The Florida Supreme Court must decide between now and Monday, April 1, on whether to allow ballot initiatives concerning recreational marijuana and abortion rights on the November 2024 ballot.
Why this matters: Jayden D’Onofrio, chairman of Voter or Tomorrow, told me that those initiatives will motivate young voters to take to the polls in November.
“These are two issues that really, really matter to youth, and it’s fantastic that we’re likely to have that on the ballot, assuming they clears the Florida Supreme Court,” D’onofrio said. “That’s going to provide quite the jump to youth voter turnout in Florida and allow us to understand how much support is there for both of those issues. We estimate it to be well over 70% for the Right to Choose among youth voters.”
Dig Deeper: The justices will determine whether the proposed amendments address a single subject and whether the ballot summary and title are misleading.
- Attorney General Ashley Moody has tried to block both amendments.
Give me a break, while I agree wholeheartedly with everything you say, Christian nationalism isn’t just for breakfast in the South any more. What has happened in my home state of Iowa, for instance, is absolutely appalling. I don’t even recognize it; those are not the people I grew up with, and that includes attending Catholic school. (A meme circulating for a while was the state border sign heralding “Welcome to Iowa! We used to be nice.”)
This is how fascist dictatorships always take root. There isn’t anything that is even the slightest bit special about what’s happening right now in the context of world history: the democracy side didn’t realize until it was far too late that the “Christian” right Trumplican DeSatan worshipers were waging an actual war against democracy. Then once they finally understood just how serious it was–that, for instance, the majority of our “Supreme” “Court” means business in toppling our democracy to increase their own power–the failure to rise to the occasion has been epic.
Never again will I wonder how this sort of animalistic brutality, greed, and power hunger overwhelms the people in a democracy. It doesn’t. It happens because the people in the democracy beg for it, thinking they will be among the ruling class.
Meanwhile they have no idea that their children and grandchildren are getting set up to be the ditch diggers for the plutocracy: undereducated, barefoot, pregnant, and inculcated, while handfuls of tech bros, demagogues, and potentates game each other for their next billion. And in the meantime, GOP voters just adore supporting billionaires sucking off the grant and donation trough by making sure they don’t have to pay any taxes while they commit highway robbery on the world.
Welcome to Atlas Shrugged, otherwise known as Project 2025. The reality is, if the 1% gets half of what they’re after right now–which is all of it–there won’t be enough ditches to dig along their AI super highways. As far as material resources go, here’s a hint: if folks are fine with the Panhandle becoming the source of feudal labor for the mega-sized public-private plantations being orchestrated right now in the green belt by millionaire urban republicans, keep voting for a GOP super-majority in the state of Florida.
https://www.project2025.org/
They voted for trump…twice.
They’re mouthpiece “christians” and hate democracy.
Ms. Pino, many Florida voters love themselves some authoritarian dictates and the last 30 years of regression–as long as it favors their particular flavor of the sweet baby jeebus that bears no actual relation to the things that he preached.
It’s obviously overwhelming in this area sometimes to even comprehend the pretzel logic these folks demonstrate, but the bottom line is they want everything to be “like it used to be.” Incapable of empathy, growth, or logic.
Happy damn Easter…
This is a watershed moment for the State of Florida.
The state Supreme Court isn’t really deciding on the legality of putting these two things in particular on the ballot for voters to decide. They are deciding whether they will
(a) cough up some legal mumbo jumbo to get around our rule of law, providing cover to the dangerous and grossly anti-democratic authoritarianism of DeSantis, every member of his administration, and Attorney General Moody, or
(b) uphold the state constitution and our rule of law.
Which direction they go at this juncture will be a bellwether for whether it takes
(a) many years or
(b) many decades (if ever )
for this state to dig out of the mess the GOP supermajority has made for us in doing DeSantis’s dictatorial bidding.
If the justices appointed by Herr Stiletto Boots fall down and allow him to grind his janky jack boot further into their necks, and one or other of these initiatives don’t make it onto the ballot as a result, we will see this state tumble headlong into irrecoverable fascism for a very long time.
Congratulations, Florida voters. How is everybody liking that super majority you all gave birth to now?