Random News: August 29, 2023

DISCLAIMER: Zak's Random News is very random and doesn't cover many things, and not everything may be accurate, because I'm just some guy. Go find a real news source.

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Good morning. It’s August 29, 2023, and it’s a Tuesday. Oh boy, do I have some stuff for you. It’s been a busy 24 hours in the world of news, so without further adieu…

• U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan has scheduled Donald Trump’s D.C. trial on charges of attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election for March 4, 2024.
• Note: this is one of the two cases from special counsel Jack Smith, the other one being a separate criminal case in regard to the documents Trump stole and hid at his golf motel.
• This case involves four charges for which Trump was indicated earlier this month: conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction; and conspiracy against the right to vote and to have one’s vote counted. Trump has pleaded not guilty.
• Jack Smith had requested a start date for this trial in January, while El Dumpo had requested a start date of — hee hee — April 2026.
• Judge Chutkan's decision sets the trial in the middle of the Republican presidential primaries and the day before Super Tuesday. Too bad, so sad.
• Trump posted that he would appeal the trial date decision. But orders setting trial dates are not appealable, which any of his lawyers could have mentioned to him (and probably did). The Orange Turd might still affect the trial date due to other litigation in the case, however.
• Let’s head back down south to Georgia, where yesterday morning, former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows surprisingly took the witness stand in a bid to get the criminal case charging him with tampering with the 2020 presidential election results moved out of state court and ultimately dismissed.
• This is in the Fulton County Fani Willis case, to avoid any confusion.
• Meadows spent more than two and a half hours testifying. He stated that he took an extremely wide-ranging view of his responsibilities as chief of staff and viewed that role as encompassing nearly all his actions prosecutors say amounted to corrupt pressure on Georgia officials.
• In other words, he was “just following orders” as part of his job as CoS.
• And here’s the danger: if a federal judge agrees that Meadows’ actions plausibly fell within the scope of his federal duties, the case may get moved into federal court, and Meadows may be immune from the charges against him. It’s the same defense that Trump himself is expected to use.
• Four other defendants have joined Meadows in seeking to move their cases to federal court, including three GOP fake electors and former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark, who has a similar hearing set for September 18.
• Anyway, at the exact moment Meadows was testifying for his own defense in Georgia, another former senior Trump White House aide, Peter Navarro, was testifying in a federal courtroom in Washington, D.C., on charges for defying a House January 6 select committee subpoena for testimony.
• Navarro is also using the “just following orders” excuse, saying that Trump asserted executive privilege to shield him from having to cooperate with the committee’s request for testimony and documents.
• You know who else were just following orders? Most of the Nazis. And they faced the ultimate punishment anyway. It didn’t work then. It doesn’t work now.
• These cases are like watching a 100-car pile-up on a fogbound icy freeway. Everyone involved in the inner circle of The Former Guy is going to be defending their criminal actions for a long, long time to come. This is how their lives are now.
• Moving on…
• Very happy with my state’s attorney general. AG Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit against the Chino Valley Unified School District yesterday over its recently adopted policy that requires schools to notify parents if their children change their gender identification or pronouns.
• We don’t do that shit in California. Fuck right off, Chino Valley.
• In other news, all hell broke loose yesterday at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill when a graduate student shot a faculty member to death. Tailei Qi was arrested and booked on a first-degree murder charge.
• The shooting caused chaos at the school, with students jumping from windows in panic to escape. Classes have been canceled there today.
• Let’s do some good news.
• This morning, the Biden administration released its list of the first 10 drugs that Medicare will target for price cuts by negotiating the prices with drugmakers.
• These 10 drugs cost people on Medicare $3.4 billion in out-of-pocket costs in 2022.
• The list includes blood thinners Eliquis and Xarelto; diabetes drugs Jardiance, Januvia, Farxiga and Fiasp/Novolog insulin; Enbrel and Stelara, drugs used to treat autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis and Crohn's disease; and Imbruvica, a drug that treats blood cancers.
• Speaking of President Biden, he and first lady Dr. Jill Biden visited Eliot-Hine Middle School yesterday, surprising kids who are just getting back to class for the new school year.
• When he popped into an eighth-grade math class, a kid screamed “Joe Biden!”
• Joe told students and staff that he had been bullied when he was younger because he was small and would stutter. Both the president and first lady shook every child’s hand.
• And now, The Weather: “Ready For You” by Cherry Glazerr
• Hurricane Idalia is expected to intensify considerably as it heads toward Florida. It’s due to hit at Category 3 strength, and millions are under storm warnings.
• I used to be one of those people who would say, “Why don’t people just leave?”
• Then I found out that they had no place to go, no money to get there, no where to keep their pets, no one to protect their homes from looters, and would lose their jobs for not being there in the middle of a disaster.
• We’re basically unevolved, stupid barbarians with Internet.
• The National Guard is on call and evacuations underway as the storm could deliver a devastating blow to parts of Florida’s Gulf Coast. Good luck to all.
• Eminem has told GOP candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to stop singing “Lose Yourself”.
• Performing rights organization BMI has informed Ramaswamy’s campaign at Eminem’s request that it will no longer license the rapper’s music for use by the campaign.
• A funny thing about Ramaswamy: he’s being positioned as a “Younger Trump”, but do his backers really think that the majority of the MAGA voter block will throw support behind a brown-skinned Hindu man?
• Never gonna happen.
• I’ll remind you that above all else, abortion will be the primary topic going into the 2024 election cycle. Pennsylvania will be the next state-level battleground on this issue.
• More to come on that topic. Much more.
• From the Sports Desk… today at 4PM ET is the deadline for all NFL teams to set their final 53-man rosters for the 2023 NFL regular season, which kicks off Thursday, September 7.
• Good luck.
• Today in history… Copper coins are minted in Japan (708). The city of Nuuk, Greenland is founded (1728). American forces defeat the British and Iroquois forces at the Battle of Newtown (1779). Massachusetts farmers have an armed uprising against high taxes and debts, called Shays’ Rebellion (1786). Michael Faraday discovers electromagnetic induction (1831). Gottlieb Daimler patents the world's first internal combustion motorcycle, the Reitwagen (1885). The Goodyear tire company is founded (1898). The Beatles perform their last ticketed concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco (1966). Netflix is launched as an internet DVD rental service (1997). Hurricane Katrina devastates the Gulf Coast, killing up to 1,836 people and causing $125 billion in damage (2005).
• August 29 is the birthday of physician/philosopher John Locke (1632), physician/writer Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809), engineer Charles F. Kettering (1876), actress Ingrid Bergman (1915), saxophonist/composer Charlie Parker (1920), singer-songwriter Dinah Washington (1924), soldier/politician John McCain (1936), actor Elliot Gould (1938), director Joel Schumacher (1939), press secretary/activist James Brady (1940), singer-songwriter Michael Jackson (1958), actress Rebecca De Mornay (1959), astronaut Chris Hadfield (1959), SCOTUS justice Neil Gorsuch (1967), bass player/singer-songwriter Meshell Ndegeocello (1968), and MLB player Noah Syndergaard (1992).

As usual, there are more things to say than the time I have allotted to say it. That’s okay. There will be more things on other days. Enjoy your day.