251 days until the November election
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Today’s comic by Jen Sorensen is Future veterans of the information wars:
• FedEx says it won’t end NRA discounts, but supports assault weapon ban:
Under increasing pressure from gun control activists to stop giving discounts to NRA members, FedEx put out a statement Monday indicating that though the global shipping conglomerate supports a ban on assault weapons, it will not be joining Delta, United, Hertz, and a host of other companies in severing its benefits package with the National Rifle Association.
In a statement, FedEx made clear its position on gun policy differs from that of the NRA: “FedEx opposes assault rifles being in the hands of civilians … FedEx views assault rifles and large capacity magazines as an inherent potential danger to schools, workplaces, and communities when such weapons are misused. We therefore support restricting them to the military.” In 2014, a gunman opened fire at a Georgia FedEx facility. The gunman was killed by a self-inflicted gunshot, and six others were wounded. The shooter used a shotgun.
• Seventy years ago these migrant workers were invisible in life and nameless in death:
On the morning of February 27, 1948, a plane traveling from Oakland to the Mexican border crashed in Los Gatos Canyon, California, about an hour southwest from Fresno. All 32 people on board died that day. Twenty-eight of them were Mexican farmworkers who were in the United States because of the Bracero Program.
All the people on the plane died the same way, but in death, they were not treated the same. For the four American crew members, U.S. officials gathered what remains they could, and sent caskets to their families. The remains of the 28 Mexican braceros were not sent back to Mexico to be repatriated or given proper burial by their families. Instead, they were buried in a mass grave under a tiny plaque that read only “28 Mexican citizens who died in an airplane accident near Coalinga.” Even the media that reported the accident referred to the 28 Mexicans only as “deportees.”
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MIDDAY TWEET
• Levi Sanders, son of Bernie Sanders, is running for 1st District congressional seat in New Hampshire. He is the eighth Democrat to declare for the seat now held by Carol Shea-Porter, who is not running for re-election.
• Global Seed Vault celebrates 10th anniversary: The vault is an insurance policy against potential global doomsday scenarios. On Monday it received a shipment of more than 76,000 seed samples. That makes a total of 1,059,646 botanical specimens accepted since it opened in 2008. The vault is set inside a mountain on the island Svalbard halfway between Norway and the North Pole. It opens just twice a year to accept shipments of seeds donated by more than 70 institutions around the world.
• On diversity, television industry gets worse:
The television industry’s exclusion of female show creators and people of color has only gotten worse in the new season, according to a study that paints a grim picture even as Hollywood has made bold commitments to improve diversity and representation.
Creators of new shows in the 2017-18 season were 91% white and 84% male, marking a step backwards for both gender and racial diversity behind the camera, researchers with the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) reported on Tuesday.
• 100 cities worldwide now running on at least 70% renewables:
More than 100 cities around the world now get at least 70 percent of their electricity from renewable sources such solar, wind, geothermal, and hydropower, according to new research from the non-profit CDP. That's more than double the 40 cities reporting they were powered by at least 70 percent clean energy in 2015.
The list includes large cities with dense populations such as Auckland, New Zealand; Nairobi, Kenya; Oslo, Norway; Seattle, USA; and Vancouver, Canada.
Impressively, a remarkable 43 cities, including Burlington, Vermont; Reykjavik, Iceland; and Basel, Switzerland, are running on 100 percent renewables.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Gun randos are creeping on schools, and Republicans want to give them a tax break. Not The Onion! Contributor Mark Hogue corrects us on the Myers-Briggs test. Armando updates us on DACA. And then, we discover the missing collusion nexus.
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