Tuesday News: “Biden Starts Big Infrastructure Bet With U.S. Far Behind China”; “10 People Killed in Colorado Supermarket Mass Shooting”; “Republicans Have No Good Arguments Against D.C. Statehood”; “Coverage of the migrant surge at the border shows how easily the media can be trolled by Republicans”

by Lowell

Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Tuesday, March 23.

• Surprising study finds sharks are key to restoring damaged habitats, fighting climate change (“Researchers tested how the absence of tiger sharks could affect seagrass coverage.”)
• Australia floods see swarming spiders and wet wallabies as animals seek refuge (“First fires, now floods – it’s been a terrible year for Australia’s wildlife and livestock that are now trying to survive the rainfall pummelling New South Wales.”)
• US and Canada follow EU and UK in sanctioning Chinese officials over Xinjiang
• China is convinced America is in decline. Biden has a chance to change that.
• Putin to get Covid shot as intrigue surrounds Russia’s vaccine strategy
• Biden should start planning now to help the rest of the world get vaccinated
• Israelis vote in fourth national election in two years (“Netanyahu’s Likud party is ahead in polls, but predictions are unreliable as many voters remain undecided”)
• China’s retaliatory sanctions on the EU set the stage for how Beijing will respond to other global powers
• Biden Starts Big Infrastructure Bet With U.S. Far Behind China
• Federal Officials Question AstraZeneca Trial Data
• Biden administration frets J&J may miss vaccine goal
• America Is Now in the Hands of the Vaccine Hesitant (“A subset of Americans haven’t yet made up their mind about getting a COVID-19 shot. Whether they turn out in the coming weeks will determine the future of the pandemic.”)
• 10 People Killed in Colorado Supermarket Mass Shooting
• Critics Tell GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert What To Do With Her ‘Prayers’ After Boulder Shooting (“’This may be the worst ever ‘thoughts and prayers’ message in the aftermath of a mass shooting,’ one Twitter user hit back at the Colorado Republican.”)
• 10 people killed in shooting at grocery store in Boulder, Colo. (Why do we allow this in America?)
• Fed Chair Touts ‘Much Improved’ Economy 1 Year After Stocks Hit Pandemic-Era Low
• Building A Big Infrastructure Plan, Biden Starts With A Bridge To Republicans
• White House officials to meet with energy industry execs ahead of climate, infrastructure plan, sources say (“News of the meeting comes as White House climate advisor Gina McCarthy has been engaging with industry leaders ahead of the Biden administration’s expected unveiling of a massive infrastructure and climate package”)
• 1,500 Wind Turbines. 2,700 Square Miles. Offshore Wind in the Atlantic Will Be Big. Really Big(“American offshore wind farms, of which there are 17 in the works for the Atlantic Ocean, are no longer far off on the horizon. The overall magnitude of this emerging renewable energy industry is starting to take shape.”)
• White House prepares massive infrastructure bill with universal pre-K, free community college, climate measures
• Biden Team Prepares $3 Trillion in New Spending for the Economy
• The fate of the filibuster is fluid (“Don’t assume that filibuster reform won’t happen just because a few Senate Democrats have opposed it.”)
• Republicans’ war on voting feels increasingly frantic (“Republicans will not be deterred from protecting whiteness.”)
• The Supreme Court confronts a union-busting argument that’s too radical even for Kavanaugh
• Coverage of the migrant surge at the border shows how easily the media can be trolled by Republicans (“Media can educate the public without ratcheting up the hysteria by calmly providing the historical context”)
• Getting real about the Democratic Party’s ‘immigration problem’ (“The Democrats’ real ‘immigration problem’ is that they’ve accepted that premise, which means trying to tackle the serious logistical challenges that entails. But isn’t that a good thing?”)
• Activists Decry a Different Border Surge in Texas: Cops and Troops (“Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s Operation Lonestar is the latest move in a long tradition of border militarization.”)
• Biden first president in decades to have first-pick Cabinet secretaries confirmed
• Biden to nominate tech antitrust pioneer Lina Khan for FTC commissioner (“Khan brought Big Tech scrutiny mainstream”)
• White House yanks Interior nominee after Murkowski opposition (“The White House has withdrawn its nomination of Elizabeth Klein to become the Interior Department’s deputy secretary, as the Biden administration faced push back from Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, sources familiar with the situation said Monday.”)
• How Not to Panic About Inflation
• How Many Women Have to Die to End ‘Temptation’? (“The Atlanta murders follow a terrible pattern of misogynist violence.”)
• A Trump-appointed prosecutor blindsided the Biden DOJ with a ‘60 Minutes’ interview on the Capitol riot cases
• Republicans can’t handle the truth about Capitol insurrectionists
• Former Capitol riot prosecutor’s comments on Trump alarm new no-drama Justice Department
• Justice Dept. Said to Be Weighing Sedition Charges Against Oath Keepers
• 11 Years On, the Affordable Care Act Defies Opponents and Keeps Expanding (“More than 200,000 have used a special enrollment period to sign up for health insurance under the act, while Alabama and Wyoming eye the law’s Medicaid expansion.”)
• Why Democrats In Congress Need Biden’s Approval Rating To Stay In The Mid-50s
• Fact check: No, Nancy Pelosi isn’t trying to ‘steal’ a House seat
• USPS chief DeJoy said to cut post office hours, lengthen delivery times in 10-year-plan
• All Republicans Have Against D.C. Statehood Is a Parade of Bogeymen
• The dumbing down of the D.C. statehood debate
• Republicans Have No Good Arguments Against D.C. Statehood (“So they’re forced to make some absurd ones”)
• Report: Facebook Still Struggles to Contain Misinformation (“Despite the company’s public commitments, pages pushing post-election violence have grown.” How hard is it to just shut down pages that push out lies?)
• Betsy DeVos made at least $225 million while education secretary
• Senate Republicans torn over return of earmarks
• ‘A conversation that needs to happen’: Democrats agonize over ‘defund the police’ fallout (“In private email exchanges and on public social media platforms, Democratic elected officials, operatives and aides continue to battle over whether the issue that has come to be known as simply ‘defund’ is so radioactive that it nearly cost the party its majority — or whether it had any impact at all on the outcome…A recent USA Today/Ipsos poll found that fewer than one in five respondents back efforts to ‘defund the police,’ while 58 percent are against them”)
• The Whole Point Was to Avoid Mob Violence (“The Founders would have been appalled by the attack on the Capitol but not surprised”)
• Why Obama’s Climate Plan Failed. And How Biden’s Could Succeed (“A decade ago, Democrats missed a golden opportunity to address the climate crisis. But if they can learn from that mistake, the next chance may not slip away.”)
• Indicators to watch as the Chamber’s new leader approaches climate change policy
• Trump, My Dad and the Rightward Shift of Latino Men (“In the constant push and pull between economic and cultural issues in the Democratic coalition, it’s possible that, for some Latino men, left-wing cultural politics have proved off-putting. It’s been well-documented at this point that most Latinos don’t use the gender-neutral term ‘Latinx,’ but the male-female breakdown is noteworthy. According to Pew Research Center, 14 percent of Latinas between 18 and 29 use the term, but only 1 percent of Latino men in the same age group use it.” Also, “32 percent of Hispanics see themselves as a group similar to European American immigrants who can join the mainstream.”)
• Fox News host feeds fake news straight to Trump on-air, immediately forced to walk it back (Fox is abysmally bad, total joke of a network.)
• Disgraced former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens is launching a comeback on the back of Steve Bannon (“Greitens keeps pushing election fraud conspiracy theories”)
• Ron Johnson isn’t a Republican outlier
• Ron Johnson’s vile new defense of Trump makes his defeat more urgent
• Mo Brooks launches Senate bid in Alabama
• Mo Brooks Compared Biden’s Election to the Start of the Civil War. Now He Wants a Senate Seat. (Appalling.)
• Sidney Powell moves to dismiss Dominion lawsuit
• Sidney Powell argues in new court filing that no reasonable people would believe her election fraud claims Sidney Powell is certainly NOT a “reasonable person” by any metric.)
• The Supreme Court May Drop a Very Hot Potato in Merrick Garland’s Lap (“A potential death-penalty sentence for the Boston Marathon bomber could make for big-time performative outrage.”)
• NBC and Fox Sunday shows featured no Asian American voices to discuss attacks on Asian Americans (“NBC’s Chuck Todd admitted that the ‘collective political intelligentsia’ hadn’t been listening to Asian American voices — even while he didn’t bring any on Meet the Press”)
• Trump’s army takes aim at 2022 touting his election lies (Good for CNN, putting the word “lies” right in the headline.)
• Trump advisors expect ex-president’s Twitter alternative to run on a new platform built by Brad Parscale
• Trump considers adding a social media network to his list of failures (“Trumpbook? Trmpr? If he ever does it, it won’t succeed.”)
• NCAA March Madness drops the ball for women’s basketball with sexism outrage (“This should be the last time the value of the NCAA’s elite female athletes is so flagrantly denigrated.”)
• Senate confirms Boston mayor Marty Walsh as Biden’s labor secretary (“Cabinet nearly assembled but president still must make hundreds of other federal appointments”)
• Kim Janey Becomes First Black Woman To Lead Boston
• Atlanta shooting victim’s husband says police held him in handcuffs for hours (“Mario Gonzalez’s accusation would mean he was detained after images of suspect released and authorities captured him” WTF?)
• Video: Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA11) Says Preventing DC Statehood Is “a wrong, based in race, based in very sordid history that is long overdue to be righted” (“The other side of the aisle tragically is about voter suppression.”)
• Congresswoman Luria launches Congressional Offshore Wind Caucus
• Virginia AG Mark Herring Signs Letter Calling on U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to Close “Ghost Gun” Loophole
• One in four Virginians has received at least one dose, CDC director warns of ‘avoidable surge’ if restrictions lift
• Monday (3/22) Virginia Data on COVID-19 Finds +1,063 Confirmed/Probable Cases (to 605,967), +28 Hospitalizations (to 25,820), +10 Deaths (to 10,127) (Lowest 7-day new COVID-related deaths since 11/11/20)
• Virginia prisoners, once left out of vaccine plan, have now all been offered a dose
• ‘Superheroes’ keep hungry Virginia students fed during pandemic
• Northam signs legislation to create 21-member LGBTQ+ advisory board
• Editorial: Virginia should use its federal stimulus money for school construction
• Inspector general fires investigator who found misconduct at the Virginia Parole Board
• State investigator fired following Va. Parole Board disclosures, attorney says
• Sunrise Movement endorses Jennifer Carroll Foy for Virginia governor
• Sunrise Movement endorses Jennifer Carroll Foy in Virginia governor race
• Carroll Foy plans to drastically ramp up digital spending to reach primary voters
• Va. teachers pay ranks last in U.S. compared to full-time, year-round workers
• State Board Questions How Far Protections Go for Asian Americans
• Former LG Bill Bolling (R) Explains Why “For me, the choice comes down to Cox and Youngkin.” (“If Republicans nominate Chase they are giving away any chance they have of winning the Governor’s office, and probably giving away the other two state wide offices as well.”)
• Princess Blanding Advances Ambitious Progressive Platform (The problem is, without Ranked Choice Voting, all an independent progressive candidacy does is help Republicans.)
• Virginia Tech board adopts goal of carbon-neutral campus by 2030
• Fairfax poised to approve zoning changes that would make it easier to rent converted apartments (“Amendments to the county’s 42-year-old zoning ordinance call for lifting age and disability requirements for accessory living units.”)
• ‘Stressful, sad and lonely’: Exhausted and burned-out, Claire Moore, nurse on the VCU COVID ward, describes the past year
• University of Richmond faculty, students protest school’s decision to keep two controversial names on campus buildings
• Portsmouth schools double the planned raises for teachers and staff next year
• Editorial: Overcoming challenges, NSU helps lift region’s spirits
• D.C.-area forecast: Cloudy for the next two days before big, late-week warm-up (“Showers threaten Wednesday, but our first chance of 80-degree weather comes Friday.”)