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Antarctica warming much faster than models predicted in ‘deeply concerning’ sign for sea levels

Antarctica warming much faster than models predicted in ‘deeply concerning’ sign for sea levels

The Guardian reports: Antarctica is likely warming at almost twice the rate of the rest of the world and faster than climate change models are predicting, with potentially far-reaching implications for global sea level rise, according to a scientific study. Scientists analysed 78 Antarctic ice cores to recreate temperatures going back 1,000 years and found the warming across the continent was outside what could be expected from natural swings. In West Antarctica, a region considered particularly vulnerable to warming with…

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Lawsuit filed to remove Trump from ballot in Colorado under 14th Amendment

Lawsuit filed to remove Trump from ballot in Colorado under 14th Amendment

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington: Having disqualified himself from public office by violating Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, Donald Trump must be removed from the ballot, according to a lawsuit filed today by six Republican and unaffiliated Colorado voters including former state, federal and local officials, represented by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the firms Tierney Lawrence Stiles LLC, KBN Law, LLC and Olson Grimsley Kawanabe Hinchcliff & Murray LLC. Section 3 of the…

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Alabama is quickly discovering the dangers of defying the Supreme Court

Alabama is quickly discovering the dangers of defying the Supreme Court

Mark Joseph Stern writes: Alabama Republicans’ brash defiance of the Supreme Court hit a wall on Tuesday when a federal district court declared that the state’s new congressional maps discriminate against Black citizens in violation of the Voting Rights Act. The decision was entirely predictable given that GOP lawmakers have openly refused to draw districts that comply with the Supreme Court’s recent ruling against them. But the opinion is still remarkable for its caustic and exasperated criticism of the state’s…

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Why Republicans could impeach a liberal State Supreme Court justice before she’s heard a case

Why Republicans could impeach a liberal State Supreme Court justice before she’s heard a case

The New York Times reports: Wisconsin Democrats are aghast at what they view as another attempt by Republicans to reject the outcome of an election they lost. Many now privately concede that impeaching Justice Protasiewicz is a foregone conclusion. “They’re deliberately trying to overturn the will of the people,” said Sarah Godlewski, the Democratic secretary of state. “We have to understand the risk this is posing. It’s a potential reality that would put Wisconsin’s democracy in jeopardy.” The Democratic Party…

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Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse files ethics complaint over Justice Samuel Alito interview

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse files ethics complaint over Justice Samuel Alito interview

NBC News reports: Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse is demanding that Chief Justice John Roberts take action over an unusual interview conservative Justice Samuel Alito gave in which he questioned whether Congress has the power to impose ethics rules on the Supreme Court. Whitehouse’s complaint, submitted Monday, focuses on a July 28 interview published by The Wall Street Journal, conducted in part by conservative lawyer David Rivkin, in the wake of recent news articles raising questions about Supreme Court ethics. “No…

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How Trump still taps into America’s cultural animus

How Trump still taps into America’s cultural animus

Scott Nelson and Bradley Klein write: When Trump first won the presidency in 2016, legacy media outlets, including the New York Times, wrung their hands in anguish for having missed the story of profound public anxiety about the future. They raced to diners and truck stops across the Midwest in an effort to find out what “ordinary Americans” — those who rejected the Roosevelt coalition and bicoastal liberalism — were thinking and feeling. The stories that resulted painted a picture…

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The truth about Elon Musk and anti-Semitism

The truth about Elon Musk and anti-Semitism

Judd Legum and Tesnim Zekeria write: Elon Musk, a self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist,” is threatening to sue the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for billions of dollars because the group has publicly criticized his management of X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. In a public meltdown over X’s declining financial condition, Musk accused the ADL, an organization founded in 1913 “to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all,” of being “the biggest…

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It’s reassuring to think humans are evolution’s ultimate destination – but research shows we may be an accident

It’s reassuring to think humans are evolution’s ultimate destination – but research shows we may be an accident

The Cambrian explosion, about 530 million years ago, was when most of the major groups of animals first appear in the fossil record. canbedone/Shutterstock By Matthew Wills, University of Bath and Marcello Ruta, University of Lincoln Depending upon how you do the counting, there are around 9 million species on Earth, from the simplest single-celled organisms to humans. It’s reassuring to imagine that complex bodies and brains like ours are the inevitable consequence of evolution, as if evolution had a…

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Climate-linked ills threaten humanity

Climate-linked ills threaten humanity

The Washington Post reports: The floods came, and then the sickness. Muhammad Yaqoob stood on his concrete porch and watched the black, angry water swirl around the acacia trees and rush toward his village [Bagh Yusuf, in Sindh province, Pakistan] last September, the deluge making a sound that was like nothing he had ever heard. “It was like thousands of snakes sighing all at once,” he recalled. At first, he thought villagers’ impromptu sandbags, made from rice and fertilizer sacks,…

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Betting against worst-case climate scenarios is risky business

Betting against worst-case climate scenarios is risky business

David Spratt writes: Would you live in a building, cross a bridge, or trust a dam wall if there were a 10 percent chance of it collapsing? Or five percent? Or one percent? Of course not! In civil engineering, acceptable probabilities of failure generally range from one-in-10,000 to one-in-10-million. So why, when it comes to climate action, are policies like carbon budgets accepted when they have success rates of just 50 to 66 percent? That’s hardly better than a coin…

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Trump’s co-defendants are already starting to turn against him

Trump’s co-defendants are already starting to turn against him

Politico reports: The finger-pointing among Donald Trump’s inner circle has begun. And as his four criminal cases march toward trials, some of his aides, allies and co-defendants are pointing at the former president. In court documents and hearings, lawyers for people in Trump’s orbit — both high-level advisers and lesser known associates — are starting to reveal glimmers of a tried-and-true strategy in cases with many defendants: Portray yourself as a hapless pawn while piling blame on the apparent kingpin….

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Can Joe Biden ride ‘boring’ to reelection?

Can Joe Biden ride ‘boring’ to reelection?

Molly Jong-Fast writes: “Do you want my most subversive hot take?” a friend recently asked me over dinner. I nodded, as a writer can never say no to a question like that. “Biden is the best president of our lifetime.” They might be right. Despite being very much on the fence about Joe Biden in the 2020 Democratic primary, and even writing a Washington Post piece saying he should drop out after he lost primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire,…

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‘Stop Cop City’ activists hit with RICO charges by same grand jury that indicted Trump

‘Stop Cop City’ activists hit with RICO charges by same grand jury that indicted Trump

The Daily Beast reports: Georgia prosecutors have filed racketeering charges against 61 people accused of involvement with “Stop Cop City,” a protest movement against a controversial Atlanta police training facility. The charges were filed last week, according to online court records. Charging documents were not immediately available on Tuesday morning. But the list of defendants suggests that the case implicates people who have already been arrested on tenuous evidence, like a legal observer who was jailed while monitoring protests, activists…

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Elon Musk amplifies call by antisemites to ban the ADL from X

Elon Musk amplifies call by antisemites to ban the ADL from X

JTA reports: Elon Musk is engaging with white nationalists and antisemites who want to ban the Anti-Defamation League from Twitter, the influential social media platform he now calls “X.” Musk on Saturday asked his followers whether he should poll the platform about a hashtag, #BanTheADL, embraced in recent days by white nationalists and others on the far right. Musk had earlier “liked” the tweet launching the hashtag by Keith Woods, an Irish white nationalist and self-described “raging antisemite.” “The ADL’s…

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