Most important: DON'T LOSE HOPE. This is a giant and important fight for us but, win or lose, we keep fighting and voting and organizing and spreading truth and light. We never give up.
Need a little Hope? Well then take a look at some of the great things that happened this past week:
We CAN win in November (with hard work)
Biden is finally tapping into a winning political strategy
On the 12th anniversary of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), former President Barack Obama returned to the White House, once again standing shoulder to shoulder with President Joe Biden, his former number two, who is now managing a number of domestic and global challenges. The former President spoke of how difficult the ACA was to pass – and the crucial roles played by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the late-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in rounding up the necessary votes for it.
While it is useful to remind the American people of the benefits of the ACA, there is a more important message to deliver – and Biden did so with the necessary intensity. Rather than just praising what Democrats accomplished through the ACA, the President explained how Republicans could undermine those gains and leave Americans worse off – a framing his Democratic colleagues would be wise to take note of.
“We need to keep up the fight,” Biden said. “Mr. President, since you signed the law, (our Republican colleagues) haven’t stopped for one second. Multiple court challenges, you mentioned sabotage from the previous administration (and) over 70 attempts to repeal the law by Republicans in Congress.” He concluded, 12 years later, the GOP have “not stopped their attack on this life-saving law.”
The GOP is less popular than Biden. Why would voters put it back in power?
President Biden’s low approval ratings understandably receive a lot of attention. But that doesn’t mean Republicans are getting rave reviews. To the contrary, GOP congressional performance draws even less support than Biden does. And some of their most public stances get thumbs down with the public overall.
Nearly three-quarters of US counties have more businesses than before pandemic: analysis
Close to three-quarters of U.S. counties have seen a net gain of businesses since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, according to an analysis of federal data released Tuesday.
By the end of September, 74 percent of U.S. countries had more physical business establishments than they did before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and recession in March 2020, according to researchers at the Economic Innovation Group (EIG), a bipartisan think tank. Only 44 percent reached that level five years after the end of the 2007-08 recession and financial crisis.
Democrats doing great things
We’ve made it,’ Jackson says of being the first Black woman headed to the Supreme Court
Today, during a celebration outside the White House, President Biden and his Supreme Court nominee, Justice-designate Ketanji Brown Jackson, leaned heavily into the historic nature of her confirmation as the first Black woman to sit on the Supreme Court in its 233-year history. Biden called it “a moment of real change in American history" as he basked in a moment that has energized his party’s base.
Jackson, noting that it had taken 115 previous appointments before a Black woman was confirmed to the court, declared, “We’ve made it." She thanked God and long list of friends, family and colleagues. Vice President Harris, the first Black woman to hold her job, also joined the celebration, saying Jackson would “inspire generations of leaders."
The student loan pause has been extended until the end of the summer
The Biden administration announced Wednesday that it is again extending the moratorium on federal student loan payments, interest and collections, this time until summer's end, Aug. 31. The U.S. Department of Education also unveiled a plan to reset the roughly 7 million borrowers who are in default, using the pandemic pause to restore their accounts to good standing.
Republicans in disarray
Trump Keeps Losing but the GOP Just Can’t Quit Him
It’s “a sea of performative moronics” ahead of the mid-terms, says New Abnormal Molly Jong-Fast, and we’re all drowning in it. Just look at “the cruelty, the stupidity and the racism” coming out of Texas right now, where Gov. Greg Abbott seems more interested in getting booked on Fox News than in getting anything done.
Then Jan. 6 committee member Jamie Raskin joins the pod to explain how Republicans transitioned from the party of Lincoln to the party of Trump, “a minority party, a shrinking minority party” that nonetheless “wants to get rid of Liz Cheney, who represents pretty big parts of the conservative Republican establishment. They want to get rid of Adam Kinzinger and Mitt Romney and so on because they don't follow the leader in the way that they’re supposed to.”
Republicans stopped trying to convince voters or expand their tent, he says, “because ‘they are convinced that with the gerrymandering of congressional districts and the voter suppression statutes they’ve been engineering across the country, plus the use of right-wing court packing and right-wing traditional activism, they will be able to hang on to power without growing anymore. I mean, they know all the young people of America are going in the direction of the Democrats” and that’s why “They operate like a religious cult and engage in a series of political conspiracies of the kind that we saw on Jan 6.”
Republicans are nuts
The thing that strikes me about these Republican bills is that they’re staking ground on some things that are not necessarily popular with the majority of voters. That would seem to suggest to me that there’s political risk in doing them, but instead these laws have been copied from G.O.P. statehouse to G.O.P. statehouse.
Every Republican could spend the next couple of months just saying, “Huh, gas prices are pretty high, aren’t they?” And that would be it. They would win the midterms. It would be done.
And instead, the Republican Party, in part due to the incentives of modern media, in part due to the example offered by Donald Trump and how he shot to prominence and then ultimately to the presidency, has become extraordinarily attention-hungry among its rank-and-file legislators. And so if you can create the next culture-war kernel by passing a really brutal piece of legislation — and these are brutal pieces of legislation that will hurt a lot of very just ordinary kids who need some help — then you can catapult to the center of the national debate.
So I don’t think Mitch McConnell wants to be having this conversation. I don’t think Kevin McCarthy wants to be having this conversation. I think they want to talk about how Joe Biden is a failure. But the Republican Party doesn’t have that kind of control over its own structure and its own institutional members now. And so at a time when there’s a lot of tailwinds for them, they are nevertheless pulled along by the more extreme and attention-driven members of their own caucus.
Republicans’ Vote Against Ketanji Brown Jackson Could Come Back to Bite Them
Prior to the hearings, Judge Jackson held a 58 percent approval rating in a Gallup poll. And after nearly 24 hours of answering questions over two days, the percentage of respondents who said that they would vote for her if they were senators rose from 64 percent to 72 percent in a Marquette Law School national survey.
Support for Jackson in the Marquette poll among Black adults currently sits at 86 percent, among Hispanics it’s 76 percent, and among whites it’s 59 percent—easily making her the most popular Supreme Court nominee since John Roberts was elevated to Chief Justice in 2005. Yet, with few exceptions, nearly half the Senate is poised to vote against her history-making confirmation—exposing a disconnect with the broader sentiment in the country.
This could very well come back to bite the GOP come election time.
Ron DeSantis’s repulsive war on Disney will soon face a reckoning
The stench of presidential ambition around Ron DeSantis has grown so thick that it resembles Charlie Brown pal Pigpen’s visible cloud of filth, and key to the Florida governor’s hopes is finding a way to capture the political energies unleashed by Donald Trump.
But DeSantis’s war on Disney will soon face a reckoning. A big question is whether DeSantis will seek to revoke Disney’s state tax incentives as a weapon in the war over that measure, which opponents call the “Don’t Say Gay” law.
If so, that could alienate Republicans who are fine with a bit of performative culture-warring but want to keep corporations happy where it really counts, i.e., on their bottom line. If not, that could disappoint right-wingers who actively want Republicans to wield state power wherever possible to bring “woke” corporations to their knees.
Trump’s Truth Social Is Doing Even Worse Than You Thought
The app that Donald Trump once hoped would avenge his exile from social media and make him a MAGA Mark Zuckerberg has instead plummeted to the 28th most popular social media platform in Apple’s App Store, lagging behind the likes of more obscure social networks like “Wizz,” “BeReal,” and “Bloomer-random video chat.”
This month, the situation has only gotten worse for Trump’s latest large-scale business venture, according to data analyses reviewed by The Daily Beast, and sources close to Trump say he has recently complained about the low-energy activity on the app and appears disengaged from trying to turn the platform around, much less post on it.
Download data shared by the analytics firm Apptopia shows that downloads of the app have plummeted from a peak of 170,000 downloads a day to just 8,000 now. The app is now just the 355th most popular app on Apple devices overall. And those who have downloaded it don’t seem to be using it that much.
Heart Warming News
A displaced Ukrainian dad asked for Legos for his son. Gifts poured in.
When 11-year-old Andrii Sidorov fled Kyiv in late February, he packed a small suitcase of essential items. He had no choice but to leave his prized Lego collection behind.
“He was so sad,” said his father, Igor Sidorov, who drove with two of his four sons to Vienna on Feb. 23, just before Russia launched its assault on Ukraine. His two older sons — ages 19 and 16 — stayed to fight in the war. Their mother remained in Kyiv, too.
While they were physically safe, Sidorov said, Andrii felt lost without his Legos to soothe and occupy him. Since he was a toddler, playing with Legos has been his favorite pastime.
Sidorov, who worked as a regional sales manager in Ukraine, decided to post a plea on Facebook in several groups, including “Ukrainians in Ireland,” on March 28.
He explained that his son is “engaged in the creation and construction of various Lego toys on a semiprofessional level with out instruction,” adding that his child is a “very clever boy.
To Sidorov’s delight, his online appeal worked. Within 24 hours, dozens of packages filled with new and lightly used Lego sets started pouring into the Galmont Hotel & Spa, where Irish social welfare services placed the family.
“There is Lego all around me. In the reception, in the room, everywhere,” said Sidorov, who said he is both stunned and touched by the overwhelming show of support.
Andrii, for his part, is starting to feel more at home now that he is once again surrounded by Legos.
“Glory to Ireland!” he wrote in an Instagram post, featuring a Lego creation of an Irish flag. “Thanks to all these wonderful and very kind people with very big hearts!”
One Good Thing: An unsolicited dik-dik pic
It’s not NSFW. It’s a Twitter account that tweets photos of tiny antelopes.
Dik-diks are tiny antelopes that are no larger than an overfed house cat. These creatures are adorable because of their size, but also because they have enormous eyes and long eyelashes, small trunk-like snouts, and tufts of disheveled fur jutting out of their scalp.
I get unsolicited dik-dik pics twice a day because I follow the Twitter account Unsolicited Dik-Diks — and I urge you to do the same. Twice each day, the account posts a photo or video of these peculiar antelopes to its 115,000 followers. It’s got it all: dik-diks eating leaves, dik-diks with Alfalfa hair, dik-diks on a scale.
The images are little beams of light piercing through what is otherwise a feed of despair. They put me at ease, making me feel warm and comfortable, perhaps because these animals seem so innocent. Like I said, the opposite of a dick pic.
They were facing jail time. Instead, they’re training shelter dogs.
Kelvin Simmons was sitting in the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta awaiting sentencing on assault charges in September when a surprising offer came in: Would he be interested in training shelter dogs and taking life-skills classes instead of being locked up?
Simmons, who had been jailed for seven months without bail, said he briefly wondered whether there was a trick behind the invitation from the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office and the nonprofit Canine CellMates.
Inmates who were recommended for this diversion program, Beyond the Bars, would be released from jail if they agreed to stay with the project for one year. And if they successfully trained a dog and finished the required self-help classes — including conflict resolution, parenting skills and time management — the charges against them would be dropped.
Hollander said she developed some participation guidelines so that men who had been unsuccessful at previous intervention methods would receive top consideration.
“We’re looking for a person with a pattern — maybe that’s addiction or theft — and that person genuinely wants to break that cycle and become a productive member of society,” she said.
She does not allow into the program men who have been convicted of crimes such as murder, rape, child abuse or armed robbery, Hollander said. Men who have abused animals also are ineligible.
“This has changed my life. I’ve been to prison a couple of times,” Simmons said. “I have three kids, and I’m now learning how to be a better father and a better listener. I’m learning it’s easier to take a deep breath and relax.”
Cars were killing salamanders. A student got the road closed to save them.
Eli Bieri noticed something disturbing as he walked through Presque Isle Park in Marquette, Mich., a few years ago.
Several dozen blue-spotted salamanders had been smashed by cars while they were crossing from the forest to the wetlands on the other side of the road during their annual migration to breed and lay eggs.
On that drizzly night in 2018, he said he was the only one in the park to witness the yearly migration that happens over several weeks in the spring.
The following year, Bieri said he knew he had to do something to help the blue-spotted salamanders that were being crushed by people who drove their cars into the park to stargaze, not knowing any better.
He got other students to help with his research, and together they tagged salamanders to get a feel for their numbers, he said.
The following year, Bieri said he knew he had to do something to help the blue-spotted salamanders that were being crushed by people who drove their cars into the park to stargaze, not knowing any better.
Good Labor News
How a bunch of Starbucks baristas built a labor movement
For Reese Mercado, the decision to unionize came after they watched a customer physically assault a former coworker over enforcing vaccine requirements at their Starbucks store. For Hayleigh Fagan, it was when she got a company-wide letter from the Starbucks Vice President telling employees not to unionize. For Hope Liepe, it was the hypocrisy of calling employees “partners” but not treating them that way.
Since the first corporate Starbucks location voted to unionize late last year, 13 others have voted. Only one store has voted against unionizing. Just today, three more Starbucks, one in Buffalo and two in Rochester, voted yes on unionizing. Last week, the company’s flagship store in Manhattan, which voted 46-36, became the largest to unionize. One of just three Starbucks roasteries in the country, the Manhattan location is an important milestone for the Starbucks union since it has many more employees (nearly 100) than a typical Starbucks and shows that the Starbucks union can be successful in the company’s manufacturing arm as well. Even more notable, these Starbucks have voted yes in the notoriously difficult-to-unionize food services industry, where high rates of turnover and a more easily replaceable workforce make union organizing extremely difficult.
While the unionizing Starbucks stores so far only represent a small portion of the chain’s roughly 9,000 company-run locations, its number belies its importance. It’s a spark of optimism in a union movement that has been in decline for decades. And as unions have become less prevalent in the American workforce, so have the worker benefits and protections unions afforded, including health care, pensions, and paid time off. Along with several other high-profile union efforts at a range of companies, including Amazon, John Deere, and the New York Times, Starbucks workers could help stanch or even reverse that decline.
Worker-led win at Amazon warehouse could provide new labor playbook
The unorthodox but stunningly successful unionization campaign by Amazon employees in New York was propelled by a burst of new energy by many worker groups, which have emerged from the coronavirus pandemic with new tactics and edge.
Employees at a number of other Amazon warehouses are expected to try to replicate the success notched Friday by workers at a Staten Island facility. Already, a smaller warehouse in Staten Island is scheduled to vote at the end of the month, and an election in Bessemer, Ala., is pending based on contested ballots.
Amazon fought to beat back the unionization effort, and the victory against one of the country’s largest private employers could provide a new playbook for workers that are trying to reverse a historic trend away from union rights. And while Amazon confronts this new reality, other companies are dealing with restless workers, including railroad engineers, coal miners, baristas, nurses and teachers.
Other good news
humanity can still avoid climate catastrophe
Every half-decade or so, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change releases an authoritative report on climate change, reflecting the consensus view among a vast number of experts and government officials. The latest installment, on the path humanity must take to avoid punishing climate consequences, came out on Monday. Another analysis filled with dire warnings, the latest report might seem depressing — or, depending on one’s point of view, encouraging.
The encouraging part is that progress is still possible — easier, in fact, than one would have expected even a decade ago. The cost of renewables such as wind and solar has plummeted. Battery technology has improved. Some 18 countries have cut their emissions for 10 years straight. The pathway is clearer now than it has ever been. Cheaper renewables need to be deployed quickly and at massive scale, with continued government aid. Building standards must cut energy waste from the built environment. Cities must require better public transportation and non-car infrastructure. Electric vehicles must become the norm and run on a cleaner energy grid. Better technology and less wasteful behavior could cut energy needs by half by 2050.
The Holy Grail of Energy Generation Might Finally Be Within Our Grasp
If you’ve ever been outside during the day, you’ve seen a fusion reactor—though you’re not supposed to stare directly at it. The sun is our fusion reactor in the sky. It’s constantly fusing hydrogen atoms to create helium, and this process generates a massive amount of energy, which produces the light and heat that make life on Earth possible.
Here on the surface of this planet, we’re trying to replicate this process to revolutionize how we generate clean electricity. Fusion researchers believe this technology could be the key to meeting our vast energy needs. Depending on who you talk to, we’re either on the cusp of one of the most important breakthroughs in all of science and technology; or we’re a long way away from our goals.
There are two main types of fusion that are currently being researched.
“I think it really shows a lot of promise for both of these different methods—the inertial confinement and the magnetic confinement—and hopefully this motivates more interest from government funding and private industry,” Kuranz said. “This is viable, and this is also the time to invest in these technologies.”
Kuranz said one of the things that’s been holding fusion research back over the decades is a lack of investment. She said we’re now seeing a lot more private investment in this research, which she believes could help get us to a fusion reactor sooner than we otherwise may have. Investors are pouring billions into trying to become the first to make fusion work.
“Someday I expect to see it producing power on the grid, and that would be very exciting and very important for humanity to have these sources of energy,” Zylstra said.
No one knows when fusion power will be achieved, but we’re getting closer every year. We harness the power of sunlight with our solar panels, but nuclear fusion researchers want to bring the sun to Earth.
A Brain Implant Could Restore the Ability to Communicate for ALS Patients
For hundreds of thousands of people living across the globe, communication isn’t as straightforward as moving your mouth or raising a hand. In the U.S., nearly 30,000 people live with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis—better known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease. It’s a terrifying and incurable disease that progressively robs affected individuals of their ability to move, interact, and communicate.
The good news, though, is that a team of scientists is fixing to change that. In a new study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, Swiss and German researchers helped a 34-year-old man with severe ALS to communicate through a brain-computer interface (BCI) implanted in his brain. This new approach aims to revolutionize communication devices for patients with ALS and potentially other neurological disorders that severely impair speech and other movements.
On the Lighter Side
Before we not, don’t forget to DONATE (if you can)! I set up a place where we can donate and the funds will be distributed evenly between the tossup House and Senate races. Think of it as a one stop shop for using your $$$ to save democracy. Here is the link:
Did you donate yet? C’mon… it’ll make you feel great!