After more than a year of negotiating and still far from an agreement, the union representing the teaching staff at Rutgers has called the first strike in the university’s 257-year history, putting a halt to all non-necessary research work at the New Jersey university’s three main campuses starting Monday.

Politico reports leaders of Rutgers AAUP (American Association of University Professors)-AFT noted the increase in support for unions across the country.  “We are not alone,” Todd Wolfson, general vice president of Rutgers AAUP-AFT, noted after the vote to strike. “The strikes that are happening right here in New Jersey and in other parts of the country right now are building on a historic strike wave in higher education.”

The union represents more than 9,000 full-time and part-time faculty, as well as instructors and graduate assistants serving 45,000 undergraduate and 20,000 graduate students.

The Camden County (Missouri) commissioners took a bold stand, asserting the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is “unconstitutional” and declaring it will refuse to cooperate with the agency on any of its investigations, which in this case, is a zoning question to check a box to license four prospective gun stores in the county.

KCUR, the NPR affiliate in Kansas City, Missouri reports County Commissioner Ike Skelton–I could not make that name up, folks–responded to the agency requesting zoning information, “Under the Anti-Commandeering Doctrine, Camden County was the first county in Missouri, and possibly in the country, to pass an ordinance prohibiting any county employee from assisting your unconstitutional agency in violating the rights of our citizens.”  Two of Ike’s fellow commissioners co-signed, as did County Attorney Jeff Green, Sheriff Tony Helms and County Treasurer Kendra Hicks.

ATF uses the zoning information to ensure someone has not submitted a fraudulent application to license a property zoned for something other than retail space, such as a residence or hospital. Put aside the fact that, well, that’s not how any of this works constitutionally or administratively, these county commissioners are actually screwing over their own gun-lovin’ constituents in a number of ways.  First, they’re preventing four local businesses from being able to open, and second, they’re limiting access for customers to purchase guns.  Talk about shooting yourself in the foot over nothing.

The union representing 30,000 non-professional service staff working in the Los Angeles Unified School District announced its membership approved a new deal that will net them a 30% raise and a $1,000 bonus for workers that earn an average of $25,000 per year.

Service Employees International Union Local 99 announced the deal Saturday four weeks after the union, supported by other unionized employees in the district, staged a three-day strike that closed the schools and kept the 400,000+ students home, according to the Associated Press.

Adam Klasfeld at Law & Crime tweets Fox Corporation, the parent company of the eponymous propaganda network, has settled a lawsuit brought by Venezuelan businessman Majed Khalil, whom Fox personalities claimed was involved in the fake Dominion Voting Systems conspiracy; in fact, he was not. The terms of the settlement were not released.  Fox faces a separate $1.6 billion defamation suit from Dominion Voting Systems, in which the judge determined key aspects of Dominion’s claim to be settled and Fox cannot challenge them.  Little things like Fox and its on-air hosts lied about Dominion during broadcasts and that they all knew they were lying.

Four people were killed in Orlando, Florida early Easter Sunday morning after a good guy with a gun made a decision to change teams, shooting and killing three family members including a child, before committing suicide by cop, CBS News reports.

We here at National Zero don’t regularly report on such mundane mass murders–or the multiple mass shootings that occur every day in scores of places where government regulations cannot prevent a gun owner from open carrying 24/7: private residences.  No government has ever attempted to limit the ability of a homeowner to carry a gun in their own home.  Yes, there has been legislation regulating secure storage of weapons that are not on the person of the owner; that common-sense reform was knocked down by conservative activist judges.  But no legislation has ever been proposed about guns being carried inside a home.

Ammosexuals like Kentucky Republican Congressman Thomas Massie, the co-chair of the Second Amendment Caucus, are fond of claiming that mass shootings typically happen in places that ban the carrying of firearms.  Massie and his fellow cultists claim that if people were allowed to carry guns there, mass shootings would virtually disappear–or at a minimum, the number of victims would be greatly reduced by the swift actions of multiple Lone Rangers who immediately intercede–without creating mass chaos about who the true threat is as myriad gun-wielding stuporheroes fire at everyone else brandishing weapons. 

A report by the Florida Department of Health claiming that grave dangers from the coronavirus vaccine merited men ages 18 to 39 avoiding the shot omitted key data showing that the risk of getting the virus far exceeded the risk of getting the shot, AP reports.

Florida’s imported Surgeon General, California anti-vax activist and demon seed theory supporter Joseph Ladapo released a report last Fall claiming that the risk of outlier cases of fatal cardiac issues and other long-term heart damage in men within the age group who got the vaccine were sufficient to recommend the demographic not get vaccinated.  The report was Ladapo’s and Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s effort to undermine a CDC study demonstrating the benefits of the vaccine and recommending inoculation.

However, early drafts of the Ladapo’s report show that researchers in the Florida department found there was a far greater chance of long-term cardiac damage, including death, from getting the virus without being vaccinated than the dangers of similar outcomes from people vaccinated.  “This is a grave violation of research integrity,” Matt Hitchings, an infectious disease epidemiologist and professor of biostatistics at the University of Florida, said. “(The vaccine) has done a lot to advance the health of people of Florida and he’s encouraging people to mistrust it.”

Jill and I join Christians around the world in celebrating Easter Sunday.

We wish you hope, health, joy, and the peace of God, which passes all understanding.

Happy Easter and may God bless and keep you.

— President Biden (@POTUS) April 9, 2023

A new ABC News/Ipsos survey finds 54 percent of independent voters who believe disgraced former President Trump committed a crime in the 2016 hush money payoff to pornstar Stormy Daniels, an 11 percent increase over the same question asked a week earlier.

While obviously it’s a different sample from before the survey taken before the indictment and statement of facts in the case were made public, that kind of shift is significant enough to make note of when 2024 is going to be won or lost on single-digit margins in swing states. On the question of if Trump should drop out because of the charges, 48 percent say yes to 43 percent saying he should stay in. We would be in the latter, because of course he should stay in and win the GOP nomination. This isn’t 2016 when he was new and novel and just barely won. The fat bastard already lost in 2020 and is only going to get more unhinged and radioactive to swing voters.

The Dallas Express, an outlet described by trustworthy lefty hellraiser Texas journo Steve Monacelli as “right-wing propaganda under the guise of being non-partisan and objective,” probably regrets picking up this story now since it’s been revealed that MAGA billionaire and Hitler fanboy Harlan Crow has since been revealed to be Supreme Court zealot Clarence Thomas’s sugar daddy, but last month the Express reported that Crow’s brother, Trammell Crow Jr, has been accused in a federal RICO suit of having provided “essential financial assistance and influence” over a sex trafficking ring.

The two female plaintiffs allege that, for the past 12 years, Trammell and his psychologist pal drugged them up and had them perform sex acts with each other and with other women brought in at parties while the men watched. Neither Harlan Crow nor Clarence Thomas are named in the report but in a world where New York Judge Juan Merchan’s daughter working for Kamala Harris’s campaign is MAGA world’s proof that the judge is “biased” against Trump we can and maybe even should assume that Clarence was at the very least aware of this abuse. It’s fair and balanced.

What’s the difference between the two Black men expelled from the Tennessee state legislature and the one White woman who was proposed but survived the vote?  Five racists.  Yes, you can say that all 70 Republicans who voted to expel the two Black representatives who voiced support for school safety advocates from the floor of the chamber are racists.  But to be fair, that may not be accurate.

The March 30th demonstration for gun control after continuing gun violence in schools brought thousands of people to the Capitol grounds in Nashville, but only a few hundred at most entered the building.  Through doors, not windows. Perversely, the GOP’s Tennessee Speaker of the House Cameron Sexton said the March 30th protest–where no one was arrested, no one was harmed, no laws were broken, no unauthorized person walked on the House floor, no one was evacuated and the Tennessee Capitol building had been open to the public–was worse than January 6th, where… well, you know.

As the Daily Beast points out, a total of 65 Republicans voted to expel all three Democrats.  The charges?  Basically a matter of decorum:  the three were very vocal in urging the demonstrators on; one used a blowhorn.  It disrupted business on the floor of the House, granted, but that’s what demonstrations are supposed to do:  make those in power uncomfortable and inconvenienced so that they effect change.  Peaceful demonstration is kinda a cornerstone of the Constitution.  Were they disruptive?  Yeah, sure.  But it’s not like these people were child molesters.

Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced he’ll pardon convicted murderer Daniel Perry, found guilty of shooting a Black Lives Matter demonstrator he claimed aimed an assault rifle at him, KXAN NBC-36 in Austin reports.

“I am working as swiftly as Texas law allows regarding the pardon of Sgt. Perry,” Abbott tweeted.  A pardon must first go through the state’s pardon advisory board before Abbott can sign it.

During a July 2020 protest in Austin, Perry, working as an Uber driver, turned into the street where the protest was occurring.  Instead of turning around, Perry proceeded toward the crowd and was quickly surrounded by demonstrators; prior to this night, there had been no fewer than 75 times drivers plowed into BLM protests in the Summer of 2020, killing two and injuring dozens; most of the drivers were angry racists who intentionally tried to harm or kill protestors.

Too many of us in Blue America fell for the hype that the Trump Administration would end in self-destruction early and Mike Pence would end up being sworn in as the 46th president at some point or another before probably at some point in 2019 it became clear we were stuck with the fat fuck until 2021 at the earliest. It’s easy to blame the media for this in hindsight, but they don’t make a product when there’s no market for it. Every minute development in the Russia investigation brought such joy to the libs who so craved and hoped for justice to be delivered to a degenerate madman who had no business in the most powerful job on Earth even if he had been elected legitimately.

And some of those “It’s Mueller Time!” memes were so fucking cringe too. Seriously, even at the time that stuff was embarrassing. Whoever came up with that “Mueller Ain’t Going Away” should be forced to drink a gallon of 1 percent lowfat milk in under an hour as penance for that bullshit.

Extreme right wing Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s sugar daddy, Texas MAGA billionaire Harlan Crow, is pretty big on Hitler memorabilia, with a collection containing a signed copy of Mein Kampf and two of his shitty paintings, among other Nazi artifacts, Washingtonian reports.

“I still can’t get over the collection of Nazi memorabilia,” said a person who attended a party at Crow’s house several years ago. “It would have been helpful to have someone explain the significance of all the items. Without that context, you sort of just gasp when you walk into the room. [A painting] done by George W Bush next to a Norman Rockwell next to one by Hitler.”

Crow’s backyard also contains a garden full of allegedly authentic busts of 20th century European Communist dictators Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin, Nicolae Ceausescu, and Josip Broz Tito.

Two Montana children, 4 year-old Aryan Holmes and her 2 year-old brother Nation Holmes were located and recovered safely Friday by Butte-Silver Bow Law Enforcement several hours after an alert was issued over their abduction by their non-custodial mom Sunny White, KPAX 8 reports.

The kids had been removed from White after she had been charged with vehicular homicide over an incident earlier this month but not earlier after she named them Aryan and Nation at birth.

An Italian tourist was killed in a car-ramming attack in Tel-Aviv and two British-Israeli women were shot dead in the West Bank as tensions again rose between Israel and Palestine, the AP reports on that which seems awfully conveniently timed given the recent political turmoil around dictator Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to overthrow the country’s judiciary. One might even think that he somehow started this new round of violence on purpose to maintain his power.

• A former president of the United States gets indicted for the first time in the nation’s history, and by the end of the week, it’s not even mentioned in the A-block of most news shows.  That’s how fucked up the Republicans made this week.
• Sure, I can completely see Clarence Thomas as a “yacht rock” fan: on a boat, drunk and swaying to Buffett.
• White Catholic priest judge demands from the pulpit bench that parishioners citizens follow his sermon ruling.  And the GOP wonders why people have turned on them.  Good luck with suburban women in 2024, Republicans.
• Make no mistake:  Republicans are a Party based on vengeance and self-declared grievance.  In Tennessee, the GOP is running roughshod on democracy because Democratic leaders in Nashville opted not to host the Republican National Convention in 2020.  Their feelings hurt, state Republicans are now showing how unfit for civil leadership they are.

In a test of a new system that could change how US border officials handle asylum seekers, the US will initiate a test next week that will provide an initial screening to asylum seekers and provide them with legal counsel to speed the processing of asylum claims, ABC News reports.

Immigration asylum officers will screen people who cross the border illegally and provide them with a lawyer to review their legal options.  The screening would determine which migrants have an asylum claim, and those people will be assigned a lawyer who will be with them through their case’s resolution.

Currently more than 90% of asylum seekers appear for their status hearings.  Asylum seekers who have legal representation are more likely to appear before the courts.  Researchers found that a legal aide helps the applicant to feel their case is getting a fair hearing and to understand the process.  Plus, legal aides act as a de facto case manager for the migrant, keeping them on schedule and reducing flight risk.

Right wing activist federal judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk suspended the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, a drug commonly and widely used to induce abortions, ruled to be so safe it could be sold over-the-counter, the Washington Post reports.

An ultra-conservative Trump appointee who is the only federal judge in Northern District of Texas which makes his the targeted court for implementing conservative doctrine because any conservative activist is sure to get his ruling if they file in that district, Kacsmaryk gave the FDA seven days to appeal the ruling.

Kacsmaryk, who had never served on a court before being nominated by Trump, is known to support far-right causes that would ban birth control, abortion and many health choices for women.

Those poor anti-vax crusaders.  First, they start dying at an accelerated rate from coronavirus because they refuse to get “The Jab,” and now news that they won’t get expected vaccines for things like cancers and heart disease springing from research advancements in the development of the mRNA vaccines.

According to the Guardian, the chief medical officer of Moderna said he expects vaccines for common deadly diseases like heart disease and many cancers to be available by 2030, with mRNA vaccines for rarer, “orphan” cancers being developed to meet patient needs.

Saying that research that was expected to take decades became “unspooled” with research dedicated to coronavirus research reducing the timeframe to years rather than decades, Moderna’s chief medical officer Paul Burton said, “We will have that vaccine and it will be highly effective, and it will save many hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives. I think we will be able to offer personalized cancer vaccines against multiple different tumor types to people around the world.”