting-rights trial — a possible violation of the accreditor’s standards for academic freedom.

“Presumably the accreditation language only happened because the accreditor questioned the prohibition of faculty to weigh in” on controversial issues, said Carey of New America.

In May, the accreditor had asked for information about the search for a new president at Florida State University. At the time, Richard Corcoran, Florida’s education commissioner, was a candidate for that position but also a member of the board, which could violate the accreditor’s conflict-of-interest rules.

Accreditation experts have pointed out that other accreditors that would be available for the state’s 12 public universities and 28 state colleges have similar standards and procedures that would have led to similar inquiries.

New rules approved under former U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos make it easier for some colleges to seek a new accrediting agency, but the mandate creates practical challenges, said Cynthia Jackson-Hammond, president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, a group that represents accredited institutions

“We are concerned that Florida legislators may not be aware that going to a new accreditor will take a lot of time and resources,” she said, and the “cost can be voluminous, especially for a small institution.”

Florida’s legislative analysts concluded that costs “may include an application fee between $5,000 to $12,500; candidacy fee, which is between $5,000 to $6,000 for at least two regional accreditors; and costs associated with site visits conducted by the accreditor, averaging $2,500 plus expenses per evaluator. The candidate institution pays all reasonable and necessary costs per site visit, including travel, lodging, food, and possibly honoraria.”

Rep. Mariano, the only Republican to speak during floor debate, said the criticisms of the legislation were all based on fear, and argued that other accreditors were better because they oversee the nation’s top-ranked universities, such as members of the Ivy League. In fact, accrediting bodies such as the Southern Association developed regionally, essentially forming around the institutions that they oversee. In addition, she said, a provision added to the bill allows colleges to go back to the Southern Association if they cannot find another accreditor.

Edward Meadows, president of Pensacola State College, said the state shouldn’t be in charge of determining which accreditor a college chooses. “Any desire to change institutional accreditation should be made at the local level by the governing board,” he told The Chronicle.

This legislation is a direct affront to shared governance and appears to be exactly what Florida policymakers want.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved legislation last night that would ban Russian oil imports to the United States, an effort to put into law the restrictions announced by President Joe Biden in response to the escalating war in Ukraine.

Going further than Biden’s import ban on Russian oil, the bill making its way through Congress would also encourage a review of Russia’s status in the World Trade Organization and signal U.S. support for sanctions on Russian officials over human rights violations, as the U.S. works to economically isolate the regime.

Lawmakers in both parties have been eager to act, willing to risk higher gas prices at home in order to support Ukraine with a show of U.S. bipartisanship. The legislation was approved Wednesday, 414-17, and now goes to the Senate.  As reported by ABC News.

Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, who helped draft the bill, acknowledged it may cost more to fill up tanks at home to stop Russian President Vladimir Putin’s tanks abroad.

“It is one way to demonstrate our solidarity,” Doggett said during the debate.

The remarkable bipartisan resolve in Congress to deter Russia and help Ukraine has acted as an accelerant on the White House’s own strategy, pushing the Biden administration to move more quickly than it would have — a rare example of the legislative branch muscling its way into foreign policy.

Just days ago, the Biden administration was reluctant to ban Russian oil imports, worried about reducing the global energy supply and causing spikes in gas prices at a time when U.S. households already face record-setting inflation.

“We’ve been talking about doing the Russian (energy) ban for a while, and we’re so pleased the president has done that,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said ahead of the vote.

While Russian oil makes up only a small part of U.S. imports, it carries a high price for lawmakers in Congress who viewed the ban as a moral test in blocking an economic lifeline for Putin’s regime. Lawmakers appeared especially moved by Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy’s “desperate plea” for help during a weekend video call with lawmakers.

“We stand with the people of Ukraine, Democrats and Republicans alike,” said Rep. Lloyd Smucker, R-Pa.

House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy said Republicans would have preferred a tougher bill on Russia, alongside efforts to allow more energy production in the U.S. Nevertheless, they wanted to send a show of support.

“Our conference overwhelmingly does not want Russian oil; we want American oil,” McCarthy said.

The GOP leader distanced himself from former President Donald Trump’s views that Putin is a “genius” for his Ukraine strategy.

“I do not think anything savvy or genius about Putin. I think Putin is evil. He’s a dictator,” McCarthy said.

The action comes as Congress is on track to approve nearly $14 billion in military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine, a package that has swelled in size as the brutality of the war intensifies. More than 2 million Ukrainians have fled the country in the most rapid exodus since World War II.

The legislation in many ways is symbolic, since Biden has already announced the Russian oil ban. But the legislative push sets up the next showdown over Russia’s trade status as Congress presses for restrictions on other imports from Russia that the administration has so far resisted.

The White House intervened over the weekend as key lawmakers from both the House and Senate prepared a more punitive bill that would begin to strip Russia of its permanent normal trade relation status — a move that would have opened the door to tariffs on other goods coming from Russia to the U.S.

Amid the administration’s objections, Democratic leaders in Congress shelved the emerging bill rather than forcing a confrontation with their party’s president.

Instead, the new legislation approved by the House stops short of suspending Russia’s normal trade status. Rather, it calls for a review of Russia’s status at the World Trade Organization. The House bill also says the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act should be bolstered to allow the president to impose sanctions on any foreign person who has “directly or indirectly engaged in serious human rights abuse.”

The Democrats in Congress are toggling between pushing their priorities and allowing the Biden administration leeway as it works with allies in Europe and beyond to stop Putin’s war.

Senators, though, remain eager to curb Russian trade with restrictions on imports to the U.S., and Republican senators may try to amend the bill once it comes up for a Senate debate, likely in the week ahead. The bipartisan bill as initially drafted would have suspended normal trade relations with Russia as well as Belarus, the neighboring Russian ally that has been used as a launch point for incursions into northern Ukraine.

Good to see bipartisanship on this issue!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

It was announced yesterday that the first person to receive a heart transplant from a pig has died, two months after the groundbreaking experiment.

David Bennett, 57, died Tuesday at the University of Maryland Medical Center. Doctors didn’t give an exact cause of death, saying only that his condition had begun deteriorating several days earlier.

Bennett’s son praised the hospital for offering the last-ditch experiment, saying the family hoped it would help further efforts to end the organ shortage.  As reported by the Associated Press.

“We are grateful for every innovative moment, every crazy dream, every sleepless night that went into this historic effort,” David Bennett Jr. said in a statement released by the University of Maryland School of Medicine. “We hope this story can be the beginning of hope and not the end.”

Doctors for decades have sought to one day use animal organs for life-saving transplants. Bennett, a handyman from Hagerstown, Maryland, was a candidate for this newest attempt only because he otherwise faced certain death — ineligible for a human heart transplant, bedridden and on life support, and out of other options.

After the Jan. 7 operation, Bennett’s son told The Associated Press his father knew there was no guarantee it would work.

Prior attempts at such transplants — or xenotransplantation — have failed largely because patients’ bodies rapidly rejected the animal organ. This time, the Maryland surgeons used a heart from a gene-edited pig: Scientists had modified the animal to remove pig genes that trigger the hyper-fast rejection and add human genes to help the body accept the organ.

At first the pig heart was functioning, and the Maryland hospital issued periodic updates that Bennett seemed to be slowly recovering. Last month, the hospital released video of him watching the Super Bowl from his hospital bed while working with his physical therapist.

Bennett survived significantly longer with the gene-edited pig heart than one of the last milestones in xenotransplantation — when Baby Fae, a dying California infant, lived 21 days with a baboon’s heart in 1984.

“We are devastated by the loss of Mr. Bennett. He proved to be a brave and noble patient who fought all the way to the end,” Dr. Bartley Griffith, who performed the surgery at the Baltimore hospital, said in a statement.

Other transplant experts praised the Maryland team’s landmark research and said Bennett’s death shouldn’t slow the push to figure out how to use animal organs to save human lives.

“This was a first step into uncharted territory,” said Dr. Robert Montgomery of NYU Langone Health, a transplant surgeon who received his own heart transplant. “A tremendous amount of information” will contribute to the next steps as teams at several transplant centers plan the first clinical trials.

“It was an incredible feat that he was kept alive for two months and was able to enjoy his family,” Montgomery added.

The need for another source of organs is huge. More than 41,000 transplants were performed in the U.S. last year, a record — including about 3,800 heart transplants. But more than 106,000 people remain on the national waiting list, thousands die every year before getting an organ and thousands more never even get added to the list, considered too much of a long shot.

The Food and Drug Administration had allowed the dramatic Maryland experiment under “compassionate use” rules for emergency situations. Bennett’s doctors said he had heart failure and an irregular heartbeat, plus a history of not complying with medical instructions. He was deemed ineligible for a human heart transplant that requires strict use of immune-suppressing medicines, or the remaining alternative, an implanted heart pump.

Organ rejection, infections and other complications are risks for any transplant recipient. Experts hope the Maryland team quickly publishes in a medical journal exactly how Bennett’s body responded to the pig heart.

From Bennett’s experience, “we have gained invaluable insights learning that the genetically modified pig heart can function well within the human body while the immune system is adequately suppressed,” said Dr. Muhammad Mohiuddin, scientific director of the Maryland university’s animal-to-human transplant program.

One next question is what evidence, from Bennett’s experience and some other recent experiments with gene-edited pig organs, may persuade the FDA to allow a clinical trial — possibly with an organ such as a kidney that isn’t immediately fatal if it fails.

Twice last fall, Montgomery’s team at NYU got permission from the families of deceased individuals to temporarily attach a gene-edited pig kidney to blood vessels outside the body and watch them work before ending life support. And surgeons at the University of Alabama at Birmingham went a step further, transplanting a pair of gene-edited pig kidneys into a brain-dead man in a step-by-step rehearsal for an operation they hope to try in living patients possibly later this year.

Patients may see Bennett’s death as suggesting a short life-expectancy from xenotransplantation, but the experience of one desperately ill person cannot predict how well this procedure ultimately will work, said ethics expert Karen Maschke of The Hastings Center. That will require careful studies of multiple patients with similar medical histories.

Transplant centers should start educating their patients now about what to expect as this science unfolds, said Maschke, who with funding from the National Institutes of Health is developing ethics and policy recommendations on who should be allowed in the first studies of pig kidneys and what they need to know before volunteering.

Pigs have long been used in human medicine, including pig skin grafts and implantation of pig heart valves. But transplanting entire organs is much more complex than using highly processed tissue. The gene-edited pigs used in these experiments were provided by Revivicor, a subsidiary of United Therapeutics, one of several biotech companies in the running to develop suitable pig organs for potential human transplant.

As David Bennett, Jr. said:  “this story can be the beginning of hope ” for the many who suffer from heart disease.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Dear Commons Community,

Florida Republicans yesterday passed a bill to forbid instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade, rejecting a wave of criticism from Democrats that it marginalizes LGBTQ people.  The proposal, which opponents have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, now moves to the desk of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is expected to sign it into law.

Since its inception, the measure has drawn intense opposition from LGBTQ advocates, students, national Democrats, the White House and the entertainment industry, amid increased attention on Florida as Republicans push culture war legislation and DeSantis ascends in the GOP as a potential 2024 presidential candidate.

The bill states: “Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.” Parents would be able to sue districts over violations.

Republican Rep. Joe Harding, who sponsored the measure, and other GOP lawmakers in Florida have argued that parents should be broaching these subjects with their children, rather than educators. It would not bar spontaneous discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity in schools but instead is intended to prevent districts from integrating the subjects into official curriculum, Harding and supporters have said.

LGBTQ activists and advocates slammed the decision to move the legislation forward, saying it will harm queer youth by shunning representation and inclusion from classrooms.

“Let us be clear: should its vague language be interpreted in any way that causes harm to a single child, teacher, or family, we will lead legal action against the State of Florida to challenge this bigoted legislation,” said local LGBTQ advocacy group Equality Florida in a statement.

It also said erasing the presence of the LGBTQ community from lessons implies students should be ashamed or should suppress their gender identity or sexual orientation.

“Every LGBTQ young person deserves to attend a school that provides an inclusive, affirmative environment – not one that aims to erase their existence,” Amit Paley, CEO & Executive Director of The Trevor Project, an organization focused on suicide prevention among LGBTQ youth, said in a statement.

Paley added, “We know that LGBTQ youth already face higher risk for bullying, depression, and suicide – and this bill will only add to the stigma that fuels these disparities.”

Legislators against the bill argued that students are aware of gender identity and sexual orientation at a young age, and schools should be allowed to offer safe spaces to discuss these topics.

“Instead of coming up with these vague bills, why are we not supporting the most inclusive, tolerant education and, and society that we can?” Democratic state Senator Tina Polsky said during Monday’s debate on the bill.

Yes to inclusive, tolerant education!

Tony

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6w3FXi0oK5s

Dear Commons Community,

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky invoked wartime British Prime Minister Winston Churchill as he appealed to the U.K. Parliament to do more for Ukraine in the fight against Russia.

Speaking to the House of Commons (see video clip above) in London from his bunker in Kyiv yesterday, Zelensky echoed the words of Churchill in World War II. “We will not give up, and we will not lose,” he said. “We will fight to the end in the sea, in the air. We will fight for our land, whatever the costs. We will fight in the forests, in the fields, on the shores, in the streets.”

The speech drew on one of Churchill’s great speeches from World War II, in which he told Parliament in 1940: “We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans.”

British lawmakers gave Zelensky a rare standing ovation at the beginning and end of his speech.

The Ukrainian president compared his country’s struggle to the U.K.’s battle with the Nazis in World War II. “We do not want to lose what we have … our country, Ukraine,” he told MPs. “Just the same way as you once didn’t want to lose your country when Nazis started to fight and you had to fight for Britain.”

Zelensky documented the Russian invasion day by day, listing the major attacks, describing how civilians have been killed and how those who are left have run out of food and water.

Addressing Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Zelensky said he was “very grateful” for the assistance and weapons delivered 13 days into the conflict. However, he asked the British leader to increase sanctions and called again for a no-fly zone over his country.

“Please increase the pressure of sanctions,” he said. “Please make sure our Ukrainian skies are safe.” He has repeatedly pleaded with NATO to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine to stop Kremlin forces from bombing his country.

Zelensky said that over 50 children had been killed in the two weeks of fighting. “These are the children who could have lived, but these people have taken them away from us,” he told MPs in an emotional address.

The Ukrainian leader also asked Britain to declare Russia a terrorist state, asking, “Please make sure that you do what needs to be done.”

Zelensky has addressed his country and others around the world regularly since the invasion took place on Feb. 24, in what Russian President Vladimir Putin called a “special military operation.”

Last week, a translator was moved to tears while translating an impassioned speech by the Ukrainian president. “We are fighting just for our land and for our freedom,” the translator said, fighting back tears. In another video, shortly after Russia invaded, Zelensky uploaded a video online, showing him with four other officials on a darkened street in Kyiv. “We are all here,” he said. “Our soldiers are here, the citizens of our country are all here protecting our independence, and we are going to continue to do so. Glory to the defenders of Ukraine.”

Regardless of what the outcome is in the Ukraine, the Ukrainians and the world are fortunate to have a Zelensky!

Tony