Is Biden Really the Second Coming of F.D.R. and L.B.J.? - Proposing historic legislation is not transformative; passing it is. - link
How Bellingcat Unmasked Putin’s Assassins - The collective’s innovation has been to recognize that the digital-age panopticon actually works in two directions. - link
Biden’s New Deal and the Future of Human Capital - The President introduced the first part of his economic program, involving airports and bridges. The second, which invests in “human infrastructure,” could define his Administration. - link
The Powerful New Financial Argument for Fossil-Fuel Divestment - A report by BlackRock, the world’s largest investment house, shows that those who divested have profited not only morally but also financially. - link
Randi Weingarten on Opening Schools Safely - The head of the American Federation of Teachers discusses why she’s skeptical of new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control. - link
From Vox
“10 years for protest, 5 years for rape”: Demonstrators protest a policing bill in England and Wales -
Protesters in Bristol, England, march in a demonstration on April 3 in opposition to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. | Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images
The proposed law would put enormous power into police hands and potentially harm the ability to protest.
Thousands of demonstrators marched across Britain on Saturday in protest of a massive new policing bill that would create new restrictions on protest in England and Wales and impose hefty fines for not following police instructions.
The bill, officially known as the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, was introduced in early March and has been met with widespread pushback in England and Wales since then. It also includes sentencing and court reforms, among other changes, but protesters are specifically incensed by proposed new police powers concerning protests.
If the bill passes, according to the BBC’s Dominic Casciani, police will have the authority to impose start and finish times on protests, as well as noise limits — even if it’s only one person protesting.
Additionally, Casciani writes, the bill would criminalize violating restrictions that protesters “‘ought’ to have known about, even if they have not received a direct order from an officer,” and “intentionally or recklessly causing public nuisance.”
— Peace and Justice Project (@corbyn_project) April 2, 2021
“The right to protest is at the heart of a democratic society,” Corbyn said in a video Friday. “It’s part of who we are. And together, we’ll beat Boris Johnson’s dangerous proposal to ban protest.”
This weekend’s “kill the bill” marches aren’t the first. According to the Guardian, Bristol, in southwest England, has been the site of at least five protests over the last two weeks, including one that turned violent and saw at least two police vehicles set on fire earlier in March.
Nothing on the same scale has been reported so far on Saturday, but according to Sky News, at least 26 protesters have been arrested in London following a clash with police.
The United Kingdom is in the middle of its own debate on policing
A woman is arrested by Metropolitan Police officers at a vigil in memory of Sarah Everard on Clapham Common, London. Photograph by @jackhillphotopic.twitter.com/qhp8GFibNr
A London police officer, from the same police force that broke up the vigil, has been charged with Everard’s murder.
The country also saw its own Black Lives Matter movement last summer following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Protesters across the UK took to the streets to protest racism, inequality, and police brutality, and in Bristol, a crowd pulled down a statue of slave trader Edward Colston and threw it in the harbor.
In London, a statue of former Prime Minister Winston Churchill was also graffitied over the summer.
Bristol, England: Protesters pulled down a statue of Edward Colston, a 17th Century slave trader, and dumped it in the harbor. It has been retrieved and will be placed in a museum 4/ pic.twitter.com/ZZ5rPst6YZ
One provision in the policing bill currently before Parliament specifically increases the penalty for damaging such statues. According to the BBC, the measure “clarifies that damage to memorials could lead to up to 10 years in prison.”
In response to that provision and to Everard’s murder, “kill the bill” protesters have marched with signs reading “10 years for protest, 5 years for rape,” according to the Guardian. On Saturday, according to the AP, protesters chanted “Women scared everywhere, police and government do not care!”
Despite the protests, the bill has made headway in the UK Parliament with backing from Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party. In mid-March, it cleared its first vote in the House of Commons, 359 votes to 263, and the measure was advanced to committee.
According to the New York Times, the Conservative government hoped to seize on outrage over Everard’s death to pass the bill, but recent opposition appears to have changed that. The committee process has reportedly been delayed until later in the year, reports the Times, as protests and criticism from the Labour opposition continue.
“The tragic death of Sarah Everard has instigated a national demand for action to tackle violence against women,” David Lammy, a Labour MP and shadow secretary of state for justice, said in March. “This is no time to be rushing through poorly thought-out measures to impose disproportionate controls on free expression and the right to protest.”
After New York legalizes marijuana, Schumer eyes federal reform -
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer speaks at a news conference at the Capitol on March 25. | Jonathan Ernst/Getty Images
Despite the Biden administration’s hesitancy, marijuana legalization is broadly popular among US voters.
In the wake of New York’s decision to legalize marijuana earlier this week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) says he’s ready to move on federal marijuana reform.
In an interview with Politico, published Saturday, Schumer said he hopes President Joe Biden’s views on cannabis legislation will evolve, but whether or not that happens, “at some point we’re going to move forward, period.”
The specifics of a reform bill aren’t clear yet — Schumer told Politico that “you’ll have to wait and see” — but he indicated a “comprehensive” measure is on the table.
“What we want to do is first introduce our comprehensive bill, and then start sitting down with people who are not for this in both parties,” Schumer said. “We’d certainly listen to some suggestions if that’ll bring more people on board. That is not to say we’re going to throw overboard things like expungement of records — [things that are] very important to us — just because some people don’t like it.”
Whatever the eventual proposal looks like, Schumer told Politico he is “personally for legalization. And the bill that we’ll be introducing is headed in that direction.”
As of this month, 15 states plus Washington, DC, have legalized recreational marijuana use, and many more have either decriminalized the drug, legalized medical marijuana, or both.
According to Politico, more than 40 percent of the US population lives in those 15 states where marijuana is now legal; however, the drug is still illegal federally.
Biden, for his part, has said he supports decriminalizing the drug and leaving recreational use up to the states, according to The Verge.
According to Lopez, “decriminalization generally eliminates jail or prison time for limited possession of marijuana, but some other penalties remain in place, treating a minor marijuana offense more like a minor traffic violation.”
Legalization, though, is more broad and “is generally taken to represent the removal of all government-enforced penalties for possessing and using marijuana. In most, but not all, cases, legalization also paves the way for the legal sales and home-growing of marijuana.”
A new hope for marijuana legislation in the Senate
However, with Schumer now holding the majority leader’s gavel in the Senate, the prospects for a similar bill are much sunnier. In response to a question from Politico this week, Schumer suggested that there are Republican senators who “support removing cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act.”
Additionally, he said, “the fact that every member will know once we introduce this legislation — not only that it has my support, but that it will come to the floor for a vote — is going to help move things forward in a very strong way.”
Some experts are less sure — John Hudak, the deputy director of the Center for Effective Public Management at the Brookings Institution, who has also written a book on marijuana, told The Verge he doesn’t believe marijuana legalization has the votes to survive the filibuster in the Senate — but cannabis reform remains broadly popular with voters.
Marijuana legalization is incredibly popular in the US
Public support for marijuana legalization has risen steadily over time, according to Gallup, and reached an all-time high in 2020 with 68 percent of Americans supporting the policy.
The specific bill passed by the House last year is also quite popular: According to Morning Consult, 66 percent of all voters said they supported the MORE Act as of December 2020.
And though Republicans lag independents and Democrats in their support for legalization, the bill has majority support even among GOP voters: 51 percent of Republicans said they either somewhat or strongly supported the legislation, though only five Republican representatives voted for it.
According to Schumer, that widespread support, as well as the success of legalization at the state level, has helped shape his current stance on marijuana legalization.
“The legalization of states worked out remarkably well,” he told Politico. “They were a great success. The parade of horribles never came about, and people got more freedom. And people in those states seem very happy. … When a state like South Dakota votes by referendum to legalize, you know something is out there.”
Why the MLB pulled the All-Star Game from Atlanta, briefly explained -
Truist Park in Atlanta being prepared for an exhibition MLB game in 2020. | David J. Griffin/Icon Sportswire/Getty Images
Corporate America is starting to push back on Republican voter suppression efforts
On Friday, Major League Baseball announced it would move the 2021 All-Star Game and the MLB draft out of Atlanta in response to Georgia’s restrictive new voting law, which was signed by Gov. Brian Kemp last week.
The league’s decision comes as corporate America begins to take notice of the Georgia bill and others like it — and to push back on voter suppression around the country.
Since the law was passed, several companies, including Delta Air Lines, Coca-Cola, and Microsoft, have released statements condemning the bill, which makes it harder for Georgians to vote by mail and shifts control over election rules to the state legislature, among other changes.
The law, which University of Georgia political scientist Cas Mudde described as “anti-democratic” in an interview with Vox, gives Georgia’s Republican legislature majority control of the State Election Board, makes it illegal to give food or water to anyone waiting in line to vote, and imposes new voter ID requirements on mail-in voting.
As Vox’s Zack Beauchamp explains, the combined effect of those changes is to “create barriers to voting” — and those changes are likely to affect low-income and minority voters the most.
“I have decided that the best way to demonstrate our values as a sport is by relocating this year’s All-Star Game and MLB Draft,” league commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement Friday. “Major League Baseball fundamentally supports voting rights for all Americans and opposes restrictions to the ballot box.”
The move isn’t unprecedented in American sports — previously, both the NFL and the NBA have moved major events in response to bills passed or not passed by host states — but the loss of the MLB All-Star Game, scheduled for July, is by far the biggest blow yet to Georgia following the bill’s passage.
A new venue for the MLB All-Star Game and the draft have not been announced as of Saturday.
Republican lawmakers are decrying the move
The league’s decision has already sparked a torrent of both condemnation and support, with Kemp, a Republican, accusing MLB of having “caved to fear, political opportunism, and liberal lies.”
Bothof Georgia’s newly minted Democratic senators, meanwhile, focused on the bill itself in their responses, framing the MLB decision as an “unfortunate consequence” of Republican voting restrictions.
“The Governor and the legislature are deliberately making it harder for Black voters to vote,” Sen. Jon Ossoff said Friday. “They know it. Everybody knows it, and this egregious and immoral assault on voting rights has also put our state’s economy at grave risk.”
Earlier this week, President Joe Biden told ESPN that he would “strongly support” the decision to move the All-Star Game out of Georgia, though some activists and politicians in the state, including onetime Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, a Democrat, have opposed boycotts.
“I respect boycotts,” Abrams said in a statement Friday, “although I don’t want to see Georgia families hurt by lost events and jobs. … We should not abandon victims of GOP malice and lies — we must stand together.”
The MLB decision has also led to some very public courting of the now-homeless All-Star Game by politicians on Twitter.
“Hey @MLB here in Baltimore we strongly support voting rights as do our beloved @orioles,” Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott tweeted Friday. “We’d love to host the All Star game at Oriole Park at Camden Yards the ballpark that inspired them all.”
Hey @MLB here in Baltimore we strongly support voting rights as do our beloved @orioles. We’d love to host the All Star game at Oriole Park at Camden Yards the ballpark that inspired them all. Remember how great it was the last time? https://t.co/yYD8sbodyVhttps://t.co/nSkXRGRNGc
Some Republicans have gone beyond simple condemnation to threaten retaliation against the league for pulling the All-Star Game out of Georgia.
In a statement Friday, former President Donald Trump called for supporters to “boycott baseball and all of the woke companies,” while Rep. Jeff Duncan, a South Carolina Republican, said Friday he would seek to end baseball’s federal antitrust exception, which protects the league from antitrust laws used to ensure fair competition.
The former president of the United States is now urging a boycott of our national pastime. pic.twitter.com/sunb82hYOf
Corporations are taking note of voter suppression efforts in other states, too
In Georgia, where SB 202 is already law, the wave of corporate pushback to new voter restrictions may have come too late to change the outcome (though there is precedent for states rolling back unpopular laws in response to corporate pressure).
Elsewhere, however — most notably in Texas — companies are making their stances known before new voter restrictions are signed into law. At least two Texas-based companies, American Airlines and Dell Technologies, have come out explicitly against a Texas bill, SB 7, that would limit early voting and absentee voting, among other changes.
“To make American’s stance clear: We are strongly opposed to this bill and others like it,” American said in a statement Thursday after the bill was advanced by the Texas Senate. “As a Texas-based business, we must stand up for the rights of our team members and customers who call Texas home, and honor the sacrifices made by generations of Americans to protect and expand the right to vote.”
According to the Texas Tribune, AT&T and Southwest Airlines, which are also based in Texas, reiterated their support for voting rights Friday, though neither mentioned SB 7 by name.
As the Texas bill moves on to the state House, it’s unclear if that opposition will mean anything, but the corporate response in Georgia could make a difference in how legislators see things.
“Major Texas employers are stepping up and speaking out against voter suppression, and for good reason,” former Texas House Speaker Joe Straus tweeted Thursday. “Texas should not go down the same path as Georgia. It’s bad for business and, more importantly, it’s bad for our citizens.”
Pushback by corporate America in Georgia and Texas could also make a difference nationally: New voter suppression bills have been introduced in nearly every state in the country in the wake of the 2020 presidential election.
According to the Brennan Center for Justice, at least 361 restrictive new bills have been introduced in 47 states as of March 24, with Texas, Georgia, and Arizona leading the field in number of bills.
Not all of these bills are equally damaging. Historically, both parties benefit from mail-in voting in non-pandemic conditions; restricting it, while clearly undemocratic, might not help Republicans too much in the 2022 midterms. The evidence on the impact of voter ID laws on turnout is somewhat mixed.
But the parts of the Georgia bill mostly likely to affect election outcomes — the partisan power grab over actual electoral administration — are far from unique.
“What we are seeing in Georgia is democratic backsliding, American-style,” Beauchamp writes. “And it won’t be the last attempt we’ll see.”
Big business, however, is taking note. In a statement released Friday and shared on Twitter by Judd Legum, who writes the Popular Information newsletter, more than 100 companies joined a Civic Alliance statement condemning new voter suppression efforts around the country.
“Our elections are not improved when lawmakers impose barriers that result in longer lines at the polls or that reduce access to secure ballot dropboxes,” reads the statement. “We call on elected leaders in every state capitol and in Congress to work across the aisle and ensure that every eligible American has the freedom to easily cast their ballot and participate fully in our democracy.”
From The Hindu: Sports
Noted shooting coach Sanjay Chakraverty dies aged 79 - He guided the likes of Olympic medallist Gagan Narang and Anjali Bhagwat
Former international table tennis player Suhas Kulkarni dies aged 68 - After retiring as a player, Kulkarni was actively involved with the game with coaching and also regularly played in the Masters’ TT tournaments at the National and International level
IPL 2021: Azharuddin offers to host IPL games in Hyderabad - Mumbai reported 9,108 new cases of coronavirus on Saturday.
Virat Kohli’s foundation to set up animal shelters in Mumbai - “It is our dream to create a safer space for the stray animals of our city,” Kohli said.
South Africa fined for minimum over-rate in first ODI against Pakistan - South Africa skipper Temba Bavuma pleaded guilty to the offence and accepted the proposed sanction, so there was no need for a formal hearing.
From The Hindu: National News
AI to aid cotton ryots in 2,800 villages - MoU signed by Agriculture department and Wadhwani AI to help check pests
Another batch of Rafale jets to fly in by mid-May - 8-9 new arrivals will complete first IAF squadron of the fighters
People of the region disenchanted with Naxals, says Chhattisgarh CM - “The State government is not afraid of such attacks and is determined to carry out development work in each and every village,” Mr. Baghel said.
West Bengal Assembly polls | After Nandigram, the electoral contest heats up Singur - Agriculture and industry have come full circle in a battle of prestige over what was once a site of resistance
Assam Assembly polls | Congress has no vision for Assam development, says Shah - A task force would be created to free Vaishnavite monasteries of encroachers, he says
From BBC: Europe
Covid-19: France enters third national lockdown amid ICU surge - The measures come as Europe battles a third wave of the pandemic and delays in its vaccine rollout.
Women charged for refusing Irish hotel quarantine - The pair were not aware of the regulations before they travelled to Dubai for plastic surgery, a court hears.
Spain drug bust: ‘Speedboat smugglers’ arrested - Some 100 suspected gang members are accused of trafficking cannabis from Morocco.
Russian ‘troop build-up’ near Ukraine alarms Nato - Thousands of Russian troops have allegedly massed near Ukraine, but Russia does not confirm it.
Mark Rutte: Survivor of Dutch politics in fight for political life - Mark Rutte won elections only last month but his future as prime minister is now in question.
From Ars Technica
Narwhal tusks tell a troubling tale - Narwhal diets are changing as the Arctic warms. - link
It’s the Tune Squad vs the Goon Squad in Space Jam: A New Legacy trailer - LeBron James leads Looney Tunes characters in basketball rematch for the digital age - link
Xbox Game Streaming app is now live on Windows—via a sneaky download - Until we see planned web browser version, this loophole will have to suffice. - link
Amazon admits its drivers sometimes have to pee in bottles - “Drivers can and do have trouble finding restrooms,” Amazon admits. - link
Malicious cheats for Call of Duty: Warzone are circulating online - The cheat is fake, but the malware it installs is the real thing. - link
From Jokes Subreddit
A teacher was working with a group of children, trying to broaden their horizons through sensory perception. -
She brought in a variety of lifesavers and said,”Children, I’d like you to close your eyes and taste these.” The kids easily identified the taste of cherries, lemons and mint, but when the teacher gave them honey-flavored lifesavers, all of the kids were stumped. “I’ll give you a hint,” said the teacher. “It’s somethin your mommy and daddy probably call each other all the time.” Instantly, Little Johnny coughed his onto the floor and shouted, “Quick! Spit’em out! They’re assholes
Jesus and Moses are relaxing on a boat and talking about the good old days. -
The subject of miracles comes up, and they decide to see if they can still perform them.
“It’s been almost 4000 years since I did this one” Moses says, then raises his arms. The water parts, revealing the floor of the lake.
Jesus claps His hands and says “Good one! It’s only been about 2000 years since I did this” and steps off the boat onto the water, and sinks into the lake.
Moses parts the water and throws a line down to the soaking wet Jesus, and helps Him back onto the boat.
Jesus says “That was embarrassing. I guess I need to clear my mind and focus.” Jesus closes His eyes, takes a deep, slow breath, then steps off the boat again. Again He sinks to the bottom of the lake.
Moses parts the water and helps Jesus up again. Moses says “Hey, maybe we should just head back and You can try again tomorrow” but Jesus says “No, I can do this.” He mouths a silent prayer, winks at the sky, and again sinks when He steps off the boat.
Moses parts the water a third time and helps Jesus up. Jesus looks shaken and looks at His feet, then smiles.
“I know what’s wrong now. Last time I didn’t have these damn holes in my feet.”
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22410955/dtTl9_marijuana_laws_in_the_us.png)
