The Ninth Justice

This passed Monday, Apr. 10, President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch sworn in as the ninth justice of the Supreme Court, filing former justice, Antonin Scalia’s seat.

Justice Gorsuch took his oath in the White House Garden. Along with President Trump, the other eight Justices also attended his swearing in ceremony.

Gorsuch was confirmed with much difficulty, as many democratic senators said that they would not confirm him and threatened to filibuster. In order for Gorsuch to originally be confirmed as Justice he needed a minimum of 60 votes from the senate. However, with the lack of support from the democratic senators (and a few independents) he would not have had reached the needed votes.

Also, if the democrats had filibustered, Gorsuch’s confirmation would have been “talked to death” and therefore no conclusion would be made and he would not have been confirmed.

The Republicans in turned used the ‘nuclear option’ to kill this filibuster. In which they lowered the required votes from 60 to 51. This move to confirm a Justice is what got Gorsuch confirmed, since there are a total of 52 Republicans and only 48 Democrats.

However, the move was unprecedented, in that the Nuclear Option has never been used on a confirmation of a Supreme Court justice and sets the tone for more cases like this in the future.

Syria Vs. Citizens, U.S. Vs. Russia

On April 4, the Syrian government is suspected to have used what is nicknamed the “Poor Man’s Atomic Bomb”, on their people. This chemical gas attack in northern Syria is said to have killed over 80 people including a large amount of children. Hours after the attack civil defense workers in the area reported that a small field hospital was also destroyed.

After being shown pictures of children affected by the attack President Donald Trump authorized an airstrike against on the area of Syria where the attack had been launched.

White house officials have confirmed that the Syrian government was responsible for the attack, despite Syria having denied responsibility and Russia blaming Syrian rebels for the attack.

One U.S. official has boldly claimed that Russia was also aware of Syria’s plan, stating that the Russia’s denials are wrong. Another official stated no official conclusion on the previous statement has been made concerning Russia and that the official had not been authorized to speak.

Although, no hard evidence has been found U.S.intelligence have considered that Russia having prior knowledge of Syria storing these chemical weapons is possible due to the presence of Russian personnel in the area.

Pepsi’s “Most Popular” Commercial

Pepsi recently put out a highly controversial commercial starring Kendall Jenner. The video showed a crowd of people protesting (what they are protesting is unclear, but has been interpreted in representing the Black Lives Matter movement), and Kendall Jenner posing for a photo shoot. Later in the video Jenner abruptly stops leaves the shoot and joins the crowd that are protesting against the police officers. Jenner walks up to one of the officers and hands him a Pepsi, and everything is suddenly okay.

Pepsi and Jenner received an uproar of disapproval and angry comments, finding the commercial tone deaf and offensive. Many of the comments mocked the commercial.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter, Bernice King, also made her disapproval heard when she tweeted, “Only if Daddy knew the power of #Pepsi.”

Ever since the backlash Jenner has taken a step back and laid low. An unknown source from stated that the model was really feeling the backlash and is “traumatized” afraid that her career will be affected by this.

Pepsico on the other hand is facing possible litigations with the San Francisco Police Department, for in the commercial the officers wore badges that looked very similar to that of the SFPD.

Passenger Dragged From Overbooked Flight

Sunday, Apr. 9, a passenger was dragged off an overbooked United Airlines flight at Chicago O’Hare International Airport .

Four United crew members were needed, to be on the flight and asked for volunteers to get off the flight, and would be compensated accordingly. However, when there were no volunteers they called names ordering for them to get off. One passengers, refused to get off of the flight the agents dragged him off, resulting in an injury of the passenger’s face from physical resistance.

Despite much criticisms of the incident, airlines are allowed to force passengers off of a flight in what is called a “Involuntary De-boarding Situation”. If there are not enough seats for the crew members, the airlines has to ask for volunteers to deboard the plane and if there are no volunteers then they enter the “Involuntary De-boarding Situation” in which they call out the lowest paying passengers and tell them to leave. If these passengers refuse then security is allowed to use force. But all passengers either asked or forced to leave are compensated.

However, much suspicion has risen in that the videos of the incident show that the passenger might not have given them a reason to be forceful.

United CEO Oscar Munoz has apologized for the situation and promised to compensate the passenger accordingly and is investigating the situation to see what really happened.

So far three of the security officers involved were put on leave.

“Friends” The Musical

Believe it or not, one of NBC’s most popular sitcom “Friends” is said to be going musical. It is supposed to be rebooted as an off-Broadway musical that will be held at New York’s Triad Theatre.

The musical was composed by Bob and Tobly McSmith, who’ve also participated in the projects for Kardashian: The Musical and Full House! The Musical!

The musical is supposed to come out in fall of this year (2017). Tickets come out this summer.