Well Shoot, TX Gov Greg Abbott Didn't Mean To *Help* The Migrants!
D'OH!
Greg Abbott isn't the worst governor in America — that title belongs to Ron DeSantis, and he's not letting any grass grow under his cloven hooves. But Abbott really does give it the old college try, kicking every immigrant and gay kid he possibly can in an effort to prove to "the base" that he's just as pig ignorant and spiteful as they are.
Take the publicity stunt Abbott pulled earlier this month, when he announced he'd be scooping up migrants at the southern border and busing them to DC to dump on Joe Biden's doorstep.
“To help local officials whose communities are being overwhelmed, Texas is providing charter buses to send these illegal immigrants, who have been dropped off by the Biden administration, to Washington DC … where the Biden administration will be able to more immediately address the needs of the people they are allowing to come across our border," he said at a press conference on April 6.
As noted by the Texas Tribune, Abbott forgot to mention one or two tiny details when he was beating his chest and threatening a wildly unconstitutional usurpation of the federal government's border authority. Like the fact that his busing program is entirely voluntary. Or that it's only transporting migrants already processed by federal immigration authorities. And that the migrants who took the state of Texas up on its generous offer were only delighted to get a free trip across the country.
“We are very thankful for all the help that has been given to us,” Ordalis Heras, a 26-year-old Venezuelan asylum-seeker, told the Tribune on arrival in DC. “Frankly, we did not have the money to get here otherwise, so we are very thankful for the help."
And as the New York Times reports, if the nation's capital isn't the preferred destination, migrants can get off along the way in Alabama, Georgia, or North Carolina, where Santo Linarte López, a migrant from Nicaragua recently disembarked.
“Imagine, how much would it cost to get from here to all the way over there,” he told theTimes, marveling at his luck.
Even the White House was impressed.
“These are all migrants who have been processed by CBP and are free to travel,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said on April 13, “so, it’s nice the state of Texas is helping them get to their final destination.”
But Abbott is still pretending that he's really sticking it to the libs, and you can too if you just SEND MONEY.
"As soon as I announced that, our phones started ringing off the hook with people wanting to help," Abbott told Fox's Maria Bartiromo at the end of a completely unhinged segment where the two pretended that Joe Biden had thrown open the borders and was allowing a flood of criminals in to destroy the country. "And I want to tell Americans where you can go to help pay for a bus trip for migrants to go to Washington DC and make the Biden administration deal with it in person."
Yes, the state of Texas is setting up a GoFundMe for Abbott's stupid stunt. Well, not exactly that. But it has set up a website where you can hand over your credit card to help defray the cost to Texas taxpayers of transporting migrants to their destination of choice. As of this writing, the amount raised was a whopping $63,973. The state declined to tell the Tribune how much it had already spent on this boondoggle.
Gosh, who could possibly have seen this coming? Wonder if the bus company just so happens to be owned by GOP donors ... that would really be shocking!
[Texas Tribune / NYT]
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Which Country Will Putin's Republicans Vote To Give Him Next?
God it's just so appalling.
Lately it seems like if it is a day in the Congress, Democratic leadership is giving Republicans as many chances as possible to affirm that they're on the side of goodness and freedom and not Vladimir Putin.
And a lot of Republicans are going along with it! Congratulations, a lot of Republicans!
Right now, there is some weird shit happening in Transnistria, a region of Moldova. Moldova is a sovereign nation that shares borders with Ukraine, Romania, and Not Even A Little Bit Russia. And look, Transnistria is weird. It's a tiny breakaway region. According to that last link, Moldovans make fun of it for being totally backward. But there are worries Russia is looking to expand its murderous game of grabass with sovereign nations into Moldova. There have been explosions in Transnistria. Nobody's really sure what's up. Sounds like Russia might be trying to do some false-flagging, blaming Ukraine for attacking poor Transnistria.
So this week, the House held a pretty simple vote, "[e]xpressing support for Moldova's democracy, independence, and territorial integrity and strengthening United States and Moldova relations." Literally, you could put any free country in there, except for how Moldova is the one some are worried Putin is training his beady little eyes and his overfilled cheeks toward right now. Just hey, here's a resolution saying we like your democracy and we like you and let's be friends.
Seventeen Republicans voted against that.
17 Republicans vote against \u201cExpressing support for Moldova's democracy, independence, and territorial integrity and strengthening United States and Moldova relations\u201dpic.twitter.com/XBDv9Wjizx— Acyn (@Acyn) 1651094062
What the goddamn fuck?
This is what the goddamn fuck. JoeMyGod shares this tweet, a list of the usual suspects:
17 Russian Republican members of the US House vote to surrender Ukraine\u2019s neighbor Moldova to Putin:\n\nBiggs\nBishop\nBoebert\nCawthorn\nCloud\nClyde\nGosar\nGreene\nHarris\nHice\nHiggins\nMassie\nNehls\nNorman\nPerry\nRoy\nSteube— Tristan Snell (@Tristan Snell) 1651114820
You got Lauren Boebert, Madison Cawthorn and Marjorie Taylor Greene, AKA the remedial learners of the newest class of Republicans. You've got Clay "WHAR BOXES!" Higgins and Thomas Massie and Paul Gosar and Andrew Clyde and Chip Roy and Greg Steube and all the rest. It's just the whole entire Sedition Caucus, that's who.
This is all kind of a thing.
When it was time to suspend normal trade relations with Russia and Belarus in April, the entire Congress voted for it, except three Republicans: Matt Gaetz, Greene, Massie. (Guess Gaetz is cool with Moldova for some reason.)
When it was time to ban oil imports from Russia, 413 House members said yes. Nine said no, including Republicans Gaetz, Greene, Massie, Gosar, Roy, Dan Bishop and Andy Biggs. (And then there were two Democrats, Ilhan Omar and Cori Bush. We noticed.)
An earlier similar resolution in March was opposed by 15 Republicans.
Just a simple resolution backing Ukraine in March? That was fine with everyone except Gosar, Massie and Matt Rosendale.
The exact list of usual suspects in Putin's caucus changes a bit depending on exactly what the bill or resolution is. But that caucus is there, and as William Saletan wrote earlier this month at The Bulwark, it really really loves Russia, and it really really really hates America.
And now they hate Moldova, we guess. We also imagine the number of hours that elapsed between "finding Moldova on map" and voting against Moldova was in the single digits for several of them. You can guess which several we're wildly speculating about.
Can't wait until the House has to vote on Sweden and Finland in NATO. How much Putin-fluffing will there be then?
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Moderna Asks FDA To Approve COVID Vaccine — You Know, For Kids
The vaccine for kids under 5 could finally be here — in June.
At long last, parents of very young kids may soon be able to get their little darlings vaccinated against COVID-19. Moderna today submitted an application to the Food and Drug Administration to authorize its vaccine for use in young children aged 6 months through five years, citing clinical trials showing the vaccine is effective in preventing serious illness in that age group. The FDA is expected to make a final decision on whether to authorize the vaccine for little kids by June.
As of right now, children under 5 are the only age group in the US who aren't yet authorized to get vaccines. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is available for all ages 5 and up, but the Moderna and Johnson and Johnson vaccines are only approved for folks 18 and up.
NBC News reports that the Moderna vax for kids will be two 25-microgram doses given four weeks apart; that's a quarter of the adult dose.
Unlike the adult vaccines, clinical trials of the child dosage found that it isn't especially effective at preventing infection with the coronavirus, but Moderna is pursuing approval because it does prevent serious illness.
Moderna chief medical officer Dr. Paul Burton told NBC News that the lower efficacy against infection was due to the extremely contagious omicron variant, which has dealt a blow to the effectiveness of the current vaccines for other age groups as well.
Still, the two-dose vaccine for young children provides a “good level of protection” and “can protect these kids,” Burton said.
The vaccine will be a huge relief for parents, since one of the scarier things about Omicron is that when it was surging earlier this year, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that kiddos under 5 were hospitalized roughly five times as often as they had been during the earlier Delta variant wave of 2021.
The Omicron wave got a lot of kids and teenagers sick, too, NBC News notes:
The CDC estimates that, by February, three-quarters of children and teens in the U.S. caught Covid at least once, though agency officials noted it remains unclear how long that protection from those previous infections will last or whether it's as robust as the protection provided by the vaccines.
But since the "natural" immunity resulting from previous infection varies widely from person to person, having a vaccine that provides more predictable protection from serious illness will be extremely valuable in keeping kids healthy.
Pfizer is also getting ready to try again for FDA authorization of its vaccine for kids under five; it had submitted an application for authorization of a two-dose vaccine earlier this year, but then withdrew the request because clinical trial data didn't show it was particularly effective, and the FDA asked for more testing with a three-dose regimen instead. NBC News notes that it's not clear yet whether the FDA would authorize the two companies' vaccines for tots "one at a time, or hold off and authorize both at the same time," which might reduce confusion and ensure supplies are available more widely.
A bit farther out, Moderna is also preparing to
seek authorization for a booster dose for the age group. The shot could be available in the fall, [Burton] said, and could be a so-called bivalent vaccine, which targets two strains of the coronavirus in a single shot.
Separately, Pfizer this week has submitted paperwork for authorization of booster shots for its vaccine for kids aged five to 11; currently, boosters are only available for ages 12 and up.
You know what would also be really good? If Republicans in Congress would recognize that the virus is still dangerous (it's still killing 376 people a day), and without a new funding package, there soon won't be any money for vaccines, testing, or treatment, to say nothing of developing and distributing new vaccines and treatments.
Maybe we could start a rumor that the virus is turning people gay. That might shake loose some funding.
[NBC News / NPR / AP / Photo: Heather Hazzan for Self Magazine, Creative Commons License 2.0]
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