Last Call For The Road To Gilead Goes Through North Carolina, Con't

NC Republicans aren't wasting any time now that traitorous ex-Democrat Tricia Cotham's decision to join their ranks, giving them the two-thirds majority needed to override Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper's promised veto on a newly-proposed 12-week abortion ban.

 

The bill is called the “Care for Women, Children, and Families Act,” and it will likely be placed into Senate Bill 20 using a procedural move where both House and Senate Rules committees will meet to discuss the bill. The bill would then move to the floor to be discussed and voted on again. This is not a common procedure, but the move quickly sends the bill to Governor Cooper, who will likely veto it.

“This proposal erodes even further the freedom of women and their doctors to make deeply personal health care decisions,” Cooper tweeted after the press conference. “I, along with most North Carolinians are alarmed by the overreach of Republican politicians into people’s personal lives, and I strongly oppose it.”

However, in a recent poll, 57% of North Carolinians support legislation to prohibit abortions after the first trimester, with exceptions for rape, incest, and when the life of the mother is in danger.

According to Rep. Sarah Stevens, R-Surry, every Republican in the House and Senate has agreed on this bill, meaning there is enough support to override Cooper’s veto.

Stevens also mentioned there may be some Democrats willing to vote for the bill. Still reeling from Rep. Tricia Cotham’s decision to switch to Republican affiliation last month, Democrats have struggled to keep its members on the same policy page on issues like abortion that divide the Democrat caucus along moderate versus liberal progressive lines.

A member of the House informed Carolina Journal on the condition of anonymity that as many as four House Democrats are expected to back the bill.

Two Democrats, both of whom are pastors, who are most likely to vote in favor of restricting abortion, are Reps. Garland Pierce, D-Scotland, and Amos Quick, D-Guilford.

Three more Democrats who have shown they are willing to work with Republicans on other issues, and could potentially agree with them on this bill, are Reps. Shelly Willingham, D-Edgecombe, Michael Wray, D-Northampton, and Cecil Brockman, D-Guilford.

According to a press release from Senate Republicans, the bill will make the following changes to North Carolina’s abortion laws:

• Limit elective abortions in the second and third trimesters
• Establish an exception for rape and incest through 20 weeks
• Establish an exception for fetal life-limiting anomalies through 24 weeks

The bill maintains an exception to save the life of the mother through the duration of her pregnancy.

“The ‘Care for Women, Children, and Families Act’ is reasonable, commonsense legislation that will protect more lives than at any point in the last 50 years,” said Sen. Joyce Krawiec, R-Forsyth. “We are beginning the process of creating a culture that values life, and that’s something we can all be incredibly proud of.”

"Incredibly proud" that at least we're not banning abortion completely, so you bitches should be goddamn grateful to the Republican party, right?

We're enlightened troglodytes, you see, ladies.

That 12-week ban will become a six-week ban as soon as the election is over, but I guess it's a victory, yay!

Empire State Of Energy

New York is banning fossil fuels in new construction, a major step towards future decarbonization, but the MAGA trolls and the courts are going to have a field day with this, and  I give it less than 50% odds that it survives the inevitable SCOTUS challenge.

New York has become the first state in the nation to pass a law banning natural gas and other fossil fuels in most new buildings, a move that could help reshape how Americans heat and cook in their homes in the coming decades.

Late Tuesday, the New York legislature approved a $229 billion state budget that will prohibit natural gas hookups and other fossil fuels in most new homes and other construction, a major victory for climate activists. The move, which will likely face a court challenge from the fossil fuel industry, will serve as a test of states’ power to ban fossil fuels outright, rather than simply encouraging developers to build low-carbon buildings.

The law effectively requires all-electric heating and cooking in new buildings shorter than seven stories by 2026, and in 2029 for taller buildings. And although it allows exemptions for manufacturing facilities, restaurants, hospitals and even carwashes, the measure does not do what some climate activists had feared: give cities and counties license to override the ban.

Dozens of cities and counties have adopted bans on gas hookups in new buildings, part of a national movement to cut emissions from homes and businesses that account for about 11 percent of the nation’s carbon pollution and 30 percent of New York state’s greenhouse gas emissions.

As the restrictions spread across the country, they become a new front in the culture wars. Earlier this year, when a federal official suggested, and then quickly retracted, the idea that the national government might ban gas stoves, debate over the future of gas flared.

But Democrats, who control the New York Senate and Assembly, decided to press ahead, despite the partisan warfare. And, in the end, it was not negotiations over gas stoves that stirred controversy but a drawn-out fight over bail reform and housing policy that delayed approval of the budget by a month.

The law’s passage, and the approval of a measure that would require the state to build renewable energy when the private sector falls short, have fueled supporters’ hopes for New York to become a national model.

“I hear from local government and state folks frequently that they’re thinking of this sort of policy, and so I’m certain, as other policymakers look to a state that’s found a politically and technically feasible way to go about electrification, that others will be paying attention,” said Amy Turner, a senior fellow at Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.

In Massachusetts, a law adopted last year has allowed 10 cities and towns to participate in a pilot program banning gas-burning stoves and furnaces from new construction. Environmentalists are eager to see the state go further, using a new building code written to discourage the use of fossil fuels. Advocates are also eyeing Chicago, where the heavily blue city recently elected a liberal mayor.

New York’s new law “is an indication that this policy is definitely building momentum and becoming more mainstream, in particular within the Democratic Party,” said Abe Scarr, director of the Illinois Public Interest Research Group, a consumer group that’s part of a coalition trying to build support for a similar ban in Chicago.

 

So, we'll see if this works or not. I mean, eventually we're going to stop using fossil fuels because we'll either ban them, or none of us will be left to argue about it.

Lots Of Strike Through Text

The Writer's Guild of America authorized a strike Tuesday after months of fruitless negotiations with Hollywood Studios, and the immediate effect is that late night TV will be on reruns until further notice.

 

Nightly talk shows including The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel Live! and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, are set to go dark starting on Tuesday after writers agreed to strike.

Late Night with Seth Meyers and The Daily Show, which had correspondent Dulcé Sloan host this week, also will be hit. The Late Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, The Tonight Show and Late Night will officially be in re-runs now, waiting on what Comedy Central will do with The Daily Show.

Weekly shows as Saturday Night Live, Real Time with Bill Maher and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver will be similarly impacted. The two HBO shows will shut down, although a final decision on SNL is expected to come later in the week. UPDATE Monday 1:30 PM. SNL has officially canceled this week’s show, which was supposed to be hosted by Pete Davidson. Repeats of the late-night program will air until further notice.

Colbert was set to have Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Chita Rivera on Tuesday’s show, with Chris Hayes, Zach Cherry, Michael J. Fox and Shonda Rhimes lined up for later in the week. Fallon was set with Ken Jeong and Emma Chamberlain on Tuesday, with the likes of Jennifer Lopez, JJ Watt, Elle Fanning and Bowen Yang among guests for later in the week. Kimmel was welcoming Dr. Phil, Gina Rodriguez and The Pixies on Tuesday, with Melissa McCarthy, Will Poulter, Ricky Gervais, Anthony Carrigan and Smashing Pumpkins set for later in the week. The Daily Show was set to welcome authors Vashti Harrison and Jason Reynolds and former NFL All-Pro Brandon Marshall.

Seth Meyers, speaking on Late Night this afternoon, said: “I love writing. I love writing for TV. I love writing this show. I love that we get to come in with an idea for what we want to do every day and we get to work on it all afternoon and then I have the pleasure of coming out here. No one is entitled to a job in show business. But for those people who have a job, they are entitled to fair compensation. They are entitled to make a living. I think it’s a very reasonable demand that’s being set out by the guild. And I support those demands.”

Pete Davidson, whose Peacock comedy series Bupkis starts this week, was set for his SNL return on May 6. We hear that there are a number of possibilities for the Lorne Michaels-created show if there is a strike and that a decision is set to be made closer to showtime.

Speaking on The Tonight Show, Davidson joked that he was taking it personally. “It sucks because it just feeds my weird story I have in my head, like, of course that would happen to me.”

Two of the nightly hosts, Kimmel and Colbert, went through this situation in 2007-08, the latter as the host of The Colbert Report. Meyers was at Saturday Night Live during the last strike, and Oliver was on The Daily Show. Maher’s Real Time was also hit, with its season finale replaced by a rerun.

One of the issues in this year’s negotiation between the writers guild and the studios is also, in fact, surrounding late-night shows on streaming. As it stands, writers who work on “comedy variety programs made for new media,” such as Peacock’s The Amber Ruffin Show, do not qualify for MBA minimums, something the WGA has been fighting for.

Late-night showrunners have told Deadline that they will stay in touch with each other as the strike progresses to give a unified approach to the situation, something that didn’t happen in ’07-’08.

“I have been and will continue to talk to the other shows to see what they’re up to,” one showrunner said. “We’ve got to support the writers — our writers are amazing. That said, the rest of the staff is amazing, and I don’t want to see anybody lose their jobs or lose a paycheck. What’s the happy medium there? Figuring that out, it’s not been easy.”

 

We haven't really had a writers' strike in the era of pervasive social media, and this is where I think this will be a shorter strike, because the studios are getting torched on Twitter, Instagram, and yes, even Facebook. 

Oh, and you know which late night show is breaking the strike?  Gutfeld! on Fox News.

They couldn't afford WGA writers anyway, I guess. It's not like the guy is funny.