Midday open thread. Colbert: Trump 'repealed the environment'; 'Dems could take House in 2018'
Today’s comic by Matt Bors is It's fake news all the way down:
• EPI—Black Americans are working more, but racial wage gaps remain:
Over the last several decades, black workers have been offering more to the economy and the labor market to incredibly disappointing results in pay and unemployment. Some have argued that the disparity in wages between blacks and white is the result of white workers working longer and harder than black workers. They blame black workers for racial wage gaps, saying that they should do anything from getting more education to simply working harder. Such explanations minimize the role of racial discrimination on labor market outcomes, while perpetuating racial bias and stereotypes of black workers as unmotivated and lazy.
And the data show they are simply false: hours and weeks worked have increased for both races, with a larger increase for black workers over the last several decades.
• Two anti-abortion activists charged with 15 felonies in California. The two met with Planned Parenthood officials and secretly taped their interviews, then redacted then to make it seem as if the organization was illegally selling tissue from aborted fetuses. But the charges aren’t about the misleading redactions, but about their failure to let interviewees know they were being taped:
State Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra’s office alleges that David Daleiden and his co-conspirator, Sandra Merritt, filmed 14 people without their consent at meetings with women’s healthcare providers in Los Angeles, Pasadena, San Franciso and El Dorado.
• Britain makes Brexit official with letter to European Council. Now follows two years of negotiating the terms of departure.
• Here’s Mother Jones’ list of every insane thing Donald Trump has said about climate.
• National Journal: “Dems Could Take House in 2018”:
Democrats now have a realistic shot at retaking the House in 2018. Each of the past three midterm elections have swung wildly against the party in power—reflective of the longstanding dissatisfaction of voters towards political leadership, no matter who’s in charge. Trump’s job approval rating is hovering around 40 percent, a toxic level for the dozens of Republicans running for reelection in swing districts. Republicans would be foolish to assume that President Obama’s coalition of millennials and nonwhite voters—many of whom stayed home in past midterm elections—remains disengaged given their aversion to Trump.
• Colbert—Trump “repealed the environment” Tuesday, surrendering “Florida to the ocean”:
• O’Reilly snickers during his nopology to Rep. Maxine Waters for racist slam.
• Nebraska Liquor Control Commission finally holding hearing April 6 into Whiteclay licenses:
Whiteclay is home to four liquor stores that sell millions of cans of beer every year, primarily to residents of the nearby Pine Ridge Reservation, where alcohol is outlawed. For decades, leaders and citizens of the Oglala Sioux Tribe have questioned whether authorities have turned a blind eye to law enforcement, regulatory and social problems in the small community. [...]
Meanwhile, the state attorney general filed 22 citations against the stores, The World-Herald reported earlier this month. Among other allegations, they are being accused of selling to bootleggers, an issue that had long been raised by the tribe and activists.
• On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin catches us up on the Gop health care bomb & the latest polls. Joan McCarter collects plaudits for her early warning on a gov’t shutdown, and updates the Gorsuch fight and the Gop’s big privacy sellout. Manafort & Cyprus are back in the news.
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