A great big gift not on Trump’s disclosure form: Giuliani’s legal advice

A great big gift not on Trump’s disclosure form: Giuliani’s legal advice

The New York Times reports: For the past 20 months, President Trump has received free personal legal services from one of America’s highest-paid lawyers, who has traveled around the country and across the ocean to defend him in the special counsel’s inquiry and press Ukraine to investigate a political rival and unfounded conspiracy theories. The lawyer, of course, is Rudolph W. Giuliani, but Mr. Trump did not mention Mr. Giuliani or his unpaid labor on the annual financial disclosure he…

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Supreme Court to rule on release of Trump’s financial records

Supreme Court to rule on release of Trump’s financial records

The New York Times reports: The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to decide whether President Trump can block the release of his financial records, setting the stage for a blockbuster ruling on the power of presidents to resist demands for information from prosecutors and Congress. The court’s ruling, expected by June, could require disclosure of information the president has gone to extraordinary lengths to protect. Or the justices could rule that Mr. Trump’s financial affairs are not legitimate subjects of…

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Judge’s decision may shine light on secret Trump-Putin meeting notes

Judge’s decision may shine light on secret Trump-Putin meeting notes

Yahoo News reports: A district court judge in Washington, D.C., has ordered administration lawyers to explain why, for more than two years, the White House has refused to turn over to the State Department an interpreter’s notes from a meeting between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. That meeting took place in the summer of 2017, during a summit of the G-20 nations in Hamburg, Germany. The two men got along so well that the meeting, which was supposed…

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The American conservatives who believe ‘Russia is on our side’

The American conservatives who believe ‘Russia is on our side’

Anne Applebaum writes: Sherwood Eddy was a prominent American missionary as well as that now rare thing, a Christian socialist. In the 1920s and ’30s, he made more than a dozen trips to the Soviet Union. He was not blind to the problems of the U.S.S.R., but he also found much to like. In place of squabbling, corrupt democratic politicians, he wrote in one of his books on the country, “Stalin rules … by his sagacity, his honesty, his rugged…

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Trump’s Ukraine plot appears to have been financed by Russia

Trump’s Ukraine plot appears to have been financed by Russia

Jonathan Chait writes: President Trump is facing impeachment primarily for abusing his power for political gain, extorting a foreign country to discredit his political rivals. The secondary aspect of the plot is that the target of his extortion is hardly random. Ukraine is the victim of Russian aggression, and Russia’s continuing incursions into Ukrainian territory is the muscle that gave Trump’s threats leverage. Trump’s domestic interests are one intended beneficiary of his scheme. The other is Vladimir Putin. Trump and…

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Eric Holder: William Barr is unfit to be attorney general

Eric Holder: William Barr is unfit to be attorney general

Eric Holder, writes: As a former U.S. attorney general, I am reluctant to publicly criticize my successors. I respect the office and understand just how tough the job can be. But recently, Attorney General William P. Barr has made a series of public statements and taken actions that are so plainly ideological, so nakedly partisan and so deeply inappropriate for America’s chief law enforcement official that they demand a response from someone who held the same office. Last month, at…

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EU aims to stir global action with pledge on climate crisis

EU aims to stir global action with pledge on climate crisis

The Guardian reports: The EU will attempt to revive the world’s flagging attempts to tackle the climate crisis with a historic proposal from Brussels to halve emissions by 2030, and reach net zero carbon by mid-century. Wednesday’s announcement is seen as the vital first step towards gathering a “coalition of ambition” among key countries to fulfil the pledges of the 2015 Paris agreement, which is in danger of languishing amid deadlocked UN talks. Ursula von der Leyen, the new president…

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The anatomical ability to speak evolved millions of years before the rise of Homo sapiens

The anatomical ability to speak evolved millions of years before the rise of Homo sapiens

Baboons make sounds, but how does it relate to human speech? Creative Wrights/Shutterstock.com By Thomas R. Sawallis, University of Alabama and Louis-Jean Boë, Université Grenoble Alpes Sound doesn’t fossilize. Language doesn’t either. Even when writing systems have developed, they’ve represented full-fledged and functional languages. Rather than preserving the first baby steps toward language, they’re fully formed, made up of words, sentences and grammar carried from one person to another by speech sounds, like any of the perhaps 6,000 languages spoken…

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Greenland’s ice sheet melting seven times faster than in 1990s

Greenland’s ice sheet melting seven times faster than in 1990s

The Guardian reports: Greenland’s ice sheet is melting much faster than previously thought, threatening hundreds of millions of people with inundation and bringing some of the irreversible impacts of the climate emergency much closer. Ice is being lost from Greenland seven times faster than it was in the 1990s, and the scale and speed of ice loss is much higher than was predicted in the comprehensive studies of global climate science by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, according to…

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Our oceans brim with climate solutions. We need a Blue New Deal

Our oceans brim with climate solutions. We need a Blue New Deal

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson writes: Our nation has more than 95,000 miles of shoreline, home to 40 percent of Americans who live in coastal counties. Our blue economy, including fishing, ocean farming, shipping, tourism and recreation, supports more than 3.25 million American jobs and a $300-billion annual contribution to our gross domestic product. And, for many, our cultural heritage is tied to the sea. These communities are threatened by rising sea levels, eroding coasts and climate change-fueled storms. Yet the Green…

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The ‘Russia hoax’ is itself a hoax

The ‘Russia hoax’ is itself a hoax

Adam Serwer writes: If you are following mainstream news outlets, you know that in 2016, Donald Trump benefited from a Russian hacking and disinformation campaign designed to help him get elected, even as he sought permission from the Russian government to build a hotel in Moscow. You know that he deflected blame from Russia for that campaign, even as he sought to benefit from it politically. You know that shortly after the election, Trump told Russian officials in the Oval…

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Trump lashes out at FBI director in wake of Justice Department inspector general’s report

Trump lashes out at FBI director in wake of Justice Department inspector general’s report

  The Washington Post reports: President Trump lashed out Tuesday morning at FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, suggesting that “he will never be able to fix the FBI” based on his reaction to a Justice Department inspector general’s report examining the bureau’s investigation of Trump’s 2016 campaign. “I don’t know what report current Director of the FBI Christopher Wray was reading, but it sure wasn’t the one given to me,” Trump tweeted. “With that kind of attitude, he will never…

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