Trump’s words, and deeds, reveal the depths of his drive to retain power

Trump’s words, and deeds, reveal the depths of his drive to retain power

Shane Goldmacher writes: The events of Jan. 6 played out so publicly and so brutally — the instigating speech by Mr. Trump, the flag-waving march to the Capitol, the violent clashes with the police, the defiling of the seat of democracy — and have since been so extensively re-examined that at times it can seem as if there were little more to be discovered about what led up to that day. Then, The New York Times reported this week that…

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Exposure to one nasal droplet enough for Covid infection, study finds

Exposure to one nasal droplet enough for Covid infection, study finds

The Guardian reports: Exposure to a single nasal droplet is sufficient to become infected with Covid-19, according to a landmark trial in which healthy volunteers were intentionally given a dose of the virus. The trial, the first to have monitored people during the entire course of infection, also found that people typically develop symptoms very quickly – on average, within two days of encountering the virus – and are most infectious five days into the infection. The study was carried…

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The great Amazon land grab – how Brazil’s government is turning public land private, clearing the way for deforestation

The great Amazon land grab – how Brazil’s government is turning public land private, clearing the way for deforestation

A satellite captured large and small deforestation patches in Amazonas State in 2015. The forest loss has escalated since then. USGS/NASA Landsat data/Orbital Horizon/Gallo Images/Getty Images By Gabriel Cardoso Carrero, University of Florida; Cynthia S. Simmons, University of Florida, and Robert T. Walker, University of Florida Imagine that several state legislators decide that Yellowstone National Park is too big. Also imagine that, working with federal politicians, they change the law to downsize the park by a million acres, which they…

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Secrets of early animal evolution revealed by chromosome ‘tectonics’

Secrets of early animal evolution revealed by chromosome ‘tectonics’

Viviane Callier writes: Chromosomes, the bundles of DNA that star in the mitotic ballet of cell division, play a leading role in complex life. But the question of how chromosomes came to exist and evolve has long been discouragingly hard to answer. This is due partly to the lack of chromosome-level genomic information and partly to the suspicion that eons of evolutionary change have washed away any clues about that ancient history. Now, in a paper appearing today in Science…

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The makings of a shattering constitutional crisis in 2025

The makings of a shattering constitutional crisis in 2025

Bruce Ackerman and Gerard Magliocca write: Donald Trump is already signaling that he will run for president in 2024. A Biden-Trump rematch risks worsening our country’s already deep divisions. But there’s more to be worried about: The next election will provoke a genuine constitutional crisis, unless decisive steps are taken soon to prevent it. Section 3 of the 14th Amendment — the Disqualification Clause — expressly bars any person from holding “any office, civil or military, under the United States”…

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The Marxist academic who challenges liberals and the Left

The Marxist academic who challenges liberals and the Left

Benjamin Wallace-Wells writes: Since roughly 2015, every part of politics has been pressured by the possibility of authoritarian developments on the right. When I reached [Adolph] Reed [emeritus political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania] on Zoom in Philadelphia, he confessed that he’d been feeling those pressures, too. For his Zoom background he’d chosen a diagram of a mounting tsunami, which he said represented his fears of an imminent surge of authoritarianism and the retreat of American democracy. “I’ve basically…

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Trump had significant role in weighing proposals to seize voting machines

Trump had significant role in weighing proposals to seize voting machines

The New York Times reports: Six weeks after Election Day, with his hold on power slipping, President Donald J. Trump directed his lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, to make a remarkable call. Mr. Trump wanted him to ask the Department of Homeland Security if it could legally take control of voting machines in key swing states, three people familiar with the matter said. Mr. Giuliani did so, calling the department’s acting deputy secretary, who said he lacked the authority to audit…

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Kyrsten Sinema courted Republican fossil fuel donors with filibuster stance

Kyrsten Sinema courted Republican fossil fuel donors with filibuster stance

The Guardian reports: With a crucial vote pending over filibuster rules that would have made strong voting rights legislation feasible, Democratic senator Kyrsten Sinema flew into Houston, Texas, for a fundraiser that drew dozens of fossil fuel chieftains, including Continental Resources chairman Harold Hamm and ConocoPhillips chief executive Ryan Lance. The event was held on 18 January at the upmarket River Oaks Country Club. One executive told the Guardian that Sinema spoke for about half an hour and informed a…

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Let’s bring the Supreme Court back down to Earth

Let’s bring the Supreme Court back down to Earth

Jamelle Bouie writes: A new vacancy on the Supreme Court means a new round of political theater over the beliefs and qualifications of the president’s eventual nominee. But what does it mean for a Supreme Court justice to be “qualified”? The Constitution is silent on the question, and there’s not much to take from the framers either. To the extent that “qualified” means anything to most people, it’s that the nominee has ample experience on the bench, a standard in…

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Will Omicron end the pandemic? Here’s what experts say

Will Omicron end the pandemic? Here’s what experts say

Nature reports: On 11 January, just seven weeks after the Omicron variant was first reported, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned of a “tidal wave” of infection washing from west to east across the world. Fifty of the 53 countries in Europe and central Asia had reported cases of Omicron, said Hans Henri Kluge, the WHO’s regional director for Europe. Countries would have to cope as best they could, he said, guided by their individual epidemiological situation, available resources, vaccination-uptake…

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When fact checking goes wrong: Facebook versus the British Medical Journal

When fact checking goes wrong: Facebook versus the British Medical Journal

The BMJ reports: On 3 November Howard Kaplan, a retired dentist from Israel, posted a link to a BMJ investigation article in a private Facebook group. The investigation reported poor clinical trial research practices occurring at Ventavia, a contract research company helping to carry out the main Pfizer covid-19 vaccine trial. The article brought in record traffic to bmj.com and was widely shared on Twitter, helping it achieve the second highest “Altmetric” score of all time across all biomedical publications.3…

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Climate change divides along racial lines. Can tackling it help address longstanding injustices?

Climate change divides along racial lines. Can tackling it help address longstanding injustices?

Jeremy Williams writes: When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, it was the city’s black neighbourhoods that bore the brunt of the storm. Twelve years later, it was the black districts of Houston that took the full force of Hurricane Harvey. In both cases, natural disasters compounded issues in neighbourhoods that were already stretched. Climate change and racism are two of the biggest challenges of the 21st Century. They are also strongly intertwined. There is a stark divide between…

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Trump’s grip on the MAGA movement is starting to weaken

Trump’s grip on the MAGA movement is starting to weaken

The New York Times reports: About halfway into his Texas rally on Saturday evening, Donald J. Trump pivoted toward the teleprompter and away from a meandering set of grievances to rattle off a tightly prepared list of President Biden’s failings and his own achievements. “Let’s simply compare the records,” Mr. Trump said, as supporters in “Trump 2024” shirts cheered behind him, framed perfectly in the television shot. Mr. Trump, who later went on to talk about “that beautiful, beautiful house…

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Why book banning efforts are spreading across the U.S.

Why book banning efforts are spreading across the U.S.

The New York Times reports: In Wyoming, a county prosecutor’s office considered charges against library employees for stocking books like “Sex Is a Funny Word” and “This Book Is Gay.” In Oklahoma, a bill was introduced in the State Senate that would prohibit public school libraries from keeping books on hand that focus on sexual activity, sexual identity or gender identity. In Tennessee, the McMinn County Board of Education voted to remove the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel “Maus” from an…

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