CNBC: “The United States and its allies are considering a joint boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, the State Department said Tuesday. ‘It [a joint boycott] is something that we certainly wish to discuss,’ State spokesman Ned Price told reporters when asked about the Biden administration’s plans ahead of the international games. ‘A coordinated approach will not only be in our interest but also in the interest of our allies and partners,’ he added.”

“Price said that the United States has not yet made a decision but was concerned about China’s egregious human rights abuses. The Olympic Games are due to take place between Feb. 4 to Feb. 20. The potential diplomatic boycott of the Olympic Games comes as the Biden administration works to rally allies to mount international pushback on China”.

“I’m just not very interested in baseball, for the last number of years… You know, you look – it’s – you want to find a game, it’s on, it’s on every channel, and yet you can’t find anything. It’s the weirdest thing. Used to be a nice, easy thing to follow. And you know what I mean by that. It was on one network and it was nice and good and beautiful. Today, you don’t even know what the hell you’re watching. So I would say boycott baseball, why not” – Trump to Newsmax via CNN’s David Wright.

“NASA’s InSight lander on Mars felt two relatively large quakes shake the Red Planet last month. InSight uses these shakes on Mars – caused by volcanic activity – to learn more about the interior of the planet. The two quakes, which were felt on March 7 and March 18, were magnitudes 3.3 and 3.1. ‘It’s wonderful to once again observe marsquakes after a long period of recording wind noise,’ John Clinton, an InSight scientist, said in a statement. ‘One Martian year on, we are now much faster at characterizing seismic activity on the Red Planet.’ The quakes seemed to come from a region called Cerberus Fossae, the same area where two other strong shakes were felt earlier in the mission. The waves from all four of those relatively strong quakes traveled like quakes do on Earth – through the planet. Other shakes on Mars have been more like those seen on the Moon, which are more ‘scattered,’ according to NASA” – Axios.

Big Corporations: Get woke. Go broke.

— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) April 6, 2021

YourCentralValley.com: “The son of a Fresno man who died during an amateur taco eating contest is suing the organizers of the event. Authorities say 41-year-old Dana Hutchings died after he choked on tacos during the competition in August of 2019. It was held during a Fresno Grizzlies game. ‘People say all the time he knew what he was getting into, well clearly he didn’t,’ said Martin Taleisnik, an attorney representing Hutchings’ son, Marshall. The 8-page wrongful death lawsuit filed Monday alleges the Fresno Grizzlies owner, Fresno Sports and Events, did not possess the competence and/or experience to safely carry out an eating competition of that nature and failed to provide a medical response team that could have initiated lifesaving procedures. It also alleges the organizers didn’t fully disclose the risks of the contest.”

“There’s an offhand line in Outriders that sure sounds like a reference to the failed January 6 insurrection in Washington, D.C. According to the game’s publisher, any connections one could make there are ‘purely coincidental.’ Developed by People Can Fly and published by Square Enix, the class-based looter-shooter Outriders officially released last week for everything but the Switch. In the future – you’ll never believe this – ‘Earth [is] dead,’ ruined by war and famine and all that other apocalyptic turmoil that tends to serve as set dressing in airport kiosk sci-fi novels. To preserve humanity, the governments of Earth band together and fund a colony ship that will carry thousands of survivors to a habitable planet, Enoch, roughly a dozen light years away. You’re cast as a titular outrider, a gun-slinging badass tasked with exploring Enoch before the rest of the settlers leave the safe confines of the ship. One early mission – ‘Reunion’ – features some banter between your character and Jakub, with the two reminiscing about the good ol’ days of killing people on Earth.”

“You: ‘I’m getting major déjà vu in this place. Reminds me of that mission is Damascus, where we rescued those diplomats.’ Jakub: ‘I had to save your ass from that machete-wielding mob.’ You: ‘Ha! More like that time I had to save your sorry ass from that redneck mob storming D.C.'”

“You’re not wrong to think this line is a reference to the failed coup attempt that was agitated by Republican political leadership. When reached for comment by Kotaku, representatives for Square Enix and People Can Fly had this to say: ‘We wrote and recorded the script for Outriders a couple of years ago and all aspects of it are entirely fictional and related to the backstory of the game. Any similarities to real-world events are purely coincidental'” – Kotaku.

That’s Fox News White House Correspondent Peter Doocy, son of Fox and Friends host Steve Doocy, trying to make it sound like Colorado’s voting rules are the same as Georgia’s, and then getting smacked down by Jen Psaki, by the way. It’d be a shame if there was someone a little less of a dumbass and more of a tough-as-nails, doesn’t-take-shit-from-anyone type star reporter who might have wanted the Presidential briefing room beat at Fox News but lost out apparently because the “Doocy” name exudes such power and formidability at the network.

And this is not to automatically trash anyone who might’ve gotten a leg up in their career because of who their parent or parents are. Chris Wallace, son of the late great Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes, is a pretty damn good questioner, aside from that shitshow first Biden-Trump debate (and how much of that was really his fault anyway). Donald Trump Jr is pretty good at tweeting stupid bullshit that appeals to undereducated hillbillies – and has managed to stay on Twitter without being banned for life like his dad. Mitt Romney has been a Governor and a Senator of two completely different states while his dad was only governor of one. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is a perfect clone of Mike Huckabee. Peter Doocy though, to put it charitably, just absolutely sucks. He’s there to make Biden and the Dems look bad, and even failing at that. Why not just go into real estate or insurance or something, Pete?

CNBC: “Former President Donald Trump’s political action committee has amassed a war chest of more than $85 million as he builds an operation meant to take on his enemies and possibly fuel another run for president in 2024. Save America, Trump’s leadership PAC, heads into the second quarter with that gargantuan sum of cash on hand, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter who declined to be named as the fundraising data has not been made public. The PAC raised more than $30 million from late November through December, and finished last year with $31 million on hand, Federal Election Commission filings show.”

“This person did not say how much the PAC raised in the first quarter, noting that it files disclosures semi-annually, which means the public likely won’t see details on Trump’s fundraising success until the summer. The total also does not include the cash on hand for other Trump affiliated PACs, including the Trump Make America Great Again Committee. Trump has significant resources to deploy as he looks to influence the 2022 midterm elections, when Republicans will try to make inroads in both the House and Senate. Democrats currently control both chambers of Congress.”

“A former Trump appointee who served as a regional administrator for the Department of Housing and Urban Development was fined $1,000 and barred from federal employment for four years for violating the Hatch Act. Lynne Patton, who recruited people living in the New York City Housing Authority to participate in a video later shown at the Republican National Convention, is the latest in a long list of Trump officials to violate the Hatch Act, which restricts federal employees from engaging in partisan political activity” – Axios.

At least six unidentified drones circled, followed and trailed US Navy ships transiting through the Channel Islands off the California coast in July 2019, raising concerns about unidentified aircraft jeopardizing the security and safety of military vessels, NBC News reports.

The drones were able to keep up with Navy ships traveling at 16 knots and could stay aloft at least 90 minutes, performance outside the parameters of commercially available drones.  The drones continued trailing the ships in low-visibility conditions, defined as less than one mile of clear sight. The Drive website first reported the sightings, noting that military officials said there is no indication that the aircraft were extraterrestrial.

Officials from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, the FBI field office in Los Angeles and the director of the Maritime Intelligence Operations Center within the Navy’s 3rd Fleet were investigating the craft, which were sited near San Clemente Island, home to sensitive naval operations and SEAL training facilities.

Democratic Congressional Committee Chairman Sean Maloney, a New York Democratic Congressman released a list of 22 Republican-held House seats the Democrats will try to flip in the 2022 midterm elections, the Washington Post reports.

“Every Republican member on this battlefield voted against putting money in people’s pockets and getting shots into people’s arms,” Maloney said. “They are on the wrong side of the most important issues.”

With overall support for Donald Trump fading, Republicans refusing to support legislation that is widely popular with voters, and the GOP generally lacking substantive policy initiatives besides promoting obstructionism, the DCCC sees an opportunity to reverse traditional midterm losses by the party in power. 

“Call it a catch-535: Democrats in Congress are trying to pass a huge slate of voting-related reforms, under the name of the For the People Act, or H.R. 1, that could aggressively reshape U.S. elections, change the way Americans vote, and also go a long way toward alleviating the Democratic Party’s structural electoral disadvantages. But the Democrats have to pass this bill with the tight margins they have in the House of Representatives and the Senate, thanks in part to the same structural disadvantages. The party finds itself short on votes and long on irony. The challenge of the bill is that, aside from advancing the vague concept of democratic reforms, it doesn’t present a single theory of how to reform the electoral system, but is instead a palimpsest of Democratic freak-outs, with more recent ones piled atop older ones. At the top are measures that would push back on the voter-suppression laws currently in consideration or newly enacted by states with Republican legislatures, the most acute worry among progressives today. One level down are rules to mitigate or eliminate partisan gerrymandering, something many in the Democratic Party considered the most urgent election problem during the Trump years. Below that are new campaign-finance rules, representing the big concern of the late Obama years.”

“Although H.R. 1 has been around for a couple of years – it was the first thing Democrats introduced in 2019, when they took over the House – it uses the same strategy that the party adopted for COVID-19 relief and infrastructure: Throw as much stuff as possible in and try to ram it through. A Democratic aide told Vox’s Andrew Prokop that about 60 separate bills were rolled together to make this bill. That worked with the relief package, but it’s creating complications for H.R. 1. Many Democrats support certain versions of campaign-finance reform, for example. But some of them, such as Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, are uncomfortable with the federal government meddling with state power over election administration (though it’s been done plenty in the past). Black Democrats are eager to roll back changes such as Georgia’s new law, which Senator Raphael Warnock has branded ‘Jim Crow in new clothes,’ but The New York Times reports that some of them are also wary of independent commissions handling redistricting, a central idea of the bill but one that might carve up majority-minority districts, especially in the South” – The Atlantic.

FiveThirtyEight: “Typically, after losing a presidential election, a political party will undertake an intense intra-party debate over why it didn’t win and how the party needs to change to take back the White House. Democrats did so after losing in 1988, 2000, 2004 and 2016. In fact, even after winning in 2020 – taking control of the White House and U.S. Senate and maintaining control in the U.S. House – Democrats are having an intra-party debate, trying to figure out why they didn’t win more House seats and struggled with Latino voters. Republicans, too, have had such debates, after losses in 1996, 2008 and 2012. But not this time.”

“Despite Republicans losing the White House and Senate in 2020, and thus being totally swept out of power in Washington, there’s been no official ‘autopsy’ or widespread consideration of appointing new leaders or anything else. In the period after the 1988 presidential election, the Republican Party has lost the popular vote in all but one presidential race (2004). It has lost three of the last four presidential elections and allowed itself to be dominated by former President Donald Trump, who was twice impeached for breaking with democratic values. But it is moving forward like none of that really happened.”

“Biden plans to announce that the deadline for adult eligibility for COVID-19 vaccines is being moved up to April 19, according to a person familiar. He had previously called for states and territories to make all adults eligible for shots by May 1” reports Ed O’Keefe of CBS News.

“Israel’s president has named Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the party leader to try to cobble together a governing majority. Reuven Rivlin’s announcement in Jerusalem on Tuesday nudged forward the twin dramas of the country’s future and Netanyahu’s fate as his corruption trial resumed across town. The charges facing Israel’s longest-serving premier posed an extraordinary choice for the country’s president over whether ‘morality’ should be a factor in who should lead the government. The March 23 election revolved around whether Netanyahu is fit to continue serving. His Likud party won the most seats, but no party won a governing majority of 61 seats in the Knesset. That handed to Rivlin the task of deciding who has the best chance of cobbling together a coalition. Netanyahu denies all charges and says prosecutors are trying to undermine the voters intent and oust him from office” – NBC News.

Politico: “Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) built a public profile as an unapologetic, unambiguous, omnipresent booster of President Donald Trump. But as his own political career skids toward disaster amid allegations that he had sex with a minor and paid for sex with women of legal age, neither Trump nor anyone in the ex-president’s orbit is rushing to Gaetz’s defense. A group that often instinctively decries any such charge as part of some nefarious, coordinated witch hunt from deep-state operators has, instead, said virtually nothing at all. ‘Not a lot of people are surprised,’ said one person involved in Trump’s post-presidential operations. In the days since news broke that the Department of Justice was looking into whether Gaetz had violated sex trafficking laws – an allegation he denies – no Trump aide or family member has tweeted about the Florida congressman. Nor have almost any of the most prominent Trump surrogates or Trump-allied conservatives and media personalities, including Sean Hannity, Dan Bongino, Charlie Kirk or American Conservative Union Chair Matt Schlapp, at whose annual CPAC conference Gaetz had recently appeared.”

“The Daily Beast reported on Friday night that Trump himself was monitoring the situation but following the advice of aides to stay quiet about it. And several people familiar with their relationship said Gaetz and Trump have not spoken regularly lately, even after the lawmaker had offered to resign from Congress to join the ex-president’s impeachment defense team in February. Operatives inside Trump World say the silence is owed to a variety of factors. Among them is the fact that Gaetz has always been regarded as a grenade whose pin had already been pulled. The congressman had a reputation for a wild personal lifestyle that, associates say, occasionally bordered on reckless. Some of Gaetz’s own aides would regularly send embarrassing videos of their boss to other GOP operatives, according to two people familiar with the videos. Neither Gaetz nor his office returned a request for comment.”

Republican Utah Governor Spencer Cox signed a bill into law that would require the biological fathers to pay half of the prenatal care costs for the women they impregnate in a unique new law that could challenge the traditional financial responsibility for pregnancies, NBC News reports.

The bill’s sponsors say that it will help defer some of the costs of prenatal care for expectant mothers, but challengers to the bill say the law may put women in a more dangerous situation when they are in vulnerable and abusive situations.

“We want to help people and actually be pro-life in how we do it as opposed to anti-abortion,” Republican state legislator Brady Brammer said. “One of the ways to help with that was to help the burden of pregnancy be decreased.”

ESPN: “Coors Field in Denver has been chosen to host this year’s All-Star Game, sources told ESPN’s Buster Olney on Monday. MLB opted to move the game out of Atlanta due to voting laws passed in Georgia last month. It will mark the second time the homer-friendly home of the Colorado Rockies will host the Midsummer Classic. The American League beat the National League 13-8 at Coors in 1998. This year’s All-Star Game originally was scheduled for July 13 at Truist Park, home of the Braves. However, on April 2, MLB announced that it decided to move the game out of Atlanta due to a new Georgia law that has civil rights groups concerned about its potential to restrict voting access for people of color. Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement at the time that he discussed the potential move with individual major leaguers and the Players Alliance, an organization of Black players formed after the death of George Floyd last year, before ultimately deciding to make the call ‘as the best way to demonstrate our values as a sport.'”

A ruling by the Senate parliamentarian will allow Democrats to add additional provisions to the budget reconciliation used to pass the American Rescue Plan, the Biden Administration economic stimulus plan passed with 50 Democratic votes with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking the tie.

According to CNN, it’s still unclear what type of legislation could be included under the budget reconciliation, such as the Biden infrastructure plan under consideration in Congress.  Whatever is added to the resolution would only require 50 votes to pass the Senate after passing the Democratic-led House.

“While no decisions have been made on a legislative path forward using Section 304 and some parameters still need to be worked out, the Parliamentarian’s opinion is an important step forward that this key pathway is available to Democrats if needed,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s spokesman Justin Goodman said.