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That woman from Michigan would be amazing against Trump

That woman from Michigan would be amazing against Trump

Jonathan Martin writes: Democrats in Michigan’s congressional delegation have pleaded with [Gov. Gretchen] Whitmer to run [for president], I’m told by officials familiar with the conversations, and the lawmakers have themselves been nudged by colleagues from other states to push her. Notably, that roster of congressional Democrats from other states eager for a Whitmer bid included members of the Congressional Black Caucus. These backstage conversations have taken place as Biden’s approval ratings show little sign of improvement and increasingly appear…

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Restricting the govt. from speaking to tech companies will spread disinformation and harm democracy

Restricting the govt. from speaking to tech companies will spread disinformation and harm democracy

Leah Litman and Laurence H. Tribe write: On July 4, federal Judge Terry A. Doughty in the Western District of Louisiana issued a preliminary injunction in Missouri v. Biden, a case that basically turns some elected Republicans’ fixation on social media censorship into legal reality. The impetus behind the case is the now thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory that the government is somehow strong-arming Big Tech into censoring conservative speech and speakers in violation of the First Amendment. While there are, in theory, interesting questions about when…

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Why a sudden surge of broken heat records is scaring scientists

Why a sudden surge of broken heat records is scaring scientists

The Washington Post reports: A remarkable spate of historic heat is hitting the planet, raising alarm over looming extreme weather dangers — and an increasing likelihood that this year will be Earth’s warmest on record. New precedents have been set in recent weeks and months, surprising some scientists with their swift evolution: historically warm oceans, with North Atlantic temperatures already nearing their typical annual peak; unparalleled low sea ice levels around Antarctica, where global warming impacts had, until now, been…

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Swing state Republicans bleed donors and cash over Trump’s false election claims

Swing state Republicans bleed donors and cash over Trump’s false election claims

Reuters reports: Real estate mogul Ron Weiser has been one of the biggest donors to the Michigan Republican Party, giving $4.5 million in the recent midterm election cycle. But no more. Weiser, former chair of the party, has halted his funding, citing concerns about the organization’s stewardship. He says he doesn’t agree with Republicans who promote falsehoods about election results and insists it’s “ludicrous” to claim Donald Trump, who lost Michigan by 154,000 votes in 2020, carried the state. “I…

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Russia’s war on Ukraine has forced us in Germany to think differently about our role in the world

Russia’s war on Ukraine has forced us in Germany to think differently about our role in the world

Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s foreign minister, writes: Our security is not a given. For too long, we did not listen to the warnings of our eastern neighbours who urged us to take the threats emanating from Russia seriously. We learned that “hoping for the best” is not enough when dealing with an increasingly autocratic leader. Besides all our efforts to construct a European security architecture with Russia, our economic and political interaction also did not sway the Russian regime toward democracy….

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Why did Darwin’s 20th-century followers get evolution so wrong?

Why did Darwin’s 20th-century followers get evolution so wrong?

James A Shapiro writes: Since 1859, when Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was first published, the theory of natural selection has dominated our conceptions of evolution. As Darwin understood it, natural selection is a slow and gradual process that takes place across multiple generations through successive random hereditary variations. In the short term, a small variation might confer a slight advantage to an organism and its offspring, such as a longer beak or better camouflage, allowing it to…

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Highest-ranking person in Copper Age Spain was a woman, not a man, genetic analysis shows

Highest-ranking person in Copper Age Spain was a woman, not a man, genetic analysis shows

Live Science reports: Since its discovery in 2008, the skeleton of a high-ranking individual buried inside a tomb in the Iberian Peninsula between 3,200 and 2,200 years ago was thought to be the remains of a man. However, a new analysis reveals that this person was actually a woman. Archaeologists in Spain dubbed the woman the “Ivory Lady” based on the bounty of grave goods found alongside her skeleton, including an ivory tusk surrounding her skull, flint, an ostrich eggshell,…

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Ukraine warns Russia might attack the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. How worried should we be?

Ukraine warns Russia might attack the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. How worried should we be?

CNN reports: Russian troops have placed “objects resembling explosives” on roofs at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP), Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address Tuesday that instantly sparked concerns around the world. “Perhaps to simulate an attack on the plant. Perhaps they have some other scenario,” Zelensky speculated. But on one point, he was unequivocal: “In any case, the world sees – can’t but see – that the only source of danger to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power…

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Wagner rebellion raises doubts about stability of Russia’s nuclear arsenal

Wagner rebellion raises doubts about stability of Russia’s nuclear arsenal

The Washington Post reports: The rebellion in Russia by Wagner mercenaries confronted Western officials with one of their gravest fears: the possibility of political chaos and instability in the country with the world’s largest nuclear arsenal. Anxiety over who might gain control of Russia’s weapons of mass destruction has long tempered Western hopes that President Vladimir Putin might be ousted from power. But months of nuclear posturing by Putin and other senior Russian officials, and a new debate among Moscow…

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Kremlin ‘can’t confirm’ China’s president urged Putin not to use nuclear arms in Ukraine

Kremlin ‘can’t confirm’ China’s president urged Putin not to use nuclear arms in Ukraine

The Guardian reports: The Kremlin has denied a report that the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, had personally warned his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, against using nuclear weapons in Ukraine. “No, I can’t confirm it,” Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters on Wednesday when asked about a Financial Times report that said Xi delivered the message when he visited Moscow in March. Peskov said the two countries had issued statements at the time on the content of their talks, calling all…

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Kidnapped scholar Elizabeth Tsurkov deserves America’s every effort to bring her to safety

Kidnapped scholar Elizabeth Tsurkov deserves America’s every effort to bring her to safety

New Lines magazine reports: Our last contact with Elizabeth Tsurkov was on March 19. She told us she’d had enough of doing field research in the Middle East and wanted to return to Princeton University to write her doctoral dissertation. “No more fieldwork,” she said. We were relieved. We did not want her to stay in an Iraq that was increasingly dominated by pro-Iranian militias. Just over a week later we learned from our sources that a pro-Iranian militia had…

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How the far right rose – and found Trump

How the far right rose – and found Trump

Charles Kaiser writes: Rightwing extremism has always been a feature of American life, from the diehard supporters of slavery in the 19th century to the 20,000 fascists who filled Madison Square Garden in 1939 and the violent opponents of integration who beat and killed civil rights workers and leaders throughout the 1960s. Today, this ugly tradition of hatred is perpetuated by dozens of vile groups, from the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers to the Family Research Council and a…

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Meltwater is hydro-fracking Greenland’s ice sheet through millions of hairline cracks – destabilizing its internal structure

Meltwater is hydro-fracking Greenland’s ice sheet through millions of hairline cracks – destabilizing its internal structure

Richard Bates and Alun Hubbard kayak a meltwater stream on Greenland’s Petermann Glacier, towing an ice radar that reveals it’s riddled with fractures. Nick Cobbing. Alun Hubbard, University of Tromsø I’m striding along the steep bank of a raging white-water torrent, and even though the canyon is only about the width of a highway, the river’s flow is greater than that of London’s Thames. The deafening roar and rumble of the cascading water is incredible – a humbling reminder of…

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Clean energy subsidies attract European companies to expand hydrogen development in the U.S.

Clean energy subsidies attract European companies to expand hydrogen development in the U.S.

Politico reports: European leaders have devoted tens of billions of dollars toward encouraging production of hydrogen, a clean-burning fuel that advocates say will create jobs and help fight climate change. But now, many of those jobs will be going to the United States instead. The clean energy subsidies that undergird President Joe Biden’s climate agenda have just prompted one Norwegian manufacturer to choose Michigan, not Europe, as the site of a nearly $500 million factory that will produce the equipment…

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