Welcome to Battlegrounds Watch, a new column available on our Substack and at BreakingBattlegrounds.vote we hope will become a daily feature on weekdays. Simply put, Battlegrounds Watch is a collection of stories and topics in today’s news Chuck & Sam are tuning in to.
WaPo: He came to D.C. as a Brazilian student. The U.S. says he was a Russian spy
Sometimes, in between policing stuff they don’t like on Twitter, US intelligence agencies do the job they’re actually paid to do…
“His real name is Sergey Cherkasov and he had spent nearly a decade building the fictitious Ferreira persona, according to officials and court records. His “team” was a tight circle of Russian handlers suddenly poised to have a deep-cover spy in the U.S. capital, positioned to forge connections in every corner of the American security establishment, from the State Department to the CIA.”
USA FACTS: How much emissions to electric cars produce?
The European Union recently rolled back it’s mandate that all vehicles sold in Europe after 2035 be electric. The rise of EVs may take longer than policy-makers think, but it’s still happening. So exactly how much more environmentally friendly are EV’s vs. gas-powered vehicles?
“Gas-powered cars produce almost three times as many pounds of well-to-wheel emissions as all-electric vehicles. But all-electric vehicles still produce 3,932 pounds[1] of emissions in an average year. Emissions from plug-in hybrid and hybrid vehicles (which use both gasoline and electricity) produce about 2,000 pounds more in emissions than all-electric vehicles.”
AP: Poll: Cut federal spending — but not big-ticket programs
Polling shows Americans citizens know Washington needs to cut spending, but are every bit as unwilling as our elected officials to make tough choices.
“Six in 10 U.S. adults say the government spends too much money. But majorities also favor more funding for infrastructure, health care and Social Security — the kind of commitments that would make efforts to shrink the government unworkable and politically risky ahead of the 2024 elections.”
NYT: European nations urge Big Tech to block false news aimed at eroding support for Ukraine.
Government officials around the world continuing their love affair big tech censorship, Twitter Files be damned. First it was Covid, then elections, now Ukraine…
“Amid growing worries about the insidious effects of disinformation from Russia, the prime ministers of eight European countries — including Ukraine, Moldova and Poland — have signed an open letter asking the chief executives of major social media companies to take more aggressive steps to halt the spread of false news on their platforms.”
NEWS 4 JAX: DeSantis signs bill aimed at addressing affordable housing crisis in FL
Florida governor & legislature take significant steps to incentivize affordable housing construction and reduce costs for builders, Democrats object because it also bars rent control schemes that sound good but reliably backfire and limit investment in new housing.
“The “Live Local Act” will provide incentives for private investment in affordable housing and encourage mixed-use development in struggling commercial areas, while barring local rent controls and pre-empting local government rules on zoning, density and building heights in certain circumstances.”
CITY JOURNAL: Straight talk about bail reform
Bail reform has been a boon to career criminals, while devastating hard-working families and local retailers. Democrats still won’t give it up, but they need to.
“Without amendments to three flawed “reform” bills relating to discovery compliance, parole, and teen crime, New Yorkers’ prospects for regaining public order and safety face tough odds. Governor Kathy Hochul is aware that crime is voters’ top priority, but she is putting all her political capital behind a single, minimal change to the 2019 bail law. Hochul has asked the state legislature to remove the mandate that, as a standard for pretrial release, judges impose only the “least restrictive” conditions that “reasonably assure” defendants’ return to court.”
WSJ: Musk, AI experts call for pause in technology’s development
Artificial Intelligence will change the world, and the world isn’t ready for it. Setting up guardrails is essential, but will take time.
“A moratorium of six months or more would give the industry time to set safety standards for AI design and head off potential harms of the riskiest AI technologies, the proponents of a pause said.
“We’ve reached the point where these systems are smart enough that they can be used in ways that are dangerous for society,” Mr. Bengio, director of the University of Montreal’s Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms, said in an interview. “And we don’t yet understand.”
And a bit of fun for the baseball and history buffs out there…
CBS SPORTS: Old Yankee Stadium's rise and fall: The complete story of 'The House that Ruth Built' 100 years after opening
“On April 18, 1923, it was a brisk 49 degrees in New York City, a spring in name only. The wind whipped up dust from the dirt roads and vacant lots abutting the ballpark that now rose from the planed-out soil of city plot 2106, lot 100. Those same winds whirled the eight-foot copper baseball bat that served as a weathervane from atop the in-play flagpole in center field. There had been a farm there, granted to John Lion Gardiner just prior to the Revolutionary War, and then a sawmill, and the surrounding sweeps of land seemed more suited to just that – an old farm or sawmill – rather than what now scraped the sky.”
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