How Manchin and Sinema completed a conservative vision

How Manchin and Sinema completed a conservative vision

Ronald Brownstein writes: The decision by Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin to block their fellow Democrats from passing new federal voting-rights legislation clears the path for years of tightening ballot restrictions in Republican-controlled states. It also marks a resounding triumph for Chief Justice John Roberts in his four-decade quest to roll back the federal government’s role in protecting voter rights. Roberts as much as anyone set in motion the events that have led to this week’s climactic Senate confrontation…

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Ukraine needs help preparing for war

Ukraine needs help preparing for war

Alyona Getmanchuk writes: It’s a shame that Ukraine was largely absent from talks last week among American, European and Russian diplomats. Especially since it is our future that is at stake — and Kyiv’s asks might come as a surprise. Our country is not brimming with hope about a Western savior or a NATO rescue in the face of a Russian invasion. What we want from our Western partners that share our desire for us to be a true democracy…

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Arab leader’s gamble to play kingmaker in Israel is paying off

Arab leader’s gamble to play kingmaker in Israel is paying off

The Associated Press reports: Mansour Abbas broke a longstanding taboo when he led his Arab party into Israel’s governing coalition last year. The bold move appears to be paying dividends. Abbas, a once obscure politician, is the linchpin of the shaky union, securing hefty budgets and favorable policies for his constituents and even winning an audience with the king of Jordan. “We are equal partners the whole way, part of the coalition, for the first time in the state of…

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Ostrich eggshell beads reveal 50,000-year-old social network in Africa

Ostrich eggshell beads reveal 50,000-year-old social network in Africa

The Guardian reports: Scientists have uncovered the world’s oldest social network, a web of connections that flourished 50,000 years ago and stretched for thousands of miles across Africa. But unlike its modern electronic equivalent, this ancient web of social bonds used a far more prosaic medium. It relied on the sharing and trading of beads made of ostrich eggshells – one of humanity’s oldest forms of personal adornment. The research by scientists in Germany involved the study of more than…

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Do the Omicron numbers mean what we think they mean?

Do the Omicron numbers mean what we think they mean?

Dhruv Khullar writes: More than a hundred and fifty thousand Americans are currently hospitalized with the coronavirus—a higher number than at any other point in the pandemic. But that figure, too, is not quite what it seems. Many hospitalized Covid patients have no respiratory symptoms; they were admitted for other reasons—a heart attack, a broken hip, cancer surgery—and happened to test positive for the virus. There are no nationwide estimates of the proportion of hospitalized patients with “incidental covid,” but…

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Heading for a second term, Fed Chair Jerome Powell bucks a global trend on climate change

Heading for a second term, Fed Chair Jerome Powell bucks a global trend on climate change

Inside Climate News reports: Many of the questions Jerome Powell faced at his Senate confirmation hearing last week would have been familiar to any Federal Reserve chair on Capitol Hill: Where is the economy heading? What about inflation? How fast could interest rates rise? But Powell, who is seeking his second term, also confronted a question that underscored the profound changes that could be ahead for both the economy and the powerful financial institution he leads: How does the Fed…

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Reinventing the electric grid is crucial for solving the climate crisis

Reinventing the electric grid is crucial for solving the climate crisis

Integrating solar panels with farming can provide partial shade for plants. Werner Slocum/NREL By Charles F. Kutscher, University of Colorado Boulder and Jeffrey Logan, University of Colorado Boulder In the summer of 1988, scientist James Hansen testified to Congress that carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels was dangerously warming the planet. Scientific meetings were held, voluminous reports were written, and national pledges were made, but because fossil fuels were comparatively cheap, little concrete action was taken to reduce carbon emissions….

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Corporate sedition is more damaging to America than the Capitol attack

Corporate sedition is more damaging to America than the Capitol attack

Robert Reich writes: Capitalism and democracy are compatible only if democracy is in the driver’s seat. That’s why I took some comfort just after the attack on the Capitol when many big corporations solemnly pledged they’d no longer finance the campaigns of the 147 lawmakers who voted to overturn election results. Well, those days are over. Turns out they were over the moment the public stopped paying attention. A report published last week by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in…

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Too crazy for QAnon but right at home at Trump’s rally

Too crazy for QAnon but right at home at Trump’s rally

Rolling Stone reports: One full day before Trump spoke to an estimated 15,000 die-hard Republicans in Arizona, a group of JFK Jr. obsessed QAnon fanatics arrived at the venue grounds here. They drove all the way from Dallas, Texas, where they’ve been holed up in a Hyatt hotel for over two months amid a series of failed prophecies that JFK Jr. would return from the dead. The first among them was Stephen Tenner, right hand man to the group’s leader…

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Reconstruction-era law could keep Trump off presidential ballot in six Southern states

Reconstruction-era law could keep Trump off presidential ballot in six Southern states

HuffPost reports: Should former President Donald Trump run for the White House again, an obscure Reconstruction-era law could keep him off the ballot in six southern states, including North Carolina, Georgia and Florida, because of his incitement of the Jan. 6 insurrection. The third section of the 14th Amendment prohibits people who swore to defend the Constitution, but who subsequently took part in an insurrection against the United States, from holding state or federal office. Other language in that post-Civil…

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Two decades of soldiers’ medical records implicate common virus in multiple sclerosis

Two decades of soldiers’ medical records implicate common virus in multiple sclerosis

Science reports: One hundred and fifty years after a French neurologist first recognized a case of multiple sclerosis (MS) in a young woman with an unusual tremor, the cause of this devastating disease remains elusive. Now, a study that combed data from regular blood tests of 10 million U.S. soldiers has found the strongest evidence yet that infection with a common virus, Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), dramatically increases a person’s chances of developing the rare disease. The work leaves many questions,…

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Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis

Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis

Council on Foreign Relations reports: Months after the Taliban’s takeover, Afghanistan is in crisis. Millions of people are facing starvation, the health-care system is collapsing, and wages are plummeting. The country of thirty-eight million people heavily depended on foreign aid before the Taliban came to power in August. Now, experts say it has been devastated by the international response to the hard-line Islamist group’s seizure of power: halting billions of dollars in assistance and enforcing sanctions that have impeded relief…

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Census memo cites ‘unprecedented’ meddling by Trump administration

Census memo cites ‘unprecedented’ meddling by Trump administration

The New York Times reports: A newly disclosed memorandum citing “unprecedented” meddling by the Trump administration in the 2020 census and circulated among top Census Bureau officials indicates how strongly they sought to resist efforts by the administration to manipulate the count for Republican political gain. The document was shared among three senior executives including Ron S. Jarmin, a deputy director and the agency’s day-to-day head. It was written in September 2020 as the administration was pressing the bureau to…

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DirecTV loss could cripple rightwing One America News

DirecTV loss could cripple rightwing One America News

Reuters reports: The largest satellite provider in the United States said late Friday it will drop One America News, a move that could financially cripple the rightwing TV network known for fueling conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. The announcement by DirecTV, which is 70% owned by AT&T, comes three months after a Reuters investigation revealed that OAN’s founder testified that AT&T inspired him to create the network. Court testimony also showed that OAN receives nearly all of its revenue…

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