Music: Emil Brandqvist Trio — ‘When the Light Shines Through’
Biden campaign is finally realizing: ‘It’s a when, not if’
NBC News reports: In the hours after the assassination attempt on Trump last weekend, some Democrats said — even feared — that the calls for Biden to step aside would be “frozen” as the president dealt with a national crisis. But that faded quickly. Some allies now say that the shooting, which has caused an even more intense rallying around Trump within his party, only makes it more glaringly obvious that the nagging narrative of whether Biden is on a…
Sharpton says he told Biden that staying in race could imperil his legacy
The New York Times reports: The Rev. Al Sharpton said Thursday that he had told President Biden it was time for “a serious calculation” of his standing in the presidential campaign and that remaining in the race could imperil much of Mr. Biden’s legacy as president. “I said that whatever he does, I’ll always respect what we’ve done together,” Mr. Sharpton said in a phone interview. “I was not one to push him out of the race, but he needs…
Retaliation: Biden campaign tries to punish dissent
Politico reports: Democrats in Michigan cut off a vulnerable House Democrat from a major part of campaign operations after she called last week for President Joe Biden to step down from the ticket. Officials reversed that decision Thursday, after facing questions from POLITICO. Rep. Hillary Scholten, a first-term Democrat who flipped a traditionally Republican seat in 2022, was booted last week from a coordinated effort between the Biden campaign and the state party to elect candidates up and down the…
Why tech titans are turning toward Trump
Vox reports: Former President Donald Trump used to be persona non grata in Silicon Valley. Nearly all of the dollars spent by Silicon Valley elites in 2016 went to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. In 2020, those elites spent even more to defeat Trump. The few who supported Trump that year — such as venture capitalist Peter Thiel, the co-founder of Paypal and Palantir — did so knowing they were standing on a third rail, and many did not speak openly about it for fear…
The United States of Suppression
Teen Vogue reports: The backlash to progress is often swift. The response to the 2020 protests for Black lives and against police brutality — what may have been the biggest mobilization in US recorded history — was stunning. A bright spark of resistance and the expression of long-held frustration was met with suffocating state repression: arrests, beatings, prosecutions, and calls for more police funding from the highest levels of government. With the 2024 presidential election on the horizon, authoritarianism in the…
Climate crisis is making days longer, study finds
The Guardian reports: The climate crisis is causing the length of each day to get longer, analysis shows, as the mass melting of polar ice reshapes the planet. The phenomenon is a striking demonstration of how humanity’s actions are transforming the Earth, scientists said, rivalling natural processes that have existed for billions of years. The change in the length of the day is on the scale of milliseconds but this is enough to potentially disrupt internet traffic, financial transactions and…
To save life on Earth, bring back taxonomy
Robert Langellier writes: In 2009, the botanist Naomi Fraga was hunting a flower without a name near Carson City, Nev. Ms. Fraga saw that the plant was going extinct in real time as its desert valley habitat was bulldozed to make way for Walmarts and housing developments. But in order to seek legal protections for it, she had to give it a name. The diminutive yellow flower became the Carson Valley monkeyflower or, officially, Erythranthe carsonensis, allowing conservationists to petition…
Music: Emil Brandqvist Trio — ‘My New Bike’
Nearly two-thirds of Democrats want Biden to withdraw. He’s ‘arrogant, narcissistic,’ says Michael Moore
The Associated Press reports: Nearly two-thirds of Democrats say President Joe Biden should withdraw from the presidential race and let his party nominate a different candidate, according to a new poll, sharply undercutting his post-debate claim that “average Democrats” are still with him even if some “big names” are turning on him. The new survey by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, conducted as Biden works to salvage his candidacy two weeks after his debate flop, also found that…
Schiff calls on Biden to drop out, citing ‘serious concerns’ he can’t win
The Los Angeles Times reports: Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), who is running for U.S. Senate in California, is calling for President Biden to drop out of the presidential race, he said in an exclusive statement Wednesday to The Times. Schiff, who is heavily favored to win his Senate race, cited “serious concerns” that Biden can beat former President Trump in November. He is the latest Democrat to call for the incumbent president of their own party to end his…
Pelosi privately works to address Biden crisis after having herself made way for generational change
Politico reports: One House Democrat anxious about President Joe Biden’s effect on the 2024 campaign recently sought out guidance from a trusted party leader: Nancy Pelosi. This lawmaker, who represents a swing seat and was granted anonymity to describe private conversations, said Pelosi asked detailed questions about congressional district-level polling and was “very receptive” to concerns that Biden couldn’t win in November. The member ended the phone call with the distinct impression that Pelosi believed Biden should exit the presidential…
House Democrats left ‘aghast’ by Biden’s by ‘defensive,’ ‘incoherent,’ and ‘unintelligible’ exchange with Rep. Crow
ABC News reported on a Zoom call Biden held with House Democrats on Saturday: [Colorado Democrat Rep. Jason] Crow questioned Biden’s mental fitness and if his age is a “national security risk.” The president was “defensive” in his responses, sources say. A member described to ABC News the exchange was “hard to watch” and detailed how Crow referenced voters’ concerns about Biden being “at the helm when they go to sleep at night.” The conversation became personal when Biden mentioned…
In private speech, J.D. Vance said the ‘devil is real’ and praised Alex Jones as a truth-teller
By Andy Kroll, ProPublica, and Nick Surgey, Documented This story was originally published by ProPublica. Sen. J.D. Vance, whom Donald Trump named as his vice presidential running mate Monday, told a group of influential young conservatives in a closed-door speech in 2021 that they should stand up for “nonconventional people” who speak truth, such as Infowars founder Alex Jones. “If you listen to Rachel Maddow every night, the basic worldview that you have is that MAGA grandmas who have family…
The hidden ties between Google and Amazon’s Project Nimbus and Israel’s military
Wired reports: On April 16, police entered Google offices in New York and California to detain several employees protesting a $1.2 billion cloud contract with Israel’s government called Project Nimbus. The deal, shared with Amazon, has met pushback from some employees at both companies since 2021, but the protests have grown louder since Israel’s renewed conflict with Hamas after the attacks of October 7, 2023. Current and former Google and Amazon workers protesting Project Nimbus say it makes the companies…
Why planetary problems need a new approach to politics
Jonathan S Blake and Nils Gilman write: ‘Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world,’ Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared to the World Health Assembly on 29 November 2021, quoting Albert Camus’s The Plague. ‘Outbreaks, epidemics and pandemics are a fact of nature,’ Tedros, the director-general of the World Health Organization since 2017, continued in his own words. ‘But that does not mean we are helpless to prevent them, prepare for them or mitigate their impact.’ Exuding…