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The movement that sees Trump as an instrument of God leading a spiritual war

The movement that sees Trump as an instrument of God leading a spiritual war

Stephanie McCrummen writes: Convergence. Spiritual warfare. Demonic strongholds. These were the kinds of terms that Tami [Barthen] tossed off easily, and knew could make the movement seem loopy to outsiders. But they were part of a vocabulary that added up to a whole way of seeing the world, one traceable not so much to ancient times but rather to 1971. That was when an evangelical missionary named C. Peter Wagner returned to California after spending more than a decade in…

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How Leonard Leo, architect of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority, helped DeSantis flip the state Supreme Court

How Leonard Leo, architect of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority, helped DeSantis flip the state Supreme Court

The Washington Post reports: For decades, the ambitions of Florida’s Republican governors were stymied by the liberal-leaning state Supreme Court. That is, until Ron DeSantis was elected. The court let him erase a congressional district with a large Black population. It opened the door to a law making it easier to impose the death penalty. Now, it’s poised to rule on the governor’s plan to outlaw most abortions in the third-most-populous state. The hard-right turn was by design. DeSantis seized…

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Team Trump suspects his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, is a ‘rat’

Team Trump suspects his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, is a ‘rat’

Rolling Stone reports: Earlier this year, Donald Trump sent some of his lawyers and political advisers on a “small fact-finding mission,” as a person with knowledge of the matter describes it to Rolling Stone. The former president wanted to know, according to that source and another person close to Trump: “What is Mark doing?” Trump was referring to his former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows. Justice Department investigators and Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office had been keen on…

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U.S. is rejecting asylum seekers at much higher rates under new Biden policy

U.S. is rejecting asylum seekers at much higher rates under new Biden policy

The Los Angeles Times reports: A new Biden administration policy has dramatically lowered the percentage of migrants at the southern border who enter the United States and are allowed to apply for asylum, according to numbers revealed in court documents obtained by The Times. Without these new limits to asylum, border crossings could overwhelm local towns and resources, a Department of Homeland Security official warned a federal court in a filing this month. The new asylum policy is the centerpiece…

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Legal experts say the charges against Hunter Biden are rarely brought

Legal experts say the charges against Hunter Biden are rarely brought

NBC News reports: The charges brought against President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden are rarely prosecuted, legal experts say. Under a plea deal reached with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Delaware — an office headed by Donald Trump appointee David Weiss — Hunter Biden will plead guilty to two misdemeanor charges of failing to pay taxes, which he later reimbursed. Biden also faces a felony gun charge — possession of a firearm by a person who is…

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One photon is all it takes to kick off photosynthesis

One photon is all it takes to kick off photosynthesis

Emily Conover writes: For photosynthesis, one photon is all it takes. Only a single particle of light is required to spark the first steps of the biological process that converts light into chemical energy, scientists report June 14 in Nature. While scientists have long assumed that the reactions of photosynthesis begin upon the absorption of just one photon, that hadn’t yet been demonstrated, says physical chemist Graham Fleming, of the University of California, Berkeley. He and colleagues decided “we would…

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The more people enjoy music, the more their brain activity mirrors that of the musicians

The more people enjoy music, the more their brain activity mirrors that of the musicians

Robert Martone writes: When a concert opens with a refrain from your favorite song, you are swept up in the music, happily tapping to the beat and swaying with the melody. All around you, people revel in the same familiar music. You can see that many of them are singing, the lights flashing to the rhythm, while other fans are clapping in time. Some wave their arms over their head, and others dance in place. The performers and audience seem…

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FBI resisted opening probe into Trump’s role in January 6 for more than a year

FBI resisted opening probe into Trump’s role in January 6 for more than a year

The Washington Post reports: On Jan. 13, 2022, the department indicted Rhodes and 10 other Oath Keepers on charges of seditious conspiracy. It did not quiet the criticism, but instead put a spotlight on signs the Justice Department was not, in comparison with the House committee, working as actively to investigate Trump’s role in the attempted coup. Politico had reported that week that the House committee had demanded and received documents from several states about fake electors as well as…

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Well-funded Christian group behind U.S. effort to roll back LGBTQ+ rights

Well-funded Christian group behind U.S. effort to roll back LGBTQ+ rights

The Guardian reports: With the US besieged by a rightwing culture war campaign that aims to strip away rights from LGBTQ+ people and others, blame tends to be focused on Republican politicians and conservative media figures. But lurking behind efforts to roll back abortion rights, to demonize trans people, and to peel back the protections afforded to gay and queer Americans is a shadowy, well-funded rightwing legal organization, experts say. Since it was formed in 1994, Alliance Defending Freedom has…

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As the nation celebrates Juneteenth, it’s time to get rid of these three myths about slavery

As the nation celebrates Juneteenth, it’s time to get rid of these three myths about slavery

John Blake writes: Temple “Tempie” Cummins stoically stares at the camera with her arms folded in her lap, sitting stiffly in a chair in her dusty, barren backyard with her weather-beaten wooden shack behind her. Her dark, creased face reflects years of poverty and worry. The faded black and white image of Cummins from 1937 was snapped by a historian who stopped by her home in Jasper, Texas, to ask her about her childhood during slavery. Cummins, who did not…

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What the hell happened to Biden’s human rights agenda?

What the hell happened to Biden’s human rights agenda?

Matthew Duss writes: As president, Donald Trump made no secret of his admiration for repressive rulers around the world. Joe Biden campaigned on a promise to change that. He regularly criticized Donald Trump’s silence about repressive regimes and promised that a Biden administration would “hold to account those who perpetrate human rights abuses.” Since taking office he has repeated the refrain that “human rights will be the center of our foreign policy.” Not only has Biden not honored this promise,…

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Russia sought to assassinate defector in Florida

Russia sought to assassinate defector in Florida

The New York Times reports: As President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has pursued enemies abroad, his intelligence operatives now appear prepared to cross a line that they previously avoided: trying to kill a valuable informant for the U.S. government on American soil. The clandestine operation, seeking to eliminate a C.I.A. informant in Miami who had been a high-ranking Russian intelligence official more than a decade earlier, represented a brazen expansion of Mr. Putin’s campaign of targeted assassinations. It also…

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Blinken and Xi pledge to stabilize deteriorated U.S.-China ties, but the main U.S. request is rebuffed

Blinken and Xi pledge to stabilize deteriorated U.S.-China ties, but the main U.S. request is rebuffed

The Associated Press reports: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met on Monday with Chinese President Xi Jinping and said they agreed to “stabilize” badly deteriorated U.S.-China ties, but America’s top diplomat left Beijing with his biggest ask rebuffed: better communications between their militaries. After meeting Xi, Blinken said China is not ready to resume military-to-military contacts, something the U.S. considers crucial to avoid miscalculation and conflict, particularly over Taiwan. Yet Blinken and Xi pronounced themselves satisfied with progress made…

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Brain waves synchronize when people interact

Brain waves synchronize when people interact

Lydia Denworth writes: Neuroscientists usually investigate one brain at a time. They observe how neurons fire as a person reads certain words, for example, or plays a video game. As social animals, however, those same scientists do much of their work together—brainstorming hypotheses, puzzling over problems and fine-tuning experimental designs. Increasingly, researchers are bringing that reality into how they study brains. Collective neuroscience, as some practitioners call it, is a rapidly growing field of research. An early, consistent finding is…

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