Apr 17
BIRD NEWS
On April 9th of this year the Emperor penguin was reclassified from a near-threatened to endangered species. The habitat loss from global warming is severely effecting the populations of these aquatic birds!!!!! D:
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BIRD NEWS
On April 9th of this year the Emperor penguin was reclassified from a near-threatened to endangered species. The habitat loss from global warming is severely effecting the populations of these aquatic birds!!!!! D:
Justice Department Reclassifies State-Licensed Medical Marijuana As A Less Dangerous Drug
— By Hannah Rabinowitz, Steve Contorno, Alicia Wallace
A Marijuana Plant in San Anselmo, California, on August 11, 2025. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed an order Thursday reclassifying state-licensed medical marijuana as a less dangerous drug, changing a policy that has for decades made the drug’s potential medicinal benefits more difficult to research.
The order from Blanche does not make recreational use legal under federal law. Instead, it moves licensed medical marijuana from Schedule I — which are the most restricted drugs such as heroin and ecstasy — to Schedule III, the same category as some prescription medicines like ketamine and Tylenol with codeine.
It also gives a tax break to licensed medical marijuana dealers and eases some restrictions on researching its effects.
“These actions will enable more targeted, rigorous research into marijuana’s safety and efficacy, expanding patients’ access to treatments and empowering doctors to make better-informed healthcare decisions,” Blanche wrote in a social media post on X.
The Drug Enforcement Administration will also hold administrative hearings before a judge on reclassifying marijuana more broadly, Blanche said.
The White House celebrated the Justice Department reclassifying state-licensed marijuana as “a welcome step to increase critical research into possible medical applications of cannabis.”
“The Trump administration continues to implement a Gold Standard Science-based approach to shape health policymaking and deliver for American veterans and patients,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement to CNN.
The effort to downgrade marijuana’s classification has been discussed and attempted by several administrations, but none were successful in finalizing a rule. Former President Joe Biden initiated a new attempt in the last year of his presidency, but it wasn’t completed before he left office.
Critics blamed reluctancy from then-DEA Administrator Anne Milgram for slow-walking the process. The rule had been similarly scheduled for administrative hearings before the end of Biden’s term but was put on pause indefinitely by the DEA’s top judge.
In an executive order last December, President Donald Trump ordered the Justice Department to expedite the process and push through Biden’s proposed rule change.
But there was little public movement in the proceeding months, and advocates of eased regulations grew frustrated.
Trump himself appeared to express frustration about the delay over the weekend, telling podcaster Joe Rogan, a supporter of rescheduling marijuana, at an Oval Office event that “they’re slow-walking me.”
Sources told CNN that in the White House and Justice Department have also faced increasing pressure from the cannabis industry to get the scheduling change over the line.
As a plan to move forward was being finalized, some in the department hoped to publicize its efforts on April 20 — a day of celebration for marijuana enthusiasts — but were told that it would be unseemly, two sources familiar with the discussions said.
Now, the reinvigorated effort is likely to face swift legal challenges from critics who say that the downgrade could encourage recreational use of a harmful drug.
Smart Approaches to Marijuana, an advocacy organization that opposes marijuana legalization, said in a statement that it will be “taking legal action immediately” against the order.
“The only thing today’s decision advances are the interests of an addiction-for-profit industry—and if the president isn’t going to use the Food and Drug Administration as the law requires, why doesn’t he simply abolish it,” the statement said.
Still, loosening restrictions around marijuana is broadly popular. A 2024 Pew Research Center survey found nearly six in 10 Americans support the legalization of recreational cannabis.
Twenty-four states, two territories and Washington, DC, have legalized cannabis for adult recreational use, and 40 states, three territories and DC allow medical use of cannabis products, according to data from the National Conference of State Legislatures. Since the first adult-use cannabis sale took place in 2014 in Colorado, cannabis has blossomed into a multibillion-dollar industry that has attracted the attention of multinational companies across sectors such as alcohol, agriculture, pharmaceutical and tobacco.
It remains unclear how Wednesday’s rescheduling directive could affect state-legal cannabis businesses that have both recreational and medical licenses.
Kim Rivers, the CEO of the marijuana company Trulieve, thanked both Trump and Blanche for “delivering” on their promise to reclassify marijuana.
“The dual approach of utilizing the treaty pathway and the rulemaking process ensures rescheduling medical marijuana happens quickly and completely and is an unequivocal statement of the President’s commitment to make good on his campaign promise,” she said.
Economic Impacts
The federal government acknowledging marijuana’s medical value is not only symbolically powerful but also could serve as a permissive signal to state-level lawmakers currently weighing cannabis legislation, said Brian Vicente, a founding partner of Vicente LLP, a Denver-based cannabis law firm.
A rescheduling would carry practical implications as well, he said, noting one of the most significant being that cannabis businesses might no longer be subject to Internal Revenue Code Section 280E, an early 1980s tax provision that prohibits businesses engaged in the “trafficking” of Schedule I or II substances from deducting ordinary business expenses or claiming tax credits.
Shown is Marijuana at NJ Weedman's Joint Dispensary in Trenton, N.J., Thursday, April 23, 2026. Associated Press Photo/Matt Rourke
“We’re talking about billions of dollars in new economic activity, tens of thousands of new jobs or just really a wind in the sail for this industry that’s really paid a very heavy tax burden for years,” Vicente said. “That would be life-changing for many, many state-legal cannabis businesses.”
Since 2018, cannabis businesses have paid an estimated $15 billion in excess 280E-related taxes, according to an analysis released earlier this month by Whitney Economics. Subject to 280E, some cannabis businesses have an effective tax rate of 70% or more, according to the Portland, Oregon-based cannabis and hemp consulting and economic research firm.
Where is Medical Marijuana Legal in the US?
“By removing this tax burden, you’re going to have a substantial positive impact on these businesses, their ability to hire, their ability to pay higher wages, their profitability,” Vicente said. “In somewhat of a challenging economy, this could be a real win for those states that have these businesses.”
The Internal Revenue Service would likely have to issue guidance on moving marijuana to Schedule III, Vicente said.
Another real-world implication of rescheduling would be the acceleration of medical research on cannabis, he said.
“For years in Colorado and across the country, I’ve talked to universities and hospitals that want to allow research, but they’re afraid of federal illegality and losing federal funds,” he said. “While this would not change the legality of cannabis, it would move it to Schedule III, which would help fast-track research and certainly reduce some of the stigma attached to this medicine.”
A man wearing a Grinch costume pretending to smoke a joint takes part in the International Marijuana Day celebration at Paseo de la Reforma avenue in Mexico City on April 20, 2023. Pedro Pardo, AFP Via Getty Images
What is not expected to change, he said, will be the state-level laws and regulations involving recreational and medical cannabis.
Rescheduling marijuana will not solve the longstanding federal-state conflict: The cultivation, manufacture, sale and possession of marijuana for recreational use would remain illegal under federal law and potentially subject to enforcement and prosecution.
States’ legal medical marijuana businesses do currently have some federal protections in place via appropriations legislation that restricts the Justice Department from interfering in these programs.
President Donald Trump on Monday confirmed he is considering reclassifying marijuana as a less dangerous drug.
Read full article here: https://time.com/6952928/virginia-racial-integrity-act-history/
A century ago, Virginia's Racial Integrity Act became a model for segregation. Its impact on Native people is still felt.
What I thought was Echeveria nodulosa or maybe a small-leaved Sedum is really
Aeonium sedifolium
The way to tell?
1. Lower leaves shrivel and drop in spring just like the larger Aeonium, and
2. removing a leaf leaves a surface scar rather than a divot in the stem like Echeveria do.
@Regrann from @the_ra_smith - Between 1670 and 1717 far more Indians were exported than Africans were imported. In southern coastal regions entire tribes were exterminated through slavery compared to disease or war. In a law passed in 1704, Indian slaves were conscripted to fight in wars for the colony long before the American Revolution. The historical record of the Indian slave trade is based on many disparate and scattered sources including legislative notes, trade transactions, journals of slavers, government correspondence and especially church records, making it difficult to account for the entire history. It is well known by historians that the slave trade began with the Spanish incursions into the Caribbean and Christopher Columbus’s taking of slaves, as documented in his own journals.As the Indian slave trade gave way to the African slave trade by the late 1700’s (by then over 300 years old) Native American women began to intermarry with imported Africans, producing mixed-race offspring whose native identities became obscured through time. In thecolonial project to eliminate the landscape of Indians, these mixed-race people simply became known as "colored" people through bureaucratic erasure in public records. In some cases such as in Virginia, even when people were designated as Indians on birth or death certificates or other public records, their records were changed to reflect “colored.” Census takers, determining a person’s race by their looks, often recorded mixed-race peopleas simply black, not Indian. The result is that today there is a population of people of Native American heritage and identity (particularly in the Northeast) who are not recognized by society at large, sharing similar circumstances with the Freedmen of the Cherokee and other Five Civilized Tribes. So well over 300 years old the "Indian Slave Trade" was replaced and used alongside the African introduced to America. #Reclassification #Denationalization #PaperGenocide #AutochthonStandUp™ #PanGlobalistParadigm #IndigenousStatus #BoundToTheLandByBlood #OurStory #OriginalPeoples #StolenLegacy #Regrann