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U.S. corporate profits soar with margins at widest since 1950

U.S. corporate profits soar with margins at widest since 1950

Bloomberg reports: A measure of US profit margins has reached its widest since 1950, suggesting that the prices charged by businesses are outpacing their increased costs for production and labor. After-tax profits as a share of gross value added for non-financial corporations, a measure of aggregate profit margins, improved in the second quarter to 15.5% — the most since 1950 — from 14% in the first quarter, according to Commerce Department figures published Thursday. The data show that companies overall…

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How to rest well

How to rest well

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang writes: Downtime is undervalued in today’s busy, always-on world. But for most of human history, rest – time in which we can recharge the mental and physical batteries we use while labouring – was prized as a gift. To Aristotle, work was drudgery and necessity; only in leisure could we cultivate our mental and moral abilities, and become better people. In The Sabbath (1951), Rabbi Abraham Heschel argued that, in Judaism, this day of rest was more…

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Out of office, Trump’s ‘ready, fire, aim’ reflex compounds his legal peril

Out of office, Trump’s ‘ready, fire, aim’ reflex compounds his legal peril

The New York Times reports: On Tuesday, a Florida judge informed two lawyers representing former President Donald J. Trump, neither of them licensed in the state, that they had bungled routine paperwork to take part in a suit filed following the F.B.I.’s search this month of Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and private club. “A sample motion can be found on the Court’s website,” the judge instructed them in her order. Mr. Trump has projected his usual bravado, and raised millions…

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Trump tells his lawyers: Get ‘my’ top secret documents back

Trump tells his lawyers: Get ‘my’ top secret documents back

Rolling Stone reports: In the weeks after the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago raid, former President Donald Trump repeatedly made a simple-sounding but extraordinary ask: he wanted his lawyers to get “my documents” back from federal law enforcement. Trump wasn’t merely referring to the alleged trove of attorney-client material that he insists was scooped up by the feds during the raid, two people familiar with the matter tell Rolling Stone. The ex-president has been demanding that his team find a way to recover…

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Canceling student debt could help close the wealth gap between white and Black Americans

Canceling student debt could help close the wealth gap between white and Black Americans

Santul Nerkar wrote in May: America’s racial wealth gap is well-documented, even if many continue to underestimate its existence. Black Americans’ net worth is, on average, less than 15 percent of white Americans’, the legacy of centuries of systemic anti-Black racism. Moreover, both political parties have failed time and again to address the inequities facing Black Americans. But what if I told you that an effective way to start closing this gap was within reach? According to the scholars I…

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California plans to ban the sale of new gasoline cars

California plans to ban the sale of new gasoline cars

The New York Times reports: California is expected to put into effect on Thursday its sweeping plan to prohibit the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035, a groundbreaking move that could have major effects on the effort to fight climate change and accelerate a global transition toward electric vehicles. “This is huge,” said Margo Oge, an electric vehicles expert who headed the Environmental Protection Agency’s transportation emissions program under Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. “California…

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Dangerous Russian plan to disconnect Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant from grid

Dangerous Russian plan to disconnect Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant from grid

The Guardian reports: A detailed plan has been drawn up by Russia to disconnect Europe’s largest nuclear plant from Ukraine’s power grid, risking a catastrophic failure of its cooling systems, the Guardian has been told. World leaders have called for the Zaporizhzhia site to be demilitarised after footage emerged of Russian army vehicles inside the plant, and have previously warned Russia against cutting it off from the Ukrainian grid and connecting it up to the Russian power network. But Petro…

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What if Netanyahu wins?

What if Netanyahu wins?

Neri Zilber writes: Last fall, a few months after Benjamin Netanyahu was finally toppled from his perch as Israeli prime minister, a challenger arose from within his right-wing Likud party. Yuli Edelstein, a former Knesset speaker and senior minister, stated that he would run against Netanyahu for party leader ahead of any new election. “Netanyahu has already tried four times; how can we succeed with him the fifth time?” Edelstein posited, alluding to the four general elections held in Israel…

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Natural: Same-sex couples are everywhere in the animal kingdom

Natural: Same-sex couples are everywhere in the animal kingdom

Justin Gregg writes: I’m surprised at the number of people I talk to about animal behavior that are shocked at how common homosexual behavior is in the animal kingdom. I often point gay animal skeptics to Biological Exuberance by Bruce Bagemihl—a 1999 book detailing more than 300 different animal species that engage in a diverse array of behaviors that fall under the umbrella of homosexuality. Everything from same-sex sex, affection, pair bonds, and parenting. It might seem odd that homosexuality…

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Poll indicates Cheney presidential run would hurt Biden more than Trump

Poll indicates Cheney presidential run would hurt Biden more than Trump

Yahoo News reports: Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., has vowed to do “whatever it takes to ensure Donald Trump is never again anywhere near the Oval Office” — including possibly embarking on a White House bid of her own. “It is something that I am thinking about,” she said last week. Yet a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll shows that if Cheney were to run for president as an independent in 2024, she could actually do the opposite. She could single-handedly swing…

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Documents recovered at Mar-a-Lago were among government’s most highly classified, letter shows

Documents recovered at Mar-a-Lago were among government’s most highly classified, letter shows

Politico reports: The National Archives found more than 700 pages of classified material — including “special access program materials,” some of the most highly classified secrets in the government — in 15 boxes recovered from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in January, according to correspondence between the National Archivist and his legal team. The May 10 letter — posted late Monday on the website of John Solomon, a conservative journalist and one of Trump’s authorized liaisons to the National…

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Conservative activists want library books approved by the supreme conservative they call God

Conservative activists want library books approved by the supreme conservative they call God

NBC News reports: For months, a group of conservative Christians have inundated the staff and board of a public library in Bonners Ferry, Idaho, with complaints about books they didn’t want to see on the shelves. Their list of more than 400 titles predominantly focuses on young adult books with LGBTQ characters, scenes describing sexual activity or invoking the occult. The only problem: None of the books are in the library’s collection. Still, the activists in this town of 2,500…

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White House launches new war on secrecy

White House launches new war on secrecy

Politico reports: The government keeps way too many secrets, the Biden administration asserts. The sprawling spy community — made up of 18 separate intelligence agencies — sees it quite differently. But despite differing worldviews, the White House is quietly gearing up to try to pierce the veil, according to eight government officials and secrecy experts and internal documents. And it is enlisting a leading advocate for greater government transparency in the effort. The National Security Council initiated a review this…

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Ex-Twitter exec blows the whistle, alleging reckless and negligent cybersecurity policies

Ex-Twitter exec blows the whistle, alleging reckless and negligent cybersecurity policies

CNN reports: Twitter has major security problems that pose a threat to its own users’ personal information, to company shareholders, to national security, and to democracy, according to an explosive whistleblower disclosure obtained exclusively by CNN and The Washington Post. The disclosure, sent last month to Congress and federal agencies, paints a picture of a chaotic and reckless environment at a mismanaged company that allows too many of its staff access to the platform’s central controls and most sensitive information…

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