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Are North Carolina Republicans trying to steal a state supreme court seat?

Are North Carolina Republicans trying to steal a state supreme court seat?

Republicans on the NC Supreme Court blocked certification of a Democratic justice's election win. Her GOP opponent is trying to throw out 60,000 ballots cast in November, citing debunked far-right legal theories. This assault on democracy should be a national scandal. — Robert Reich (@RBReich) January 9, 2025 Vox reports: North Carolina’s supreme court has temporarily prohibited the state’s Board of Elections from certifying the election of sitting Democratic Justice Allison Riggs to the bench on Tuesday, despite her 734-vote…

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Trump will continue his assault on international law

Trump will continue his assault on international law

Mark Lawrence Schrad writes: Jan. 20, 2025, will mark the second inauguration of Donald Trump as president of the United States. Coincidentally, it will also mark my 20th year of teaching international law. Since many of my international politics students—now college juniors and seniors—were still in middle school during Trump’s first inauguration, they are largely unsure of what to expect from a second Trump administration. If history is any guide, the primary target of his foreign policy ire will be not…

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The media isn’t ready for Trump’s mass deportation moment

The media isn’t ready for Trump’s mass deportation moment

Adrian Carrasquillo writes: Imagine this scenario: Department of Homeland Security agents storm a meatpacking plant in the South, a show of force in the largest workplace raid in a decade. Rounding up workers, they target those who appear to be Latinos, without regard for citizenship. They don’t ask for documentation until hours later. A worker, overcome by fear, makes a run for it and is tackled by immigration agents, with one putting a boot on the worker’s neck for over…

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Poking fun at Trump, Mexico’s president suggests the U.S. should be renamed Mexican America

Poking fun at Trump, Mexico’s president suggests the U.S. should be renamed Mexican America

The New York Times reports: Mexico’s president rejected several of President-elect Donald J. Trump’s assertions about her country and even joked that the United States should be called “Mexican America” after Mr. Trump said the Gulf of Mexico should be renamed the Gulf of America. President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico used her Wednesday morning news conference to show a world map dating from 1607. The map labeled North America as Mexican America and already identified the Gulf of Mexico as…

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Americans are now spending more time alone than ever

Americans are now spending more time alone than ever

Derek Thompson writes: Americans are spending less time with other people than in any other period for which we have trustworthy data, going back to 1965. Between that year and the end of the 20th century, in-person socializing slowly declined. From 2003 to 2023, it plunged by more than 20 percent, according to the American Time Use Survey, an annual study conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Among unmarried men and people younger than 25, the decline was more…

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How the Palestinian Authority’s final gamble in Jenin could lead to its demise

How the Palestinian Authority’s final gamble in Jenin could lead to its demise

Middle East Eye reports: The Palestinian Authority (PA) has entered a lost battle with its crackdown in Jenin, which will ultimately lead to its demise, analysts and an insider say. The ongoing campaign against anti-occupation armed groups in the northern West Bank city, which has killed at least 16 Palestinians so far, is doomed to fail regardless of the outcome, a senior Fatah figure told Middle East Eye. Speaking on condition of anonymity, he explained that the PA has been…

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A nickel rush threatens Indonesia’s last nomadic tribes and its forests, fishermen and farmers

A nickel rush threatens Indonesia’s last nomadic tribes and its forests, fishermen and farmers

Garry Lotulung writes: Deep in the backcountry here, Sumean Gebe, 42, lives with Bede Yuli, 39, and his two children in the forest around Dodaga Village, about four hours by road from the capital of North Maluku Province. Every so often, they’ll move to a different forest. “We have been like this since we were little,” he said. “Usually we will make a bivouac [a temporary shelter] with a roof of palm leaves and tarpaulin. We are comfortable living there.”…

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How the search for beauty drives scientific enquiry

How the search for beauty drives scientific enquiry

Bridget Ritz and Brandon Vaidyanathan write: When Paulo was an undergraduate, he was tasked with taking photographs of neurons. ‘A single cell,’ he came to notice, ‘it’s a whole universe.’ Looking at cells beneath a microscope is not unlike gazing at stars in the sky, Paulo realised. ‘We all know they are there, but until you see them with your own eyes, you don’t have that experience of awe, of wow.’ It was then, as he put it, that he…

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A ‘golden age of America’ or for Trump family businesses?

A ‘golden age of America’ or for Trump family businesses?

The New York Times reports: President-elect Donald J. Trump was at the lectern talking through the approaching inauguration of his second term. But across the ballroom at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., was a display of the extraordinary way that his family business interests are now fully mixed with his plans for governance of the United States. Mr. Trump opened the unusual news conference on Tuesday by introducing Hussain Sajwani, the founder and chairman of DAMAC Properties, a…

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Trump will unleash a crypto frenzy that endangers the whole of the financial system

Trump will unleash a crypto frenzy that endangers the whole of the financial system

Annie Lowrey writes: “The countdown clock on the next catastrophic crash has already started,” Dennis Kelleher, the president of the nonprofit Better Markets, told me. In the past few weeks, I have heard that sentiment or similar from economists, traders, Hill staffers, and government officials. The incoming Trump administration has promised to pass crypto-friendly regulations, and is likely to loosen strictures on Wall Street institutions as well. This will bring an unheralded era of American prosperity, it argues, maintaining the…

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Imperial designs: Trump willing to invade Greenland and Panama; ‘economic force’ against Canada

Imperial designs: Trump willing to invade Greenland and Panama; ‘economic force’ against Canada

The Associated Press reports: President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday said he would not rule out the use of military force to seize control of the Panama Canal and Greenland, as he declared U.S. control of both to be vital to American national security. Speaking to reporters less than two weeks before he takes office on Jan. 20 and as a delegation of aides and advisers that includes Donald Trump Jr. is in Greenland, Trump left open the use of the…

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Trump promises to rename Gulf of Mexico as Gulf of America

Trump promises to rename Gulf of Mexico as Gulf of America

The Daily Beast reports: Donald Trump wants to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America,” he revealed in a bonkers news conference Tuesday. “We’re going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, which has a beautiful ring that covers a lot of territory,” he said. “The Gulf of America, what a beautiful name.” The Gulf of Mexico, as it was named as far back as the…

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Elon Musk’s dishonest demagogy on Britain’s grooming gangs

Elon Musk’s dishonest demagogy on Britain’s grooming gangs

Michelle Goldberg writes: Over a decade ago, a horrific sex trafficking scandal rocked Britain. Starting in the late 1990s, thousands of mostly white girls in the postindustrial north of England, many from struggling families, were groomed by networks of mostly Pakistani men, who often professed to be their boyfriends before trapping them in a hell of repeated rape and prostitution. Several girls were murdered. The mass abuse went on for years as those who tried to sound the alarm —…

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Elon Musk is getting involved in European politics to serve his business interests

Elon Musk is getting involved in European politics to serve his business interests

Malcolm Ferguson writes: Elon Musk wants to be the Italian government’s sole telecommunications provider. The billionaire’s SpaceX company is closing in on a $1.6 billion security contract after Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni visited Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate on Saturday. The Italian government promises that Meloni didn’t talk to Musk about the deal while she was there. If enacted, Musk’s SpaceX would supply Italy with encryption services for government and military use. “Ready to provide Italy the most secure and…

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