What’s coming up on Sunday Kos:
- How the college admissions process illuminates the reality of the American caste system by RebeccaRenner
- Affirmative Action and the myth of structural reverse racism, by Frank Vyan Walton
- Sorry, Trump: Coal is going down, renewables are headed up, by Sher Watts Spooner
- The Ohio gerrymandering court case: 'A map that Speaker Boehner supports', by David Akadjian
- Women's History Month: Reclaiming the herstories of Black women suffragists, by Denise Oliver Velez
- Donald Trump’s 10 most pathetically predictable broken promises, by Jon Perr
- Preparing for war in Venezuela? I’ve seen this play before, by Egberto Willies
- I, for one, welcome our robot overlords—they can't be any worse than Trump, by Mark E Andersen
- Too many Democrats? History shows that a large presidential field bodes well for our chances in 2020, by Ian Reifowitz
- Sexist campaign coverage can't be fixed if media won't admit to 2016 fiasco, by Eric Boehlert
• All four co-chairs of the New Democrat Coalition’s Climate Change Task Force say they oppose Green New Deal: Reps. Don Beyer and Elaine Luria of Virginia, Sean Casten of Illinois, and Susan Wild of Pennsylvania told reporters at a roundtable on Thursday that they would vote against the progressive climate plan introduced as a resolution by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts. Luria explained that “The entire plan of the task force is to find ways to attack this incrementally”—this being global temperature rise. Said Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.), a freshman lawmaker who ran primarily on a climate change platform and has spent years working on clean energy: “The energy industry is replete with bad unintended consequences of well-intentioned regulation. The aspirations of the Green New Deal are great. The amount of attention it’s brought to this issue are fantastic. But doing energy and environmental policy right really requires you get the expertise of the folks who have been down in the trenches.” Luria said: "Philosophically, there's differences in the way people like to approach things. Some people might be big and bold and come out with something that's less achievable in the long run. And I like to chip away at things in a more pragmatic, achievable way." It seems that the meaning of “urgent” hasn’t yet chipped away at the mind-set of these co-chairs.
MIDDAY TWEET
• New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern says gun laws will be changed in wake of terrorist attack: Of the Friday massacre that left 49 dead and many others critically injured, she told reporters in Christchurch on Saturday, “There were two other firearms in the vehicle that the offender was in and it absolutely was his intention to continue with his attack.” The legally acquired guns used in the murders were modified, but how exactly has not been announced. On Monday, the cabinet will discuss changes in the nation’s gun laws that now allow the sale of about 2,000 different kinds of firearms. One of those changes will almost certainly be a ban on the sale of semi-automatic rifles, several types of which are currently legal to own by New Zealanders having an entry-level gun license. Thirty-nine people wounded by the killer remain in the hospital, with 11 in critical condition in an intensive care unit in Christchurch. A 4-year-old child in critical condition was flown to the children’s Starship hospital in Auckland. The youngest person wounded in the attack was 2 years old.
• NY prosecutors said new evidence shows Donald Trump illegally used foundation money during his 2016 campaign:
New York Attorney General Letitia James disclosed the evidence in a filing late Thursday in Manhattan Supreme Court, saying Trump urged supporters at his rallies to donate to the Donald J. Trump Foundation, and then gave his campaign total control over the disbursement of the donations, from choosing the recipients to the amounts and timing of the grants.
“This arrangement not only violated New York law, but also ran afoul of federal campaign finance law, turning a charity fundraiser into a campaign fundraiser and campaign rallies into opportunities for the candidate to dole out money the public had donated to a charity,” James wrote in a 19-page brief.
• Sharp Arctic winter temperature rise “locked in”: A new report from the U.N. Environment Assembly forecasts that winter temperatures in the Arctic will soar 3 to 5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2050. And they will rise an additional 5 to 9 degrees C by 2080. These increases will occur even if the world meets the Paris Agreement goals, the report states. “What happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic,” said Joyce Msuya, acting executive director of the assembly. The temperature spikes would trigger massive permafrost melting, and that would mean vast releases of methane, a greenhouse gas far more potent, though not as long-lasting, as carbon dioxide. Masuya said, “We have the science; now more urgent climate action is needed to steer away from tipping points that could be even worse for our planet than we first thought.”