Music: Moca — ‘So Funky’
America’s power-hungry Christians need to face their own flaws
David French writes: There’s a popular story in Christian circles that’s literally too good to be true. According to legend, in the early 1900s, The Times of London sent an inquiry to a number of writers asking the question, “What’s wrong with the world today?” The Christian apologist G.K. Chesterton responded succinctly and profoundly: “Dear Sirs, I am.” The real story is just as profound, but less succinct. In 1905 Chesterton wrote a much longer letter to London’s Daily News,…
Religious right gets blindsided by angry parents in a Southern California school district
Politico reports: Three Southern California school board members backed by a far-right pastor narrowly won election last fall in campaigns fueled by pandemic rage. Then they banned critical race theory and rejected social studies materials that included LGBTQ rights hero Harvey Milk. Now, they’re fighting for their political lives. After just six months in office, those officials face a recall effort on top of a civil rights investigation launched by the state’s Democratic-led education department. Students have held protests, and…
Where Clarence Thomas entered an elite circle and opened a door to the Supreme Court
The New York Times reports: On Oct. 15, 1991, Clarence Thomas secured his seat on the Supreme Court, a narrow victory after a bruising confirmation fight that left him isolated and disillusioned. Within months, the new justice enjoyed a far-warmer acceptance to a second exclusive club: the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, named for the Gilded Age author whose rags-to-riches novels represented an aspirational version of Justice Thomas’s own bootstraps origin story. If Justice Thomas’s life had unfolded as…
GOP states quit the program that fights voter fraud. Now they’re scrambling
Politico reports: Over the past year and a half, eight Republican-led states quit a nonpartisan program designed to keep voter rolls accurate and up to date. Top Republican election officials in those states publicly argued the program was mismanaged. The conspiracy theorists who cheered them on falsely insisted it was a front for liberals to take control of elections. But experts say the program, known as the Electronic Registration Information Center, was among the best nationwide tool states had to…
From the Jenin raid to settlements, Biden is giving Israel’s far-right government a green light
Mairav Zonszein writes: On Monday July 3, while Israeli forces were raiding the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, in a ground and aerial assault that forced thousands of Palestinian civilians to evacuate their homes, U.S. Ambassador Tom Nides hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a Fourth of July event in Jerusalem. They talked about the close bond between the United States and Israel, and smiled for the cameras. During the Israeli military’s two-day raid—the largest in…
Joe Biden should embrace all seven of his grandchildren
Maureen Dowd writes: Even my Republican sister is not immune to Joe Biden’s gregarious Irish charm. She met him at media holiday parties over the years and was so impressed that she got seduced to the other side for a time, voting for the Obama-Biden ticket in 2008 and writing in Biden’s name for president in 2012. She sent out a Christmas card one year with a picture of herself cheek to cheek with Biden — and some of her…
Twitter Blue accounts fuel Ukraine war misinformation
BBC News reports: False and misleading posts about the Ukraine conflict continue to go viral on major social media platforms, as Russia’s invasion of the country extends beyond 500 days. Some of the most widely shared examples can be found on Twitter, posted by subscribers with a blue tick, who pay for their content to be promoted to other users. Many misleading posts have been shared online about the recent riots in France, but one viral post last week focused…
Music: Moca — ‘Latein’
What history reveals about the biggest new power player in U.S. politics: Moms for Liberty
Nicole Hemmer writes: When Moms for Liberty met in Philadelphia last week, they attracted the kind of attention, and controversy, that they have become accustomed to courting. Founded two years ago in the wake of President Joe Biden’s election, the organization attracted the leading contenders for the Republican presidential nomination, including former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. They also drew a crowd of protesters and activists who oppose the group’s reactionary political projects, such as book bans…
Abducted Princeton student’s friends warn ‘lies’ could get her killed
The Daily Beast reports: Friends and colleagues of Elizabeth Tsurkov, a dual Russian-Israeli citizen who was kidnapped by an Iran-backed militia in Iraq earlier this year, are slamming what they describe as dangerous lies spreading online about the Princeton doctoral student. Tsurkov, 36, went missing in March after traveling to Iraq on a research trip for her dissertation, Israel’s Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement this week, adding that she was abducted by Kataib Hezbollah, a notorious militia group…
The U.S. and China must work together to combat climate change, says Yellen
Reuters reports: The United States and China, as the world’s two largest economies, must work together to combat the “existential threat” of climate change, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told Chinese government officials and climate experts on Saturday. During a visit to Beijing, Yellen said previous cooperation on climate change between the U.S. and China had made possible global breakthroughs such as the 2015 Paris Agreement, adding that both governments wanted to support emerging markets and developing countries as they…
Earth is at its hottest in thousands of years. Here’s how we know
The Washington Post reports: Observations from both satellites and the Earth’s surface are indisputable — the planet has warmed rapidly over the past 44 years. As far back as 1850, data from weather stations all over the globe make clear the Earth’s average temperature has been rising. In recent days, as the Earth has reached its highest average temperatures in recorded history, scientists have made a bolder claim: It may well be warmer than any time in the last 125,000…
There have been an average of almost two mass shootings every day in the U.S. so far this year
ABC News reports: The United States has faced at least 351 mass shootings so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. This averages out to almost two mass shootings a day. Mass shootings are defined as an incident in which four or more victims are shot or killed, according to the archive. Though mass shootings don’t make up the majority of gun violence incidents in America, their impact on communities and victims is evident. Incidents like the mass…
‘Sound of Freedom’: Box office triumph for QAnon believers
Miles Klee writes: “Based on a true story,” I heard from somewhere across the theater. The familiar words had appeared on screen, and an elderly man had taken it upon himself to read them aloud, to the rest of a sizable audience seated for a matinee showing of the anti-child-trafficking thriller Sound of Freedom, starring Jim Caviezel. For the seasoned moviegoer, this phrase is a joke — we know that cinema will stretch almost any “truth” to the breaking point — and the rank…
Measurement of electron’s ‘shape’ dims hopes for discovery of new particles
Science reports: A measurement of the humble electron has dimmed particle physicists’ long-held hopes of discovering exotic new particles. The finding, reported today in Science, confirms to greater precision than ever before that the distribution of electric charge in the electron is essentially round. The result implies that any new fundamental particles lurking undiscovered in the vacuum might be too massive for even the world’s biggest atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), to produce. “It’s a fantastic result,” says…