The spectacle of a British royal coronation is something we haven’t seen in 70 years, but there’s one on deck for 6 May 2023, when King Charles III finally comes into his long-awaited inheritance. The United Kingdom may be in financial tatters, made worse by Brexit, but nobody does panoply, pomp and circumstance like the Brits, and the coronation at Westminster Abbey in London promises to be a sight to remember.
Joe Biden officially threw his hat into the ring for the 2024 US presidential election, announcing his candidacy in an online video that crossed just after 6 AM EDT on 25 April 2023. Hardly shocking news, Biden had been signaling his intention to run for reelection for months. The moment chosen seems to be an auspicious one at the micro astro-level, but its placement in the midst of eclipse season, with a stationary Pluto and a retrograde Mercury, makes it an ill-timed choice over all.
On Monday, 24 April 2023, the cable news universe was rocked by the sudden and unexpected announcement that Fox News had parted ways with Tucker Carlson, who had been anchoring the coveted 8 PM weeknight spot for six years with his eponymous “Tucker Carlson Tonight”, the network’s top-rated news/opinion show. The split came barely a week after a record $787.5 million settlement in the defamation case brought by Dominion Voting Systems, in which Carlson was a scheduled witness, one among several Fox News anchors who promoted the “Big Lie” that Donald Trump had won the 2020 election, but had it stolen from him by rigged Dominion machines. Carlson’s embrace of the stolen election fraud was legendary, as was his attempt to paint the January 6th insurrection as a peaceful protest or conspiracy from the left.
April 25, 2023 witnesses the opening of the first salvo of courtroom dramas involving former US president Donald J. Trump, although as a civil case, he’s not required to attend in person, and likely won’t do so. The case is brought by journalist and author E. Jean Carroll, who alleges Trump sexually assaulted her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in Manhattan in the mid-1990s. No, the charge isn’t rape – it’s defamation of character, following statements Trump made after Carroll publicly accused him in 2019, when he denied ever meeting her, much less assaulting her, in terms peppered with his patented brand of denigration and misogynistic dismissal.
As asteroid Thomas moved toward its retrograde station, a pair of stories erupted into the American consciousness, with yet another mass shooting at a Louisville, Kentucky bank, where five died, including bank VP Thomas “Tommy” Elliot; and allegations of ethics violations in nonreporting of gifts to US Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas emerged. Both stories broke within two weeks of Thomas’ cosmic turnabout on April 20th at 25 Sagittarius, a period fraught with peril for those terrestrial entities associated with this celestial body, provoking a literal “turning point” in their lives. Sagittarius is the sign ruled by Jupiter, which is associated with both banks and the judiciary, making Thomases involved in these fields even more susceptible to asteroid Thomas’ fallout.
On 6 April 2023, the lower chamber of the Tennessee State House took an unprecedented step – voting on the expulsion of three members who had violated floor protocols by joining an anti-gun demonstration during a lag in official proceedings. State representatives Justin Jones, Justin Pearson and Gloria Johnson briefly took a bullhorn to the well of the House to express solidarity and support for hundreds of students and others who had come to protest lax gun laws in the Volunteer State, in the wake of a mass shooting at a Christian school in Nashville the week before, that had left six dead, including three nine-year-olds.
