Day: March 7, 2023

University of Florida Reports Significant Increase in Trans-Identifying Students, Sex Change Treatments in Response to DeSantis Audit

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University of Florida (UF) health centers reported an uptick in the number of transgender patients, fulfilling a request by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration in January, UF student newspaper the Independent Florida Alligator reported.

The Florida Office of Policy and Budget sent a memo to university leaders on Jan. 11 demanding reports about the number of patients treated for gender dysphoria at affiliated health centers. UF Health reported an increase in sex change treatments including puberty blocker prescription, hormone therapy, surgery and behavioral services at its various clinics since 2018, according to the reports obtained by the Alligator.

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Big Ag Set to Crush Family Farmers with ‘Climate-Smart’ Carbon Markets: Report

The Center Square

Family scale farmers in the Midwest may lose a lot to large agribusinesses through carbon markets, a new report says.

According to the report, “Agricultural Carbon Markets, Payments and Data: Big Ag’s Latest Power Grab” by Open Markets Institute and Friends of the Earth, carbon markets programs will entrench chemical-intensive farming practices and increase corporate control of agriculture rather than reduce greenhouse gas emissions like politicians assert.

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Tennessee AG Skrmetti Leads 46 States to Demand China-Based TikTok Comply with Multistate Investigation

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Forty-six attorneys general joined Tennessee in requesting that a state court force TikTok to comply with an ongoing multistate investigation into the platform’s impact on children.

Following TikTok’s failure to comply with a Request for Information (RFI) last week, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti filed a motion Monday to require the Chinese-owned social media company to preserve documents and internal messages, his office announced. Colorado and 45 other states also filed an amicus brief Monday in support of Skrmetti’s motion, arguing that TikTok’s failure to respond impedes “the State’s ability to protect their citizens.”

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Commentary: ‘Geofence Warrants’ Threaten Every Phone User’s Privacy

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The last time your phone asked you to allow this or that app access to your location data, you may have had some trepidation about how much Apple or Google know about you. You may have worried about what might come of that, or read about China’s use of the data to track anti-lockdown protesters. What you probably didn’t realize is Google has already searched your data on behalf of the federal government to see if you were involved with January 6th.

But last month, the federal district court in DC issued an opinion in the case of  one of the many defendants who stands accused of sacking the Capitol in the wake of the 2020 election.

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Report: Florida’s Tourism Industry Will Continue Post-COVID Recovery

The Center Square

With the exception of a dip during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, Florida’s tourism industry has continued to grow since 2019 and predictions are that the good times will continue to roll for the Sunshine State.

A report from Visit Florida, showed that the Sunshine State had approximately 33.2 million visitors in total during the fourth quarter of 2022. This is 6% higher than the same time period in 2021, and 7.8% higher than October 2019 through December 2019.

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Commentary: Your Tax Dollars at Work in Ukraine in Six Charts

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According to a report by Jonathan Masters and Will Merrow, since Russia’s invasion in February of 2022, Ukraine has become far and away the top recipient of U.S. foreign aid. It’s the first time that a European country has held the top spot since the Harry S. Truman administration directed vast sums into rebuilding the continent through the Marshall Plan after World War II.

Since the war began, the Biden administration and the U.S. Congress have directed about $75 billion in assistance to Ukraine, which includes humanitarian, financial, and military support. The number is documented in a report by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German research institute, analyzed by Masters and Merrow. 

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Commentary: Class Divisions Versus Factions, and the Role They Play in a More Perfect Union

RealClearWire

We live in politically divided times. How we describe the sources of our divisions, though, varies. Some focus on principles such as equality, justice, liberty, and order. Some take up policy disputes related to those principles while others look to economic class, race, or even geography.

Does using these lenses to view our divisions violate our founding principles? Since humans will disagree about justice, especially its application, one can defend principled lines. Indeed, our Founders created mechanisms of elections and deliberative bodies to adjudicate those differences. Moreover, one can rightly conclude that race presents a troubling source of division in light of our commitment to human equality.

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Global Carbon Dioxide Emissions Hit Record High

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Global carbon dioxide emissions hit a record high of more than 36 billion tons in 2022, although emissions grew more slowly than anticipated, the International Energy Agency (IEA) reported Thursday.

Emissions from coal surged by 1.6%, to a record breaking 15.5 billion tons, as Europe turned to coal after Russia slashed exports of natural gas following its invasion of Ukraine, the IEA reported. Growth in renewable energy sources mitigated more than half a billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions, helping keep emissions growth below expectations, and accounted for roughly 90% of all new power generation.

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‘Corrupt’: Ramaswamy Says Consultant Promised Second-Place Finish in CPAC Poll for ‘a Few Hundred Thousand Dollars’

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Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said Monday he was offered second place in the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll if he paid a consultant.

“One of the things you see as an outsider is how corrupt the system is. You know something funny about this? I’ve attended CPAC before. I didn’t know it works this way,” Ramaswamy told Fox Business host Stuart Varney. “A consultant calls my campaign shortly after I declared, says ‘Hey, we can get you up to number two on there if you pay us a few hundred thousand dollars.’ I was shocked, you know … there’s a lot of people making money not only off of me, but every presidential campaign.”

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