And another day of affirmative action, religious accommodations, DeSantis to eliminate four federal agencies, rich guys who want RFK for President, House R’s avenging Trump, book bans threatening democracy, health insurers saying ‘no,’ and ‘ghost’ particles comes to a close:
“If Generation Z is concerned about their future they will never vote for a Republican.” — David Pederson
Supreme Court strikes down college affirmative action programs. The decision was hailed by prominent conservatives, who say the Constitution should be "colorblind," with former President Donald Trump calling the ruling "a great day for America." Liberals, however, condemned the ruling, saying affirmative action is a key tool for remedying historic race discrimination...The ruling is likely to have repercussions far beyond higher education, including on K-12 schools, and puts increased pressure on colleges to come up with workable race-neutral programs that would foster racial diversity. The decision could also lead to future challenges to racial diversity programs used by employers as similar arguments could be made under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination in employment.
Sotomayor and Jackson slam idea that U.S. is 'colorblind'. The Supreme Court's first Latina and first Black female justices both argued that race-conscious admissions have advanced constitutional equality. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson accused their conservative colleagues on the Supreme Court of ignoring the persistent presence of racism in the United States in striking down affirmative action in college admissions on Thursday..."The Court subverts the constitutional guarantee of equal protection by further entrenching racial inequality in education, the very foundation of our democratic government and pluralistic society," Sotomayor added. "Because the Court’s opinion is not grounded in law or fact and contravenes the vision of equality embodied in the Fourteenth Amendment, I dissent."..."Our country has never been colorblind.”
California ended affirmative action in the ’90s but retains a diverse student body. Colleges and universities in California have relied on holistic reviews of applicants, considering such factors as personal essays and whether students turn educational opportunities at their high schools into academic achievement. Some institutions have eliminated requirements for all applicants to submit standardized test scores, which tend to benefit students whose families are able to afford tutors and preparatory classes. The move away from standardized test scores is part of a larger national trend to level the playing field for students from all walks of life.
Supreme Court solidifies protections for workers who ask for religious accommodations. The court made clear that businesses must cite more than minor costs — so-called de minimis costs — to reject requests for religious accommodations at work. Unlike most cases before the court, both sides in the case had agreed businesses needed to show more.
Ron DeSantis says he would eliminate four federal agencies if elected president. "We would do Education, we would do Commerce, we'd do Energy, and we would do IRS," DeSantis said in an interview with Fox News’ Martha MacCallum when he was asked whether he favored closing any agencies. "If Congress will work with me on doing that, we'll be able to reduce the size and scope of government," he added. "If Congress won't go that far, I'm going to use those agencies to push back against woke ideology and against the leftism that we see creeping into all institutions of American life." — DeFascist is not a Republican moderate. He’s an extremist.
Meet the Rich Guys Who Want RFK Jr. to be President. But now, two months later, the anti-vaccine activist-turned-presidential hopeful is doing a lot better in his bid for the Democratic nomination than anyone had expected. It’s early days, of course, but a May CNN poll suggested that he should not be consigned to being a mere curiosity, or a fringe candidate: A fifth of Democratic and Democratic-leaning Independent voters said they favored him over President Biden. As for his financial support, his campaign disclosures will not be released until mid-July…The support Kennedy commands is even more notable considering that Kennedy’s platform is, to put it mildly, eccentric. The founder of the anti-vaccine advocacy group Children’s Health Defense, he recently remarked to podcast host Joe Rogan, “Wi-Fi radiation opens up your blood-brain barrier, and so all these toxins that are in your body can now go into your brain.” In a conversation earlier this month with Twitter executive chairman Elon Musk, Kennedy raved about how Covid was a bioweapon and suggested that secret labs the world over are designing special weapons designed to kill only people of certain races. Last week, in a SiriusXM interview, he said that he believed that Russia was “acting in good faith” in its invasion of Ukraine. Despite his storied last name and the fact that he is running as a Democrat, over the last two years, Kennedy has allied himself with prominent right-wing activists. In 2021, he spoke at the ReAwaken America tour organized by former national security adviser to former President Donald Trump and conspiracy theorist Mike Flynn. Given this unusual collection of beliefs, it is not surprising that the CNN poll found that Kennedy’s greatest strength among voters so far is his family name…One of Kennedy’s biggest—and richest—fans is the entrepreneur Steve Kirsch, who made an early Silicon Valley fortune as a pioneer of the optical computer mouse in 1980. [The article gives a lot of information on Kirsch. Read it.]…Kirsch, who didn’t respond to my requests for comment for this article, does not yet appear to have donated to Kennedy’s super PAC, American Values 2024. But some other rich guys did…This cast of left-meets-right Kennedy superfans clearly wants to help propel Kennedy out of the fringe and into the spotlight—but whether they’ll be able to do it, says Open Secrets’ Glavin, remains to be seen…Candidates can’t get that broader support without flashy ads, which, of course, is where the rich guys come in. If Kennedy gets “one of these contrarian, wealthy supporters to put a lot of money into the super PAC,” says Glavin, “he’s going to be able to get out there and really make his presence felt.” — Let’s be clear: his name may be Kennedy, but his family does not support his political views. His name is irrelevant. He’s a conspiracy theorist. Don’t let him split the Democratic vote and let Trump or DeSantis into the White House.
House Republicans embark on a mission: Avenge Trump. They've punished his Democratic critics, probed prosecutors who charged him and set up a weaponization panel boosting his narrative. Now they want to “expunge” his impeachments. House Republicans are using the powers of their majority to carry out Donald Trump’s quest for retribution against his political adversaries, bolstering the indicted former president’s 2024 campaign message that he is the victim of a wide-ranging conspiracy by “villains” who must be brought down.
Pregnant or recently pregnant? You just got a lot more rights. The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA), which went into effect this week, gives pregnant and postpartum workers rights to temporary accommodations at work — things like flexible schedules, lighter duty, remote work, more breaks, or access to a chair. The hope is that this will help them keep their jobs while they grow and recover from growing other humans. A decade in the making, the new law will likely change the work outcomes for millions of pregnant people who now have the ability to ask for what they need to get by at work.
How book bans threaten democracy. At the library, patrons aren’t really expected to pay for anything; they can use the library’s free services, from unlimited wifi to job application support; and, of course, the thousands of books libraries hold are available to anyone. But in recent months, Republican state lawmakers and local elected boards in states including Texas and Missouri have threatened to remove library funding as a way to control what materials patrons can and cannot access…The funding threats didn’t come out of nowhere. They are an outgrowth of book bans in public schools. When anti-book crusaders are unsuccessful at banning certain materials, lawmakers and board leaders escalate the fight and threaten to remove funding for libraries altogether.
Paris: Macron calls police killing of teen 'unforgivable'. France's president has called Tuesday's fatal shooting of a teen by police "unforgivable", saying "nothing justifies" a young person's death. Emmanuel Macron's comments come after protests over the killing gripped the Paris region overnight. Nahel, aged 17, was shot in his car after failing to stop when ordered to. Video on social media shows an officer pointing a gun at the driver of a car, before a gunshot is heard and the car then crashes to a stop. The teenager died of bullet wounds in the chest, despite help from emergency services.
How Often Do Health Insurers Say No to Patients? No One Knows. Yet, how often insurance companies say no is a closely held secret. There’s nowhere that a consumer or an employer can go to look up all insurers’ denial rates — let alone whether a particular company is likely to decline to pay for procedures or drugs that its plans appear to cover. The lack of transparency is especially galling because state and federal regulators have the power to fix it, but haven’t…“This is life and death for people: If your insurance won’t cover the care you need, you could die,” said Karen Pollitz, a senior fellow at the Kaiser Family Foundation who has written repeatedly about the issue. “It’s all knowable. It’s known to the insurers, but it is not known to us.” — Healthcare is a right, not a privilege.
“It has long astonished me that the people who oppose single-payer medical insurance because they don't want ‘some government bureaucrat’ making their medical decisions are PERFECTLY OK with some corporate bureaucrat at a for-profit insurance company doing the same exact thing.” — Vaughn Winchell
Central US is now getting worst of the drought. Corn crops are stressed, rivers are running low. Heavy rain over the winter eased the drought in the West, but now the middle of the country is extraordinarily dry. Crops are stressed, rivers are running low, and cities and towns are anxiously hoping for a break in the weather. Experts say the drought in the central U.S. is the worst since at least 2012, and in some areas, is drawing comparisons to the 1988 drought that devastated corn, wheat and soybean crops. This year, although temperatures have been generally mild through the spring and early days of summer, rainfall has been sorely lacking.
Google says it will remove Canadian news links from searches in the country. Google announced it will stop showing links to Canadian news on its products in Canada after the passage of the Online News Act, which requires online platforms to pay content fees to Canadian news outlets.
Thousands more prisoners across the US will get free college paid for by the government. Thousands of prisoners throughout the United States get their college degrees behind bars, most of them paid for by the federal Pell Grant program, which offers the neediest undergraduates tuition aid that they don’t have to repay. That program is about to expand exponentially next month, giving about 30,000 more students behind bars some $130 million in financial aid per year.
Why streaming services are dumping shows left and right. Why, you might very reasonably ask, would anybody do this? If a show is just sitting on a hard drive somewhere, not hurting anybody, what’s the harm of leaving it there? Maybe it’s not the most-watched show on the service, but who cares? Companies care, as it turns out, especially about their balance sheets and their shareholders.
Scientists have finally ‘heard’ the chorus of gravitational waves that ripple through the universe. Scientists have observed for the first time the faint ripples caused by the motion of black holes that are gently stretching and squeezing everything in the universe. They reported Wednesday that they were able to “hear” what are called low-frequency gravitational waves — changes in the fabric of the universe that are created by huge objects moving around and colliding in space.
Scientists see 'ghost' particles originating from the Milky Way for the first time. In a world-first, scientists have said they produced an image of the Milky Way not based on electromagnetic radiation — light — but on ghostly subatomic particles called neutrinos.
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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