Lunchtime Reads for National Tartan Day (April 6)

Good afternoon, all, and happy National Tartan Day! Today honors the 20-ish million Americans with Scottish heritage. Also, I want to apologize for my past two weeks’ absence. The first week I was in Savannah for Georgia Heritage Responders training. GHR is disaster response for cultural heritage sites. Last Wednesday, I was at the funeral of Congressman Don Young, who I worked for from 2008-2011. I should have a remembrance printed in the Congressional Record this week, so I’ll link it for y’all next week. He was the best boss, and he loved his state fiercely. I learned more working in that office than I did in any other job, period. He was a giant, and I’ll miss him terribly.

Now… on to the news.

Pat Conroy

• Some good news: The mental health bill has been signed into law.
• Sine Die has finally happened for the year. Here’s a recap of the last day of session. (Alternate link.)
• Here’s a bit more about the last minute bills on election fraud and divisive concepts/transgender sports (alternate link).
• Public college campuses will no longer be able to establish “free speech zones,” so the Pit Preacher will now be free to hurl obscenities at women all over campus instead of being limited to areas where he can’t disrupt classes. The bill’s author and I have very different definitions of “protecting students,” clearly.
• The storms that rolled through yesterday killed a woman in Pembroke.
• The state has settled with the widow of Julian E. Lewis for $4.8 million. Lewis was shot during a traffic stop in Screven County in 2020.
• Former President Donald Trump is no longer bullish on David Perdue’s chances to unseat Governor Brian Kemp.
• GA-400 is getting tolls again, this time in the form of express lanes.
• Some good and bad news from Georgia State University:
  • Their microgrant program is helping students graduate faster and with less debt. Way to go!
  • An English professor called campus police on two students who were two minutes late to class on Friday.
• Smyrna is considering what to do with Aunt Fanny’s Cabin. (Alternate link.)

Alice Walker

• The pause on federal student loans has been extended to August 31st.
• Declining immigration is one of the causes of the current labor shortage. (Alternate link.)
• However, Senate Republicans are holding up COVID aid over a demand for an extension of Title 42, which limits immigration due to the pandemic.
• The Supreme Court has reinstated an environmental rule from the Trump Administration that limits states’ ability to block projects that could pollute rivers and streams. (Alternate link.)
• President Joe Biden has ordered new national research on long COVID.
• Ivanka Trump testified before the January 6th Commission yesterday. (Alternate link.)
• Virginia has ordered Jonathon Moseley – the defense lawyer for a number of January 6th insurrection defendants – disbarred.
• Oklahoma has passed a near-total abortion ban.
• The United States and our allies have agreed to ban future investments in Russia.
• Satellite companies are participating in the hunt for Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine.
• Human rights organizations have documented ethnic cleansing of Tigrayans in the war in Ethiopia.
• Israel’s coalition government has lost its majority after one member quit parliament.
• 20 inmates have been killed in a “mafia prison riot” in Ecuador.
• Some missing Darwin notebooks have been returned to Cambridge University.

Flannery O’Connor

• Representative Ami Bera was bitten by a fox at the U.S. Capitol yesterday.