I’m married to an avid news follower. Each day, Jan texts me snippets of the news she consumes while she’s doing other things. I’ve long tried to convince her to make these public. Yesterday she started doing just that, on her Threads account (@janblixt) as well as on Facebook. Give her a follow, for what she calls “interesting stuff happening today. Not an exhaustive list, with a definite liberal truth bias.”
April 17, 2024
Parts of the Arabian Peninsula received 10 inches of rain in 24 hours – an area of the world that averages 3.5 inches of rain PER YEAR.
The PM of the UK, Rishi Sunak (think if Vivek Ramaswami actually got elected to something) lost a major vote in Parliament’s upper chamber when they rejected his plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda. Seriously, the MAGA (MUKGA?) wing of the Tory party wants to load UK asylum seekers on to planes and fly them to RWANDA.
France isn’t sure they can get the Seine clean enough for water sports for this summer’s Paris Olympic Games. I’m bummed about that.
Astronomers are calling the most massive known stellar black hole in the Milky Way galaxy a “sleeping giant,” after detecting an unusual wobble in space. Gaia BH3, has a mass that is nearly 33 times that of our sun, located 1,926 light-years away in the Aquila constellation. My question: considering the nickname, do they think it’s going to wake up?
NASA is saying the chunk of space garbage the ISS jettisoned was expected to disintegrate completely upon reentry. Apparently not and bits of it hit Florida. Mmm-hmmm.
Around 1 pm: The US Senate convened a Court of Impeachment for the House charges (actually, just vibes) against DHS Secretary Mayorkas.
Around 3:30 pm: US Senate dismissed both House impeachment charges (actually, just vibes) of illegal conduct by DHS Secretary Mayorkas.
51-48 first count, 51-49 second. Murkowski abstained the first count.
Real profiles in courage there on the Republican side- they were all doing interviews this morning about how impeachment shouldn’t be used this way and there were no high crimes or misdemeanors – but when it was time to vote? They all fell in line. Apparently they were upset they wouldn’t get to “give speeches on the importance of border security.”
Arizona House Republicans again refuse to take a bill to repeal the 1864 Abortion Ban which will soon take effect. This is the third such opportunity to repeal that they have quashed. Don’t believe any of them as they make the media rounds talking up their moderation.
“Facing criticism that it is overly beholden to Elon Musk, Tesla’s board of directors said on Wednesday that it would essentially give him everything he wanted, including the biggest pay package in corporate history.” I literally just copied this headline from NYT as it’s perfect in every way. FYI: Tesla is currently the worst performing stock on the market – even worse – over time – than Trump Media.
Jan’s new legal/scientific/jargon term of the day: “Sandoval Notice” is a statement proffered to the court by the prosecution stating what prior bad acts and illegalities the defendant was involved with. The judge can determine in a hearing which specifics can be asked about by the prosecutor to the defendant in front of the jury.
Today, a Sandoval Notice was filed by DA Bragg’s office seeking to use rulings from the E. Jean Carroll cases, the NY civil fraud case, the ridiculous case he filed against Hillary Clinton – which was thrown out and for which he was sanctioned – the payoffs to Weisselberg, and the Trump Foundation fraud case to impeach Trump’s credibility on cross.
Not a lawyer, but I can’t imagine the icky man’s lawyers will let him anywhere near the stand.
There’s tons more, it’s a big world, but that’s a quick clip.
