Friday Politics Roundup | House GOP goes after the poor and climate; gun violence; Rutgers strike; Lower Merion restricts guns; satellite crashes; Starship goes boom

GOP House Leader Kevin McCarthy announced his party’s demands in the latest round of public hostage-taking around the nation’s debt ceiling. McCarthy and House republicans are calling for massive cuts to social programs, the elimination of the student-loan debt forgiveness plan, new work requirements for welfare recipients, cuts funds for improving the IRS, repeals green energy programs and incentives, and takes back any unspent COVID funds. 

It seems that flooding our communities with guns and stoking fear, hate, and misinformation on conservative media is producing a new form of gun violence. This week, several young people were shot - and some killed - as they accidentally knocked on the wrong door or mistakenly got into the wrong car. This is the culture of vigilantism that conservatives funded by the NRA and the gun industry have been grooming us for. 

In Liberty, MO, Ralph Yarl, a 16 year old African American kid, who was going to pick up his sister, but knocked on the wrong door. He was nearly killed.

In Fort Edward, NY, Kaylin Gillis, a 20 year old white woman, was looking for a friend’s house and mistakenly drove up the wrong driveway. She was shot and killed.

In Elgin, Texas, Two competitive cheerleaders, Heather Roth and Payton Washington, were shot after mistakenly getting into the wrong car. Roth suffered a grazing wound while Washington was sent to a hospital in critical condition. 

According to new reporting in Politico, the Rutgers University faculty unions are considering getting back on the picket lines because the administration is dragging its feet in finalizing their “framework deal” that led the unions to suspend their historic weeklong strike. It was the first strike by faculty in Rutgers’s 257 year history. 

The strike won historic victories on wages and job security for adjunct faculty. At the same time, graduate student workers and workers at Rutgers Biomedical Health were still expressing concerns about the deal as several key issues about their working conditions remained to be hammered out. 

After a gun store opened up near several schools in Lower Merion, PA, the township’s board of commissioners unanimously passed a new ordinance that limits where guns can be sold in the township. Starting immediately, firearms businesses can no longer operate within 1,000 feet of public schools, they cannot operate out of homes, can only operate in commercially zoned areas, and they must follow new safety regulations. Commissioner Dan Bernheim said if the new ordinance “moves the needle ever so slightly…that’s the right thing to do.”

On Wednesday night an old, 660 pound satellite came crashing down to Earth in a part of the Sahara desert, near the Sudan-Egypt border. 

And SpaceX’s first test flight of its massive Starship rocket exploded a few minutes after launch.