02/22/24

Good morning! It’s Thursday, February 22nd.

National Chili Day.

On a nice cold day? A nice bowl of chili? Some crackers and cheese on top?

I’m hungry.

And now, the news.

Boeing Replaces 737 Max Program Leader

-via ABC News

Let’s start with some Boeing internal affairs news. You know, like we always do. When in doubt, talk about the hirings and firings of the Boeing company.

In response to the time a door flew off a plane, and then a bunch of other screws were just never put on doors… Boeing has replaced the head of their 737 Max program, as well as shaken things up in general within the company, and replaced Ed Clark with Katie Ringgold.

You want something done right? Promote a woman!

Biden Cancels Debt and Possible Asylum

-via AP News (student debt) and CNN (asylum)

 A couple pieces of Biden news for ya…

First, because the Trump-stacked Supreme Court won’t let him the way he wanted to do it the first time, Biden is still working to cancel student debt for as many people as possible. A group that now includes an additional 153,000 borrowers.

Emails to announce your debt has been forgiven were sent out Wednesday (I didn’t get one). They were originally meant to be sent out in July but they’re ready to cancel this round of the debt right now, five months early, so here we go!

And then in not even remotely connected news…

The White House is reportedly considering an executive order that would restrict migrants’ ability to seek asylum at the US-Mexico border if they crossed illegally.

No final decision has been made, and expect no one to be happy here. Because obviously something needs to be done about the border, but when you can describe something as “reminiscent of a Trump-era action,” for sure progressives are going to be upset.

And conservatives just don’t want to agree with Biden on literally anything, but in particular they believe that chaos at the border is good for Trump, and that’s all they currently care about. So they’re going to have an issue with this as well.

Also, this isn’t an easily done action, as Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (which is how this would get done) allows a president to suspend the entry of noncitizens who are ‘detrimental to the interests of the United States,’ but that’s not the authority to just close the space between ports to entry for everyone.

212(f) is what Trump tried to use as well, and a federal appeals court ending up ruling that 212f authority doesn’t override asylum law.

TBD on whether Biden goes through with it.

Michigan Man First Charged Under New Gun Law

-via AP News

A Michigan man, whose two-year-old daughter shot herself with her dad’s revolver last week, will be the first charged under the state’s new safe storage law.

His daughter was shot on February 14th and has been in critical condition for since then.

Two years old.

What are we doing here? Listen, the law is a good idea but if you don’t have the critical thinking skill to know you need to safely lock up a gun with a two-year-old in the house, I mean kids in general but a two-year-old?... how are you deemed responsible enough to get a gun in the first place?

University of Alabama Pauses IVF Services

-via NBC News

After the Alabama Supreme Court shocked us all by ruling that frozen embryos are children and afforded the same safety and protections of actual kids, the University of Alabama announced that they are suspending their IVF services out of fear of criminal prosecution.

To be clear, the University will offer egg retrieval, but it will no longer fertilize eggs or develop embryos. A senior staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights says this ruling “does not appear to create criminal liability for IVF providers in the practice of IVF [or] the creation of embryos for IVF," but what it does, what all of these laws do, is create confusion and fear. And lead to things like this.

Teamsters Donate to RNC

-via Washington Post

And finally, in confusing news… The Teamsters’ political committee has given $45,000 to the RNC, $15,000 more than they donated to the DNC.

But like… they know Trump is the leading Republican candidate, right? The same Trump who hates unions, thinks striking workers should be fired, and can’t even be trusted to run a company?

This isn’t necessarily a surprise – a lot of union members support Trump. But it’s always surprising. Because if you’re pro-union, and then vote for someone like Trump, you’re voting against yourself.

Silly gooses!

And speaking of Trump… we’re waiting on two Supreme Court rulings, hoping coming this week. The first is a ruling in whether, as president, he has full immunity to do literally anything he wants but specifically, in regards to this case, full immunity to do federal election stealing crimes. And then of course we are also waiting to hear what the Supremes will have to say about whether Trump can be removed from the primary in Colorado.

And that’s it. That’s the news.

Lots of news coming up. I hope we hear more soon.

But before we get to that, and before I get to dive into a nice bowl of chili… because you’re warm and a little cheesy… I’m proud of you.