TOTALITY:  The Solar eclipse that passed over North America brought millions of Americans together briefly in hours of wonder. Thousands gathered in stadiums, on hill and mountain tops, and just out in the street. A man proposed to his girlfriend on the top of Stowe ski mountain in Vermont.

  The eclipse entered the US ironically in Eagle Pass, Texas, the hot spot for migration into the country. It exited in peaceful and remote rural Maine.

  For opportunities to see a total eclipse in the next four years, you’ll have to travel to places like Australia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria, Spain and Greenland. 

THE WAR ROOM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his military has set the timing for a ground offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where about 1.5 million Palestinians are living or have been displaced from other areas. He didn’t say when.

  Netanyahu said that “entry into Rafah” is necessary for a “complete victory over Hamas.” 

  State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller reiterated the US position that a ground offensive “would have an enormously harmful effect on … civilians, and that it would ultimately hurt Israel’s security.” 

ORANGE ALERT: Donald Trump yesterday issued his campaign policy on abortion, betraying the far right and taking the middle road, declaring that the states should set their own rules and laws.

  He abandoned a previous position of a 15 week ban and did not say he would back a total federal abortion ban if it were to come before Congress.

  “Many states will be different, many will have a different number of weeks or some will have more conservative than others, and that’s what they will be,” Trump said in a video posted on his Truth Social website. “At the end of the day, it’s all about will of the people,” he added. “That’s where we are right now and that’s what we want — the will of the people.”

  He was immediately criticized by South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and former Vice President Mike Pence, who called Trump’s stance a retreat and a “slap in the face.” 

   The former president told a whopper when he said, “I was proudly the person responsible for the ending of something that all legal scholars, both sides, wanted and, in fact, demanded be ended: Roe v. Wade.”

  Far from “all” legal scholars wanted any such ruling. 

  In Trump’s criminal matters, a New York appeals court yesterday shot down Trump’s last ditch effort to change the location and delay the open of his Stormy Daniels hush money trial. Trump lawyers had also asked for lifting of the gag order placed on him by Judge Juan Merchan.

  The trial still set to begin April 15^th is likely to be Trump’s only criminal trial held before the November election. The indictment charges him with felony falsification of business records to cover the payment made to keep Daniels silent about the fling she had with Trump. His lawyers claim he can’t get a fair trial in liberal New York.

THOU SHALT NOT: The Vatican yesterday issued a condemnation of gender fluidity and transition surgery, as well as birth by surrogacy, describing all as affronts to human dignity.

  The sex to which a person is born is an “irrevocable gift” from God, the document argues and that “any sex-change intervention risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception.” People who desire “a personal self-determination, as gender theory prescribes,” risk  usurping the powers of God, the edict declares.

  On the subject of birth by surrogacy, that makes the child “a mere means subservient to the arbitrary gain or desire of others,” the Vatican said in the document, which also opposed in vitro fertilization.

HOOP DREAMS: The UConn men just about chased Purdue off the court last night to win the NCAA basketball championship. At one point UConn was up by 17 and finished with a 75-60 win.

  It was the second consecutive championship for the Connecticut men making them the first to accomplish that since Florida in 2006-07.  

THE SPIN RACK: Country singer Morgan Wallen was arrested early yesterday in Nashville on charges of reckless endangerment and disorderly conduct after he was accused of throwing a chair from the 6th floor roof of a downtown bar. The chair hit the street near where some police officers were standing. — Missouri Gov. Mike Parson said he will not commute the death sentence of a convicted murderer supported by more than 70 current and former prison workers in a bid for clemency. Brian Dorsey, 52, pleaded guilty to murdering his cousin and her husband in 2006, leaving behind their 4-year-old daughter. Despite Dorsey becoming a model and popular prisoner, Gov. Parson said, “The pain Dorsey brought to others can never be rectified, but carrying out Dorsey’s sentence according to Missouri law and the court’s order will deliver justice and provide closure.” — Tesla yesterday dodged out of trial on a major lawsuit and settled the case brought by the family of an Apple engineer who was killed in a crash while his Tesla was on autopilot. — The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg ruled that Switzerland violated human rights by failing to adequately tackle the climate crisis. More than 2,000 older Swiss women sued the country arguing that climate-induced heat waves undermined their health and quality of life.

BELOW THE FOLD: The Biden Administration is asking NASA to create a moon-based time standard in preparation for more space travel because time ticks by faster on the moon relative to Earth.

  The new lunar time zone would be called Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC) and NASA is in close consultation with Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene because she already lives in it. 

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