Today is Thursday, April 13th, and you're listening to The Morning Announcements

presented by Betches Media. I'm your host, Sammy Sage, and The Morning Announcements

is your daily five-minute breakdown of the headlines, but isn't afraid to take a side

and roast the most consequential reality show there is. Our government.

Nikki Haley has some competition for her 2024 presidential run from within her own home state

of South Carolina. Republican Senator Tim Scott has launched an exploratory committee,

signaling that he is actively considering a presidential run. In terms of campaign legalities,

an exploratory committee would allow him to raise money that could then be used to fund an

official campaign. He announced this maybe campaign in a video titled Faith in America,

and he will certainly need a lot of faith to overcome the recent poll of South Carolina

Republicans, 41% of whom say they'd vote for Trump in a primary compared with Scott's 7%.

But I mean, we all know you only need 1% to be in the conversation. So good on him.

Now we are back to Tennessee, where Representative Justin Pearson was reinstated yesterday by

the Shelby County Board of Commissioners to return to his seat in the state legislature

after he was expelled for protesting gun violence. So it's safe to say that the only thing

accomplished here was giving two young lawmakers major national profiles, which I'm sure was the

entire intent behind expelling them in the first place. New York Attorney General Latisha James

announced yesterday that the vaping company Jewel will need to pay a $460 million settlement to

six states. New York, California, Illinois, New Mexico, Massachusetts, Colorado, and Washington,

D.C. Attorney General James announced the settlement because she led the lawsuit alongside California

Attorney General Rob Bonta. They accused the company of misleading marketing practices targeted at

minors because they claimed that vapes were healthier than cigarettes, not true, which ultimately

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