Music: Chris Gall & Bernhard Schimpelsberger — ‘Song of June’
Why America’s window of opportunity to beat back Covid-19 is closing
Helen Branswell writes: The good news: The United States has a window of opportunity to beat back Covid-19 before things get much, much worse. The bad news: That window is rapidly closing. And the country seems unwilling or unable to seize the moment. Winter is coming. Winter means cold and flu season, which is all but sure to complicate the task of figuring out who is sick with Covid-19 and who is suffering from a less threatening respiratory tract infection….
Facing bleak November, Republicans look to stoke BLM backlash
Politico reports: For a brief moment after George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis policeman in late May, some members of the GOP joined calls for change as protests exploded onto streets across the country. That moment is over. Facing possible electoral calamity, Republicans are now turning to a familiar playbook: stoking fear by trying to redefine the Black Lives Matter movement as a radical leftist mob looking to sabotage the white, suburban lifestyle. Republicans are using two lines of…
The U.S. Senate is the most structurally racist institution in America
Jonathan Chait writes: In a time when institutions across the country have undergone a searching self-examination, the reckoning has only begun for the most powerful source of institutional racism in American life: the United States Senate. It is not merely a problem of legacy and culture — though the Senate’s traditions are deeply interwoven with white supremacy, as Joe Biden inadvertently confessed when he touted his cooperation with segregationists — but of very-much-ongoing discrimination. Quite simply, achieving anything like functional…
The greatest weakness of American men? Fear of looking weak
Alex Abad-Santos writes: Fellas, is it gay to not die of a virus that turns your lungs into soggy shells of their former selves, drowning you from the inside out? Is wearing a mask to avoid death part of the feminization of America? Is it too emasculating to wear a mask to protect the others around you? Does staying alive make you feel weak? According to many American men, yeah. Poll after poll, most recently a Gallup poll from July…
Does coronavirus linger in the body? What we know about how viruses in general hang on in the brain and testicles
Are there places in the body where SARS-CoV-2 can hide from the immune system? fotograzia / Getty Images By William Petri, University of Virginia As millions of people are recovering from COVID-19, an unanswered question is the extent to which the virus can “hide out” in seemingly recovered individuals. If it does, could this explain some of the lingering symptoms of COVID-19 or pose a risk for transmission of infection to others even after recovery? I am a physician-scientist of…
Lebanese government resigns as fury over deadly explosion deepens political crisis
NBC News reports: Lebanon’s government resigned Monday as the fallout from last week’s deadly explosion deepened a political crisis in the country’s blast-ravaged capital. Prime Minister Hassan Diab said he would resign along with all of his ministers. “We will back down and stand with the people. We need to open the door for the people,” he said in a televised address to the nation before presenting his resignation to President Michel Aoun. The move comes after enraged protesters and…
Grooming behavior between dairy cows reveals complex social network
By Peter Rejcek, Frontiers Science News, August 4, 2020 Like humans, cattle are social creatures with complex relationships that change as group dynamics evolve. A study published in Frontiers in Veterinary Science offered new insights into the social networking behavior of dairy cows, building on a body of research that could someday help reshape farm management practices to create healthier living environments for the animals. A team of Chilean and US scientists spent 30 days observing a small herd of…
Music: Christoph Sietzen — ‘Attraction’
Trump’s history of racism and the reckoning it has forced
Ibram X. Kendi writes: Marine One waited for the president of the United States on the South Lawn of the White House. It was July 30, 2019, not long past 9 a.m. Donald Trump was headed to historic Jamestown to mark the 400th anniversary of the first representative assembly of European settlers in the Americas. But Black Virginia legislators were boycotting the visit. Over the preceding two weeks, the president had been engaged in one of the most racist political…
America tops 5 million confirmed virus cases, to Europe’s alarm
The Associated Press reports: With confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.S. hitting 5 million Sunday, by far the highest of any country, the failure of the most powerful nation in the world to contain the scourge has been met with astonishment and alarm in Europe. Perhaps nowhere outside the U.S. is America’s bungled virus response viewed with more consternation than in Italy, which was ground zero of Europe’s epidemic. Italians were unprepared when the outbreak exploded in February, and the…
Trump flouts coronavirus guidelines with golf club gathering, calling it a ‘peaceful protest’
The Washington Post reports: Just before 7 p.m. Friday evening, members of President Trump’s private golf club here began streaming into a gilded ballroom by the dozens. Some carried wine glasses — few wore masks. The happy hour scene just steps from the golf course was orchestrated by Trump, who decided late Friday to hold an impromptu news conference and invite his club members to gather indoors in defiance of state restrictions aimed at slowing the spread of the novel…
Trump’s go-it-alone stimulus won’t do much to lift the recovery
Jim Tankersley writes: The executive actions President Trump took on Saturday were pitched as a unilateral jolt for an ailing economy. But there is only one group of workers that seems guaranteed to benefit from them, at least right away: lawyers. Mr. Trump’s measures include an eviction moratorium, a new benefit to supplement unemployment assistance for workers and a temporary delay in payroll tax liability for low- and middle-income workers. They could give renters a break and ease payments for…
How to beat populists when the facts don’t matter
Anne Applebaum writes: A few weeks ago, I went to a political rally in a farmyard. The Polish presidential candidate Rafał Trzaskowski was speaking; in the background, a golden wheat field shimmered in the late-afternoon sun. The audience was enthusiastic—the host, a local farmer, had spread news of the candidate’s visit only the day before—but the juxtaposition of Trzaskowski and the wheat field was odd. He is the mayor of Warsaw, speaks several languages, has degrees in economics, and belongs…
‘Christianity will have power,’ Trump promised
Elizabeth Dias writes: They walked to the sanctuary in the frozen silence before dawn, footsteps crunching over the snow. Soon, hundreds joined in line. It was January 2016, and the unlikely Republican front-runner, Donald J. Trump, had come to town. He was the boastful, thrice-married, foul-mouthed star of “The Apprentice.” They were one of the most conservative Christian communities in the nation, with 19 churches in a town of about 7,500 people. Many were skeptical, and came to witness the…
‘We’re not protesting churches. We’re protesting this church.’
BuzzFeed reports: The clip that was posted to Twitter — and subsequently viewed over 1.2 million times — purports to show protesters invading a church, screaming “Black Lives Matter” and even abusing parishioners. One demonstrator is filmed calling a church member “a dumb fuck.” The clip was uploaded by Charlie Kirk, one of the leading voices in the Trump Youth Movement, who added his own interpretation of events: “Christians have not been allowed to attend church for months,” Kirk tweeted,…