And another day of indictments, uncomfortable truths, SCOTUS surprises, Rs pushing mail ballots, Rs subverting elections, smoke in the East, no more summer Arctic sea ice, El Nino coming early, and lawyers blame ChatGPT comes to a close:
“The GOP frames trans issues in a way intended to encourage and justify violence. It's not an exaggeration to call much of this rhetoric genocidal, in the sense that it encourages and is aimed at building sentiment for the elimination of trans people from public life.” — Noah Berlatsky
Trump charged over classified documents in 1st federal indictment of an ex-president. The indictment carries unmistakably grave legal consequences, including the possibility of prison if he’s convicted. But it also has enormous political implications, potentially upending a Republican presidential primary that Trump had been dominating and testing anew the willingness of GOP voters and party leaders to stick with a now twice-indicted candidate who could face still more charges. And it sets the stage for a sensational trial centered on claims that a man once entrusted to safeguard the nation’s most closely guarded secrets willfully, and illegally, hoarded sensitive national security information.
An uncomfortable truth about GOP anti-trans bigotry. The right hasn't exactly been coy about its genocidal intentions…Trans people, for Knowles, aren't real, and therefore eliminating them doesn't count — openly dehumanizing rhetoric which echoes Nazi insistence that Jewish people's identities were built on deception, infiltration, and lies. Anti-trans legislation in red states is also in effect, and often in explicit intention, aimed at eliminating trans people…Targeting trans people and making them unable to exist in public also predictably forces them to flee. Though there aren't good statewide statistics given the newness of many of these bans, reporters have found numerous families in Texas, Florida, and Oklahoma who are leaving the state because of anti-trans bills. The GOP can eliminate "transgenderism" by denying trans people healthcare, by making it impossible for them to inhabit public spaces, and by making life so unlivable that are forced to leave and abandon relatives, jobs, and homes…Right-wing trolls will also sometimes argue that trans people aren't a race or ethnic group so genocide doesn't apply. But "race" is a cultural category, not a biological truth — any marginalized group can be framed as racially other. It's like saying the Holocaust wasn't a genocide because Jews are a religion not a race. The issue is how a group is targeted by genocidal policies, not whether one group or another technically "counts.”
Supreme Court rules in favor of Black Alabama voters in unexpected defense of Voting Rights Act. The Supreme Court on Thursday issued a surprising 5-4 ruling in favor of Black voters in a congressional redistricting case from Alabama, with two conservative justices joining liberals in rejecting a Republican-led effort to weaken a landmark voting rights law. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh aligned with the court’s liberals in affirming a lower-court ruling that found a likely violation of the Voting Rights Act in an Alabama congressional map with one majority Black seat out of seven districts in a state where more than one in four residents is Black. The state now will have to draw a new map for next year’s elections.
Republicans set to push mail ballots, voting methods they previously blasted as recipes for fraud. After years of criticizing mail voting and so-called ballot harvesting as ripe for fraud, Republicans at the top of the party want to change course. They are poised to launch aggressive get-out-the-vote campaigns for 2024 that employ just those strategies, attempting to match the emphasis on early voting Democrats have used for years to lock in many of their supporters well ahead of Election Day. The goal is to persuade voters who support GOP candidates that early voting techniques are secure and to make sure they are able to return their ballots in time to be counted, thus putting less pressure on Election Day turnout efforts.
States have introduced nearly 200 bills this year to 'subvert' elections, report finds. Its findings suggest that the election denial movement is alive and well in statehouses across the U.S. — even though an overwhelming number of election deniers (candidates who have echoed former President Donald Trump’s continuing false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him) lost their races in pivotal battleground Senate and secretary of state elections in last year’s midterms — and that attempts to make it easier to overturn elections will persist if such legislation is left unchecked.
Disabled Mississippians Now Face Even More Hurdles in Voting. On March 22, incumbent Gov. Tate Reeves, a Republican, approved Senate Bill 2358, under which only an election official, postal worker, family member or caregiver can return an absentee ballot, instead of friends, neighbors, or volunteers for voter services groups—who would face fines and up to a year’s incarceration for doing so...“Voters—especially those with disabilities—depend on the assistance of community groups, friends, and neighbors,” said Peg Ciraldo, co-president of the League of Women Voters of Mississippi, in a statement. “Now these neighborly efforts are being criminalized, and Mississippi voters in need of assistance are being silenced.”
Ohio Sec. of State LaRose admits move to make constitution harder to amend is ‘100% about… abortion’. After months of denial, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose admitted that the proposal to make the constitution harder to amend is "100%" due to efforts to legalize abortion. — Fucker.
Australia’s government says it is planning legislation to ban swastikas and other Nazi symbols nationwide due to an increase in far-right activity. While most Australian states already ban such Nazi symbols, the federal law would go further by also banning the trade in such material.
A third day of smoky air gives millions in US East Coast, Canada a new view of wildfire threat. A third day of unhealthy air from Canadian wildfires may have been an unnerving novelty for millions of people on the U.S. East Coast, but it was a reminder of conditions routinely troubling the country’s West — and a wake-up call about the future, scientists say.
Climate study says it’s too late to save summer Arctic sea ice. The research indicates that even under a scenario where carbon emissions are sharply curtailed, the Arctic will be “practically” ice-free in September by the middle of the 21st century…The research is also more pessimistic about the speed of ice loss, predicting the loss of summer ice by the 2030s, as opposed to the IPCC projection of the 2040s under a high- or intermediate-emissions scenario.
Here comes El Nino: It’s early, likely to be big, sloppy and add even more heat to a warming world. “The onset of El Nino has implications for placing 2023 in the running for warmest year on record when combined with climate-warming background,” said University of Georgia meteorology professor Marshall Shepherd. An El Nino is a natural, temporary and occasional warming of part of the Pacific that shifts weather patterns across the globe, often by moving the airborne paths for storms. The world earlier this year got out of an unusually long-lasting and strong La Nina — El Nino’s flip side with cooling — that exacerbated drought in the U.S. West and augmented Atlantic hurricane season. What this in some ways means is that some of the wild weather of the past three years – such as drought in places – will flip the opposite way.
Lawyers blame ChatGPT for tricking them into citing bogus case law. Attorneys Steven A. Schwartz and Peter LoDuca are facing possible punishment over a filing in a lawsuit against an airline that included references to past court cases that Schwartz thought were real, but were actually invented by the artificial intelligence-powered chatbot.
Court orders DC man to stop smoking pot where his neighbor can smell it. A Washington, D.C., judge ruled that a resident must stop using medical marijuana after a neighbor complained it was disturbing her. After a nearly three-year long court battle, Judge Ebony Scott ruled Monday night that Thomas Cackett could no longer smoke in his apartment or within 25 feet of his neighbor’s home. Scott said while Cackett has a license to buy medical marijuana, “he does not possess a license to disrupt the full use and enjoyment of one’s land, nor does his license usurp this long-established right.”
Higher taurine levels help slow aging in animals, new research shows. Scientists report that increasing the nutrient found in protein-rich foods may slow the aging process, leading to a longer, healthier life in animals — and maybe humans, too.
Walking and yoga ‘can cut risk of cancer spreading or returning’. Walking for 30 minutes a day and practising yoga can help reduce fatigue in cancer patients and cut the risk of the disease spreading, coming back or resulting in death, research suggests.
Just keep swimming: SoCal study shows sharks, humans can share ocean peacefully. Researchers at California State University, Long Beach-based Shark Lab used drones to study juvenile white sharks along the Southern California coastline and how close they swim to humans in the water. Turns out, it’s pretty close. Almost within the bite radius. Still, it’s safe. There were no reported shark bites in any of the 26 beaches surveyed between January 2019 and March 2021, according to the Shark Lab…“Most of the time water users didn’t even know the sharks were there, but we could easily see them from the air.”
“Pat Robertson, the right-wing televangelist and former Republican presidential candidate who espoused racist, sexist, misogynistic, homophobic, AIDSphobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic bigotry on air for decades, has died.” — Keith Boykin
““Ouch. Fuck. It’s hot” -Pat Robertson” — Aric Johnson
“It’s easy to laugh at Pat Robertson, but, as I bring this commentary to a close, I want to stress that his views are not as fringe in the American evangelical world as many pundits portray them to be. When you’re brought up (as I was) attending Christian schools steeped in Christian nationalism—and hundreds of thousands of American children are in the often voucher-funded schools of this nature at any given time, with even more being indoctrinated in the same ideology via homeschooling—Robertson’s notion that entire nations can be “blessed” or “punished” based on their degree of “obedience to” or “rebellion against” God is standard fare. At the end of the day, I’m all for laughing at buffoonish Christian theocrats. But that’s precisely because I take them seriously as a threat to democracy and human rights.” — Chrissy Stroop (Read the entire article here.)
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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