Random News: April 24, 2024

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 April 24, 2024, and it’s a Wednesday. I slept like a rock last night, to the point that my alarm going off at 6am was entirely shocking. “What is this infernal sound?” I asked aloud while in a dream about interviewing Leonard Nimoy. Anyway, back to reality, so here’s a giant pile of news for you to enjoy.

• Here’s a noteworthy tidbit to open things up.
• Yesterday saw the Democratic and Republican presidential primaries in Pennsylvania, a crucial swing state.
• President Joe Biden, unsurprisingly, got over 93% of the vote, winning his race easily.
• But the Republican race was pretty shocking. Donnie Dump won, of course… but only got less than 85% of the vote. Nikki Haley, who dropped out early last month, received over 15% of the vote.
• That is a nightmare scenario for Team Dump. They need a ton of hearty support in that state to have a hope of winning, and it doesn’t seem to be there.
• Let’s stay on the good news for a bit.
• Yesterday the Biden administration announced a new rule that would make millions of workers newly eligible for overtime pay.
• Currently, employees who are in executive, administrative, and professional roles have a salary threshold of just $35,568 to be exempt from receive overtime pay. 
• Starting July 1, the rule would increase the threshold to $43,888, and on January 1, the threshold would rise further to $58,656.
• I like the quote from Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su: “So often, lower-paid salaried workers are doing the same job as their hourly counterparts but are spending more time away from their families for no additional pay. This is unacceptable.”
• But that wasn’t the only good news for workers that came out yesterday.
• The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) voted 3-2 to ban noncompete agreements. This is really, really good news.
• Noncompete employment clauses prevent tens of millions of employees from working for competitors or starting a competing business after they leave a job. The FTC estimates that 18 percent of the U.S. workforce is covered by noncompete agreements — about 30 million people.
• Fuck that bullshit. I’m glad they’re gone… at least for now. 
• Because the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — the largest pro-business lobbying group in the country — has said it will sue to block the rule. Of course they will. Pricks.
• Back to the good news.
• Last night, the Senate overwhelmingly passed the bill for $95 billion in war aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, sending the legislation to President Joe Biden after months of delays.
• After making it through the House over the weekend, the bill passed the Senate on a 79-18 vote. U.S. officials said about $1 billion of the aid could be on its way shortly, with the bulk following in coming weeks.
• Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell said something interesting after the aid bill passed the Senate. He was asked why it took so long for the USA to show its support. His answer…
• "I think the demonization of Ukraine began by Tucker Carlson, who in my opinion ended up where he should've been all along, which is interviewing Vladimir Putin. He had an enormous audience, which convinced a lot of rank-and-file Republicans that maybe this was a mistake."
• I think we’re going to see more moderate Republicans growing some balls and standing up to the wacko far-right MAGA/QAnon crowd as various events transpire over coming months.
• Let’s do the bad news.
• Volker Türk, the UN's human rights chief, has said he is horrified by the destruction of Gaza's Nasser and al-Shifa hospitals and the reports of mass graves being found at the sites after Israeli raids.
• He’s called for independent investigations into the deaths.
• Palestinian officials said they had exhumed the bodies of almost 300 people at Nasser. It is not clear how they died or when they were buried.
• More than 34,000 people — most of them children and women — have been killed in Gaza since the war began in October of last year.
• Sometimes, I have to repeat myself here, because some things are too important to risk being misunderstood.
• I am horrified by the atrocities Israel seems to be committing in their war in Gaza.
• I believe war crimes are being committed and that eventually, someone will have to answer for that… most likely Bibi Netanyahu.
• I also feel it’s very understandable that college students in the USA are exercising their right to protest against Israel’s actions in Palestine.
• It’s also understood that Israel is able to act in this way via the support of US money and military might, making us complicit in these actions and deserving to be called out on it.
• Now let me tell you something else.
• If you’re blaming Jews in the USA for what’s happening in Israel and Palestine, you’re a fucking fool who’s being used for an entirely different agenda.
• Protest your asses off. But any negative sentiment or attacks aimed at your friends, classmates, neighbors, and fellow citizens who are Jewish are no less appalling than what people did to Muslim Americans in the wake of 9/11.
• Bigotry can never be accepted, and antisemitic behavior of any kind at any level only hurts the cause of trying to help the people of Palestine.
• Let’s move on.
• I suppose we should do some mention of yesterday’s antics in the hush money/election interference criminal trial of Don the Con.
• Before yesterday’s proceedings got underway, they had to attend to the matter of Dump’s continual violation of the gag order imposed that — like any other criminal defendant — does not allow him to try and intimidate witnesses or the court’s officers and jurors.
• One of Dump’s lawyers spelled out the process behind his social posts, explaining that people working with Dump will pick out articles and then repost them under his name.
• His lawyers actually said, and I’m not making this up, that reposting a news article (rather than writing it himself) means it doesn’t violate the gag order.
• So Judge Merchan asked for legal citations to cases to back that up. The lawyer said he didn’t have any, but claimed that, “it’s just common sense.”
• Lemme tell you… if I willingly repost any content, it’s with the purpose of spreading that content to my followers and it means I openly endorse the message. That’s just common sense.
• If I disagree with the content, it’s up to me to make that clear when I quote the original post or article.
• The remainder of the day was focused on the testimony of former tabloid executive David Pecker. He testified for over two hours yesterday.
• The short version: Pecker, who is the ex-publisher of the National Enquirer, detailed a 2015 agreement with Trump and his lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen to try to kill negative stories about Trump and run negative stories his rivals.
• Prosecutors say that the hush money deal with Stormy Daniels that Pecker helped broker was part of a larger conspiracy to influence the 2016 presidential election.
• Let’s move on.
• Right now, the Supreme Court is hearing arguments over whether the federal government has the power to penalize hospitals that fail to provide emergency abortions even in states with strict bans on the procedure.
• They are considering the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act — known as EMTALA — a law that requires hospitals that receive federal funds to stabilize or transfer all patients, regardless of their ability to pay.
• The Biden administration invoked EMTALA to try to retain emergency access to abortion after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
• The administration sued the state of Idaho in 2022, saying that the state’s abortion restrictions are preempted in part by the federal law, and that strict state bans have confused health workers, confounded patients and led to delays in lifesaving care for pregnant women.
• Here’s hoping for the best. It’s impossible to really predict what this far-right Court will do.
• Tomorrow, the Supreme Court will take up the monumental question of whether a U.S. president has absolute immunity from crimes, like a king or emperor, placing him or her above the law of the land to which every other American is subject.
• The case, Donald J. Trump v. United States, presents an unprecedented constitutional quandary for the court brought about by equally unprecedented actions by Dumpy in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to Joe Biden by a margin of 7 million popular votes.
• The outcome of this case will determine whether Dump faces a federal trial this year on four felony counts pressed by special counsel Jack Smith, including conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and obstruction of an official proceeding, for his attempts to overturn the electoral vote count certifying Biden's victory.
• Two courts have resoundingly rejected Dump's immunity arguments, including a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
• The appeals court warned that if Dump's constitutional theory were accepted, it would collapse our system of separated powers by putting a president above the law.
• We will be keeping a close eye on that, obviously. It would mean the end of America as we know it should the SCOTUS side with Dumpy.
• Back to cool news.
• The Voyager-1 space probe launched in 1977 and is humanity's most distant object.
• And it’s talking to us again. A computer fault had stopped Voyager-1 returning readable data in November but engineers have now fixed this.
• Currently Voyager is sending back only health data about its onboard systems, but further work should get the scientific instruments back online.
• That little probe is now more than 15 billion miles away. Its data, moving at the speed of light, takes 22.5 hours to reach us.
• Voyager-1 moved beyond the heliosphere in 2012, and is now embedded in interstellar space, which contains the gas, dust, and magnetic fields from other stars.
• That’s amazing. Keep going, space probe brother.
• And now a flashback and a reminder.
• Yesterday was the anniversary of an infamous moment in American history. Back on April 23, 2020, we were at one of the crucial moments of the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Researchers were working around the clock to develop a vaccine, but at that time, there was no way to protect people from being infected by — and potentially dying from — the virus, beyond isolation, social distancing, and mask use.
• April 23 was the date that Donnie Dump held a COVID press conferences and claimed that his health advisers were going to "test" whether "very powerful light" could be brought "inside the body" to kill COVID.
• And then, just allowing his mouth to ramble with no basis in reality, he continued, "And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. It would be interesting to check that."
• I know we all try and forget those dark days, but due to the nature of Dump’s brainwashed MAGA crowd taking him at his word, his comments prompted the makers of disinfectants like Lysol to issue a statement warning that "under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body."
• Fucking hell.
• When people ask whether you’re better off today than your were four years ago, keep in mind that the President of the United States was advising people to shove UV lamps up their asses and to shoot up bleach.
• And now, The Weather: “Dedicated To The World” by Chanel Beads
• From the Sports Desk… Reggie Bush is getting his Heisman Memorial Trophy back. Bush won the Heisman in 2005 when he rushed for 1,740 yards on 200 carries and scored 18 total touchdowns for the University of Southern California.
• In 2010, Bush voluntarily gave up the coveted award after an NCAA investigation found he received benefits of several thousand dollars and a vehicle that were not allowed at the time.
• But current rules would not have prohibited Bush from those actions. College athletes can now receive compensation for their name, image, and likeness. I think it’s fair to return the trophy to him as such.
• Today in history… Thutmose III ascends to the throne of Egypt, although power effectively shifts to Hatshepsut (1479 BC). Mary, Queen of Scots, marries the Dauphin of France, François, at Notre Dame de Paris (1558). The United States Library of Congress is established when President John Adams signs legislation to appropriate $5,000 to purchase "such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress” (1800). American sharpshooter Annie Oakley is hired by Nate Salsbury to be a part of Buffalo Bill's Wild West (1885). The first segment of the Imperial Wireless Chain providing wireless telegraphy between Leafield in Oxfordshire, England, and Cairo, Egypt, comes into operation (1922). Winston Churchill is knighted by Queen Elizabeth II (1953). Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov dies in Soyuz 1 when its parachute fails to open (1967). The Hubble Space Telescope is launched from the Space Shuttle Discovery (1990). WikiLeaks starts publishing the Guantanamo Bay files leak (2011).
• April 24 is the birthday of Tahiti queen Marau (1860), painter Willem de Kooning (1906), actress Shirley MacLaine (1934), politician Richard M. Daley (1942), singer/actress Barbra Streisand (1942), music producer Tony Visconti (1944), singer-songwriter Jack Blades (1954), comedian/actor Cedric the Entertainer (1964), MLB player Chipper Jones (1972), MLB player Carlos Beltrán (1977), singer-songwriter/TV host Kelly Clarkson (1982), actor Jack Quaid (1992), and NFL player Jerry Jeudy (1999).

Okay, that was a massive ton of news shit, and a lot of it was super important. I hope you’re paying attention somewhat. I do hear from people that if not for these bullets I spend an hour each morning writing, they wouldn’t be nearly as well informed, and that makes it completely worthwhile to me. Time to go workout. Enjoy your day.