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How Kavanaugh and Gorsuch deceived the Senate

How Kavanaugh and Gorsuch deceived the Senate

The New York Times reports: During a two-hour meeting in her Senate office with the Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh on Aug. 21, 2018, Senator Susan Collins of Maine pressed him hard on why she should trust him not to overturn Roe v. Wade if she backed his confirmation. Judge Kavanaugh worked vigorously to reassure her that he was no threat to the landmark abortion rights ruling. “Start with my record, my respect for precedent, my belief that it…

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Five misunderstandings of pregnancy biology that cloud the abortion debate

Five misunderstandings of pregnancy biology that cloud the abortion debate

Science News reports: Like most aspects of biology, early human development involves many complex processes. Despite the rhetoric around these issues, clear lines — between having a heart and not having a heart or being able to survive outside of the uterus — are scarce, or nonexistent. “There aren’t these set black-and-white points for much of this,” says obstetrician-gynecologist Nisha Verma, a fellow with the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in Washington, D.C. Here’s what’s known about five key…

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Ukrainian troops retreat from Severodonetsk after weeks of brutal battle

Ukrainian troops retreat from Severodonetsk after weeks of brutal battle

The Wall Street Journal reports: Ukraine ordered its troops to withdraw from their remaining foothold in the city of Severodonetsk to avoid encirclement, the regional governor said, ending a battle that lasted nearly two months and giving Russia a small but symbolically important victory in the grinding war for control of eastern Ukraine’s Donbas area. Hard to defend and separated from the rest of Ukrainian-held territory by a river, Severodonetsk, a city of just over 100,000 people before the war,…

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Do you think you see the world objectively while others are biased?

Do you think you see the world objectively while others are biased?

Erika Weisz and Sarah Stamper write: When Lee Ross, a professor of psychology at Stanford, explained to his students what his term “fundamental attribution error” meant, he loved to quote George Carlin. “Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?” The late comedian perfectly captured our tendency to attribute the world’s problems to other people and not ourselves. I’m the only good driver on the road….

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America is growing apart, possibly for good

America is growing apart, possibly for good

Ronald Brownstein writes: It may be time to stop talking about “red” and “blue” America. That’s the provocative conclusion of Michael Podhorzer, a longtime political strategist for labor unions and the chair of the Analyst Institute, a collaborative of progressive groups that studies elections. In a private newsletter that he writes for a small group of activists, Podhorzer recently laid out a detailed case for thinking of the two blocs as fundamentally different nations uneasily sharing the same geographic space….

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Trump privately called a Roe v. Wade reversal ‘bad’ for his party

Trump privately called a Roe v. Wade reversal ‘bad’ for his party

The New York Times reports: The man most responsible for shaping a United States Supreme Court that delivered the conservative movement a long-sought victory has spent weeks saying he didn’t think it will be good for his party. Publicly, after a draft of the likely decision leaked in May, former President Donald J. Trump was remarkably tight-lipped for weeks about the possible decision, which the court ultimately handed down on Friday, ending federal abortion protections. But privately, Mr. Trump has…

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No one is above the law, and that starts with Donald Trump

No one is above the law, and that starts with Donald Trump

Richard L. Hasen writes: In a 2019 ruling requiring the former White House counsel Don McGahn to testify at a congressional hearing about former President Donald Trump’s alleged abuses of power, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson declared that “presidents are not kings.” If we take that admonition from our next Supreme Court justice seriously and look at the evidence amassed so far by the House select committee on the Jan. 6 attack, we can — and in fact must — conclude…

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I was forced to give birth to my rapist’s baby. The end of Roe means more will suffer my hell

I was forced to give birth to my rapist’s baby. The end of Roe means more will suffer my hell

Dina Zirlott writes: My story is one that some already know, but for the sake of those who might not, and in light of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade, it is best summarized by these three sentences: I was raped when I was 17 years old. I was forced to give birth to a baby when I was 18 years old. My baby died when I was 19 years old. I wrote my first essay for HuffPost in…

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Biden, 11 U.S. states to boost support for offshore wind energy

Biden, 11 U.S. states to boost support for offshore wind energy

Reuters reports: The Biden administration is partnering with 11 East Coast states to accelerate development of offshore wind facilities and create jobs by supporting a domestic supply chain for the industry, the White House said on Thursday. The move is part of President Joe Biden’s push to fight climate change by expanding clean energy technologies. That agenda has been weighed down recently by rising prices, particularly for gasoline. Offshore wind is a major component of that strategy. The administration has…

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Rare ‘triple’ La Niña climate event looks likely — what does the future hold?

Rare ‘triple’ La Niña climate event looks likely — what does the future hold?

Nature reports: An ongoing La Niña event that has contributed to flooding in eastern Australia and exacerbated droughts in the United States and East Africa could persist into 2023, according to the latest forecasts. The occurrence of two consecutive La Niña winters in the Northern Hemisphere is common, but having three in a row is relatively rare. A ‘triple dip’ La Niña — lasting three years in a row — has happened only twice since 1950. This particularly long La…

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If you can’t balance on one leg for at least 10 seconds, you may die within a decade

If you can’t balance on one leg for at least 10 seconds, you may die within a decade

ZME Science reports: Human balance, or lack thereof, can be a reliable proxy that reflects a person’s health and potential underlying conditions. Recent research on more than 1,700 middle-aged and older subjects found that those who couldn’t balance on one leg for 10 seconds had a much higher death rate than those who could. Similar to how a police officer might ask you to step out of the vehicle and perform a balancing task to see if you’re intoxicated, this…

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‘Ukraine’s future is in the EU’: Zelenskiy welcomes granting of candidate status

‘Ukraine’s future is in the EU’: Zelenskiy welcomes granting of candidate status

The Guardian reports: European leaders have granted Ukraine candidate status, in a historic decision that opens the door to EU membership for the war-torn country and deals a blow to Vladimir Putin. EU leaders meeting in Brussels approved Ukraine’s candidate status on Thursday night, nearly four months after the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, launched his country’s bid to join the bloc in the early days of the Russian invasion. Moldova was also given candidate status. Zelenskiy immediately welcomed the move,…

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Pacifism is the wrong response to the war in Ukraine

Pacifism is the wrong response to the war in Ukraine

Slavoj Žižek writes: For me, John Lennon’s mega-hit Imagine was always a song popular for the wrong reasons. Imagine that “the world will live as one” is the best way to end in hell. Those who cling to pacifism in the face of the Russian attack on Ukraine remain caught in their own version of “imagine”. Imagine a world in which tensions are no longer resolved through armed conflicts … Europe persisted in this world of “imagine”, ignoring the brutal…

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What Turkey wants to support Finland and Sweden joining NATO

What Turkey wants to support Finland and Sweden joining NATO

Steven Erlanger writes: Spurred by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Finland and Sweden applied last month to join NATO, anticipating swift and smooth entry into the alliance. Instead they are in a bind, their path blocked by the unpredictable Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. With NATO’s annual summit beginning on June 29 in Madrid, their expectations to be greeted as fast-track applicants are quickly fading, after Mr. Erdogan backtracked on earlier promises not to put obstacles in their way. Ibrahim Kalin,…

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