Today’s Lineup

Here are some of the topics that have caught my attention as I’ve been browsing the internet: why I would like the Democrats to fight back, a cheer to House Democrats for starting the discharge petition process for the national debt ceiling, the Biden Administration may finally try to help Vice President Kamala Harris improve her standing with voters, introducing the people who will lead Biden’s re-election campaign, Peter Thiel discovers Republicans care about the culture wars, Senator Patty Murray reaches a milestone, roadside drug tests are junk science, the first moon landing was much closer to ending in disaster than I had thought, there’s a cool graphic of a space elevator, figuring out the economics of Succession, and a New Jersey Little League has an innovative idea to address umpire abuse.

Leading Off

I participate every couple of weeks in a virtual coffee club with other members of the Lamorinda Democratic Club. I learn something every week—and the most valuable conversations expose my potential political and policy blind spots.

In our most recent gathering, I ended up expressing frustration about how Democratic leaders are still acting like both parties are following the norms to which we had become accustomed in the post-war period.

I wanted to know when Democrats were going to fight back against the anti-democratic efforts being demonstrated by the Republican Party leadership in Washington, D.C., and state capitals.

Why aren’t Democrats talking about the Republicans who supported election denial and the January 6 insurrection? Where was the political accountability? Why wasn’t this an issue in every interview and in every hearing?

Why isn’t every mention of investigating Hunter Biden met with a reply about a potential subpoena for Jared Kushner or Ivana Trump?

Why aren’t conversations about the corruption at the Supreme Court a reason to remind voters that the Senate Republicans had broken all of the norms to steal two seats?

Republicans demonstrate nearly every day that they are willing to break any norms to ensure ensure they have the power to implement an agenda unpopular with the American people.

Republican political leaders expelled Democratic legislators in Tennessee. In Montana, they suspended a legislator from being able to speak or even make an appearance on the legislative floor. Governors in Florida and Texas are discussing removing locally elected district attorneys if they use their prosecutorial discretion to avoid targeting pregnant people seeking abortion care. Republicans in several states are discussing raising the threshold for voters to pass a proposition—or to ban certain subjects from the ballot altogether.

Meanwhile, Senate Democrats are still allowing Republicans to block judges and justices using the blue slip tradition that requires both Senators from a nominee’s home state to consent to the confirmation process moving forward. The Senate Judiciary Committee refuses to use its subpoena power to require the Supreme Court Justices to explain their actions (and that situation is complicated by the lengthy absence of Senator Dianne Feinstein D-CA).

Things are not normal. I want to see more of a recognition of the realities of this political moment. It is not the job of reporters to raise this issues on their own, as much as some may wish they would. It is the job of Democrats to force the conversations about these dynamics through debate, events, and actions.

So I am happy that we are finally seeing some action on the national debt ceiling calamity. Earlier today we learned that my Member of Congress, Rep. Mark DeSaulnier (D-CA) had introduced a bill at the start of the session that now will be used to see if five Republicans will join the Democrats in forcing a vote on a clean debt ceiling increase through a discharge petition.

I don’t think this bill is going to pass any earlier than the deadline for a breach of the debt ceiling. But at least something now exists. Democrats can talk about it. Democrats can ask why so-called moderate Republicans won’t sign on to a clean increase to the national debt ceiling when the other alternative is the extreme House Republican bill.

The national debt ceiling situation is a dangerous one for our country, made worse because it is entirely unnecessary. Democrats should have eliminated it when they had the power to do so because they have seen how it was used to hold the nation hostage.

But at least the Democrats showed a bit of fight on this one issue today. I hope Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin (D-IL) can take some inspiration from the example.

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Quick Pitches

California

Legislation seeking to address California’s housing crisis has created a split within organized labor.
CalMatters’ Ben Christopher explains what the legislation is attempting to achieve and how the debate has led to a public disagreement within the State Building and Construction Trades Council: “Two affiliates of the trades council defected, throwing their weight behind a housing bill that the parent organization had been fighting for months. It’s a surprising and surprisingly public break that could help shift the political balance long defining California housing policy.
The bill in question would make permanent a 2017 state law that expedites affordable housing construction in many parts of the state. Under the reauthorization proposal, developers who make use of the law would be required to pay union-level wages — a standard that some in the building industry say still makes construction untenably expensive in many parts of the state. But it scraps a provision that mandates the hiring of union members for some projects.” (Ben Christopher, CalMatters)
California Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis (D) became the first candidate to announce that she is running for governor in 2026. By announcing early, Kounalakis is following the example set by current Governor Gavin Newsom when he announced his intention to seek the top job soon after beginning his second term as Lt. Governor. (Christopher Cadelago, Politico)
Just a few hours after Kounalakis’ announcement, former State Controller Betty Yee (D) announced that she also intended to run for governor but didn’t intend to formally file until later this year. (Sophia Bollag, San Francisco Chronicle)

Politics

The Biden Administration finally appears to have a plan to try to improve Vice President Kamala Harris’ political standing. It’s long overdue. (Alex Thompson, Axios)
Here are the people President Biden has tasked with being the senior campaign staff for his re-election campaign, starting with Campaign Manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez. (Matt Berg, Politico)
Several people who would have been plausible National Finance Chairs for the Biden re-election campaign are unavailable because they currently serve as U.S. Ambassadors. So how might Biden handle the situation—and might the national fundraising ambassador prove to be Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg? (Theodore Schleifer, Puck)
Tech billionaire Peter Thiel, who donated millions to back former President Donald Trump in 2016 and successful U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance (R-OH), is telling people that he plans to sit out the 2024 cycle. Apparently, Thiel has just discovered that GOP legislators are serious about focusing on fighting a culture war rather than tech innovation. This has been obvious for a couple of decades, so it’s great to see the tech elite catch up a bit to reality. (Anna Tong, Alexandra Ulmer, and Jeffrey Dastin, Reuters)
U.S. Senate President Pro Tempore Patty Murray (D-WA) recently became the first woman to cast 10,000 floor votes in the United States Senate, joining a list including 32 men. (Jacob Knutson, Axios)
Former prisoners at the Guantánamo prison camp have accused Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) of observing and covering up the torture of inmates when he was assigned as a navy lawyer there. (Julian Borger and Oliver Laughland, The Guardian)
“A Nebraska state lawmaker and mother to a trans child is being formally investigated over a potential conflict of interest for opposing restrictions on gender-affirming care for minors, a move that several senators from both parties were quick to denounce.” Given our experience with such issues, I doubt that as many lawmakers will denounce the next effort to silence a colleague. (Grace Moon, The Washington Post)
We are all quite fortunate that all Jack Douglas Teixeira attempted to do was leak classified documents. Some of his classmates thought he was dangerous enough to potentially be a school shooter.
As Natalia Antonova writes: “Teixeira’s stupidity means we all got lucky. If he was smarter, this could have been much worse. He could’ve fled before he was apprehended. If he was crazier, this could have been much worse as well. He could’ve barricaded himself in with a bunch of hostages.” (Natalia Antonova, Natalia Mitigates The Apocalypse)
Roadside drug tests often used to convict people have been found to indicate many false positives.
“For years, these tests have had this unjustified scientific veneer,” said Des Walsh, founder of the Roadside Drug Test Innocence Alliance, which advocates for the use of more accurate testing technology. “Finally, we believe the tide is turning with this dawning awareness of the unacceptably high rate of false positives.”

The National Registry of Exonerations records 131 instances of drug convictions being overturned after more accurate tests reviewed the evidence and found no illegal substances. Judges should not allow prosecutors to use this kind of junk science as a critical piece of evidence in their courtrooms or to make plea deals. (Ryan Gabrielson, ProPublica)
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito says he knows who leaked his draft opinion in the case that overturned Roe v. Wade, but he won’t share what he knows. He’s also angry that people question his judgment and the current Court majority’s authority. None of this should seem normal. (Jonathan Chait, New York Intelligencer)

Abortion, Contraception, and Reproductive Rights

In Oklahoma, Jaci Stratton discovered that she had a molar pregnancy, where the fetus would not survive and the tissue had become cancerous. This put her life at risk. But the strict abortion bans meant doctors felt they could not legally act to help her.
“They were very sincere; they weren’t trying to be mean,” Statton, 25, says. “They said, ‘The best we can tell you to do is sit in the parking lot, and if anything else happens, we will be ready to help you. But we cannot touch you unless you are crashing in front of us or your blood pressure goes so high that you are fixing to have a heart attack.’”

They had to wait until she was crashing in front of them. That is a monstrous outcome. Stratton had to go to a different state to get the health care she needed. But this is an example of the real-life implications of the strict and confusing abortion bans Republican legislatures are passing. (Selena Simmons-Duffin, NPR)
So-called abortion ban exceptions may help Republican politicians in their efforts to hide their extremism from voters, but they won’t help women and pregnant people access needed reproductive health services. We should never forget that the exception laws are written to ensure they are almost impossible to use. (Carter Sherman, Vice)
Ten states have relaxed child labor protections recently. A new proposed federal law would allow 16 and 17-year-olds to work dangerous jobs in the logging industry. This is one way to fill jobs while continuing to suppress wages. (Michael Sainato, The Guardian)

Science

NASA launched Voyager 2 in 1977, but the spacecraft has continued to send back data even as it has reached interstellar space. While its power supply will eventually go out, scientists now have plans to use a small battery backup to extend its data-gathering lifetime. (Joshua Hawkins, BGR)
“Doctors, scientists and researchers have built an artificial intelligence model that can accurately identify cancer in a development they say could speed up diagnosis of the disease and fast-track patients to treatment.” (Andrew Gregory, The Guardian)
I didn’t realize until reading this story over the weekend just how close Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin came to being stranded on the moon. Thankfully Aldrin was able to use a felt tip pen to address a broken circuit breaker switch whose function was required for the two astronauts to lift off from the moon. (Lesley Kennedy, History)
Neal Agarwal has created an animated simulation of using a space elevator to go from the Earth’s surface into space. You can explore Earth’s atmosphere, wildlife, and planes as you scroll up on your web browser. Space elevators are an actual idea scientists have suggested to transport people and materials to and from space. (Neal Agarwal, Neal.Fun)
The penumbral lunar eclipse coming on May 5 won’t be visible in North America, but you can watch it online. “The last time a penumbral eclipse was visible from the contiguous U.S. was on Nov. 30. 2020, and the next time such an event will be visible from this region of the globe will be on March 25, 2024.” (Robert Lea, Space.com)

Technology

A bipartisan group in Congress plans to introduce legislation to ensure any decision to launch nuclear weapons is made by a human—and not artificial intelligence. The law would reinforce current policy, but if there’s one thing we should have learned over the past few years, it’s that enacting or repealing laws to ensure policy outcomes is wiser than relying on policy or precedent. (Kadia Goba, Semafor)
The Wall Street Journal’s technology columnist tested artificial intelligence-generated video and audio tools to see how they would do replicating her. She was able to fool members of her family and the voice-generated security features of her bank. (Joanna Stern, Wall Street Journal)

Culture

A new book from the late Georgia Tech History Professor Kristie Macrakis, Espionage: A Concise History, discusses the secret communication methods used by agents over the centuries. This book excerpt is a fun review of some of the ways agents have tried to send private messages since the ancient Greeks. (Kristie Macrakis, MIT Press Reader)
Belgium customs authorities ordered that 2,352 cans of Miller High Life beer be emptied and crushed after the French committee for the protection of Champagne took issue with the beer’s “the Champagne of Beers” slogan. (Emma Bubola, The New York Times)
The Financial Times tried to figure out the economics of the main plots we are seeing on Succession. While there are discrepancies, I was surprised by how well it all holds up. (Louis Ashworth, Financial Times)

Sports

Major League Baseball has told the Atlanta baseball team to stop celebrating home runs using an oversized hat after complaints from New Era, the official on-field hat supplier to MLB. Wow, look at that quick action! But I do wonder when MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred will get around to dealing with that franchise’s offensive team name and its fans’ use of the tomahawk chop. (Joon Lee, ESPN)
Phoenix Mercury star Brittney Griner held her first press conference since her release in a prisoner swap after serving 294 days in Russian prisons. She is preparing for her 10th WNBA season. (Cindy Boren, Washington Post)
The Argentina Football Association, home to the defending Men’s World Cup Champions, is targeting the United States market for expansion, including building a national training facility in Miami. This will give Argentina one more national training facility in our nation than the United States Soccer Federation. (Felipe Cardenas, The Athletic)

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The Closer

A New Jersey Little League has come up with an innovative way to try to prevent parents and fans from abusing its umpires, as USA Today’s Steve Gardner reports:

“A new rule this season in the Deptford Township Little League requires spectators who seem to think they could do a better job than the volunteer umpires on the field to come out and prove it.

Anyone in the stands who confronts an ump during a game must themselves umpire three games before they’re allowed back as a spectator.”

I hope we find out more about how this experiment goes.

Many sports leagues are now dealing with a shortage of referees and umpires. It is hard to convince people who are volunteers are low-paid to put up with the abuse some people wrongly think they have the right to share as a spectator.

A shortage of game officials now will lead to increased problems over time, as the potential pool of professional game officials is limited because so many people give up early in their careers or never even try.

I get frustrated at officials’ decisions. But I try not to react to any game official below a professional level—and abuse is never okay.

If we want high-level sports to work, we need umpires and referees who are competent and whom we can trust. We should be making it easier for more people to try.

Post-Game Comments

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