Good afternoon, America's long national nightmare is finally over. Baseball is back! President Joe Biden's $2 trillion infrastructure bill is meeting a cool reception among Republicans in Congress, spurring lots of hand-wringing about the sad state of bipartisanship if people can't even cross the aisle for infrastructure, which everyone loves! But Politico's Michael Grunwald notes that America's geographic polarization, in which Democrats increasingly live in urban areas and Republicans in rural and exurban areas, means "Democrats and Republicans now have very different ideas of what counts as infrastructure." It's not just a fight over the spoils of government, either — because living in cities tends to make people more Democratic, infrastructure to make cities more livable might end up leading to more Democrats; similarly infrastructure to make rural areas more livable could make more Republicans. [Read more] A group of Democratic lawmakers held a news conference yesterday to condemn anti-Asian hate crimes and call for new legislation on the topic. "It's important to underscore just how much our communities are living in terror," Rep. Ilhan Omar said, per MPR News' Mark Zdechlik. The 2016 protests on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation against the Dakota Access pipeline transfixed the nation. MPR's Dan Gunderson spoke to participants five years later about how the protests changed the lives of participants. [Read more] Florida U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz is under federal investigation for alleged sex trafficking, and the story of how he ended up on the Justice Department's radar is wild. It starts with a friend of Gaetz's named Joel Greenberg, who was elected to the office of Seminole County Tax Collector in 2016. In that office, charges allege, Greenberg gave public contracts to his friends, started and ran a private blockchain company out of the Tax Collector's office, used government funds to buy Bitcoin, tried to use his office to get out of a speeding ticket and stalked a political opponent by accusing them of rape and white supremacy via fake social media accounts. Most seriously, he's accused of using his official access to the Florida Driver and Vehicle Information Database to look up information on underage victims and use it as part of alleged sex trafficking. (Greenberg denies the charges.) It was this sex trafficking investigation that ended up looping in Gaetz as a subject. [Read more from the Orlando Sentinel's David Harris] President Biden is pondering major changes to the U.S.'s asylum process, amid escalating attention to migrants arriving at the southern border. [Read more from NPR News' Franco Ordoñez] U.S. House candidate Rita Hart has officially conceded after losing by just six votes. Hart, a Democrat, had considered asking the House of Representatives to overturn the election and seat her instead. But with many Democrats (including Minnesota's Dean Phillips) balking, backed out instead, leaving Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks in the seat. [ Read more from NPR News' Barbara Sprunt] Dive deeper: Congress used to regularly intervene in disputed elections, dating all the way back to the 1st Congress. During the Gilded Age, up to 5 percent of all House seats ended up being overturned by a vote of the House. But since 1922, there have only been five instances of the House overturning an election. [Read more from FiveThirtyEight's Geoffrey Skelley] Today is April Fools Day, the annual hoaxing holiday that some curmudgeons are criticizing with increasing vehemence. Not me, though. I love a good hoax. Here are some notable political-themed hoaxes, most of which were helpfully collected by the Museum of Hoaxes:
Something completely different: Cat playing piano. [Read more from Vice's Matthew Gault] Listen: You all are probably familiar with the Broadway smash "Hamilton." And of course most of you have seen that noteworthy cinematic triumph, 1996's "Space Jam." But on this special day, you can encounter 'Slamilton," a 48-minute mashup of the "Hamilton" and "Space Jam" soundtracks that's quite well done! [Listen]
