* NBC…

With little fanfare, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation Monday allowing residents to carry a concealed loaded weapon without a permit.

DeSantis signed the bill in a non-public event in his office with only bill sponsors, legislative leaders and gun rights advocates, including the National Rifle Association, in attendance. […]

Florida is now the 26th state in the country to pass some form of permitless carry legislation. The signing comes one week after six people, including three children were gunned down at The Covenant School in Nashville.

“This is a momentous step in the Constitutional Carry movement as now the majority of American states recognize the Constitution protects the right for law-abiding Americans to defend themselves outside their homes without fees or permits,” Randy Kozuch, interim executive director, NRA-ILA, said in a statement, which included a picture of the event. “The carry movement began decades ago and the NRA has been working to get this legislation passed throughout America. Therefore, today is indeed a day to celebrate.”

Opponents of the proposal have said it will increase gun violence, and they said it was telling that DeSantis did not hold a public signing ceremony like he has done in the past for other high-profile bills.

* It should be no surprise that there’s more out of Florida…

Florida’s ban on providing gender-affirming care to new patients went into effect this month after the state’s Boards of Medicine and Osteopathic Medicine voted to approve the rule last year. Under the rule, gender-affirming care includes treatments like puberty blockers, hormone replacement therapy and surgery. The ban makes an exception to allow minors who were already receiving this care before January 2023 to continue their treatments.

“Everybody is in a kind of chaos right now,” said Joseph Knoll, a nurse practitioner and the CEO of Spektrum Health, a community-based health center located in central Florida that specializes in medical and mental health services for the LGBTQ community and beyond. He told me that the new rules leave healthcare professionals who provide this care “feeling helpless.”

Doctors and other practitioners who violate the ban could lose their medical license and be hit with hefty fines. Many are even considering leaving the state, given the uncertainty of future restrictions on their practice. Part of the dismay comes from feeling that the deck has been unfairly stacked. Local news outlets have reported that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis appointed all the members of the “vociferously apolitical” Board of Medicine, several of whom made contributions to his campaign totaling $80,000. DeSantis is reportedly considering running for president in 2024 and gender-affirming care is an issue that many conservative lawmakers have been pushing across the country. […]

Florida, unlike the other states, initially chose not to take a legislative route, instead moving ahead via state medical boards. A bill, though, is currently making its way through the Florida House of Representatives to codify the ban on gender-affirming care. This bill also includes a ban on changing the sex as recorded on a birth certificate, prohibits health insurance providers from covering any treatments related to youth transitioning and prohibits organizations that provide transition-related healthcare to minors from receiving public funds.

Already, this has led to clinics shutting down preemptively. Outlets reported that the Johns Hopkins All Children Hospital in St. Petersburg and Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami, among others, stopped accepting new patients into programs that provided hormones or puberty blockers well before the law went into effect. The fear of prosecution leaves few providers still offering these services.

* Kentucky…

Kentucky state Sen. Karen Berg had to deal with the most devastating thing a mother could imagine.

In December last year, Berg’s transgender son Henry Berg-Brosseau died by suicide. He was just 24 and a prominent LGBTQ rights activist who inspired his mother to run for office. […]

Two weeks later, Berg was awash with grief but had to pick herself up and go to the state Capitol for the 2023 legislative session. She says she felt exhausted. […]

More than two months later, she watched her Republican colleagues, one by one, vote to override a veto on Senate Bill 150, banning all gender-affirming medical care for trans youth in Kentucky including puberty blockers and hormone therapy.

For public schools, the bill restricts which bathrooms students can use and puts limits on discussing gender and sexuality. It also allows teachers to refer to students by their gender assigned at birth.

It’s exactly what her son Henry fought against.

* Mississippi…

House Bill 1020, which would significantly increase state control over Jackson’s judicial system and policing, passed the Mississippi House, 72-41, on Friday, sending one of the most controversial bills of the 2023 session to the governor’s desk as lawmakers wind down their work for the year.

Democratic leadership promised the bill, if it is signed into law by Gov. Tate Reeves, will see legal challenges immediately upon taking effect on July 1.

“Legal action takes place when there is a cause of action. Cause of action does not become effective until the law actually is enacted. As soon as this bill becomes law, there will be lawsuits filed,” House Minority Leader Robert Johnson, D-Natchez, said.

It would create a new unelected court system within an expanded Capitol Complex Improvement District, add temporary appointed judges to the Hinds County court system, increase the boundaries of the CCID and allow Capitol Police to work outside of that area, expanding their jurisdiction to include the entire city, all of which local leaders have opposed.

* Texas…

A federal judge in Texas ruled that at least 12 books removed from public libraries by Llano County officials, many because of their LGBTQ and racial content, must be placed back onto shelves within 24 hours, according to an order filed Thursday.

Seven residents sued county officials in April 2022, claiming their First and 14th Amendment rights were violated when books deemed inappropriate by some people in the community and Republican lawmakers were removed from public libraries or access was restricted.

The lawsuit filed in the US District Court for the Western District of Texas in San Antonio claimed county officials removed books from the shelves of the three-branch public library system “because they disagree with the ideas within them” and terminated access to thousands of digital books because they could not ban two specific titles.

Books ordered to return to shelves include “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents” by Isabel Wilkerson, “They Called Themselves the K.K.K.: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group” by Susan Campbell Bartoletti and “Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen” by Jazz Jennings.

* Wisconsin…

Control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and likely the future of abortion access, Republican-drawn legislative maps and years of GOP policies in the key swing state rests with the outcome an election Tuesday that has seen record campaign spending.

The winner of the high-stakes contest between Republican-backed Dan Kelly and Democratic-supported Janet Protasiewicz will determine majority control of the court headed into the 2024 presidential election. The court came within one vote of overturning President Joe Biden’s narrow win in 2020, and both sides expect another close race in 2024.

It’s the latest election where abortion rights has been the central issue since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last June. It’s also an example of how officially nonpartisan court races have grown into political battles as major legal fights play out at the state level.

All of it has fueled spending that will double, and likely triple or more, the previous high of $15.4 million spent on a state court race in Illinois in 2004. Democrats have spent heavily for Protasiewicz and Republicans for Kelly.