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Top Biden ally, Rep. Jim Clyburn, pleads with him to scrap filibuster for election reform

Top Biden ally, Rep. Jim Clyburn, pleads with him to scrap filibuster for election reform

Politico reports: After months of setbacks and gridlock on voting rights, one of President Joe Biden’s top allies in Congress is calling for him to support amending the Senate filibuster. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) told POLITICO Biden “should endorse” the idea of creating a carveout to the legislative filibuster in the Senate for legislation that applies to the Constitution. In effect, the reform would make it possible for Democrats to pass their sweeping elections reform bill and another…

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Like in ‘postapocalyptic movies’: Heat wave killed marine wildlife en masse

Like in ‘postapocalyptic movies’: Heat wave killed marine wildlife en masse

The New York Times reports: Dead mussels and clams coated rocks in the Pacific Northwest, their shells gaping open as if they’d been boiled. Sea stars were baked to death. Sockeye salmon swam sluggishly in an overheated Washington river, prompting wildlife officials to truck them to cooler areas. The combination of extraordinary heat and drought that hit the Western United States and Canada over the past two weeks has killed hundreds of millions of marine animals and continues to threaten…

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FDA calls for federal investigation into its controversial Alzheimer’s drug approval

FDA calls for federal investigation into its controversial Alzheimer’s drug approval

STAT reports: The head of the Food and Drug Administration has called for a wide-ranging federal investigation into the approval of Biogen’s treatment for Alzheimer’s disease just one month after a decision that sparked the ire of lawmakers, doctors, and public health advocates. In a letter posted Friday, acting Commissioner Janet Woodcock asked the independent Office of Inspector General to investigate how agency staff interacted with Biogen in the run-up to the June 7 approval of Aduhelm. The agency cited…

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How marginalized communities in the South are paying the price for ‘green energy’ in Europe

How marginalized communities in the South are paying the price for ‘green energy’ in Europe

CNN reports: Andrea Macklin never turns off his TV. It’s the only way to drown out the noise from the wood mill bordering his backyard, the jackhammer sound of the plant piercing his walls and windows. The 18-wheelers carrying logs rumble by less than 100 feet from his house, all day and night, shaking it as if an earthquake has taken over this tranquil corner of North Carolina. He’s been wearing masks since long before the coronavirus pandemic, just to…

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Heatwaves and drought are killing trees at an alarming rate

Heatwaves and drought are killing trees at an alarming rate

Juniper trees, common in Arizona’s Prescott National Forest, have been dying with the drought. Benjamin Roe/USDA Forest Service via AP By Daniel Johnson, University of Georgia and Raquel Partelli Feltrin, University of British Columbia Like humans, trees need water to survive on hot, dry days, and they can survive for only short times under extreme heat and dry conditions. During prolonged droughts and extreme heat waves like the Western U.S. is experiencing, even native trees that are accustomed to the…

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The biggest threat to democracy is the GOP stealing the next election

The biggest threat to democracy is the GOP stealing the next election

Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt write: The greatest threat to American democracy today is not a repeat of January 6, but the possibility of a stolen presidential election. Contemporary democracies that die meet their end at the ballot box, through measures that are nominally constitutional. The looming danger is not that the mob will return; it’s that mainstream Republicans will “legally” overturn an election. In 2018, when we wrote How Democracies Die, we knew that Donald Trump was an authoritarian…

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There is no debate over critical race theory

There is no debate over critical race theory

Ibram X. Kendi writes: The United States is not in the midst of a “culture war” over race and racism. The animating force of our current conflict is not our differing values, beliefs, moral codes, or practices. The American people aren’t divided. The American people are being divided. Republican operatives have buried the actual definition of critical race theory: “a way of looking at law’s role platforming, facilitating, producing, and even insulating racial inequality in our country,” as the law…

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Covid has become a disease of the unvaccinated

Covid has become a disease of the unvaccinated

Nature reports: On 21 June, Israel’s Ministry of Health recommended that all individuals aged 12–15 be vaccinated against COVID-19 — making the nation one of the few that have so far approved vaccinations for younger adolescents. The decision came in response to a trend that many countries with high rates of vaccination are experiencing: an ever-increasing proportion of new infections are in younger age groups. Israel’s swift vaccination campaign — which has now reached more than 85% of the adult…

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The Christian right is in decline, and it’s taking America with it

The Christian right is in decline, and it’s taking America with it

Michelle Goldberg writes: The presidency of George W. Bush may have been the high point of the modern Christian right’s influence in America. White evangelicals were the largest religious faction in the country. “They had a president who claimed to be one of their own, he had a testimony, talked in evangelical terms,” said Robert P. Jones, chief executive of the Public Religion Research Institute and author of the 2016 book “The End of White Christian America.” Back then, much…

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Armed Afghan women take to streets in show of defiance against Taliban

Armed Afghan women take to streets in show of defiance against Taliban

The Guardian reports: Women have taken up guns in northern and central Afghanistan, marching in the streets in their hundreds and sharing pictures of themselves with assault rifles on social media, in a show of defiance as the Taliban make sweeping gains nationwide. One of the biggest demonstrations was in central Ghor province, where hundreds of women turned out at the weekend, waving guns and chanting anti-Taliban slogans. They are not likely to head to the frontlines in large numbers…

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Climate change is about greed. It’s time for big oil to pay us back

Climate change is about greed. It’s time for big oil to pay us back

Jeffrey Sachs writes: Four interconnected pieces of climate change-related news from the past two weeks reveal America’s predicament. And they also show the way forward, which ultimately must include oil companies’ paying restitution for damage that they have done to the climate and humanity for decades. The first of the four pieces of climate news is the deadly heat wave hitting the western US and Canada, killing hundreds to date. According to the United Nations, there has been a “staggering…

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Delta variant said to be far more widespread than federal estimates

Delta variant said to be far more widespread than federal estimates

Politico reports: The more-transmissible Delta coronavirus variant is believed to be significantly more widespread than the current federal projections, according to two senior Biden administration health officials with knowledge of the situation. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data released late Tuesday shows the Delta strain accounted for more than 51 percent of new Covid-19 cases from June 20 to July 3. But the reality on the ground is likely much higher because states and private labs are taking weeks…

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White evangelicals now outnumbered by mainline Protestants in U.S.

White evangelicals now outnumbered by mainline Protestants in U.S.

New York Magazine reports: The new “2020 Census of American Religion” from the Public Religion Research Institute is out, and while it has a number of interesting findings, the most surprising is that among white Christians, mainline Protestants have reversed a long-standing decline in membership and have now surged past Evangelical Protestants. The survey measured self-identification among white Christians as “evangelical”/“born-again” Protestant or “other” Protestant, so it is not correlated to institutional membership in this or that denomination. But generally…

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Trump’s social media lawsuits feature a mashup of arguments courts have already rejected

Trump’s social media lawsuits feature a mashup of arguments courts have already rejected

BuzzFeed News reports: Former president Donald Trump’s latest attempt at getting back on mainstream social media platforms came in the form of lawsuits on Wednesday against Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube — each featuring a series of claims that multiple courts, including the US Supreme Court, have rebuffed. Trump was suspended from Facebook and Twitter in the immediate aftermath of the Jan. 6 riots at the US Capitol and blocked from YouTube a few days later; all three companies cited posts…

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