“US civil rights leader Cesar Chavez, who was known for advocating for the rights of farm workers, has been accused of sexual abuse. Dolores Huerta said in the 1960s, Chavez, who co-founded the United Farm Workers union (UFW) with her, once ‘manipulated and pressured’ her into having sex, and on another occasion forced her. It comes after the New York Times published an investigation that detailed allegations from Huerta and two other women, who said Chavez groomed and sexually abused girls who were involved in the labour movement during the 1960s and 1970s. Chavez, who died in 1993 aged 66, rallied California’s farmworkers from the 1950s to push for improvements in working conditions, and led national boycotts and marches. The news has prompted Los Angeles and other communities to consider renaming places, schools, and streets named after Chavez.” (03/19/26)
“For over 250 years, Americans have relied on the United States Postal Service for timely processing of their mail, no matter the conditions. After we dropped it in a box or gave it to a letter carrier, we could count on our mail being postmarked on that date so that our bills and tax returns aren’t late and our election ballots are counted. Unfortunately, this trust is now increasingly risky, since we can no longer rely on USPS to postmark mail on the day it’s collected. As part of former Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s broader cost-cutting and restructuring plan, the Postal Service has stopped its practice of picking up mail at the end of every day from all post offices. This means your ballot or bill payment could sit there until the following morning or even longer before being postmarked at a huge processing center.” (03/19/26)
“The Trump administration said Thursday that it has launched investigations into 13 states that require state-regulated health insurance plans to cover abortion. The probes are the latest in a long-running dispute between the political parties on how to interpret a provision, known as the Weldon Amendment, that’s included in federal spending laws each year. It bars states from discriminating against health entities that don’t provide, cover or refer for abortion. When Democrat Joe Biden was president, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ civil rights office said the provision didn’t pertain to employers or other health care sponsors. The Trump administration said this year that it does. The administration says that potentially puts states with abortion coverage requirements in violation of the law, because they may not allow employers or other health care issuers to opt out. It said it was sending out letters to gather more information from those states.” (03/19/26)
“In 2023, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party held a slim, single-seat majority in the Minnesota State Senate and control of the State House and Governor’s Mansion. It had been a decade since the last Democratic trifecta in the state, which like many similar moments of prior eras, produced only incremental wins for progressives and the Left. Since the financial crisis and Great Recession of the early Obama era, a core group of community and union organizers in Minnesota had been building what they called ‘alignment’. It would go beyond the traditional coalitions so many of us were used to — ones coalesced around a single fight but too pragmatic to inspire people to action. Real power building, I was told, would require something different: An ability to work across organizations and ideologies while holding up bigger sets of common, universal demands.” (03/19/26)
“My first official act as the Marine Corps officer instructor at the Naval ROTC at Vanderbilt University in 1979 was to blow up a classroom. My predecessor had warned me that I would be teaching the evolution of warfare at the death hour (1 p.m.) after lunch, when the students were drowsy. He recommended an ‘attention getter.’ That day, I was lecturing on ancient Greek naval warfare and decided to use a cardboard scale model of a period warship to demonstrate the early use of fuel-air explosives. Frankly, chemistry had never been one of my strong points, and I apparently used more white gas in the mix than was needed. The resulting explosion blew the door open and set off the fire alarms.” [editor’s note: I had assumed the piece would be about the idiotic attempt to make the Corps no longer a complete self-contained force, but no, it’s another one of those “a noun, a verb, DEI” rants – TLK] (03/18/26)
“Health care has become so expensive in the US now that it has become a threat to public safety. At least that’s the message out of Okanogan County, Washington, where Sheriff Paul Budrow announced this month he’s stepping down because the elected position doesn’t come with health insurance for his family. … ‘As an elected official, the Sheriff’s position does not provide insurance benefits, and ensuring healthcare coverage and financial stability for my family became a responsibility I could not set aside.’ Health care affordability has become a national issue, with President Donald Trump having discussed it in his State of the Union address.” (03/18/26)
“For most of the four-year war in Ukraine, Russia’s trading partners in Africa have maintained a studied silence on the issue. These nations rely on Russia for crucial imports – especially the oil that fuels their modernization and the wheat that feeds their burgeoning populations. But recently, civilians in several of these trade-dependent countries have pushed their governments to speak up about a much different, much murkier type of trade with Russia – the deceitful trafficking in humans who are forcibly thrown into the Russian battlefront in Ukraine. Last month, families of Kenyan men allegedly duped into fighting for Russia held protests in Nairobi, as the government revealed that more than 1,000 citizens had been so recruited. ‘These are … matters of human rights, national responsibility, and continental dignity,’ declared the Centre for Investigative Journalism in Zambia.” (03/17/26)
“A judge in the US has ruled that the effective closure of the Voice of America (VOA) last year was ‘illegal’ and that hundreds of its journalists should be reinstated. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth has given authorities one week to put the international broadcaster back on air. The VOA was set up during World War Two to counter Nazi propaganda. Just weeks after returning to office as president, Donald Trump issued an executive order to close the broadcaster which his officials accused of left-wing bias.” (03/18/26)
“Over the next several days, perhaps even stretching into next week, the United States Senate, that grave and august deliberative body, will performatively waste time with impassioned speeches over the SAVE America Act, which they all know will never pass. There may, however, be an off ramp to this Mobius loop of legislative futility: A proposal from Sen. John Fetterman [D-PA] would have the upper body vote on a clean, simple, voter ID bill, without provisions regarding mail-in ballots or citizenship. Make no mistake, President Donald Trump is correct that all the provisions of the SAVE America Act, including one banning men from women’s sports have broad popular support, and are of vital importance. But if the bill cannot pass, then so what?” (03/18/26)
“Two Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday introduced legislation that would prohibit online prediction markets from allowing bets on government actions that could be easily gamed by insiders. The proposed Banning Event Trading on Sensitive Operations and Federal Functions (BETS OFF) Act, unveiled by US Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Rep. Greg Casar [D-TX], would ban ‘wagering on government actions, terrorism, war, assassination, and events where an individual knows or controls the outcome.’ The lawmakers said the legislation was necessary due to suspiciously timed bets that were placed on the cryptocurrency-based prediction platform Polymarket related to imminent US military actions in Venezuela and Iran, raising concerns that Trump administration officials were using insider information to profit from life-or-death policy decisions.” (03/18/26)
