Carolyn Wilke writes: Young jumping spiders dangle by a thread through the night, in a box, in a lab. Every so often, their legs curl and their spinnerets twitch — and the retinas of their eyes, visible through their translucent exoskeletons, shift back and forth. “What these spiders are doing seems to be resembling — very closely — REM sleep,” says Daniela Rößler, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Konstanz in Germany. During REM (which stands for rapid eye…
Donald Trump’s indictments bring new heat on the coup’s “team effort,” after new footage that first aired on “The Beat” showed Trump vet Roger Stone pushing the elector plot before all votes were in. In accordance with Stone’s rules — “Admit nothing, deny everything…” he responded to Ari Melber’s report: Trump veteran Roger Stone replies to a report on the The Beat, and denies Cassidy Hutchison’s testimony under oath that Mark Meadows called him on January 5, 2021. pic.twitter.com/b9dLof2lsJ…
The New York Times reports: Mr. Biggs recorded a podcast after the riot in which he declared that the attack on the Capitol was “a warning shot to the government.” Mr. Biggs’s contacts in the world of right-wing politics were never restricted solely to the Proud Boys. Like Mr. Tarrio, he has long had ties to Roger J. Stone Jr., one of Mr. Trump’s political advisers. He has also been involved at the edges of far-right disinformation campaigns like the…
The Associated Press reports: Some Republicans in Washington and Georgia began attacking Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis immediately after she announced the Aug. 14 indictment of former President Donald Trump for conspiring to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. But others, including Gov. Brian Kemp, have been conspicuous in their unwillingness to pile on. Kemp, who had previously survived scathing attacks from Trump over his refusal to endorse the former president’s false claims about the election, declined to comment…
Peter Sagal writes: [Cult expert, Daniella Mestyanek] Young doesn’t believe that anybody can be argued out of Trumpism (or any other firmly held belief). People can save only themselves, as she did [when she escaped from the Children of God]. But she argues that such self-rescues are happening all around us. “Twenty years ago,” she told me, “when I walked away from a cult, it was much rarer to meet Americans like me, who are completely estranged from their families…
Judd Legum writes: North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls is being threatened with sanctions for criticizing the court’s approach to racial and gender discrimination. Earls, the only Black woman on the court, is under investigation by the state’s Judicial Standards Commission, a body largely comprised of conservative judges appointed by North Carolina Chief Justice Paul Newby. On August 15, Earls received a letter from the Commission informing her that she was under investigation on suspicion that her comments to…
The Washington Post reports: The Biden administration is pressing Saudi Arabia to identify which elements of its security forces are alleged to have slaughtered migrants along the kingdom’s border with Yemen, a step that would mark an advance toward determining responsibility for the reported abuses and help the United States establish if it has provided weapons or training to those units. Riyadh has categorically denied the allegations in last week’s explosive report from Human Rights Watch, which described widespread killing,…
Live Science reports: An ape fossil found in Turkey may controversially suggest that the ancestors of African apes and humans first evolved in Europe before migrating to Africa, a research team says in a new study. The proposal breaks with the conventional view that hominines — the group that includes humans, the African apes (chimps, bonobos and gorillas) and their fossil ancestors — originated exclusively in Africa. However, the discovery of several hominine fossils in Europe and Anatolia (modern-day Turkey)…
CNN reports: For millions of Americans, mass shootings are hitting as close as one mile to home. Almost 42 million Americans – over one-eighth of the US population – are estimated to have lived within one mile of a mass shooting since 2014, according to an original CNN analysis of data from the Gun Violence Archive (GVA) and US Census Bureau. Mass shootings are happening both more frequently and in an increasing number of cities and towns across the country….
Politico reports: The New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office is “carefully reviewing the legal issues involved” in a long-shot effort by some Republicans in the state to keep former President Donald Trump off the ballot in 2024, the office announced on Tuesday. Bryant “Corky” Messner — an attorney and prominent Republican who ran on Trump’s endorsement as the state’s 2020 U.S. Senate nominee — has publicly questioned Trump’s eligibility to run for president, citing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. The…
Liz Dye writes: Last year, Judge Aileen Cannon tried valiantly to derail the Justice Department’s investigation of Donald Trump’s retention of classified documents at his Florida country club. The unanimous conclusion among court watchers was that Judge Cannon, who was confirmed after Trump had already lost the 2020 election, put both thumbs and all eight fingers on the scale for the man who nominated her to the federal bench. She was only stopped by the intervention of the 11th Circuit,…
A lot of people have recently weighed in on legacy admissions, the preferential treatment given to the children of alumni in the college application process: President Biden. Members of Congress. Supreme Court justices. Officials at numerous colleges — some defending the practice, others calling to ditch it. The Education Department even opened a civil rights investigation last month into Harvard University’s legacy admissions policy. But what about the students who have benefited from the practice themselves, and were accepted…
Layla Maghribi writes: “Have you seen the TikTok reels?” I groaned at the question a friend posed a few days before I traveled to Damascus. I had caught glimpses of the social media content created by certain traveler-influencer types but had largely avoided them to keep good humor. But as my first visit to my mother’s country in a few years approached, and I contemplated how I would perceive it, I found myself tempted to have a look at what…
Politico reports: Republican lawmakers are calling for the State Department to probe how the Tehran Times, an Iranian state-run media outlet, obtained a purported memo informing U.S. Special Envoy for Iran Rob Malley that his security clearance was suspended. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Mike McCaul (R-Texas), said Monday in a statement that Foggy Bottom “needs to do a top to bottom security review, because I am concerned they have a leak.” McCaul also touched on concerns that the Tehran…