Thursday, April 7, 2022

And another day of history making, concerns about reversing LGBTQ rights, Covid cases running amok in Congress, racism made Covid worse, weak social programs, TX executing an innocent woman, black coaches sue NFL, the W Boson, and dinosaurs comes to a close:

“The very party that claims to be very concerned with protecting children, that’s accusing their enemies of being literal pedophiles, wrote a bill that apparently would have allowed children to get married." — Chris Hayes

Deaths

US: 1,011,096 (+559)

World: 6,195,441 (+4015)

Cases

US: 81,988,278 (+38,031)

World: 496,549,028 (+1,190,175)

Ketanji Brown Jackson Makes History and Becomes the First Black Woman on Supreme Court. The Senate voted 53–47 today to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson as President Joe Biden’s first Supreme Court nominee. Only three Republicans joined all of the Senate Democrats in voting to confirm the court’s first Black female justice.

Historic Supreme Court confirmation comes at a time when some in the GOP are trying to reverse LGBTQ rights. Take a striking point of contention during Jackson’s confirmation hearings last month. Many Republican senators spent part of their questioning time complaining about marriage equality. “The Constitution doesn’t mention the word ‘abortion,’” said Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, “just like it doesn’t mention the word ‘marriage.’” As Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern described the situation, Republican senators “used the Jackson hearings to test the waters with Obergefell (v. Hodges), revealing a newly invigorated push for its reversal. And why not? The crusade against Roe seemed hopeless for decades until, suddenly, it didn’t.” Even if the court doesn’t overrule the landmark 2015 marriage equality case, such an outcome feels more possible now than it has at any other post-Obergefell time. Crucially, LGBTQ equality is being challenged in other ways, too. -- Fuck Republicans. And fuck you if you are one.

Jobless claims fall to 166,000, lowest level since 1968. After briefly rising in mid-January during the peak of the omicron wave, jobless claims have fallen steadily through 2022 as businesses seek to hire and retain as many workers as possible amid historic demand for labor.

Pelosi, Garland, Schiff, others test positive: Covid-19 is running amok in Washington, D.C. Pelosi’s positive test comes during a stretch in which several Democratic lawmakers and prominent officials have contracted the disease. It’s looking like Saturday night’s swanky Gridiron Club dinner could have been a superspreader event. Since then, eight Democratic members of Congress have tested positive, including Reps. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), Katherine Clark (D-Mass.), Scott Peters (D-Calif.), Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), and Derek Kilmer (D-Wash.).

Experts say US suspension of COVID aid will prolong pandemic. In the latest Senate package targeted at stopping the coronavirus, U.S. lawmakers dropped nearly all funding for curbing the virus beyond American borders, a move many health experts slammed as dangerously short-sighted.

Racism Made COVID Worse — Scholars Just Proved It. Once white Americans knew that COVID was wreaking particular havoc in Black communities, they began to show a marked indifference to the pandemic and its risks. That, in turn, resulted in greater opposition to masking, social distancing, and ultimately, vaccines intended to guard against the spread of the virus. The results, of course, were predictable — ultimately, COVID caught up to them too. Now here we are, two years and nearly a million deaths later.

Up to 65% of Africans have had COVID, far more than thought. The World Health Organization said that up to 65% of people in Africa have been infected with the coronavirus and estimates the number of actual cases may have been nearly 100 times more than those reported.

We’re Running Out of Money to Track Covid Variants. An Expert Explains Why That Would Be Very Bad. The United States is at risk of running out of money to fight Covid. Without additional funds from Congress, the White House warned last month, the country will see immediate consequences. Additional, free booster doses for all Americans won’t be possible. Medical providers won’t be reimbursed for treating, testing, or vaccinating uninsured patients. And the federal government won’t have enough cash to make new purchases of treatments like monoclonal antibodies or oral antiviral pills. Much of the media attention around this possible crisis has focused on these immediate effects—some of which we’re already starting to feel. But perhaps equally concerning, experts say, is how a lack of money may hinder our ability to monitor possible future Covid outbreaks…There are times when you ask yourself, have we learned nothing here?

Social programs weak in many states with tough abortion laws. States with some of the nation’s strictest abortion laws are also some of the hardest places to have and raise a healthy child, especially for the poor, according to an analysis of federal data by The Associated Press. The findings raise questions about the strength of the social safety net as those states are poised to further restrict or even ban abortion access following an expected U.S. Supreme Court decision later this year. The burden is likely to fall heaviest on those with low incomes, who also are the least able to seek an abortion in another state where the procedure remains widely available. -- And that’s the point. That’s the goal of Republicans--to keep poor people poor. Rich people will still be able to get abortions, still be able to go to college, still be able to succeed in life. And poor people will still stay poor.

Michigan governor sues to secure abortion rights, vacate ban. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer filed a lawsuit Thursday asking a Michigan court to recognize the right to get an abortion under the state constitution and to overturn a 176-year-old ban in the state that might take effect again if the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade ruling is vacated.

I’m an expert in false confessions who looked at Melissa Lucio’s case. Texas is executing an innocent woman. This is one of the most tragic cases I’ve come across in my 40-year career. It’s important to note here that there is a meaningful difference between the US and UK in terms of what investigators are allowed to do legally to obtain a confession. In the US, unlike in the UK, interrogators are, generally, allowed to deceive and manipulate suspects’ vulnerabilities, despite scientific evidence that such tactics place suspects at risk of false confession. The five interrogators in Lucio’s case used the US law to their full advantage to manipulate Lucio until she ultimately acquiesced to their demands.

2 more Black coaches sue NFL alleging racial discrimination. Two Black coaches joined Brian Flores on Thursday in his lawsuit alleging racist hiring practices by the NFL when there are vacancies for coaches and general managers. The updated lawsuit in Manhattan federal court added coaches Steve Wilks and Ray Horton.

Twitter Launches 'Unmention' Feature That Lets You Untag Yourself From Any Tweet. For now, the feature is available for select accounts on the web version of Twitter.

Google now lets you search by combining images and words. Google wants to make it easier to search for things that are hard to describe with just a few words or an image…With this feature, you could search for a shirt similar to one in a photo but type that you want it with "polka dots," or take a picture of your couch and type "chair" to find ones that look similar. The feature, which the company calls "multisearch" and previewed in September, is now available for US users within the Google Lens part of Google's mobile app.

Why Scientists Are So Worried About the W Boson Right Now. Anyway, there's drama with the W boson. According to a paper published Thursday in the journal Science, 10 years of unimaginably precise data suggest the particle is more massive than our physics predicts. Unless you're a physicist, at first glance, this might sound trivial. But it's actually a major problem for…kind of everything.

Scientists find fossil of dinosaur ‘killed on day of asteroid strike’. The perfectly preserved leg, which even includes remnants of the animal’s skin, can be accurately dated to the time the asteroid that brought about the dinosaurs’ extinction struck Earth 66m years ago, experts say, because of the presence of debris from the impact, which rained down only in its immediate aftermath…The dig has been filmed for a BBC documentary Dinosaurs: The Final Day with Sir David Attenborough; during which the broadcaster will review the fossil finds. “When Sir David looked at ‘[the leg], he smiled and said ‘that is an impossible fossil’. And I agreed,” Manning said.

Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.

Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.