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GOP lawmakers are quietly turning against the death penalty

GOP lawmakers are quietly turning against the death penalty

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Madeleine Carlisle writes: David Welch’s wife died on Christmas Day 2016. He doesn’t remember much of what happened that next year. But in the grips of grief, he came to a fundamental realization, he told me: The death penalty is “just morally wrong.” Welch has served as a Republican in the New Hampshire state House for more than three decades. For most of that time, he had consistently voted to uphold the death penalty. But after his wife’s death, he…

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In secret recording, Pompeo opens up about Venezuelan opposition, says keeping it united ‘has proven devilishly difficult’

In secret recording, Pompeo opens up about Venezuelan opposition, says keeping it united ‘has proven devilishly difficult’

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The Washington Post reports: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo offered a candid assessment of Venezuela’s opposition during a closed-door meeting in New York last week, saying that the opponents of President Nicolás Maduro are highly fractious and that U.S. efforts to keep them together have been more difficult than is publicly known. “Our conundrum, which is to keep the opposition united, has proven devilishly difficult,” Pompeo said in an audio recording obtained by The Washington Post. “The moment Maduro leaves,…

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Justice Ginsburg says deep divisions on the way, and Supreme Court watchers look for clues

Justice Ginsburg says deep divisions on the way, and Supreme Court watchers look for clues

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The Washington Post reports: When Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg turns reporter, reporters and lawyers start searching for clues. In a purportedly just-the-facts speech Friday to the judicial conference of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in New York, Ginsburg gave plenty to dissect. She teased pending decisions in cases about whether the census may contain a question on citizenship, and if the court would for the first time decide that a state’s electoral maps are…

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The end of the Arctic as we know it

The end of the Arctic as we know it

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Jonathan Watts writes: The demise of an entire ocean is almost too enormous to grasp, but as the expedition sails deeper into the Arctic, the colossal processes of breakdown are increasingly evident. The first fragment of ice appears off the starboard bow a few miles before the 79th parallel in the Fram strait, which lies between Greenland and the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. The solitary floe is soon followed by another, then another, then clusters, then swarms, then entire fields…

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Watching Elizabeth Warren come alive

Watching Elizabeth Warren come alive

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Dahlia Lithwick writes: The photos were all over the internet on election night of 2016. They went viral in the bad way, and they all looked something like this: Women, standing in a crowd of other women, hands over their mouths, tears on their cheeks, as they realized that Hillary Clinton had lost to Donald Trump, the man who bragged about treating women like garbage. Those photos had come immediately on the heels of the other photos, also inescapable, taken…

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Barr is lying about Mueller’s evidence

Barr is lying about Mueller’s evidence

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William Saletan writes: The final report on the Russia investigation, submitted on March 22 by special counsel Robert Mueller, documents multiple attempts by President Donald Trump to obstruct justice. So why hasn’t Trump been indicted? Because one man stands in the way: Attorney General William Barr. Two days after receiving Mueller’s 448-page report, Barr declared Mueller’s evidence insufficient. Since then, Barr has offered no detailed analysis to support his conclusions. Instead, in hearings and interviews, the attorney general has based…

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YouTube’s new policy on hate speech risks increasing ignorance about fascism

YouTube’s new policy on hate speech risks increasing ignorance about fascism

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The Guardian reports: YouTube has blocked some British history teachers from its service for uploading archive material related to Adolf Hitler, saying they are breaching new guidelines banning the promotion of hate speech. The video-sharing website announced on Wednesday that it would remove material glorifying the Nazis from its platform in an attempt to stop people being radicalised. In the process however, it also deleted videos uploaded to help educate future generations about the risks of fascism. Scott Allsop, who…

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Russian disinformation on YouTube draws ads, lacks warning labels, say researchers

Russian disinformation on YouTube draws ads, lacks warning labels, say researchers

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Reuters reports: Fourteen Russia-backed YouTube channels spreading disinformation have been generating billions of views and millions of dollars in advertising revenue, according to researchers, and had not been labeled as state-sponsored, contrary to the world’s most popular streaming service’s policy. The channels, including news outlets NTV and Russia-24, carried false reports ranging from a U.S. politician covering up a human organ harvesting ring to the economic collapse of Scandinavian countries. Despite such content, viewers have flocked to the channels and…

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Physicists debate Stephen Hawking’s idea that the universe had no beginning

Physicists debate Stephen Hawking’s idea that the universe had no beginning

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Natalie Wolchover writes: In 1981, many of the world’s leading cosmologists gathered at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, a vestige of the coupled lineages of science and theology located in an elegant villa in the gardens of the Vatican. Stephen Hawking chose the august setting to present what he would later regard as his most important idea: a proposal about how the universe could have arisen from nothing. Before Hawking’s talk, all cosmological origin stories, scientific or theological, had invited…

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Pelosi tells senior Democrats she wants to see Trump ‘in prison’

Pelosi tells senior Democrats she wants to see Trump ‘in prison’

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Politico reports: Speaker Nancy Pelosi told senior Democrats that she’d like to see President Donald Trump “in prison” as she clashed with House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler in a meeting on Tuesday night over whether to launch impeachment proceedings. Pelosi met with Nadler (D-N.Y.) and several other top Democrats who are aggressively pursuing investigations against the president, according to multiple sources. Nadler and other committee leaders have been embroiled in a behind-the-scenes turf battle for weeks over ownership of the…

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How Trump could be prosecuted after the White House

How Trump could be prosecuted after the White House

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Renato Mariotti writes: With Congress enmeshed in a fraught debate over whether to impeach President Donald Trump, Robert Mueller’s brief and dramatic news conference provided a sharp reminder that impeachment is not the only option for addressing the president’s alleged misdeeds. The outlines of a potential civilian prosecution of a former president Trump are already emerging. While there are reports of tax dodges, illegal campaign contributions, and improper foreign contributions to his inaugural committee—among other things—investigations into those claims are…

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No-deal Brexit cannot happen without parliamentary consent, says Speaker

No-deal Brexit cannot happen without parliamentary consent, says Speaker

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The Guardian reports: John Bercow, the Speaker of the House of Commons, has said it is “blindingly obvious” that the new Conservative prime minister will not be able to suspend parliament to push through a no-deal Brexit. The Speaker said it would not be an option after outrage across the political spectrum when the leadership hopeful Dominic Raab suggested he might try to take that path. “That is simply not going to happen. It is just so blindingly obvious that…

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13 Democrats recorded messages about Israel. Bernie Sanders was the only one to show any courage

13 Democrats recorded messages about Israel. Bernie Sanders was the only one to show any courage

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Peter Beinart writes: The mantra of Kirsten Gillibrand’s presidential campaign is “Brave Wins.” Yet in her video message to the American Jewish Committee’s Global Forum this week, the New York Senator didn’t even mention the word “Palestinian.” That was typical. The 2020 Democratic hopefuls talk a lot about having the courage not just to challenge Donald Trump but to transform America’s political and economic system. But with the exception of Bernie Sanders, the leading contenders couldn’t muster the nerve to…

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