MyPillow guy questions Gov. DeSantis’ Miami-Dade win, report says
ORLANDO, Fla. — Mike Lindell, the MyPillow inventor and fervent Donald Trump backer, is taking his talents to South Beach.
Lindell, the most prominent election conspiracy theorist this side of Mar-a-Lago, has paid tens of millions of dollars to conduct baseless investigations of Democratic voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election that Trump lost. Now, he’s got Gov. Ron DeSantis’ reelection victory in his sights.
The Washington Post reported that Lindell said he wants to investigate DeSantis’s 11-point win in Miami-Dade County in last month’s election, calling it the kind of “deviation” from the norm he’s been fruitlessly looking into in Arizona and other states.
“A Republican hasn’t won Dade County like DeSantis did,” Lindell told The Bulwark, saying he wanted to know “if there (were) problems with the election, things with the machine or whatever.”
—Orlando Sentinel
As Conception boat burned, divers trapped below deck calmly looked for way out, video shows
LOS ANGELES — Following the horrific Conception boat fire in 2019, authorities offered a small solace: The 33 divers and one crew member had died of smoke inhalation and may have perished in their sleep without suffering.
That theory was called into question when some of the dead were found to have been wearing their shoes, leading investigators to speculate they had tried to escape before the ship was engulfed in flames.
Now, more than three years after one of the country's deadliest maritime accidents, a sobering piece of evidence has put the question to rest, showing conclusively that the divers were awake and searching for a way off the boat in the minutes after crew members had jumped into the water.
A 24-second video federal investigators recovered from a victim's badly damaged phone recorded the relatively calm, but increasingly desperate scene as smoke seeped below deck into the dive boat's bunk room, according to relatives of two unrelated victims who viewed the footage, as well as authorities involved in the investigation who confirmed the contents of the video.
—Los Angeles Times
North Carolina teacher files lawsuit saying he was fired for criticizing 'critical race theory'
RALEIGH, N.C. — A professor claims he was unfairly fired from the North Carolina Governor’s School for speaking out against the program’s use of "critical race theory."
David Phillips charges in a lawsuit filed this month in Wake County Superior Court that he was fired in 2021 after some staff members complained about his seminars criticizing critical race theory. Phillips claims he was fired because he says the Governor’s School is hostile toward white, male, cisgender, conservative Christian students and staff.
“By firing him, Defendants trampled on his constitutional rights to free speech, retaliated against him for refusing to adopt the Defendants’ radical ideology, and discriminated against him because of his race, sex and religion,” according to the lawsuit filed on Phillips’ behalf by Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal advocacy organization.
The lawsuit names the state Department of Public Instruction and several current and former DPI and Governor’s School employees as defendants. DPI runs the Governor’s School.
—The News & Observer
Spain’s win for transgender rights almost tore the country apart
Carla Antonelli waved a baby blue, white and pink trans flag as the Spanish congress passed a bill that makes the country one of the few in the world where anyone over the age of 16 can easily change their gender on their identification card. In a sign of how fraught the debate had been, half of the chamber clapped, while the other half stayed silent.
It had become personal for Antonelli, the only trans person to have ever held a parliamentary seat in Spain. In October, she resigned as a member of the Socialist Party in protest over the governing party’s opposition to key parts of the bill, which was sponsored by its own coalition partner, the far-left Unidas Podemos group. Though the Socialists eventually backed down, the months-long battle over the age at which people would be allowed to self-identify hurt the unity of the movement and the public image of trans people, Antonelli said.
“This bill makes cosmic justice for trans people,” Antonelli said earlier this week as it became clear the law had enough support for approval in congress. “I’ve lost shreds of skin in this bloody battle and I ask myself if all that was necessary, or if the same could have been achieved without so much pain.”
Transgender rights had been on the fringes in Spain. But political debate about them has gone mainstream amid controversies more common in the English-speaking world — in addition to the age of self-ID, there’s friction over which bathrooms they can use and whether trans rights come at the expense of women’s rights.
—dpa
