NBC News: “Texas Republicans are rolling out a slew of restrictive election bills, taking particular aim at early voting after Democrats enthusiastically embraced the practice last year. More than two dozen GOP-sponsored elections bills are under consideration as lawmakers seek to tighten ID requirements and voter rolls, limit early voting and up the penalties for errors. The broad interest – and a directive last month from the governor to prioritize election legislation – makes changes to Texas’ election law likely this year. ‘Texas has been working on election integrity for a while,’ said state Sen. Bryan Hughes, a Republican who chairs the State Affairs Committee and introduced a 27-page omnibus bill with several new restrictions and penalties. ‘This was already in process, but then the 2020 election was so in the national spotlight, and so many people have questions, so many people have concerns,’ he said. ‘I would say that has raised the profile of the issue.'”

“Former President Donald Trump’s stolen election lie has convinced 3 of every 4 Republicans that there was widespread voter fraud in last year’s election, according to a December Quinnipiac University poll, even though there is broad evidence that it is extremely rare. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office spent 22,000 hours looking for voter fraud and uncovered just 16 cases of false addresses on registration forms, according to The Houston Chronicle. Nearly 17 million voters are registered in Texas. And while Texas already had some of the most restrictive laws on the books, that isn’t stopping state lawmakers from joining their GOP peers across the country to propose new restrictive bills. Republican legislators in Georgia, Arizona, Florida and Wisconsin – many of whom joined with Trump to cast doubt on the system – are legislating to restrict the vote, arguing that new measures are needed to restore trust in the system.”

“Just as we can often spot the beginnings of an illness from a number of signs, there are symptoms of volcanic activity that can indicate a growing likelihood of eruption. Monitoring them can involve detecting surface changes and small earthquakes caused by the movement of magma inside a volcano, or measuring changes in gases emitted from vents. Signs like these are used to raise alerts and trigger evacuations, and they have saved lives. But they aren’t always perfect. Japan’s Mount Ontake erupted in 2014 without warning, for example, killing more than 60 people. So additional methods for detecting volcanic activity are always welcome, especially if they involve subtler signs that could be overlooked. A new study from a Jet Propulsion Laboratory group led by Társilo Girona highlights the possibility that presently available satellite data could provide an entirely new way to warn of eruptions. Heat is obviously a relevant parameter for volcanic activity, but it can be quite variable at the individual spots where you might set up a thermometer. If we could instead measure all the heat coming out of a volcano, it would be quite meaningful, since the majority of volcanic energy gets released as heat.”

“To attempt this, the team turned to thermal radiation data from NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites. Combined, these two provide twice-daily passes with global coverage, and each measurement is integrated over a 1 kilometer by 1 kilometer pixel. There are five volcanoes that have both had significant eruptions since 2002 (when these satellites came online) and aren’t located on islands that are too small to span enough pixels for a good signal. These include Ontake in Japan, Ruapehu in New Zealand, Calbuco in Chile, Redoubt in Alaska, and Pico do Fogo in Cape Verde. Increasing temperature trends were seen over the two- to four-year periods preceding each eruption – including Ontake’s surprise 2014 eruption. Temperatures only increased by 1°C or less in the lead-up to each event, but these were statistically significant trends and not just noise. The peak temperatures in each record were associated with an eruption” – Ars Technica.

“Federal authorities have arrested and charged two men with assaulting U.S. Capitol Police officer Brian D. Sicknick with bear spray during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot but have not determined whether the exposure caused his death. Julian Elie Khater, 32, of Pennsylvania and George Pierre Tanios, 39 of Morgantown, W.Va., were arrested Sunday and are expected to appear in federal court Monday. ‘Give me that bear shit,’ Khater allegedly said to Tanios on video recorded at the Lower West Terrace of the Capitol at 2:14 p.m., where Sicknick and other officers were standing guard behind metal bicycle racks, arrest papers say. About nine minutes later, after Khater said he had been hit with bear spray, Khater is seen on video discharging a canister into the face of Sicknick and two other officers, arrest papers allege. Khater and Tanios are charged with nine counts including assaulting three officers with a deadly weapon – Sicknick, another U.S. Capitol Police officer identified as C. Edwards, and a D.C. police officer identified as B. Chapman. They are also charged with civil disorder and obstruction of a congressional proceeding.”

“The charges are punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Prosecutors filed charges after tipsters contacted the FBI allegedly identifying Khater and Tanios from wanted images released by the bureau from surveillance video and officer-worn body camera footage, the complaint said. It said the men grew up together in New Jersey, and that Khater had worked in State College, Pa., and Tanios owns a business in Morgantown. Still, questions remain about whether anyone will be held criminally responsible in Sicknick’s death. Autopsy results for Sicknick were still pending as of Monday, according to a spokeswoman for the deputy mayor of public safety in D.C. Without a cause of death, his case has not been established as a homicide, although charging papers allege that evidence of an assault on Sicknick is clear on video” – Washington Post.

Reuters: “The U.S. Congress is investigating a multibillion-dollar subsidy for chemically treated coal that is meant to reduce smokestack pollution, after evidence emerged that power plants using the fuel produced more smog not less. The outcome of the probe could play a big role in whether lawmakers vote to renew the subsidy, on track to expire at the end of this year.”

“The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, is examining the refined coal tax credit program which generates at least $1 billion a year for U.S. corporations, according to GAO analysts that contacted Reuters requesting information. Three U.S. Democratic senators called for the investigation after a Reuters report in December 2018 revealed that many power plants burning the fuel, which supporters call ‘clean coal’, pumped out more pollution than previously.”

President Trump is looking better than ever before!! He’s getting in shape for 2024 and the liberals are freaking out!! pic.twitter.com/7IfBymEsUO

— Nick Adams (Alpha Male) (@NickAdamsinUSA) March 14, 2021

“Triumphant over the signing of their far-reaching $1.9 trillion stimulus package, Democrats are now starting to angle for a major political payoff that would defy history: Picking up House and Senate seats in the 2022 midterm elections, even though the party in power usually loses in the midterms. Democratic leaders are making one of the biggest electoral bets in years – that the stimulus will be so transformational for Americans across party lines and demographic groups that Democrats will be able to wield it as a political weapon next year in elections against Republicans, who voted en masse against the package. Republicans need to gain only one seat in the Senate and just five in the House in 2022 to take back control, a likely result in a normal midterm election, but perhaps a trickier one if voters credit their rivals for a strong American rebound. Republicans say the Democratic bet is a foolhardy one, both because of how little of the spending is directly related to the coronavirus pandemic and because of fleeting voter attention spans. But Democrats say they intend to run on the bill – and press Republicans over their opposition to it” – New York Times.

Adam Serwer, The Atlantic: “Donald Trump was a punishment. Conservatives saw him that way, and Trump saw himself that way, too. After his upset victory over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, some conservatives started to respond to any perceived liberal excess with a simple phrase: ‘This is why Trump won.’ If that was a convenient deflection, a way to rationalize Trumpian malice as the left’s responsibility, it was also a concise expression of Trump’s appeal to them. Trump was not a successful president. But as a form of punishment, he was everything conservatives dreamed of, and they loved him for it. Throughout his term in office, and even after his electoral defeat, Trump proclaimed to his admirers that he was all that stood between them and annihilation, cultivating a sense of existential dread among the conservative faithful. On January 6, the former president warned his supporters that ‘our country will be destroyed’ if Joe Biden were allowed to take office, minutes before they went on to sack the Capitol building.”

“Whereas Trump entered office and immediately sought to use the power of the state to crush the rival party’s constituencies, Biden and the Democratic Party will be deploying that same power to ensure that Americans, regardless of partisan affiliation, will receive the necessary vaccines to contain the coronavirus pandemic, and have enough money to feed their families, stay in their homes, and keep their businesses afloat. The passage of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 symbolizes more than an ideological divergence on public policy; it reflects a radically different theory of governance. The Democrats are no saints, but they’ve come to believe that both the viability of their party and the sustainability of American democracy depend on their capacity to broaden their appeal to right-leaning voters. Trump wanted to punish his enemies; Biden must convince Trump supporters that he is not their enemy. Defeating Trump was but a battle; defeating Trumpism is the war.”

“Disgraced former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens is moving closer to a 2022 Senate bid, alarming top Republicans who worry he will jeopardize the party’s grip on the seat and imperil their prospects of seizing the majority. Greitens – who resigned in mid-2018, less than two years into his term, following allegations that he sexually assaulted a woman who was not his wife – has been calling around to fellow Republicans to inform them of his deliberations, and many have come away convinced he’s running. The maneuvering, which follows Republican Sen. Roy Blunt’s surprise retirement announcement last week, is giving Republicans nightmarish flashbacks to 2012, when they nominated a problematic Senate candidate, Todd Akin, who went on to lose the election.”

“The concerns have grown so serious that former President Donald Trump and those in his orbit have heard from Republicans inside and outside Missouri, who warn that Greitens would be the one GOP candidate who could lose to a Democrat, according to a person familiar with the conversations. Republican leaders say they aren’t ruling out taking aggressive steps to stop Greitens from winning the nomination, including waging a slashing advertising campaign against him. Party officials – ranging from members of the Missouri congressional delegation to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s political operation – have been united in their worry about the former governor and spent the week having conversations about the situation, according to people familiar with the discussions” – Politico.

Daily Beast: “For Newsmax, it looks like midnight is approaching, and the upstart TV channel is in danger of turning back into a pumpkin. The pro-Trump cable news network – which barely registered in Nielsen ratings for the first six years after its chief executive and majority owner, Chris Ruddy, launched it in May 2014 – prompted massive media attention for seemingly taking Fox News head-on in the aftermath of last year’s presidential election. Perhaps more than a Cinderella story, it was a wingnut media version of David versus Goliath. But now, a mere four months after the supposed slingshot to Fox News’ forehead, reality has intruded, and Newsmax finds itself smack-dab in the middle of a ratings collapse.”

“Many of the disaffected Trump supporters who initially flocked to Newsmax to gobble up unhinged election conspiracies challenging the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s presidency have faded away now that Biden is firmly ensconced and Fox News has pivoted to aggressive coverage of the Democratic establishment’s supposed war on Christianity, support for open borders and unlimited immigration, and ‘cancel culture’ that is allegedly depriving innocent children of their beloved Dr. Seuss books and Looney Tunes characters. While some Newsmax insiders feel that the plummeting viewership is much ado about nothing, as other cable news networks also experience a post-inaugural erosion, others suggest that the fledgling network’s days of hoping to compete head-to-head with Fox are all but over, and that Newsmax will inevitably return to the fringes.”

A San Antonio noodle shop whose owner spoke on CNN against the decision of Republican Governor Greg Abbott to lift mask mandates was defiled with anti-Asian graffiti, and the crime is being investigated as a hate crime, KABB Fox 29 in San Antonio reports.

Mike Nguyen, owner of Noodle Tree, was shocked and disappointed when he saw the graffiti on his business walls and tables.  “I was pretty upset. I was boiling,” he said. “I had to take a couple of minutes to just clear my head a little bit.  It’s uncalled for it’s unfortunate, placing blame on something that has nothing to even do with Asian-Americans.  You know one of the graffiti’s said ‘Go back to China,’ I’m not even Chinese.”

Asian-Americans have faced increased violence in recent months as people blame them for the coronavirus pandemic that is thought to have sprung out of China.  Business that require wearing masks–a provision allowed by Abbott’s decree–are targeted for harassment, with Asian-American owned businesses selected for xenophobic, bigoted messages.

With tens of  thousands of students migrating to spend the next week on their Spring Break, Miami Beach has geared up police action to control unruly crowds that are taken over the town, CNN reports.

The Miami Beach Police said 100 people were arrested for actions taken Friday night, when a crowd surrounded police officers and jeered and harassed them.  Two officers sustained injuries in the incident.  Police did not deploy tear gas or chemical irritants to disperse the crowd.

“We’re seeing too much spring break activity,” Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber told CNN Saturday morning. “We’ve got a problem with too many people coming here, we’ve got a problem with too many people coming here to let loose.”

New York Times:  “A protester was burning an American flag outside the 2016 Republican convention in Cleveland when Joseph Biggs rushed to attack. Jumping a police line, he ripped the man’s shirt off and “started pounding,” he boasted that night in an online video.

“GOLDMAN SACHS: ‘We have raised our GDP forecast to reflect the latest fiscal policy news and now expect 8% growth in 2021 (Q4/Q4) and an unemployment rate of 4% at end-2021—the lowest among consensus forecasts—that falls to 3.5% in 2022 and 3.2% in 2023.'” —James Pethokoukis of CNBC

The Grammy Awards, a show that recognizes performers for popularity in music, were broadcast on CBS or maybe NBC or QVC Sunday night. The Grammys, which are shaped kind of like golden Flintstones telephones, are given out to the musicians with the most middle-class white fans who listen to Top 40 stations like Z100 in New York City. Those two expository sentences were intended to explain to readers that the Grammys award show and the trophies themselves are called Grammys. There is a further, third layer of confusion that may emerge for readers, stemming from the fact that the Grammys is an event where musicians tell other musicians how special they are, but the television broadcast is also called ‘The Grammys’.

So to be clear the word ‘Grammys’ refers to the trophies, the event in which those trophies are awarded to their recipients, and the television broadcast of the event. Additionally, it’s a near certainty that a golden Flintstones-telephone-shaped individual trophy may not be the bearer instrument of a Grammy award, but the awardee or recipient of said trophy is the one who holds such a title, regardless of the personal possession of said trophy. Such a title is an artificial construct, and whilst the accolade is prestigious in the popular music world, it has no tangible physicality to it other than the Grammy trophy. Coming into possession of a Grammy trophy does not make one a Grammy winner. It just makes one owner of a Grammy trophy. The winner of Grammy award is conferred the trophy.

So, for example, if in ten years, one of the winners of a 2021 Grammy trophy pawns it to buy drugs, the pawn shop will not be a Grammy winner. It’ll just be a pawn shop. Who won a 2021 Grammy? I don’t know, nor do I care. We try to avoid reporting on celebrity bullshit here at National Zero.

Duke University has instituted a one week stay-in-place order for underclassmen due to an increasing number of coronavirus infections on campus, a situation that led it vaunted basketball team to miss the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1995.

According to NBC News, more than 180 students have been diagnosed with coronavirus, and another 200 are in quarantine due to contact tracing.  “This is by far the largest one-week number of positive tests and quarantines since the start of the pandemic,” administrators wrote in announcing the lockdown Saturday.

The letter said the spread of the virus was accelerated by “recruitment parties for selective living groups.”  The administration ordered students to stay in their residents and said coursework, including labs, would be done in a virtual environment. 

A majority of Iowans do not want their senior Senator, 87-year-old Republican Chuck Grassley, to run for re-election in 2022, according to a new Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll reported by Politico.

Grassley first won election in 1980, and the upcoming election would be his seventh.  Still, just 28% of Iowans polled want him to run for reelection, with 55% wishing he chooses not to.  More than one-third of Republicans, 35%, said they do not want Grassley to run.

Grassley has not stated that he would or would not seek re-election, but five other incumbent Republicans have announced that they will not seek their seats again.  Twenty Republicans are up for reelection in 2022, versus 14 Democrats.  Three of the Republicans are in existing swing states:  Pennsylvania, Ohio and North Carolina.

The Biden Administration wants Iran to come back to the bargaining table to discuss reestablishing the nuclear deal that had been negotiated during the Obama Administration, a multi-national agreement the Trump Administration subsequently violated and pulled the United States from, the Washington Post reports.

Donald Trump reinstituted sanctions, and implemented an estimated 1,500 new ones, against Iran even though his administration determined that Iran was in technical compliance with the 2015 agreement.  The other nations–China, France, Russia, United Kingdom and Germany–continued to encourage Iran to adhere to the agreement.  Iran declined.

Iran announced it would begin again to enrich uranium in May 2019, a year after the US negated the agreement, known a the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. 

The Irish government has suspended the use of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine after a number of people who received the inoculations reported developing blot clots, the Associated Press reports.

The Food and Drug Administration has not approved the AstraZeneca vaccine for emergency use in the United States yet, although the company was expected to apply for emergency use authorization next months.

After Norway’s health ministry reported blood clots developing in four patients who received the AstraZeneca vaccine, Dr. Ronan Glynn, Ireland’s deputy chief medical officer, opted to suspend use of the vaccine in the nation.  Denmark, Norway and Iceland have also cut the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

On Friday a Federal grand jury in the DC US District Court hit L Brent Bozell IV, son of Christian Conservative leader L Brent Bozell III, with six felonies related to his involvement in the Capitol riot, including disordery conduct, destruction of federal property, unlawful entry, and disruption of an official proceeding. Read the complaint here.

The younger Bozell was filmed in the Senate chamber and later exiting the Capitol building. He has been charged with obstructing an official proceeding, entering a restricted building, and disorderly conduct. Wearing a sweatshirt from the Hershey Christian Academy, a school in Pennsylvania is daughters attend and where he once served as girls basketball coach, the younger Bozell also posted clips of his activities in the Capitol to his social media accounts.

What’s interesting here is how much the traditional “family values” conservative world surrendered to the nihilism and malevolence of Trumpism. And it goes back to WWF (now WWE) pro wrestling. Around 1999 to 2001, Bozell III’s “Parents’ Television Council” group (PTC) waged a protest campaign against the WWF accusing the wrestling company (correctly) of promoting violence and indecency to children, with the goal of getting Karens to call the USA Network and pressure them to cancel the weekly WWF broadcasts. It went pretty much nowhere.

WWF CEO Vince McMahon responded by having one of his mid-card performers Stevie Richards – a punkish headbanger type wrestler – rebrand himself as “Steven Richards, head of ‘Right to Censor’ (RTC)” who would run out wearing an oxford shirt and tie to ruin other wrestler’s matches or whatever scenes between matches that were staged in the ring with women in bikinis and what not. It was a good laugh, with WWF “Attitude” mocking those Evangelical moral crusaders, but what’s funnier is that a decade and a half later Vince McMahon was one of Trump’s biggest supporters and his wife was a cabinet-level federal department secretary in the Trump Administration for four years – until shortly after Bozell’s adult son was committed a felony for attacking the Capitol as commanded by Trump. How’s that for Christian conservatism?

“Republicans are bashing the new $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package for further ballooning the federal debt, but it’s the Trump administration that greased the path for a smooth federal spending spree. The Treasury has a cash pile of well over $1 trillion, which will allow the government to quickly disburse money in line with the sweeping new law, including direct checks to millions of Americans that are expected to start hitting bank accounts in the coming week. That robust rainy-day fund was built last year by then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who preemptively cranked up the pace of government borrowing, unsure of how and when Congress might mandate further relief measures. So, despite concerns that markets will be flooded with new U.S. government debt to pay for the rescue package, the Treasury Department might not have to change its borrowing plans much at all to fund the legislation signed into law by President Joe Biden on Thursday.”

“‘There are enormous implications for everyone else, but the Treasury was out in front of this nine months ago,’ said Lou Crandall, chief economist at research firm Wrightson ICAP. The advance moves by the Trump team are proving to be key to limiting turbulence in government debt markets from such massive spending. Bond yields have already been inching up in recent months due to brighter prospects for the economy, raising the cost of new borrowing – a dynamic that’s rippling through markets and is expected to be a central focus as Federal Reserve policy makers meet in the coming week. The planning by Mnuchin also demonstrates that, even as Republicans now balk at the price tag of Biden’s rescue package, the Trump administration itself was prepared for the possibility that the economy would need another big infusion of cash to fully emerge from the pandemic” – Politico.