“It simply criminalizes abortion,” Collins said. “It is meant to actually use some of the same language that is addressed in Roe vs. Wade. So, hopefully it just completely takes it all the way to the Supreme Court eventually to overturn.”
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This attack on science, and on knowledge itself, goes beyond anything we have seen in America before. And it is not only dangerous to science, it is dangerous to our nation and the world.
https://globalecoguy.org/im-a-scientist-this-is-what-i-ll-fight-for-554ccb15e99b
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Politico - Morning Media Newsletter, Wednesday, April 3, 2019
Natasha Bertrand will leave The Atlantic to join POLITICO as a national security correspondent later this month. She will continue to appear on MSNBC as a contributor.
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Ok this story is just really really scary.
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Adding to the very long WTF list of changes the T administration is making. Health and safety are not given their place in the pursuit to advance profits and give ultimate power back to the food plant owners. And even the chief veterinarian from the USDA will not sign off on it…which should give everyone pause.
The Trump administration plans to shift much of the power and responsibility for food safety inspections in hog plants to the pork industry as early as May, cutting the number of federal inspectors by about 40 percent and replacing them with plant employees.
Under the proposed new inspection system, the responsibility for identifying diseased and contaminated pork would be shared with plant employees, whose training would be at the discretion of plant owners. There would be no limits on slaughter-line speeds.
…
The administration also is working to shift inspection of beef to plant owners. Agriculture Department officials are scheduled next month to discuss the proposed changes with the meat industry.
These proposals, part of the administration’s broader effort to reduce regulations, come as the federal government is under fire for delegating some of its aircraft safety oversight responsibilities to Boeing, which developed the 737 Max jets involved in two fatal crashes over the past six months. Federal Aviation Administration certification of the two aircraft involved in the crashes took place under President Trump, but the major shift toward delegating key aspects of aviation oversight began during the George W. Bush administration.
Pat Basu, the chief veterinarian with the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service from 2016 to 2018, refused to sign off on the new pork system because of concerns about safety for consumers and livestock. The USDA sent the proposed regulations to the Federal Register about a week after Basu left, and they were published less than a month later, according to records and interviews.
“Look at the FAA. It took a year or so before the crashes happened,” Basu said. “This could pass, and everything could be okay for a while, until some disease is missed, and we have an outbreak all over the country. It would be an economic disaster that would be very hard to recover from.”
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BREAKING: United States government revokes visa of Fatou Bensouda, an International Criminal Court prosecutor investigating alleged US war crimes in Afghanistan.
https://share.qz.com/news/2371631/
US revokes visa of International Criminal Court prosecutor
Fatou Bensouda has been investigating possible war crimes - including torture - committed by American forces in Afghanistan
U.S. revokes ICC prosecutor’s entry visa over Afghanistan investigation
THE HAGUE (Reuters) - The United States has revoked the entry visa of the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda, her office said on Thursday, a response to her inquiry into possible war crimes by U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
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WikiLeaks: Assange will be expelled from Ecuadorian Embassy within ‘hours to days’
All indications are the U.K. will then arrest him.
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MOSCOW (AP) — A small Russian bank owned by former U.S. congressman Charles Taylor was stripped of its license Friday after allegedly breaking anti-money laundering rules.
Russia’s central bank said that Commercial Bank of Ivanovo committed “numerous” breaches of anti-money laundering regulations — including by providing “incomplete and unreliable information” about transactions — and inflated the value of its assets.
The central bank has appointed administrators and says more than 70 percent of CBI’s lending was “low-quality loans.”
Taylor, a Republican widely considered a hard-line conservative, was a congressman from North Carolina between 1991 and 2007.
Central bank records show Taylor owns more than 80 percent of CBI, a regional lender based in the textile-manufacturing city of Ivanovo, just over 150 miles (245 kilometers) north-east of Moscow. …
Taylor bought CBI in 2003 alongside his business partner Boris Bolshakov, a former KGB agent and Supreme Soviet deputy who is listed as the bank’s second-largest shareholder.
Russians laundering money into the U.S. aided by a wealthy Republican politician? Who ever imagined such a thing could happen? I’m shocked!
Here’s a more detailed article from a regional paper:
https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/state/north-carolina/article228877939.html
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This is how I want all news to be reported lol.
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So like, Bernie has a podcast now. I don’t know how I feel about this… Is it just me or is that just an hour long political advertisement?
Fuck it we need those votes.
Podcasts for everyone.
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Watch is exchange - dumbfounding accusations towards former Sen Kerry on his credentials to discuss Climate Change
How low can we go? Apparently this low.
WTF
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Follow thread about recent election in Madagascar and how the Russians swooped in to supply money and influence voters to support certain candidates…
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Mayor Pete’s team is so incredibly savvy, they put together a public design tool kit! This is how you turn fans into brand ambassadors.
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The 10-year agreement would make Braidy Rusal’s biggest customer and give Rusal a significant presence in the U.S. rolled-aluminum market, where it has no mills of its own. Rusal would own a 40% stake in the Braidy subsidiary operating the mill.
“We think this type of partnership is something we could replicate around the world,” said Gregory Barker, chairman of Rusal parent company En+ Group PLC and Britain’s former minister for energy and climate change.
The deal still needs to be approved by board members at Braidy and En+.
The investment in Braidy is the first by Rusal and En+ in the U.S. since the federal government imposed sanctions against the company in April 2018 in retribution for Russia’s alleged meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The sanctions were lifted in January after Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska agreed to surrender his majority ownership of En+ and the board was revamped, with Mr. Barker as chairman.
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Mayor Pete on the fire at Notre Dame. Click for video and translation 
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He is SO thoughtful, smart and never with attitude. And kind, and so human…
Wow…
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The Pulitzer Prizes recognize the superior news reporting of the year…Here are a few of the winners…Dogged reporting…and speaking ‘truth to power.’ - so impressive.
PUBLIC SERVICE
The South Florida Sun Sentinel
The Sun Sentinel’s sweeping coverage of the causes and consequences of the deadly mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., shaped the national gun safety debate and prompted changes in local policies. The paper addressed a culture of leniency at Broward County schools, blunders by the sheriff’s office in responding to the attack and attempts by officials to mask their failures.
Finalists ProPublica, The Washington Post
BREAKING NEWS REPORTING
Staff of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“I don’t think there’s a single person on the staff who didn’t contribute” to covering the shooting deaths of 11 worshipers at the Tree of Life synagogue, said Keith Burris, the paper’s executive editor. A visceral account of the attack began with the first words of the Mourners’ Kaddish, a Jewish prayer for the dead, rendered in Hebrew. Other articles examined the victims’ lives, the harrowing experiences of survivors and the quick reactions of 911 center workers.
Finalists The Chico Enterprise-Record; South Florida Sun Sentinel
NATIONAL REPORTING
Staff of The Wall Street Journal
EXPLANATORY REPORTING
David Barstow, Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner
of The New York Times
The 18-month investigation of President Trump’s finances debunked his claims of self-made wealth and revealed a business empire “riddled with tax dodges,” the Pulitzer committee said. The series led city and state officials in New York to open investigations into whether Mr. Trump and his family had underpaid taxes on his father’s real estate empire and participated in fraudulent tax schemes. This is the fourth Pulitzer for Mr. Barstow; Ms. Craig, 51, and Mr. Buettner, 57, have been finalists.
Finalists Kyra Gurney, Nicholas Nehamas, Jay Weaver and Jim Wyss of The Miami Herald; Aaron Glanz and Emmanuel Martinez of Reveal/The Center for Investigative Reporting; Staff of The Washington Post
The Wall Street Journal won the national reporting prize for its articles on hush money payments made to two women who claimed during the 2016 presidential campaign that they had sexual encounters with Donald J. Trump. “To see the story unfold the way it did and reach the president was just incredible,” said Michael Rothfeld, one of The Journal reporters who contributed to the coverage. “For me, it’s just the story of a lifetime.”
In honoring The Sun Sentinel, The Post-Gazette and The Capital Gazette, the Pulitzer board underlined the importance of local journalism at a moment when regional papers are struggling to survive. First given in 1917, the Pulitzer Prizes are presented annually by Columbia University for excellence in journalism and letters.
Invoking the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, The Washington Post columnist killed in Turkey by Saudi assassins, Ms. Canedy praised this year’s honorees for a willingness to speak truth to power.
…
The Times’s examination of Mr. Trump’s family finances, by the journalists David Barstow, Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner, drew on tens of thousands of pages of confidential records and previously undisclosed tax returns.
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And what a coincidence that this would affect Kentucky so positively with Sen McConnell being up for re-election in 2020
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, opposed the effort to block the sanctions relief on the Russian companies, the New York Times reported in January.
A spokesman for McConnell did not immediately respond on Monday when asked if the Braidy Industries investment played a role in McConnell’s stance on the sanctions.
Braidy Industries is looking for more help from the Trump administration to make the aluminum mill a reality: It is seeking $800 million in below-market financing from a U.S. Department of Energy program aimed at helping produce efficient vehicles.
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President Trump deleted a tweet Monday in which he had mistakenly said he had spoken by phone with Sri Lanka’s president instead of the country’s prime minister in the wake of the Easter Sunday explosions that killed 290 people and wounded more than 500.
The deleted tweet marks the second time Trump has tweeted erroneous information related to the Sri Lanka attacks. In a now-deleted Sunday morning tweet, he grossly overstated the death toll as “at least 138 million people.”
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