JANUARY 2024 IGNOMINIOUS ABUSRDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. Missouri Senator Josh Hawley.  Hawley should know better than anyone how dangerous radical right-wing domestic terrorists are, and how corrosive online propaganda can be to democracy and the public order. They’re the reason no one can watch him walk—or run—anywhere these days without getting the “Benny Hill” theme stuck in their heads.

But even though Hawley ran from Donald Trump’s conspiracy-besotted mob on Jan. 6, 2021, much like a stoned ostrich chasing an ice cream truck, he’s faux-outraged that our government would ever do anything to combat the kind of homegrown misinformation that could have got him killed.

Hawley has introduced a bill—titled The Ending DHS Funding for Liberal Propaganda Act—that aims to make the world safe for conservative viewpoints, so long as they’re suitably bonkers.

Here’s the text of the bill:

The Secretary of Homeland Security may not issue any grant funding to any entity that will use the funds for the development of—

(1) any programming that engages in partisan political advocacy or promotes discrimination on the basis of political affiliation; or

(2) any programming relating to countering narratives or views on political topics, including6 COVID-19, vaccination, media bias, immigration, and crime.

Among the evidence justifying the bill, Fox News mentioned a federal grant to the University of Rhode island’s Media Education lab which it alleged was to create “counter-propaganda” against conservative viewpoints. In its words:

The $700,000 grant was used to address “propaganda and misinformation concerning topics including immigration, racial justice, the coronavirus, and vaccination” and “build on top of concerns about so-called ‘fake news’ and ‘cancel culture.’”

Well, Hawley may have a point here. Without propaganda, misinformation, and fake news, all Republicans have left is hours of b-roll of Donald Trump humping flags and praising dictators. Clearly, the effort to stop deadly propaganda is now an existential threat to the GOP.

Hawley, who runs to the right of most of his Senate colleagues—and to the left … and down the stairs … and possibly to the bathroom, where he tucks his feet up onto the toilet lid so his bear spray-wielding MAGA admirers can’t find him—is incensed by the University of Rhode Island grant, and he’s emphatically saying so.

“This is an outrageous use of federal funds and abuse of power,” Hawley wrote in a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. “All these funds should be clawed back by the federal government immediately, and anyone involved in making this grant should be fired.”

Of course, Hawley, who’s happily endorsed confirmed rapist and proud authoritarian Trump, isn’t concerned about any of Trump’s overtly political proposals—such as vowing to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.” No, as far as that goes, Hawley clearly won’t be happy until he’s the senior senator from the Show-Me-Your-Papers State.

But instead of showing appropriate alarm over Trump’s running roughshod over sacrosanct American values and the plain truth, Hawley is targeting immunologists and demonstrably provable facts on topics ranging from immigration to crime.

He might as well introduce a bill preventing NASA from funding woke spherical-Earth radicals and moon-landing-conspiracy debunkers.

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking: Don’t give him any ideas.

2. Florida State Republican Senator Erin Grall and Rep. Jenna Persons-Mulicka. Not satisfied with their earlier efforts, the architects of Florida’s six-week abortion ban started the year by pushing for another draconian anti-choice law. Grall and Persons-Mulicka introduced similar bills in the state legislature this month that would allow parents to recover civil damages for the wrongful death of a fetus or “unborn child.” The bills state that a pregnant woman cannot be sued but do not include protections for physicians – leading some advocates to believe that the legislation could be used against doctors providing abortion care and fertility treatments.

The House bill has one more hearing before a floor vote; the Senate version has not yet had a committee hearing. It’s likely the bill will become law given the legislature’s Republican supermajority and proven anti-choice track record. Opponents of the bill are holding out slim hope that the Senate, which can sometimes be a firewall against some of the most extreme policies, stops the bill from getting to Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ desk.

Florida Democrats told HuffPost they’re worried the law will be weaponized against abortion providers, OB-GYNs who handle miscarriages and physicians who offer reproductive care such as in vitro fertilization (IVF)..

“As a woman who had to utilize assisted reproductive technology to have my children, it is frightening for me that there’s a piece of legislation moving through the process that would basically make it untenable to utilize this type of medicine to achieve creating a family,” Florida state Senate Minority Leader Lauren Book (D) told HuffPost. “It’s really, really scary.”

Some anti-abortion activists oppose IVF because they believe a fertilized egg is a person, and they consider discarding fertilized eggs to be murder.  Doctors typically implant one fertilized egg at a time and if the patient becomes pregnant, they can choose to discard their other fertilized eggs or freeze them for possible future use.

Not all fertilized eggs will lead to viable pregnancies so physicians discard some. In some scenarios, physicians implant multiple fertilized eggs into the uterus, which can result in a multiple pregnancy. Some patients may choose a fetal reduction that lowers the number of fetuses, improving their chances of a healthy pregnancy.

The majority of U.S. states have some form of civil action for the wrongful death of a fetus but 25 include a viability statute, meaning parents can only file a wrongful death suit on behalf of a fetus if it was viable or past 24 weeks. Other states abide by what is referred to as a “conception” standard in wrongful death suits for fetuses, which normally include the definition of an “unborn child” to be “in utero” or “carried in the womb.”

The Florida bill has the potential to be particularly insidious because it does not define the gestational age of an “unborn child.”

When state Rep. Ashley Gantt (D) asked during a subcommittee hearing about whether the law may impact IVF, Persons-Mulicka did not rule out the possibility.

“Is an embryo an unborn child? I think that falls outside the scope of this bill, but in terms of this bill you’d have to show a wrongful act, which is intentional or negligence in order to recover,” she said. 

After Gantt pressed Persons-Mulicka again on the question of fertility care during the hearing, she added that a person would have to meet a high burden of proof in a scenario where an embryo was terminated.

Many anti-choice organizations are known for weaponizing laws like this one to silence and deter people from getting abortion care. Just the threat of criminalization can discourage people from seeking abortion care, and laws like the one being proposed in Florida could have a similar effect on people looking to undergo fertility treatment to start a family. Even if the pregnant person ends up winning their case, going to court is typically emotionally exhausting and expensive.

3. Wisconsin Republican State Rep. Joel Kitchens. In January, the Wisconsin State Assembly passed a bill that would put a 14-week abortion ban on April’s election ballot, following a ridiculous debate in which Kitchens argued that as a farm animal vet, he knew more about “mammalian fetal development better than probably anyone here”—apparently even more than the women in the room who’d actually given birth.

This wasn’t about health care, the cow doctor asserted. “If you believe that a fetus is a human life, then abortion is not health care. … And in my mind there's absolutely no question that's a life, and I think the science backs me up on that.”

One woman in the room, Democratic state Rep. Deb Andraca, was having none of that.  “You could say this is a matter of local control. I don’t know how you get more local than a uterus. … You may not like the fact that all of us, male or female, vet or doctor, whatever you are or wherever you pray, should be able to make that decision for yourself.”

Kitchens didn’t do the forced-birth cause any favors with his viral moment in the sun. The bill already faced enough opposition that it had to be rewritten to include exceptions for rape and incest, and to require doctors “make reasonable efforts” to preserve the life of the fetus during medical emergencies.

The bill is unlikely to come before voters. The Republican-led state Senate doesn’t seem overly keen on taking up the bill. And even if it passes the Senate, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers will veto it. He made that abundantly clear in his State of the State address this week. “I want to speak directly to women in Wisconsin tonight: I will veto any bill that takes away your reproductive freedom or makes reproductive healthcare any less accessible in Wisconsin than it is today. Period.”

Kitchens just made it all that much easier for Evers by making himself the misogynistic face of the bill and saying the quiet part out loud: As far as the forced-birth movement is concerned, women are basically breeding stock.

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And the January winner is:

All three candidates this month obviously have little respect for freedoms of beliefs, speech, inquiry or choice,  which reflects a lurking evilness in their humanity and makes them solid IGGY candidates, but as for pure evil, I have to go with Josh Hawley as the January IGGY winner-- a long overdue choice. I group him with Donald Trump, Jim Jordan, Lauren Boebert, Matt Goetz, MTG, and Devon Nunes—to name a few-- as the most nauseating politicians I’ve ever had the displeasure to watch or hear.