Justice

Republicans in at least 14 states have introduced legislation that would seize power from election officials or limit their authority, apparently in response to unfounded attacks from former President Donald Trump and allies who sought to overturn his election loss.

On Sunday, April 11, a cop pulled Daunte Wright over for air fresheners hanging from the rearview mirror and expired tags. Then she murdered him, saying she couldn’t tell her gun from her taser. The killing happened 20 minutes down the road from where Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd by kneeling on his neck.

The COVID-19 virus continues to spread and mutate, with massive outbreaks in India and Brazil raising fears that without a global, coordinated effort to quickly manufacture vaccines in poorer countries, the pandemic will continue to claim untold numbers of lives while threatening economic recovery. The manufacturing capacity is out there, advocates say, but other countries need access to proprietary production technology and the vaccine “recipe” in order to develop that capacity.

Florida was one of the last states to begin providing the vaccine in prison. Back in February 2021, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis criticized other states where they were “vaccinating drug addicts instead of seniors.” Early in April, vaccines finally went out to Florida prisons. After Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly announced that those in prison would get the vaccine, lawmakers passed a resolution to give the vaccine to “law-abiding” Kansans before “healthy incarcerated individuals.” Sen. Richard Hilderbrand, who wrote the resolution, said that the decision would mean that people who had been convicted of violent crimes and sex offenses “would be offered life-saving vaccines before their victims.”

Such programs could help bolster work on the more traditional infrastructure projects as they allow working-class Americans the opportunity to get back into the workplace or advance their own career paths. “Child care is infrastructure. Paid leave is infrastructure. Caregiving is infrastructure. Because if we don’t invest in all three, families can’t get back to work,” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York) recently tweeted.

GOP state lawmakers have pushed 81 new bills aimed at crushing protest in the 2021 legislative session.

The announcement comes after a jury found former Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin guilty of murdering George Floyd.

After Jan. 6, some corporations vowed to cut donations to politicians involved, but it was soon business as usual again.

Released body camera video shows Toledo had his hands in the air when an officer shot him.

The progressives’ bill calls for investing over $100 billion in public housing over the next decade.