Republicans: continued

[L'Emmerdeur]

The anti-genocide protesters on college campuses in the US must be getting help from the notorious antisemite George Soros. I mean, look at the identical tents!!1!

'Now Republicans Are Blaming George Soros for Campus Protests'

A number of Republicans are now suggesting—or in some cases, flat-out declaring—that George Soros, often the target of right-wing conspiracy theories, is funding the pro-Palestine protests on college campuses.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), during a NewsNation interview Wednesday, speculated that the billionaire philanthropist and Holocaust survivor was behind the unrest at universities like Columbia in New York, where the city’s police department the day prior removed and arrested student protesters from a building they had broken into and occupied.

“I think the FBI needs to be all over this,” Johnson said on The Hill. “They need to look at the root causes and find out if some of this was funded by—I don’t know—George Soros or overseas entities. There’s sort of a common theme and a common strategy that seems to be pursued in many of these campuses.”

While visiting Columbia last week, Johnson said he and others noticed something that was apparently odd.

“The tents at their little encampment there—many of them matched,” he said with a skeptical tone. “They were the same color, make and model. Hmmm. Did somebody purchase that and send it in? It looks pretty orchestrated to me.”

Johnson’s suggestion came the day after Donald Trump made a similar claim, without naming Soros directly, on Fox News: that protesters were being paid because the former president thought their signs looked similar.

“I really think you have a lot of paid agitators, professional agitators in here too, and I see it all over. And you know, when you see signs and they’re all identical, that means they’re being paid by a source,” he told Sean Hannity.

“When you see that, that means there’s somebody at the top that’s paying or a group that’s paying.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) joined in on the subject with a direct shot at Soros.

“The antisemitic protests at Universities are funded by George Soros and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund,” he wrote Tuesday in a post on X, formerly Twitter, while predictably linking to his podcast.

“These groups are responsible for Jewish students being terrified to go to campus because their lives are being threatened.”

[L'Emmerdeur]

Owning the stupid libs ...

'Proposed North Carolina law would make it illegal to wear masks in public'

Republican senators in North Carolina passed a bill Wednesday revoking a pandemic-era law allowing for masks to be worn in public for health concerns.

The legislative proposal, dubbed the "Unmasking Mobs and Criminals" bill, was passed along party lines 30-15, despite outcries from some Senate Democrats to tweak it, allowing for the exception of using masks in public for anyone who feels their health or the health of their loved ones is compromised without them.

Most of the bill’s focus is on enhancing penalties for people wearing masks during crimes and intentionally blocking traffic during demonstrations.

“It’s about time that the craziness is ... at least slowed down, if not put to a stop,” Republican Sen. Buck Newton, who presented the bill, said on the Senate floor Wednesday.

He could not be reached for additional comment Thursday afternoon.

Democratic Sen. Natasha Marcus said Thursday the bill jeopardizes the health of the public and turns otherwise law-abiding people into criminals.

"It makes it a criminal act to wear a mask to protect yourself or others from communicable diseases," Marcus said.

...

Proponents of the bill have argued it is needed in response to the demonstrations that escalated to police clashes and arrests, including those at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Protests and encampments have popped up at college campuses since Hamas attacked Israel in October. While most campus demonstrations have remained peaceful, there have been violent confrontations at times between police and protesters, some of whom have worn surgical-style masks.

Newton on Tuesday brushed off concerns that getting rid of pandemic-era exemptions for masks was overly broad, saying he expects authorities to use “good common sense.”

“We didn’t see Granny getting arrested in the Walmart pre-Covid,” he said as he presented the bill in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Marcus said Thursday it's not right to put the onus on law enforcement to use discretion.

"That’s not how the criminal law is supposed to work. It’s either a crime or it’s not," she said, adding that the bill's passage in the Senate by Republicans is nothing more than a culture war vote.

"They are clearly trying to feed red meat to their anti-vax, anti-science, anti-mask base with this bill," Marcus said. "I do think it was initially sparked by student protests on various campuses across our state. But the fact is if they just wanted to address those student protests, they did not need to ban masks for everyone."

[Brian Peacock]

Strikes me that the right would probably not be cracking down on protests if they didn't fear the protesters might have some measure of public support.

[JimC]

I wonder how much of this is due to the left-over hatred evinced by many on the right on the whole Covid/mask wearing thing, and how much is down to the publicly advanced position of stopping protestors from hiding their identities...

[pErvinalia]

Most probably the former.

[rasetsu]

There's no exception for health. It's just feeding red meat to the base.