7 Things: Alabama State Superintendent doesn’t appear to understand the point of new law, Ivey signs multiple controversial bills and more …

7. Blanchard: Ivey isn’t doing the right conservative things

• Gubernatorial candidate Lindy Blanchard released a new video from her campaign where she makes claims against Governor Kay Ivey being a “Fauci loving, never Trump liberal.” Ivey has maintained being the frontrunner in the race, while Blanchard is at a distant third.

• Blanchard says in the spot that Ivey “shut down this state and shut down businesses, she left open the abortion clinics.” Blanchard has also claimed that Ivey copied her stance on believing the 2020 election was stolen. The former U.S. ambassador to Slovenia went on to discuss fellow candidate Tim James and said, “You profit when your daddy was governor, so I think he’s a conservative, but I do think he’s connected in other areas where he’ll have to pay back.”

6. New anti-Durant ad released

• A new television ad going after U.S. Senate candidate Mike Durant has been released, and the ad calls out liberal links to Durant’s campaign as well as ties to a “never Trumper.” This is not the first time accusations have been made about liberal ties in Durant’s campaign.

• The ad, which was released by the Alabama RINO PAC, says, “Political candidate Mike Durant – have you checked to see who’s behind Mike Durant? This guy, who worked for Hillary. He’s a top never-Trumper, calling the shots for the Durant political committee. And wealthy donors from California, they’re paying for Durant ads. They’re pushing secretly liberal candidates all over America to keep the Senate liberal. Once you know who’s behind Mike Durant, you can’t support Mike Durant.”

5. Candidates are now directly attacking each other by name in U.S. Senate race

• Until now, most of the most pointed attacks in the Alabama U.S. Senate race were coming from SuperPACs and not the candidates themselves. That strategy allowed the candidate to appear to remain positive while their allies did the negative campaigning.

• That has now changed with Katie Britt’s campaign purchasing attack ads about Mike Durant’s comments on the Second Amendment and U.S. Representative Mo Brooks (R-Huntsville) hitting Britt with a Pinocchio-like image and referencing her support for tax increases.

4. Masking should be a personal decision, according to Fauci

• As the threat of serious infection of the coronavirus has dwindled, Dr. Anthony Fauci has changed his recommendation for what people should do in terms of masking and taking precautions.

• Fauci said, “What’s going to happen is that we’re going to see that each individual is going to have to make their calculation of the amount of risk that they want to take in going to indoor dinner is going to functions even within the realm of a green zone. It’s going to be a person’s decision about the individual risk they’re going to take.” However, he also said, “We may need to revert to being more careful and having more utilizations of masks indoors”

3. Brooks: Confirming Ketanji Brown Jackson was a bad decision

• U.S. Representative Mo Brooks (R-Huntsville) shared his thoughts on Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson being confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court last week. Brooks described Brown as “a radical Left-wing judicial activist.” Potential Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is making it pretty clear he won’t be rushing to confirm any Biden nominees if the GOP were to take the U.S. Senate back.

• Brooks also noted that Brown has a “record of usurping the separation of powers defined in the Constitution.” He called the confirmation a “bad decision for our country,” adding,
  “We’ve got a radical Supreme Court justice now who, quite frankly in my judgment, does not believe in the United States Constitution as it is written and is more than happy to supplant her view of what the law should be rather than what it actually is.”

2. Ivey signed transgender bills; Literacy Act delay not signed yet

• The pieces of legislation that regulate bathrooms at public schools, prevent LGBTQ sexual education for grades K-5, and ban prescribing puberty blockers or performing gender reassignment surgeries for transgender youth have been signed by Governor Kay Ivey. The White House is not happy about this.

• Ivey said of the legislation, “We should especially protect our children from these radical, life-altering drugs and surgeries when they are at such a vulnerable stage in life. Instead, let us all focus on helping them to properly develop into the adults God intended them to be.”

1. Parents don’t want teachers doing this at all — that is the point

• State Superintendent Eric Mackey commented on the Alabama Legislature passing a law prohibiting the teaching of LGBTQ sexual education in grades K-5, saying that previously this wasn’t being taught but now there could be a need for guidelines in case the topic comes up.

• Mackey said, “We don’t have any standards that discuss gender identity or sexuality in K-5, and so we don’t think [the law] has any impact on what we’re doing.” He later said, “I think it could create some tricky situations because let’s say, for whatever reason, it comes up in a classroom.” He also posed a scenario of a child with gay parents, saying, “If a teacher enters a discussion, whether their personal belief might be pro- or anti-, that it doesn’t matter what your personal belief is. The law says they can’t introduce discussion on it.”