Random News and Notes 3 June
On this date in 1754, during the Seven Years’ War, a 22-year-old lieutenant colonel in the Virginia militia named George Washington begins construction of a makeshift Fort Necessity. The fort was built to defend his forces from French soldiers enraged by the murder of Ensign Joseph Coulon de Jumonville while in Washington’s custody. One month later, the French, led by Jumonville’s half-brother, won Washington’s surrender and forced confession to Jumonville’s murder.
Union General Ulysses S. Grant makes what he later recognizes to be his greatest mistake by ordering a frontal assault on entrenched Confederates at Cold Harbor, Virginia on this date in 1864. The result was some 7,000 Union casualties in less than an hour of fighting. On May 30, Lee and Grant collided at Bethesda Church. The next day, the advance units of the armies arrived at the strategic crossroads of Cold Harbor, just 10 miles from Richmond, where a Yankee attack seized the intersection. Sensing that there was a chance to destroy Lee at the gates of Richmond, Grant prepared for a major assault along the entire Confederate front on June 2.
But when Winfield Hancock’s Union corps did not arrive on schedule, the operation was postponed until the following day. The delay was tragic for the Union, because it gave Lee’s troops time to entrench.
The Yankees met murderous fire, and were only able to reach the Confederate trenches in a few places. The 7,000 Union casualties, compared to only 1,500 for the Confederates, were all lost in under an hour. Grant pulled out of Cold Harbor nine days later and continued to try to flank Lee’s army. The next stop was Petersburg, south of Richmond, where a nine-month siege ensued. There would be no more attacks on the scale of Cold Harbor.
On this date in 1943, a group of U.S. sailors marches through downtown Los Angeles, carrying clubs and other makeshift weapons and attacking anyone wearing a “zoot suit”—the baggy wool pants, oversized coats and porkpie hats favored by many young men of color at the time.
Over the next week, the so-called Zoot Suit Riots spread throughout the city, including the largely Mexican-American neighborhood of East Los Angeles and the largely Black neighborhood of Watts.
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On May 30, 1943, a verbal confrontation between a group of U.S. sailors and a group of zoot-suiters ended in the beating of one of the sailors. In retaliation, about 50 sailors left the local U.S. Navy Reserve Armory on the evening of June 3, armed with makeshift weapons and targeting zoot-suiters (even those as young as 12 or 13 years old). On the second night of rioting, the sailors headed into the city’s Mexican-American communities, barging into cafes, bars and theaters to seek out and attack their victims.
No one was killed during the Zoot Suit Riots, though many people were injured. In the aftermath, Governor Earl Warren tasked an independent citizens’ committee with investigating the riots and determining their cause.
Now News!
We start in California where some significant primaries took place yesterday. In the Los Angeles mayoral race it appears that upstart reality TV star Spencer Pratt will be advancing to face incumbent Karen Bass in the General come fall. Early returns show Bass getting ~35% of the vote, with Pratt garnering ~30%. Nithya Raman, the AOC backed, DSA candidate is in a distant third with ~22% of the votes counted so far. These numbers will change, but by how much I don’t know.
The governor’s primary looks a little more settled with 62% of the precincts in the state reporting. Steve Hilton has ~28% of the votes counted so far. Xavier Becerra is right around 25%. Billionaire Dem Tom Steyer is sitting at 19%.
As I told you yesterday, California has a “jungle primary”, meaning the top two vote getters advance to the General in November.
The Supreme Court issued a pretty thorough smackdown of some of the judges in Alabama’s Northern District yesterday. The cases involve Alabama’s redistricting effort. A three judge panel in that district enjoined Alabama’s new, racially neutral maps form going into effect. After Callais was decided, a per curiam order was issued 11 May that vacated and remanded the case for reconsideration under the new Callais framework. The same three judge panel reissued the order enjoining the use for the new maps with no new consideration. Yesterday’s order from SCOTUS called them out for defying the Supreme Court and ignoring the precident that is Callais.
My non-attorney guess is that the judges in this case, which has been ongoing for several years, got too wedded to their own opinions on the matter and disregarded the law. There really needs to be a way to discipline jurists.
Federal prosecutors just charged an NIH virologist with smuggling biological materials into the United States. The US Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan charged Vincent Munster, chief of NIH’s Virus Ecology Section, and research fellow Claude Kwe with conspiring to smuggle the vials from the Republic of the Congo on January 25, 2026, and lying to customs agents. Tests confirmed 17 of 20 sampled vials contained inactivated monkey pox virus.
The men face up to 5 years in federal prison if convicted.
Protests bordering on riots have broken out in Southampton UK after bodycam footage of the death of Henry Nowak was released.
It was also announced – the same day the body cam footage was released, I suspect to blunt the effect of the footage – that the rest of the killer’s family was being charged in connection with Henry’s death.