Political News of the Week Roundup Sept 17 2021

Political news of the week roundup discusses the big topic in America. Political psychologist, Dr. Bart ROssi, Ph.D. joins Flrodia ABC affiliate Wink News to discuss the J6 Justice Rally, the GOP legal challenges against the Biden vaccine mandates, the Recall, and immigration.

Recall Flop

It’s been a wild week in politics. We saw Gavin Newsome trounce Larry Elder in the California gubernatorial recall race.  There have been many recall attempts throughout American history. But of the many successful recalls, from city council members to mayors, and senators, only two referendums were successful in unseating a sitting governor — the recall of governor Lynn Frazier (of North Carolina) in 1921, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, running as a Republican,  unseated Democratic governor Gray Davis in 2003.

Clearly, there was enough enthusiasm at removing Gavin Newsome to get the required petition signatures. During the short effort to unseat him, beginning with the petitions to the election, there was a moment that Republican Larry Elder saw his support rise to almost a dead tie with Newsome in the polls leading up to the polls. As election day came closer, however, Newsome pulled far in the lead, and then on election day captured over 60% of the vote.

California has always been a political quagmire with voters seemingly never happy. As the largest state in the country, with an economy — that if it were a country — that ranks 5th or 6th in the world, it is a behemoth.

There has been debate over the California recall that in the end, the masses saw the need to retain a Governor seen as battling the coronavirus, not dismissing it. Larry Elder was quick to say that if elected that he would end all mandated mitigation efforts; no masks, no vaccines. So one could argue, and many have, that science won the election.  The question remains whether the California vote was a referendum of the men or their policies regarding COVID-19.

Justice for the J6 ‘political prisoners.’ 

The former Trump campaign official that organized the “Justice for J6” — along with representatives Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene — are making the case that the January 6th rioters that stormed the Capital are now “political prisoners.” Do you believe that? I don’t.  The J6 rioters broke the law, period. When BLM was protesting around the country in the summer of 2020, the GOP voices told us that they “all” need to be locked up, because they “all” are terrorists. That they were angry and protesting unarmed black men dying at the hands of police didn’t matter. But now, to hear them tell it, we need to have empathy as to why the J6 MAGA crowd stormed the Capital, threatened the lives of the Vice President, Speaker of the House, and others.

Many seem to forget what we all saw with our own eyes. Thousands of people, some armed, some not, some with lethal intent, some not, who all charged the Capital, caused havoc, disrupted a session of Congress. caused property damage, and caused the deaths of 5 people, and injuries to hundreds of other law enforcement officers. Later, other policemen from that day would commit suicide due to the trauma of the day.

Yet, according to the former president, Donald Trump, and many of his allies, the rioters of J6 were ‘peaceful and loving patriots.’

The big speculation this week, however, is what will unfold during the rally on Saturday, September 18? Republican leaders were unusually quiet this week, publically stating that they weren’t aware of any GOP lawmakers planning to attend.

That didn’t stop Homeland Security from issuing high-alert warnings to local police, the national guard being called up and at the ready, or the re-erection of the sense around the White House and Congress. Having said that, the chatter online seems to suggest that there isn’t any violence planned. The former Trump campaign organizer seems to suggest that the J6 rioters were arrested for expressing their 1st amendment rights at the wrong time and wrong place, nothing more

Political News of the Week Roundup

Vaccine Mandates

The Biden administration got off to a robust start in early 2021 in its fight against COVID-19, issuing a national mask mandate combined with an aggressive vaccine rollout. The result saw the COVID-19 case count and hospitalization rate plummet. Until the Delta variant arrived. It was more transmissible, highly contagious, and more deadly. At the same time vaccination rates began to fall as some Americans refused to get vaccinated, putting themselves, and others at risk. So when I’d see comments on social media saying things such as “it’s hard, but we have to fight for our freedom and resist conformity” it highlights the level of misinformation and idiocy that still exists within the public. The political rhetoric that this health crisis is is a hidden trojan horse to gain control is too ridiculous to delve into; perhaps they should stop posting and spend their time checking under their beds for communists.

By July and vaccinations still lagging among some citizens, there were rumblings of new mandates forthcoming.

President Biden has issued sweeping vaccine mandates for federal workers, and businesses. Contrary to misinformation, that doesn’t mean employees “have to” get the vaccine; it means they have the option of getting the vaccine or submitting to weekly testing.

Nonetheless, while Arizona became the first state to sue the Biden Administration over the vaccine mandates, over twenty others are threatening to follow, as is the RNC.

Hattian crisis at the border. This has been an issue for presidents for at least the past 40 years. If Biden can move immigration reform forward, he will have accomplished something the right and left have argued about for decades. Despite the rhetoric from the Trump supporters “to just shut the border down”, Democrats and Republican lawmakers alike support immigration, they’ve just never been able to come together on what immigration reform should look like.

Border Crisis

To wrap up the political news of the week roundup is the crisis on the U.S. southern border, but then again, we have had an immigration crisis in America for forty years or more. And, ironically, neither Democrats nor Republicans are against immigration. They have different views on illegal immigration, but not immigration as a whole. However, the GOP has mostly resisted calls for immigration reform in recent decades. The illegal immigration problem in the United States is complex and layered. Simply “closing the border” or building a wall will not solve the problem. While Trump supporters are under the belief that Trump ‘solved’ the border problem, the truth is he merely slapped on a band-aide that was always going to fall off and overwhelm the system; a system that his administration systematically gutted, leaving it far less efficient than it was prior. Now it needs to be rebuilt, the processes reset, and the backlog pruned.

Haiti suffered from the assassination of its president, and a devastating earthquake, so there has been a flood of refugees coming to the Unites States. So much so that Texas has some 9,000 people held up under the Del Rio Bridge.

IN THIS EPISODE 

In this short episode, Dr. Rossi comments on the vaccine mandate lawsuits, the California recall election. the Haitian refugee surge at the southern border, and the J6 Justice rally in Washington D.C.

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