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According to a report from the Daily Beast, a frantic Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) clashed with FBI investigators who were assisting the Florida Republican's father who was being blackmailed -- and then ran to Fox News and lied about it to make the FBI look bad as news broke that he was also under investigation.
As the Beast's Roger Sollenberger wrote, an FBI report details agents' interactions with the younger Gaetz on the day that it was being reported that he had allegedly been sending money to an associate who in turn was reportedly passing along the cash to young women for sexual favors -- raising questions about sex trafficking.
According to the FBI report, investigators were meeting with the lawmaker's father, Don Gaetz, a former president of the Florida Senate, who was being victimized by blackmailers who claimed they had dirt on his lawmaker son, when the younger Gaetz burst in on their meeting.
As Sollenberger wrote, as the elder Gaetz was handing a recording device back to the investigators while asking them to collect more evidence when his son Matt lashed out at the agents.
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"That evening—around 7:45 p.m., according to the FBI report—two special agents rang the doorbell at the Gaetz family residence. They had come for their recording device. The sting was off, but the records don’t explain why, and they don’t mention the Times story," writes the Daily Beast, which then quoted an FBI report stating that "M. GAETZ yelled, ‘He has a lawyer!’ multiple times.”
Sollenberger's report continued, “M. GAETZ yelled, ‘Do you have a warrant to be here?’ and asked his father if they took anything from him. The agents did not respond, the report says. Don Gaetz answered his son: no, they only took the recording device they had previously given him."
Following the altercation, Gaetz appeared on Fox News with host Tucker Carlson in what the controversial Carlson later called "one of the weirdest interviews I’ve ever conducted."
"Minutes later, Matt Gaetz was on national television delivering a broadside against the men he still alleges extorted his family, while at the same time describing a series of events that FBI records show wasn’t accurate," The Beast reports.
Asked for comment about the discrepancy between what Gaetz told Fox viewers and what the FBI report detailed, a spokesperson for the lawmaker issued a statement that read, "Rep. Matt Gaetz stands by every word he has said about this fiasco. Time has only vindicated his claims and resulted in the guilty plea of one of the people involved in a shakedown of his family,” the spokesperson said. “Due to ongoing investigations of other people involved in this shakedown, we will not have further comment.”
Gaetz is still reportedly still under investigation by federal and Florida state officials.
By Brooke Park, The Texas Tribune
May 17, 2022
Librarian Suzette Baker said she faced a hard choice last year when her boss asked her to hide a book on critical race theory behind the counter.
“OK, I’ll look into it,” Baker recalled telling her boss at the time.
But eventually, Baker — a librarian at the Llano County Public Library’s Kingsland Branch — decided to ignore the request. And she continued to vocally protest other decisions, like the ban on ordering new books. She spoke up, telling her supervisors that the library was facing a censorship attack.
By February, the pressure to keep new or donated books from the shelves increased, she said. After waiting weeks for a local library board to approve the books Baker wanted to add to her library, Baker’s boss would tell her that even donated books could not reach the shelves.
On March 9, Baker was fired for insubordination, creating a disturbance and failure to follow instructions.
“This change is inevitable and you are allowing your personal biases, opinions and preferences to unduly influence your actions and judgment,” her dismissal documents stated.
Baker’s experience represents one of many new conflicts facing Texas librarians as book challenges continue to multiply. Many feel left out of decisions on banning books while also facing increased scrutiny from politicians, parents, and county and school district staff. Some have already quit, and others are considering it.
For those librarians working at schools and at public libraries, the pressure to keep some challenged books off the shelves is growing. And some Texas librarians say the insults and threats through social media and the added pressure from supervisors to remove books are taking a toll on the profession.
“It’s the job I’ve always wanted my entire life,” Baker said. “But then it started getting to be a place where it was hostile.”
The Llano County Commissioner’s Court and the county judge, who oversaw some library services and suspended new library book purchases in November, declined to comment, as did the library system’s director, Amber Milum.
Now that Baker is no longer working at the library, she said she worries for the future of Llano County’s library system.
“Immobilized by what the future could look like”
The Texas Tribune spoke to librarians in two independent school districts that have been at the center of book challenges and bans: Keller, northeast of Fort Worth, and Katy, west of Houston. One from each district spoke to the Tribune, but both asked that their names not be published because they feared harassment.
In Keller, local Facebook group pages and Twitter accounts have included pointed comments about librarians being “heretical” and portrayed them as pedophile “groomers” who order pornographic books. After a particular book challenge failed, one commenter included the phrase “pass the millstones,” a biblical reference to execution by drowning.
“It was heartbreaking for me to see comments from a community that I’ve loved and served for 19 years, directed towards me as a person,” the Keller ISD librarian said.
Parents and community members have challenged more than 30 books in Keller ISD since October, including the Bible and Maia Kobabe’s “Gender Queer.” The district has so far removed at least 10 from circulation, and librarians have not been able to order new books since that time, the Keller ISD librarian said.
Several successful Keller ISD board candidates ran this month on campaign promises that they would increase parent involvement in education, including looking harder at school library books.
“I don’t think there’s been a day or an hour in the last 12 months that I haven’t been frightened and immobilized by what the future could look like,” the Keller ISD librarian said.
The Keller ISD librarian said she wants to talk with more parents about the books they want to ban, but so far, only one parent has reached out to her.
“This has been our experience in reality, and we still want to work together,” she said. “Communities have to come together. We can’t keep doing this back and forth.”
“Should I play it safe?”
A librarian In Katy ISD said the wave of book bans has left her less confident about what new books to order for her school library.
She considered ordering a collection of short stories called “Growing Up Trans: In Our Own Words” but worried the book may be targeted for removal.
“Should I play it safe?” she said. “Or should I push the envelope and get a couple and see what happens?”
She worries that librarians will soon be able to fill shelves with only books included on pre-approved lists.
“Are we going to get there?” she said. “Are you just gonna take everything away that I came into this job wanting to do?”
Just north of Austin, at Round Rock Independent School District, the pressure on librarians has been intense, says Ami Uselman, the director of library services for the district. Some of her librarians are reaching breaking points. One came to her in tears, worried about what their church would think about social media accounts calling them groomers. Another quit.
Uselman said parents are walking into schools and grilling librarians with questions about books. Some demanded records for all books purchased in the library, some 30,000 titles. Surprisingly, there’s not been one formal book challenge, she said in late April.
But Uselman’s work phone still lights up with calls, some from people outside of the district, accusing her of stocking inappropriate material in libraries. The pressure to remove books has been easing, but she worries about the next event that could ignite community anger.
“There’s just a lot of misunderstandings,” Uselman said. For example, some parents mistake graphic novels as sexually explicit when instead they are picture and comic books.
“I feel like it has gotten better,” Uselman said. “The problem is just when you think it’s getting better, something else pops up.”
Disclosure: Facebook has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2022/05/17/librarians-texas-book-bans/.
The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.
After two years of Covid disruption, the Cannes Film Festival returns to its traditional May slot for a 75th anniversary edition stacked with celebrated auteurs and Hollywood starpower, including Tom Cruise. The French Riviera gathering, which opens on Tuesday in the shadow of the war in Ukraine, promises to balance nostalgic odes to cinema’s past icons with urgent questions about our troubled times.
The world’s premier showcase for the movies will be hoping for a return to a semblance of normality after the pandemic forced a no-show in 2020 and a scaled-back July gathering the next year. Inevitably, the war raging in Ukraine will loom large over the proceedings, framing the conversation just as it influenced the line-up of films.
There will be no mandatory masks or health passes this year – and no restrictions to partying. Still, the continent’s biggest armed conflict since World War II is likely to ensure cinema’s glitziest showcase opts for unusually sober celebrations even as it marks its diamond jubilee.
For the host country, Cannes marks a welcome lull in an intensely politicized year, sandwiched in between presidential and parliamentary elections – themselves largely overshadowed by the Russian invasion. But there will be no shortage of political material on the big screen, with war, migration, feminist struggles and the climate emergency all high on filmmakers’ agenda.
It’s just as well, because this year’s jury head Vincent Lindon, the French actor known for his politically-charged roles, has already stated his preference for “films that tell us something about the world in which they’re made”.
In the shadow of war
In a sign of just how much Vladimir Putin’s war will weigh on the festival, French director Michel Hazanavicius has agreed to rename his curtain-raiser – a zombie fest initially titled “Z” in French, now called “Coupez!” – to avoid all association with warmongers from Russia.
Mirroring steps taken elsewhere, Cannes organizers have barred Russians with ties to the government from the festival. But they have resisted calls for a blanket boycott of Russian artists, welcoming the prominent Kremlin dissident Kirill Serebrennikov into the main competition for a third time. Having twice run in absentia due to Moscow’s travel bans, the now-exiled director will finally walk the red carpet on Wednesday for his latest feature, “Tchaikovsky’s wife”.
Ukraine will be represented by Cannes stalwart Sergei Losnitza, whose latest documentary explores the destruction of German cities during World War II. In the Un Certain Regard sidebar, focused on emerging talent, Maksim Nakonechnyi’s timely “Butterfly Vision” will examine the ordeal of a Ukrainian soldier coming to terms with her experiences as a prisoner of Russian-backed rebels in the Donbas region.
Footage shot by the late Lithuanian filmmaker Mantas Kvedaravičius before he was killed in Mariupol in April will also be shown by his fiancée, Hanna Bilobrova, in what promises to be one of the festival’s most emotional screenings.
Veterans, newcomers and Tom Cruise
As a bastion of arthouse cinema and the world’s most glamorous film fest, the Cannes Film Festival always needs to strike a balance between auteur worship and Hollywood star power – and between devotion to the past and turning to the future. This year promises plenty of stardust on the red carpet and an intriguing mix of veterans and newcomers.
The flagship Palme d’Or contest sees four past laureates return to the Riviera for more silverware: Hirokazu Kore-eda, Ruben Ostlund, Cristian Mungiu and two-time winners the Dardenne brothers. Other habitués include Park Chan-wook and David Cronenberg, both of them past winners of the jury’s Grand Prix, along with James Gray, Arnaud Desplechin and 84-year-old veteran Jerzy Skolimowski, who was first in competition at Cannes in 1972.
Last year, France’s Julia Ducournau became only the second woman to win a Palme d’Or with her daring “Titane”, starring Lindon. This year, there are five movies directed by women in competition for the Palme, a record for Cannes but still a low percentage compared to other international festivals. They include a trio of French directors led by iconoclast Claire Denis, fresh from her best director win in Berlin. US auteur Kelly Reichardt will finally have her first shot at the Palme, reuniting with her favorite muse Michelle Williams for a self-reflective look at a small-town artist trying to overcome distractions.
Beyond the Palme d’Or contest, Cannes will host more Hollywood star wattage than it has in years, starting with Joseph Kosinski's pandemic-delayed “Top Gun” sequel, starring Tom Cruise in the role that propelled him to global stardom 36 years ago. Cruise will walk the carpet for the first time in three decades and sit for a rare, career-spanning interview.
Later on, Baz Luhrmann will bring his splashy “Elvis” biopic, starring Austin Butler and Tom Hanks, while George Miller, last in Cannes with “Mad Max: Fury Road”, will debut a fantasy epic starring Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton. Ethan Coen will premiere his first film without his brother Joel, a documentary about rock ‘n’ roll legend Jerry Lee Lewis. And actor-director Ethan Hawke will add to the nostalgic feel of the fortnight with a series about Hollywood’s golden couple Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward.
Spotlight on the Middle East
The much-touted return of big stars from Tinseltown is terrific news for Cannes, since the world’s premier movie festival is as much about the glamour as the films. It’s also a financial boon for this otherwise sleepy seaside town of 74,000 inhabitants, which sees its population treble for two weeks each May.
On top of the usual stargazers, the festival will bring some 35,000 accredited professionals to the Riviera – almost twice as many as last year but still short of pre-Covid levels, with pandemic concerns barring some delegates from attending. “Asia isn’t back to traveling,” said festival director Thierry Frémaux, pointing to travel restrictions in China and elsewhere.
There will, however, be a sizable contingent from India, this year’s guest of honor at the Cannes Film Market that runs parallel with the festival. The Middle East and Arab countries will also feature prominently, including in the Palme d’Or race, with the latest Cairo-set thriller by Tarek Ali (of “Le Caire Confidentiel” fame) as well as Iranian dramas by Saeed Roustayi and Ali Abbasi, whose thrilling “Border” won the Un Certain Regard sidebar four years ago.
At “just” four, the French contingent in the Palme d’Or race has been halved from last year, when eight of the 24 films in competition hailed from France. But the home country accounts for just under a quarter of the overall selection, with the likes of Olivier Assayas, Quentin Dupieux and Rachid Bouchareb screening their latest works out of competition.
French directors will get the ball rolling on Tuesday, starting with a rare screening of Jean Eustache’s iconic love triangle “The Mother and the Whore”, half a century after it first kicked off a storm on the Croisette. Hazanavicius’s tribute to horror B-movies will follow for the official curtain-raiser, in an echo of Jim Jarmusch’s zombie fest that opened the festival’s last “normal” edition in 2019 – back in the pre-Covid era.
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