Music: Shai Maestro — ‘In a Sentimental Mood’
The terrifying future of the Republican Party
David Brooks writes: Rachel Bovard is one of the thousands of smart young Americans who flock to Washington each year to make a difference. She’s worked in the House and Senate for Republicans Rand Paul, Pat Toomey, and Mike Lee, was listed among the “Most Influential Women in Washington Under 35” by National Journal, did a stint at the Heritage Foundation, and is now policy director of the Conservative Partnership Institute, whose mission is to train, equip, and unify the…
Say goodbye to swing districts. Lawmakers are drawing easy wins in dozens of states
Politico reports: When most voters go to the polls to elect members of Congress next year, the general election will essentially be meaningless. That’s because winners are being determined right now, by a small number of party officials who are surgically ensuring preordained victories in the majority of the nation’s congressional districts. The current redistricting cycle is garnering more interest and scrutiny than ever because the power of the process has become so clear: When politicians control redistricting, they have…
GOP can’t escape ‘self-inflicted injuries’ as they fight to reclaim House
Politico reports: House Republicans should be riding high: The majority is in their grasp and President Joe Biden’s poll numbers are tanking. Instead, they’re getting in their own way, again. Ahead of a vote on Democrats’ biggest agenda item, the GOP conference is embroiled in messy internal spats that have spilled into public view, including the censure Wednesday of a far-right House member, the first such vote in more than a decade. At the same time, some rank-and-file Republicans are…
First known Covid case was vendor at Wuhan market, scientist claims
The New York Times reports: A scientist who has pored over public accounts of early Covid-19 cases in China reported on Thursday that an influential World Health Organization inquiry had most likely gotten the early chronology of the pandemic wrong. The new analysis suggests that the first known patient sickened with the coronavirus was a vendor in a large Wuhan animal market, not an accountant who lived many miles from it. The report, published on Thursday in the prestigious journal…
The forgotten oil ads that told us climate change was nothing
The Guardian reports: Why is meaningful action to avert the climate crisis proving so difficult? It is, at least in part, because of ads. The fossil fuel industry has perpetrated a multi-decade, multibillion dollar disinformation, propaganda and lobbying campaign to delay climate action by confusing the public and policymakers about the climate crisis and its solutions. This has involved a remarkable array of advertisements – with headlines ranging from “Lies they tell our children” to “Oil pumps life” – seeking…
Mass extinctions don’t drive evolutionary change — life does
Riley Black writes: Of all the species that have ever lived on our planet, more than 99 per cent are extinct. Most of these organisms disappeared through the constant shuffle of ecological and evolutionary change. But not all. Many species have vanished in a geological snap during mass extinctions – truly catastrophic events where the rate of extinction vastly outpaces the origin of new species. For a time, these ecological disasters were thought to drive a great flourish of new…
What to learn from hedgerows
Katarina Zimmer writes: Hedgerows are as British as fish and chips. Without these walls of woody plants cross-stitching the countryside into a harmonious quilt of pastures and crop fields, the landscape wouldn’t be the same. Over the centuries, numerous hedges were planted to keep in grazing livestock, and some of today’s are as historic as many old churches, dating back as far as 800 years. Today, Britain boasts about 700,000 kilometers (435,000 miles) of them, a length that surpasses that…
Music: Emil Brandqvist Trio — ‘The Sea Begins to Freeze’
You can’t beat climate change without tackling disinformation
Amy Westervelt writes: In the past month or so, climate disinformation has been making its way into the news more than usual. There was the House Oversight Committee’s climate disinformation hearing in October, and then, just days later, leaked documents from Facebook revealed its role in spreading climate denial. The Oversight Committee’s investigation continues, as does the work to fully understand social media’s role in disinformation, about climate and otherwise. But for all we know about disinformation and how dangerously…
Democrats shouldn’t panic. They should go into shock
Thomas B. Edsall writes: The rise of inflation, supply chain shortages, a surge in illegal border crossings, the persistence of Covid, mayhem in Afghanistan and the uproar over “critical race theory” — all of these developments, individually and collectively, have taken their toll on President Biden and Democratic candidates, so much so that Democrats are now the underdogs going into 2022 and possibly 2024. Gary Langer, director of polling at ABC News, put it this way in an essay published…
Poll: Voters’ doubts rising about Biden’s health, mental fitness
Politico reports: Voters have increasing doubts about the health and mental fitness of President Joe Biden, the oldest man ever sworn into the White House, according to a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll. Only 40 percent of voters surveyed agreed with the statement that Biden “is in good health,” while 50 percent disagreed. That 10-percentage-point gap — outside the poll’s margin of error — represents a massive 29-point shift since October 2020, when Morning Consult last surveyed the question and found…
Sinema speaks up — and shakes off her critics
Politico reports: Watch the Senate floor enough and you’ll notice Sen. Kyrsten Sinema regularly chatting with Mitch McConnell and his top deputy John Thune. Republicans have even tried to recruit her to their conference, and throw the Senate to the GOP. Don’t worry though, Democrats: Sinema’s not becoming a Republican. “No. Why would I do that?” the moderate Arizonan says in her trademark deadpan. Thune, the GOP whip, wishes it were otherwise, confirming in an interview he’s pressed Sinema to…
Can Russia’s press ever be free?
Masha Gessen writes: Around noon every workday, Dmitry Muratov, the editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, sits down at the head of a long table in a large round room in the paper’s office, in Moscow, to chair a planyorka, or planning meeting. On October 11th, the Monday after the Friday when the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced that it was awarding this year’s Peace Prize to Muratov and the Filipina journalist Maria Ressa, ten people gathered at the table, joined by fifteen…
The elephant who could be a person
Jill Lepore writes: The subject of the most important animal-rights case of the 21st century was born in Thailand during the Vietnam War. Very soon after that, a tousle-haired baby, she became trapped in human history. She was captured, locked in a cage, trucked to the coast, and loaded onto a roaring 747 that soared across the Pacific until it made landfall in the United States. She spent her earliest years in Florida, not far from Disney World, before she…
Who said science and art were two cultures?
Kevin Berger writes: On a May evening in 1959, C.P. Snow, a popular novelist and former research scientist, gave a lecture before a gathering of dons and students at the University of Cambridge, his alma mater. He called his talk “The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution.” Snow declared that a gulf of mutual incomprehension divided literary intellectuals and scientists. “The non-scientists have a rooted impression that the scientists are shallowly optimistic, unaware of man’s condition,” Snow said. “On the…