Hunter Walker/The Uprising:
14 Votes Against Juneteenth: A Racist Act In The Halls Of Congress
There is currently a fight going on in this country over whether we should celebrate the end of slavery. Yes, you read that right. A small number of elected officials and pundits are actually debating whether it is acceptable to have a holiday commemorating the American Emancipation.
Yesterday, President Biden signed a law proclaiming Juneteenth a federal holiday. The legislation was sent to Biden’s desk with the support of almost every member of Congress. However, in the House, 14 Republicans voted against the measure and two others didn’t vote at all.
Many people in the public sphere are already highlighting this and condemning it while stopping just short of calling it by its name. But this is not a subjective matter. Refusing to celebrate the end of slavery is racism. Something this simple and awful needs to be easily recognized for what it is.
Ian Millhiser/Vox:
Joe Manchin’s sweeping new voting rights proposal, explained
The pivotal senator has released a potentially transformative plan to promote fair elections.
No voting rights bill will become law without Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-WV) approval, at least in the current Congress. The conservative Democrat is the median vote in the Senate, and he’s a frequent source of frustration for other members of his party. Earlier this month, Manchin came out against the For the People Act, a comprehensive voting rights bill backed by Democratic leadership, effectively killing any hope that the bill could become law during the current Congress.
But on Wednesday, Manchin did something unexpected: He released a long list of voting reforms that he does support, potentially scrambling the congressional debate over voting rights as the Senate prepares to vote on Democratic leaders’ proposal.
Manchin’s list includes many reforms drawn from the For the People Act as well as from a companion voting rights bill known as the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. Significantly, Manchin endorsed banning partisan gerrymandering — a high priority for both small-d democrats and large-D Democrats, who want to prevent the GOP from seizing control of the House of Representatives with rigged congressional maps.
Not everything on Manchin’s list will delight his fellow Democrats.
You read that right.
Colin McEnroe/myjournalcourier:
No need to worry about people using marijuana - they already do
Ladies and gentlemen, start your gummies.
Connecticut has legalized the production, sale and adult use of recreational marijuana, which is a big step because I’m pretty sure nobody in marijuana has tried Connecticut before. Wait. I wrote that wrong. Am I high already? Just because the law changed? …
But anyone familiar with the workings of the legislature over the last several decades knows that they were blotto when they passed lotto and they were hammered whenever they retooled the state budget and they were toasted whenever they asked us to part with more of our bread. There were wine nights and beer nights, and often the libations were provided by lobbying firms or regulated industries.
So how do you drink that much and then tell a 21-year-old he has to watch Marie Kondo on Netflix without the aid of marijuana? I’m a little sensitive on this subject because I went to college from 1972-76 and did not get high. Marijuana must have been legal at the time because everybody seemed to have it.
Janell Ross/TIME:
Juneteenth Isn't Just a Celebration of the End of Slavery. We Also Honor the Black Americans Who Helped Create Their Own Freedom
If you ask Black people born and raised on the island, Juneteenth marks the day Black soldiers in blue uniforms came with their guns to Galveston. That is the story they have told for generations, about the moment some of their ancestors knew freedom had finally arrived in Texas, the westernmost Confederate breakaway state.
That’s the truth as it’s widely understood by Black people in Galveston, even if the common story of that day often focuses on a single white man: General Gordon Granger, who led Union troops to the harbor there on June 17, 1865. Two days later, records in the National Archives tell us, he issued what’s known as General Order No. 3.
A reminder of the importance of oral history.
Eleanor Janega/Going Medieval:
I assure you, the Black Death was actually bad
But in case we need an English example (can’t imagine why I think my man here might not considered other people’s accounts worthwhile) how about the chronicle from Meaux Abbey in Yorkshire:
“The pestilence held such sway in England at the time that there were hardly enough people left alive to bury the dead, or enough burial grounds to hold them. During that time two closes or crofts were consecrated for the burial of the dead in London, and two monasteries were afterwards founded in them….The pestilence grew so strong that men and women dropped dead while walking in the streets, and in innumerable households and in many villages not one person was left alive. … The shortage of labourers and of workers in every kind of craft and occupation was then so acute that more than a third of the land throughout the whole kingdom remained uncultivated…”[3]
Andy Slavitt/USA Today:
Trump's Supreme defeat: Will Republicans finally stop trying to cancel people's health care?
The Supreme Court has handed Republicans the perfect opportunity to lay down their weapons. Attacking this health care law is both cruel and futile.
An interesting question is why. Why did Trump and Republicans fight so hard to do something so plainly unpopular and harmful to millions of Americans? Especially because, as the ruling yesterday showed, the plaintiffs in this case didn’t even have standing to bring the case – in other words, they were not being harmed by the law. So why try to eliminate a law that helps some in such a deeply personal way, particularly if it causes no harm (and is budget neutral)? The Republican politics of health care and the politics of Trump are the politics of cruel indifference.
Philip Bump/WaPo:
The far right rushes to embrace Tucker Carlson’s FBI-Capitol riot conspiracy theory
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.) rose to speak on the floor of the House on Thursday, a sheaf of news articles in his hand and the spirit of a Breitbart commenter in his heart.
He began by defending his recent question to a Forest Service official asking if that agency might be able to shift the Earth’s orbit. Then, a riff on a Washington Times article about criminal activity in Mexico, a country that enjoyed a “fantastic location.” Then, in conclusion, Gohmert shifted to the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, an event that he has in the past dismissed as “people without any firearms coming into a building.”
“There’s been so much appropriate concern about January 6,” Gohmert said. “What happened that day. Unfortunately, we don’t know all that happened that day. There are some major, major questions that need to be answered.”
Perhaps we need a bipartisan commission to look at what happened, then?
