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Far-right groups now pose the greatest terrorist threat in the U.S. and Europe

Far-right groups now pose the greatest terrorist threat in the U.S. and Europe

NBC News reports: The threat of terrorism — particularly from the far right — should be a major concern for governments on both sides of the Atlantic as coronavirus restrictions continue to ease, according to multiple experts and former law enforcement officials who have experience monitoring violent extremist activity. High unemployment levels due to the pandemic, poor economic prospects and the spread of disinformation through the internet and social media could accelerate radicalization, they said. And after a major drive…

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Trump’s response to protests in Portland is damaging to our government and our democracy, says former DHS spokesperson

Trump’s response to protests in Portland is damaging to our government and our democracy, says former DHS spokesperson

David Lapan writes: I believe deeply that how our government’s security forces are seen by the American public is critical to their ability to protect us and our ability to maintain a healthy democracy. That belief comes from experience: I served for decades in the U.S. Marine Corps, as a Department of Defense spokesperson, and as the Trump administration’s first Department of Homeland of Security spokesperson. It’s as an American who cares profoundly about the missions of both DOD and…

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There’s nothing conservative about what Trump is doing in Portland

There’s nothing conservative about what Trump is doing in Portland

Paul Rosenzweig and Arthur Rizer write: Twenty years ago, Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist—not generally thought of as a radical liberal—said: “We can think of no better example of the police power, which the Founders denied the National Government and reposed in the States, than the suppression of violent crime and vindication of its victims.” Last week Attorney General William Barr went full interventionist, telling the press that he was deploying federal law-enforcement officers to Chicago and Albuquerque, New…

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Trump is on the prowl for enemies of the state in American cities. And who will stop him?

Trump is on the prowl for enemies of the state in American cities. And who will stop him?

Ellis Cose writes: When Trump ran for president, he promised to take America back to greatness. I assumed he wanted to return us to the 1950s, when minorities and women supposedly knew their respective places, and coal and tobacco were king. He apparently had an earlier period in mind: the years right after World War I. In that era, federal agents stormed across America, arresting and deporting presumed enemies of the state. The effort was led by Attorney General A….

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Covid-19 hygiene theater

Covid-19 hygiene theater

Derek Thompson writes: As a covid-19 summer surge sweeps the country, deep cleans are all the rage. National restaurants such as Applebee’s are deputizing sanitation czars to oversee the constant scrubbing of window ledges, menus, and high chairs. The gym chain Planet Fitness is boasting in ads that “there’s no surface we won’t sanitize, no machine we won’t scrub.” New York City is shutting down its subway system every night, for the first time in its 116-year history, to blast…

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Covid-19 infections leave an impact on the heart, raising concerns about lasting damage

Covid-19 infections leave an impact on the heart, raising concerns about lasting damage

STAT reports: Two new studies from Germany paint a sobering picture of the toll that Covid-19 takes on the heart, raising the specter of long-term damage after people recover, even if their illness was not severe enough to require hospitalization. One study examined the cardiac MRIs of 100 people who had recovered from Covid-19 and compared them to heart images from 100 people who were similar but not infected with the virus. Their average age was 49 and two-thirds of…

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In social insects, researchers find hints for controlling disease

In social insects, researchers find hints for controlling disease

By Michael Schulson, July 22, 2020 Given that she infects ant colonies with deadly pathogens and then studies how they respond, one might say that Nathalie Stroeymeyt, a senior lecturer in the school of biological sciences at the University of Bristol in the U.K., specializes in miniature pandemics. The tables turned on her, however, in March: Covid-19 swept through Britain, and Stroeymeyt was shut out of her ant epidemiology lab. The high-performance computers she uses to track ant behavior sat…

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Less punishment, more justice

Less punishment, more justice

David Cole writes: The mass protests spurred by George Floyd’s killing have been more sustained and widespread than any this country has seen before in response to police abuse. When the initial ones prompted even more police violence—officers driving cars into peaceful demonstrators or beating them with truncheons, using chemical agents and flash grenades to clear crowds for a presidential photo op, pepper-spraying young and old alike—the aggression, much of it captured on video, only inspired more people to join…

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Trump’s private army

Trump’s private army

Elizabeth Goitein writes: It doesn’t take a legal expert to know that what’s happening in Portland, Oregon is an abuse of power. When unidentified federal forces dressed as soldiers pull people off the streets into unmarked vans, something is gravely wrong. What’s less apparent is that this abuse is part of an ongoing effort by the administration to get around “posse comitatus”: the principle that the president cannot use the military as a domestic police force. The implications for the…

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Is it time to shut down the Department of Homeland Security?

Is it time to shut down the Department of Homeland Security?

Jonathan Blitzer writes: In early June, after the killing of George Floyd, when tens of thousands of mostly peaceful demonstrators assembled in cities across the country to protest police brutality, the Department of Homeland Security sent hundreds of its agents to patrol the crowds. They cleared space for a Presidential photo op in front of St. John’s Church, in Washington, D.C., by forcibly removing demonstrators, and in New York City they reportedly made at least one arrest at gunpoint. The…

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How California went from coronavirus success story to disaster — and how it can regain control

How California went from coronavirus success story to disaster — and how it can regain control

George Rutherford writes: In the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, California seemed to be a success story. Today, however, the state’s case count is surging, recently topping 400,000 total and surpassing New York. Compared with levels around Memorial Day in Southern California and around the second week in June in Northern California, daily cases have increased fourfold. In recent weeks, the average number of daily deaths statewide has increased by 50 percent. What is driving this surge, and how…

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Coronavirus ravaged Florida, as Ron DeSantis sidelined scientists and followed Trump

Coronavirus ravaged Florida, as Ron DeSantis sidelined scientists and followed Trump

The Washington Post reports: As Florida became a global epicenter of the coronavirus, Gov. Ron DeSantis held one meeting this month with his top public health official, Scott Rivkees, according to the governor’s schedule. His health department has sidelined scientists, halting briefings last month with disease specialists and telling the experts there was not sufficient personnel from the state to continue participating. “I never received information about what happened with my ideas or results,” said Thomas Hladish, a University of…

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Protests swell in Russia’s far east in a stark new challenge to Putin

Protests swell in Russia’s far east in a stark new challenge to Putin

The New York Times reports: Watching the passing masses of protesters chanting “Freedom!” and “Putin resign!” while passing drivers honked, applauded and offered high-fives, a sidewalk vendor selling little cucumbers and plastic cups of forest raspberries said she would join in, too, if she did not have to work. “There will be a revolution,” the vendor, Irina Lukasheva, 56, predicted. “What did our grandfathers fight for? Not for poverty or for the oligarchs sitting over there in the Kremlin.” The…

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Ancient microbial arms race sharpened our immune system — but also left us vulnerable

Ancient microbial arms race sharpened our immune system — but also left us vulnerable

Ann Gibbons writes: At a recent symposium on the evolution of infectious diseases, University of California, San Diego (UCSD), pathologist Nissi Varki noted that humans suffer from a long list of deadly diseases—including typhoid fever, cholera, mumps, whooping cough, measles, smallpox, polio, and gonorrhea—that don’t afflict apes and most other mammals. All of those pathogens follow the same well-trodden pathway to break into our cells: They manipulate sugar molecules called sialic acids. Hundreds of millions of these sugars stud the…

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