Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of February 21

It's not just Florida. 15 other 'Don't Say Gay'-style bills are cropping up nationwide

Yet Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill is just one part of a nationwide trend. There are 15 similar bills moving through state legislatures that restrict how textbooks and curriculums teach LGBTQ+ topics, who can be hired and what teachers are allowed to say when it comes to gender identity and sexual orientation.

A House bill in Tennessee would ban textbook and instructional materials that “promote, normalize, support, or address lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) lifestyles” in K-12 schools. Another, in Kansas, seeks to amend the state’s obscenity law to make using classroom materials depicting “homosexuality” a Class B misdemeanor. Legislators in Indiana are working to bar educators from discussing in any context “sexual orientation,” “transgenderism” or “gender identity” without permission from parents.

Where Trump’s border wall left deep scars and open gaps, Biden plans repair job (Washington Post)

In the year since President Biden halted border wall construction, his administration has been developing plans to put its own stamp on Trump’s pet project. Biden has waved off calls from activists to tear the structure down and recycle the steel. The president promised while he campaigned that there would “not be another foot,” but his government has been adding new barriers as it shores up 13 miles of flood levees along the Rio Grande and fixes other segments left in a precarious state by the contractors rushing to build right up to Biden’s inauguration.

In recent weeks, CBP officials have been soliciting input from ranchers, environmental advocates, landowners and others as the Biden administration prepares to spend hundreds of millions for border wall remediation. The money, which will include unused construction funds, will go to clean up worksites, stabilize areas facing erosion and remedy some of the worst environmental damage, while also allowing CBP to close gaps in the wall. The precise details — where and how much money — remain undefined.

NYT: 41 million Americans are QAnon believers, survey finds.

The nonprofit and nonpartisan group found that 16 percent of Americans, or roughly 41 million people, believed last year in the three key tenets of the conspiracy theory. Those are that Satanist pedophiles who run a global child sex-trafficking operation control the government and other major institutions, that a coming storm will sweep elites from power and that violence might be necessary to save the country.

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The results are from 19,399 respondents to four surveys conducted by the institute throughout 2021. The margin of error is plus or minus 0.9 percentage points, the institute said.

More depressing news for the pile.