FirstCircle

Companies offering the drug risk reputation and legal repercussions, according to an Aug. 2 letter sent to CEOs at the two retail giants, as well as Kroger, Albertsons and medical distribution company McKesson Corp. The group said 6,000 Costco customers have signed a petition saying they will cancel their membership if the retailer starts selling the pills.

The religious coalition behind the petition owns about $172 million in shares of the five companies. The coalition was led by Boise, Idaho-based Inspire Investing, which manages $3 billion of assets, and includes the investment arm of the Southern Baptist churches and the American Family Association, a Christian fundamentalist group.

Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/37488122

If Donald Trump is re-elected president in November, a coalition of more than 50 right-wing organizations known as Project 2025 will be ready with a plug-and-play plan for him to follow, starting with a database of potential administration appointees carefully vetted by coalition members; an online “Presidential Administration Academy” run by coalition members to school new appointees; and a 920-page policy platform called Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise.

A new book ban goes into effect in Idaho on July 1.

House Bill 710, a key political win for the Idaho Family Policy Center (IFPC), is targeted at books with Black, feminist or LGBTQ+ themes. It allows any person affiliated with a student at a public or private school to sue its library for carrying a book with “obscene materials.”

The policy defines obscene materials as any literature containing nudity or homosexuality.

While the Bible contains each of these concepts in both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, it does not seem that Christian and Jewish texts were the intended target of the ban, but rather books written by queer or Black authors.

IFPC voiced its opposition to The Handmaid’s Tale, the popular dystopian novel criticizing fascism and misogyny, on June 7 after it was removed from the Idaho Fine Arts Academy school library.

Governor Brad Little [R] signed the policy in April, saying that the bill would keep children from reading harmful materials.

The Idaho Library Association is against the bill and says it is harmful to young people, librarians and LGBTQ+ people.

Idaho’s education system ranked 47th in a January analysis of state education levels conducted by Scholaroo.

Tractor Supply Company, which bills itself as the largest rural lifestyle retailer in the U.S., will eliminate its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) roles, withdraw its carbon emissions goals and stop sponsoring Pride events in response to criticism from conservative activists.

The Fortune 500 company has been nationally recognized as an inclusive and diverse workplace, including last year in Bloomberg’s Gender Equality Index and Newsweek’s inaugural list of America’s Greatest Workplaces for Diversity.

But it recently became the target of conservative ire for that very reason, as the latest in a growing series of retailers to face backlash over — and ultimately walk back — its DEI initiatives.

Robby Starbuck, a music video director and Republican who ran unsuccessfully to represent Tennessee's 5th Congressional District in 2022, launched the campaign against Tractor Supply on X (formerly Twitter) earlier this month.

He wrote on June 6 that it was “time to expose Tractor Supply,” which he said was one of conservatives’ most beloved brands but was at odds with their values. He pointed to its DEI hiring practices, in-office Pride Month decorations, climate change activism and “funding sex changes,” among other complaints.

It all started, Greg Bombard said, with a broken coffee maker. That’s what prompted him to get into his car and head to Dunkin’ on a winter day in 2018.

It ended this month when the state of Vermont paid Bombard $175,000 to settle the lawsuit that ultimately resulted from that short drive.

The settlement covers Bombard’s arrest that day by a state trooper who said the St. Albans Town man flipped him the middle finger — and a second, related citation nearly six years later, on Christmas Day.

A Wenatchee fruit grower is facing $353,000 in fines for safety violations that led to a worker being buried alive in a trench collapse last fall in Othello.

Photographs obtained by the Washington Department of Labor & Industries (L&I) show multiple workers of Stemilt Ag Services LLC digging in a trench more than five feet deep and about 25-30 feet long without any type of cave-in protection such as sloping, shielding or shoring.

A crew of 10 workers was repairing an irrigation pipe when a portion of the trench caved in on one of the workers, knocking him down and burying him. His co-workers were able to uncover his face after a couple of minutes to allow him to breathe while they dug for another 10 minutes to get him out of the trench. He was taken to the hospital with multiple crush injuries to his head, face, and body.

“This could have easily ended in death, all because the employer chose to ignore rules to protect workers,” said Craig Blackwood, assistant director for L&I’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health.

L&I cited Stemilt in March with five willful serious violations in connection with the cave-in. There was no protective system inside the trench to prevent a collapse, and no ladder or way for the workers to get out of the trench within 25 feet of where they were working. The piles of dirt dug from the trench were not set back at least two feet away from the edge. Dirt piles too close to the trench can cause the walls to collapse.

Also, there was no one onsite with the knowledge needed to inspect the trench before workers went into it, and no training program for trenching and excavation work. The company was also cited for changing the scene by filling in the trench after the cave-in before L&I inspectors arrived.

Willful violations are among the most serious and mean the employer knew or should have known the safety requirements, but chose to ignore them. The company is appealing the new citation.

It’s not the first time Stemilt has been cited for trenching issues. The company was cited and fined nearly $17,000 in Quincy in 2021 for violating the same trenching safety rules.

“We hope the latest fines will be the wake-up call that motivates Stemilt to keep their workers safe, before someone is killed,” said Blackwood.

The company is now is now considered a severe violator and is subject to follow-up inspections to determine if the conditions still exist.

An ordained minister accused of drugging and raping a woman and molesting a child was arrested in Spokane Friday.

Russell Anders, 55, was arrested Friday morning at his home on the 1800 block of West Gardener Avenue in Spokane by a United States Marshals’ task force on an outstanding federal warrant.

Anders is charged with second-degree rape and first-degree voyeurism in Spokane.

On multiple occasions, a woman woke up after having drinks with Anders feeling off, according to court documents. She eventually was able to access his laptop and found videos of Anders having sex with her while she was unconscious after putting sleeping pills in her drinks, according to court records.

She also found sexually explicit videos of children on the laptop, she told police.

Anders was indicted last year in federal court in Seattle on one count of producing child pornography, along with possessing depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct.

He also has pending Seattle cases, including charges of child molestation and sexual exploitation of a minor, among other similar crimes.

Jackson, 78, was just 21 years old when he joined the Birmingham A's as one of a few Black players on the minor league team and at the height of violent racial strife in the American South.

“Fortunately, I had a manager and I had players on the team that helped me get through it, but I wouldn't wish it on anybody,” Jackson said on the Fox Sports panel for the Negro Leagues tribute game on Thursday.

When Jackson arrived in Alabama in the 1960s, the city of Birmingham was making headlines for its open abuse of Black Americans.

Led by Bull Connor, the notorious city commissioner of Birmingham, racial tensions were at a fever pitch, marking a peak with the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church, which claimed the lives of four young Black girls.

“I walked into restaurants and they would point at me and say 'the n***** can't eat here.' I would go to a hotel and they said, 'the n***** can't stay here,' ” Jackson said.

“We went to Charlie Finley's country club for a welcome home dinner, and they pointed me out with the N-word. ‘He can't come in here.’ Finley marched the whole team out,” Jackson recalled, referencing the Alabama native and Major League Baseball franchisee Charles Finley.

Televisions that can stream platforms like Hulu or Max usually come loaded with technology that collects information on what viewers are watching, and buyers consent to have their viewing tracked when they open their new TV and click through terms of service agreements. Sometimes, data firms can connect those viewing habits to a voter’s phone or laptop via their IP address, promising a trove of information about an individual and the ability to track them across screens.

Other times, firms focus on dividing households into groups based on what they’re watching, how they use their TVs and how many campaign ads they’re seeing, which is a boon to political campaigns eager to target specific groups of voters. Connecting this data to voter files is increasingly a focus — a move that adds individual voting habits into the mix.