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Trump wanted his Justice Department to stop Saturday Night Live from teasing him

Trump wanted his Justice Department to stop Saturday Night Live from teasing him

The Daily Beast reports: It was the middle of Donald Trump’s presidency, and he was—yet again—mad at Saturday Night Live. And he wanted the federal government to help him settle the score. In March 2019, the then-president of the United States had just watched an episode of the long-running, liberal-leaning NBC sketch comedy series (it wasn’t even a new episode, it was a rerun), and grew immediately incensed that the show was gently mocking him. “It’s truly incredible that shows…

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Trump can’t be sued over the violent clearing of Lafayette Square last summer, a judge ruled

Trump can’t be sued over the violent clearing of Lafayette Square last summer, a judge ruled

BuzzFeed News reports: Donald Trump and a cadre of current and former federal officials can’t be sued over the violent clearing of peaceful protesters from a park in Washington, DC, last summer shortly before the then-president passed through for a photo op, a federal judge ruled Monday. Black Lives Matter DC and individual protesters who were forcibly removed from Lafayette Square on June 1, 2020, had sued Trump, former attorney general Bill Barr, and top officials from other federal agencies…

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What Biden — and a lot of other people — get wrong about journalists

What Biden — and a lot of other people — get wrong about journalists

Margaret Sullivan writes: When [Janet Malcolm] died last week, obituaries reprised the famously devastating critique that opened her 1989 New Yorker magazine piece, later to become a book, “The Journalist and the Murderer.” “Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible,” she wrote. “He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people’s vanity, ignorance or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying…

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A record buyout is just the start as wealthy flee U.S. tax hike

A record buyout is just the start as wealthy flee U.S. tax hike

Bloomberg reports: For 110 years, four generations of Mills family members earned their money by expanding their great-grandfather’s Chicago apron business into a medical supplier that ranked among the nation’s largest private companies. But soon after Democrats turned their attention toward raising taxes for the wealthy this year, the family signed a deal to cash out billions. It was no coincidence, according to people close to the more-than $30 billion transaction, which sold part of Medline Industries Inc. to a…

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Populist leaders in Eastern Europe have a problem: Unpopularity

Populist leaders in Eastern Europe have a problem: Unpopularity

The New York Times reports: A right-wing populist wave in Eastern Europe, lifted by Donald J. Trump’s surprise victory in 2016, has not crashed as a result of his defeat last November. But it has collided with a serious obstacle: Its leaders are not very popular. After winning elections by railing against widely disliked elites, right-wing populists on Europe’s formerly communist eastern flank, it turns out, are themselves not much liked. That is due in large part to unpopular coronavirus…

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The dark side of solar power

The dark side of solar power

Atalay Atasu, Serasu Duran, and Luk N. Van Wassenhove write: It’s sunny times for solar power. In the U.S., home installations of solar panels have fully rebounded from the Covid slump, with analysts predicting more than 19 gigawatts of total capacity installed, compared to 13 gigawatts at the close of 2019. Over the next 10 years, that number may quadruple, according to industry research data. And that’s not even taking into consideration the further impact of possible new regulations and…

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Biden must stop methane pipelines to deliver on climate change and environmental justice

Biden must stop methane pipelines to deliver on climate change and environmental justice

Crystal Cavalier and Michael E. Mann write: Four years of President Donald Trump have cost America dearly. We lost our global leadership on addressing climate change and saw the struggle for environmental justice thwarted here at home. President Joe Biden has defined both of these objectives as cornerstones of his legacy, but a huge interstate methane gas pipeline now being rammed through the Appalachian Mountains threatens to undermine the progress his administration has promised. The 42-inch diameter Mountain Valley Pipeline…

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How Democrats are ‘unilaterally disarming’ in the redistricting wars

How Democrats are ‘unilaterally disarming’ in the redistricting wars

Politico reports: Oregon Democrats had finally secured total control of redistricting for the first time in decades. Then, just months before they were set to draw new maps, they gave it away. In a surprise that left Democrats from Salem to Washington baffled and angry, the state House speaker handed the GOP an effective veto over the districts in exchange for a pledge to stop stymieing her legislative agenda with delay tactics. The reaction from some of Oregon’s Democratic House…

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The man who controls the Senate

The man who controls the Senate

Evan Osnos writes: On a frosty night in February, Joe Manchin III, the senior senator from West Virginia, invited a few colleagues over for dinner aboard the houseboat he docks on the Potomac. In the past, opponents have sought to highlight the vessel for political effect; a 2018 advertisement by the National Republican Senatorial Committee called it a “$700,000 D.C. luxury yacht.” (In response, Manchin’s office reported that he bought it, used, for two hundred and twenty thousand dollars.) The…

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Progressives crank up filibuster pressure on Sinema with million-dollar ad buy in Arizona

Progressives crank up filibuster pressure on Sinema with million-dollar ad buy in Arizona

NBC News reports: A progressive group is launching a seven-figure ad campaign aiming to pressure Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., to support abolition of the filibuster, as the Senate eyes a vote to advance major voting rights legislation. The group, Just Democracy, is spending $1.2 million for TV ads and another $200,000 on digital ads in Arizona from June 21 to June 30, said a spokesman for the group, adding the effort will feature two ads on cable news programs, local…

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The authoritarian instincts of police unions

The authoritarian instincts of police unions

Adam Serwer writes: In May 2020, Darnella Frazier, a 17-year-old with a smartphone camera, documented the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. Most Americans who watched the video of Floyd begging for his life, as Officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on his neck, saw a human being. Robert Kroll did not. The head of the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis saw a “violent criminal” and viewed the protests that followed as a “terrorist movement.” In a letter to…

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Since 9/11, military suicides dwarf the number of soldiers killed in combat

Since 9/11, military suicides dwarf the number of soldiers killed in combat

NBC News reports: Since 9/11, four times as many U.S. service members and veterans have died by suicide than have been killed in combat, according to a new report. The research, compiled by the Costs of War Project at Brown University, found an estimated 30,177 active duty personnel and veterans who have served in the military since 9/11 have died by suicide, compared with 7,057 killed in post 9/11 military operations. The figures include all service members, not just those…

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Climate models predicted heatwaves like America’s record-breaking weekend

Climate models predicted heatwaves like America’s record-breaking weekend

Quartz reports: The U.S. hasn’t seen anything quite like this. Over the weekend, temperatures soared to new triple-digit heights across the American West. The immediate cause was a “heat dome,” a mass of high-pressure air trapping heat beneath it, one far stronger and larger than normal. But what we saw this weekend is what climate scientists have been predicting for decades. And it’s a taste of what’s to come. “It’s surreal to see your models become real life,” Katharine Hayhoe,…

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Everyone wants to sell the last barrel of oil

Everyone wants to sell the last barrel of oil

Bill McKibben writes: A final victory last week over the Keystone XL pipeline is a reminder that fighting particular fossil-fuel projects is a necessary strategy if the climate is to be saved. The defeat of Keystone XL doesn’t mean that Canada’s vast tar-sands project, which is generally regarded as the largest industrial project in the world, is over, but the fight has been a gut punch to the fossil-fuel industry. In 2011, when protests began outside the White House, Canada’s…

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