Music: Tigran Hamasyan — ‘Yes Siretsi’ ft. Golshifteh Farahani
Can he do that? How Trump could try to break the federal government
ABC News reports: President Donald Trump’s picks to lead the next administration are talking about abolishing entire agencies and firing tens of thousands of federal workers at a time. But can his administration actually do all that? Experts believe Trump can get much further on upending the government system this go-around compared to his first term — in part because the typical checks and balances are expected to lean in his favor. Next year, the House and Senate are on…
U.S. federal workers hope Republicans will curb Trump, Musk firings
Reuters reports: Members of the over 2 million-strong U.S. civilian federal workforce are looking to an unlikely source to protect it from Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s promise to slash government employees and cut costs: the incoming Republican-controlled Congress. Federal employee unions are lining up lawyers and preparing public campaigns to try to stave off any mass firings, but they’re hoping Republican Congress members will join Democrats in defending their importance to local economies, health and safety, union members and…
Trump’s corruption of the DOJ goes much deeper than Gaetz
Liz Dye writes: Donald Trump’s nomination of Matt Gaetz as attorney general is a giant middle finger to anyone who believes in the rule of law. But his nominees for other key Justice Department positions may be both more consequential and potentially more dangerous for democracy. That’s partly because Gaetz is a lazy fool who never tried a federal criminal case and is functionally a “liberal tears” meme made flesh. It’s not that he’s too stupid to be dangerous —…
Silicon Valley eyes a windfall from Trump’s plans to gut regulation
The Washington Post reports: Prominent venture capitalists and start-up founders see Donald Trump’s victory as heralding a golden age for innovation — anticipating a major boost to tech businesses from lucrative government contracts and the rollback of regulations they consider onerous. The tech industry’s potentially unbridled future under the second Trump administration energized some Republican donors at a Las Vegas conference this week hosted by the Rockbridge Network, a conservative political advocacy group co-founded by Trump’s incoming vice president, former…
This election’s surprising bright spot for progressives is a very big deal
Mark Joseph Stern writes: The 2024 election marked a painful setback for Democratic hopes of rebalancing the federal judiciary: When Donald Trump reenters the White House in January, he will have a pliant Republican Senate majority eager to confirm his hard-right judges. But federal courts don’t tell the whole story: Across the country, voters also elected liberal justices to their state Supreme Courts, which function as a key backstop for civil rights and democracy as federal courts lurch rightward. Progressives…
Human-caused ocean warming intensified recent hurricanes
Yale Climate Connections reports: Human-caused climate change boosted the wind speeds of recent Atlantic hurricanes, making them more damaging and costly, according to a pair of scientific reports released today. Research published in the journal Environmental Research: Climate, “Human-caused ocean warming has intensified recent hurricanes,” found that between 2019 and 2023, the maximum sustained winds of Atlantic hurricanes were 19 mph (31 km/h) higher because of human-caused ocean warming. And a parallel report by Climate Central, a nonprofit scientific research…
Hiker discovers first trace of entire prehistoric ecosystem in Italian Alps
The Guardian reports: A hiker in the northern Italian Alps has stumbled across the first trace of what scientists believe to be an entire prehistoric ecosystem, including the well-preserved footprints of reptiles and amphibians, brought to light by the melting of snow and ice induced by the climate crisis. The discovery in the Valtellina Orobie mountain range in Lombardy dates back 280 million years to the Permian period, the age immediately prior to dinosaurs, scientists say. Claudia Steffensen, from Lovero,…
Music: Arve Henriksen — ‘Heritage’
Key intelligence watchdogs resign in wake of Trump’s win
The Project On Government Oversight reports: The top watchdogs for the Central Intelligence Agency and Office of the Director of National Intelligence are leaving their roles in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s re-election, sources tell the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) and their agencies confirm. These departures come as unease has swept across the federal inspector general community, which anticipates the possibility of a purge of senior watchdog officials by the incoming Trump administration. Appointed by the president…
Anti-trafficking ministries oppose Trump’s pick for attorney general
Christianity Today reports: Several Christian anti-trafficking organizations are publicly opposing President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for US attorney general, former Republican representative Matt Gaetz of Florida. Gaetz resigned his congressional seat last week after the nomination announcement, just days before the House Ethics Committee planned to release its investigation into accusations the lawmaker had sex with a minor. He was also investigated by the Department of Justice (DOJ) for sex trafficking, though the DOJ did not pursue charges. If he wins…
‘That is genocide’: Israeli-American Holocaust historian on Gaza
Israeli-American historian and esteemed professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University, Omer Bartov, sat down with Mehdi Hasan to discuss Gaza, genocide, and the far right in Israel during a live event hosted by Busboys & Poets in Washington, D.C. During the discussion, Bartov explained the extremist direction of the Israeli military, the current far-right Israeli government, the weaponization of antisemitism to shield Benjamin Netanyahu from criticism, and how the United States could have prevented Israel from…
For minority working-class voters, dismay in Democrats led to distrust
The New York Times reports: The working-class voters Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign needed were not moved by talk of joy. They were too angry about feeling broke. For decades, Democrats had been the party of labor and of the working class, the choice for voters who looked to government to increase the minimum wage or provide a safety net for the poor, the old and the sick. But this year’s election results show how thoroughly that idea has…
The three pillars of the bro-economy
Annie Lowrey writes: Just 50 days before his reelection, Donald Trump took the time to hawk a new crypto platform. If the country does not build out its cryptocurrency ecosystem, “we’re not going to be the biggest, and we have to be the biggest and the best,” Trump said on a livestream on X. “It’s very young and very growing. And if we don’t do it, China’s going to do it.” The livestream was sponsored by World Liberty Financial, which…
Biden locks in $6.6B for TSMC chip factories, ensuring Trump can’t rescind CHIPS Act deal
By Phineas Hogan/Cronkite News, Arizona Mirror November 18, 2024 WASHINGTON – The Biden administration has finalized a $6.6 billion award for the Taiwan semiconductor giant that is building massive factories in Phoenix, amid concerns President-elect Donald Trump will derail subsidies aimed at fostering the domestic chip industry. “This is a gigantic announcement,” Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo told reporters on a call ahead of the announcement early Friday, 10 days after Trump’s election. “This will be one of the most…
The power of small brain networks
Elena Renken writes: Small may be mightier than we think when it comes to brains. This is what neuroscientist Marcella Noorman is learning from her neuroscientific research into tiny animals like fruit flies, whose brains hold around 140,000 neurons each, compared to the roughly 86 billion in the human brain. In work published earlier this month in Nature Neuroscience, Noorman and colleagues showed that a small network of cells in the fruit fly brain was capable of completing a highly…