And another day of filibusters, fertility clinics, Margaret Atwood reflections, TX can’t support more kids, Eastman wanted to ‘Provide some cover’ for Rs, DeSantis mandates instruction about ‘victims of communism,’ GOP moves to police social media, the baby formula shortage, and sidewalk chalk comes to a close:
"I know that hate will only win if people like me stand by and let it happen." -- Mallory McMorrow, Michigan State Senator
“The only way to save democracy is to vote for Democrats in the fall. And I say that as an ex-Republican turned independent. It doesn’t matter if you disagree with Democrats on some issues. The overriding issue is the preservation of our democracy.” — Max Boot
“POTUS is facing the most sophisticated, coordinated, venomous, dishonest, divisive and insane propaganda machine in American history, bar none. It is ruthless, coordinated and determined to take power. It is strategic and purposeful. It is immensely dangerous and yes, EVIL. I completely and utterly reject the notion that responding and fighting back against a mob of thugs, conspiracy theorists, fascists, crooks, weirdos and scumbags is UNHINGED. It is not. What is unhinged and delusional is not fighting back.” —-Steve Schmidt
Deaths
US: 81,107,296
World: 6,282,290
Cases
US: 83,953,371
World: 519,098,992
Senate bid to save Roe v. Wade falls to GOP-led filibuster. The almost party-line tally promises to be just the first of several efforts in Congress to preserve the nearly 50-year-old court ruling, which declares a constitutional right to abortion services but is at serious risk of being overturned this summer by a conservative Supreme Court. -- Just know that the filibuster will be eliminated by Republicans the first chance they get.
The first women who'd be personally affected if Roe is overturned are already pregnant. If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, the decision would most immediately and directly affect more than 300,000 women who are pregnant now or will be before July in the 13 states with so-called trigger laws. "I don’t wish it on anyone to ever have to make that choice, but not being able to make that choice if they need to is a whole different story.”
A Roe v. Wade reversal could put fertility clinics at the center of the abortion fight. News that the Supreme Court is on the cusp of overturning Roe v. Wade is sounding alarms for an unexpected part of the population: people looking to get pregnant and the doctors who are helping them. The conservative justices, according to a draft majority opinion disclosed last week, are preparing to give states the full power to determine abortion policies within their borders. Experts say that could open up the legal terrain for states to interfere with the fertility process known as in vitro fertilization, in which a sperm fertilizes an egg outside the body.
Idaho lieutenant governor wants harshest US abortion ban. Idaho Republican Lt. Gov. and gubernatorial candidate Janice McGeachin on Monday demanded that Republican Gov. Brad Little call a special legislative session to eliminate rape and incest as legal exceptions to Idaho’s abortion law...McGeachin is running against Little in the Idaho Republican gubernatorial primary and in a statement said the potential Idaho law is insufficient because of numerous exceptions. Besides rape and incest, it also allows abortions to save mothers' lives. -- The cruelty is the point. These people are like Terminators. They can’t be reasoned with, they can’t be bargained with, and they will not stop until they believe they control the bodies of every woman in America. And even then, they’ll think of something else even more cruel to inflict. Remember, these people are not “pro-life,” regardless of what they say. They don’t give a shit about human life. Their actions scream this truth.
“We’ve gone from #MeToo to Medieval Times.” — Sari Beth Rosenberg
‘Enforced childbirth is slavery’: Margaret Atwood on the right to abortion. The US supreme court draft ruling on abortion is an assault on fundamental individual freedoms. The Handmaid’s Tale author reflects on the issues at stake. Perhaps a different way of approaching the question would be to ask: What kind of country do you want to live in? One in which every individual is free to make decisions concerning his or her health and body, or one in which half the population is free and the other half is enslaved? Women who cannot make their own decisions about whether or not to have babies are enslaved because the state claims ownership of their bodies and the right to dictate the use to which their bodies must be put. The only similar circumstance for men is conscription into an army...If the goal is more babies, I am sure many women would oblige if properly recompensed. Otherwise, they are inclined to follow the natural law: placental mammals will abort in the face of resource scarcity. But I doubt that the state is willing to go so far as to provide the needed resources. Instead, it just wants to reinforce the usual cheap trick: force women to have babies, and then make them pay. And pay. And pay. As I said, slavery...A gift that cannot be rejected is not a gift, but a symptom of tyranny...No one is forcing women to have abortions. No one either should force them to undergo childbirth. Enforce childbirth if you wish but at least call that enforcing by what it is. It is slavery: the claim to own and control another’s body, and to profit by that claim.
“I don’t know what’s worse…the fact that we’re still fighting for women’s rights or that the decision makers are mostly men.” -- Annie C
Texas isn’t ready to support more parents and kids in a post-Roe world, advocates warn. More than a quarter of women of childbearing age are uninsured in Texas, the highest rate in the nation, and the state has chosen to cap Medicaid benefits for new moms earlier than other states. This would make many Texans want to avoid pregnancy altogether. But learning about, let alone accessing, contraception can be a challenge in a state that does not require sex education and has narrowed family planning options in recent years. Republican lawmakers, many of whom have focused on restricting abortion access in recent years, have said strengthening the state’s social safety net will now become a top priority. But advocates who have been working on these issues for years say any help will likely be too little, too late. “People fail to realize that this is bigger than abortion access,” Willis said. “We’re going to be setting people up for generational poverty.” — Which is the point.
House GOP says protesting outside justices’ homes is illegal. A federal law prohibits “pickets or parades in or near a building housing a court of the United States, or in or near a building or residence occupied or used by such judge, juror, witness, or court officer” when it is “with the intent of interfering with, obstructing, or impeding the administration of justice, or with the intent of influencing any judge, juror, witness, or court officer.”
Scalise says Republicans will take up Born-Alive Act on ‘day one’ if GOP wins House majority. The bill, which was introduced in the House by Rep. Ann Wagner (R-Mo.) last January, would require that health care practitioners provide care to babies that survive an attempted abortion.
Video shows Russian soldiers killing 2 civilians before they ransack a business. Russian soldiers shot two unarmed civilians as they walked away after an encounter in the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv. CNN has obtained surveillance video of what is now being investigated as a war crime by Ukrainian prosecutors. Both civilians died after the heartless shooting that goes against the so-called rules of war that outlaw the targeting of civilians. CNN has identified the victims. One was the owner of the vehicle dealership that was looted, whose family does not want to be named. The other was Leonid Oleksiyovych Plyats, a 68-year-old grandfather who worked as a guard there.
'Provide some cover': New Eastman emails shed light on his push to overturn Biden's win. Attorney John Eastman urged Republican legislators in Pennsylvania to retabulate the state’s popular vote — and throw out tens of thousands of absentee ballots — in order to show Donald Trump with a lead, according to newly unearthed emails sent in December 2020, as Trump pressured GOP lawmakers to subvert his defeat. This recalculation, he posited in an exchange with one GOP state lawmaker, “would help provide some cover” for Republicans to replace Joe Biden’s electors from the state with a slate of pro-Trump electors, part of a last-ditch bid to overturn the election results. — Republicans have fully tossed aside democracy. They must be stopped from holding power everywhere. They want a totalitarian state where they can eliminate everyone they don’t like. This is not a drill.
“We lock up people for stealing toothpaste and other basic items everyday in this country but somehow John Eastman walks free for helping a criminal POTUS try and steal a democratic election.” — Noel Casler
DeSantis signs bill for Florida students to learn about ‘victims of communism’. Discussions of gender identity and sexual preference are banned in many Florida classrooms because of governor Ron DeSantis’s “don’t say gay” law, alongside dozens of math textbooks blocked for “prohibited topics”. Now the Republican who has loudly condemned what he sees as the “indoctrination” of young people has made another subject compulsory: students must receive at least 45 minutes’ instruction every November about the “victims of communism”…The instruction will begin in the 2023-2024 school year, DeSantis said, and will require teaching about Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro, as well as “poverty, starvation, migration, systemic lethal violence, and suppression of speech” endured under their leaderships in the Soviet Union, China and Cuba respectively…Educators in Florida are banned, however, from teaching students about racial issues, including the history of slavery, if it makes them “feel uncomfortable”, according to DeSantis’s recently signed Stop Woke Act.
Providing gender-affirming care for trans youth in Alabama is now a felony. Unless a federal court steps in to block the law, the state now becomes the only place where doctors can be charged with a felony for prescribing hormones or puberty blockers.
Conservative accusations of LGBTQ people "grooming children" are not new. They're steeped in a long history that feeds off fear. Actual grooming occurs when adults take advantage of a child's vulnerability to manipulate and coerce the child into sexual abuse. Now that meaning has been warped and corrupted to broadly smear the motives of LGBTQ people and those who oppose anti-LGBTQ legislation...The "grooming" smear often expands to include accusations of pedophilia and sex trafficking — conspiracy theories spawned by far-right extremists such as QAnon supporters, propagated widely through social media and right-wing channels and spreading through mainstream conservative thought. -- Fuck conservatives and their fear mongering, their lying, and their hatred towards others.
GOP state legislators move to police social media. Legislators in at least 18 states have considered bills that would impose penalties for censorship or content limits based on ideological viewpoints. The specifics vary, but many of the proposals would allow users who believe their views have been censored or silenced to bring lawsuits in state courts. -- But a business owner who doesn’t want to provide services to a gay couple, or a pharmacist who doesn’t want to sell you birth control because of their personal “beliefs” is okay to do? The GOP is not the party of small government.
Israeli forces kill Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh. She was hit by a live bullet on Wednesday while covering Israeli raids in the city of Jenin, according to the ministry and Al Jazeera journalists. In video footage of the incident, Abu Akleh can be seen wearing a blue flak jacket clearly marked with the word “PRESS”.
Slain Al Jazeera journalist was icon of Palestinian coverage. An Al Jazeera correspondent who was shot dead on Wednesday during an Israeli raid in the West Bank was a highly respected journalist in the Middle East whose unflinching coverage was known to millions of viewers.
A U.S. appeals court ruled Wednesday that California’s ban on the sale of semiautomatic weapons to adults under 21 is unconstitutional.
Why Isn’t Biden Doing More to Address the Baby Formula Shortage? Haven’t heard of the shortage? It’s nothing short of a disaster. 40 percent of formula stock has vanished. Fueled by persistent supply-chain issues and a recent recall from Abbott (one of the four biggest manufacturers of baby formula), retailers are starting to limit how much you can buy if you do happen to stumble upon a rare stash. I can say anecdotally that friends are panicking…It’s against this backdrop that the crisis doesn’t feel as though it’s receiving the kind of urgency with which parents are having to drive from Target to CVS to Walmart on any given day in search of a basic need (food) for their babies. Sure, it’s making a few headlines. But you’d think that babies on the brink of going hungry would give way to a giant federal response. Lawmakers demanding action. Everyday updates. I can’t help but think that isn’t the case simply because the shortage reads like a Woman’s Problem.
Yes, Susan Collins Actually Called the Cops Over a Sidewalk Chalk Message. I Got the Police Report. Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) called the local police department in response to a pro-choice chalk message outside her home in Bangor, Maine on Saturday. The Bangor Daily News reported the incident Monday without naming who called the police. A copy of the police report shared with Mother Jones confirms the complainant was Collins. The note outside the senator’s home was not menacing, but polite, and written in multiple colors of chalk: “Susie, please, Mainers want WHPA —–> vote yes, clean up your mess,” it said. The message refers to the Women’s Health Protection Act, legislation that aims to protect abortion rights nationwide. — She is a pathetic disgrace for American women.
Costa Rica declares state of emergency over ransomware attack. Hackers crippled computer networks across multiple government agencies, including the Ministry of Finance. The official declaration, published to a government website Wednesday, called the attack “unprecedented in the country” and said that it interrupted the country’s tax collection and exposed citizens’ personal information.
A highly contagious strain of bird flu plagues farmers across the U.S. This flu strain is so contagious that it could even enter a closed barn traveling on airborne bits of dust or dirt, leaving farmers like Zimmerman always on edge.
Where are the bodies buried? Climate change is showing us. The shoreline of Nevada’s Lake Mead receding has led to the discoveries of two sets of human remains and cracked open the mystery of the nation's largest reservoir's watery depths and what may be hidden below. Even more bodies are likely to come to light, police say, as water levels continue to drop and drought grips the area, further exposing secrets long obscured in the underwater grave.
Study finds cleaner air leads to more Atlantic hurricanes. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration study links changes in regionalized air pollution across the globe to storm activity going both up and down. A 50% decrease in pollution particles and droplets in Europe and the U.S. is linked to a 33% increase in Atlantic storm formation in the past couple decades, while the opposite is happening in the Pacific with more pollution and fewer typhoons, according to the study published in Wednesday’s Science Advances.
Assisted deaths of two Canadian women living in poverty puts spotlight on euthanasia laws. Unable to work, they each received $1,169 per month – placing them well below the poverty line in Canada’s most populous and expensive province. For activists, the cases have come to represent Canada’s failure to care for its most vulnerable citizens – and raised questions about how assisted-suicide laws are applied. But experts caution the cases are also being used by groups opposed to medical assistance in death (Maid) in an attempt to scale back legislation – rather than looking at how governments can improve people living with disabilities.
Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.
Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.
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