[Previous Crime News thread HERE, covering June 1 thru 10]

By Hillary Borrud | The Oregonian/OregonLive, June 10

The Oregon House voted 59-1 Thursday to expel Rep. Mike Nearman, the first time it has ejected a sitting representative.

Lawmakers removed Nearman because he let far-right demonstrators, some of whom were heavily armed, into the Capitol on Dec. 21 while lawmakers were holding a special session. The Capitol was closed to the public due to the pandemic and remains so. That means his seat representing a rural district west of Salem will likely sit vacant for the remainder of the legislative session, which must wrap up by June 27 [....]

Verda Tetteh used her graduation speech to talk about resilience. “Because if we’re being honest with ourselves, some of us were born with the odds stacked against us,” she told more than 200 fellow seniors at Fitchburg High School in Fitchburg, Mass., where most students are deemed “economically disadvantaged.”

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) showed everyone just how knowledgeable he is about science during a House Committee on Natural Resources hearing on Tuesday. “I was informed by the ... director of NASA that they have found that the moon’s orbit is changing slightly and so is the earth’s orbit around the sun, and we know there’s been significant solar flare activity,” he said as he asked a question of the Forest Service’s Jennifer Eberlien. “And so is there anything the National Forest Service or BLM [Bureau of Land Management] can do to change the course of the moon’s orbit or the earth’s orbit around the sun? Obviously they would have profound effects on our climate.” The National Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management do not have any control over the moon’s orbit.

Dozens of staff members at a Houston-area hospital protested on Monday night against a policy that requires employees to be vaccinated against Covid-19.

The hospital, Houston Methodist, had told employees that they had to be vaccinated by Monday. Last month, 117 employees filed a lawsuit against the hospital over the vaccine policy.

While the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends health care workers get a flu shot, and some hospital systems require it, few American companies have required Covid-19 shots, despite federal government guidance that says employers can mandate vaccines for onsite workers.