STUDIES IN STUPIDITY: Florida to ban vaccine mandates, here comes the Panhandle Pokey, and what insurrection?

The Sunshine States leads the march back to the Dark Ages with a new plan that would reverse decades of progress in public health

Back to the Dark Ages

Thanks to Joe Ladapo, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ handpicked surgeon general, Florida is now officially the dumbest—and unhealthiest—state in the nation.

On Wednesday, the anti-vax leader of the state’s health system announced his plan to end all vaccine mandates, which will include eliminating requirements that school children be inoculated against contagious diseases.

It would make Florida the only state in America to do so, would reverse decades of progress fighting disease, and it immediately drew the ire of doctors and health professionals around the country.

Said the American Medical Association of Ladapo’s baffling announcement:

“The American Medical Association strongly opposes Florida’s plan to end all vaccine mandates, including those required for school attendance. This unprecedented rollback would undermine decades of public health progress and place children and communities at increased risk for diseases such as measles, mumps, polio, and chickenpox resulting in serious illness, disability, and even death. While there is still time, we urge Florida to reconsider this change to help prevent a rise of infectious disease outbreaks that put health and lives at risk.”

With DeSantis at his side, Ladapo, speaking at a press conference near Tampa, said vaccination requirements are “wrong and drips with disdain and slavery.”

"Who am I as a man standing here now to tell you what you should put in your body?” Ladapo asked.

He appears to have forgotten his job description. It is the duty of the state’s surgeon general to oversee Florida’s public health system to protect and improve the health of Floridians, not return us to the Stone Age where the average life expectancy was less than 35 years.

DeSantis, for his part, acknowledged ending certain vaccine requirements would “require changes from the legislature.”

Florida law currently mandates that students must be vaccinated against polio, diphtheria, rubeola, rubella, pertussis, mumps and tetanus, although it allows exemptions for religious and medical reasons. Getting rid of those would require the approval of state lawmakers.

However, the Florida Department of Health, which Ladapo runs, could immediately target four vaccines mandated under its own rules: chicken pox, hepatitis B, Hemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) and the pneumococcal vaccine PCV 15/20, according to news reports.

Ladapo’s announcement mirrors the sentiments of the Trump administration and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the founder of an anti-vaccine organization.

While Florida is falling in line with the flat-earth, anti-vax crowd’s anti-science rhetoric, other states are moving in different directions. California, Oregon and Washington — states led by Democrats — have announced they’re creating an alliance to coordinate their own immunization guidelines and preserve access to vaccines.

Kennedy, for his part, is scheduled to testify today before a congressional committee about the chaos he’s created at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with his firing of CDC director Susan Monarez.

Senior leaders at the agency have resigned, and yesterday more than a thousand current and former employees of the Department of Health and Human Services signed a letter demanding his resignation.

James Colgrove, a Columbia University professor of public health, called these developments “very troubling … It’s probably going to be catastrophic. Anyone who knows anything about public health can see this is a train wreck.”

Color blind

Ron DeSantis’s mad spray painters at the Department of Transportation have been roaming the state covering up rainbow crosswalks and other public art, but they tripped up recently in Fort Lauderdale.

The Sun Sentinel reports that “one of the designs that made the state’s crosswalk hit list no longer exists, prompting one city commissioner to question how the state is coming up with its running tally of forbidden street art.”

“I would like to know who’s putting these lists together,” Commissioner Steve Glassman said. “Who are these street art police? And where are they getting their information? They’re citing street art that no longer exists or has even been recognized for improving pedestrian safety.”

Let’s rewrite us some history

House Republicans voted Wednesday to create a subcommittee to relitigate the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol because previous efforts were unfair to President Donald Trump.

A resolution was quietly slipped into a rule on the House floor establishing the subcommittee to be headed by Rep. Barry Loudermilk of Georgia.

Trump, who egged on the insurrectionists’ attack on the U.S. Capitol, continues to insist—despite obvious reality—that he didn’t lose the 2020 election to Joe Biden.

Said Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, a Democratic member of the first committee to investigate the insurrection:

“We welcome yet another chance to remind Americans of House Republicans’ ongoing complicity with — and embarrassing apologetics for — MAGA’s violent insurrection against Congress and Vice-President Mike Pence and Trump’s sinister attempt to overthrow a presidential election.”

Speaking of denying reality

Trump’s tariffs are coming home to roost. For the first time since April 2021, the number of unemployed Americans has surpassed the number of available jobs.

In July, there were 7.24 million job seekers and 7.18 million open positions, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday. The number of open jobs had dropped from 7.4 million in June.

Bye Bye

The Trump administration announced on Wednesday that hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans living in Florida and elsewhere in the U.S. will lose their deportation protections and work permits under Temporary Protected Status by next week.

Until recently, Venezuelans in Florida have leaned Republican in their voting habits, but that’s changing with the rise of immigrant roundups and the institution of prison camps like Alligator Alcatraz.

Best Pals

Victims of Jeffrey Epstein have lambasted the Trump administration for its lack of transparency and demanded the release of all documents regarding the late sex criminal and former self-described best pal of Donald Trump.

Chauntae Davies, among other victims at a press conference on the steps of the U.S. Capitol yesterday, described Trump’s relationship with Epstein:

“Epstein surrounded himself with the most powerful leaders of our country and the world. He abused not only me but countless others, and everyone seemed to look away. The truth is, Epstein had a free pass. He bragged about his powerful friends, including our current president, Donald Trump. It was his biggest brag … His biggest brag, forever, was that he was very good friends with Donald Trump. He had an 8x10 framed picture of him on his desk, with the two of them. They were very close.”

Panhandle Pokey

DeSantis has announced he’s planning a third immigrant prison, this one in West Florida, and, of course, it will have a corny, alliterative name.

“There’s a demand to have way more than just Alligator Alcatraz,” DeSantis said, and that immigration law enforcement efforts in the Panhandle recently showed how far away detainees must be transported.

“We’re actually in the process of figuring out how we can set up a Panhandle Pokey.”

Harvard 1, Trump 0

Harvard University won a crucial legal victory in its clash with the Trump administration on Wednesday, the New York Times reports, when a federal judge said that the government had broken the law by freezing billions of dollars in research funds in the name of stamping out antisemitism.

The ruling may not be the final word on the matter, but the decision by Judge Allison D. Burroughs of the U.S. District Court in Boston rebuffed—for now—the Trump administration’s campaign to dumb down America.

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J.C. Bruce, journalist and author, is the founder of Tropic Press. He holds dual citizenship in the United States of America and his native Florida. Share this email with your friends. They will love you for it.

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