Two of a kind
This article contains news and liberal commentary.
A state data scientist who was fired after accusing Florida Gov. Rick DeSantis (in photo, left) — a Republican who has opposed health measures and aggressively pushed for reopening the economy — of covering up the seriousness of the pandemic in his state, and then was “swatted” by armed state police in a raid at her home, has filed a lawsuit alleging the raid was retaliation, was conducted under a “sham” warrant, and violated her rights. Read story here, and my previous articles about this incident here and here.
As a Wisconsin newspaper reported here, Jones had previous run-ins with the police, but despite attacks on her by rightwing media (for example, here), she’s never been convicted of a crime and the only active case is a “misdemeanor count of cyberstalking stemming from what appears to be an acrimonious breakup.” The ad hominem attacks are, at any rate, a distraction; and have no bearing on either the accuracy of her allegations against state officials or the legality of the police raid on her home.
What is incontestible is that Gov. DeSantis has tried to minimize the severity of Covid-19 in Florida, and has interfered with efforts by mayors and other local officials to contain the virus. Complicating things is the fact that Florida, unlike most other states, doesn’t have independent local health departments; its county health offices are under the state health department, which gives the governor much greater control over his state’s public health officials than other governors have, and DeSantis has used it to suppress Covid-19 response measures.
As I’ve written elsewhere on this blog (see, e.g., my article here), the Republican Party as a whole, from Trump on down, appears to have made a deliberate policy decision to forfeit Americans’ lives to keep businesses open and protect business profits. At least, it certainly looks that way.