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“O, for a muse of fireside,” pleads the refrain on the outset of William Shakespeare’s “Henry V.” It seeks to “ascend the brightest heaven of invention” and conjure up “the vasty fields of France” on a tiny stage to move the viewers again in historical past.
Drama could possibly be had final week with no want for the type of exertions Shakespeare and his troupe employed at London’s Globe theater greater than 400 years in the past.
A former president of america appeared in a New York courtroom to face prison prices. The borders of NATO grew dramatically as Finland joined the alliance. Pivotal elections in Wisconsin and Chicago demonstrated voters’ growing affinity for progressive politics. Tennessee legislators focused three members of the state Home for becoming a member of a gun management protest within the chamber, expelling two younger Black males whereas failing to oust a 60-year-old White lady.
After which on Friday night, a federal decide in Texas issued a ruling suspending the US Meals and Drug Administration’s approval, granted 23 years in the past, of one among two medicine typically utilized in remedy abortions, which now account for a majority of all abortions in America. (He gave the Biden administration every week to attraction the ruling earlier than it goes into impact. In the meantime, a decide in Washington state dominated in a unique case that the federal government should proceed to make the drug accessible in 17 states and the District of Columbia.)
Thus, the week that started with Trump dealing with a decide in Manhattan ended with a Trump-appointed decide overturning greater than 20 years of medical apply. It was one other signal that Trump’s impression — significantly his selection of three conservative Supreme Court docket judges who helped overturn the best to abortion enshrined in Roe v. Wade — has outlasted his 4 years in workplace.
The abortion situation not solely helped form the end result of Wisconsin’s judicial election Tuesday, it additionally figured in an rising debate over the best of People to journey to different states for medical procedures.
Mary Ziegler and Naomi Cahn noticed {that a} new Idaho legislation, labeled an “abortion trafficking” measure, “criminalizes anybody who helps a minor get an abortion or abortion drugs with out parental consent. Violators will face felony prices and as much as 5 years in jail.”
“The legislation might deal with anybody, from mates to grandparents, as traffickers … Idaho Republicans introduced the invoice as a common sense safety of parental rights.”
“However make no mistake: Idaho’s invoice is a part of a broader assault on the best to journey for adults in addition to minors, and the stakes of whittling away at that proper are greater than ever.” In the meantime Idaho’s lawyer common withdrew a controversial letter he issued final month that stated the state “prohibits an Idaho medical supplier from both referring a lady throughout state strains to entry abortion providers or prescribing abortion drugs for the lady to select up throughout state strains.”
The Republicans within the Tennessee state Home of Representatives who expelled Justin Jones and Justin Pearson had been “utilizing their energy as a device of intimidation,” wrote Jemar Tisby. “What different conclusion may be drawn from the inappropriate and disproportionate response to a decorum infraction?”
However their tactic backfired in a spectacular manner, Tisby wrote. The vote has raised the profile of the 2 state representatives to nationwide prominence, and “as a substitute of dissuading Tennesseans from their requires gun management, Republican legislators appear to have energized the individuals and motivated them to withstand much more vigorously.”
As SE Cupp noticed, some Republican leaders and right-wing commentators have described the January 6, 2021 assault on the US Capitol as “completely high quality, no huge deal, and people protesters are patriots who ought to be left alone. However the three Democratic lawmakers who briefly protested inaction on gun management — a protest that led to zero violence and wasn’t an tried crime — that’s unacceptable and people lawmakers ought to lose their jobs.”
In Cupp’s view, it’s “one other instance of the GOP attacking democracy. They haven’t been in a position to persuade a majority of voters to assist their far-right excessive agenda, so as a substitute they wish to make it more durable to vote, more durable to protest, more durable to entry data.”
Trump’s critics had waited years for this second. His supporters had spent months bitterly denouncing the method main as much as it. However when the previous president took his seat on the protection desk in a Manhattan prison courtroom Tuesday, the occasion was one thing of an anti-climax.
“Beneath the acquainted swoop of dyed-blond hair and thick basis, his expression was grim and reserved,” wrote Nicole Hemmer. “For the second, he was simply one other defendant, depending on a decide to find out his subsequent transfer. And whereas Trump will work exhausting within the coming hours and days to supply a unique studying of these photographs — and media retailers will probably be tempted to assist him out by specializing in the spectacle — they depict not a departure from common order, however quite its return.”
Trump wished a mug shot, in line with two sources cited by CNN, however he didn’t get one. “As an alternative of a defiant N.Y.P.D. photograph or a raised fist,” David Firestone wrote within the New York Instances, “the lasting picture of the day might be that of a humbled former president wanting hunched, indignant and nervous on the courtroom protection desk, a all of the sudden small man wedged between his attorneys, as two New York State court docket officers loomed behind him in a required posture of constructing certain the defendant stayed in his place.”
In some methods, a prosecution of Trump was a very long time coming, noticed Fareed Zakaria. “For many years he has flouted guidelines, norms and even legal guidelines as he climbed his solution to the highest, openly satisfied that the standard requirements didn’t apply to him. His firm was discovered responsible of tax fraud, he’s been taken to court docket numerous instances over unpaid payments, and he’s even stolen cash from his personal charities.”
However was this the best case to deliver? “The prosecutor, Alvin Bragg, is an elected district lawyer who ran a marketing campaign for that workplace boasting that he had helped sue Donald Trump ‘greater than 100 instances,’” Zakaria famous. “Even so, as soon as elected and after wanting over the proof, he’s reported to have put the case on the again burner, which triggered a storm of criticism from his Democratic base. He then reversed course and determined to pursue the case on a brand new foundation, if reported accounts are right … this case has the texture of zealous prosecutors minutely inspecting all potentialities to search out some violation of the legislation.”
John Dean and Norman Eisen argued that “there’s no good cause to exempt Trump from prosecution when his former lawyer Michael Cohen went to jail for his position in surreptitiously transferring these funds to learn the marketing campaign, as have others for comparable conduct.”
“The violation for falsifying books and data is a transparent one: These had been alleged hush-money funds by Trump and his entities that they’re accused of falsely getting into into their data as authorized charges.”
In distinction, David Orentlicher, wrote that “Trump’s relationship with grownup movie star Stormy Daniels and his alleged funds to her, through his former lawyer Michael Cohen, elevate substantial moral issues — however they aren’t issues that ought to be addressed in a courtroom.”
President Joe Biden famous in a CNN Opinion commentary that Passover is all about telling “the miraculous story of the Jewish individuals’s exodus from slavery in Egypt to freedom. It’s a timeless, highly effective story of religion, hope and redemption that has impressed oppressed individuals in every single place for generations.”
“However Passover is greater than only a recounting of the previous. It’s also a cautionary story of the current and our future as a democracy. As Jews learn from the Haggadah about how evil in each technology has tried to destroy them, antisemitism is rising to document ranges right now,” Biden wrote.
He described a number of methods the federal government is addressing the difficulty. “However authorities alone can not root out antisemitism and hate. All People, together with companies and group leaders, educators, college students, athletes, entertainers and influencers should assist confront bigotry in all its types. We should every do our half to create a tradition of respect in our workplaces, in our colleges, on our social media and in our houses.”
“As a result of hate by no means goes away, it solely hides till it’s given just a bit oxygen.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has suffered setback after setback. Certainly one of his largest defeats got here Tuesday, when Finland formally joined NATO.
In launching the struggle in February 2022, “Putin argued that his aim was to stop NATO from increasing,” as Frida Ghitis recalled. “On that depend, Putin not solely failed, however in actual fact propelled the very improvement he sought to stop. Now Russia’s border with NATO nations has greater than doubled in size, including an additional 830 miles of frontier with Finland.”
“Finland, which was as soon as a part of the Russian empire … will transfer shortly to fortify that lengthy border. That’s as a result of when Russia invaded Ukraine, it despatched an unmistakable sign to its neighbors that it merely couldn’t be trusted.”
This weekend’s holidays of Good Friday and Easter have essentially completely different messages in some contexts, in line with spiritual research scholar Bart D. Ehrman.
One view sees Jesus on Easter as “the Christ of the Apocalypse, the place the ‘lamb who was slaughtered’ comes again for blood, wreaking vengeance on a world that rejected him earlier than judging the earth and ordering those that usually are not amongst his most trustworthy followers to be thrown right into a lake of burning sulfur.”
The higher course is the message of Good Friday: the Jesus of the Gospels, Ehrman writes. His followers “are to not assert energy or ‘lord it over others.’ They’re to be humble and meek. They’re to feed the hungry, welcome strangers, are inclined to the sick, promote what they’ve and provides to the poor — even these they don’t know, strangers, foreigners, followers of different religions. Most emphatically, Jesus insists his followers not be violent, not search revenge, not return evil for evil. They’re to show the opposite cheek; they’re to like their enemies.”
For extra:
Kathryn Reklis: Why I lastly determined to look at ‘The Chosen’
Sweden’s Greta Thunberg was joined by Stanford pupil organizer Sophia Kianni and Ugandan local weather activist Vanessa Nakate in warning that the Biden administration goes down the mistaken path by greenlighting the Willow Undertaking in Alaska and opening 73 million acres within the Gulf of Mexico to grease and gasoline drilling.
“Younger individuals and members of marginalized communities are those who will bear the brunt of the results of the escalating local weather emergency,” they wrote. “The rubber-stamping of such a venture sends a message not simply to our technology however humanity as an entire: The way forward for our planet and the current well-being of frontline communities are being sacrificed for short-term financial achieve and political expediency.”
On the best, Trump’s indictment energized the MAGA base, giving the previous president a carry over potential rivals for the 2024 nomination. However on the left, a victory within the Wisconsin Supreme Court docket election Tuesday advised that Democrats could also be higher positioned to assemble successful voter coalitions than their GOP rivals — significantly when abortion is a number one situation.
“If Republicans are going to reverse their fortunes in” the suburban counties surrounding Milwaukee, “they’re going to should settle the abortion situation,” noticed James Wigderson, a Wisconsin-based conservative author. “In line with the Marquette College Legislation Faculty ballot, nearly all of unbiased voters stays persistently against the Dobbs determination overturning Roe. These unbiased voters, particularly ladies, are actually pulling the lever for the Democrats.”
“However Republicans are additionally going to have to finish the blood contract with Trump. The pattern of the Republicans dropping suburban votes started earlier than Roe v. Wade was overturned.”
For extra on politics:
Julian Zelizer: The Clarence Thomas revelations are the final straw
Clay Cane: The battle towards ‘woke’ is actually conservative gaslighting
“One thing unimaginable occurred this previous weekend,” wrote Amy Bass. “People went to mattress Sunday night time speaking about ladies’s basketball and awakened Monday morning nonetheless happening and on about it.”
Angel Reese, the star of Louisiana State College’s successful crew, pushed again at criticism of her “so-called taunting of (Iowa’s Caitlin) Clark within the final seconds of the championship recreation, with the racialized vitriol that accused her of being ‘classless’ or ‘unsportsmanlike’ demonstrating vividly the double normal Black athletes are all too conversant in,” famous Bass.
“When different individuals do it, y’all don’t say nothing,” Reese identified, after the crew’s victory. “This was for the individuals who appear like me.”
First girl Jill Biden, who watched the sport in individual, initially advised that each LSU and Iowa deserved an invitation to the White Home due to the standard of play. However the White Home quickly made clear that, following custom, solely the successful crew will go. Bass wrote: “Iowa doesn’t get an invitation to the White Home. They misplaced. Let’s not try this. Let’s not go there.”
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Dean Obeidallah: Why is ’60 Minutes’ amplifying the views of Marjorie Taylor Greene?
Ani Bundel: ‘Grease’ reboot comes 45 years after the unique — and proper on time
Dana Peterson and Frank Steemers: How protected is your job?
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AND…
Making electrical scooters broadly accessible on metropolis streets sounds “nice in idea,” wrote Jill Filipovic. “In apply, they’re rather more of a menace than a comfort.”
“Over the previous few years, electrical scooters have been dropped at Paris and dozens of different cities worldwide by numerous startups promising an environmentally-friendly particular person transport possibility. What cities have gotten as a substitute is chaos: scooters taking pictures down sidewalks at harmful speeds or laying deserted on pedestrian thoroughfares. Each riders and pedestrians have been injured and typically killed.”
Ninety p.c of the roughly 100,000 individuals who voted in Paris need the scooters banned. “One drawback with scooters is that there is no such thing as a apparent spot for them inside city infrastructure,” Filipovic famous. “They go far too quick to be protected on the sidewalk” and aren’t proper for bike lanes or roads both.
“Why does anybody suppose this can be a good concept?”
