Random News: February 15, 2025

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 February 15, 2025, and it’s a Saturday. As is my typical modus operandi on a weekend morning, I’m in my blue bathrobe and sipping a cup of Peet’s coffee — Big Bang is today’s varietal — and taking a casual trip down the information superhighway to see what news is worth mentioning to you here.

• Let’s start with some actions against fascism, dictatorship, and the fall of democracy and the USA.
• A second judge has temporarily blocked Dumpy’s executive order that sought to make gender transition care illegal for young people under the age of 19.
• Yesterday, U.S. District Judge Lauren King in Seattle issued a temporary restraining order against Dump’s stupid fucking directive that would apply to hospitals and clinics in the three states that brought the lawsuit: Washington, Oregon, and Minnesota.
• King said the order “blatantly discriminated against trans youth” and will likely “not survive constitutional scrutiny.”
• I agree.
• There have already been damages. After Dump signed the order in January, hospitals across the country either suspended or scaled back gender transition care, leaving patients and parents reeling.
• At least one teenager wrote in court documents that officials at Seattle Children’s Hospital canceled his appointment while he was at the hospital “because the hospital did not want to lose federal funding under the EO.”
• This follows a similar ruling by a federal judge in Maryland on Thursday.
• Moving on.
• Yesterday, in perhaps the most idiotic and laughable situation since the new Musk/Dumpy administration started, national Nuclear Security Administration officials attempted to notify some employees who had been let go the day before that they are now due to be reinstated — but they struggled to find them because they didn't have their new contact information.
• What do those government employees do? The NNSA is tasked with designing, building and overseeing the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile.
• And they got accidentally fired.
• What.. a bunch… of fucking morons.
• In an email sent to employees at NNSA, officials wrote, “The termination letters for some NNSA probationary employees are being rescinded, but we do not have a good way to get in touch with those personnel.”
• Why? Because they’d all been fired on Thursday and lost access to their federal government email accounts. Now NNSA cannot reach these employees directly and is asking recipients of the email, “Please work with your supervisors to send this information (once you get it) to people’s personal contact emails.”
• Dump’s administration has acted with very questionable legality in seeking to cut large portions of the federal government, laying off staff and ending contracts. But that speed has resulted in complications, including this situation of firing irreplaceable people that they agencies need and want to keep.
• Now we don’t have anyone looking after our stockpile of thousands of nuclear weapons.
• It was nice knowing all of you. Let’s hook up again in the next plane of existence.
• Moving on.
• Let’s talk about some of the real results of the abortion bans that were put in place after Dumpy’s Supreme Court killed Roe v. Wade.
• Infant mortality rates have increased in states that adopted abortion bans after the 2022 overturn.
• Researchers from Johns Hopkins, UC Berkeley, and two other academic institutions looked at live birth data across all 50 states from 2013 until 2023.
• They determined there were 478 infant deaths across 14 states with complete abortion bans or bans after six weeks of pregnancy that wouldn’t have happened if the bans were not in place.
• Abortion is almost completely banned in 12 states including Texas, Louisiana, Kentucky, Alabama, Idaho, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and West Virginia. The procedure is banned after six weeks of pregnancy in another four states: Florida, Georgia, Iowa, and South Carolina.
• Researchers found that the overall infant mortality rate in the states examined was 6.26 per 1,000 live births, well above the expected rate of 5.93 deaths per 1,000 live births.  
• The problem is that MAGAs are far too ignorant to understand the bigger implications of their immediate reactions.
• In other news…
• The Department of Health and Human Services is making the extraordinarily awful move of firing about 5,200 health workers, part of a government-wide purging of new employees.
• Of course, the terminations come one day after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was sworn in as secretary of the agency which oversees the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other agencies.
• At the CDC alone, nearly 10 percent of the essential Atlanta-based agency is being cut.
• And while we’re on catastrophic health news…
• Yesterday, Dumpy the Murderer signed an executive order halting federal funding for schools and universities with COVID-19 vaccination mandates.
• As we’re aware, a wide range of schools, universities, and employers moved in 2021 to require that students and workers receive vaccines against the coronavirus as the pandemic ravaged America.
• Let’s move on.
• You may recall in 2023 when Andrew Lester, an 86-year-old Kansas City man, shot a kid in the face for having mistakenly rung his doorbell to pick up his siblings at the wrong house.
• Ralph Yarl, who survived the attack, is a Black honor student who has since graduated high school.
• Yesterday Lester pleaded guilty to second-degree assault, a lesser charge than he’d originally faced. He’ll be sentenced on March 7.
• The charge carries a sentence of up to seven years in prison, compared to first-degree assault, which carries a sentence of 15 to 30 years.
• I’m pretty sure he dies in prison regardless, which is fine with me.
• And now, The Weather: “People Like You” by Matt MacNeil
• From the Sports Desk… the group of finalists for this year's Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame class was announced yesterday.
• Topping the list are Carmelo Anthony, Dwight Howard and a team they were part of — the gold medal-winning 2008 U.S. Olympic men's basketball team.
• In addition to Anthony and Howard, the 2008 team included the late Kobe Bryant, Jason Kidd, Dwyane Wade, Chris Paul, Chris Bosh, and LeBron James.
• Women’s basketball legends Sue Bird, Maya Moore, and Sylvia Fowles are also among the nominees. Coaches Billy Donovan and Mark Few were also nominated.
• Today in history… The city of St. Louis is established in Spanish Louisiana — now in Missouri, USA (1764). Confederates commanded by Brig. Gen. John B. Floyd attack General Ulysses S. Grant's Union forces besieging Fort Donelson in Tennessee and the Confederates surrender the following day (1862). US President Rutherford B. Hayes signs a bill allowing female attorneys to argue cases before the Supreme Court of the United States (1879). The battleship USS Maine explodes and sinks in Havana harbor in Cuba, killing about 274 of the ship's roughly 354 crew and giving the United States an excuse to declare war on Spain (1898). In Miami, Giuseppe Zangara attempts to assassinate US President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, but instead shoots Chicago mayor Anton J. Cermak (1933). ENIAC, the first electronic general-purpose computer, is formally dedicated at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia (1946). Canada and the United States agree to construct the Distant Early Warning Line, a system of radar stations in the far northern Arctic regions of Canada and Alaska (1954). A new red-and-white maple leaf design is adopted as the flag of Canada, replacing the old Canadian Red Ensign banner (1965). Sound recordings are granted U.S. federal copyright protection for the first time (1972). Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer is sentenced in Milwaukee to 15 terms of life in prison (1992). Protests against the Iraq war take place in over 600 cities worldwide in the largest peace demonstration in history (2003). A meteor explodes over Russia, injuring 1,500 people as a shock wave blows out windows and rocks buildings (2013).
• February 15 is the birthday of Italian ruler Piero the Unfortunate (1472), astronomer/physicist Galileo Galilei (1564), French king Louis XV (1710), businessman Charles Lewis Tiffany (1812), suffragist/activist Susan B. Anthony (1820), politician Elihu Root (1845), politician James Forrestal (1892), actor Cesar Romero (1907), politician Endicott Peabody (1920), actor Harvey Korman (1927), astronaut Roger B. Chaffee (1935), NFL player Ken Anderson (1949), singer-songwriter Melissa Manchester (1951), animator Matt Groening (1954), NFL player Darrell Green (1960), actor Chris Farley (1964), actress Alex Borstein (1971), my sister Danielle (1972), NHL player Jaromír Jágr (1972), singer-songwriter Brandon Boyd (1976), singer-songwriter Conor Oberst (1980), and rapper Megan Thee Stallion (1995).

Welp… time for me to get out of the robe and get productive with various things. Enjoy your day.