And another day of taking the 5th, an unconstrained DeSantis, using the popular vote instead of the Electoral College, polio spreading in the UK, help for vets, a severe US teacher shortage, and why Americans increasingly doubt the value of going to college comes to a close:
“Imagine being an elected official and saying that—court-approved warrant or not—the FBI can’t legally search the home of elected officials. Fascism is on the ballot this November.” — Seth Abramson
Deaths
US: 1,060,755 (+1114)
World: 6,444,786 (+3293)
Cases
US: 94,348,507 (+219,600)
World: 592,129,086 (+1,028,414)
Trump says he took the Fifth in New York civil investigation. Donald Trump invoked his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination as he testified under oath Wednesday in the New York attorney general’s long-running civil investigation into his business dealings, the former president said in a statement.
Ron DeSantis, unconstrained by constitutional checks, is flexing his power in Florida ahead of 2024 decision. The ruthless display of raw political power in removing Hillsborough County state attorney Andrew Warren, however brazen and unprecedented, was merely the latest example of a new reality in Florida: DeSantis is governing unconstrained by the traditional checks on executive authority. In the last eight months, DeSantis orchestrated a new law to exact revenge on Disney amid a political feud with the entertainment giant, bulldozed an aggressively partisan redrawing of congressional boundaries through the state legislature and pushed nearly every facet of state government to the front lines of the culture wars. And he has done it all with limited dissent from the Republicans who control the other branches of government in Florida...“DeSantis has a blank check,” said Bob Jarvis, a law professor at Nova Southeastern University, a private school in Fort Lauderdale. “There is no part of the constitution now that is protecting democracy because the checks and balances on him have been completely eviscerated. If he wins, he’ll spin it as a mandate and say, ‘If Floridians didn’t like any of what I did, they would’ve vote me out.’ “ -- DeSantis is dangerous for democracy.
Most Americans support using the popular vote to decide U.S. presidents, data shows. Most Americans support using the popular vote and not the electoral college vote to select a president, according to data from the Pew Research Center. About 63% of Americans support using the popular vote, compared to 35% who would rather keep the electoral college system...Opinions on the systems varied sharply according to political party affiliation. 80% of Democrats approve of moving to a popular vote system, while 42% of Republicans support the move. Though, many more Republicans support using the popular vote system now than after the 2016 election, when support was at 27%. There is also an age divide: 7 out of 10 Americans from ages 18 to 29 support using the popular vote, compared to 56% in Americans over 65 years old.
The Republican Power Grab Hidden in Indiana’s Zero-Week Abortion Ban. The bill’s few exceptions—for rape, incest, fatal fetal abnormalities, and the mother’s life and health—are so closely circumscribed by labyrinthine requirements that it’s hard to imagine them working for any real patients in need…Now, here’s where things get interesting: The old, Senate version of the abortion bill would have given the state AG authority to prosecute “any violation of a criminal law” if a county prosecutor declines to enforce that law as a “blanket” policy. Such language has implications far beyond abortion:..The effort to override prosecutors’ authority isn’t limited to Indiana…These laws are part of the backlash against progressive prosecutors, who typically try to fight mass incarceration in their counties by bringing fewer low-level charges and focusing resources on the most serious crimes. But they also represent an effort to consolidate power in red-state legislatures by stripping authority from other elected officials who might dare to defy an ever more extreme Republican party line. As more states pursue these efforts, especially in places where abortion is outlawed, it’s worth looking closer at which people Republican lawmakers aim to criminalize.
Polio spreading in London, booster campaign launched for under-10s - health agency. The levels of poliovirus found since and the genetic diversity indicated that transmission was taking place in a number of London boroughs, the agency said on Wednesday.
Biden signs ‘burn pits’ help for vets; a personal win, too. The law, which Biden described as long overdue, caps a years-long battle to ensure treatment for chronic illnesses that veterans have blamed on burn pits, which were used to dispose of chemicals, tires, plastics, medical equipment and human waste on military bases. Estimates of affected troops run to 3.5 million.
Why Americans are increasingly dubious about going to college. A little-understood backlash against higher education is driving an unprecedented decline in enrollment that experts now warn is likely to diminish people’s quality of life and the nation’s economic competitiveness, especially in places where the slide is most severe. “With the exception of wartime, the United States has never been through a period of declining educational attainment like this.”...Focus groups and public opinion surveys point to other, less easily solved reasons for the sharp downward trend. These include widespread and fast-growing skepticism about the value of a degree, impatience with the time it takes to get one, and costs that have finally exceeded many people’s ability or willingness to pay...Americans are increasingly dubious about the need to go to college. Fewer than 1 in 3 adults now say a degree is worth the cost, according to a survey by the nonprofit Strada Education Network, which conducts research into and financially supports ways of expanding access to higher education...This is being made only worse by a growing unhappiness among recent university and college graduates with the value of the education they received...From 2015 to 2019, Americans’ faith in higher education dropped more than their confidence in any other institution measured by the Gallup polling organization — an extraordinary erosion of trust, considering that this list includes the presidency, Congress, big business and the criminal justice system. -- Read that last part again. Holy shit. -- A degree does, in fact, still pay off. Workers with bachelor’s degrees earn 67% more than people with only high school diplomas, according to the BLS. More than half of “good jobs” — those with salaries of at least $35,000 for workers under age 45 and $45,000 for people 45 to 64 — call for bachelor’s degrees, the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce estimates. Yet since the start of the pandemic, the proportion of 14- to 18-year-olds who think education is necessary beyond high school has dropped from 60% to 45%, the nonprofit Educational Credit Management Corporation...Even before the pandemic, the nation was facing a shortage of more than 9 million college-educated workers over the next decade, affecting nearly every state and costing nearly $1.2 trillion in lost economic output, the center-right American Action Forum estimated. Economic rivals “could wish nothing better but to see the share of [American] adults who go to college drop by 12 percentage points,” Hicks said. “It is literally cataclysmic.” -- This is bad. Really, really bad.
Low pay, stress and burnout: U.S. schools face severe teacher shortage. Nationwide, there are at least 280,000 fewer public school teachers than there were before the pandemic, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Proposals would ease standards, raise retirement age to address pilot shortage. So to address the shortage, some in the industry and in Congress are calling for some big changes. Among them are raising the mandatory pilot retirement age from 65 to 67, and reducing the number of flight hours required before a pilot can be certified.
Gen Z is over Facebook, Pew Research Center finds. Facebook, once the go-to social media platform for many, has plummeted in popularity among younger users, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.
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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