And another day of witness tampering, Trump’s taxes, millions to lose Medicaid, expanded global surveillance, the ‘death penalty’ of child welfare, more Twitter chaos, and racism on social media after World Cup loss comes to a close:
“I fear we've still only scratched the surface on how ugly this is all going to get.” — Justin Baragona
Covid Deaths
US: 1,113,808 (+501)
World: 6,675,652 (+2236)
Covid Cases
US: 101,865,927 (+40,848)
World: 658,872,976 (+649,207)
Trump’s former White House ethics lawyer told Cassidy Hutchinson to give misleading testimony to January 6 committee, sources say. The January 6 committee made a startling allegation on Monday, claiming it had evidence that a Trump-backed attorney urged a key witness to mislead the committee about details they recalled. Though the committee declined to identify the people, CNN has learned that Stefan Passantino, the top ethics attorney in the Trump White House, is the lawyer who allegedly advised his then-client, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, to tell the committee that she did not recall details that she did, sources familiar with the committee’s work tell CNN.
GOP’s usual embrace of Trump muted after criminal referral. The Republican Party quickly and forcefully rallied behind Donald Trump in the hours after federal agents seized classified documents from his Florida estate this summer. Four months later, that sense of intensity and urgency was missing — at least for now — after the Jan. 6 House committee voted to recommend the Justice Department bring criminal charges against him. Leading Republicans largely avoided the historic criminal referral Monday, while others pressed to weigh in offered muted defenses — or none at all.
Trump tax audits required by law were delayed, panel says. A report issued Tuesday by the Democratic-controlled House Ways and Means Committee found that required IRS audits of Donald Trump were delayed, and committee members voted along party lines to also release tax filings of the former president who broke political norms by refusing to release the information on his own.
Millions to lose Medicaid coverage under Congress’ plan. Millions of people who enrolled in Medicaid during the COVID-19 pandemic could start to lose their coverage on April 1 if Congress passes the $1.7 trillion spending package leaders unveiled Tuesday.
Police seize on Covid-19 tech to expand global surveillance. In the pandemic’s bewildering early days, millions worldwide believed government officials who said they needed confidential data for new tech tools that could help stop coronavirus’ spread. In return, governments got a firehose of individuals’ private health details, photographs that captured their facial measurements and their home addresses. Now, from Beijing to Jerusalem to Hyderabad, India, and Perth, Australia, The Associated Press has found that authorities used these technologies and data to halt travel for activists and ordinary people, harass marginalized communities and link people’s health information to other surveillance and law enforcement tools. In some cases, data was shared with spy agencies. The issue has taken on fresh urgency almost three years into the pandemic as China’s ultra-strict zero-COVID policies recently ignited the sharpest public rebuke of the country’s authoritarian leadership since the pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989. For more than a year, AP journalists interviewed sources and pored over thousands of documents to trace how technologies marketed to “flatten the curve” were put to other uses. Just as the balance between privacy and national security shifted after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, COVID-19 has given officials justification to embed tracking tools in society that have lasted long after lockdowns.
The ‘death penalty’ of child welfare: In 6 months, some parents lose their children forever. Twenty-five years ago, Congress passed a law aimed at speeding up adoptions for children languishing in foster care. In the process, it destroyed hundreds of thousands of families through the termination of parental rights. Once considered a last resort reserved for parents who abandon their children, the involuntary and permanent termination of parental rights now hangs over every mother and father accused of any form of abuse or neglect — including allegations of nonviolent behavior like drug use or truancy, the two central parenting issues in the Snodgrasses’ case. Known in the legal world as the “death penalty” of child welfare, it can happen in a matter of months...Over the past 25 years, courts and child protective services agencies have increasingly turned to this ultimate consequence, partly in response to Clinton-era federal policies that support faster adoptions. According to a recent study, the risk that a child will experience the loss of their legal relationship with their parents roughly doubled from 2000 to 2016. One in 100 U.S. children — disproportionately Black and Native American — experience termination through the child welfare system before they turn 18, the study found. Most of those families became entangled in the system because of allegations of neglect, a broad category closely linked to poverty and substance use. Just 15% of children whose parents’ rights were severed around the country from 2015 to 2019 had been removed from their homes because of concerns about physical or sexual abuse, according to the ProPublica and NBC News analysis. (The reasons ultimately cited for the terminations themselves weren’t provided in the data.) -- Wrong on so many levels. And so much room for the state to abuse this power.
A Texas superintendent ordered school librarians to remove LGBTQ books. Now the federal government is investigating. The U.S. Education Department’s civil rights enforcement arm has launched an investigation into a North Texas school district whose superintendent was secretly recorded ordering librarians to remove LGBTQ-themed library books. Education and legal experts say the federal probe of the Granbury Independent School District — which stemmed from a complaint by the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas and reporting by NBC News, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune — appears to be the first such investigation explicitly tied to the nationwide movement to ban school library books dealing with sexuality and gender.
Women banned from universities in Afghanistan by the Taliban. Despite initially promising a more moderate rule and women’s and minority rights, the Taliban have widely implemented their harsh interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia. They have banned girls from middle school and high school, restricted women from most employment and ordered them to wear head-to-toe clothing in public. Women are also banned from parks and gyms.
After Kingsley Coman missed a penalty in the World Cup final shootout, Twitter and Instagram were flooded with racist messages directed at the French national team player. The pattern is all too familiar. France's national team player Kingsley Coman has been berated in the worst possible way on social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram since France lost the World Cup final. In the comments on his Instagram channel, the whole racist portfolio is there for all to see. Misguided users even wanted to "send him back to Africa." — So many hateful people on this planet.
French federation to go after abusers of World Cup players. The French soccer federation wants to go after social media users who targeted some of the national team’s players with racist comments following France’s loss to Argentina in the World Cup final. The federation said Tuesday that some players were hit by “unacceptable racist and hateful comments on social networks” and that it planned to file a complaint against those that posted abuse.
German court convicts 97-year-old ex-secretary at Nazi camp. A German court on Tuesday convicted a 97-year-old woman of being an accessory to more than 10,000 murders for her role as a secretary to the SS commander of the Nazis' Stutthof concentration camp during World War II.
Musk says he’ll be Twitter CEO until a replacement is found. Elon Musk said Tuesday that he plans on remaining as Twitter’s CEO until he can find someone willing to replace him in the job. -- He does all this stupid shit just to get attention.
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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