Here are some of today’s top stories:
- Democrats increase pressure on Sens. Manchin and Sinema to support voting rights.
- Climate activist investor wins third board seat at Exxon Mobil.
- Historian explains the white supremacists origins of the Second Amendment.
- Watch Paxton Smith’s brave valedictorian address in Lake Highlands, Texas.
- Arizonan Republicans get windfall for backing fraudit.
- As climate warms, freshwater lakes lose oxygen, putting fish at risk.
- Iran’s largest warship catches fire and sinks in the Gulf of Oman.
- Infrastruture deal is dead as long as Sens. Manchin and Sinema support the Senate’s Jim Crow-era cloture rules.
- Stimulus checks “substantially” reduced hardship, so Republican governors are ending Biden-backed pandemic unemployment payments early.
- NASA announces two missions to Venus.
Details and links to sources below the fold.
This is an open thread. Everyone is encouraged to share articles, stories, and tweets in your comments.
594,512 PEOPLE HAVE DIED FROM CORONAVIRUS IN THE U.S. 168.7 MILLION PEOPLE IN THE U.S. HAVE RECEIVED A VACCINATION DOSE
The Washington Post
Pressure mounts on Manchin as ‘panic’ sets in among Democrats over voting rights
Democratic leaders and activists are urgently stepping up pressure on Sen. Joe Manchin III to support legislation to fight Republican-led voting restrictions across the country, with party officials increasingly concluding that the battle over voting rights could come down to what the centrist Democrat from West Virginia does.
In a rare show of public frustration with his own party on Tuesday, President Biden appeared to lash out at Manchin when he accused a pair of unnamed senators of aligning too closely with Republicans and stalling efforts to pass sweeping voting standards.
Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) recently announced that his chamber would vote this month on a House-passed elections bill co-sponsored by every Democratic senator except Manchin — a move that would force Manchin to pick a side in a fight that has taken on new urgency in recent weeks.
Ecological disaster looms as ship with ‘dangerous goods’ aboard sinks off Sri Lankan coast
A fire-ravaged container ship began to sink off the western coast of Sri Lanka on Wednesday, increasing the likelihood that oil and dangerous goods will leak into the ocean and exacerbate what is already one of the worst environmental crises in the country’s history. […]
Billions of tiny plastic pellets, or “nurdles,” that the ship was carrying floated into the sea after the fire started and began to blanket Sri Lanka’s yellow-sand beaches, reaching as far as 75 miles to the south. Dead fish, birds and sea turtles began to wash up on shore. Scientists have warned that ocean currents could eventually carry the pellets to beaches on the other side of the island nation, killing more wildlife and damaging sensitive ecosystems.
Bloomberg
Exxon Activist Expands Boardroom Presence With Third Seat
Exxon Mobil Corp. activist investor Engine No. 1 expanded its presence on the oil giant’s board to three seats, according to preliminary vote tallies, cementing a victory that has reverberated across the energy industry.
The initial counts show the newest nominee from Engine No. 1’s slate elected to Exxon’s 12-member board is private-equity investor Alexander Karsner, Exxon said Wednesday in a statement. The results, which still need to be certified, confirmed an earlier report by Bloomberg News. […]
Karsner joins Gregory Goff, former chief executive officer of refiner Andeavor, and environmental scientist Kaisa Hietala, whose victories were announced last week shortly after Exxon’s May 26 annual general meeting.
Schumer’s Infrastructure Path May Get Trickier After Ruling
A new ruling by the Senate parliamentarian could complicate the Democrats’ ability to use a fast-track budget process to enact President Joe Biden’s $4 trillion economic agenda without Republican support.
The Senate rules official said last Friday that the fast-track budget process, known as reconciliation, can be used more than once in each fiscal year by revising a budget outline -- but also that there are limits on how that can be used, according to people familiar with the matter.
Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough said that to revise a budget resolution, such as the fiscal 2021 resolution used to pass the Covid 19 relief bill in March, the measure must go through committee and have floor amendment votes. That would make the process of revising a budget as time consuming as doing a fresh one. MacDonough also ruled that there must be a legitimate reason -- such as a new economic downturn -- for a revision, the people said.
NPR News
Historian Uncovers The Racist Roots Of The 2nd Amendment
Do Black people have full Second Amendment rights? That's the question historian Carol Anderson set out to answer after Minnesota police killed Philando Castile, a Black man with a license to carry a gun, during a 2016 traffic stop. […]
In her new book, The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America, Anderson traces racial distinctions in Americans' treatment of gun ownership back to the founding of the country and the Second Amendment, which states:
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
The language of the amendment, Anderson says, was crafted to ensure that slave owners could quickly crush any rebellion or resistance from those whom they'd enslaved. And she says the right to bear arms, presumably guaranteed to all citizens, has been repeatedly denied to Black people.
Prosecutors Secure The 2nd Guilty Plea In The Capitol Insurrection
A Florida man who stormed the U.S. Capitol and stood on the Senate floor during the Jan. 6 insurrection has become the second person to plead guilty in the federal investigation into the deadly riot.
Paul Hodgkins entered his plea during a virtual hearing Wednesday in federal court in Washington. The 38-year-old was originally facing five charges, but under a deal negotiated with prosecutors, he pleaded guilty to one count of obstructing an official proceeding.
D(allas) Magazine
Lake Highlands High Valedictorian Pulls Switcheroo on Commencement Speech
You know the drill. Every valedictorian has to get her speech approved before she delivers it at commencement. You can’t let high school kids — even really smart, hardworking, responsible kids — just get up and say whatever they want to say. That leads to chaos and rioting.
So Paxton Smith, the valedictorian of Lake Highlands High School’s Class of 2021, with her 104.93 average, submitted her speech ahead of Sunday’s commencement ceremony at the high school stadium. It was about media and how much of it she consumes and how that consumption has shaped the way she sees the world.
But another matter kept nagging at her. She couldn’t stop thinking about the “heartbeat bill” that Gov. Greg Abbott had signed into law last month.
Houston Chronicle
Texas Democrats call on Congress to help fight voting restrictions
As Texas Democrats drew national attention over the weekend, dramatically killing a massive package of election measures that would have reduced access to the polls, they said they wanted to make a larger point about what they view as Republican efforts to suppress the minority vote.
“We knew today, with the eyes of the nation watching action in Austin, that we needed to send a message,” state Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio, said at a news conference just after House Democrats staged a walkout in the legislative session’s final hours Sunday. “And that message is very, very clear: Mr. President, we need a national response to federal voting rights.”
On Tuesday, President Joe Biden made clear their message was received. The Democrat denounced a “tireless assault” on the right to vote and vowed to “fight like heck with every tool at my disposal” to pass federal legislation aimed at preventing states like Texas from restricting voting.
The Dallas Morning News
Atop every member’s desk in the Texas House of Representatives sits a small round voting machine. In a slot at the edge of the shiny metal pad, fits a key.
This key usually stays in the unlocked position, allowing representatives to vote from their seats. When a member is absent, or doesn’t want a deskmate or colleague voting for them, the key is turned, locking the machine. When lawmakers want to be extra sure no votes are cast when they’re gone, they take the key. […]
For days, rumors floated through the Capitol hallways that Democrats might stage a mass walkout, one of their few means of killing a bill this late in the session. But many doubted they would actually do it. After all, lawmakers had used the tactic only three times in Texas history. […]
The walkout, coordinated by Black and Latino Democrats, was a remarkable move that underscored how far they would go to kill the bill they called “Jim Crow 2.0.”
Mother Jones
Jim Crow Killed Voting Rights for Generations. Now the Republican Party Is Repeating History.
On September 3, 1868, Henry McNeal Turner rose to speak in the Georgia House of Representatives to fight for his political survival. He was one of 33 new Black state legislators elected that year in Georgia, a revolutionary change in the South after 250 years of slavery. Eight hundred thousand new Black voters had been registered across the region, and the share of Black male Southerners who were eligible to vote skyrocketed from 0.5 percent in 1866 to 80.5 percent two years later.
These Black legislators had helped to write a new state constitution guaranteeing voting rights for former slaves and leading Georgia back into the Union. Yet just two months after the 14th Amendment granted full citizenship rights to Black Americans, Georgia’s white-dominated legislature introduced a bill to expel the Black lawmakers, arguing that the state’s constitution protected their right to vote but not to hold office. “You bring both Congress and the Republican Party into odium in this state,” said Joseph E. Brown, who had served as governor during the Confederacy years, when “you confer upon the Negroes the right to hold office…in their present condition.” […]
Turner’s passionate speech would become a rallying cry for the civil rights movement 100 years later. “Am I a man?” he asked. “If I am such, I claim the rights of a man. Am I not a man because I happen to be of a darker hue than honorable gentlemen around me?”
But his pleas went unheeded. The legislature voted to expel the Black lawmakers, who weren’t even allowed to participate in the vote.
Arizona Republic
Arizona election audit a money windfall for state Republican Party
The Arizona Republican Party, along with other Trump-leaning groups, has used the state Senate's ongoing ballot review as a way to raise funds for their causes and candidates.
The fundraising has helped revitalize the Arizona GOP financially, tying its fortunes extremely closely to Trump. Other groups supporting Trump are benefiting in the same way, which could translate into support for candidates who follow the former president's playbook in the 2022 election.
The state party has taken in and kept far more cash than in recent political cycles in the first four months of the off-year. It is on track to spend more than it has in recent cycles, but is also debt-free.
The Atlantic
The Frightening New Republican Consensus
Conservatives may disagree with one another about what happened in 2020, but they’re converging on a belief that Democrats win close elections only through fraud. […]
There is widespread agreement inside the GOP that Democratic fraud is stealing elections, and that Republicans must not let that happen. If there’s a civil war in the Republican Party, it’s not about whether the problem exists, but how to fix it—by trying to undo the 2020 result, or instead by preparing for 2024.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia absentee ID law has outsized impact on Black and metro voters
Over 272,000 registered voters don’t have a driver’s license or state ID on file with election officials, meaning they’d have to submit additional documents to vote by mail under Georgia’s new voting law, state election records show.
The ID requirements disproportionately affect Black voters, who are much less likely than white voters to have ID numbers matched to their voter registrations, according to election data.
Voters who lack a driver’s license or state ID number linked to their registrations will have to verify their identities to vote absentee. Georgia’s voting law requires them to provide a utility bill, bank statement or other form of ID in future elections.
Thousands of Fauci’s pandemic emails published. Here’s what they show about him
Freedom of Information Act filings … have led to the release of more than 3,200 pages of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s emails from January 2020 to June 2020. The release shows Fauci worked plenty of overtime as the pandemic halted life as we know it.
Across the country, millions of people looked to his expertise for insight and guidance on how to defeat COVID-19. While Fauci received hundreds of questions on camera in television and news briefings, he also answered emails off-screen from nearly everyone who reached out, from colleagues and former colleagues, to producers, friends, celebrities, reporters and the occasional stranger.
Throughout his emails, Fauci took time to respond with sincere notes of support and strategy despite the ongoing conflicts between his office and the Trump administration.
Oregon Public Broadcasting News
Irrigators say they plan to force open Klamath headgates and release water
A pair of Klamath Project irrigators and their supporters say they intend to break into federal property and open the controls that are preventing water from Upper Klamath Lake from going to farms and ranches.
Rising tensions in the Klamath Basin could come to a boil soon, as two Klamath Project farmers plan to breach the fenced headgates of the federal irrigation project’s main canal and try to release water, likely triggering a standoff with the federal government.
Farmers Grant Knoll and Dan Nielsen bought property next to the headgates in April for $30,000 and have set up camp on the site. They are staffing a large canvas tent with volunteers from the local branch of People’s Rights, a national organization formed in 2020 by militant activist Ammon Bundy, and they’re trying to rally support.
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Allegheny County judge halts plea deals amid questions surrounding DA Zappala
Criminal justice advocates and elected officials are calling for the resignation of Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. after an email he sent banning plea offers to a Black attorney who called his office “systematically racist” became public.
Additionally, an Allegheny County judge is now refusing to accept plea deals from his office
The long-time prosecutor has not offered any public response since the Tribune-Review on Wednesday published excerpts of the May 18 email sent to the supervisors in his office. Zappala declined to comment on that story.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
[…] "Mr. Chauvin asks the Court to look beyond its findings, to his background, his lack of criminal history, his amenability to probation, to the unusual facts of this case, and to his being a product of a 'broken' system," [defense attorney Eric] Nelson wrote in a sentencing memorandum filed Wednesday.
Nelson did not elaborate further on what he meant by a " 'broken' system."
The Minnesota Attorney General's Office, which prosecuted Chauvin, also filed a memorandum Wednesday arguing for a 30-year prison term.
Minnesota Public Radio News
Study: As temps warm, lakes' deep waters are losing oxygen
Oxygen levels are falling in freshwater lakes in Minnesota and across the globe — a trend likely driven by climate change and human development, a new study suggests.
The findings could be a sign that trouble is ahead for Minnesota lakes that provide important habitat for cold-water fish species, and could have more harmful algal blooms in their future.
The study, published Wednesday in the scientific journal Nature, was the first to look at temperature and oxygen changes across a large number of lakes across the globe. Its research team included scientists from the University of Minnesota and other institutions.
AP News
Charges after US Capitol insurrection roil far-right groups
Donald Trump’s lies about a stolen 2020 election united right-wing supporters, conspiracy theorists and militants on Jan. 6, but the aftermath of the insurrection is roiling two of the most prominent far-right extremist groups at the U.S. Capitol that day.
More than three dozen members and associates across both the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers have been charged with crimes. Some local chapters cut ties with national leadership in the weeks after the deadly siege. The Proud Boys’ chairman called for a pause in the rallies that often have led to clashes with anti-fascist activists. And one Oath Keeper has agreed to cooperate against others charged in the riot.
Iran’s largest warship catches fire, sinks in Gulf of Oman
The largest warship in the Iranian navy caught fire and later sank Wednesday in the Gulf of Oman under unclear circumstances, the latest calamity to strike one of the country’s vessels in recent years amid tensions with the West.
The blaze began around 2:25 a.m. and firefighters tried to contain it, the Fars news agency reported, but their efforts failed to save the 207-meter (679-foot) Kharg, which was used to resupply other ships in the fleet at sea and conduct training exercises. State media reported 400 sailors and trainee cadets on board fled the vessel, with 33 suffering injuries.
BuzzFeed News
[…] This past week, on a cold and rainy Memorial Day morning, 100 years to the day since the campaign of terror began, a crowd gathered along the church’s southern rampart for an interfaith service dedicating a new prayer wall honoring victims of the 1921 massacre. The crowd included a mix of national civil rights leaders and politicians who had come to town for the official anniversary commemorations.
“It’s hard for me to smile today,” said Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware over the hum of the traffic on I-244. “I feel this ground today, but I also see a highway that went through a city. So we are here to remember, to mourn, and to rebuild equitably.”
But missing from the crowd were the three survivors of the attack who are still alive: Hughes Van Ellis, 100, known around town as “Uncle Red”; his 107-year-old sister, Viola Fletcher (“Mother Fletcher”); and Lessie Benningfield Randle (“Mother Randle”), 106.
Los Angeles Times
Biden and Capito try to chip away at impasse on infrastructure
President Biden met privately in the Oval Office on Wednesday with Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W. Va.), the Republicans’ lead negotiator on infrastructure legislation, as the two sides looked to make progress toward a bipartisan deal.
But they still have a long way to go. Even after last week’s $928-billion proposal from Republicans, there is a huge divide on the size of the package and no progress on how to pay for it.
The meeting, at least part of which was not expected to include even senior aides, appeared to be an effort to build more of a personal rapport than to hash out the specifics of a deal.
Netanyahu rivals form an Israeli coalition government to oust him
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s chief political rival formally declared Wednesday night that he had put together a governing coalition with sufficient parliamentary backing to dislodge Netanyahu, the country’s longest-serving leader.
The news amounted to a political earthquake in Israel, where the 71-year-old prime minister has been a commanding political presence for a generation, but the new government will not be sworn in until later this month, which could mean a tense interlude for the country.
The Guardian
Ex-Austrian minister who danced with Putin at wedding lands Russian oil job
A former Austrian foreign minister who danced with Vladimir Putin at her wedding has been given a seat on the board of directors of the Russian state-controlled oil industry giant Rosneft, the company has annnounced.
Karin Kneissl shot to infamy after she invited Putin to her wedding. Images of her dancing with the Russian leader in Gamlitz in the south-eastern state of Styria near the Slovenian border, went around the world in August 2018.
EU agrees to force multinationals to disclose tax, piling pressure on UK
The EU has agreed it will force large multinational companies to publish a breakdown of the tax they pay in each of the bloc’s member states and in tax havens such as Seychelles, piling pressure on the UK government to follow suit.
After years of stalled talks, a deal was struck on Tuesday evening between EU governments and MEPs on public country by country reporting, a policy designed to expose how some of the world’s biggest companies – such as Apple, Facebook and Google – avoid paying an estimated $500bn (£358bn) a year in taxes through shifting their profits.
Under the new rules, companies with global revenues of at least €750m (£645m) over two consecutive years must publicly disclose how much tax they pay in each of the EU member states and in 19 jurisdictions put on black and grey lists that are regarded to varying degrees as being “non-cooperative”.
Flower power: how one company is beautifying the wind turbine
Tulips and flowers could help harness the power of the wind, after a green energy company came up with its own spin on wind power in an “eco-art” design.
Flower Turbines, based in the US and the Netherlands, has installations across Rotterdam, Amsterdam, parts of Germany, Israel and Colombia. The company aims to democratise green energy for everyone and make small windfarms a leading player in the green energy industry.
The turbines pose no danger to birds and other wildlife, particularly in urban settings, the company claims, and they create noise at a low frequency undetectable to humans.
The New York Times
Stimulus Checks Substantially Reduced Hardship, Study Shows
Researchers found that sharp declines in food shortages, financial instability and anxiety coincided with the two most recent rounds of payments. […]
In offering most Americans two more rounds of stimulus checks in the past six months, totaling $2,000 a person, the federal government effectively conducted a huge experiment in safety net policy. Supporters said a quick, broad outpouring of cash would ease the economic hardships caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Skeptics called the policy wasteful and expensive.
The aid followed an earlier round of stimulus checks, sent a year ago, and the results are being scrutinized for lessons on how to help the needy in less extraordinary times.
A new analysis of Census Bureau surveys argues that the two latest rounds of aid significantly improved Americans’ ability to buy food and pay household bills and reduced anxiety and depression, with the largest benefits going to the poorest households and those with children. The analysis offers the fullest look at hardship reduction under the stimulus aid.
Reuters
Half of U.S. states to end Biden-backed pandemic unemployment early
Half of U.S. states, all of them led by Republican governors, are cutting off billions of dollars in unemployment benefits for residents, rebuffing a key part of President Joe Biden’s response to the coronavirus recession.
The payments - an extra $300 per week from the federal government to unemployment recipients because of the pandemic - have become part of a political battle in Washington over how to best guide the country out of an economic downturn.
Nicaraguan police raid opposition leader's home
Nicaraguan police stormed into the home of opposition leader Cristiana Chamorro on Wednesday, escalating a political battle ahead of elections later this year in which longtime leftist President Daniel Ortega is seeking to hold on to power.
Social media and local television broadcast live images of police entering and surrounding the home of Chamorro, who could be seen using force to eject journalists who had arrived to cover the scene.
The police action comes in the wake of prosecutors seeking Chamorro's arrest for money laundering and other crimes, according to judicial authorities.
China's Guangdong tightens coronavirus measures as cases persist
Cities in China's most populous province of Guangdong have locked down compounds and streets and ordered some travellers to furnish negative COVID-19 test results, as health officials battle to control outbreaks.
All 10 of China's locally confirmed mainland cases on June 1 were in southern Guangdong, the National Health Commission said on Wednesday, seven in the provincial capital of Guangzhou and three in the nearby city of Foshan.
The Globe and Mail
Murray Sinclair says more remains will be found at residential school sites
The former chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission into Canada’s residential schools says the country is beginning to see evidence of how many children died at the institutions and that more sites will likely come to light.
Murray Sinclair released a video message on Tuesday evening, his first public remarks since the remains of children were discovered at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School last week. He said survivors of the schools need to understand that it is important to make this evidence public so Canadians can see the magnitude of what happened and the extent of responsibility. This includes what he described as the need to force churches that have documents related to residential schools to disclose them.
Mr. Sinclair said his commission heard from survivors who talked about children being “buried in large numbers into mass burial sites.” He also shared that the commissioners were told infants born to young girls at residential schools fathered by priests were taken away and “deliberately killed, sometimes by being thrown into furnaces.”
The Times of India
India’s digital divide will exclude marginalised from jabs: Supreme Court
The Supreme Court on Wednesday relied on central government data amplifying the deep urban-rural digital divide and said the Centre’s policy mandating compulsory registration on CoWin app for a vaccination slot could leave out a large population belonging to marginalised communities from the universal vaccination drive.
Citing statistics published by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on tele-density and the number of common service centres run by the ministry of electronics and IT, a bench of justices D Y Chandrachud, L N Rao and S R Bhat said, "There exists a digital divide in India, particularly between rural and urban areas. The extent of advances made in improving digital literacy and digital access falls short of penetrating the majority of the population in the country. Serious issues of availability of bandwidth and connectivity pose further challenges."
Digital service tax: US suspends proposed tariffs against India, others
The US on Wednesday suspended the imposition of retaliatory tariffs against India, the UK and four other countries that had begun levying digital service tax on companies such as Google and Facebook.
“The final determination in those investigations is to impose additional tariffs on certain goods from these countries, while suspending the tariffs for up to 180 days to provide additional time to complete the ongoing multilateral negotiations on international taxation at the OECD and in the G20 process,” the US Trade Representative Katherine Tai said in a statement. […]
This is the latest move by the Biden administration to lower the tension on trade issues…
Deutsche Welle
US says Russia 'has a role to play' in stopping cyberattacks
US President Joe Biden is ″looking closely″ at reports Russian hackers were to blame for ransomware attacks on businesses in the United States, the White House said on Wednesday.
Biden will discuss the issue of Russia harboring ransomware hackers with President Vladimir Putin this month following an attack on a major meat processing firm this week.
Ars Technica
Big Tech sues Florida, saying social media law violates First Amendment
Trade groups representing Facebook, Twitter, and other major websites have sued Florida to block a state law that makes it illegal for social media companies to ban politicians. The industry groups say the law violates the First Amendment—and legal experts have said the same, as we've previously written. […]
The lawsuit against Florida was filed by Netchoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA). Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Google, and eBay are members of both groups.
Venus is so very nice, NASA is going there twice
NASA announced Wednesday that it will send, not one, but two spacecraft to Venus this decade as part of its efforts to ramp up exploration of the closest planet to Earth.
The decision was hailed by scientists who study Venus and have felt neglected by a space agency decidedly more interested in Mars. NASA has not sent a robotic spacecraft to Venus since the launch of the Magellan orbiter in 1989. Launched by space shuttle Atlantis, Magellan made a controlled entry into the Venusian atmosphere in 1994 after collecting reams of data that have tantalized scientists ever since. […]
The space agency said DAVINCI+ will study how the atmosphere formed and evolved as well as determine whether the planet ever had an ocean. It will also carry a "descent sphere" that will plunge through the planet’s thick atmosphere, making precise measurements of noble gases and other elements to understand why Venus' atmosphere is a runaway hothouse compared the Earth's.