Every week I wonder how I’m going to find enough good news, and then once I start searching, there’s just an overwhelming amount of it. So in these tough times, keep your spirits up by reading about the inevitable downfall of the current administration, and how thousands of people going quietly about their day jobs, are helping to make the world a better place for everyone.
This isn’t going to go over well:
Donald Trump is floating the idea of using the military’s budget to pay for his long-promised border wall with Mexico.
Trump raised the idea with the House speaker, Paul Ryan, at a meeting last week, according to a person familiar with the discussion who spoke on condition of anonymity.
New Manafort associate investigated:
The FBI has found that a business associate of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort had ongoing ties to Russian intelligence, including during the 2016 campaign when Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates, were in touch with the associate, according to new court filings.
The documents, filed late Tuesday by prosecutors for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, also allege that Gates had said he knew the associate was a former officer with the Russian military intelligence service.
The allegations underscore Mueller’s interest in Manafort and Gates, who continued to interact with business associates in Ukraine even as they helped lead Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
But her emails!: (No, not those emails)
Peter Thiel's data-mining company Palantir and former Google chairman Eric Schmidt's daughter both had connections to Cambridge Analytica's (CA) misuse of Facebook user information, according to documents seen by The New York Times.
[...]
Thiel is a Facebook board member and a conservative libertarian with a dystopian view of the future who funded Donald Trump's US presidential campaign. He became a billionaire through a series of tech investments including PayPal and Facebook.
CA was founded by Robert Mercer, the conservative billionaire hedge fund creator who has also funded Trump and the Breitbart News Network, the right-wing media group that is often accused of publishing misleading stories. The company is now the subject of criminal investigations in both the UK and the US over its role in the 2016 US presidential election and the Brexit referendum in the UK. The company has made contradictory statements about its alleged role persuading British people to vote to Leave the EU.
This won’t go over well either: (Mitt, we knew you were out of touch, but ouch!)
Utah Senate candidate and former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney said he is farther to the right on immigration policy than President Donald Trump.
In a question-and-answer session in Provo, Utah, Romney touted his conservative credentials and bucked many Republicans who want a permanent solution to immigrants benefitting from the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, according to local media.
"For instance, I'm a deficit hawk," Romney said. "That makes me more conservative than a lot of Republicans and a lot of Democrats. I'm also more of a hawk on immigration than even the president. My view was these DACA kids shouldn't all be allowed to stay in the country legally."
American Samoans sue: (Mitt, what do you have to say about this? It’s in your state.)
John Fitisemanu, who works for a lab company in Utah, has paid U.S. taxes and been subject to American laws his whole life. But the 53-year-old father and husband isn't considered a U.S. citizen by the federal government because he was born in American Samoa, a U.S. territory and the only place in the country without automatic claim to citizenship. Now, he's suing to be recognized as an American.
Fitisemanu is the lead plaintiff on a lawsuit filed Tuesday on behalf of American Samoans in Utah to be treated as U.S. citizens under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. The Associated Press obtained the documents before the case was filed.
American Samoa, a U.S. territory since 1900, is a cluster of islands 2,600 miles (4,184 kilometers) southwest of Hawaii perpetually stuck in a legal loophole. People born in the territory are labeled U.S. nationals. Under that status, they cannot vote, run for office, sponsor family members for immigration to the U.S., apply for certain government jobs, or serve on a jury -- despite paying taxes to Uncle Sam. They're even issued special U.S. passports that say: "This bearer is a United States national and not a United States citizen."
NRA under the gun:
A U.S. senator asked the National Rifle Association on Tuesday to turn over detailed internal records about foreign funding it received in the past three years and how it spent that money, including whether any of it went toward influencing American elections, according to a copy of the letter delivered to the powerful gun group’s top lawyer.
Sen. Ron Wyden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, released his request a week after NRA general counsel John Frazer acknowledged that the tax-exempt nonprofit receive some foreign funding.
Supreme Court Justice calls for repeal of Second Amendment:
Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who retired from the bench in 2010, on Tuesday called for the repeal of the Second Amendment, the constitutional right used to defend gun ownership. In a New York Times op-ed, Stevens — who was appointed by President Gerald Ford and emerged as a liberal voice on the court — said the weekend March for Our Lives demonstrations after last month's school shooting in Parkland, Fla., "demand our respect."
Cult leader/human trafficker charged:
Keith Raniere, the founder of the so-called self-help organization "NXIVM," was arrested and deported back to the U.S. after he was found Sunday in a luxury villa in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
[...]
"As alleged, Keith Raniere displayed a disgusting abuse of power in his efforts to denigrate and manipulate women he considered his sex slaves," FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge Sweeney said in a written statement. "He allegedly participated in horrifying acts of branding and burning them, with the cooperation of other women operating within this unorthodox pyramid scheme. These serious crimes against humanity are not only shocking, but disconcerting to say the least, and we are putting an end to this torture today."
At least one Black Life Matters:
Clark was shot 20 times on Sunday, March 20 in South Sacramento when police officials responded to a call that said a six-foot-one man wearing a black hooded sweatshirt and dark pants was breaking car windows.
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Therefore, state Attorney General Xavier Becerra and Police Chief Hahn on Tuesday called for the state Justice Department to play two roles — to provide independent oversight of the investigation into the shooting and to review Sacramento’s police training and policies on the use of force.
Facebook in hot water:
Facebook Inc Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg plans to testify before U.S. Congress, a source briefed on the matter said on Tuesday, as he bows to pressure from lawmakers insisting he explain how 50 million users’ data ended up in the hands of a political consultancy.
[...]
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission took the unusual step of announcing on Monday that it had opened an investigation into the company - which it generally only does in cases of great public interest - citing media reports that raise what it called “substantial concerns about the privacy practices of Facebook.”
Utah legalizes free-range parenting:
Utah became the first state in the country to legalize "free-range parenting," which will allow children to do certain activities without parental supervision.
The bill, signed by Utah. Gov. Gary Herbert earlier this month, redefines "neglect" so that parents won't be guilty of a crime for allowing their kids to "learn the skills of self-reliance and problem-solving they'll need as adults," Utah state Sen. Lincoln Fillmore, a sponsor of the bill, said in a statement to ABC News.
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Some of the practices children will be allowed to do unattended will include traveling to and from school; traveling to and from nearby commercial or recreational facilities; playing outside; remaining in a vehicle unattended except under extreme circumstances; and remaining at home unattended.
Scientists discover surprise:
Layers of the body long believed to be dense, connective tissues are actually interconnected, fluid-filled compartments, the scientists report in a new study.
"This finding has potential to drive dramatic advances in medicine," said study co-senior author Dr. Neil Theise, a pathology professor at NYU Langone Health in New York City.
"The direct sampling of interstitial fluid may become a powerful diagnostic tool," Theise added in an NYU news release.
Nobody’s going to complain about these robots taking their jobs:
Robots have found an important calling working in radioactive environments. In the wake of the Fukushima disaster, teams of Japanese roboticists have created a small army of robots capable of surviving, if only for a few minutes, inside the compromised reactor cores.
One of those robots recently transmitted the first photos of nuclear debris from the site.
The job of helping decommission the Piketon facility, which is operated by the Department of Energy and has been closed since 2000, will fall to a pair of customized autonomous robots developed at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.
Action item: don’t forget, we need only one vote to save Net Neutrality under the Congressional Review Act! Call your Republican Senator today!
That’s all for today, folks. Remember the week is half over, and we’ve survived 14 months of the current administration. Take heart, and don’t forget we are all in this together.