Despite a 72-hour cease-fire extension to allow people to escape, Sudan’s capital experiences heavy fighting. After a 24-hour journey, an evacuation convoy of about 300 U.S. citizens on over a dozen buses has reached the coast at Port Sudan from Khartoum under the protection of armed drones deployed by the Pentagon.
A drone strike may have caused the gigantic fire at a fuel storage facility and refinery in Sevastopol, the Crimean city occupied by Russia. The day before, Russia’s strike on the Ukrainian city of Uman by cruise missiles from Russian aircraft in the Caspian Sea killed 23 civilians, including children, and more civilians were killed in Dnipro. Uman is considered a holy city for Orthodox Judaism, a site for Hasidic pilgrimage for over 200 years. Ukraine intercepted 21 of the 23 missiles.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will be added to the list of people who are above the law. A GOP bill will exempt DeSantis from public records laws; he will be able to hide information about his travel, people at the governor’s mansion, and donations to state political committees by extending deadlines for reports about fundraising. In court cases, DeSantis has claimed “executive privilege” to block the release of records and to keep staff from testifying, an advantage only for presidents.
Chief Justice John Roberts stated that Supreme Court justices should control their own ethics issues, but their behavior indicates they aren’t qualified. Elite law firms paid his wife, Jane Roberts, over $10 million in seven years with hundreds of thousands of dollars from a firm arguing a case in the high court. Most of her placements with law firms, however, are confidential. On his disclosure forms, Roberts does not release information about who is paying his wife.
Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas failed to recuse themselves from cases involved with those who enriched them—failing to be specific about the largess—and Samuel Alito was wooed with free meals and vacation locations by an evangelical activist coordinating an influence campaign for the court to overturn women’s reproductive rights. Justice Antonin Scalia died in 2016 on an expenses-paid trip with a secretive hunting society at a luxury Texas ranch.
Unlike judges in lower courts, Supreme Court justices are exempt from the Judicial Conference’s rigorous Code of Conduct; Roberts calls it a “starting point.” Supreme Court is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act or the oversight of the Office on Government Ethics. It has no internal ethics committee and no inspector general.
After years of questioning the conduct of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, new information reveals serious omissions in research about him when he was a candidate. In 2018, a Senate report released by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) provided the unfounded and unverified claim that one of his accusers was “likely” mistaken in alleging that Kavanaugh had exposed himself to her at a dormitory party, blaming another Yale student. The accusation came from a Colorado attorney member of the Federalist Society supporting Kavanaugh and friend of the judiciary committee’s lead counsel at that time. The young man picked by the attorney who allegedly exposed himself instead of Kavanaugh was a high school senior at the time, not a Yale student, and had never been contacted by any GOP staffers for the report. He said:
“These people can say what they want, and there are no consequences, ever.”
In a never-before-heard recording, another Yale graduate said he witnessed Kavanaugh expose himself at a party. Previously he tried to anonymously tell the FBI during the confirmation process that he saw Kavanaugh’s friends push the future justice’s penis into the hand of a female classmate at a party. In another situation, Kavanaugh had allegedly tried to push his penis into the mouth of a young woman almost passed out on the floor from drinking. Republican committee members were aware of the witness’s wish to testify to the FBI, but he was not interviewed by the committee’s investigators.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (R-RI) is expected to release a report of the FBI’s shabby handling of the Kavanaugh investigation by the end of the year. Roberts refused to testify at a Senate judiciary hearing on Tuesday, May 2, regarding potential reforms to ethics rules. Chair Dick Durbin (D-IL) cited “a steady stream of revelations regarding justices falling short of the ethical standards.”
According to several sources, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) obtained passing votes for his shady debt ceiling bill by telling Republicans to ignore the provisions of the measure because it would never become law. Instead, they should focus on its symbolic victory proving to President Joe Biden that GOP could unite around votes.
Two conservative states failed to ban abortion, each by one vote. The Nebraska bill in the unicameral legislature was to stop abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy, and South Carolina would have prevented them at conception. Six Republicans helped block motions with the chamber’s five women filibustering the proposal. One Republican senator compared the bill to Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale, in which women are considered state property. An 80-year-old Republican in Nebraska abstained because six weeks is not long enough for a woman to know that she is pregnant. Nebraska currently bans abortion after the 20th week.
Citing bigger expenses, WinRed, a website for GOP donations intends to add a $.30 fee for every donation on top of the 3.94 percent it already charges. During the 2022 election, the 31.2 million donations on WinRed were valued at almost $1.2 billion, and the 2024 election could double that number. The company could make almost an additional $20 million, reducing GOP campaign monies. WinRed complained that GOP donations were down and multiple investigations were expensive.
A judge issued a restraining order against a reporter in Arizona when she rang the doorbell of Sen. Wendy Rogers’ home to ask about her residency. Rogers may not be living in the district where she is elected. The judge refused the request to keep the reporter out of the state senate. In her second term, Rogers is an Oath Keeper, election denier, and QAnon promoter who also has faced accusations of antisemitism. Rogers defended Alex Jones who claimed the massacre of small children at Sandy Hook a hoax. Last year, most of her GOP colleagues voted to censure her for comments such as seeing her political enemies hanged.
The Federal Aviation Administation indefinitely grounded SpaceX after the Starship blew up four minutes after takeoff. The failure caused blackened structures and a huge crater in the ground at the launch pad, and dust and debris spread out, striking at least one vehicle. Heat and the force of the firing rocket engines caused the pad’s concrete structure to fracture after gasses expelled from the engines entered cracks at a high pressure, further eroding the pad. Dirt from under the pad cast massive quantities of dust for several miles away.
People in Port Isabel, five miles away from the launch, had broken windows, shaken buildings, and dust raining down. The particulates can cause respiratory problems and other health problems. In addition, five to eight of the 33 Raptor engines didn’t fire at different times during the ascent. One cause could have been debris from the pad’s destruction may have damaged them, especially the rocket nozzles.
The destruction of the launch pad was unanticipated. CEO Elon Musk suggested using a water-cooled steel plate to disperse the heat, but it wasn’t ready in time. Engineers assumed the pad could survive one launch, and they went ahead.
In another revelation about Elon Musk’s companies, a new report shows that Twitter complies with government requests to censor material far more often than before Musk purchased the company. In the first six months of his control, Twitter’s compliance for censorship demands rose to 80 percent from about 50 percent, especially in India where the right-wing government insisted on the removal of unflattering media portrayals about the governing party. Turkey provided the most requests to Twitter to suppress dissent which have been largely fulfilled.
Lawyers for Jack Teixeira, the airman who leaked hundreds of classified Pentagon documents, want him released into the custody of his father with a $20,000 bond. Prosecutors pointed out that he could be a flight risk, especially because his knowledge could be valuable to a foreign governments. Prosecutors also said that Teixeira had destroyed evidence in the case and has a history of making violent threats online.
Teixeira was suspended in high school for violent threats, planned to participate in a public shooting from an SUV. Six months ago, he said he would “kill a ton of people” with the goal of “culling the weak minded.” He also kept an arsenal of handguns and rifles in his room along with a gas mask. The judge scoffed when Teixeira’s lawyer claimed his client is only accused of sharing the information with a small group on the internet.
Two leaders of the Massachusetts Air National Guard unit where Teixieia was stationed have been suspended during the investigation, temporarily losing access to classified systems and information.
A family in Cleveland (TX) asked their neighbor to stop firing his AR-15 rifle in his yard at 11:30 pm so their baby could sleep. He went to their house and murdered five of them ages 8 to 31 with the gun. Five others were injured, three of them in the hospital. The shooter is still at large with the rifle. The U.S. has had at least 174 mass shootings in the first 128 days of 2023. That’s freedom in the United States.
For people who think studying punctuation has no value…
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