Trump is running out of time as he tries to restrict mail voting

Trump is running out of time as he tries to restrict mail voting

The Washington Post reports: President Donald Trump is running out of time in his quest to limit voting by mail, as a judge holds up his plans, and election officials begin sending ballots to voters in two swing states and gear up to send them across the country. Nearly a third of voters used mail ballots in 2024, and last-minute changes to how they’re handled could lead to undelivered ballots and uncounted votes. Trump has long argued that mail ballots…

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A gerrymandered flop: Republicans might still lose half the seats they’re trying to flip

A gerrymandered flop: Republicans might still lose half the seats they’re trying to flip

Politico reports: Republicans are growing increasingly worried their mid-decade gerrymandering push isn’t going to save their House majority. The norm-breaking plan hatched by the White House last summer to draw new maps to protect the party from an unfavorable midterm environment is not on track to bear the fruits they hoped it would. Two months out from Election Day, Republicans are sweating races they thought they would win comfortably when they redrew district boundaries, according to conversations with a dozen…

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West Bank settler violence is being facilitated by the Israeli government

West Bank settler violence is being facilitated by the Israeli government

Mairav Zonszein writes: Of all the fronts on which Israel is exerting force, the West Bank is where the Jewish state is the most invested, exerts the most control and has received the least American pushback. It is also where over half a million Israeli citizens live among some three million Palestinians who are under military occupation without citizenship. President Trump has not put any brakes on Israeli settlement expansion, creeping annexation, military raids, demolitions of Palestinian homes or settler…

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Iran emerges more confident after six months of war with the U.S.

Iran emerges more confident after six months of war with the U.S.

The New York Times reports: Iran has grown more confident in its ability to attack targets in the Middle East and appears determined to continue the conflict for months to frustrate the United States, according to U.S. intelligence reports in recent weeks. In many respects, the assessments reflect what has been observable on the ground as fighting erupted again after a period of relative calm. In the past week, Iran targeted ships in the Strait of Hormuz and American troops…

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A political operative on the verge of self-deportation

A political operative on the verge of self-deportation

Jesús Rodríguez writes: One recent Sunday in August, Daysi González addressed a crowd of about seventy people in a sterile conference room in New York’s financial district. The people who were gathered at tables around her, eating buffet tacos and sipping cans of Coke Zero, were first- and second-generation Americans getting ready to run for office or to work on political campaigns. Some looked younger than thirty and were dressed casually, while others already looked the part of the candidate,…

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Haitians deported from the U.S. are left broke and stranded

Haitians deported from the U.S. are left broke and stranded

The New York Times reports: Dozens of deportees are arriving in the Haitian city of Cap Haitien weekly as the Trump administration pushes to remove Haitians who lack legal immigration status in the United States, and some are now marooned in an unfamiliar place. More than 80 people were returned last week, often with only the U.S. government-issued sweatpants and T-shirts, and with immigration court documents stuffed in their pockets. Many returned broke, saying their valuables had disappeared during the…

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Study outlines the five-stage pipeline Clavicular used to spread ‘diagnostic masculinity’ and looksmaxxing

Study outlines the five-stage pipeline Clavicular used to spread ‘diagnostic masculinity’ and looksmaxxing

PsyPost reports: A recent study explores how an extreme male self-improvement trend known as looksmaxxing moved from obscure internet forums into mainstream public awareness. The research suggests that this spread relies not just on social media algorithms, but on a coordinated system of controversy, short-form video clips, and mainstream media coverage. The findings were published in Journal. Media. Looksmaxxing revolves around the intense, systematic attempt to maximize a person’s physical attractiveness. Participants often scrutinize their own facial features, such as…

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Pete Hegseth ‘is a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States and the world’

Pete Hegseth ‘is a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States and the world’

The Guardian reports: In a different Washington, under a different president, a return to the well-worn playbook of all-out sanctions to counter Iran might have been the signal for a publicity-hungry US secretary of defense to adopt a lower profile. But these are no ordinary times. And Pete Hegseth is no ordinary defense secretary. Barely a week after the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, unleashed a supposed “economic D-day” aimed at crushing the regime in Tehran under the weight of commercial…

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Nepal’s catastrophic flood heralds a new era of disasters

Nepal’s catastrophic flood heralds a new era of disasters

Bloomberg reports: The giant wave of rock, ice and debris that swept through 100 kilometers (62 miles) of Nepalese valleys last week is the deadliest illustration yet of how climate change is fueling mountain disasters of epic proportions. Scientists have long predicted quicker melting of snow and ice and accelerated thawing of permafrost in high mountain areas that are warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet. For years they have documented the results: more frequent rockfalls, avalanches,…

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The AI overlords are using apocalyptic warnings to distract us from immediate threats

The AI overlords are using apocalyptic warnings to distract us from immediate threats

Cal Newport writes: The observation that the most alarmist claims about A.I.’s impact seem to come from the individuals most connected to Rationalism [originating from Eliezer Yudkowsky] should anger us. This exaggerated grimness makes it easy to overlook the more immediate harms created by these technologies, such as their potential use in cybersecurity attacks, excess resource consumption, impact on our cognitive fitness, role in undermining education and amplification of soul-deadening slop. This style of anxious talk also allows the A.I….

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OpenAI’s rogue agents keep escaping, with no formal process to investigate them

OpenAI’s rogue agents keep escaping, with no formal process to investigate them

TechCrunch reports: OpenAI is at the center of another agent swarm incident. Researchers say the company’s internally deployed agents took over an obscure German-language wiki in May and June, using it to coordinate on evaluations and swap methods to evade OpenAI’s own controls (OpenAI has not yet confirmed the swarm came from the company). The revelation surfaces days after METR and Redwood Research published their account of July’s Hugging Face breach. In July, a swarm of OpenAI agents worked together…

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Republicans sour on the economy

Republicans sour on the economy

Axios reports: Republicans’ confidence in the economy has plummeted over the last six months at a pace unseen since Covid — reminiscent of the declines during the global financial crisis nearly two decades ago. Why it matters: Usually, the president’s party is upbeat about the economy, while the party out of power is far more downcast. What’s striking now is that Republicans have grown increasingly sour this year, even with a Republican president in office. It’s another in a long list of ominous indicators for President…

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Norway seizes Russian research ship in the high Arctic

Norway seizes Russian research ship in the high Arctic

The New York Times reports: For the past several days, Norwegian security services had been tracking a Russian research ship. It was cruising around Svalbard, an icy archipelago high in the Arctic near the North Pole that Norway controls but is governed by a one-of-a-kind treaty that gives the Russians access. On Wednesday, the Norwegians pounced. Armed with a court order that is part of a global effort to recover Russian assets, Norwegian police officers boarded the ship while it…

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How a massive solar storm could take down the power grid

How a massive solar storm could take down the power grid

CNN reports: Forecasters knew something unusual was hurtling toward Earth. Three days before a solar storm arrived on May 10, 2024, they watched as a dark knot on the sun — tangled magnetic field lines spanning 124,000 miles — took aim at the planet. “That’s magnets twisting and turning and popping through each other,” said Shawn Dahl, service coordinator at the Space Weather Prediction Center operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colorado. “Think about a rubber…

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