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The Supreme Court is poised to cut the heart out of majority rule

The Supreme Court is poised to cut the heart out of majority rule

Laurence H. Tribe and Dennis Aftergut write: The Supreme Court’s extremist justices are aiming their next dagger at the heart of the entire democratic enterprise: voters’ right to pick leaders of their choice. On Thursday, the court announced that it will hear Moore vs. Harper, a North Carolina case involving gerrymandered congressional district maps drawn by the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature. Those maps would probably give Republicans control of 11 of 14 congressional districts in the state. North Carolina’s Supreme Court…

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After string of Supreme Court setbacks, Democrats wonder whether Biden White House is capable of urgency moment demands

After string of Supreme Court setbacks, Democrats wonder whether Biden White House is capable of urgency moment demands

CNN reports: Debra Messing was fed up. The former “Will & Grace” star was among dozens of celebrity Democratic supporters and activists who joined a call with White House aides last Monday to discuss the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. The mood was fatalistic, according to three people on the call, which was also co-organized by the advocacy group Build Back Better Together. Messing said she’d gotten Joe Biden elected and wanted to know why she was being asked…

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Explosion of life on Earth linked to heavy metal act at planet’s center

Explosion of life on Earth linked to heavy metal act at planet’s center

The Observer reports: At the centre of the Earth, a giant sphere of solid iron is slowly swelling. This is the inner core and scientists have recently uncovered intriguing evidence that suggests its birth half a billion years ago may have played a key role in the evolution of life on Earth. At that time, our planet’s magnetic field was faltering – and that would have had critical consequences, they argue. Normally this field protects life on the surface by…

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The norms the Supreme Court targeted this term all came from the same era

The norms the Supreme Court targeted this term all came from the same era

Bill McKibben and Akaya Windwood write: The supreme court, thank heaven, finally adjourned on Thursday, after a week of decisions that blew up much of the framework of American policy and politics. And a key thing to notice about that assault on American norms was how many of their targets were adopted in a few short years in the 1960s and 1970s. Roe v Wade, of course, dates to 1973, the fruit of many year’s work by committed feminists. Thursday’s…

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Women’s rights have suffered a grim setback. But history is still on our side

Women’s rights have suffered a grim setback. But history is still on our side

Rebecca Solnit writes: As it happened, I was in Edinburgh the day Roe v Wade was overturned, and the next day I caught a train back to London and did what I usually do when I get anywhere near King’s Cross station. I took the short walk to the old St Pancras churchyard to visit the tombstone of the great feminist ancestor Mary Wollstonecraft, author of that first great feminist manifesto A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. To be…

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Bill McKibben: ‘Clean Air Act can’t really be used to protect clean air now

Bill McKibben: ‘Clean Air Act can’t really be used to protect clean air now

  After a bitter 50-year fight over climate change policy, the Supreme Court delivered another win to the right wing on Thursday. In a 6-3 ruling, the Court decided that the Environmental Protection Agency does not have the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions for existing power plants. “The Clean Air Act can’t really be used to protect clean air now,” says leading environmentalist, Bill McKibben. He says fossil fuel tycoons have successfully lobbied against decades of progress and shifting…

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Alexander Vindman: ‘How we treat refugees is one of the greatest tests of our American experiment.’

Alexander Vindman: ‘How we treat refugees is one of the greatest tests of our American experiment.’

“Today, America is faced with yet another opportunity to live up to its creed,” says Alexander Vindman. “How we treat refugees is one of the greatest tests of our American experiment.” https://t.co/1IdskgEiqH pic.twitter.com/4RWW6fo5TP — New York Times Opinion (@nytopinion) July 4, 2022

Google allowed a sanctioned Russian advertising company to harvest user data for months

Google allowed a sanctioned Russian advertising company to harvest user data for months

By Craig Silverman, ProPublica, July 1, 2022 The day after Russia’s February invasion of Ukraine, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner sent a letter to Google warning it to be on alert for “exploitation of your platform by Russia and Russian-linked entities,” and calling on the company to audit its advertising business’s compliance with economic sanctions. But as recently as June 23, Google was sharing potentially sensitive user data with a sanctioned Russian ad tech company owned by Russia’s largest…

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Fox and other rightwing networks confront billion-dollar lawsuits over election fraud claims

Fox and other rightwing networks confront billion-dollar lawsuits over election fraud claims

The Guardian reports: In the months following the 2020 US presidential election, rightwing TV news in America was a wild west, an apparently lawless free-for-all where conspiracy theories about voting machines, ballot-stuffed suitcases and dead Venezuelan leaders were repeated to viewers around the clock. There seemed to be little consequence for peddling the most outrageous ideas on primetime. But now, unfortunately for Fox News, One America News Network (OAN), and Newsmax, it turns out that this brave, new world wasn’t…

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People vary in how well they recognize, match or categorize the things they see – an ability researchers call ‘o’

People vary in how well they recognize, match or categorize the things they see – an ability researchers call ‘o’

Some people are inherently better at tasks like reading X-rays. SDI Productions/E+ via Getty Images By Isabel Gauthier, Vanderbilt University and Jason Chow, Vanderbilt University Like snowflakes, no two people are exactly the same. You’re probably used to the idea that people differ substantially in personality and in cognitive abilities – skills like problem-solving or remembering information. In contrast, there’s a widely held intuition that people vary far less in their ability to recognize, match or categorize objects. Many everyday…

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How the Russian media spread false claims about Nazis in Ukraine

How the Russian media spread false claims about Nazis in Ukraine

The New York Times reports: In the months since President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia called the invasion of Ukraine a “denazification” mission, the lie that the government and culture of Ukraine are filled with dangerous “Nazis” has become a central theme of Kremlin propaganda about the war. A data set of nearly eight million articles about Ukraine collected from more than 8,000 Russian websites since 2014 shows that references to Nazism were relatively flat for eight years and then…

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Most Russians are unaware of the horrendous war crimes being committed by Putin’s forces in Ukraine

Most Russians are unaware of the horrendous war crimes being committed by Putin’s forces in Ukraine

Vladimir Kara-Murza writes: At the hearing in early June — the one that extended my arrest through mid-August — the court honored the prosecution’s request to ban any spectators, including journalists and diplomats, from the room. It was a scene reminiscent of the dissident trials of the Soviet era. Even if the outcome is predetermined, the last thing the Kremlin needs is to have the uncomfortable truth about its bloody war in Ukraine publicly voiced in a courtroom in downtown…

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An American’s murky path from Russian propagandist to January 6

An American’s murky path from Russian propagandist to January 6

The New York Times reports: In security footage from Jan. 6, it is easy to overlook the thin man wearing a red Trump hat who filters into the U.S. Capitol Building to record the mayhem with his phone. He blends in with the mob, seemingly unexceptional by the chaotic standards of that day. But what he did afterward was far from routine. Within 24 hours, the man, Charles Bausman, gave his recordings and commentary to a Russian television producer for…

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Summer in America is becoming hotter, longer and more dangerous

Summer in America is becoming hotter, longer and more dangerous

The Washington Post reports: Wildfires had been burning for weeks, shrouding Reno, Nev., in harmful smoke, when Jillian Abney and her eight-year-old daughter Izi drove into the Sierras last year in search of cleaner air. The eerie yellow haze that filled the sky had brought summer to an abrupt halt, canceling all of the season’s usual delights. Abney headed for Donner Lake, hoping the higher elevation would put them above the smoke. But instead of the blue skies that had…

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