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The politics of overturning Roe are bad for Republicans

The politics of overturning Roe are bad for Republicans

William Saletan writes: On Tuesday, at a Republican press conference, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was asked three times about the big story of the week: A draft Supreme Court opinion, leaked to Politico, that exposed the Court’s intention to overturn Roe v. Wade. McConnell was furious about the leak. But each time reporters asked him to talk about abortion, he refused to engage. Morally, this reticence seems bizarre. For half a century, Republicans have campaigned on promises to expunge…

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Human exceptionalism is a danger to both non-humans and humans

Human exceptionalism is a danger to both non-humans and humans

Jeff Sebo writes: This January, a 57-year-old man in Baltimore received a heart transplant from a pig. Xenotransplantation involves using nonhuman animals as sources of organs for humans. While the idea of using nonhuman animals for this purpose might seem troubling, many humans think that the sacrifice is worth it, provided that we can improve the technology (the man died two months later). As the bioethicists Arthur Caplan and Brendan Parent put it last year: ‘Animal welfare certainly counts, but…

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Sleep: Here’s how much you really need for optimal cognition and wellbeing – new research

Sleep: Here’s how much you really need for optimal cognition and wellbeing – new research

Most of us struggle to think straight after a poor night’s sleep. Hank Grebe/Shutterstock By Barbara Jacquelyn Sahakian, University of Cambridge; Christelle Langley, University of Cambridge; Jianfeng Feng, Fudan University, and Wei Cheng, Fudan University Most of us struggle to think well after a poor night’s sleep – feeling foggy and failing to perform at our usual standard at school, university or work. You may notice that you’re not concentrating as well, or that your memory doesn’t seem up to…

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America can’t support democracy only when it’s convenient

America can’t support democracy only when it’s convenient

Matthew Duss writes: [T]he administration’s framing of the Russian war on Ukraine as symbolic of a battle between democracy and autocracy might be rhetorically satisfying but obscures more than clarifies the challenges and opportunities of this moment. First, it overlooks that the contest between democracy and autocracy is being waged within states as much as between them, including within the United States, as authoritarian-leaning ethnonationalist forces continue to gain strength—indeed, draw strength—from an us versus them discourse of civilizational struggle….

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Lavrov’s anti-Semitic outburst exposes absurdity of Russia’s ‘Nazi Ukraine’ claims

Lavrov’s anti-Semitic outburst exposes absurdity of Russia’s ‘Nazi Ukraine’ claims

Peter Dickinson writes: The Russian Foreign Minister’s very public descent into the squalid depths of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories highlights the mounting difficulties facing the Putin regime as it attempts to justify the war in Ukraine. Officially, Russian President Vladimir Putin has stated that the aim of his “special military operation” in Ukraine is to “de-Nazify” the country. However, neither Putin nor any of his colleagues have been able explain exactly why they regard Ukraine as “Nazified.” Instead, they have relied…

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Russia is losing on the electronic battlefield

Russia is losing on the electronic battlefield

David Ignatius writes: Among Russia’s most costly mistakes when it invaded Ukraine was the expectation that it would dominate the electronic warfare part of the battle. Instead, Russia has stumbled and lost its way in the little-known realm of intercepting and jamming communications, an increasingly essential element of military success. Russia’s unexpected failure on the electronic battlefield offers a case study in what has gone wrong for Moscow since the invasion began Feb. 24. The Russians overestimated their own capabilities,…

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The Constitution makes no reference to women. That’s a problem to remedy, not a precedent to honor

The Constitution makes no reference to women. That’s a problem to remedy, not a precedent to honor

Jill Lepore writes: Within a matter of months, women in about half of the United States may be breaking the law if they decide to end a pregnancy. This will be, in large part, because Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is surprised that there is so little written about abortion in a four-thousand-word document crafted by fifty-five men in 1787. As it happens, there is also nothing at all in that document, which sets out fundamental law, about pregnancy, uteruses,…

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How Justice Alito is like Donald Trump

How Justice Alito is like Donald Trump

Norman Eisen and Colby Galliher write: For all the seeming chaos of his administration, Donald Trump actually had a philosophy of governance, one grounded in assaulting the rule of law, ethics, and truth itself: Trumpery. In a new book, we warn that with Trump out of office, the greatest danger posed by Trumpery is that others will adopt it. Now that has apparently happened at the Supreme Court, as reflected in Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion overruling Roe v. Wade….

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It was time for someone to puncture the Supreme Court’s veil of secrecy

It was time for someone to puncture the Supreme Court’s veil of secrecy

Jack Shafer writes: Although the justices are political appointees, the court pretends to rise above politics. It conducts its work under a veil and depends on the press to fetishize the mysteries of the temple. It derives its authority not from the people but from the cosmos, the court’s deifiers would have you believe. Hence the robes that rival Batman’s cape, the court’s ban on cameras and the grand edifice from which it hands down its rulings. But this exalted…

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Indian court rules nature has legal status on par with humans. We are required to protect it

Indian court rules nature has legal status on par with humans. We are required to protect it

Inside Climate News reports: The highest court in one of India’s 28 states ruled last month that “Mother Nature” has the same legal status as a human being, which includes “all corresponding rights, duties and liabilities of a living person.” The decision from Madras High Court, located in the southeastern state of Tamil Nadu, also said that the natural environment is part of the human right to life, and that humans have an environmental duty to future generations. “The past…

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This is the work of an emboldened, radically conservative majority

This is the work of an emboldened, radically conservative majority

Mary Ziegler writes: Something fundamental about the Supreme Court has changed in recent months. It is not simply that the Court has a conservative supermajority, although that is true enough. What is really striking is just how emboldened that conservative supermajority is—how willing to take on a number of deeply divisive culture-war issues; how blasé about making major decisions via the Court’s shadow docket; how open to making rapid, profound changes to long-standing precedent. Last night, when Politico released a…

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The Supreme Court’s legitimacy is already lost

The Supreme Court’s legitimacy is already lost

Dahlia Lithwick writes: If the Supreme Court indeed strikes down Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey this June, as the draft opinion leaked to and published by Politico tonight suggests it will, years of conventional wisdom about the court and its concerns for its own legitimacy will be proved wrong. Every single court watcher who spoke in terms of baby steps, incrementalism, or “chipping away” at one of the most vitally important precedents in modern history will have…

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Europe is in danger, as always

Europe is in danger, as always

Caroline de Gruyter writes: In July 2020, along with European officials and experts, I was asked to take part in a policy game. Convened by a German think tank, we were asked to play out what would happen if either Matteo Salvini or Marine Le Pen, the far-right leaders in Italy and France, came to power. We spent a few hours frenziedly debating how the European Union would respond to each occurrence. Of one thing we were sure: It would…

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The climate movement in its own way

The climate movement in its own way

Charles Komanoff writes: After decades of critically documenting nuclear power’s outsize costs, I finally admitted to myself that the carbon-reduction benefits from continuing to run US nuclear plants are substantial, and in some respects irreplaceable. I made the case for keeping them open in an April article on TheNation.com. Closing New York’s Indian Point reactors last year was a climate blunder, I wrote. Not just because fracked gas is now filling the breach, but because the need to replace the…

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