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‘Sponge city’: How Copenhagen is adapting to a wetter future

‘Sponge city’: How Copenhagen is adapting to a wetter future

E360 reports: In just two hours on July 2, 2011, a torrential, once-in-a-millennium storm battered and flooded Copenhagen, pounding parts of Denmark’s capital with more than 5 inches of rain. Critical infrastructure at the city’s largest hospital was swamped, as were major roads, basements, and businesses. The city that had been engaged with advanced sustainability planning for decades, it turned out, was woefully unprepared for the fierce rainfall, which caused $1.8 billion in damages. Shaken by the calamity, the city…

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Nakba 2.0: Israel in talks with multiple countries to which it could send Gaza Palestinians

Nakba 2.0: Israel in talks with multiple countries to which it could send Gaza Palestinians

The Times of Israel reports: Israel is in talks with five countries or territories — Indonesia, Somaliland, Uganda, South Sudan and Libya — about potentially accepting resettled Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, Channel 12 reported Wednesday. “Some of the countries are showing greater openness than before to accepting voluntary immigration from the Gaza Strip,” a diplomatic source told the outlet, naming Indonesia and Somaliland as particularly open to the idea. However, no concrete decisions have reportedly been made. Somaliland is…

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With chaotic airdrops, Israel’s engineered starvation of Gaza enters new phase

With chaotic airdrops, Israel’s engineered starvation of Gaza enters new phase

+972 reports: From his displacement tent in western Deir al-Balah, Tayseer Obeid has spent the past week scanning the skies over central Gaza, noting the time and direction of aircraft dropping aid. His family of 12 hasn’t received proper humanitarian assistance in six months. To feed them, he planted small patches of molokhia, eggplant, and pumpkin around his and his relatives’ tent. But the crops have been repeatedly destroyed — including at the end of July, when the Israeli army…

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Bondi’s illegal order exacerbates the crisis in D.C. and teaches all the wrong lessons

Bondi’s illegal order exacerbates the crisis in D.C. and teaches all the wrong lessons

Austin Sarat writes: What is happening in Washington, D.C., should alarm every American. The Founders of this country imagined that the federal government would play a small and secondary role, backstopping state and local government and carrying out functions (such as negotiating with foreign powers) that they could not. The sight of the National Guard and Drug Enforcement, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and other federal law enforcement agents on the streets of the nation’s capital would have shocked and horrified…

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The Supreme Court is poised to kill the Voting Rights Act

The Supreme Court is poised to kill the Voting Rights Act

  Paul Blumenthal reports: The march for voting rights from Selma, Alabama, to the capital of Montgomery in 1965 wasn’t meant to lead to the passage of the Voting Rights Act. But then came the horror of the scenes on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where police fractured the late John Lewis’ skull and beat organizer Amelia Boynton unconscious, with much of the violence caught on camera. It swayed public opinion: President Lyndon Johnson delivered the voting rights bill to Congress…

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Four out of five U.S. troops surveyed understand their duty to disobey illegal orders

Four out of five U.S. troops surveyed understand their duty to disobey illegal orders

National Guard members arrive at the Guard’s headquarters at D.C. Armory on Aug. 12, 2025 in Washington. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images By Charli Carpenter, UMass Amherst and Geraldine Santoso, UMass Amherst With his Aug. 11, 2025, announcement that he was sending the National Guard – along with federal law enforcement – into Washington, D.C. to fight crime, President Donald Trump edged U.S. troops closer to the kind of military-civilian confrontations that can cross ethical and legal lines. Indeed, since Trump returned…

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Justice Department opens the door to domestic terrorism

Justice Department opens the door to domestic terrorism

Jeff Stein, Michael Isikoff, and Karen J. Greenberg report: A top official in the Justice Department unit assigned to combat domestic terrorism has resigned in frustration after watching his office effectively gutted with much of its funding cut off and its lawyers reassigned to immigration enforcement and other matters. “I no longer had a functioning job. There was nothing for me to do anymore,” said Thomas Brzozowski, who had served as the unit’s senior counsel for the last 10 years,…

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The tiny group of Trump loyalists making major national-security decisions

The tiny group of Trump loyalists making major national-security decisions

Missy Ryan, Jonathan Lemire, Nancy A. Youssef, and Michael Scherer report: During Donald Trump’s first term, his top advisers attempted to run a traditional process for shaping foreign policy, tapping experts from the White House’s National Security Council, debating recommendations from across the government, and steering the president away from decisions that they feared would damage America’s interests. But Trump was deeply mistrustful of the NSC, which he saw as too big, too cumbersome, and too attached to Republican orthodoxy….

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Federal agents in LA gather outside Gov. Newsom press conference in apparent attempt at intimidation

Federal agents in LA gather outside Gov. Newsom press conference in apparent attempt at intimidation

TRUMP’S PRIVATE ARMY IS ILLEGALLY ON PRIVATE PROPERTY!!!! WE WILL NOT BE INTIMIDATED BY THIS WEAK LITTLE MAN!!! https://t.co/13nJL6JRvG — Governor Newsom Press Office (@GovPressOffice) August 14, 2025 Democracy Docket reports: Masked and armed federal agents made arrests outside of a Los Angeles museum in which Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) Thursday was announcing plans to redraw the state’s congressional map to offset the GOP’s redistricting efforts in Texas. The aggressive police operation directly outside the press conference appeared to be…

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Department of Homeland Security accused of tweeting antisemitic dog whistles

Department of Homeland Security accused of tweeting antisemitic dog whistles

JTA reports: Over the weekend, the Department of Homeland Security’s X account appeared to reference an antisemitic dog whistle. And it wasn’t the first time that happened this summer. “Which way, American man?” the department’s official page posted Sunday, over a political cartoon from 1936 called “Uncle Sam at the Crossroads.” The post, a recruitment ad for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, alluded to the phrase “Which way, Western man?” — the title of a 1978 book steeped in antisemitic conspiracy…

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‘Legitimization Cell’: Israeli unit tasked with linking Gaza journalists to Hamas

‘Legitimization Cell’: Israeli unit tasked with linking Gaza journalists to Hamas

+972 reports: The Israeli military has operated a special unit called the “Legitimization Cell,” tasked with gathering intelligence from Gaza that can bolster Israel’s image in the international media, according to three intelligence sources who spoke to +972 Magazine and Local Call and confirmed the unit’s existence. Established after October 7, the unit sought information on Hamas’ use of schools and hospitals for military purposes, and on failed rocket launches by armed Palestinian groups that harmed civilians in the enclave….

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Israel is becoming a defining issue for Democrats

Israel is becoming a defining issue for Democrats

Politico reports: Pete Buttigieg once had a ready answer about the U.S.-Israel relationship, likening it to a “friendship” in which you “try to guide them to a better place.” It’s a line that used to go over well with the “Pod Save America” guys, who once clapped for and nodded along with it on stage back in 2019. But this week they no longer did. The politics of the Israel-Hamas conflict — and its center of gravity — have changed….

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Consumer financial protections at risk as Wall Street reverses its stance on crypto

Consumer financial protections at risk as Wall Street reverses its stance on crypto

The New York Times reports: Not long ago, bank executives would compete with one another to be the loudest critic of cryptocurrencies. Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, once compared Bitcoin to a pet rock and said the whole crypto industry should be banned. Bank of America’s Brian Moynihan described the space as an “untraceable tool for money laundering,” while HSBC’s chief executive proclaimed bluntly: “We are not into Bitcoin.” Now big banks can’t stop talking about crypto….

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In Silicon Valley, eugenics is called ‘genetic optimization’ with breeding programs for smarter babies

In Silicon Valley, eugenics is called ‘genetic optimization’ with breeding programs for smarter babies

The Wall Street Journal reports: Tsvi Benson-Tilsen, a mathematician, spent seven years researching how to keep an advanced form of artificial intelligence from destroying humanity before he concluded that stopping it wasn’t possible—at least anytime soon. Now, he’s turned his considerable brainpower to promoting cutting-edge technology to create smarter humans who will be up to the task of saving us all. “My intuition is it’s one of our best hopes,” said Benson-Tilsen, co-founder of the Berkeley Genomics Project, a nonprofit…

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