Evening Wrap

U.S. House Republicans on Tuesday impeached Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas by a single vote, obliterating yet another political precedent in service of partisan posturing that solves nothing and helps no one other than Donald Trump. Three Republicans joined Democrats in opposing the measure, which marks the first-ever impeachment of a sitting cabinet secretary, our D.C. bureau reported.

Last week, Oregon state Sen. Lew Frederick introduced a seemingly innocuous bill: A proposal to prevent school districts from banning textbooks or library materials solely because they depict people of color, the LGBTQ+ community, individuals with disabilities or any other group protected from discrimination. The bill does not change the procurement process for reading materials or restrict parents’ ability to monitor what their children read; it also offers no punitive measures for violations, most of which are already covered under existing state law. Mostly, it just acknowledges a host of books that already sit on library shelves in schools across the state, Frederick said.

Typically, the stumbles are rooted in good intentions. Since the end of December, college students across the country have struggled to access federal financial aid forms as the U.S. Department of Education enacts changes designed, somewhat ironically, to simplify the process and expand eligibility. The glitches have affected every part of the aid process, forcing colleges to delay submission deadlines and making it impossible for millions of students to apply for funds at all.

Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan on Friday launched a last-minute bid for the United States Senate, an unexpected about-face that follows years of denying any interest in serving in the United States Senate, Maryland Matters reported. In a video posted online hours before the filing deadline, Hogan seemed more resigned than enthusiastic about the prospect, casting himself as part of “the exhausted majority of Marylanders” fed up with “the toxic politics that divide our nation.”

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday officially joined our collective nightmare, hearing arguments in a case that could upend American politics by determining whether Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election should disqualify him from appearing on the ballot in 2024, Colorado Newsline reported. 

We may as well start with the most substantive bill of the bunch — a Virginia proposal that would require school boards to send annual safe storage reminders to parents who own guns. The proposal, approved Tuesday by the Senate, is one of several measures aimed at curbing gun violence, a renewed interest for Democrats after a 2023 shooting at an elementary school in Newport News, where a 6-year-old shot his teacher using a firearm from home, per the Virginia Mercury.

I used to play The Sims, a video game where you create little people and build them little houses and then tend to the boring details of their daily existence in hopes of climbing the corporate ladder* so you can achieve your dreams of building bigger homes and filling them with better stuff. (Basically it is American capitalism, but slightly more fun, and also proof that we exist in a simulation.) My Sims had some amount of free will, but ultimately I had all the power, which I mostly used to force them to exercise, play chess and extinguish the fires they periodically set all over their homes.

A federal appeals court on Tuesday ruled that Donald Trump can be prosecuted for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, sharply rejecting his claims of absolute immunity and moving the case one step closer to a jury trial, our D.C. bureau reported. 

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators on Sunday released the much-anticipated text of a $118 billion bill that would tie critical foreign aid to a massive overhaul of the country’s immigration system, our D.C. bureau reported. The 370-page package is likely to face a vote in the Senate this week despite mounting opposition in the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) declared it “dead on arrival.”

I’ll begin with a very normal story out of Alaska, where a proposed bill would require school districts to train volunteers to serve as armed guards. Schools would be exempted only if no one agrees to assume the role of unpaid sentry, or if no one is “able” to do it, per the Alaska Beacon.

Horrified to learn that corporal punishment is still a thing in Florida schools, lawmakers on Wednesday advanced a bill that would continue the practice — but only if a child’s parent approves, per the Florida Phoenix.

Two weeks ago, we talked about an increasingly common health care scenario: A private equity firm swoops in to purchase a hospital chain, saddles it with debt, uses the proceeds to pay off already wealthy investors and then sells off the properties, leaving communities to deal with the fallout. As their stake in American health care grows, equity firms have found themselves in the crosshairs of legislative debate and public outrage. Most of that negative attention has focused on hospitals and nursing homes — but that’s not the full story, Stateline reported.