Here are some of tonight’s stories:
- The Senate voted to confirm Rachael Rollins as US attorney for Massachusetts, making her the first Black woman to hold the office in state history.
- The Supreme Court seems in favor of requiring taxpayer funding for some religious schools.
- President Biden has appointed a far more diverse group of judges than his predecessors.
- Hispanic voters now evenly split 44%/44% between the Democratic and Republican Parties, according to a poll conducted by The Wall Street Journal.
- Greg Abbott has huge early lead on Beto O’Rourke for Texas governor, according to a new poll finds. Texans say O’Rourke too liberal.
- The world is dangerously unprepared for the next pandemic according to the latest Global Health Security Index report.
- January 6 was practice. Donald Trump’s Republican Party is much better positioned to subvert the next election.
- The U.S. sends first migrants to Mexico in court-ordered reboot of Trump-era policy.
- The Senate is making a one-time exception to the filibuster to increase the debt ceiling so Republicans do not have to vote to support keeping the nation from default.
- President Biden said he will not order U.S. troops to Ukraine to deter Russian invasion threat and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said the U.S. will use diplomacy and deterrence to protect Taiwan from a Chinese invasion.
Links and details below the fold.
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The Boston Globe
The Senate on Wednesday narrowly confirmed Suffolk District Attorney Rachael Rollins to be US attorney for Massachusetts, making the progressive prosecutor the first Black woman to become the state’s top federal law enforcement official.
After weeks of delay, the historic and unusually contentious nomination came with a final dose of drama. Vice President Kamala Harris had to trek to Capitol Hill twice Wednesday to break votes tied 50-50 along party lines — on a procedural motion and then on confirmation — in the face of united Republican opposition to a nominee they branded as a radical intent on dismantling the criminal justice system from the inside.
US attorney nominees normally are confirmed easily for their four-year terms by a routine unanimous consent motion. But Rollins’s nomination turned into the latest partisan battle in the evenly divided Senate over President Biden’s executive and judicial branch picks. Republican opposition to her forced the Senate to hold its first roll call vote to confirm a US attorney since 1975.
Massachusetts Representative Ayanna Pressley and other House Democrats on Wednesday introduced a resolution to strip Representative Lauren Boebert of her committee assignments in response to Boebert’s Islamophobic comments about Muslim Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.
The push for the resolution comes after a video surfaced in which Boebert made a series of anti-Muslim comments directed at Omar, and later refused to offer a public apology to the Minnesota lawmaker.
“Today we stand in solidarity with the broader Muslim community,” Pressley said during a press conference discussing the resolution on Wednesday. “For a member of Congress to repeatedly and unapologetically use hateful, racist, and Islamophobic tropes towards a Muslim colleague is dangerous. This sort of toxic behavior has no place in the halls of Congress, and it diminishes the honor of the institution that we all serve in.
Los Angeles Times
Supreme Court leans in favor of requiring taxpayer funding for some religious schools
Supreme Court justices sounded ready Wednesday to rule for a Maine couple seeking state taxpayer funds to send their children to a church-sponsored school because no public ones are available in their area.
The case of Carson vs. Makin poses the latest test of the line between church and state, and it comes at a time when the court’s conservatives have increasingly sided with religious discrimination claims. Last year, the high court ruled for Montana parents who sought a state scholarship to send their children to a Christian school.
Democrats weigh overturning Senate parliamentarian’s ruling on immigration
[…] The Senate parliamentarian is expected to rule shortly on whether Democrats’ third immigration proposal — which would provide work permits and deportation protection to immigrants in the country illegally — conforms with Senate rules required to pass the package. She rejected two earlier immigration provisions.
Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), a longtime proponent of immigration reform, said he would support overruling the parliamentarian if she rules against their latest proposal. […]
Still, Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), the most conservative Democrat in the chamber, is adamantly opposed.
“I’m not going to vote to overrule the parliamentarian,” Manchin said on Fox News last month, a sentiment he repeated Wednesday. “I’m not going to do that. They all know that.”
Bloomberg
Meadows Sues Pelosi, Jan. 6 Committee to Block Subpoenas
…Donald Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows sued House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Jan. 6 committee investigating the Capitol riot to block subpoenas compelling him to testify. […]
Mississippi Democrat Bennie Thompson, the committee’s chairman, told reporters Wednesday he hadn’t seen Meadows’ lawsuit but the committee will likely recommend next week that the former chief of staff be prosecuted.
He said Meadows’ lawsuit is another attempt to stall the committee’s investigation.
U.S. House Passes Bill to Punish China Over Oppression of Uyghurs
The U.S. House passed legislation designed to punish China for its treatment of Uyghur Muslims in the country’s Xinjiang province, a move that is sure to anger Beijing and add to rising tension between the world’s two largest economies.
The 428-1 vote on the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act demonstrated the broad, bipartisan sentiment in Congress for the U.S. taking a harder line against China. A similar measure has already passed in the Senate.
AP News
Senate aims to reject Biden’s vaccine mandate for businesses
The Senate is poised to approve a resolution Wednesday overturning the Biden administration’s requirement that businesses with 100 or more workers have their employees be vaccinated against the coronavirus or submit to weekly testing.
The Democratic-led House is unlikely to take it up, which means the mandate would stand, though courts have put it on hold for now. Still, the vote would give senators a chance to come out against a policy that they say has sparked fears back home from businesses and from unvaccinated constituents who worry about losing their jobs should the rule go into effect. […]
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Americans who have refused to get vaccinated are the biggest impediment to ending the pandemic. He implied that some of the resistance to mandated vaccines is based on politics. […]
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., indicated last week he would join with Republicans in voting to void the vaccine rule, saying in a tweet that he does not support any federal vaccine mandate for private businesses.
Expelled Coast Guard cadet sues over policy banning parents
A former cadet who was expelled from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy after becoming a father filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday challenging the school’s policy that prohibits students from being parents.
Isaak Olson was two months from graduating from the academy in 2014 with a degree in mechanical engineering and a commission as an officer when he disclosed that his fiancee had given birth to their first child several months earlier, according the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Connecticut.
The academy expelled Olson under a regulation that requires cadets to either resign or be “disenrolled” if they incur a “parental obligation” from a pregnancy over 14 weeks, according to the lawsuit.
San Francisco Chronicle
Biden appointing a far more diverse group of judges than predecessors, report says
President Biden's judicial appointments so far are setting new records for diversity, a report showed Wednesday - three-fourths are women, and nearly three-fourths are racial minorities. And the judges he has nominated in California are even more diverse.
Of the 28 judicial nominees confirmed by the Senate as of Nov. 8, 21 were women, according to a report from the Center for Constitutional Rights, a nonprofit liberal advocacy group. Eight were white, eight were Black and the others were from other racial or ethnic groups.
They join a federal judiciary that is now 65% male and 72% white, the report said. Biden has promised to nominate the Supreme Court’s first-ever Black female justice to fill the first available vacancy on the court, which currently includes three women - one of whom is Latina and two who are white - one Black man and five white men.
Marin County health officials have asked prosecutors to see whether parents who knowingly sent their child to school with a coronavirus infection — a decision that led to an outbreak at the school — should face criminal charges.
The Wall Street Journal
Hispanic Voters Now Evenly Split Between Parties, WSJ Poll Finds
The nation’s large and diverse group of Hispanic voters is showing signs of dividing its support between Democrats and Republicans more evenly than in recent elections, a new Wall Street Journal poll finds, a troubling development for the Democratic Party, which has long counted on outsize Hispanic support.
One year after giving Democratic House candidates more than 60% of their vote, according to polls at the time, the Journal survey found that Hispanic voters are evenly split in their choice for Congress. Asked which party they would back if the election were today, 37% of Hispanic voters said they would support the Republican congressional candidate and 37% said they would favor the Democrat, with 22% undecided.
Hispanic voters were also evenly divided when asked about a hypothetical rematch in 2024 of the last presidential contenders, with 44% saying they would back President Biden and 43% supporting … Donald Trump. In 2020, Mr. Biden won 63% support among Hispanic voters, nearly 30 points more than Mr. Trump, according to AP VoteCast, a large survey of the presidential electorate.
The News & Observer
North Carolina’s 2022 primary election delayed in court fight over maps
North Carolina’s 2022 primary election must be delayed — as gerrymandering lawsuits play out that could lead to redrawn districts — the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.
It’s a win for the liberal voters and groups that have challenged the new political maps for those races as being unconstitutionally gerrymandered, and a loss for the Republican lawmakers who drew the maps.
All primaries, not just the ones using disputed maps for U.S. House and the state House and Senate, are being delayed to May 17 from March 8.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Wisconsin elections officials from both parties threw out a challenge Wednesday to private grants that helped cities run their elections during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The series of rulings by the state Elections Commission is the latest instance of authorities rejecting claims that the grants were illegal. Over the last year, three courts dismissed lawsuits over the grants.
In the latest development, the commissioners tossed out a new set of challenges over the grants that were filed this spring.
"The Commission finds that the Complaint does not raise probable cause to believe that a violation of law or abuse of discretion has occurred. All claims are hereby dismissed," attorneys working for the commission wrote in a letter they sent Wednesday to the lawyer who spearheaded the challenges.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Inside Perdue’s plan to defeat Kemp in 2022
Former U.S. Sen. David Perdue wasn’t planning to jump in the race for Georgia governor so soon. But Democrat Stacey Abrams scrambled his schedule when she made the leap last week, presenting the Republican with a gut-check moment about whether to also challenge Gov. Brian Kemp.
“When Stacey Abrams announced, it forced my hand, honestly. I was conflicted… The last thing I want to do is run a campaign,” said Perdue, who just lost his reelection bid in January. “But on the other hand, I can’t see the state go down this road that Stacey Abrams wants to go down. Kemp has failed to unite the party, and he can’t defeat her.”
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Republicans in the Pennsylvania state House unveiled a proposal Wednesday for a new congressional map, taking the biggest step yet toward drawing new districts that will reshape elections for the next decade.
The “citizen map” was drawn by Amanda Holt, a well-known redistricting advocate who successfully sued to overturn the state legislative maps drawn in 2011. It was submitted to the House State Government Committee as part of an open call for map submissions from the public. […]
State Rep. Seth Grove (R., York), the chair of the House committee, said he and fellow Republicans chose Holt’s map partly because it was drawn by a member of the public known for supporting nonpartisan redistricting. He claimed not to know the partisan distribution of the map.
Houston Chronicle
Gov. Greg Abbott has huge early lead on Beto O’Rourke, new poll finds
Gov. Greg Abbott has a commanding lead over Democrat Beto O’Rourke in a new public poll released on Wednesday. Abbott, a Republican, leads O’Rourke 52 percent to 37 percent according to the Quinnipiac University poll of 1,224 registered voters.
A big problem for O’Rourke lies in the poll findings, in which 54 percent of respondents say the former El Paso congressman is too liberal. […]
On some of the biggest issues of the day, Abbott has a distinct edge over O’Rourke. On the economy, gun policy and the border, Texans all give Abbott much higher marks than O’Rourke, it found.
NPR News
A Texas school district is reviewing 400 library books after a Republican lawmaker's inquiry
One of Texas' largest school districts is reviewing more than 400 of its library books following a Republican lawmaker's statewide inquiry into school library titles dealing with topics like race, gender and sexuality.
The North East Independent School District in San Antonio says it was already in the process of reviewing its library books when state Rep. Matt Krause, who chairs the Texas House's General Investigating Committee, announced his inquiry in late October.
Krause — who is also a candidate for Texas attorney general — sent schools statewide a 16-page list of roughly 850 books related to gender identity, sexuality, race and sexual health, and asked officials to tell him how many copies of the books their libraries hold and how much their districts spent on them.
The Denver Post
Once pandemic hotspots, college campuses become safe zones against COVID-19
College campuses were among Colorado’s biggest breeding grounds for COVID-19 last year, but high rates of vaccinations and strict masking turned schools into relatively safe havens despite the new variants.
The University of Colorado in Boulder, for example, stood out as a hotspot in September 2020, when Gov. Jared Polis pointed to a 16% positive test rate. But now that rate has fallen to 2.3%, well below the statewide rate of about 8%. And the latest state data showed 216 COIVD cases since August, compared with 1,732 cases during the same period last year.
Health officials have reported few major outbreaks since in-person classes began this fall at 13 public university campuses around the state — sites initially deemed high-risk where COVID could accelerate and spread to society at large.
Orlando Sentinel
Manatees will receive emergency rations of romaine lettuce if starvation looms this winter
Romaine lettuce will be used as emergency food for manatees in an unprecedented intervention to prevent the marine mammals from enduring another winter of mass starvation.
A total of 757 manatees died, most from starvation, over the past year around the Indian River Lagoon, where pollution from farms and lawns has killed off seagrass. The deaths pushed the number of manatee deaths statewide past 1,000 for the year.
“It’s against federal and state law to feed manatees for good reason,” said Thomas Eason, assistant executive director of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, speaking at a news conference Wednesday at the Florida Power & Light plant manatee viewing area in Riviera Beach.
“There are all sorts of unintended consequences of that that usually lead to poor outcomes for manatees. So we’ve collectively looked at that and decided that this unprecedented event was worth unprecedented action, and we are prepared to do that.”
The Washington Post
Two years into this pandemic, the world is dangerously unprepared for the next one, report says
Nearly two years into a coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 5 million people, every country, including the United States, remains dangerously unprepared to respond to future epidemic and pandemic threats, according to a report released Wednesday assessing the efforts of 195 countries.
Researchers compiling the Global Health Security Index — a project of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a D.C.-based nonprofit global security group, and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School of Public Health — found insufficient capacity in every country, which they said left the world vulnerable to future health emergencies, including some that might be more devastating than covid-19.
The assessment of each country’s ability to prevent, detect and respond to health emergencies in 2021 was based on public information. Researchers also weighed other factors, such as public confidence in government. The average country score for 2021 was 38.9 out of a possible 100 points, essentially unchanged from 2019. No country scored above 75.9.
Biden wants to make federal government carbon neutral by 2050
The Biden administration announced Wednesday it aims to buy its way to a cleaner, cooler planet, spending billions to create a federal fleet of electric vehicles, upgrade federal buildings and change how the government buys electricity.
The executive order President Biden signed leverages Washington’s buying power to cut the government’s carbon emissions 65 percent by the end of the decade. It lays out goals that would put the federal government on a path to net-zero emissions by 2050 and would add at least 10 gigawatts worth of clean electricity to the grid.
Under the new approach, federal operations would run entirely on carbon-free electricity by 2030. By 2035, the government would stop buying gas-powered vehicles, switching to zero-emission heavy-duty trucks and cars. A decade after that, most of the buildings owned or leased by the government would no longer contribute to the carbon pollution that’s warming the planet.
The Oregonian
Nearly 60 earthquakes strike off Oregon coast; no tsunamis expected
Nearly 60 earthquakes have struck off the Oregon coast between Tuesday and Wednesday, with the largest two reaching magnitude-5.8.
The 59 earthquakes hit far off the coast, roughly west of Newport starting early Tuesday morning. No tsunamis are expected.
Small earthquakes strike often near Oregon’s coast, a regular reminder of the cataclysmic earthquake geologists say will happen when the pressure building between the Juan de Fuca and North American plates breaks.
The Atlantic
Technically, the next attempt to overthrow a national election may not qualify as a coup. It will rely on subversion more than violence, although each will have its place. If the plot succeeds, the ballots cast by American voters will not decide the presidency in 2024. Thousands of votes will be thrown away, or millions, to produce the required effect. The winner will be declared the loser. The loser will be certified president-elect.
The prospect of this democratic collapse is not remote. People with the motive to make it happen are manufacturing the means. Given the opportunity, they will act. They are acting already.
Who or what will safeguard our constitutional order is not apparent today. It is not even apparent who will try. Democrats, big and small D, are not behaving as if they believe the threat is real. Some of them, including President Joe Biden, have taken passing rhetorical notice, but their attention wanders. They are making a grievous mistake.
“The democratic emergency is already here,” Richard L. Hasen, a professor of law and political science at UC Irvine, told me in late October. Hasen prides himself on a judicious temperament. Only a year ago he was cautioning me against hyperbole. Now he speaks matter-of-factly about the death of our body politic. “We face a serious risk that American democracy as we know it will come to an end in 2024,” he said, “but urgent action is not happening.”
Vox
Why the Senate is making a one-time exception to the filibuster
The Senate is finally doing away with the filibuster — for one vote.
In order to address an impasse over the debt ceiling, Democratic and Republican leaders have agreed to a measure that raises the debt limit with just 51 votes, instead of the 60 that are required if a bill is filibustered. The House already passed the measure on Tuesday night, and the Senate is set to consider it later this week. […]
Republicans opted to go this circuitous route because they’ve long wanted to claim that they didn’t vote in favor of a debt ceiling increase. However, failing to increase the debt limit was not seen as an option by leadership, due to the negative economic consequences that would have.
This put Republicans in a bind, particularly because certain members could have filibustered a debt ceiling increase again, as they did in October. That would have forced members of the conference to vote in favor of overcoming the blockade, much as some had to do previously. In this case, they are technically voting to approve another bill that allows Democrats to pass the debt ceiling increase unilaterally, and can now say that they did not vote in favor of the increase.
Why adoption isn’t a replacement for abortion rights
Americans don’t need abortion because adoption exists. That, at least, was the implication of comments made by Justice Amy Coney Barrett last week, as the Supreme Court appeared to edge closer than ever to overturning the landmark 1973 decision Roe v. Wade and stripping Americans of the right to an abortion before viability. […]
The argument that adoption can effectively replace abortion assumes that people who choose the former are able to simply sidestep all the challenges associated with parenthood. But people who choose adoption still become parents — they just don’t raise their children. They often experience significant grief and loss, for which they struggle to get support in a culture that views adoption through rose-colored glasses. Barrett seemed to be “assuming that people who terminate their rights are moving quickly past this termination,” says Gretchen Sisson, a sociologist with Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health, a group at the University of California San Francisco. But “that is not something that I have ever seen in my research.”
Thinking of adoption as a stand-in for abortion also ignores the very real dangers people face when they carry any pregnancy to term. Maternal mortality has been rising in the US for 20 years, and the most recent data places the country a dismal 55th in the world when it comes to the safety of childbirth.
The Hindu
Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat, his wife Madhulika Rawat, an Army Brigadier, and ten others perished when an Indian Air Force (IAF) Mi-17V5 helicopter carrying them crashed into a heavily wooded area of the Coonoor ghat in the Nilgiris in western Tamil Nadu on Wednesday afternoon. The cause of the chopper crash, in which there is only one survivor, is being investigated.
The Coonoor ghat rises steeply from Mettupalayam and the Coonoor river flows through the deep gorge with sheer cliff faces on both sides. Visibility was said to be limited on Wednesday. […]
Group Captain Varun Singh, Directing Staff at the DSSC, who survived with injuries, is under treatment at the Military Hospital, Wellington. He had come to Sulur to receive General Rawat and others.
Taipei Times
US promises ‘action’ in China scenario
The US “will take every action” in diplomacy and deterrence to prevent the forcible unification of Taiwan by China in concurrence with a hypothetical Russian invasion of Ukraine, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on Tuesday. […]
“The United States is going to take every action that we can take, from the point of view of both deterrence and diplomacy, to make sure that the Taiwan scenario you just described never happens and to try to avert the invasion and deter the invasion into Ukraine,” Sullivan said.
“The sum total of the efforts we have undertaken over the course of the past eight months in the Indo-Pacific have also all been geared towards avoiding any kind of scenario where China chooses to invade,” he said.
EuroNews
Olaf Scholz becomes Germany's new chancellor as Merkel bows out
Olaf Scholz took his oath of office at the Bundestag on Wednesday as he became Germany's new chancellor.
He replaced Angela Merkel, who is standing down after 16 years at the helm.
Scholz, who omitted the optional phrase "so help me God" during the swearing-in ceremony, smiled as he was formally appointed by President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
Merkel wished Scholz luck at a handover ceremony at the chancellery.
Reuters
Seven U.N. peacekeepers killed in central Mali explosion
An explosion on Wednesday in central Mali killed seven United Nations peacekeepers and seriously wounded three others, the U.N. mission said on Twitter.
A logistics convoy hit an improvised explosive device between the towns of Douentza and Sevare, an area where groups linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State operate. No group claimed responsibility on Wednesday.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres strongly condemns the attack against the convoy, spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.
U.S. sends first migrants to Mexico in reboot of Trump-era policy
The United States has returned the first two migrants to Mexico since restarting a Trump-era program to remove asylum seekers from U.S. soil, officials said Wednesday, as the Biden administration grapples with pressure to curb immigration. […]
President Joe Biden, a Democrat, has struggled to reverse many hardline immigration policies put in place by his Republican predecessor, Donald Trump, and is facing a record number of migrant arrests at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Biden ended MPP soon after his inauguration in January as he sought to pursue what he called a more humane approach to immigration. But a federal judge ruled Biden's move did not follow proper procedure, and in August ordered MPP reinstated.
Al Jazeera
Thai construction tycoon jailed for poaching protected animals
Thailand’s supreme court has sentenced construction tycoon Premchai Karnasuta to two and a half years in prison without probation on charges related to the poaching of protected animals…
Premchai, president of Thai construction company Italian-Thai Development, was found guilty on Wednesday of possessing a firearm without a permit, enabling poaching and possessing the carcass of a protected animal, said prosecutor Phanomrit Homnitsakul.
Premchai’s accomplices were also sentenced to 33 and 37 months in jail.
Women in Chile voice fears over far-right presidential candidate
Olga Valenzuela waits on the side of a busy street in the Chilean capital in the late November heat, wearing a black T-shirt with the name “Muriel” printed on it.
Muriel, Valenzuela’s daughter, was killed four years ago by her boyfriend during an argument in their home. She was 19, and her boyfriend has yet to go to trial or be sentenced.
“I’m not a political person, but I’ve joined this group to be heard,” says Valenzuela, who joined thousands of women in a march on November 25 to Chile’s presidential palace to protest violence against women in the South American nation.
Several mothers walked alongside her, each with names printed on their T-shirts and holding banners to denounce domestic violence. One member of the group carried a suited effigy with a cardboard cutout of the face of far-right presidential candidate, Jose Antonio Kast… a 55-year-old devout Catholic and founder of the far-right Republican Party…
The Guardian
Chilean presidential candidate’s father was member of Nazi party
The German-born father of Chilean presidential candidate José Antonio Kast was a member of the Nazi party, according to a recently unearthed document – revelations that appear at odds with the far-right candidate’s own statements about his father’s military service during the second world war.
German officials have confirmed that an ID card in the country’s federal archive shows that an 18-year-old named Michael Kast joined the National Socialist German Workers’ party, or NSDAP, in September 1942, at the height of Hitler’s war on the Soviet Union. […]
A fervent Roman Catholic and father of nine, Kast has deep family ties to the military dictatorship of Gen Augusto Pinochet that came to power following a coup in 1973. His brother Miguel served as the dictator’s central bank president.
“If he were alive, he would have voted for me,” Kast said of Pinochet during the 2017 campaign, in which he won just 8% of the vote. “We would have had tea together” in the presidential palace.
Biden says he won’t send US troops to Ukraine to deter Russian threat
Joe Biden has said that he is not considering sending US troops to defend Ukraine in response to a Russian military buildup on the country’s borders.
“That is not on the table,” he told reporters on Wednesday, one day after speaking directly with Vladimir Putin in an effort to avert a military crisis.
Biden has warned Putin that there would be “severe consequences” if Russia launches an attack on Ukraine and said the US would be providing “defensive capabilities” to the Ukrainian military.
Eight wolves were found poisoned in Oregon. Police are asking for the public’s help
The dead wolves began turning up in Oregon in early February.
First, state fish and wildlife troopers found an entire pack of five wolves – known as the Catherine pack – killed by poison in Union county. Then, between March and July, authorities found three grey wolves, two females and a male, similarly poisoned to death within the same county about 275 miles east of Portland.
The Oregon state police suspect the deaths are connected, and for months led an investigation into the poisonings before announcing in December that they had exhausted all leads. Now investigators are appealing to the public for help in solving the crime, a suspected case of poaching, while a group of animal protection and conservation organizations are offering a reward for any information that leads to a conviction.
Ars Technica
Senate gives Rosenworcel new FCC term, but Republicans aim to block Gigi Sohn
The US Senate today approved a new five-year term for Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. Today's vote ensured that Rosenworcel won't have to leave the commission at the end of the year. But the FCC is still deadlocked at 2-2 between Democrats and Republicans—and the GOP is mounting a serious challenge against Gigi Sohn, the Biden nominee who would give Democrats a 3-2 majority. […]
Sohn faces a much tougher path to confirmation. At her nomination hearing last week, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and other Republicans blasted her for tweets in which she criticized Fox News, with the GOP senators arguing that she would try to stifle conservative viewpoints. However, conservative news networks Newsmax and One America News Network supported Sohn's nomination and praised her longtime commitment to free speech.
Sohn, a longtime consumer advocate, told Cruz, "Look at the conservative cable channels that I worked with for years to get them carriage on cable systems when those systems would not carry them. I have long worked with organizations and companies with whom I vigorously disagree on their point of view—fervent Republicans, fervent supporters of the previous president—and I worked with them to get their views online. I believe that I have been characterized very unfairly as being anti-conservative speech. I think my record says otherwise."