Also on today’s menu:
Northern Lights Predicted For Thursday (Maybe)
Sweden’s NATO Membership Assured
Republican Senator Leaves Marine Corps Without A Leader
Governor Chris Sununu has signed House Bill 530, which allows a three-fifths majority of voters in one or more towns to leave a cooperative school district, and sets a high bar for the remaining towns to prevent them from leaving. (There is no word on the governor’s position on HB 349, which would allow the towns of Bridgewater, Groton, and Hebron to vote on withdrawal from the Newfound Area School District, or how HB 530 would affect that bill.)
Under current law, the only way for one or more towns to break away from their school district is for a majority of voters in the entire district to support their leaving. HB 530, which takes effect July 30, preserves the traditional approach to dissolution, but allows smaller towns to leave without having to persuade the whole district to support them. Now, if 60 percent of the break-off district’s voters decide to leave, it would take a 60 percent majority of the entire district to block the effort.
Representative Rick Ladd (R-Haverhill), chair of the House Education Committee and also the prime sponsor of HB349, said the new law sets a high bar that helps address a longstanding problem without tipping the balance too far toward withdrawing towns. “We feel that this is a compromise measure to allow this act to occur,” he said.
Northern Lights Predicted For Thursday (Maybe)
Scattered thunderstorms forecast for Thursday evening may ruin New Hampshire’s chance to see the Northern Lights when they make a rare appearance in 17 states due to a solar storm meeting the atmosphere. Also known as aurora borealis, Northern Lights are most often seen in the higher latitudes of Alaska, Canada, and Scandinavia.
An 11-year solar cycle is expected to peak in 2024, making the lights visible in places farther to the south. Three months ago, the light displays were visible in Arizona, marking the third severe geomagnetic storm since the current solar cycle began in 2019.
The Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks has forecast auroral activity on Thursday in Alaska, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, New York, New Hampshire, Vermont, Indiana, Maine, and Maryland, as well as Vancouver, Canada.
Sweden’s NATO Membership Assured
Sweden, which has observed wartime neutrality for more than 200 years, is on the verge of joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, now that Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has withdrawn his opposition to the country’s membership. Sweden had applied for membership last May to improve security and stability in northern Europe after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Turkey had argued that Sweden was providing refuge to Kurdish militants and needed to do more to crack down on rebel groups like the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which Turkey, along with the European Union and the United States, have designated as a terrorist organization.
Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson of Sweden said he and his team had “worked very hard” to address Turkey’s concerns about terrorism, opening the door for Erdogan to withdraw his opposition to NATO membership.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has been pressing in vain for NATO to accept his country’s membership. President Joe Biden Jr. said he does not support NATO membership for Ukraine while it is at war. NATO’s security pact means that a war on one member country automatically requires all NATO members to respond, so admitting Ukraine would commit U.S. troops to a war with Russia. Instead, allies are providing significant military support for Ukraine.
Republican Senator Leaves Marine Corps Without A Leader
With the July 10 retirement of General David Berger, commandant of the Marine Corps, there is no successor in place due to Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville’s stance against filling senior military nominations in protest of a Pentagon health policy that ensures “service members and their families are able to access non-covered reproductive health care.” Tuberville is holding up more than 250 military promotions, weakening the U.S. military, in his campaign against abortion.
When Tuberville ran for election with the support of President Donald Trump in 2020, Tuberville’s media consultant noted, “Alabama is a state with a large veteran population and proud military heritage. We ran an ad from Coach talking about his father’s service in World War II and his promise to donate his Senate salary to charities that help Alabama veterans.”
Instead, with the support of other Republicans, Tuberville is gutting the military’s leadership and, by extension, its ability to defend the United States.
Do you have a story to tell?
The News Café is a virtual meeting place where, each weekday, we discuss the news of the day: local, statewide, national, and international. Subscribers can share their knowledge, thoughts, and questions about any topic, and we may select some of those subjects for more in-depth analysis.
Compiling these summaries and preparing the information takes time, so your paid subscriptions help to make the effort worthwhile. However, if you’re unable to pay but still want to receive all of the posts in your in-box, click the Subscribe button and select a free subscription.
Visit us at www.libertymedianh.org
Join in the conversation through chat or notes by downloading the Substack app or going to the online site.
Also see our new Substack news site, By The Way.