Oklahoma voters’ approval of a referendum in 2016 allowed for nearly 500 inmates to walk free on Monday from the state’s massive prison system—the largest single-day commutation in U.S. history.

Four hundred and sixty-two people had their sentences commuted as a result of Question 780, which asked voters if they approved of recategorizing many felonies, including drug possession and minor property crimes, as misdemeanors. The referendum passed by a 16 percent margin.

This year, state lawmakers also made the new law retroactive and allowed parole boards to quickly review many inmates’ cases. A total of 527 sentences were commuted; 65 people will also be released early at a later date.

Kristen Clarke, executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, called the historic commutation on Monday a “step forward in the fight to end mass incarceration.”

Ryan Kiesel, executive director of the ACLU in Oklahoma, noted the significance of Oklahoma voters’ call for reforms to the criminal justice system.

A new analysis from travel website Champion Traveler shows how the burgeoning space tourism industry favored by many U.S. billionaires could severely worsen the planetary climate crisis by emissions that, in one rocket launch, are equal to nearly 400 transatlantic flights.

While the number of rockets blasting off from Earth’s surface to the stratosphere—and beyond—are still low, recent reporting indicates there is a desire on the part of space tourism and shipping company SpaceX head Elon Musk to increase that number. 

“As rocket launches become more common and space tourism accelerates in you the reader’s lifetime, as most experts predict, companies such as SpaceX will need to consider the environmental impact of their launches at scale,” wrote Champion Traveler. 

The travel company’s researchers ran the data and found that:

• The SpaceX Falcon 9 B burns 29,600 gallons (112,184 Kg) of highly refined kerosene
• 3.0 Kg of CO2 goes into the atmosphere per Kg of Kerosene burned
• 112,184 Kg x 3 Kg / CO2 = roughly 336,552 Kg of CO2 per Falcon 9 launch

An estimated over 207,000 protesters across Colombia upset at decades of right-wing rule took to the streets Thursday in the latest progressive people’s movement in Latin America to explode into the streets, following movements in Chile, post-coup Bolivia, and Ecuador. 

Demonstrators clashed with security forces in the capital, Bogotá, and elsewhere across the country.

“We are standing up to protest and tell all humanity that we need to demand change,” protester and actress Aida Prado told The Associated Press.

The demonstrations, which had been planned, began with a general strike against the policies of President Iván Duque. Protesters, many carrying the Indigenous wiphala flag in solidarity with the people of Bolivia, expressed their anger over Duque’s plan to cut pensions in the country and the lack of real forward movement in peace talks with the rebel group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

“We live in a country that kills children, that kills social leaders, with a government that is against peace,” businesswoman Alexandra Guzmán said. “That is why we have to change something. We cannot continue to live like this.”

According to The Guardian, the protests led to clashes with police forces:

The economic and social pressures on Colombian society that led to the demonstrations likely won’t lead to the kind of sustained movement that’s been seen in other parts of Latin America, Bogotá Rosario University professor Yann Basset told DW.

“We’re not in a pre-insurrectional climate,” said Basset. “I’m not sure there’s a general rejection of the political system.”

Bolivian demonstrators opposed to the right-wing regime that seized power in the country after a coup on November 10 that resulted in the forced resignation of democratically elected President Evo Morales have protested in cities and across the central South American nation for weeks. A Chilean protest movement that began in October has resulted in the country’s neoliberal leadership promising to rewrite the constitution; also in October, protests against austerity erupted across Ecuador.

Student leader José Cárdenas told AP that the marches in Colombia were inspired by the other movements on the continent.

“What happened in Chile sent a forceful message,” he said.

George Zimmerman, the former Florida neighborhood watch volunteer who shot and killed unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin in 2012, is suing the victim’s family, prosecutors, and the media for $100 million in damages.

Zimmerman was acquitted of murdering Martin in 2013.

“Imagine killing an unarmed child and then suing his parents,” tweeted Center for Policing Equity president Phillip Atiba Goff.

The lawsuit, which Zimmerman’s lawyer Larry Klayman—a right-wing legal advocate—filed in Polk County Circuit Court in Florida Wednesday names Martin’s mother, Sybrina Fulton, as the lead defendant. Fulton is running for Congress in Florida’s District 1. 

According to the Miami Herald:

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Friday accused the Republican Party of orchestrating the “greatest cover-up since Watergate” as the Senate prepared to debate and vote on whether to allow witnesses to testify in President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial.

“This is much bigger than President Trump. Preventing witnesses, evidence, and transparency in President Trump’s impeachment trial potentially undermines the Constitution for generations.”
—Karen Hobert Flynn, Common Cause

The Senate is widely expected as early as Friday evening to oppose permitting witnesses, given swing vote Sen. Lamar Alexander’s (R-Tenn.) announcement late Thursday that he will vote no. Alexander’s decision sparked widespread anger and the trending Twitter hashtag #LamarAlexanderIsACoward.

Schumer said during a press conference Friday that if the Senate votes against allowing witnesses, “the president’s acquittal will be meaningless.”

“This is about truth, and today the Senate will vote on whether witnesses and documents are allowed in this trial,” said Schumer. “The importance of this vote is self-evident.”

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The Senate at 1pm ET is scheduled to begin four hours of debate on whether to approve witnesses, followed by a vote. If the Republican-controlled chamber decides against allowing witnesses, it will be the first time in U.S. history the Senate has held an impeachment trial without witness testimony, according to PolitiFact.

An analysis put out this week by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) detailed how in each of the 15 impeachment cases completed by the Senate over its 231 year history, “witnesses who were not heard during the House of Representatives’ impeachment investigations testified in front of the Senate.”

“Throughout this impeachment trial, we have heard the unsupported claim that Senators cannot, and should not, consider testimony from witnesses the House had not already heard from. History certainly proves otherwise,” said CREW executive director Noah Bookbinder earlier this week. “In the light of the huge new revelations that have come to the public’s attention since the start of the trial and the President’s efforts to keep witnesses and documents out of the House process, the Senate must now do its constitutional duty and call forward any and all appropriate witnesses to ensure a fair, thorough and impartial trial.”

A final vote on whether to acquit or remove Trump could come as early as Friday evening, but anonymous Republican senators and aides told Politico the trial could extend until next week if House Democratic impeachment managers push for more time to make closing arguments.

Just ahead of the Senate debate on witnesses, the New York Times reported that former national security adviser John Bolton—one of the potential witnesses in the trial—alleges in an unpublished book manuscript that Trump instructed him in May of 2019 to help with the “pressure campaign to extract damaging information on Democrats from Ukrainian officials.”