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While Manchin preaches bipartisanship, democracy is already dying in the states

While Manchin preaches bipartisanship, democracy is already dying in the states

Ronald Brownstein writes: While senator Joe Manchin is demanding that both parties agree on any further federal voting-rights legislation, a new study quantifies how completely Republicans have excluded Democrats from the passage of the restrictive voting laws proliferating in red states. In places such as Florida, Georgia, Arizona, Iowa, Kansas, and Montana, the most restrictive laws approved this year have passed on total or near-complete party-line votes, with almost all state legislative Republicans voting for the bills and nearly all…

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Campaign of fear: Trump-inspired death threats are terrorizing election workers

Campaign of fear: Trump-inspired death threats are terrorizing election workers

Reuters reports: Late on the night of April 24, the wife of Georgia’s top election official got a chilling text message: “You and your family will be killed very slowly.” A week earlier, Tricia Raffensperger, wife of Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, had received another anonymous text: “We plan for the death of you and your family every day.” That followed an April 5 text warning. A family member, the texter told her, was “going to have a very unfortunate…

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Barr tries to distance himself from Trump-era subpoenas of Democratic lawmakers

Barr tries to distance himself from Trump-era subpoenas of Democratic lawmakers

Politico reports: Former Attorney General William Barr on Friday distanced himself from reports that the Trump Justice Department seized communications records belonging to two prominent Democratic lawmakers who were spearheading investigations into then-President Donald Trump. In a phone interview, Barr said he didn’t recall getting briefed on the moves. Barr’s comments came after The New York Times reported that in 2017 and 2018, the Justice Department seized the records of at least 12 people connected to the House Intelligence Committee,…

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Neuroscientists are ‘deeply confused’ about representational drift

Neuroscientists are ‘deeply confused’ about representational drift

Ed Yong writes: Carl Schoonover and Andrew Fink are confused. As neuroscientists, they know that the brain must be flexible but not too flexible. It must rewire itself in the face of new experiences, but must also consistently represent the features of the external world. How? The relatively simple explanation found in neuroscience textbooks is that specific groups of neurons reliably fire when their owner smells a rose, sees a sunset, or hears a bell. These representations—these patterns of neural…

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For most of human history, equality was the norm

For most of human history, equality was the norm

Kim Sterelny writes: Most of us live in social worlds that are profoundly unequal, where small elites have vastly more power and wealth than everyone else. Very few of the have-nots find this congenial. As experimental economists have shown, we tend to enter social situations prepared to take a chance and cooperate in collective activities. But if others take more than their share, we resent being played for a sucker. We live in unequal worlds, and few of us are…

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The grave implications for the world if China covered up the origins of Covid

The grave implications for the world if China covered up the origins of Covid

John Gray writes: If … it becomes clear that the pandemic originated in failures of the Chinese state, the damage to its model of government will be irreparable. At the same time, the West would be faced with the uncomfortable fact that Xi Jinping’s China is a totalitarian regime. Secrecy and cover-ups are normal in such systems. Only in 1990 did the Soviet state formally accept responsibility for the Katyn massacre of 22,000 Polish officers and intellectuals in 1940, carried…

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A Biden climate test on the banks of the Mississippi

A Biden climate test on the banks of the Mississippi

Bill McKibben writes: I suppose that, if I’d thought about it, I could have figured out that there had to be a place where you could jump across the Mississippi. But I’d seen its majestic flow at so many points along its course (ripping through Minneapolis, regal in St. Louis, oceanic by Baton Rouge) that I’d never imagined it as a mere trickle. Now I have—I’ve waded through that trickle, in fact—and on an epic day in recent American Indigenous…

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After risking their lives as U.S. govt employees, Afghan interpreters are now being denied visas

After risking their lives as U.S. govt employees, Afghan interpreters are now being denied visas

The New York Times reports: It was an offhand comment, blurted out in frustration. It may have destroyed Shoaib Walizada’s chances of earning a cherished visa to the United States. Mr. Walizada, who interpreted for the U.S. Army for four years until 2013, said that he had complained one day, using profanity, that his assigned combat vest was too small. When the episode came to light later that year, Mr. Walizada’s preliminary approval for a visa was revoked for “unprofessional…

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Only in our anti-truth hellscape could Anthony Fauci become a supervillain

Only in our anti-truth hellscape could Anthony Fauci become a supervillain

Margaret Sullivan writes: In October, Fauci told CBS’s “60 Minutes” that he and his family had received death threats and said he required a security detail to do his daily power walks. In November, former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon was banned from Twitter after he called for Fauci’s beheading. But the campaign against Fauci has dramatically intensified recently — especially since BuzzFeed and The Washington Post released his email trove last week. And in a twisted way, it makes…

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The far-right paramilitary wannabes feeding Mike Flynn’s conspiracy machine

The far-right paramilitary wannabes feeding Mike Flynn’s conspiracy machine

The Daily Beast reports: When QAnon conspiracy theorists descended on a Dallas event hall in late May for their convention, they were met at the door by members of 1st Amendment Praetorian, a tough-talking new volunteer group devoted to running security at MAGA events, assembling “intelligence” dossiers on perceived Trumpist foes, and foiling threats from “antifa” protesters, real or imagined. Decked out in black shirts bearing their group’s Roman-helmet logo, the self-proclaimed Praetorian members soon found that Dallas was light…

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No one knows how often DNA jumps between animal species

No one knows how often DNA jumps between animal species

Christie Wilcox writes: To survive in the frigid ocean waters around the Arctic and Antarctica, marine life evolved many defenses against the lethal cold. One common adaptation is the ability to make antifreezing proteins (AFPs) that prevent ice crystals from growing in blood, tissues and cells. It’s a solution that has evolved repeatedly and independently, not just in fish but in plants, fungi and bacteria. It isn’t surprising, then, that herrings and smelts, two groups of fish that commonly roam…

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Republicans are fighting against a multiracial democracy

Republicans are fighting against a multiracial democracy

Thomas B. Edsall writes: Determined to enforce white political dominance in pivotal states like Georgia, Arizona, Texas and North Carolina, Republicans are enacting or trying to enact laws restricting the right to vote, empowering legislatures to reject election outcomes and adopting election rules and procedures designed to block the emergence of multiracial political majorities. Republicans “see the wave of demography coming and they are just trying to hold up a wall and keep it from smashing them in,” William Frey,…

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My fellow Republicans, stop fearing this dangerous and diminished man

My fellow Republicans, stop fearing this dangerous and diminished man

Barbara Comstock writes: Many Republicans want to move on from the Jan. 6 attack. But how is that possible when the former president won’t move on from the Nov. 3 election and continues to push the same incendiary lies that resulted in 61 failed lawsuits before Jan. 6, led to an insurrection and could lead to yet more violence? If you doubt that a threat of violence exists, look at the recent poll from the Public Religion Research Institute and…

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America still undervalues public health

America still undervalues public health

Ed Yong writes: During a pandemic, no one’s health is fully in their own hands. No field should understand that more deeply than public health, a discipline distinct from medicine. Whereas doctors and nurses treat sick individuals in front of them, public-health practitioners work to prevent sickness in entire populations. They are expected to think big. They know that infectious diseases are always collective problems because they are infectious. An individual’s choices can ripple outward to affect cities, countries, and…

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