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Overnight News Digest for Wednesday, May 17 2023 (Red pill, blue pill, mifepristone edition) [1]
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Date: 2023-05-17
This is an open thread where everyone is welcome, especially night owls and early birds, to share and discuss the happenings of the day. Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
The crew of the Overnight News Digest consists of founder Magnifico, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, jeremybloom, Magnifico, annetteboardman, eeff, rise above the swamp, Besame and jck. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) Interceptor 7, Man Oh Man, wader, Neon Vincent, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck (RIP), rfall, ScottyUrb, Doctor RJ, BentLiberal, Oke (RIP) and jlms qkw.
Erin Hawley, the attorney representing the anti-abortion challengers, turned heads with her comments suggesting that women who are victims of sex trafficking or other extreme abuse have plenty of options besides the abortion pill to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. “There are other methods of obtaining abortion that are available to people in the tragic circumstances you detailed,” Hawley said to Elrod, without elaborating on how such a person would get a surgical abortion in states where the procedure is largely banned — including Texas, where the lawsuit was filed. “Surgical abortion is available,” Hawley said. “This case is not about ending abortion. It’s about ending a particularly dangerous type of abortion. So, I think the availability of other abortion procedures would mitigate much of that harm.” x .@kavitapmd on the abortion pill mifepristone: "It's safer not just than Viagra and penicillin, but it's actually safer than child birth itself." pic.twitter.com/kqzb7t1vBe — 11th Hour (@11thHour) May 18, 2023
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is where law goes to die—a place where the nation’s most partisan jurists recklessly wield their power to enact hard-right policy under the guise of judging. But even by the court’s own dismal standards, Wednesday was a shitshow of epic and catastrophic proportions. A nightmare three-judge panel heard the never-ending mifepristone case, which seeks to pull the “abortion pill” off the market in all 50 states. The hearing was a humiliating farce from start to finish as Judges Jennifer Walker Elrod, James Ho, and Cory Wilson assumed the role of pro-life warriors hellbent on changing any rules and ignoring any evidence that might stand in the way of them ruling against abortion. And here’s the punchline: Nothing these intellectual Lilliputians do will even matter. The Supreme Court has already decided that the 5th Circuit cannot be trusted with this case: In April, it froze the court’s previous decision stringently limiting access to mifepristone, expressly maintaining the freeze until the justices themselves take further action. Elrod, Ho, and Wilson are howling into the wind; they have no power to change a thing about federal regulation of medication abortion. The adults in the room have already put them in time-out. And rather than demonstrate that they can judge responsibly, they seized on Wednesday’s hearing to throw a combination temper tantrum/gaslight party. No lessons have been learned, no maturity acquired. This time-out probably isn’t ending anytime soon. ...Which brings us to Wednesday, when the FDA and Danco Laboratories (which manufacturers mifepristone) tried to pull the 5th Circuit back into the orbit of reality. It was a futile exercise. Elrod, a George W. Bush appointee, is one of the most disingenuous and petty judges on the bench. Ho is an extremist and a troll who’s blotto on his own power. Wilson, for his part, often seems to misunderstand basic facts about any given case. Both Ho and Wilson are—drum roll, please—Trump appointees. Sarah Harrington (for the FDA) and Jessica Ellsworth (for Danco) did an amazing job handling a comically hostile bench. But what was the point? Nobody seriously expects these robed ideologues to do their job with a modicum of integrity… x "This is all politically manufactured. Abortion is safe in this country, mifepristone is incredibly safe, but all of this has been manufactured by politicians and by the Republican Party" - @CecileRichards w/ @NicolleDWallace pic.twitter.com/FK7KSVmFSJ — Deadline White House (@DeadlineWH) May 17, 2023
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy on Wednesday said he would consider defying the Supreme Court and continue to provide mifepristone if the court rules in favor of a ban on the abortion pill. x NJ Gov. Murphy would consider defying Supreme Court if justices back abortion pill ban.
Good on Gov. Murphy.
https://t.co/D6UUobIRs5 — Jesse Elin Browne (@effiedog) May 17, 2023 ...“When I say everything is on the table, Katy, I mean that. This action generally, whether it’s mifepristone, or whether it’s North Carolina or South Carolina, or Florida at six weeks,” he said in an interview with MSNBC’s Katy Tur, also referring to other abortion restrictions on the state level. “This is going to cost peoples’ lives. It’s going to cost them health, it’s also going to cost peoples’ lives, women in particular sadly. That’s what’s at stake, we’ll do whatever it takes to save lives,” said Murphy, a Democrat.
Daily Beast — Party-Switching Pol Helps N.C. Republicans Pass 12-Week Abortion Ban
A single lawmaker who switched parties this spring helped North Carolina Republicans override the Democratic governor’s veto Tuesday and enact a sweeping new abortion ban that will impede access throughout the South. Tricia Cotham, a state representative who in April announced she was switching from Democrat to Republican, gave the party the two-thirds supermajority required to bar pregnant people from having abortions after 12 weeks gestation. Legislators voted late into the night, following days of last-minute jockeying to persuade at least one Republican to uphold Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto. Abortion rights advocates held out hope until the last minute that Cotham—who passionately spoke out about her own abortion on the House floor in 2015—would vote against it or simply abstain. x Watch the full video here:
https://t.co/RlWIHOSNQL — All In with Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) May 18, 2023
x Dems are extreme?!
The VA requested $20.3B dollars for the Toxic Exposures Fund, to care for Vets exposed to toxins during our time of service.
House Republicans are shortchanging the Fund by $14.7 BILLION dollars.
Breaking a promise to Veterans—and lying to us on top of it.
https://t.co/UtVnLjOwff pic.twitter.com/hMbB0poUzB — VoteVets (@votevets) May 17, 2023
x Everyone knows when you rack up a tab you pay the bill. But Republicans prefer to dine and ditch on America’s economy, which will only hurt you. Here’s how. pic.twitter.com/h68emKx6hr — Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) May 17, 2023
x To all the people asking, the police pulled the protestor (my friend) @jake_burdett away and I was asked to “answer questions.” They watched my video and held Jake across the street until the press conference was over. I never saw the rep. be questioned (maybe he was) by them — Kristy Fogle PA-C (@kristyfoglePAC) May 18, 2023
x I am currently being detained by DC Police for asking tough questions to far right extremist Congressmen @RepGosar and @laurenboebert at a press conference. Rep Clay Higgins proceeded to assault/physically remove me from the press conference.For this, the cops detained me,not him pic.twitter.com/iX4yjCGKsZ — Jake Burdett (@jake_burdett) May 17, 2023
Electric vehicle owners in Texas will be paying more to renew or register their vehicles starting in September. Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill into law Saturday requiring new electric vehicle owners to pay $400 to register their vehicles, in addition to other standard registration fees. Current owners would pay $200 a year when renewing registration. The proposal, Senate Bill 505 was passed by the Texas Senate at the end of March, followed by the House in late April. The new fee, which will take effect Sept 1, would not affect hybrid vehicles, who still pay gas taxes, nor would it affect owners of electric motorcycles, mopeds and autocycles, or a neighborhood electric vehicle with a maximum speed of 35 miles per hour.
The Lone Star State has seen rapid growth not only in oil and gas production but also in wind and solar generation, a boom that has been justly called the Texas Miracle. But now reactionary forces in the Texas Legislature want to turn the clock back to the days before the state became a national leader in producing electricity from solar and wind power. x No one in their right mind says we need less renewable energy.
Texas Legislators: Hold my beer.
🎁🔗 of @MichaelEWebber’s piece.
https://t.co/IeVDLCdj3f — David Ho (@_david_ho_) May 13, 2023 The Texas Legislature is moving to erect barriers to clean energy development while providing incentives for fossil fuel production. This would make the task of reducing emissions much harder. And it comes even though oil and gas production has continued to grow, though not at the pace of the market’s embrace of wind and solar. x 4 years ago: "It's Actually Science, Motherfuckers!"🔥
"Grow the fuck up. You're not children anymore. I didn't mind explaining photosynthesis to you when you were 12. But you're adults now" @BillNye@LastWeekTonight at 18m15s
📺
https://t.co/oa22uSVYlgpic.twitter.com/HlYpJEsmyK — Parents For Future #UnsereGenerationUnserJob (@parents4future) May 15, 2023
The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Big Oil once again on Monday by allowing two more climate accountability lawsuits — from Delaware and Hoboken, New Jersey — to continue moving toward trial in state courts. x 🚨In a first for climate accountability lawsuits, Hoboken, New Jersey, is charging fossil fuel companies with violating state RICO laws by coordinating to spread climate deception.
Read about the amended complaint ⬇️
https://t.co/Oa2R9yp4t9 — Emily Sanders (@emdashsanders) May 16, 2023 Delaware, the lowest-lying state in the nation, and Hoboken, which sits on the Hudson River across from New York City, each filed lawsuits against Exxon, Chevron, Shell, BP, and other oil majors, as well as the American Petroleum Institute (API), in 2020 to hold them accountable under local consumer fraud laws and make them pay for the rising costs to protect residents from flooding, superstorms, and other climate damages. But now, Hoboken’s case also charges the polluters with violating New Jersey’s Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act, better known as RICO.
The pandemic has shined a light on people and the planet, while the war in Ukraine unnerved many countries who are now questioning their energy security. If these events were not enough to help wean countries off fossil fuels, the timely and sobering climate report published by the IPCC (The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) should. x Adopt #RenewableEnergy to help avert a #ClimateDisaster
"UN secretary general #AntonioGuterres stressed that it was time to press ‘the fast-forward button’ and that all countries should bring their #NetZero efforts forward by a decade"#ClimateChange
https://t.co/wLwV6ZETYH — Prof. Peter Strachan (@ProfStrachan) May 16, 2023 The report clearly outlined the devasting effects of climate change, laying bare the fact there is little chance of keeping the world from warming by more than 1.5C.
For the first time in U.S. history, the Justice Department has concluded an environmental justice inquiry through the Civil Rights Act of 1964, determining that the state of Alabama and Lowndes County discriminated against Black residents for decades. x "For the first time in U.S. history, the Justice Department has concluded an environmental justice inquiry through the Civil Rights Act of 1964, determining that the state of Alabama and Lowndes County discriminated against Black residents for decades."
https://t.co/xhcCnL6nbD — philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) May 17, 2023 The findings from the investigation have led to an agreement involving the Alabama Department of Public Health and the Lowndes County Health Department to finally improve wastewater infrastructure in the rural county, where sewage woes have created a health crisis. But for the hundreds of families who’ve lived amongst their own waste for decades, cleaning up the problem requires much more than pumping cash and infrastructure improvements into the county, where the average household rakes in just $32,000 per year — less than half the U.S. average.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.)—the curtsy-voting former Democrat who has a net favorability rating of negative 23 points—is reportedly using her campaign funds to pay for trips to run marathons. According to the Daily Beast, when Sinema ran the prestigious Boston Marathon in April 2022, she appears to have also held a fundraiser that allowed her to write off travel expenses. Sinema’s Getting Stuff Done PAC (lol) spent more than $1,500 on “event supplies” and “meeting meals” at Boston-area businesses during race week, and Federal Election Commission records show several of Massachusetts-based donors gave Sinema more than $16,000 in April, many of them giving the max amount. Sinema’s campaign also paid $8,470 in lodging expenses at a Ritz-Carlton hotel, and in a post-race photo she tweeted, the luxe hotel’s logo is visible on a gift bag. And it’s not even the first time she’s done this! The story continues: “On at least six total occasions since 2019, Sinema has participated in a race while engaging in fundraising activity—and covering expenses—in the area of the competition, according to a review of public campaign finance and competition records.” The outlet linked campaign spending to races in California, Colorado, Utah, and Washington. A Sinema spokesperson didn’t respond to the Beast’s request for comment.
x BREAKING: The Republican polling firm WPA Intelligence has a new poll out today showing that President Biden would beat Trump by 7 points nationally (47% to 40%).
The poll also showed that independent voters back Biden by a whopping 14 percentage points, up from the 7 points by… pic.twitter.com/F4q8eyi4Sq — Jon Cooper (@joncoopertweets) May 18, 2023
x Announcing this is your first visit EVER to a Dunkin Donuts isn't the "I'm just a regular human" flex Mike Pence thinks it is.
https://t.co/VlgtB3iq8R — Cheri Jacobus (@CheriJacobus) May 17, 2023
x reminder not to forget that 6 weeks ago, an exec of the San Jose cop union was caught buying fentanyl from her office + receiving at least 61 shipments of it to her personal home. She was charged with "attempt to import" and then we heard no more about it.
https://t.co/lYUUWcRwB6 — IncarcerNation (@IncarcerNation) May 16, 2023
Grist is excited to announce our third-annual climate fiction short story contest, Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors. Imagine 2200 is an invitation to writers from all over the globe to imagine a future in which solutions to the climate crisis flourish and help bring about radical improvements to our world. We dare you to dream anew. [Get Imagine updates: Sign up for our email list] * * * Submissions for our 2023/2024 contest are now open. We’re looking for stories of 3,000 to 5,000 words that envision the next 180 years of climate progress — roughly seven generations – imagining intersectional worlds of abundance, adaptation, reform, and hope.
Scientific American — The Closest Living Relative of the First Animal Has Finally Been Found
Deep, deep in geologic time, some 600 million or 700 million years ago, the very first animals evolved on Earth. Their closest relatives that still live today include sponges, sea anemones and comb jellies. But exactly which of these is truly the closest relative to the very first animals has remained one of the most contentious questions in evolutionary biology. With few fossils of these early, squishy animals, their history has necessarily been muddy, and it has been challenging to reconstruct what happened. A study published on May 17 in Nature resolves the relationships of these early animals by looking at the chromosomes of sponges, comb jellies, jellyfish and three close single-celled relatives of animals. By studying the pattern of chromosomes at the base of the animal evolutionary tree breaking and fusing together, a team of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, University of Vienna, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute and University of California, Santa Cruz, determined that comb jellies, more formally known as ctenophores, are in fact the closest relatives of the first animals. “Understanding these deepest relationships in the animal tree of life is absolutely critical for reconstructing the history of the origin and evolution of a lot of the complex traits that we’re most interested in—things like the nervous system and animal symmetry,” says Casey Dunn, an evolutionary biologist at Yale University, who was not involved in the study.
Live Science — Scientists discover 62 new moons around Saturn, raising total to 145 — the most in the solar system
Jupiter's brief but glorious reign as the planet with the most moons in our solar system came crashing down this week as scientists confirmed the discovery of 62 new moons orbiting Saturn — bringing the ringed planet's total to a whopping 145 moons. That's a decisive leap ahead of Jupiter's 95 confirmed moons – a total that eclipsed Saturn's moon count for several months after 12 new moons were officially recognized orbiting Jupiter in late December. Saturn is now the first and only planet in the solar system with more than 100 known moons, according to researchers at the University of British Columbia (opens in new tab) (UBC), who aided in the new discoveries. The team of international researchers made their detections using data from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on top of Mauna Kea, Hawaii between 2019 and 2021. By analyzing a trove of sequential images taken over 3-hour observation windows, the team identified 62 moons that were previously either too small or too dim to detect. Some of the smaller moons measured just 1.6 miles (2.5 kilometers) wide — a distance smaller than the length of the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
As you’ve probably noticed, the word “woke” has been entirely wrung of any meaning in recent years. BlackRock and Silicon Valley Bank are “woke”, according to the right. Walt Disney is woke. Pope Francis is woke. Even the US military industrial complex is woke. The newest target? Miller Lite. Conservatives are hopping mad after discovering a two-month-old Miller Lite commercial that was released during Women’s History Month. x The ‘fuck your feelings crowd’ is losing their minds over yet another “woke” beer ad and it’s absolutely fucking glorious to behold. 😂 — Jo🌻 (@JoJoFromJerz) May 15, 2023 What exactly is the problem with this ad? Well, it seems that people are taking extreme offense to the fact that that the ad humorously points out that there is a long history of misogyny in beer advertising, including Miller’s own legacy of using women in skimpy bikinis to sell lager. Fully-clothed women drinking beer? Woke!
What are you objecting to tonight? What color pill are YOU taking? Tell us in the comments!
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