- To the surprise of few, Donald Trump has won a crushing victory in Super Tuesday, and as a result, Nikki Haley is suspending her campaign. Notably, she has not endorsed Trump; more notably, exit polls found that roughly a third of Republican primary voters are not guaranteeing a vote for Trump in November. Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, hundreds of thousands of voters cast an "uncommitted" protest vote in their own primaries. Fair enough as a protest, as long as they don't lose sight of the bigger picture. Worryingly, though, there are signs that some voters are; for instance, even as the economy improves, Biden is still getting poor marks for that from poll respondents. And despite the Republicans' recent fundraising woes, Trump may have an ace in the hole in the form of bailouts from billionaires such as Elon Musk.
- The US Supreme Court has struck down Colorado's attempt to keep Trump off the ballot. The specifics of the ruling are interesting - while everyone on the court, including the three more liberal judges, agreed that the enforcement of the "insurrection clause" is not up to the states, the liberals argued that a federal court should be able to enforce it. Unfortunately they were outvoted by the five conservatives who insist that only Congress can rule someone ineligible.
- A recent poll concluded that a slight majority of Americans, including 62% of those who voted for Biden last time around, oppose arms shipments to Israel while the current conflict continues.
- At the New York Times, a rift appears to be opening up over the coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict. In particular, the producers of a podcast apparently questioned some of the claims made in an article from December that claimed that Hamas was "weaponizing sexual violence" for the conflict; the podcast has not seen the light of day so far, but The Intercept got wind of the dispute, leading management to circle the wagons and allegedly conduct "targeted interrogations" of journalists of Middle Eastern ancestry to try to find the source of the leak. The journalists' union has filed a grievance.
- Universities in the US are required by law to record on-campus crimes and warn their communities. Lynchburg, Virginia's Liberty University, founded by Jerry Falwell, has been fined $14 million for multiple failures to comply with the law, including cases involving sexual violence (I guess they didn't want to investigate those good Christians for something they'd prefer to blame others, such as the LGBT* community, for).
- The city of Miami Beach, Florida has announced that they're "breaking up with spring break". In practical terms it just means they aren't going to look the other way regarding illegal activity, and they're limiting the supply of parking and raising its price.
- France is considering penalizing the manufacturers of "fast fashion" by charging the companies up to 50% of the selling price of the items.
No comments:
Post a Comment