Books

Independent - Several big publishing houses have joined Penguin Random House along with renowned authors in a federal lawsuit suing Iowa over a state law that bans certain books in schools and restricts teachings on sexual orientation and gender identity. Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Macmillan have joined Penguin Random House, who initially filed a lawsuit in November against Iowa, completing the line-up of the ‘Big Five’ US publishers on the complaint. The publisher Sourcebooks has also joined the suit with the other four, with the Iowa State Education Association, four authors, three educators, and one high school student also stated as plaintiffs.

Polling update

2024 PRESIDENTIAL RACE: BIDEN VS. TRUMP
Most recent five poll average: Biden leads by 1% ... Last June: Tie

2024 RACE: BIDEN VS TRUMP & OTHERS
Most recent five poll average: TIE  First tie in the race 

BIDEN APPROVAL RATING  Most recent five poll average 42%  - 7% below 2023 high, 3% above 2023 low

TRUMP APPROVAL RATING: Most recent five poll average 45%, 3% ahead of Biden 

PRESIDENTIAL STATE MARGINS
Total electoral votes: 538.  Biden won in 2020 by 74 electoral votes. Biden's lead in 2024 is 14.

ARIZONA
Biden- Trump poll average: Trump leads by 5% Biden down 5% from 2020
Biden-Trump-Others poll average: Trump leads by 6%
Electoral vote change Biden down 11

FLORIDA
Three poll average: Biden down 10%

DIRECTION OF COUNTRY: GOOD TIMES
ive poll average: 24%  7% below 2023 high, 9% below 2022 high

Drunk Driving Bill Could Change Law for Millions

Trump

Ex-Trump Aide Details How Staffers Would Keep Former President Awake

Financial Times: In another troubling sign for Republican fundraising efforts, Trump has 270,000 fewer unique donors than he did at the same stage of his 2020 White House run. His campaign and affiliated political action committees got money from 900,000 donors from July 2023 to the end of the first quarter of 2024, down from 1.17 million four years earlier.” “This shrinking donor base leaves questions about how Trump will sustain the costs of his legal battles on top of what is expected to be the most expensive presidential race in US history. The bottom line is he needs to step it up now when it comes to fundraising, especially while he’s stuck in court and off the campaign trail.

Guardian -  On Wednesday, prosecutors submitted paperwork alerting Trump’s lawyers about what exactly they’d want to ask him if he does decide to take the witness stand. That includes allegations of sexual abuse, his earlier civil trial loss on falsification of business records, his civil trial defamation loss to E Jean Carroll and a “frivolous, bad-faith lawsuit” he’d filed against Hillary Clinton that was later dismissed. Merchan will determine what, if anything, from this list prosecutors would be allowed to ask Trump if he did take the stand. Trump has pledged to do so, but it seems unwise and unlikely that his lawyers would want him to.

Putin, Trump, Iran, and Netanyahu Unveil the Terrifying Perils of Strongman Rule

Thom Hartmann - The most amazing thing about Donald Trump’s current criminal trial is that it is happening at all. He has told us that if he becomes president he’s going to change our country in a way that such a trial could never be possible again. There will be absolute immunity for Trump and his cronies, as he will argue before the Supreme Court on April 25. No person aligned with him will ever be prosecuted again. Just like in Hungary, Russia, Iran, Turkey, or China. Those countries are all run by strongman, the men Trump openly admires and aspires to be. As does Netanyahu. The irony about strongman leaders is that they’re generally not strong people. They use violence and the rhetoric of violence to mask their own fear and weakness, but, like the guy spinning plates on sticks, they know they’re always just one slip-up away from the whole thing crashing down around them.  MORE

Freedom

Vox - The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it will not hear Mckesson v. Doe. The decision not to hear Mckesson leaves in place a lower court decision that effectively eliminated the right to organize a mass protest in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.  Under that lower court decision, a protest organizer faces potentially ruinous financial consequences if a single attendee at a mass protest commits an illegal act. It is possible that this outcome will be temporary. The Court did not embrace the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit’s decision attacking the First Amendment right to protest, but it did not reverse it either. That means that, at least for now, the Fifth Circuit’s decision is the law in much of the American South.

Teaching Is a Grind Peppered with Joyful Moments

Larry Cuban -  This post appeared in Bill Ferriter’s blog, “The Tempered Radical.” In his blog, he describes himself as follows: “Bill Ferriter has about a dozen titles—Solution Tree author and professional development associate, noted edublogger, senior fellow of the Teacher Leaders Network—but he checks them all at the door each morning when he walks into his sixth- grade classroom in Raleigh, North Carolina.”

Record global warming

 Washington Post - Fueled by decades of uncontrolled fossil fuel burning and an El Niño climate pattern that emerged last June, the planet this year breached a feared warming threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. Nearly 19,000 weather stations have notched record high temperatures since January 1. Each of the last ten months has been the hottest of its kind. The scale and intensity of this hot streak is extraordinary even considering the unprecedented amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, researchers say. Scientists are still struggling to explain how the planet could have exceeded previous temperature records by as much as half a degree Celsius (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit) last fall. What happens in the next few months, said Gavin Schmidt, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, could indicate whether Earth’s climate has undergone a fundamental shift — a quantum leap in warming that is confounding climate models and stoking ever more dangerous weather extremes. But even if the world returns to a more predictable warming trajectory, it will only be a temporary reprieve from the conditions that humanity must soon confront, Schmidt said. “Global warming continues apace.”

Environment

Washington Post - A rule, released yesterday, will allow 245 million acres of public property to be leased for conservation in the same way that oil companies lease land for drilling. This rule — alongside new limits to oil drilling across 13 million acres of Alaska — will help to protect public lands from climate change and development.

Alternative sex and gender

Washington Post - Biden set new rules to protect transgender students and abuse survivors.

• What they do: Bar schools from discriminating against trans students and order changes to how colleges deal with claims of sexual harassment and assault on campus.
• The bigger picture: The Title IX rules, finalized today, set up an election year clash with conservative states and school boards that limit transgender rights.

 

Tik Tok

CNN -  With the House set to vote on foreign aid on Saturday, Republicans have added a hot-button bill to the funding package that could lead to a nationwide TikTok ban. House lawmakers passed a bill in March that aims to remove the platform from US app stores, but it has become bogged down in the Senate. By including it in the aid package, House Republicans hope to force the Senate to a quick vote on a measure supporters say is necessary to protect Americans' personal data from the Chinese government. Opponents, including TikTok and a range of civil society groups, have argued the bill risks violating TikTok users' First Amendment rights. The latest version of the bill sets out a nine-month timeframe for the app's Chinese parent, ByteDance, to sell the social media company. If it misses the deadline, TikTok would be banned in the US.

Middle East

US vetoes widely supported resolution backing full UN membership for Palestine
 

NBC - Israel carried out a limited military strike against Iran and is assessing the strike’s effectiveness and the damage it caused, a source familiar with the situation told NBC News. Iran state media reported that three small drones were destroyed in Isfahan province, and state media reported that there had been no casualties or damage, including at the nuclear facility in Isfahan. The U.S. was not involved in Israel's strike in Iran, a source familiar with the situation confirmed, adding that Israeli officials notified U.S. officials earlier that a response was coming. Israeli officials have remained largely silent on the country’s strike, with National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a member of a far-right party, summing up his thoughts in one word in a post on X: “Feeble.”

Guns

NPR -  Students exposed to gun violence are less likely to do well in school or graduate. At North Community High School in Minneapolis, students are well aware of those effects. The school's quarterback was shot and killed blocks from the school two years ago. Another member of the football team was shot in both legs last spring and survived. As part of President Biden's Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, Minneapolis Public Schools will receive at least $500,000 to help fund strategies to bolster school safety and mental health resources to combat gun violence. But some say there's a disconnect between what the government is offering and what they need.  Students and faculty share how gun violence has affected them and what they think is vital for creating a positive school culture. Read their stories here.

Tales from the Attic: A poker player's guide to environmental risk assessement

Originally published in 1997 in Sam Smith's Great American Political Repair Manual (WW Norton)

Sam Smith

Some simple rules

1. Calculate the stakes as well as the odds.

2. The odds of something happening at any moment are not the same as the odds of something ever happening. In ecological calculations -- especially ones in which the downside could ruin your whole millennium -- it is the latter odds that are important.

3. When confronted with conflicting odds, ask what happens if each projection is wrong. Temporary job loss because of environmental restrictions may come and go, but the loss of the ozone layer is something you can have forever.

4. When confronted with conflicting odds, remember that you don't have to play the game. There are other things to do with your time -- or with the economy or with the environment -- that may produce better results. Thus, instead of playing poker you could be making love. Or instead of getting jobs from some air or water degrading activity, the same jobs could come from a more benign industry such as retrofitting a whole city for solar energy.

5. Don't let anyone -- in industry, government, or the media -- define an "acceptable level of risk" for your own death or disease. They may not have the same vested interest in the right answer as you do.

6. If the stakes are too high, the game is not worth it. If you can't stand the pain, don't attempt the gain.

What poker taught me

I was a poker player long before I started paying attention to environmental problems. One of the things I learned while playing poker is that you can, from time to time, beat the odds -- but don't count on it. That's why you won't find me in Atlantic City or Las Vegas.

 The second thing I learned is that even when you do beat the odds, don't count on it happening again. There's a big difference between one good hand and a whole good night.

The third thing I learned is that you can, from time to time, beat the odds -- but you usually have to stay in the game long enough for it to happen. Meanwhile, you can lose an awful lot of money. You have not only to calculate the odds but the stakes as well. And you are always on the edge.