Biden administration budget request includes nearly $25 billion for NASA
President Joe Biden submitted on Friday a $1.5 trillion budget request that includes $24.7 billion for NASA for 2022.
The ask is part of the budget’s discretionary spending, which needs to be passed by Congress each year. The requested funding if approved would be $1.5 billion more than the funding for 2021, a 6.3% increase.
“This $24.7 billion funding request demonstrates the Biden Administration’s commitment to NASA and its partners who have worked so hard this past year under difficult circumstances and achieved unprecedented success,” said acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk.
The majority of the increase in funding would go to both supporting the continued Artemis program that aims to land the first woman on the moon by 2024 as well as investing in technology and research with an aim to lower costs over time. It also looks to increase funding to climate science missions.
The budget seeks to maintain funding for its scientific, robotic missions farther afield including funding for the Mars Sample Return mission to bring back soil samples to Earth, the Clipper mission to Jupiter moon Europa, Dragonfly mission to fly a drone-like craft on Saturn moon Titan and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.
—Orlando Sentinel
Republican Kelvin King to challenge Warnock in 2022 Senate contest
ATLANTA — A Republican owner of a metro Atlanta construction company entered the race for U.S. Senate on Monday with an attack on “cancel culture” and a pledge to run against Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock as a business-minded outsider.
Kelvin King becomes one of the first in a likely wave of Republicans to challenge Warnock, the pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church who is up for full six-year term in 2022 after narrowly winning a January special election runoff.
King was one of former President Donald Trump’s most prominent Black supporters in Georgia and founded a political outreach group called Speak Georgia with his wife Janelle King, a conservative pundit and operative.
In a statement, he attacked Warnock’s “divisive far left representation” and said Georgia is ground zero for the GOP push to recapture the Senate, which flipped in January with the victories of Warnock and fellow Democrat Jon Ossoff.
“Career politicians, woke corporations, and the cancel culture are all empowered while our families and small businesses are left to pay the price,” he said. “As the GOP, we have to decide right now if we are knocked down or knocked out.”
Long rumored to run, King is aiming to take advantage of the unsettled field in the wide-open GOP contest against Warnock. But he may soon have plenty more company.
Veteran Navy SEAL Latham Saddler, a banking executive and former White House fellow, recently filed paperwork to run.
—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Pregnant Meghan unable to join Harry at Prince Philip’s funeral in the UK
Prince Harry has returned to the United Kingdom after the death of Prince Philip without Meghan, The Times confirmed Monday morning.
The Duchess of Sussex, who is pregnant with her second child, was not cleared by her physician to travel to join her husband at Philip’s upcoming funeral. Harry penned a touching salute to his late grandfather, the Duke of Edinburgh, upon landing in the U.K., where he is staying at Frogmore Cottage and adhering to COVID-19 safety protocols.
The Duke of Sussex made the homecoming trip from California, where he and Meghan have been living with their 1-year-old son, Archie, after stepping back as senior members of the royal family.
“My grandfather was a man of service, honour and great humour. He was authentically himself, with a seriously sharp wit, and could hold the attention of any room due to his charm — and also because you never knew what he might say next,” Harry wrote in a statement provided to The Times.
“He will be remembered as the longest reigning consort to the Monarch, a decorated serviceman, a Prince and a Duke. But to me, like many of you who have lost a loved one or grandparent over the pain of this past year, he was my grandpa: master of the barbecue, legend of banter, and cheeky right ‘til the end.”
Philip died “peacefully” Friday morning at Windsor Castle at age 99, according to an announcement from Buckingham Palace on behalf of his wife, Queen Elizabeth II. A memorial service for the Duke of Edinburgh will be held Saturday at Windsor Castle in England.
—Los Angeles Times
Stone Mountain Park denies permit for Confederate Memorial Day service
ATLANTA — The Georgia division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans will not host its annual Confederate Memorial Day service at Stone Mountain Park this year.
The gathering was proposed to take place Saturday. But the Stone Mountain Memorial Association, the state authority that oversees management of the popular and divisive park, declined to grant the necessary permit.
In a letter dated March 31, memorial association CEO Bill Stephens listed three reasons for the denial. Foremost among them, Stephens cited an ordinance declaring large events should be denied if they create “a clear and present danger to public health or safety.”
“With the volatile nature of events of the immediate past and ongoing today, there is a clear and present danger to members of the (Sons of Confederate Veterans), potential counterprotesters, park employees and guests,” Stephens wrote.
He added that the park’s public safety department “does not have adequate resources to protect the event’s participants, employees, and guests.”
Stone Mountain Park — with its giant mountainside carving of Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis, many other tributes to Confederate leaders, and century-old ties to the Ku Klux Klan — has long been a cultural flashpoint. And amid nationwide tensions over police killings of Black Americans, systemic racism and Confederate imagery, it has increasingly become a magnet for confrontation.
—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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