By Morf Morford, Tacoma Daily Index
When it comes to memorable events, for whatever reason, April never fails to exceed the wildest expectations.
From weather to politics to international affairs, April delivered news unlike any we have seen before.
Unprecedented president
Former President Donald Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to the alleged use of campaign funds as hush money payments in 2016.
The center of these charges is, of course, Stormy Daniels, but $150K went to a second woman. The indictment also noted a $30K payment from an intermediary to a Trump Tower door attendant who claimed to have a story about a child Trump had out of wedlock.
Prosecutors will attempt to prove Trump is guilty of maintaining false business records with the intent to hide the hush money payments as a strategy to influence the 2016 presidential campaign.
Finland
Finland formally became the 31st member of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), the world’s largest military alliance, ending the military nonalignment it has maintained since 1945.
Finland has more than an 800 mile border with Russia, and this move is seen as a blow to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who cited NATO’s expansion as his inspiration for invading Ukraine.
A key NATO defense principle maintains that all allies must respond if one ally is attacked.
More mass shootings
The year has already brought us more mass shootings (defined as more than four people in any single shooting incident) across the country than days of the year.
By April 10, we had fifteen mass shootings across the country just in that month.
Many of these shootings involved children. And several were responses to trivial events.
Besides being a continuing tragedy, these killings are a peculiarly American puzzle. Few, if any, other nations have a murder rate anywhere near ours.
For whatever reason, this is who we are, and to some degree at least, this seems to be acceptable for many of us.
These events impact every area of our culture and economy. From schools to public venues to streets and work places, no place is a refuge from the possibility of a random shooting. This impacts tourism, business and public gatherings of all kinds.
Guns are the leading cause of death in America for all children under 18.
For some reason our politicians and law enforcement have no coherent response.
Maybe one day we will understand it. But for now, we treat the possibility of being murdered by our fellow citizens, often for no reason whatsoever, as something like a natural inevitability.
Worst intelligence leak in decades
Multiple classified documents made their way to several social media formats in April (and before). These included many documents labeled top secret – not to be shared with our closest allies. Some documents were altered and show details on Russia, Ukraine and China among many others.
The culprit was a 21 year old member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard who posted classified military intelligence data in a chat room for online gamers. He apparently had no political agenda – other than attempting to impress his fellow gamers.
BuzzFeed News is dead
In yet another example of the upheaval in the media/news/journalism industry, upstart social media based news company BuzzFeed News is folding. The Pulitzer Prize winning news service, which began in 2012, was caught in a maze of corporate restructuring, reverse mergers and increasing market uncertainties.
Is the Supreme Court above the law?
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas came under heavy scrutiny after a report revealed that he had taken several luxury vacations over the past two decades financed by billionaire Republican mega-donor Harlan Crow – which were never disclosed on financial disclosure forms. The lavish trips included flights on Crow’s private jets and cruises on his “super yacht,” one of which would have cost Thomas and his wife, over $500,000.
Thomas stopped reporting his received gifts in 2004 after the Los Angeles Times reported on the tens of thousands of dollars worth of gifts he had accepted over the previous six years, much of which also came from Crow.
Any other government official, from president to city council member, would have been censured or even removed for such gifting.
There was a time when Supreme Court Justices held themselves above suspicion. That time is clearly gone.
China and India
Based on projection by demographic analysts, India’s population surpassed China’s for the first time in April of 2023. Due to government policies (in both countries) this trend is expected to continue and the difference in population will only get greater.
NASA reveals 3D-printed Mars habitat where 4 people will live for a year
NASA showed a group of reporters a 3D-printed Martian habitat at Johnson Space Center to study how people will respond to life on Mars, as early as the 2030s. Four volunteers with science backgrounds will live in the CHAPEA (Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog) habitat for a year, starting in June.
The volunteers will conduct the kinds of missions they would face on Mars, like growing leafy greens, simulated spacewalks, personal hygiene, and robotics operations. They will be allowed to communicate with their loved ones on earth, but on a delay, as would happen if they were actually on Mars.
This is not an entirely new experiment. In the early 1990s, a similar program was attempted. You can see how that went here.
Fox News Settlement
Dominion Voting Systems’ anticipated $1.6 billion defamation trial against Fox News ended with a settlement of $787.5 million. Fox News was not required to apologize or admit wrongdoing. They did release a short statement agreeing that “the court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false”. And “This settlement reflects Fox’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards”.
This is one of the largest defamation settlements in US history, but not the last for Fox News. Several other defamation lawsuits are in the works after Fox News promoted months of baseless election fraud speculations and accusations after the 2020 election.
Big shake-ups in cable news
The defamation lawsuit against Fox News wasn’t the only news story to roil that network. Fox News announced that the network and its star prime time host Tucker Carlson “have agreed to part ways,” after more than a decade.
That same day CNN announced that Don Lemon had been let go.
For a variety of reasons, from lawsuits to on-air gaffs, viewership in prime time last year fell around 14% collectively across the three main cable networks — Fox, CNN and MSNBC.
Airing extremist views might be good for rousing viewer passions, but it’s bad for advertising revenues – and the vast majority of potential viewers that might prefer a bit more substance and rationality in their news feeds.
Big Birthdays
In April 1983 The Tacoma Dome opened as the city’s largest entertainment venue. After a few updates, it has become a destination site for some of the most well-known entertainers in the world – and, of course, many of us.
Ten years later, in April of 1993, a new development, known as the World Wide Web, was released into the public domain. The “Net” as some called it, was slow, unstable and complicated. It took a few years for search engines to emerge. A pioneer search engine, Netscape Navigator, came out in 1994. Google was founded in 1998. AOL (and others) came and went since then.
In spite of clumsy beginnings, by the end of 1995, more than 24 million people in the U.S. and Canada spent an average of 5 hours per week on the internet.
A generation later, most of us could not imagine life without the internet.
Second largest bank failure in US history
The FDIC seized First Republic Bank, and JP Morgan Chase is buying most of its deposits and assets. It’s the third U.S. bank failure so far this year, after Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. Nothing to see here.
Weather
April, being the first full month of spring, is noted for its erratic weather. Nationwide the USA saw heat waves and snow storms, tornadoes and flooding in areas that had been experiencing long-term droughts.
We in the Pacific Northwest, for most of the month, had temperatures 10-15 lower than usual. And then, for two days, had temperatures 10-15 degrees above average.
May tends to be mild, while June brings its almost predictable “June gloom”. We shall see.
