Source: Clarion Ledger


Mississippi federal Judge Carlton Reeves in a speech in Virginia assailed the Trump administration for lack of diversity in judicial appointments and likened President Trump's attacks on the judiciary to tactics used by the Ku Klux Klan and segregationists in the Jim Crow era.

Reeves, who has ruled on some of the state’s biggest legal cases, spoke Thursday at the University of Virginia School of Law, where he accepted this year's Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Law award from his alma mater.

. . . BuzzFeed News reports Reeves, an African American, quoted President Donald Trump's tweets and public comments about judges and the courts (the written version obtained by BuzzFeed includes footnotes making clear Reeves is referring to Trump tweets) and blasted the lack of diversity among Trump's judicial nominees.

"When politicians attack courts as 'dangerous,' 'political,' and guilty of 'egregious overreach,' you can hear the Klan’s lawyers, assailing officers of the court across the South. When leaders chastise people for merely 'using the courts,' you can hear the Citizens Council, hammering up the names of black petitioners in Yazoo City," Reeves said, quoting Trump.



Read more: https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/politics/2019/04/12/mississippi-judge-carlton-reeves-trump-judiciary-attacks-like-kkk/3448438002/

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Right on.

Video of speech

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1017538394

SOMERVILLE — US Senator Elizabeth Warren brought a box of doughnuts with her as she joined dozens of workers outside a Stop & Shop here as the strike against New England’s largest supermarket chain entered its first full day Friday.

Warren greeted the workers on the sidewalk a short distance from the chain’s McGrath Highway store shortly after 11 a.m. She shook hands with some, posed for selfies with others, and then grabbed a bullhorn.

“What do you fight for? You fight for the dignity of working people,’’ Warren told an appreciative crowd. “Unions built America’s middle class — unions will be rebuilding American’s middle class.”

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2019/04/12/senator-warren-join-striking-stop-shop-workers/ThL3VjgB7Msx7bghEYdh0N/story.html

https://twitter.com/lrozen/status/1116357920697065472


Laura Rozen@lrozen

know what endangers journalists? Assange working with Russian intelligence to elect a US president who calls journalists enemy of the people



Matt Bradley@MattMcBradley

#Assange lawyer Jennifer Robinson: “This sets a dangerous precedent for all media organizations and journalists around the world.”
8:10 AM - 11 Apr 2019

Source: The Guardian


Trump administration sabotages major conservation effort, defying Congress

Revealed: federal support to research centers cut off as scientists fear years of successful work will go ‘down the drain’


Mon 8 Apr 2019 06.00 EDT

Scientists and officials around the US have told the Guardian that the Trump administration has withdrawn funding for a large, successful conservation program – in direct contradiction of instructions from Congress.

Unique in scale and ambition, the program comprises 22 research centers that tackle big-picture issues affecting huge swaths of the US, such as climate change, flooding and species extinction. They are known as Landscape Conservation Cooperatives – or were, because 16 of them are now on indefinite hiatus or have dissolved.

“I just haven’t seen anything like this in my almost 30 years of working with the federal government,” said a scientist at the Fish and Wildlife Service who worked for one of the LCCs and wished to remain anonymous, because federal employees were instructed not to speak with the Guardian for this story. “There is this lack of accountability.”

“Congress approved $12.5m for the existing 22 landscape conservation cooperatives,” said Betty McCollum, chair of the House interior-environment appropriations subcommittee, at a recent hearing with an interior department official. “[But] we are hearing disturbing reports from outside groups and concerned citizens that the LCC program is being altered and may not receive any federal funding.”






Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/08/trump-administration-sabotages-major-conservation-effort-defying-congress

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SIFUABS