Jilly_in_VA
Jilly_in_VA's JournalGOP senator grills RFK Jr. on abortion, measles, CDC leadership at health hearing
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was taken to task by a bipartisan Senate panel Wednesday afternoon over his leadership of the agency — a tenure that has included measles outbreaks and sweeping budget and personnel cuts.
Some of that grilling came from Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chair Bill Cassidy, R-La., a physician who has been publicly critical of Kennedy over his attempts to roll back federal vaccine policy. Cassidy cast the deciding vote to confirm Kennedy last February, but only after he received specific promises from Kennedy around vaccines — some of which he has since broken.
Despite Cassidy’s vote, the pair’s relationship has since deteriorated due to their disagreements over vaccines. The tension has spilled into Cassidy’s re-election race: A group run by one of Kennedy’s closest friends, the book publisher Tony Lyons, has committed to spend $1 million to back Cassidy’s primary challenger, Rep. Julia Letlow, who also has been endorsed by Trump.
Those tensions were on full display Wednesday, when Cassidy grilled Kennedy on federal health policy around abortion pills, measles, and CDC leadership.
Cassidy kicked off his opening statement by addressing affordability — a concept that Republicans have struggled to gain ground on — calling on the government to lower the cost of drugs and health insurance.
https://www.ms.now/news/rfk-jr-senate-help-committee-hearing
I'm no fan of Cassidy, but at least he speaks from a position of knowledge, unlike Junior
Immigration officer charged after shoving protester to ground in Colorado
A Colorado district attorney on Tuesday announced criminal charges against a Customs and Border Protection officer who was recorded yanking a protester by her hair and pushing her to the ground last fall.
CBP Officer Nicholas Rice was charged with assault in the third degree and criminal mischief, District Attorney Sean Murray for Colorado’s 6th Judicial District, said in a news release. The charges are a misdemeanor and a petty offense, respectively.
Murray said he decided to file charges after “a thorough investigation conducted by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.”
The incident took place in late October outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Durango, a small left-leaning town in southwestern Colorado, where hundreds of people gathered to protest the arrest of a Colombian father and his two children.
Rice was recorded on video snatching a phone out of 57-year-old Franci Stagi’s hands and then grabbing her hair and shoving her down an embankment. Stagi told The Colorado Sun at the time that she had been recording the officer and asked him, “You’re a good Christian, aren’t you?” which she said set him off.
https://www.ms.now/news/immigration-officer-charged-colorado-protestor
That's a bit telling, isn't it? Apparently he's NOT!
CVS vows federal court challenge after TN General Assembly passes bill that could close 100+ stores
The Senate and House both passed a bill that could shut down over 100 CVS stores and impact where patients get their prescriptions.
The bill passed the Senate on Monday with 24 Ayes and nine Noes, and in the House on Tuesday with 86 Ayes and seven Noes.
Senate Bill 2040 focuses on pharmacy benefit managers — also known as PBMs — who are the middlemen between the pharmacy, the drug manufacturer and the insurance company. The proposed bill says companies can’t be both the pharmacy benefit manager and the pharmacy, as it has created conflicts of interest that can restrict patient choice, increase costs and jeopardize continuity of care.
Once passed, CVS said the only way they can comply with the law is to cease pharmacy operations, which would include the 134 CVS Pharmacy locations and two CVS Specialty locations, which would impact more than 2,000 CVS colleagues who live and work in Tennessee.
https://www.wbir.com/article/news/politics/tn-senate-passes-bill-that-could-close-100-cvs-stores/51-dc18aa6f-05a7-4d09-b540-49ff0d8925e4
On the face of it, it sounds like a good idea. Someone please explain to me what's wrong with it other than CVS having a tantrum.
MAGA Erupts After 'Disgusting' Blow to Trump
MAGA went into meltdown after voters in Virginia turned against Donald Trump in a critical referendum that could sway the result of the midterm elections.
Virginians approved a Democratic plan to allow them to redraw the state congressional map for the remainder of the decade. Subject to a state Supreme Court hearing later this week, the plan could give the party as many as four extra seats in the House come November.
The result means that Trump’s calls for redistricting in Republican-led states—which MAGA raced to back at the time—are now backfiring on the president as Democratic states rush to follow suit.
After 97 percent of the votes were counted, 51.5 percent voted yes to redistricting, while 48.5 percent voted no.
(snip)
Speaker Mike Johnson called the results “egregious”, claiming 46-percent of Virginia voters backed Trump. “That is why Democrats relied on rigging the ballot question in order to win. We fought this effort with money, manpower, and in the courts - and those fights will continue.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/maga-melts-down-after-disgusting-blow-to-trump/
And the crap they pulled in Texas wasn't illegal? Come on, Mikey!
Top Trump Terror Official Exposed on 'Sugar Daddy' Site
A Department of Homeland Security deputy assistant secretary for counterterrorism has been accused of picking up men on a sugar daddy website.
Julia Varvaro, 29, allegedly had a profile on Seeking.com, a site that is often used by young, attractive singles looking for older, wealthier partners to help fund their luxury lifestyles, according to the Daily Mail.
The profile, which was under the name “Alessia,” said its owner worked for a government agency and offered “seductive sophistication.”
It used the same photo as Varvaro’s Instagram account and described Alessia as “flirty, fun, and fond of sultry spaces,” as well as “drawn to a masculine man who’s attentive, protective, and quietly playful for mutually beneficial experiences.”
The profile was revealed by Varvaro’s ex-boyfriend, an older executive and divorced father identified by the Daily Mail as Robert B.
The two met on a different dating app, Hinge, and he spent $40,000 on her over the course of three months, including first-class trips to Aruba and Italy.
The relationship ended after Robert refused to spend even more on her, according to text messages he shared with the publication. He has since filed a complaint with DHS’s Office of the Inspector General exposing the alleged Seeking.com profile.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/top-donald-trump-terror-official-julia-varvaro-exposed-on-sugar-daddy-site/
More shit from the Shitlerians. Who's surprised? Not I.
Louisiana community is struggling to understand after man killed 8 children
A stunned Louisiana city struggled to come to grips Monday with the massacre of eight children carried out by a father who was separating from his wife and used an assault-style weapon despite a 2019 felony firearms conviction.
The violence reverberated across Shreveport a day after the nation’s deadliest mass shooting in two years. Schools brought in counselors for the victims’ young classmates and community leaders called for a city-wide reckoning on stopping domestic violence.
“We can not afford to wait until the next crisis,” said Caddo Parish Sheriff Henry Whitehorn. “We owe it to the eight children who were lost.”
The shooter, identified as Shamar Elkins, killed seven of his children and another child, police said. His wife and her sister also were shot and wounded.
(snip)
Brown’s wife, who made a series of frantic calls for help when the shooting started, and their 12-year-old daughter escaped through the home’s roof, he said. His wife broke her pelvis after falling, [the brother-in-law} said.
https://apnews.com/article/shreveport-louisiana-shooting-children-981e69dcfee2361fe81e27199c8b9b05
This is so tragic and could have been prevented, but RepubliKKKans refuse to change gun laws.....
I had a thought last night about what Democrats need
I watched a program last night about Theodore Roosevelt and looking at what he did, not only the "trust busting" but his strong environmental stance and his founding of national parks, national monuments, and national forests, and earlier, when he was police commissioner of HYC, his tough stance on crime and the way he cleaned up the streets, which were literally open sewers at the time, I thought, THIS is who the Democrats need to run. Of course, the man has been dead for some time now, so I don't mean him, but someone LIKE him, and right now I don't see that anywhere,. There has to be somebody, but I don't see him (or her). Suggestions, anyone? It can't be a partial, either.
Cookies, deodorant, socks. Iran war puts military packages in limbo
Dan F. was alarmed when his daughter, a Marine aboard the USS Tripoli, a warship deployed to fight the Iran war, sent him a photo of a meal served on the ship. A lunch tray, two-thirds empty, carried one small scoop of shredded meat and a single folded tortilla.
A picture of a mid-April dinner on the USS Abraham Lincoln, shared by a service member with his family, was similarly unappetizing – a small handful of boiled carrots, a dry meat patty and a gray slab of processed meat.
Dan and other military family members worried that their loved ones deployed to the Middle East are going hungry are filling boxes with items they hope could help service members ride out prolonged deployments in the Middle East – homemade fudge, Jolly Ranchers, crossword puzzle books, playing cards, toothpaste, Girl Scout cookies and fresh socks. But mail delivery to military ZIP codes across the Middle East has been indefinitely suspended as of April, and packages in transit now hang in limbo.
(snip)
The U.S. Postal Service temporarily suspended mail delivery to 27 military ZIP codes after the United States and Israel attacked Iran. The Army said there is no end date in sight for the suspension, despite a ceasefire in the war.
(snip)
"We have the strongest military in the world. You shouldn’t be running out of food, and you shouldn’t not be able to get mail on the ship," said Dan, 63, who also served in the Marines.
"The one thing we had over our adversaries [was] we fed our people."
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/04/16/iran-war-mail-packages-middle-east/89609308007/
This is unconscionable! Our sailors going hungry while our fat fuck of a so-called president has Door Dash delivering McDonald's!!!
'Psychological torture': outcry over conditions at ICE desert detention camp
Dust was everywhere, covering people’s blankets and clogging their airways inside Camp East Montana, the huge tent facility for immigration detention in west Texas, said D, a young Venezuelan man who was held there.
The air conditioning blasted constantly, keeping the living areas inside tents the length of two football fields at what felt like near-freezing temperatures despite the balmy weather outside, and rain leaked through the tarps, so people awoke on wet mattresses, he recalled.
“Everyone was coughing a lot – and with the same problem to breathe,” said D, who has since been released and spoke with the Guardian via video interview.
Camp East Montana is the facility with the largest number of immigration-related detainees in the US, with a capacity of 5,000 and an estimated daily average of 2,505 locked up. After just nine months in operation it has become a health and human rights scandal – and also an environmental hazard that affects the inhabitants and the area, while fueling the climate crisis.
Reports of harsh conditions, abuse, sickness and death have accumulated since the camp was erected last summer on the Fort Bliss army base in El Paso. And flying thousands of people often hundreds of miles to be locked up in an encampment run on electricity generators in the desert gobbles energy and produces emissions that are heating the planet.
“I think the environmental impact is pretty apparent,” said Danielle Jefferis, associate professor of law at the University of Nebraska College of Law. “I don’t think it takes an expert to see that if you don’t have a brick-and-mortar building that is properly plumbed and has appropriate medical units and all of the basic infrastructure [relating to] human rights, you’re going to have a serious environmental impact.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/15/ice-desert-detention-camp-east-montana
The cruelty is the point.
California attorney who tried to help overturn 2020 election loses law license
A California attorney who aided President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results has lost his license to practice in the state.
The California Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered John Eastman disbarred and his name stricken from the state roll of attorneys. It caps a yearslong effort by the state bar to strip Eastman of his law license after he developed a legal strategy to have then-Vice President Mike Pence interfere with the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential victory.
A judge for the State Bar Court of California in 2024 recommended that he lose his California law license. Eastman argued he was being punished for simply giving legal advice.
George Cardona, chief trial counsel for the State Bar of California, said Wednesday’s decision follows clear evidence that Eastman “advanced false claims about the 2020 presidential election to mislead courts, public officials, and the American public.”
“The Court’s order underscores that Mr. Eastman’s misconduct was incompatible with the standards of integrity required of every California attorney,” he said.
https://www.ms.now/news/california-attorney-tried-help-overturn-2020-election-loses-law-license
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