Weekly Recap: April 6th - 12th
Weekly Recap: April 6th - 12th
A recap of the big political stories affecting the United States this past week.
A portion of the United States saw an eclipse this week, including a path of totality across numerous states. While most people simply took time out of their day to enjoy the solar system's spectacle, others used it as a moment of fear-mongering and prophesying. Marjorie Taylor Greene said that the eclipse and the minor New Jersey earthquake were signs from God telling us to repent. Greene was not at all pleased when her Tweet received community notes explaining how routinely earthquakes happen and how eclipses can be predicted centuries in advance.
The House of Representatives returned to Washington this week after their latest recess. They still have not brought the Ukraine aid bill that passed the Senate to a vote, nor did they do anything to address the border that they continue to complain about.
The one significant vote this week was extending FISA 702, a rule that dictates how US intelligence services can gather intel from foreign countries and non-American citizens. Representatives were initially able to stop a simple rule vote on bringing the bill forward for a vote. Rules votes typically don’t fail, but this Republican-led Congress has failed the most rule votes within the last 50 years.
After that initial hurdle, the FISA bill was voted on, and it passed. At odds were politicians who wanted stricter guidance on requiring a warrant for any intelligence that came from a US citizen. The rhetoric around this was misleading as this law is not used to spy on Americans. If communications of a foreign entity are intercepted while communicating with an American citizen, that citizen is anonymized. If there is reason for concern about the activity of that citizen, then additional information may be shared.
Another challenge vote against FISA 702 will happen on Monday.
Here is an additional rundown of FISA 702:
https://www.intel.gov/foreign-intelligence-surveillance-act/1237-fisa-section-702
Probably the biggest story of this past week was Arizona’s Republican-controlled Supreme Court allowing a draconian abortion law from 1864 to take effect. This outlaws abortion at the moment of conception, has no exception for rape or incest and mandates prison time for anyone who performs an abortion or who helps someone to get an abortion.
Despite several other states already having abortion laws equally strict on the books since the overturning of Roe v Wade, this one received far more attention.
Part of this was due to Republicans previously championing these measures, such as the Senate candidate for Arizona, Kari Lake. Lake previously said she was thrilled that this law would take effect after the overturning of Roe v Wade and that it would chart a course for other states to follow. But as the backlash against this law quickly mounted, she changed her tune and said the law went too far and needed to be changed.
Donald Trump also said the law went too far, despite having said just the day before that he wanted to keep abortion rights in states’ hands and that their laws would be the law of the land. Trump has never condemned the other states with very similar laws.
Arizona is a swing state that Trump would likely need to win the 2024 election, which is why he is taking a different position now.
Donald Trump also failed in his attempts to delay the start of his criminal case involving the hush money payments to Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election.
Jury selection will begin on Monday, and the trial will proceed afterward.
Trump’s legal team made increasingly desperate attempts as the date drew closer to delay the case, hoping to achieve delays similar to those he has accomplished with his other criminal cases.
Polling has shown that being found guilty in any of these criminal cases would cause Trump to lose support in the November election. This case comes at a time when Trump is already falling behind in national polls.
Israel bombed an Iranian consulate building in Syria this week, killing 14 Iranians, including two top Iranian military officials.
Iran was quick to declare it would retaliate. The United States urged Iran not to strike back and warned that any strike on US service members would not go unpunished.
As of this writing, reports have come out that Iran has just launched a wave of drones headed to Israel to make their attack. We will not find out the full extent of the assault or the result of that attack for another couple of hours.
This marks an escalation from both Israel and Iran in their ongoing conflicts. In the past, Israel had avoided direct attacks and instead worked to intercept arms shipments from Iran to their proxies, such as Hezbollah, and Iran used their proxies, including the Houthi rebels, to create attacks against their enemies.