Florida & Beyond, and All Opinions

Closures have spread to many suburbs and small towns. Retailers saddled with high debt, overexpansion, shoplifting losses, slumping sales and online competition are shedding stores fast. The reason: Low-income urban households remain in crisis, with high rents and inflation driving up the cost of essentials. Urban chains clustered too many of their own branches close together or too near other chains. And shoplifting has scared away executives.

Their continued widespread bombing has raised the death toll in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, to 18,600. And the growing tension between Biden and Israel’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, broke into the open on Dec. 12. Biden warned Israel that it is “losing support” over the war.

As with every other Napoléon movie, Scott’s version will leave viewers with no understanding of the genocidal war to restore slavery that Bonaparte waged against Black revolutionaries in the French colony of Saint-Domingue – what’s known as Haiti today. It’s like making a movie about Hitler without mentioning the Holocaust.

Even Americans who strongly disagree with each other may find common ground when they watch the same TV shows and movies, especially those that make us laugh or cry.
Norman Lear, who died on Dec. 5, 2023, at 101, created television shows that did just that.

Disinformation is deliberately generated misleading content disseminated for selfish or malicious purposes. Unlike misinformation, which may be shared unwittingly or with good intentions, disinformation aims to foment distrust, destabilize institutions, discredit good intentions, defame opponents and delegitimize sources of knowledge such as science and journalism.

U.S. conservatives are using action films, dramas and even kids’ cartoons to build their own alternative entertainment industry, one shielded from the alleged liberal biases of Hollywood. The most prominent recent efforts are two streaming entertainment platforms from right-wing pundit Ben Shapiro and “Lady Ballers” star Jeremy Boreing. But conservatives have a spottier record when it comes to entertainment, whether it’s feature films, pop songs or kids’ shows.

Even before Taylor Swift was named “Person Of The Year” by Time magazine, politicians courted Swiftie voters. The idea that Swifties might be a key demographic in future elections is not far-fetched given their location and age. A majority of Swift’s fans live in the suburbs, the swing territory of American politics. Further, most are Gen Zers or Millennials. These groups encompass an increasing share of the electorate with each passing year.

Hate crimes and hate murders are rising across the U.S., but long-term polling data suggests that most Americans are horrified by bias-motivated violence. They also support hate crime legislation, an effort to deter such attacks. Yet police and state attorneys often resist the quick classification of incidents as a hate crime.

School-based arrests are one part of the school-to-prison pipeline, through which students – especially Black and Latine students and those with disabilities – are pushed out of their schools and into the legal system. Getting caught up in the legal system has been linked to negative health, social and academic outcomes, as well as increased risk for future arrest.

As of Nov. 25, according to health officials in the Gaza Strip, more than 14,000 Palestinians have been killed, the majority of whom are women and children. International humanitarian law prohibits direct attacks on civilians and wounded and surrendered soldiers and on civilian objects such as schools, religious centers and hospitals and other civilian infrastructure. There are exceptions. Israel is not abiding by either.

Dahl’s book is part of a long history of children’s books that feature racist stereotypes – a list that includes six Dr. Seuss books that were removed from publication in 2021. Other children’s classics, such as “Peter Pan” and “Mary Poppins,” have also been criticized for perpetuating racism.

How could a politician engage in such large-scale deception and get elected? What could stop it from happening again, as politicians seem to be growing more unapologetically deceptive while evading voters’ scrutiny?

At least 15 states and cities have dubbed themselves LGBTQIA+ sanctuaries over the last several years. Sanctuaries are generally considered local refuges, where people who are afraid of persecution or discrimination have legal immunity from particular government policies or laws. Tallahassee, Florida, is among the places that is considering declaring itself a LGBTQIA+ sanctuary.

For the past 20 years, Merriam-Webster, the oldest dictionary publisher in the U.S., has chosen a word of the year – a term that encapsulates, in one form or another, the zeitgeist of that past year. In 2020, the word was “pandemic.” The next year’s winner? “Vaccine.” “Authentic” is, at first glance, a little less obvious. According to the publisher’s editor-at-large, Peter Sokolowski, 2023 represented “a kind of crisis of authenticity,” and that the choice was informed by the number of online users who looked up the word’s meaning.

The First Amendment does not protect messages posted on social media platforms. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear five cases during this current term that collectively give the court the opportunity to reexamine the nature of content moderation – the rules governing discussions on social media platforms such as Facebook and X, formerly known as Twitter – and the constitutional limitations on the government to affect speech on the platforms.

What the Nazis did about transgender people was chilling, including imprisonment in concentration camps and execution. It’s a reminder that attacks on trans people are nothing new – and that many of them are straight out of the Nazi playbook.