Today’s comic by Ruben Bolling is Scientists discover doomsday asteroid:
• EPA acting chief indicates the Trump regime may meddle in next climate report:
Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler on Wednesday accused the Obama administration of tilting last week’s federal climate change report to focus on the worst-case outcomes — and indicated that the Trump administration could seek to shape the next big study of the issue.
“Going forward, I think we need to take a look at the modeling that’s used for the next assessment,” Wheeler said at an event hosted by The Washington Post.
• Our Revolution lost nearly $250,000 to email scam:
The political nonprofit launched by Sen. Bernie Sanders in 2016 lost nearly a quarter-million dollars to an email scam that year, according to new tax documents obtained by POLITICO.
Our Revolution “was the victim of a Business E-Mail Compromise scam that took place in December 2016 but was not discovered until January 2017, resulting in the loss of approximately $242,000 via an electronic transfer of funds to an overseas account,” the group disclosed in its tax forms covering the year 2017, which were filed earlier this month.
• Margaret Atwood says she’s writing a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale because of what’s happening in real life: Fans of the dystopian novel who have clamored for a sequel are finally going to get their wish. After three decades, Atwood announced Wednesday that her follow-up to the original will be titled the “The Testaments” and be published in September 2019. It’s set 15 years after the final scene in “The Handmaid’s Tale” and features three female narrators. In a press release, Atwood said it wasn’t her fans that spurred her to write the sequel but rather the parallels between the first novel and what is actually happening in the news now.
MIDDAY TWEET
• Open enrollment in the Affordable Care Act ends in most states on December 15: If you’ve been delaying, it’s time to get a move on if you need insurance! Free help is available. If you have questions about signing up or want to talk through your options with a trained professional, free help is just a quick call or click away. Call 1-800-318-2596, visit localhelp.healthcare.gov or make a one-on-one appointment now.
• Scientists have calculated the number of photons produced by all the stars in the universe. It’s quite a few.
• Today is the 154th anniversary of the massacre of Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians at Sand Creek in what is now eastern Colorado: The slaughter was accomplished by the Third Colorado Volunteers led by Col. John Chivington, a Methodist minister. The Indians had encamped at Sand Creek as they had been told to do if they wanted peace. On November 29, 1864, before the sun rose, Chivington gave the order to attack with artillery followed by 675 cavalrymen falling upon the village. By the time they were done, although accounts differ wildly, perhaps 150 Indians were dead, mostly women, children, and old men. In testimony before Congress in 1866, Chivington claimed 500 warriors had been slain, a figure that nobody else comes close to confirming. Some of the volunteer soldiers scalped the dying and the dead, hacked off fingers as souvenirs, and cut off scrota and breasts for use as tobacco pouches. With scalps on their pommels and carrying other gruesome memorabilia of the massacre, they returned to Denver to great public and initial media acclaim. Chivington’s most infamous comment, cited in Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, was made to one of his officers just before the attack: “Damn any man who sympathizes with Indians! ... I have come to kill Indians, and believe it is right and honorable to use any means under God's heaven to kill Indians. ... Kill and scalp all, big and little; nits make lice.” The congressional investigation excoriated Chivington but neither he nor any others involved with the slaughter were punished. Winter Rabbit has more here.
• Meanwhile, Department of Justice report finds that Feds declined to prosecute more a third of cases referred to them in Indian Country in 2017:
The report reveals that U.S. attorneys’ offices left 37 percent of referred cases from Indian Country unprosecuted in 2017 — a figure slightly up from 2016 and steady with data since 2011, after then-President Barack Obama signed the Tribal Law and Order Act into law. The percentage continues to plateau despite funding for tribal law enforcement from the Trump administration. Lawmakers like Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., see the department’s prosecution rate as failing members of federally recognized tribes.
“This report only confirms that Native victims continue to fall through the cracks of our justice system,” Udall wrote to the Associated Press.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Stories everywhere! Greg Dworkin and Armando help get us through the logjam. The Epstein-Acosta story breaks out. Pelosi gets the Speaker nod, and the NYT tut-tuts. Cohen pleads, again. Lee-Jeffries caucus chair race analyzed. Bump stock ban drops.