Courtesy of Brittany Loubier-Vervisch

• A Tampa teacher turned into a lost luggage angel during the travel chaos this holiday season.
• The woman texted at least 50 people using the numbers on people’s lost baggage.
• She told Insider she’s “never seen anything like it” as abandoned bags were left at the Tampa airport.

As travel mayhem gripped the nation this week, one Tampa-based science teacher did her part to help spread a little holiday cheer — by helping to reunite weary travelers with their lost luggage.

With thousands of flights canceled over Christmas weekend, Brittany Loubier-Vervisch found herself searching through an “Armageddon of luggage” at Tampa International Airport the day after Christmas. 

Loubier-Vervisch and her husband had already faced some holiday travel woes: They had canceled their Christmas Eve flight to visit family in Ohio because of the weather. 

The couple then made a last-minute decision to fly to Tuscon, connecting through Denver, on Boxing Day. 

“We had no idea that Southwest was going to cancel thousands of flights,” Loubier-Vervisch told Insider, adding that after a few delays, they realized they weren’t going to make it to Tuscon on Monday, so they canceled that flight, too. 

While her husband stayed put in Southwest Airlines’ customer service line at the airport to figure out how to get their luggage back, Loubier-Vervisch — frustrated with the long wait — decided to head to Southwest and Spirt Airlines’ joint baggage claim to look for their bags herself. 

Loubier-Vervisch said she’d “never seen anything like it”: “hundreds, if not thousands” of bags piled up at the baggage claim from flights all over the country.  

Faced with a mountain of baggage, she realized that she could probably reunite some travelers with their own by texting the number listed on the luggage tag while looking for her own. 

“I was circling through the baggage claims as stuff was coming off the line and being piled up and if there was a tag on it with a number, I sent a text,” Loubier-Vervisch said.

Loubier-Vervisch said she sent at least 50 text messages on Monday while searching for her own bag.

A lot of the bags that ended up in Tampa were either sent there from another location where the traveler didn’t make it on the flight or were left behind by travelers who made it out of Tampa without their bags, she said. 

The rest, Loubier-Vervisch added, were left behind because of cancelations at the airport. 

Loubier-Vervisch said she was “just trying to help people so they knew where their bags were because people were all over the United States.” She added that travelers mistook her for an airport employee. 

“I was like walking through the bags, I was like, ‘Oh, here’s your bags. Is this your name?’ And they were like, ‘Yes,'” Loubier-Vervisch explained. “I’m like, ‘Oh, here’s your other bags.’ And they were like, ‘Do you work here?'”

She said the people in the airport who had been waiting for their bags “for hours” were thankful for her initiative. As for the people she texted, she said they were generally grateful for her tip, with some asking her to give their phone numbers and addresses to Southwest to ship their luggage out. 

“It was an inconvenience for us,” Loubier-Vervisch admitted, “But for people that had no idea where in the United States their luggage could possibly be, I was like, ‘Well if I at least tell them it’s in Tampa, they know it’s not still where they were, where they were going or you know, they can figure out where it is and at least know where to look for it.’ “

The teacher’s heroics didn’t go unnoticed. One lucky traveler shared her text message on Twitter, writing: “Thank you to the random stranger who texted me that my suitcase was in fact in Tampa. You are a lifesaver!”

Loubier-Vervisch and her husband eventually found their bags around 4:30 p.m. — four hours after canceling their flight. But it was time well spent, she said. 

“I’m a teacher, I help people, that’s what I do,” Loubier-Vervisch told Insider. “Anybody can do something … What I did was very small, but if everybody does something, it can have a ripple effect.” 

David Peinado/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

• SCOTUS on Tuesday kept a controversial immigration policy implemented under former President Donald Trump in place.
• The policy enables the United States to quickly expel asylum seekers at the border on the basis of public health concerns.
• “We are a court of law, not policymakers of last resort,” conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday kept a controversial immigration policy implemented under former President Donald Trump in place, allowing the US to turn away asylum seekers at the border.

The policy, known as Title 42, was set to expire last week but 19 Republican-led states filed an emergency request at the Supreme Court, urging the justices to maintain it.

In response, Chief Justice John Roberts temporarily halted the policy’s termination, and Tuesday’s ruling represents an extension of that pause. The nation’s highest court announced that it would hear oral arguments on the dispute in February.

The justices voted 5-4 to grant the Republican-led states’ request, with conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch joining the three liberal members in voting against the plea.

The move delivers a devastating blow to immigration advocates, who have long been fighting for an end to the controversial policy, first enacted at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. The policy enables the United States to quickly expel asylum seekers at the border on the basis of public health concerns.

Gorsuch, appointed by Trump, wrote in a dissenting opinion that the court’s decisions are “unwise.”

“But the current border crisis is not a COVID crisis. And courts should not be in the business of perpetuating administrative edicts designed for one emergency only because elected officials have failed to address a different emergency,” Gorsuch, joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, wrote. “We are a court of law, not policymakers of last resort.”

This story is developing. Please check back for updates.

I hope all Palmer Report readers had a very nice holiday weekend. So the new year is coming up quickly. In just a few days, it will be 2023. And now the countdown to hell has started. This, of course, is the day when the GOP assumes control of the house, and the fight for Speaker begins in earnest.

Who will it be? Not Kevin McCarthy if things stay as they are now. He doesn’t have the votes, and some are predicting he never will. Others say Kevin might make a last-minute comeback. But it’ll be tough for the embittered coward. Will he make a touchdown, or will he screw this up as he screws up everything else?

And if not Kevin, then who? Steve Scalise? Gym Jordan? Elise Stefanik? Liz Cheney? All have been mentioned as possible contenders. And here’s the million dollar question, the one political animals such as myself are burning with. What if NOBODY gets the votes?

The House Speaker fight is promising to be exhaustive, long, and vicious. And the gloves will be off, the claws will be out, and the infighting will begin as the players begin to eat each alive while the whole world watches. Welcome to hell, republicans.

The post House Republicans’ attempt at finding a Speaker just keeps getting uglier appeared first on Palmer Report.

George Santos, the newly elected Republican representative from Long Island, finally admitted on Dec. 26 that he lied about his resume and academic history. Yet his transgressions go far beyond a sin of “embellishing” his professional history, as Santos continues to claim Jewish ancestry. Not only does Santos still assert his Jewish heritage, (“I said I was Jew-ish”) but he claimed his European-born grandparents fled anti-Jewish persecution during World War II, coming to Brazil.

Santos is far from the first person to claim an ethnic minority identity that they have not lived. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren said she had Native American ancestry, Rachel Dolezal spent years cosplaying as a Black woman. And former George Washington University professor Jessica Krug played ethnic musical chairs. It seems that claiming an identity for clout has become popular.

As antisemitism rises across the country, one might wonder who in their right mind would lie about being a member of the tribe. Santos alleged that his grandparents fled Nazi Europe during the Holocaust, and continues to deny the evidence showing his maternal grandparents were born in Brazil. What is there to gain by taking on the racial or ethnic identity of a group that faces discrimination? The celebration of oppressed identities is fueling a race to the bottom while depending on stereotypes and tropes for status. 

Some argue that there is a certain power in claiming oppression, that because of the shift in societal winds, being a member of the marginalized class earns certain privileges like elevated social status and the ability to speak loudly about oppression. “Playing the race card,” as this argument has been described colloquially, has been used to deny bigotry and discrimination and ignore the realities of racism.

With ideology increasingly demanding that only those with specific lived experiences be allowed to be part of the discussion, we are witnessing a growing number of individuals falsely claiming marginalized identities. In other words, the cultural elevation of victimhood has contributed to individuals like Dolezal and Santos, who claim to be a part of victimized communities.

Someone who takes on a racial or ethnic identity from a marginalized group that is not their own may be looking for attention and sympathy. A marginalized group can be elevated and celebrated for its perseverance in the face of bigotry, and for its resistance to assimilation to the dominant society. That attention may entice some to claim membership with oppressed groups. The more victim identities one holds, the more they are celebrated and the more power they may hold. If only members of an oppressed group can discuss oppression, this determines whose voices should be centered and whose should be decentered. Santos was betting that he had a lot to gain and little to lose by making false assertions about his ethnic identity.

As a Black Jewish woman, I belong to multiple minority communities, and can speak from personal experience that having one’s identity fetishized is dehumanizing. It also trivializes those who experience discrimination and worse. What isn’t discussed enough is that this type of identity-hijacking is rooted in stereotyping. My son was an undergraduate at George Washington University in 2020 when Krug, who was one of his professors, was unmasked for faking her racial and ethnic identity.

Krug’s deceit was revealed after a student noticed that in published articles, Krug’s identity had shifted from mixed Algerian and German to Afro-Latina. One of the most disturbing things about Krug’s deception was that she used stereotypes to build her fake racial identity, claiming that her mother was a drug-addicted prostitute. Ultimately, Krug admitted that she was Jewish, and did not hold any of the identities she’d previously claimed.

Although despicable, there is power in a victim-identity. Santos and Krug represent examples of  how appropriating another racial identity has become profitable socially, professionally and  financially. Santos was elected to office using a religious identity that he does not hold. Krug won numerous academic awards that were meant for Black women, which came with financial compensation. As an educator, she also betrayed thousands of Black and Latinx students who thought they had found in her a successful role model.

The celebration of victim-identity has contributed to the exploitation of actual victims of  oppression, especially when individuals use false racial identities for their own advancement.  When non-Jews start to define what it means to be Jewish, it’s dangerous for all Jews. We’ve seen what happens when celebrities like Whoopi Goldberg deny Jewish ethnic identity in order to reframe the Holocaust, stating that “the Holocaust isn’t about race” and with some groups of Hebrew Israelites redefining Jews as “fake.” Statements like these not only demean Jewish identity, but they create an atmosphere where cruelty towards Jews is permissible.

In order to address this racial gaslighting, we have to counter the reduction of personhood to one’s racial and ethnic identity and begin to honor individuals for more than their immutable characteristics. We also cannot allow Santos to get away with his falsehoods and be sworn into office.

Jewish identity is under assault enough as it is, without someone weaponizing our greatest trauma for political gain.

To contact the author, email editorial@forward.com. 

The post George Santos exploited Jewish trauma to win an election appeared first on The Forward.

Police in Brazil’s capital, Brasilia, said on Tuesday that a backpack found near where President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was staying that had prompted a bomb scare contained only personal belongings.

News of the bomb squad being called into action just days before Lula takes office underscores the nervy atmosphere in Brasilia after the most fraught election in a generation.

On Dec. 24, Brasilia police said they had foiled a bomb plot, arresting a man with ties to a group of pro-Bolsonaro election deniers camped outside the army headquarters, who have been urging the military to overturn Lula’s victory.

George Washington Sousa, who confessed to making the device and plotting with other camp-dwellers to detonate it, said he had hoped that the bomb would “provoke a military intervention… to prevent the installation of communism in Brazil.”

Earlier in December, a group from the encampment tried to invade the federal police headquarters after the arrest of a pro-Bolsonaro indigenous leader for alleged anti-democratic threats.

The political tensions in the capital have prompted Lula’s team to beef up security protocols for Sunday’s inauguration, incoming Justice Minister Flavio Dino said on Monday.

On Tuesday, Dino said the transition team will ask the Supreme Court to suspend the carrying of firearms in Brasilia for the next few days.

Since Bolsonaro began loosening gun laws in 2019, the number of registered gun-owners has surged sixfold to around 700,000 people.

“We will ask Justice Alexandre de Moraes… to suspend the carrying of firearms in the Federal District between tomorrow (Wednesday) and Jan. 2 or 3,” Dino told journalists.

“The goal is that even people who have permits… have this suspension by court order, so that any carrying (of firearms) in this period will be considered a crime.”

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