Trump’s ‘circular firing squad’ threatens GOP midterm gains

Trump’s ‘circular firing squad’ threatens GOP midterm gains

Politico reports: Nine months before the midterm elections, nearly everything is falling the Republican Party’s way, from President Joe Biden’s dismal approval ratings to rising gas prices and a seemingly never-ending pandemic. Yet as the Republican National Committee concluded its winter meeting here on Friday, it was censuring two of its own, Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), and decrying the House’s Jan. 6 select committee for what Ronna McDaniel, the RNC chair, called the “persecution of ordinary…

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GOP dubs January 6 attack ‘legitimate political discourse’

GOP dubs January 6 attack ‘legitimate political discourse’

The New York Times reports: The Republican Party on Friday officially declared the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and events that led to it “legitimate political discourse,” and rebuked two lawmakers in the party who have been most outspoken in condemning the deadly riot and the role of Donald J. Trump in spreading the election lies that fueled it. The Republican National Committee’s voice vote to censure Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois at…

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Cyberattack on News Corp, believed linked to China, targeted emails of journalists, others

Cyberattack on News Corp, believed linked to China, targeted emails of journalists, others

The Wall Street Journal reports: News Corp was the target of a hack that accessed emails and documents of journalists and other employees, an incursion the company’s cybersecurity consultant said was likely meant to gather intelligence to benefit China’s interests. The attack, discovered on Jan. 20, affected a number of publications and business units including The Wall Street Journal and its parent Dow Jones; the New York Post; the company’s U.K. news operation; and News Corp headquarters, according to an…

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New database reveals impact humans are having on evolution

New database reveals impact humans are having on evolution

Wired reports: Charles Darwin thought of evolution as an incremental process, like the patient creep of glaciers or the march of continental plates. “We see nothing of these slow changes in progress until the hand of time has marked the long lapse of ages,” he wrote in On the Origin of Species, his famous 1859 treatise on natural selection. But by the 1970s, scientists were finding evidence that Darwin might be wrong—at least about the timescale. Peppered moths living in…

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The reason Putin would risk war

The reason Putin would risk war

Anne Applebaum writes: There are questions about troop numbers, questions about diplomacy. There are questions about the Ukrainian military, its weapons, and its soldiers. There are questions about Germany and France: How will they react? There are questions about America, and how it has come to be a central player in a conflict not of its making. But of all the questions that repeatedly arise about a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine, the one that gets the least satisfactory answers…

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U.S. exposes what it sees as Russian effort to fabricate pretext for invasion of Ukraine

U.S. exposes what it sees as Russian effort to fabricate pretext for invasion of Ukraine

The New York Times reports: The United States has acquired intelligence about a Russian plan to fabricate a pretext for an invasion of Ukraine using a faked video that would build on recent disinformation campaigns, according to senior administration officials and others briefed on the material. The plan — which the United States hopes to spoil by making public — involves staging and filming a fabricated attack by the Ukrainian military either on Russian territory or against Russian-speaking people in…

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Biden officials mount last-minute push for electric Postal Service trucks

Biden officials mount last-minute push for electric Postal Service trucks

Bloomberg reports: Biden administration officials are pushing the U.S. Postal Service to buy more electric vehicles instead of spending billions on gas-powered models as it replaces its aging fleet. The efforts, mounted by the Environmental Protection Agency and the White House Council on Environmental Quality, follow separate warnings by activists that the Postal Service’s plan to buy mostly conventional delivery trucks downplayed the potential climate benefits of a shift to electric, non-emitting alternatives. The Postal Service’s plan “represents a crucial…

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The decline of Facebook

The decline of Facebook

Parmy Olson writes: For years, Wall Street kept faith in Facebook’s powerful ad machine. Investors gave Mark Zuckerberg the benefit of the doubt when he bet the company’s future on the metaverse and they largely forgave callous business practices revealed by a whistleblower. What mattered was the constant user growth that kept the machine printing money — a machine that accounts for a remarkable 98% of total revenue. It is why, for years, “daily active users” was the North Star…

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Jeff Zucker’s legacy is defined by his promotion of Donald Trump

Jeff Zucker’s legacy is defined by his promotion of Donald Trump

Margaret Sullivan writes: Many questions still swirl around Wednesday’s startling announcement that, after nine years, Jeff Zucker’s reign as CNN president was over. Was his ouster really all about his failure to disclose to his corporate bosses a consensual relationship with another top network executive? How much of a factor was the continuing mess over former host Chris Cuomo’s firing in December? To what extent were the network’s flagging ratings part of the calculation? It will all eventually be revealed…

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A Jewish teacher criticized Israel. She was fired

A Jewish teacher criticized Israel. She was fired

The New York Times reports: Last summer, Jessie Sander had been on the job at a Jewish school in Westchester County for less than a month when a meeting with her boss took an unexpected turn. Was she comfortable working at a Zionist institution? he asked. Her boss, Rabbi David E. Levy of Westchester Reform Temple in Scarsdale, N.Y., had come across a recent blog post she had written that renounced Zionism and sharply criticized Israel, Ms. Sander, 26, said…

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I feel, therefore I am

I feel, therefore I am

Antonio Damasio writes: In the beginning was not the word; that much is clear. Life sailed forth without words or thoughts, without feelings or reasons, devoid of minds or consciousness. Not that the universe of the living was ever simple, quite the contrary. It was complex from its inception, four billion years ago. But living organisms then took several paths. In the branch of life history that led to us, I like to imagine three distinct and consecutive evolutionary stages….

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Extreme heat in oceans ‘passed point of no return’ in 2014

Extreme heat in oceans ‘passed point of no return’ in 2014

The Guardian reports: Extreme heat in the world’s oceans passed the “point of no return” in 2014 and has become the new normal, according to research. Scientists analysed sea surface temperatures over the last 150 years, which have risen because of global heating. They found that extreme temperatures occurring just 2% of the time a century ago have occurred at least 50% of the time across the global ocean since 2014. In some hotspots, extreme temperatures occur 90% of the…

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Europe is ready to pay the cost of Russia sanctions

Europe is ready to pay the cost of Russia sanctions

Nathalie Tocci writes: Too much is being made of divisions in the West over how to respond to Russian aggression against Ukraine. The truth is that there is a broad consensus in the transatlantic alliance about how to proceed if Moscow were to invade its neighbor. The biggest differences aren’t about strategy — they’re about who will have to pay the price of carrying out that strategy. To be sure, disagreements do exist. Recent weeks have lain bare divergences over…

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FBI Director Wray says scale of Chinese spying in the U.S. ‘blew me away’

FBI Director Wray says scale of Chinese spying in the U.S. ‘blew me away’

NBC News reports: Chinese spying in the U.S. has become so widespread that the FBI is launching an average of two counterintelligence investigations a day to counter the onslaught, FBI Director Christopher Wray said in an interview. Wray has become the U.S. government’s most outspoken critic of the Chinese government’s spying. In an exclusive NBC News interview, he said the sheer scale of Chinese efforts to steal U.S. technology shocked him when he became FBI director in 2017. “This one…

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