It's primary night in Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, and West Virgina, and voters will choose nominees in a number of races that could impact control of the Senate this November. In particular, we're keeping a very close watch on the GOP primary in West Virginia, where disgraced coal baron Don Blankenship has his fellow Republicans freaked out at the possibility that he could win the party's nomination—and doom its chances against Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin in the fall. For a complete list of all key races, check out our primary preview, and join us when the first polls close at 6 PM ET tonight for our live blog at Daily Kos Elections. |
181 days remain until the November 2018 midterm elections
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Today’s comic by Jen Sorensen is Victim mentality, 2018:
• California Energy Commission likely to require new homes to have solar panels starting in 2020:
Just 15 percent to 20 percent of new single-family homes [now being] built include solar, according to Bob Raymer, technical director for the California Building Industry Association. [...]
In addition to widespread adoption of solar power, the new provisions include a push to increase battery storage and increase reliance on electricity over natural gas.
• Guess what? George Zimmerman still giving a bad name to assholes: The Florida man acquitted in the 2012 slaying of Trayvon Martin was contacted by a private investigator, Dennis Warren, who had been hired by the production company Cinemart Productions, which was producing a documentary about Martin's death. Warren said after his single attempt to contact Zimmerman on Dec. 17 last year, and said he received in return 21 phone calls, 38 text messages, and seven voicemails in a span of a couple of hours . One of the voicemails allegedly said, "Answer your phone, [expletive]" and "I'll see you before you realize it." [...] In other texts, Zimmerman allegedly said: "I know how to handle people who [expletive] with me, I have since February 2012" and "Anyone who [expletive] with my parents will be fed to an alligator." He is scheduled for arraignment on May 30.
MIDDAY TWEET
• 53rd Annual Buffalo Roundup in Custer State Park will boast dozens of “cowboy” riders but once again exclude Lakotas.
• Pregnant women get little useful lab safety advice: Scientist Melanie Nelson was in her second pregnancy when she followed her biotech company’s policy and informed the HR department of her condition:
Many people might balk at having to disclose a pregnancy as soon as they know about it, for all sorts of reasons. Nelson says that for her, that wasn’t the troubling part. “The nice thing was that HR then arranged for a consultation with our safety consultant,” as the firm was not of a size at the time to have that function in-house, she explained. “The less nice thing was that the consultant really couldn't tell me anything useful, because there wasn't any real reproductive toxicology data on any of the relevant chemicals.”
Nelson was extra worried, she said, because the company had just started working with some highly toxic anti-cancer compounds. And what's more, the safety guidelines hadn’t been updated.
987 days remain in Donald Trump’s term as pr*sident if he manages to stay in office.
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• EPA chief Scott Pruitt's “secret science” plan was developed to defend tobacco and It could be coming for clean air rules: Many scientists think Pruitt’s plan—Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science—would hamstring research because it requires disclosures of all data. Many health studies rely on personal and confidential information and so would “violate healthy privacy laws,” according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. But Steve Milloy is practically ecstatic about Pruitt’s plan, now in the middle of a 30-day public comment period:
Milloy is a climate science denier and former coal executive who, 20 years ago, was the executive director of a group known as The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition — or TASSC. More recently, he was a member of President Trump's EPA transition team.
TASSC was funded by the tobacco industry, initially Philip Morris, and had been launched in the early 1990s with another lobbying firm, APCO Associates.
This was not the earliest sign of a tobacco-sponsored campaign to restrict the EPA’s ability to build rules around scientific evidence.
• Muslim woman sues jailers for removing her hijab:
When a Southern California woman was arrested on suspicion of domestic violence last year she was told she could not wear her headscarf in the Ventura County Jail even though she’s Muslim, according to a civil rights lawsuit filed in Los Angeles federal court Monday.
Jennifer Hyatt, 44, said Ventura County officers yanked her hijab from her head and she suffered “severe discomfort, humiliation, and emotional distress,” according to the federal lawsuit filed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations in California on her behalf.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Schneiderman resigns & TrumpWorld dances, because lol yolo nothing matters. Armando adds more, re: Hewitt, Weiss. Military spouses, convinced they were hacked & threatened by ISIS, find out it was… Russia. Nunes "threatens" Sessions with contempt.
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