Music: Lars Danielsson — ‘Sonata in Spain’
Trump is reshaping Americans’ political views — just not the way he intended
David A. Graham writes: One of the most enduring descriptions of presidential power comes from Teddy Roosevelt, whose description of the office as a “bully pulpit” reflected his conclusion that its true worth was not its constitutional powers, but the ability to speak with and persuade voters. A century later, political scientists had largely debunked Roosevelt. It turns out, Ezra Klein wrote in The New Yorker in 2012, that presidents don’t actually possess much power to sway public opinion. But…
Police state: The aftermath of ICE mass arrests
Henry Grabar reports: A single mother called a neighbor on the morning of Aug. 7, as federal immigration agents stormed the rural Mississippi chicken plant where she worked: “Manuel,” he remembered her saying, “I can’t get out. I have faith, and I trust you to take care of my kids.” That afternoon, Manuel Ramirez watched TV with the boys, who are 12, 10, and 5, making excuses for their mother’s absence until the oldest child saw on Facebook that U.S….
Group of top CEOs says maximizing shareholder profits no longer can be the primary goal of corporations
The Washington Post reports: The organization representing the nation’s most powerful chief executives is rewriting how it views the purpose of a corporation, updating its decades-old endorsement of the theory that shareholders’ interests should come above all else. The new statement, released Monday by the Business Roundtable, suggests balancing the needs of a company’s various constituencies and comes at a time of widening income inequality, rising expectations from the public for corporate behavior and proposals from Democratic lawmakers that aim…
U.S. scientist to file whistleblower complaint after agency halts his climate work
Reuters reports: A climate scientist for the Trump administration’s health protection agency who was ordered to drop work on climate issues will file a whistleblower complaint this week with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, his lawyers said on Wednesday. George Luber, who ran the climate and health program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is an expert on the health impacts of climate change including risks to hospitals and public health infrastructure and of diseases borne by…
Amazon deforestation and Brazilian President Bolsonaro’s attack on science
Doug Boucher writes: Science is always a potential threat to authoritarian rulers, because it uncovers truths that contradict their lies. Recently we’ve seen a dramatic example of this conflict in Brazil, where the director of the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) has been fired by the country’s new President, Jair Bolsonaro, for releasing data showing a substantial increase in Amazon deforestation. INPE has been providing the world with measurements of deforestation, based on detailed analysis of satellite photos, for…
Did Netanyahu just kill Washington’s ‘pro-Israel’ consensus?
M.J. Rosenberg writes: The most important thing to know about the Israeli government’s decision to ban two Democratic House members, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, from entering Israel and its occupied Palestinian territories is that it is not about them. That is why it doesn’t matter that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu subsequently reversed himself and agreed to let Tlaib in on “humanitarian” grounds; it wouldn’t even matter if he reversed himself on Omar. Again, it is not about them. It…
The world looks away while Idlib awaits its fate
Elizabeth Tsurkov reports: On July 22 Russian jets bombed the market in Maarat al-Numan, a town near Idlib in northwestern Syria, killing 40 civilians. According to an eyewitness named Um Abdullah, the bombing was so devastating that rescue workers struggled to find corpses left intact. “They filled entire bags with body parts,” she said. Idlib and the surrounding area is now the last remaining territory in Syria still controlled by opposition forces. Over three million people live there, including over…
Music: Esbjörn Svensson Trio — ‘Spam-Boo-Limbo’
America holds onto an undemocratic assumption from its founding: that some people deserve more power than others
Jamelle Bouie writes: If you want to understand American politics in 2019 and the strain of reactionary extremism that has taken over the Republican Party, a good place to start is 2011: the year after a backlash to Barack Obama’s presidency swept Tea Party insurgents into Congress, flipping control of the House. It was clear, at the start of that year, that Congress would have to lift the debt ceiling — the limit on bonds and other debt instruments the…
Ohio white nationalist arrested for threatening to shoot up Jewish community center
ABC News reports: An Ohio man has been arrested for making threats toward a local Jewish community center in New Middletown. James Reardon Jr., 20, has been charged with telecommunications harassment and aggravated menacing and is being held in the Mahoning County Jail on $250,000 bond with a court hearing planned for Monday morning. On Friday, the FBI Violent Crimes Task Force raided Reardon’s house and seized a cache of weapons and ammunition, including dozens of round of ammo, multiple…
Man arrested after expressing interest in committing mass shooting, FBI says
CNN reports: Connecticut authorities arrested a man who they said was interested in committing a mass shooting, had weapons and tactical gear, and made his intentions known on Facebook. Brandon Wagshol, 22, was detained Thursday after a tip from a citizen that he was trying to buy large capacity rifle magazines from out of state, the FBI and the Norwalk Police Department said. Wagshol has been charged with four counts of illegal possession of large capacity magazines, and is being…
Man arrested in Florida for threatening to open fire on large crowd of people
CNN reports: A Florida man has been charged for threatening to commit a mass shooting after his ex-girlfriend alerted authorities to a series of ominous text messages he sent her. 25-year-old Tristan Scott Wix was arrested on Friday in a Winn-Dixie parking lot in Daytona Beach Shores, the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release. [Continue reading…]
Huge wildfires in the Arctic and far North send a planetary warning
Smoke from wildfires in Siberia drifts east toward Canada and the U.S. on July 30, 2019. NASA By Nancy Fresco, University of Alaska Fairbanks The planet’s far North is burning. This summer, over 600 wildfires have consumed more than 2.4 million acres of forest across Alaska. Fires are also raging in northern Canada. In Siberia, choking smoke from 13 million acres – an area nearly the size of West Virginia – is blanketing towns and cities. Fires in these places…
India plans big detention camps for migrants. Muslims are afraid
The New York Times reports: More than four million people in India, mostly Muslims, are at risk of being declared foreign migrants as the government pushes a hard-line Hindu nationalist agenda that has challenged the country’s pluralist traditions and aims to redefine what it means to be Indian. The hunt for migrants is unfolding in Assam, a poor, hilly state near the borders with Myanmar and Bangladesh. Many of the people whose citizenship is now being questioned were born in…
UK faces food, fuel, and drug shortages in a no-deal Brexit, leaked official documents say
Business Insider reports: Britain faces shortages of fresh food, fuel, and medicine in the increasingly likely event that it leaves the EU without a transition deal, jamming ports and requiring a hard border in Ireland, official government documents leaked to the Sunday Times show. The Times said the forecasts compiled by the Cabinet Office set out the most likely aftershocks of a no-deal Brexit rather than the worst case scenarios. The dossier, known as “Operation Yellowhammer”, is thought to be…