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New data continue to demonstrate the strength of the U.S. labor market and the nation’s continued economic recovery under the stewardship of President Joe Biden.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released a report Friday showing that March unemployment rates had dropped in 37 states while remaining stable in the other 13 states and the District of Columbia. Compared to March 2021, “all 50 states and the District had jobless rate decreases,” noted the report.

The national rate, 3.6%, declined slightly from the month previous but was fully 2.4 points lower than in March 2021. Fifteen states also logged unemployment rates lower than the national rate of 3.6%.

In addition, 12 states hit record-low rates. Among those all-time lows, Nebraska and Utah logged the lowest rates in the country at 2% each. Very close behind were Indiana at 2.2% and Montana at 2.3%. The other states hitting all-time lows included: Alaska (5.0%), Arizona (3.3%), Georgia (3.1%), Idaho (2.7%), Mississippi(4.2%), Tennessee (3.2%), West Virginia (3.7%), and Wisconsin (2.8%).

Relative to last year, Nevada has seen the largest drop (-4.2%) in its unemployment rate to 5.0%.

The news sparked a round of local headlines across the country, some of them in important midterm swing states:

• Wisconsin Public Radio: Wisconsin unemployment rate hit record low in March
• Fox 5 Atlanta: Georgia unemployment rate falls to new all-time low
• Arizona Public Radio KJZZ: Report shows low Arizona unemployment rate in March
• CBS Miami: Report: Florida Workers Shifting To Higher-Paying Jobs As Unemployment Rate Dips To 3.2 Percent In March
• CarsonNow: Nevada adds jobs in March; Reno employment at new all-time high

Governors in many states were quick to take credit for their booming economies, but, by and large, this was a Biden recovery fueled in no small part by the American Rescue Plan that every single Republican in Congress voted against.

“Americans are getting back to work in every corner of the country in record numbers. Right now, 17 states are at or tied with the lowest unemployment rate they’ve ever had—and 20 states have jobless rates below 3%,” read a White House statement from the president. “This wasn’t an accident: this was the direct result of my economic plan to grow the economy from the bottom up and middle out.”

That the U.S. economy is running hotter than virtually every other economy in the world might be finally starting to sink in with Americans. On Thursday, a report from the University of Michigan showed that U.S. consumer sentiment had begun to rebound for the first time since December. In fact, the consumer sentiment index made the biggest one-month jump since 2006.

The following graph provides a sense of just how quickly the U.S. economy is recovering under President Biden compared to other recent recoveries.

Skanda Amarnath, executive director of Employ America, defined “generationally disastrous” in a follow-up tweet as, “Taking over a decade to see a recovery from a recession seems pretty bad (2010s). Not completing the recovery is even worse (2000s).”

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The Texas Civil Rights Project (TCRP) and Southern Coalition for Social Justice on Thursday filed a lawsuit against Galveston County over its apparent “intentional racial discrimination” when proposing and adopting its redistricting map. The suit comes just three weeks after the Department of Justice filed a similar lawsuit against Galveston County in which the agency claims “the 2021 redistricting plan for the county’s governing body violates Section 2 because it has the discriminatory result of denying Black and Hispanic citizens an equal opportunity to participate in the political process and because the new map was adopted, in part with a discriminatory purpose.” Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which explicitly bars discriminatory voting practices based on race, is similarly cited in the TCRP lawsuit.

TCRP attorney Sarah Chen, who is a Skadden Fellow with the organization, detailed the shadowy proceedings that brought forth the redistricting map itself. “In our monitoring, we saw that Galveston County, unlike many others in Texas, had not released public information about the timeline they were going to redistrict, their redistricting criteria, any public meetings that would be scheduled,” Chen told Daily Kos. “There was no public hearing set until the very last day before Texas counties were supposed to adopt their redistricting maps, the day before candidate filing deadline for 2022 elections’ primaries. Filing opened on Nov. 13th, while the hearing was held on the 12th. It was announced just 72 hours before, as is legally required, but held in smaller building than was typical.”

Despite its small venue size and hastily announced date and time, hundreds of people attended the meeting and dozens made their voices heard. They made it apparent that they were unhappy with the direction the majority-white commissioners were heading with their proposed redistricting maps, one of which would carve away at the only opportunity district in the county, thereby threatening Commissioner Stephen Holmes’—the only Black Democrat on the commissioners court—seat. Another map would effectively eliminate Holmes’ district altogether. Despite the citizens’ protest, the map that consolidated the precinct was adopted by a vote of 3-1, with Holmes being the only dissenting vote.

“Even though Galveston County is 45% minority, every single member of the Galveston County Commissioners Court, under the new map, is going to be Anglo,” Holmes said at the time. “Minorities would not be represented by, or have the opportunity to elect, the candidate of their choice.”

Galveston County has a troubling history of putting forth redistricting maps that don’t adequately represent marginalized voters. Back before the Supreme Court struck down a pre-clearance measure in 2013, areas like Galveston were required to have Justice Department approval of proposed voting practices prior to them taking effect to ensure that, say, redistricting did not eliminate opportunity districts. As CNN notes, just one decade ago the Justice Department used that pre-clearance measure to strike down a redistricting map that disenfranchised marginalized voters in Galveston County. Just one year after the SCOTUS case was decided, Galveston County again tried its hand at adopting an inadequate redistricting map.

Chen said that, while Galveston County represents one of the more overt cases of voting rights violations, “this is absolutely an example of what we’re seeing across Texas and other parts of the country where people in power are using it to consolidate more power and to disempower people who have historically been disenfranchised.” TCRP and Chen’s team are hard at work fighting many other measures enacted in Texas that would make it harder for voters’ voices to be heard, including SB1, which led to the invalidation of record numbers of ballots during the state’s recent primary. A trial over that law is set to begin in July.

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The last time we checked in on Donald Trump’s endorsement of celebrity healther Dr. Mehmet Oz for Pennsylvania’s open Senate seat, right-wingers from Roger Stone to former OANN anchors were blasting the move. Even Trump’s first pick in the state who was forced to bow out, alleged domestic abuser Sean Parnell, said the endorsement was “the antithesis of everything that made Trump the best president of my lifetime.”

Now Trumpworld is rushing to contain the fallout among his base, according to Politico. A bunch of Trump surrogates plan to hit the campaign trail—a show of force intended to reinforce “the depth of his MAGA backing.” Ben Carson, former brain surgeon and one-time Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development under Trump, will be one of them.

But even Fox News is a house divided on the topic, a perfect reflection of how the Oz endorsement has confounded pro-Trumpers.

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On Monday, Sean Hannity featured Oz as a guest so the candidate could talk up his conservative cred. Hannity was reportedly one of the main people pulling for the Oz endorsement. But if one thing has come to light through Trump’s pretty horrendous string of 2022 endorsements, it’s that Trump toadies like Hannity haven’t exactly given him the soundest advice.

On the show, Hannity proceeded to give Oz his personal seal of approval, claiming that the feedback he had gotten on Trump’s backing was “99% supportive.”

“When I supported Donald Trump pretty early, I got the crap beaten out of me—Glenn Beck, Ben Shapiro,” Hannity recalled of 2016, “and I promised people he’d govern as a conservative, and he did. And I’m saying the same thing about you.”

But not all Fox hosts agree. Laura Ingraham followed Hannity’s segment with one in which she interviewed Kellyanne Conway, who’s now working with a Super PAC that supports Oz’s No. 1 rival, businessman David McCormick.

“Kellyanne, do you think the Trump endorsement of Oz was a mistake?” Ingraham asked, before quickly adding, “You wouldn’t answer the question of whether it was a mistake. I think it was a mistake for Trump to endorse Oz. I’ll say it; I’m not afraid to say it.”

Parnell, who also backs McCormick, told Politico that his phone has been “ringing off the hook from committee chairs in Pennsylvania saying, ‘What the heck is going on? What was President Trump thinking?’”

The chaos that has erupted among Trump acolytes both within and outside the state has some Pennsylvania Republicans worried.

Oz backer Gloria “Lee” Snover, chair of the Northampton Republican Party, said of the criticism, “Unless you’re really wanting to damage us in the general, I don’t know why you’re continuing this. … Okay, it happened. It’s done. You’re going to continue to trash the Republican Party? Please stop.”

The primary takes place on May 17. Oz and McCormick have been duking it out for first on the Republican side, where McCormick has held a slight but consistent edge and was also gunning for Trump’s blessing. But recent polling has also suggested a sizable chunk of Keystone State Republicans remained undecided prior to Trump weighing in.

McCormick has lined up some prominent backers of his own, such as Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who has campaigned with McCormick.

But Trump, the thinnest skinned of them all, hasn’t yet announced a visit to the state to rally behind Oz. Instead, he seems content to let the candidate dangle in the wind for a bit to see how he fares.

Of course, Trump could have simply waited out the primary after his first endorsee in the state went down in flames. Instead, he muddled the race by choosing the less popular candidate—a fellow TV huckster with dodgy political chops.

Welcome to Trump’s club, Pennsylvania.

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Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee spent the whole of the Kentanji Brown Jackson confirmation hearings playing law professor. Just look at the filibusters he subjected her to on both days of her hearings.

Lee, who lectured Jackson on Alexander Hamilton, Federalist 58, and the separation of powers (“Congress is accountable to the people at regular intervals,” he mansplained to her) seemed to take a very different view of the separation of powers, the sanctity of the Constitution, and the vote after the 2020 election. According to text messages sent to Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and seen by CNN, Lee was spending his all his time trying to overturn the will of the voters to keep and toss the election.

It’s not an exaggeration to say he was spending all his time on this: Beginning from Nov. 7, the day after Joe Biden was declared the winner, he texted Meadows a statement signed by a bunch of conservative group leaders to urge Trump to “exhaust every legal and constitutional remedy” in challenging the results. In multiple texts that day, he volunteered his “unequivocal support for you to exhaust every legal and constitutional remedy at your disposal to restore Americans faith in our elections.”

RELATED STORY: New texts expose pro-Trump lawmakers’ push to overturn election before ‘sh*tshow’ at Capitol

Apparently Lee—Sen. Constitutional Law Professor—is also Mr. Gullible, because his steady diet of Breitbart News, the Washington Examiner, and Byron York had him supposedly convinced of fraud! “This fight is about the fundamental fairness and integrity of our election system,” he told Meadows. “The nation is depending upon your continued resolve. Stay strong and keep fighting Mr. President.”

Lee was also a big Sidney Powell booster, having arranged a meeting for her to brief Republican senators early on—Nov. 9—and urging Meadows to get her on board. “You have in us a group of ready and loyal advocates who will go to bat for him, but I fear this could prove short-lived unless you hire the right legal team and set them loose immediately,” Lee wrote to Meadows while pushing Powell. “I’ve found her to be a straight shooter,” he said.

At least until Nov. 19 and that press conference—the Rudy Giuliani melting one where Powell, Giuliani, and Jenna Ellis went all conspiracy theory about voter fraud and Dominion and shit. “I’m worried about the Powell press conference,” Lee texted Meadows. “The potential defamation liability for the president is significant here,” he said. Which might be the one redeeming bit for Lee’s intellect in this text dump. “Unless Powell can immediately substantiate what she said today, the president should probably disassociate himself and refute any claims that can’t be substantiated,” he advised. And look what happened.

From November through Jan. 6, this is what Lee was doing: trying to overturn the election. He said so himself! On Jan. 4, 2021, Lee texted Meadows, hurt that Trump lashed out at him for not being sufficiently committed to overthrowing the election. “I’ve been spending 14 hours a day for the last week trying to unravel this for him,” Lee whined. He went on: “I’ve been calling state legislators for hours today, and am going to spend hours doing the same tomorrow.”

“We need something from state legislatures to make this legitimate and to have any hope of winning. Even if they can’t convene, it might be enough if a majority of them are willing to sign a statement indicating how they would vote.” Lee was all in on having the states overturn the election. On Nov. 23, 2020, he was insisting that “Something is not right in a few states,” pushing for recounts “in PA, WI, GA, and MI.” On Dec. 8, he texted: “If a very small handful of states were to have their legislatures appoint alternative slates of delegates, there could be a path.”

On Jan. 3, he was still at it: “Everything changes, of course, if the swing states submit competing slates of electors pursuant to state law.” Here he was lamenting his “grave concerns with the way my friend Ted is going about this effort,” presumably speaking about Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, adding if the states didn’t come up with competing elections, “this could help people like Ted and Josh to the detriment of DJT.” Add in Sen. Josh Hawley to people on his shit list.

Here’s what he was thinking there: not 2020 and relitigating that one, but 2024. “I don’t think the president is grasping the distinction between what we can do and what he would like us to do,” as in object to the count as Cruz and Hawley were planning. “Nor do I think he’s grasping the distinction between what certain members are saying that sound like they could help him, but would really hurt him. He’s got a very real opportunity for a win in 2024. That opportunity could be harmed in multiple ways this effort.”

Lee is arguing that would be fine for partisan state legislatures to decide that they were going to ignore the results of the election, throw out the vote, and appoint electors that would vote for Trump. That was his “Constitutional” argument. “I know only that this will end badly for the president unless we have the Constitution on our side,” he texted in the lecture delivered to Meadows on Jan. 3. “And unless these states submit new slates of Trump electors pursuant to state law, we do not.”

That’s Lee’s judicial philosophy and interpretation of the Constitution. If you want to steal an election, it’s legal if you have the states do it. To be clear, Lee was involved, deeply involved, in the plot for Trump to steal the election. Beyond that, Lee wanted to make sure that Trump wasn’t closing off his opportunity to run again and win in 2024. Even as Trump was trying to steal this election.

Mike Lee—not to mention Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley—has no business being on the Senate Judiciary Committee. He has no business determining who is qualified to serve on the federal judiciary. He has no business being in the Senate, come to that, but his months-long collusion with the White House disqualifies him from ever, ever questioning any nominee again.

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From targeting teachers who include lessons about American history, which keeps being erroneously labeled “critical race theory,” to banning books, GOP supporters have no limits. In the most recent incident of conservatives meddling in youth education, a children’s book author was forbidden from reading his book at an Ohio school.

Author Jason Tharp was banned from reading his book “It’s Okay to Be a Unicorn!” to students at an elementary school in the Buckeye Valley Local School District after the principal called with concerns that the book would “recruit” students “to become gay.”

“I just straight up asked him, ‘Does somebody think I made a gay book?’ ” Tharp told The Washington Post. “And he said, ‘Yes. … The concern is that you’re coming with an agenda to recruit kids to become gay.’ ”

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In an interview with WBNS, Jeremy Froehlich, the interim superintendent said the concern arose from one parent who visited his office on April 6. “They just wanted to make sure that we vetted the book and our staff thought that they had vetted it,” he said.

Tharp’s book was written in 2017 for children who felt like they needed to be seen. He told the Post he developed the unicorn character to remind his readers that it’s okay to be different.

“I sat down and tried to figure out what kind of character would be nonthreatening, that they will be instantly lovable, and I would be able to kind of get them … to be invested in the story,” Tharp said in an interview with The Washington Post. “I was like, ‘Kids like unicorns.’”

According to Tharp, the main message behind Tharp’s series of children’s books is pushing self-confidence, boosting self-esteem, and speaking out against bullying.

But of course, for some, a book featuring a blue and purple unicorn underneath a rainbow was too controversial.

However instead of arguing, Tharp respected the school official’s wishes and offered another book to read, “It’s Okay to Smell Good!” This book about a skunk seemed more fit, especially since it had no rainbows. Yet moments after his call with the principal, he received an email noting that higher-ups did not want him reading any books at all. Instead, he was asked to present without any reference to a book.

While the school district was against the book though, several parents were angry with the superintendent’s decision. An emergency school board meeting was held on April 8 to address the issue, during which multiple community members expressed their disappointment over the book being forbidden.

“It’s a rainbow. The fact that we had to take all of the students’ artwork down—it was gut-wrenching, and we couldn’t even believe we were in that position to do so, but we did what we were told,” Kaylan Brazelton, a parent and educator at the elementary school, said at the meeting.

This isn’t the first time assumptions about books have negatively impacted people’s careers. Last month, an assistant principal at a Mississippi elementary school was fired after reading the children’s book “I Need a New Butt!” to second-graders. The book was deemed inappropriate by the superintendent.

According to WSYX, the nationwide book bans have become more popular following the passage of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill. The outlet reported that at least two Ohio lawmakers introduced similar legislation this week that would bar discussions mentioning sexual orientation and gender identity in some school grades.

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As of October, the U.S. Supreme Court will have the first Black woman justice in Ketanji Brown Jackson. That is a huge achievement on her part, first and foremost, but also on the part of President Joe Biden in nominating her and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in quickly and efficiently pushing her nomination through. From Day One, Biden prioritized saving the judiciary from Republicans with the appointment of the most diverse slate of new judges ever at an unprecedented pace.

That’s not going to stop before the midterms, says Schumer. “We are going to keep at it,” he told The New York Times. “Keep putting judges on the bench who are diverse, as we have done in the last year, both demographically but professionally.” As of now, they’ve achieved 59 judicial appointments: one to the Supreme Court, 15 to appeals courts, and 43 to district courts. That’s a record, but with a Supreme Court packed by Trump and Sen. Mitch McConnell, they need to think strategically about nominations and court expansions.

McConnell has made it pretty damn clear that shutting down Democratic judicial appointment is a top priority should Republicans retake the Senate after November’s midterms. Schumer certainly gets that. “The hard right has such a hammerlock on Republicans in terms of judges, you can’t predict what they will do,” he said. “But it’s not going to be good.”

RELATED STORY: Biden and Schumer are building a phenomenal judicial appointment record, but can’t stop now

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As of now, there are 16 nominees who have been approved by the Judiciary Committee but not yet sent to the floor: three for the appellate courts and 13 for the district courts. Getting those floor votes done is a big priority, as are the committee hearings for the 13 who have been nominated, as well as identifying candidates for the dozens of open slots.

Given the relatively short time frame between now and November, and the fact that getting Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema on board with any idea to expand the courts, Biden and Schumer should be focusing on getting as many appointments onto the most conservative district and appeals courts to try to limit the number of really damaging cases the Supreme Court gets.

That means Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin need to entirely scrap the “blue slip” tradition. That’s the process, a courtesy really, where home state senators allow a nominee to move forward or not. Republicans have played fast and loose with blue slips for years, denying them to President Barack Obama’s nominees when they were in the minority and tossing them for Democrats when Senate Republicans had a majority. Durbin needs to toss the blue slips and start getting those red state courts filled.

That could limit some of the damage. The larger problem is that this Trump-packed Supreme Court has shown that it’s happy to act on an “emergency” basis to end abortion and voting rights already, and to do it from the shadow docket without cases having worked their way through the lower courts.

Ultimately, the only solution to fixing the Supreme Court and saving everything is expanding it. The pressure needs to keep building on Biden, on Schumer, on Durbin, and on House leadership to make that happen. In the meantime, they just have to keep on churning out the confirmations.

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