Friday Politics Roundup | Trump indicted; Waco speech; migrants killed in fire; 15m people set to lose Medicaid; no ”Rainbowland” for 1st graders; Martino’s PAC readys; Summer Lee; D&D movie!

Donald Trump was indicted yesterday for misuse of campaign funds to pay hush money to porn star Stromy Daniels. He is the first former U.S. president to ever be charged with a crime. 

Trump’s indictment comes less than a week after he launched his presidential campaign with a large rally and speech in Waco, TX. Waco was the site of the 1993 raid of the militant Branch Davidian religious compound that led to the deaths of nearly 80 people. Waco has been a rallying cry for white supremacists and the extreme right ever since. 

38 migrants were killed and 27 seriously injured in a fire at a Mexican detention center in Ciudad Juarez. The continued unjust and cruel immigration policies in the U.S. - the “Remain in Mexico” policy, for example - helped create the conditions for the deaths. Will Bunch was dead on: 

"I wonder how much of the American downplaying of this nightmare in Ciudad Juárez is willful ignorance on our part — a refusal to confront our own shameful role in this episode. That’s because the reason that refugees are overrunning the Mexican city — some estimates place the number at 20,000 — is that U.S. policy is forcing these migrants to stay south of the American border, their actual goal."

According to a new report from the Kaiser Family Foundation, up to about 15 million people are now at risk of losing health insurance as COVID era rules that expand Medicaid and CHIP benefits are rolled back.

A new study in the journal Nature, projects that deep water current around Antarctica could slow by 40% by 2050 if the current trajectory of climate change is not dramatically altered. A disrupted current could dramatically affect the climate, the flow of fresh water and oxygen, and the circulation of nutrients necessary to sustain marine life. 

Some first-graders in Waukesha, Wisconsin won’t be singing “Rainbowland,” by Miley Cyrus and Dolly Parton. They were supposed to sing the song about acceptance, coming together, and loving one another in their spring concert. Why? Because school administrators concluded that the song violated the district’s new “Controversial Issues in the Classroom,” policy initiated by a new right-wing dominated school board.  

This week’s horrific mass school shooting in Nashville is being used by right-wing politicians and pundits to stoke anti-trans hate. 

New reporting by Maddie Hanna in the Philadelphia Inquirer shows that Paul Martino’s PAC, Back to School USA, is gearing up for the culture war. The PAC’s website says it will be “taking the fight directly to the liberal teachers’ union and special interest groups that are responsible for indoctrinating our children.” The Back to School USA PAC is planning on holding an April 7th fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago with right-wing founder of Project Veritas, James O’Keefe. 

Newly elected Representative Summer Lee is wasting no time in making her voice heard. Summer Lee is a co-sponsor of the newly introduced “Assault Weapons Ban of 2023.” She took to the House floor this week 

PA Senators Bob Casey and John Fetterman and OH Senator Sherrod Brown introduced the “Railway Accountability Act” that would help prevent the kind of disasters we just witnessed in East Palestine, OH. 

A coalition of more than two dozen environmental, faith, business, and healthcare groups sent a letter to Gov. Josh Shapiro this week urging him to keep Pennsylvania’s commitment to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative as part of Shapiro’s stated commitment to getting PA to net-zero emissions by 2050. 

And Temple University’s president Jason Wingard steps down after an authorization of a no-confidence vote by the Temple’s faculty union; a strike by graduate students, and the murder of Temple University Police Sgt. Christopher Fizgerald.

And, yes, the Dungeons and Dragons movie, Honor Among Thieves hits the big screen today!

You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress.

Don’t Let Paul Martino & Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community rooted PAC to invest in organizing, support local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmask the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money.  You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.