Today’s comic by Ruben Bolling is Donald Trump's Guide to Very Fine People:
• Pipeline protesters could face 20 years in prison if Texas legislation passes: One proposal is House Bill 3557. This would increase penalties for intentional acts that “impede, inhibit or interfere” with the operations of “critical infrastructure.” Accused violators would be subject upon conviction to 20 years in prison, $10,000 fines for individuals, and up to $1 million for organizations. Protesters have challenged the building of pipelines in Texas, including a piece of the Keystone XL pipeline that has elicited protests in several states. In Denton protesters also took action in 2015 to delay operations at a fracking site after nearly 60% of voters supported a statewide fracking ban that the Texas legislature overturned. The new proposal “is criminalizing conscientious, caring people who are the canaries for their communities,” said Lori Glover, co-founder of the Big Bend Defense Coalition, an activist group that mobilized against the Trans-Pecos Pipeline. She and other critics say existing law already is adequate to protect private property.
• Six months after their worldwide walkout, Google workers walked out again Wednesday to protest retaliation for reporting sexual harassment.
• Planetary Defense Conference games out how to respond to asteroids that might smack the Earth:
In what conditions should you deflect, and how? What happens if deflection fails? How can lives be saved in that case? Doing the homework ahead of time may mean the difference between Armageddon, the movie in which miners move an asteroid’s path away from earth, and a biblical Armageddon, as in the end of the world.
MIDDAY TWEET
• Oklahoma cops gun down naked, unarmed, black teen: The 17-year-old was shot Monday when, officers claimed, he fought with them after they used a stun gun on him. He later died at the hospital of multiple gunshot wounds. Isaiah Mark Lewis was set to graduate from high school May 18. Two women, including his girlfriend, had called 911 to note that Lewis was behaving unlike himself, “flipped out,” according to one. He had by then stripped off his clothes. Police responded, hunting for him for an hour, then sighted and chased him into a house where Lewis allegedly attacked both officers, and they shot him. The officers were not wearing body-cams.
• 1.5 million volunteers set a Guinness World Record on Sunday for tree-planting: In the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, volunteers planted more than 66 million tree saplings in just 12 hours along the Narmada river. In a press release, the organizers said the aim of the mass-planting event was to raise awareness for the nation's "make India green again" plan. At the 2015 Paris climate conference, India pledged to extend its forest cover to 235 million acres by 2030.
• Rep. Debra Haaland pens op-ed on missing indigenous women: At The Guardian, Haaland, a citizen of the Laguna Pueblo and one of the two first Native women to serve in Congress, writes that she is fighting for these women by supporting passage of Savanna’s Act and to make sure protections for Native people are included in the Violence Against Women Act:
In Indian country, it is often days before law enforcement shows up for a missing person call or homicide. In the case of Ashlyn Mike, a seven-year-old-girl in New Mexico, an amber alert wasn’t issued for more than 10 hours, when typically for cases of missing children those alerts are posted almost immediately. Ashlyn Mike lost her life at the age of seven.
In Indian country, families sometimes wait days for the authorities to respond, and frequently lead the only search parties. What’s worse, sometimes the record of that missing indigenous person isn’t documented, leaving questions unanswered for decades, leading to gaps in information, missing person cases unsolved and perpetrators roaming the streets.