News
President Joe Biden on Tuesday is set to sign into law a bill that would make lynching a federal hate crime after Congress approved the legislation earlier this month with overwhelming bipartisan support.
The Emmett Till Antilynching Act of 2022 is named after a 14-year-old Black boy from Mississippi who was brutally murdered by a group of White men for allegedly whistling at a White woman in 1955. His murder sparked national outraged and was a catalyst for the emerging civil rights movement. The legislation was introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. Bobby Rush of Illinois and only three Republicans — Andrew Clyde of Georgia, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Chip Roy of Texas — voted against the bill.
The legislation then passed the Senate by unanimous consent. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said at the time that Congress had tried and failed more than 200 times to outlaw lynching and that the new legislation was “long overdue.”
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia’s military said Tuesday it would “fundamentally” cut back operations near Ukraine’s capital and a northern city, as talks brought a possible deal to end a grinding and brutal war into view.
Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin said the move was meant to increase trust in the talks after several rounds of failed negotiations to halt the conflict that has devolved into a bloody campaign of attrition.
Fomin said Moscow had decided to “fundamentally … cut back military activity in the direction of Kyiv and Chernihiv” to “increase mutual trust and create conditions for further negotiations.”
ISTANBUL/KYIV OUTSKIRTS/MARIUPOL, Ukraine, March 29 (Reuters) – Russia promised at peace talks on Tuesday to scale down its military operations around Kyiv and northern Ukraine, while Ukraine proposed adopting a neutral status but with international guarantees that it would be protected from attack.
The talks in a palace in Istanbul came as Russia’s invasion has been halted on most fronts by strong resistance, with Ukrainians recapturing territory in counter-attacks, even as civilians are trapped in besieged cities.
“In order to increase mutual trust and create the necessary conditions for further negotiations and achieving the ultimate goal of agreeing and signing (an) agreement, a decision was made to radically, by a large margin, reduce military activity in the Kyiv and Chernihiv directions,” Russian Deputy Defence Minister Alexander Fomin told reporters.
Politico, – March 29, 2022
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida’s fight over contentious LGBTQ legislation — dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill by opponents — had its genesis nearly two years ago, not in the halls of the state Legislature but in a September conversation between a Tallahassee mother and her 13-year-old teen.
The teen, according to a federal lawsuit, said they “might be non-binary” and wanted to change their name ahead of the upcoming school year to one that fit a gender different from the one they were assigned at birth. The mother, January Littlejohn, and her husband said “no,” but allowed the then-13-year-old to use a “nickname” at middle school while the parents continued to use the teen’s birth name at home. Littlejohn also emailed the teen’s math teacher to stress her opposition to the child changing their name.
President Biden on Monday unveiled sweeping plans for military and domestic spending as part of his annual budget proposal that also includes tax hikes on the wealthy.
The $5.8 trillion budget request released early Monday morning calls for investments in policing, historic spending boosts for education and tax reform targeting billionaires and wealthy corporations.
Here are five things to know.
March 29, 2022 – 10:15 am to 1:30 pm (ET)
March 29, 2022 – 10:00 am to 12:40 pm (ET)
March 29, 2022 – 10:08 am to 2:00 pm (ET)
WASHINGTON, March 29 (Reuters) – President Joe Biden on Tuesday will sign into law the first federal legislation that would make lynching a federal hate crime after the U.S. Senate passed the bill by unanimous consent this month.
The legislation is named for 14-year-old Emmett Till, who was brutally murdered in a racist attack in Mississippi in 1955 – an event that drew national attention to the atrocities and violence that African Americans faced in the United States and became a civil rights rallying cry.
The bill would make it possible to prosecute a crime as a lynching when a conspiracy to commit a hate crime results in death or serious bodily injury.
PBS NewsHour – March 29, 2022 (40:32)
We now know that Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, spent the weeks after the 2020 election cheerleading the Trump White House’s efforts to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory in that election. One detail we do not yet know, however, is what Justice Thomas knew about his wife’s communications, and whether he tried to use his office to protect her.
In January, the Supreme Court permitted the US House committee investigating the January 6 attacks on the Capitol to obtain hundreds of pages of White House records that may shine a light on former President Donald Trump’s efforts to thwart the peaceful transfer of power to Biden. These records may or may not contain additional evidence linking Ginni Thomas to January 6.
If Clarence Thomas had his way, the House committee and the public would never know. Thomas was the only justice to publicly dissent from the Supreme Court’s decision to let the House committee obtain these records — though he offered no explanation for why he dissented.
March 29, 2022 – 4:00 pm to 4:26 pm (ET)
