Wednesday News & Notes
JUNE 30, 2021 -- 'GONE WITH THE WIND' PUBLISHED, 1936; 'DO THE RIGHT THING' IN THEATERS, 1989
>President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden fly to Miami today to meet with local officials and mourning families as rescue teams continue to search for survivors in the Champlain South Tower collapse. The death toll in the tragedy stood at 12 people, the Miami Herald reports, with 149 residents of the tower still missing. >>Former President Trump visits the southern border wall today along with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, R. >>>Read our three-column debate on critical race theory (CRT) on the home page of The Hustings, https://thehustings.news. >>>>After Friday’s News & Notes, we take recess for the July 4 holiday next week, returning Monday, July 12.
SCOTUS Upholds Eviction Ban – The Supreme Court Tuesday denied an Alabama real estate group’s request to end a federal moratorium on evictions imposed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, SCOTUSblog reports. Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined John Roberts and the three liberal justices to uphold the ban, 5-4. Kavanaugh said he agreed with real estate agents that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention exceeded its authority when it issued the ban, but that it is scheduled to expire soon, anyway.
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U.S. Aircraft Supported British Destroyer in Black Sea Scuffle, Putin Says – Russian President Vladimir Putin says an American reconnaissance aircraft was in sync with a British destroyer that sailed into Russian waters last week in a “provocation” to his country, the AP reports. Putin, speaking on a live call-in show during his annual media tour, said a Russian warship fired warning shots and a warplane dropped bombs in the path of the British destroyer Defender June 23 to force it out of the area near the Crimean Peninsula.
Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, though the U.K. and U.S. still recognize the region as part of the Ukraine. Britain denied Moscow’s account and said the Defender was sailing in Ukrainian waters, the AP says. Putin said the West knows it cannot emerge winners in a global conflict, and that the U.S. aircraft’s mission was to monitor Russia’s response to the British destroyer.
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House to Remove Confederate Statues – The House of Representatives voted 285-120 Tuesday to remove the statue of the chief justice of the Supreme Court who wrote the Dred Scott decision that Black people could not be U.S. citizens, and that of several “voluntary” Confederates and white supremacists,” Roll Call reports. The statue of the late chief justice Roger B. Taney will be replaced by a statue of the first Black justice on the Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall (both from Maryland). Sixty-seven Republicans and 218 Democrats voted to remove the statues.
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NHTSA Addresses Automated Vehicle Accidents — The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said yesterday that manufacturers of vehicles with advanced driver tech in them must report, within one day of “learning of a crash” involving “a hospital-treated injury, a fatality, a vehicle tow-away, an air bag deployment, or a vulnerable road user such as a pedestrian or bicyclist,” that this has occurred. The “Standing General Order” is applied to vehicles with SAE Level 2 advanced driver assistance systems (e.g., adaptive cruise control) or SAE Level 3-5 automated driving systems (which don’t even exist on dealer lots right now, despite what might be thought to be the case—see the Note below).
Administrator Steven Cliff explained, “NHTSA’s core mission is safety. By mandating crash reporting, the agency will have access to critical data that will help quickly identify safety issues that could emerge in these automated systems.”
Note: Whenever there is an accident involving a Tesla — which typically involves the driver watching a movie or eating a hot dog in the back seat — the point is raised that Tesla has the “Autopilot” system and a “Full Self-Driving Computer.” Yes, it has those things. But there is no autopiloting in the sense that someone can turn the task of driving over to the computer. Not in a Tesla. Not in any other brand of vehicle. If we put that aside, there is the issue of more automation being added to vehicles, and while it is one thing to download a new app for your phone that will allow you to do something different, having a two-ton object that can travel the distance of a football field in five seconds (and that’s merely at 55 mph) under the control of sensors and processors is quite simply huge especially vis-à-vis safety. As William Wallace, manager of safety policy for Consumer Reports, put it, “while these emerging systems have enormous potential to make our roads safer and improve mobility in the long term, there really wouldn’t be any way for NHTSA to make sure they are developed and rolled out safely without having robust data about crashes.”
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Trump Promotes Herschel Walker for Warnock’s Senate Seat – One of the first 2022 GOP candidates promoted by former President Trump is retired football star Herschel Walker, who looks to be challenging Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-GA.
“I think he would win,” Trump said on a conservative talk show Tuesday. “I think it would be very, very hard to beat Herschel.”
That may be true in football-crazy Georgia. Walker won the Heisman Trophy as a running back for the University of Georgia Bulldogs in 1982 and is considered one of the best college players in the history of the sport.
Meanwhile, Warnock, pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, beat Republican Kelly Loeffler in last January’s state runoffs, to help the Democratic Party reach its vice-presidential tiebreaker-thin majority. Loeffler was appointed in 2019 to replace Republican Johnny Isakson, who had retired due to health concerns – thus, the short, two-year first term for Warnock.
Note: Trump’s instincts may be pointed in the right direction on this one. Walker is perhaps the highest-profile Black supporter of the former president. He’s current co-chair of the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition, having been appointed in mid-2018 by Trump. Their connection goes back to Walker’s pro-football career. Walker played for the US Football League’s New Jersey Governors from 1983-85, a team which Trump owned in 1984 and 1985. Trump became one of the formative leaders of the USFL (1982-86) after the NFL denied allowing him team ownership because of his Atlantic City casino business. Walker went on to play for the Dallas Cowboys, Minnesota Vikings, Philadelphia Eagles, and New York Giants.
--Edited by Todd Lassa, Gary S. Vasilash and Nic Woods