Trump skeptical of using foreign spies to collect intel on hostile countries, sources say

Trump skeptical of using foreign spies to collect intel on hostile countries, sources say

CNN reports: President Donald Trump has privately and repeatedly expressed opposition to the use of foreign intelligence from covert sources, including overseas spies who provide the US government with crucial information about hostile countries, according to multiple senior officials who served under Trump. Trump has privately said that foreign spies can damage relations with their host countries and undermine his personal relationships with their leaders, the sources said. The President “believes we shouldn’t be doing that to each other,” one…

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The Republican Party is doomed

The Republican Party is doomed

Stanley B. Greenberg writes: The 2020 election will be transformative like few in our history. It will end with the death of the Republican Party as we know it, leaving the survivors to begin the struggle to renew the party of Lincoln and make it relevant for our times. It will liberate the Democratic Party from the country’s suffocating polarization and allow it to use government to address the vast array of problems facing the nation. From listening to the…

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Facebook, Google face off against a formidable new foe: State attorneys general

Facebook, Google face off against a formidable new foe: State attorneys general

The Washington Post reports: Historically, the federal government has taken the starring role in competition matters, including investigations into potential monopolies and mergers, and such inquiries involving the tech giants are underway. But the states are potent actors in their own right, with the power to invoke local laws on antitrust and consumer-protection and to tap Washington’s antitrust statutes on behalf of their residents. When state attorneys general have banded together on a broad, bipartisan basis, they’ve managed to muscle…

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Dangerous new hot zones are spreading around the world

Dangerous new hot zones are spreading around the world

The Washington Post reports: The day the yellow clams turned black is seared in Ramón Agüero’s memory. It was the summer of 1994. A few days earlier, he had collected a generous haul, 20 buckets of the thin-shelled, cold-water clams, which burrow a foot deep into the sand along a 13-mile stretch of beach near Barra del Chuy, just south of the Brazilian border. Agüero had been digging up these clams since childhood, a livelihood passed on for generations along…

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White House pressured NOAA to repudiate weather forecasters who contradicted Trump’s erroneous hurricane predictions

White House pressured NOAA to repudiate weather forecasters who contradicted Trump’s erroneous hurricane predictions

The New York Times reports: The White House was directly involved in pressing a federal scientific agency to repudiate the weather forecasters who contradicted President Trump’s claim that Hurricane Dorian would probably strike Alabama, according to several people familiar with the events. Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, told Wilbur Ross, the commerce secretary, to have the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration publicly disavow the forecasters’ position that Alabama was not at risk. NOAA, which is part…

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Neoliberalism is pushing the UK towards a Brexit cliff-edge

Neoliberalism is pushing the UK towards a Brexit cliff-edge

George Monbiot writes: At first sight it’s incomprehensible. Why risk everything for a no-deal Brexit? Breaking up their own party, losing their parliamentary majority, dismantling the UK, trashing the economy, triggering shortages of food and medicine: how could any objective, for the Conservative and Unionist party, be worth this? What good does it do them? Yes, some people will benefit. To judge by recent donations to the Conservative party, some very rich people approve of Boris Johnson’s policies. A no-deal…

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Chaos is being normalised. It is all part of Boris Johnson’s pernicious plan

Chaos is being normalised. It is all part of Boris Johnson’s pernicious plan

Paul Mason writes: On Saturday, for the first time in living memory, neo-fascists were chanting the name of the serving prime minister. Supporters of the English Defence League and the Democratic Football Lads Alliance wandered around Whitehall some drunk, harassing random remain protesters and shouting into the faces of journalists until, inevitably, they attacked the police. It’s part of an unnerving trend that’s emerged in the past two weeks: the normalisation of chaos. We have a parliament suspended against its…

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Trump discussed easing Iran sanctions, prompting Bolton pushback

Trump discussed easing Iran sanctions, prompting Bolton pushback

Bloomberg reports: President Donald Trump discussed easing sanctions on Iran to help secure a meeting with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani later this month, prompting then-National Security Advisor John Bolton to argue forcefully against such a step, according to three people familiar with the matter. After an Oval Office meeting on Monday when the idea came up, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin voiced his support for the move as a way to restart negotiations with Iran, some of the people said. Later…

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On 9/11, luck meant everything

On 9/11, luck meant everything

Garrett M. Graff writes: Joseph Lott, a sales representative for Compaq computers, survived one of the deadliest days in modern American history because he had a penchant for “art ties,” neckties featuring famous masterpieces. “It began many years earlier, in the ’90s,” he said in an oral history with StoryCorps. “I love Impressionist paintings, and I use them as a way to make points with my kids. I’d put on an art tie, and then I would ask my kids—I…

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How birds nested in our language and art

How birds nested in our language and art

Jeremy Mynott writes: The Mediterranean world of 2,500 years ago would have looked and sounded very different. Nightingales sang in the suburbs of Athens and Rome; wrynecks, hoopoes, cuckoos and orioles lived within city limits, along with a teeming host of warblers, buntings and finches; kites and ravens scavenged the city streets; owls, swifts and swallows nested on public buildings. In the countryside beyond, eagles and vultures soared overhead, while people could observe the migrations of cranes, storks and wildfowl….

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NOAA’s chief scientist stands up for scientific integrity and against political interference

NOAA’s chief scientist stands up for scientific integrity and against political interference

A Message from Craig McLean: Hurricane Dorian and Exceptional Service, addressing his colleagues, states: During the course of the storm, as I am sure you are aware, there were routine and exceptional expert forecasts, the best possible, issued by the NWS Forecasters. These are remarkable colleagues of ours, who receive our products, use them well, and provide the benefit of their own experience in announcing accurate forecasts accompanied by the distinction of all credible scientists—they sign their work. As I’m…

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World ‘gravely’ unprepared for effects of climate crisis, says new report

World ‘gravely’ unprepared for effects of climate crisis, says new report

The Guardian reports: The world’s readiness for the inevitable effects of the climate crisis is “gravely insufficient”, according to a report from global leaders. This lack of preparedness will result in poverty, water shortages and levels of migration soaring, with an “irrefutable toll on human life”, the report warns. Trillion-dollar investment is needed to avert “climate apartheid”, where the rich escape the effects and the poor do not, but this investment is far smaller than the eventual cost of doing…

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In Brazil’s rainforests, the worst fires are likely still to come

In Brazil’s rainforests, the worst fires are likely still to come

By Robert T. Walker, University of Florida The number of fires this year in the Amazon is the highest since 2010, reaching more than 90,000 active fires. Farmers and ranchers routinely use fires to clear the forest. But this year’s number reflects a worrisome uptick in the rate of deforestation, which had started to drop around 2005 before rebounding earlier this decade. Many people blame the Brazilian government and its pro-agriculture policies for the current crisis. But as an environmental…

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Trump’s disordered personality has become the defining characteristic of his presidency

Trump’s disordered personality has become the defining characteristic of his presidency

Peter Wehner writes: During the 2016 campaign, I received a phone call from an influential political journalist and author, who was soliciting my thoughts on Donald Trump. Trump’s rise in the Republican Party was still something of a shock, and he wanted to know the things I felt he should keep in mind as he went about the task of covering Trump. At the top of my list: Talk to psychologists and psychiatrists about the state of Trump’s mental health,…

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