Music: Ayanda Sikade — ‘Mdantsane’
We know who’s to blame for Trump’s evasion of justice. It isn’t Jack Smith
Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern write: The six-page filing that special counsel Jack Smith submitted Monday is surely one of the strangest requests a federal prosecutor has ever had to make. Smith moved to dismiss charges against Donald Trump for election subversion, asking Judge Tanya Chutkan to toss out the case due to an “unprecedented circumstance”: The defendant has, of course, been reelected president. In the filing, he assures the judge (and the public) that the government “stands fully…
Trump’s mass deportation plan could clog immigration courts for years
Axios reports: It’s one thing to call for the largest deportation in American history. It’s another to pull it off logistically, given the highly complex process of spotting, detaining, holding and evicting people in the U.S. illegally. Why it matters: The judicial process — one small piece of a long, expensive deportation machinery — illustrates vividly the complexity ahead. The big picture: The U.S. immigration system’s backlog of 3.7 million court cases will take four years to resolve at the current pace — but that could balloon…
U.S. farm groups want Trump to spare their workers from deportation
Reuters reports: U.S. farm industry groups want President-elect Donald Trump to spare their sector from his promise of mass deportations, which could upend a food supply chain heavily dependent on immigrants in the United States illegally. So far Trump officials have not committed to any exemptions, according to interviews with farm and worker groups and Trump’s incoming “border czar” Tom Homan. Nearly half of the nation’s approximately 2 million farm workers lack legal status, according to the departments of Labor…
Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo wants to ‘crush liberal dominance’
NPR reports: Leonard Leo may not be a household name, but odds are most people in the country know his signature achievement: Leo was a key architect of the conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court that rolled back the federal right to an abortion. The conservative activist advised President-elect Donald Trump during his first term on the nominations of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. The three picks gave conservatives their 6-3 majority on the high court. And…
‘Total oppression’: West Bank children being killed at unprecedented rate
The Guardian reports: Mohammad was 12, a football-mad teenager who spent his days dreaming of a career on the pitch and his last minutes practising ball skills. Ghassan was 14, a quiet, generous teenager who ran errands for elderly relatives, with an adoring six-year-old brother who stuck to him like a shadow. Both boys were shot dead this summer by Israeli soldiers, victims of an unprecedented surge in attacks on children in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. In…
The growing enthusiasm among tech elites for genetically engineering their children
Emily R. Klancher Merchant writes: In the Operation Varsity Blues scandal of 2019, 50 wealthy parents were charged with trying to get their children into elite universities through fraudulent means. The story dramatically demonstrated the lengths to which some parents will go to ensure their children’s acceptance into places like Stanford, Yale, Georgetown, and USC. Actress Lori Loughlin and her husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, bribed athletic coaches to recruit their children for sports they did not play. Actress Felicity Huffman…
Why walking helps us think
Ferris Jabr writes: In Vogue’s 1969 Christmas issue, Vladimir Nabokov offered some advice for teaching James Joyce’s “Ulysses”: “Instead of perpetuating the pretentious nonsense of Homeric, chromatic, and visceral chapter headings, instructors should prepare maps of Dublin with Bloom’s and Stephen’s intertwining itineraries clearly traced.” He drew a charming one himself. Several decades later, a Boston College English professor named Joseph Nugent and his colleagues put together an annotated Google map that shadows Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom step by…
Music: Abdullah Ibrahim — ‘Tintinyana’
What the broligarchs want from Trump
Brooke Harrington writes: After Donald Trump won this month’s election, one of the first things he did was to name two unelected male plutocrats, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, to run a new Department of Government Efficiency. The yet-to-be-created entity’s acronym, DOGE, is something of a joke—a reference to a cryptocurrency named for an internet meme involving a Shiba Inu. But its appointed task of reorganizing the federal bureaucracy and slashing its spending heralds a new political arrangement in Washington:…
Trump is running his transition team on dark money
The New York Times reports: President-elect Donald J. Trump is keeping secret the names of the donors who are funding his transition effort, a break from tradition that could make it impossible to see what interest groups, businesses or wealthy people are helping launch his second term. Mr. Trump has so far declined to sign an agreement with the Biden administration that imposes strict limits on that fund-raising in exchange for up to $7.2 million in federal funds earmarked for…
Huge election year worldwide sees weakening commitment to act on climate crisis
The Guardian reports: An unprecedented year of elections around the world has underscored a sobering trend – in many countries the commitment to act on the climate crisis has either stalled or is eroding, even as disasters and record temperatures continue to mount. So far 2024, called the “biggest election year in human history” by the United Nations with around half the world’s population heading to the polls, there have been major wins for Donald Trump, the US president-elect who…
Foreign nationals propel U.S. science. Visa limits under Trump could change that
NPR reports: Foreign-born workers account for about half of the doctoral-level scientists and engineers working in the U.S. Many were initially hired under H-1B visas, which are granted to as many as 85,000 highly skilled specialists each year, allowing them to work in the U.S. for up to six years. But the incoming Trump administration has signaled that it will crack down on H-1B visas, which could make it harder for universities, research institutions, and tech firms in the U.S….
Bluesky is turning into a strong X alternative
Kevin Roose writes: After an hour or so of scrolling through Bluesky the other night, I felt something I haven’t felt on social media in a long time: free. Free from Elon Musk, and his tedious quest to turn X into a right-wing echo chamber where he and his friends are the permanent, inescapable main characters. Free from Threads and its suffocating algorithm, which suppresses news and real-time discussions in favor of bland engagement bait. Free from my own bad…
Social media addiction led Elon Musk to buy the platform
In three hours last night, he posted over 125 times. And he's still at it… pic.twitter.com/zzr2gaTvfM — Hoodlum 🇺🇸 (@NotHoodlum) November 24, 2024 Sam Harris comments on Musk’s social media addiction in this conversation with Tim Miller.
Scientists reveal the shape of a single photon for the first time
SciTechDaily reports: A groundbreaking quantum theory has allowed researchers to define the exact shape of a single photon for the first time. Scientists at the University of Birmingham, whose work is featured in Physical Review Letters, have delved into the intricate behavior of photons — individual particles of light. Their research reveals how photons are emitted by atoms or molecules and how their shape is influenced by the surrounding environment. This complex interaction gives rise to infinite possibilities for light…