The New York Times reports: Turning on his iPhone one day last year, the lawyer M. Evan Corcoran recorded his reflections about a high-profile new job: representing former President Donald J. Trump in an investigation into his handling of classified documents. In complete sentences and a narrative tone that sounded as if it had been… Read More »
By Corey G. Johnson This story was originally published by ProPublica. From the movie theater to the shopping mall, inside a church and a synagogue, through the grocery aisle and into the classroom, gun violence has invaded every corner of American life. It is a social epidemic no vaccine can stem, a crisis with no… Read More »
The Wall Street Journal reports: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was now ready to launch a long-awaited counteroffensive but tempered a forecast of success with a warning: It could take some time and come at a heavy cost. “We strongly believe that we will succeed,” Zelensky said in an interview in this southern port city as his country’s… Read More »
CBS News reports: Companies making so-called “forever chemicals” knew they were toxic decades before health officials, but kept that information hidden from the public, according to a peer-reviewed study of previously secret industry documents. The new study in the Annals of Global Health concluded that 3M and DuPont, the largest makers of per- and polyfluoroalkyl… Read More »
Eric Foner writes: Earlier this year, Randy McNally, the speaker of the Tennessee Senate, issued a proclamation declaring April 2023 Confederate History Month. He urged ‘citizens from across this state’ to remember their ancestors’ ‘heroic struggle’ for ‘individual freedom’. Observers outside Tennessee may find it incongruous to identify a war fought to preserve slavery with… Read More »
BBC News reports: A global expert on nerve agents, stood down from speaking at a government-backed conference, says he believes it is because he is outspoken on a range of issues including asylum policy. Dan Kaszeta was disinvited from Tuesday’s conference after his social media content was vetted. The Ministry of Defence said checks on… Read More »
Katarina Zimmer writes: It could have been a scene from Jurassic Park: ten golden lumps of hardened resin, each encasing insects. But these weren’t from the age of the dinosaurs; these younger resins were formed in eastern Africa within the last few hundreds or thousands of years. Still, they offered a glimpse into a lost… Read More »
Peter Turchin writes: How has America slid into its current age of discord? Why has our trust in institutions collapsed, and why have our democratic norms unraveled? All human societies experience recurrent waves of political crisis, such as the one we face today. My research team built a database of hundreds of societies across 10,000… Read More »
Andrew Weissmann, Ryan Goodman, Joyce Vance, Norman L. Eisen, Fred Wertheimer, Siven Watt, E. Danya Perry, Joshua Stanton and Joshua Kolb write: This model prosecution memorandum assesses potential charges federal prosecutors may bring against former President Donald Trump. It focuses on those emanating from his handling of classified documents and other government records since leaving… Read More »
The Forward reports: A new study is casting doubt on the idea, held by some but not most American Jews, that antisemitism is just as prevalent on the far left as it is on the far right. Though far more American Jews consider the far right as the greater antisemitic threat, some academics and Jewish… Read More »
Josh Chafetz writes: Although the Supreme Court has been deciding cases at a glacial pace this term — and that with an almost comically small docket of only 59 merits cases — the justices have found other ways to keep busy. They have been spinning their ethical lapses (Justice Clarence Thomas), blowing off congressional oversight (Chief Justice John Roberts), giving interviews whining about public criticism… Read More »
By Patrick Parenteau, Vermont Law & Graduate School and John Dernbach, Widener University Honolulu has lost more than 5 miles of its famous beaches to sea level rise and storm surges. Sunny-day flooding during high tides makes many city roads impassable, and water mains for the public drinking water system are corroding from saltwater because… Read More »
NBC News reports: Extreme heat waves and drought due to climate change have the potential to shock the global food supply and send prices soaring, according to a new study. The research, published Friday in the journal npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, assesses a worst-case scenario in which extreme weather hits two breadbasket regions in… Read More »
PsyPost reports: Is there a bullshit blind spot? A series of two studies recently found that people who were the worst at detecting bullshit not only grossly overestimated their detection ability, but also overestimated their ability compared to other people. In other words, they not only believe that they are better at detecting BS than… Read More »