The most openly anti-Semitic president in U.S. history

The most openly anti-Semitic president in U.S. history

Jonathan Chait writes: Donald Trump is the most openly anti-Semitic president in American history. There is no close second. While many presidents expressed anti-Semitic beliefs in private, only Trump has done so repeatedly, and usually in public. If you go through the list of classic anti-Semitic beliefs, Trump has checked off nearly every box: — Jews are natural negotiators (“I’m a negotiator, like you folks”) — Jews buy off politicians (“You want to control your own politician”) — Jews are…

Read More Read More

America is not ready for Omicron

America is not ready for Omicron

Ed Yong writes: America was not prepared for COVID-19 when it arrived. It was not prepared for last winter’s surge. It was not prepared for Delta’s arrival in the summer or its current winter assault. More than 1,000 Americans are still dying of COVID every day, and more have died this year than last. Hospitalizations are rising in 42 states. The University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, which entered the pandemic as arguably the best-prepared hospital in the country,…

Read More Read More

Unvaccinated Covid patients push hospital systems past the brink

Unvaccinated Covid patients push hospital systems past the brink

Bloomberg reports: In a Kentucky hospital bed at the end of November, a Covid-19 patient from the state’s latest wave of infections lay alone behind the glass isolation wall. A high-flow oxygen mask pushed extra air into his damaged lungs. His heart beat fast, though he lay frail and still. His mouth opened and closed to take tiny gulps of air. It looked like he was suffocating. Kentucky’s Covid landscape is a lot like what’s happening in the rest of…

Read More Read More

Will we always need Covid-19 boosters? Experts have theories

Will we always need Covid-19 boosters? Experts have theories

STAT reports: With the world facing the latest in a seemingly endless stream of coronavirus variants — and with bullish talk from manufacturers about a need for even more vaccine shots — you wouldn’t be alone if you were wondering: Are Covid boosters always going to be a fixture in our future? The simple truth is that, at this point, there’s no definitive answer to that question. But virologists, immunologists, and vaccinologists have opinions that are anchored in an understanding…

Read More Read More

January 6 investigators mull whether Trump violated obstruction law

January 6 investigators mull whether Trump violated obstruction law

Politico reports: Members of the Jan. 6 select committee are homing in on a politically explosive question: Did Donald Trump’s actions amid the Capitol attack amount to criminal obstruction of Congress? Twice this week, committee vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) has raised the possibility that Trump’s conduct while a mob of his supporters overtook the Capitol could qualify as an effort to obstruct the certification of Joe Biden’s victory. Cheney described that as a “key” topic facing the panel,…

Read More Read More

How Meadows and a band of loyalists fought to keep Trump in power

How Meadows and a band of loyalists fought to keep Trump in power

The New York Times reports: Two days after Christmas last year, Richard P. Donoghue, a top Justice Department official in the waning days of the Trump administration, saw an unknown number appear on his phone. Mr. Donoghue had spent weeks fielding calls, emails and in-person requests from President Donald J. Trump and his allies, all of whom asked the Justice Department to declare, falsely, that the election was corrupt. The lame-duck president had surrounded himself with a crew of unscrupulous…

Read More Read More

Global warming can set the stage for deadly tornadoes

Global warming can set the stage for deadly tornadoes

Inside Climate News reports: Adding a grim exclamation point to a year of deadly climate extremes, the early December tornadoes that killed at least 90 people in the Southeast were some of the most intense storms on record so late in the year. The storms fired up in Arkansas the night of Dec. 10, during weather far too hot and humid for the season, and raced across Missouri, Illinois, Tennessee and Kentucky on Dec. 11. It will take weeks of…

Read More Read More

What the Amish can teach us about technology

What the Amish can teach us about technology

In 1999, Howard Rheingold wrote: Collective negotiations over the use of telephones have ignited intense controversies in the Amish community since the beginning of the 20th century. In fact, a dispute over the role of the phone was the principal issue behind the 1920s division of the Amish church, wherein one-fifth of the membership broke away to form their own church. Eventually, certain Amish communities accepted the telephone for its aid in summoning doctors and veterinarians, and in calling suppliers….

Read More Read More

2021 Arctic Report Card reveals a (human) story of cascading disruptions, extreme events and global connections

2021 Arctic Report Card reveals a (human) story of cascading disruptions, extreme events and global connections

Community members from Utqiagvik, Alaska, look to open water from the edge of shorefast sea ice. Matthew Druckenmiller By Matthew Druckenmiller, University of Colorado Boulder; Rick Thoman, University of Alaska Fairbanks, and Twila Moon, University of Colorado Boulder The Arctic has long been portrayed as a distant end-of-the-Earth place, disconnected from everyday common experience. But as the planet rapidly warms, what happens in this icy region, where temperatures are rising twice as fast as the rest of the globe, increasingly…

Read More Read More

Omicron has all the makings of a massive wave

Omicron has all the makings of a massive wave

David Wallace-Wells writes: For all their limitations, the models right now are flashing bright red. Over the course of the pandemic, again and again, projections based on simplistic extrapolations of current trends have missed the mark when the trajectories turned. Sometimes this has been for the good, with dire warnings looking excessive after waves peaked and declined well before a full penetration of the population; sometimes, unfortunately, the turn has been in the other direction. But right now we don’t…

Read More Read More

How border walls are triggering ecological disaster

How border walls are triggering ecological disaster

George Monbiot writes: This is the century in which humanitarian and environmental disasters converge. Climate breakdown has driven many millions from their homes, and is likely to evict hundreds of millions more. The famine harrowing Madagascar at the moment is the first to have been named by the UN as likely to have been caused by the climate emergency. It will not be the last. Great cities find themselves dangerously short of water as aquifers are drained. Air pollution kills…

Read More Read More

New York City’s gas ban takes fight against climate change to the kitchen

New York City’s gas ban takes fight against climate change to the kitchen

The New York Times reports: New York City is set to ban gas-powered stoves, space heaters and water boilers in all new buildings, a move that would significantly affect real estate development and construction in the nation’s largest city and could influence how cities around the world seek to reduce the burning of fossil fuels, which drives climate change. The City Council is expected on Wednesday to approve a bill banning gas hookups in new buildings — effectively requiring all-electric…

Read More Read More

Lies about the January 6 Capitol attack and its significance

Lies about the January 6 Capitol attack and its significance

Politifact reports: Shortly after 2 p.m. on Jan. 6, supporters of President Donald J. Trump breached the U.S. Capitol, turning the seat of American democracy into the scene of an unforgettable crime. Inside, lawmakers had been preparing to count the Electoral College votes that would bring Trump’s presidency to a close. Outside, the rioters erected a hanging gallows. They waved “Trump 2020,” “Blue Lives Matter” and Confederate flags. Some were armed. After marching down Pennsylvania Avenue at Trump’s urging, the…

Read More Read More

The military-intelligence veterans who helped lead Trump’s campaign of disinformation

The military-intelligence veterans who helped lead Trump’s campaign of disinformation

Reuters reports: During the Afghan and Iraq wars, the careers of two military officers often intersected. Army General Michael Flynn and an Army Reserve colonel named Phil Waldron worked together on secret projects in both countries, Waldron said. When Flynn was appointed to run the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency in 2012, Waldron said he worked at the DIA’s clandestine service. Flynn was an intel expert. Waldron’s specialty was psychological operations, or PSYOPs – targeting foreign adversaries, as an Army field…

Read More Read More