Astronomers find secret planet-making ingredient: magnetic fields

Astronomers find secret planet-making ingredient: magnetic fields

Robin George Andrews writes: We like to think of ourselves as unique. That conceit may even be true when it comes to our cosmic neighborhood: Despite the fact that planets between the sizes of Earth and Neptune appear to be the most common in the cosmos, no such intermediate-mass planets can be found in the solar system. The problem is, our best theories of planet formation — cast as they are from the molds of what we observe in our…

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How the wealthiest Americans avoid paying their fair share of income tax

How the wealthiest Americans avoid paying their fair share of income tax

ProPublica reports: In 2007, Jeff Bezos, then a multibillionaire and now the world’s richest man, did not pay a penny in federal income taxes. He achieved the feat again in 2011. In 2018, Tesla founder Elon Musk, the second-richest person in the world, also paid no federal income taxes. Michael Bloomberg managed to do the same in recent years. Billionaire investor Carl Icahn did it twice. George Soros paid no federal income tax three years in a row. ProPublica has…

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Democrats should act like they believe their own rhetoric on Republican extremism

Democrats should act like they believe their own rhetoric on Republican extremism

Alex Pareene writes: The average consumer of political news can be forgiven for not being entirely sure how much to panic about the state of our democracy. On the one hand, one can read in the mainstream press that “more than 100 scholars of democracy have signed a new public statement” warning that “the future of our democracy itself” is in jeopardy. The president, a kindly old moderate who touted his ability to work across the aisle, even echoed this…

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Manchin is opposing big parts of Biden’s agenda under pressure from the Koch network

Manchin is opposing big parts of Biden’s agenda under pressure from the Koch network

CNBC reports: The political advocacy group backed by billionaire Charles Koch has been pressuring Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., to oppose key parts of the Democratic agenda, including filibuster reform and voting rights legislation. That lobbying effort appears to be paying off. Manchin, in a recent op-ed, wrote that he opposed eliminating the filibuster and that he would not vote for the For the People Act, which, advocates say, would limit the influence of big donors on elections. President Joe Biden…

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The evangelical politician who doesn’t recognize his faith — or his party

The evangelical politician who doesn’t recognize his faith — or his party

Emma Green writes: Bill Haslam is not a natural fit for the Donald Trump–era Republican Party. The former Tennessee governor checks certain GOP boxes: He favors low taxes and opposes abortion rights; his background is in business, including an executive role in his family’s highly successful truck-stop chain. But during his time in office, Haslam also got in trouble with his base for vetoing a bill that would have declared the Bible Tennessee’s official state book. He successfully championed Tennessee…

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Why the GOP just got blown out in a NM Congressional race

Why the GOP just got blown out in a NM Congressional race

Politico reports: Two weeks before the GOP had its first chance to pick up a seat in Congress since Joe Biden became president, the Republican Party of New Mexico hosted a three-day event dubbed “Operation Freedom.” State Sen. Mark Moores, who was running for the open seat, addressed a crowd of a few hundred party leaders, activists and donors in a hotel conference center. Afterwards, he left the hotel and drove nearly 300 miles back to Albuquerque, where he was…

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Biden Justice Department seeks to defend Trump in defamation lawsuit over rape denial

Biden Justice Department seeks to defend Trump in defamation lawsuit over rape denial

The New York Times reports: During the presidential campaign, Joseph R. Biden Jr., then the Democratic candidate, slammed his opponent, Donald J. Trump, for a highly unusual legal move: bringing in the Justice Department to represent him in a defamation lawsuit stemming from a decades-old rape allegation. At one of their debates, Mr. Biden accused Mr. Trump of treating the Justice Department like his “own law firm” in the suit, filed against him by the writer E. Jean Carroll. “What’s…

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Capitol Police didn’t act on warnings Trump backers would breach Capitol, target Democrats, report says

Capitol Police didn’t act on warnings Trump backers would breach Capitol, target Democrats, report says

NBC News reports: U.S. Capitol Police leaders learned that Trump supporters were discussing ways to infiltrate tunnels around the complex and target Democratic members of Congress on Jan. 6 but failed to act on the threats, according to a new Senate report summing up what it says were profound intelligence and security failures that contributed to one of the worst incidents of domestic terrorism in U.S. history. The report also says that officers complained about a lack of leadership within…

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Carbon dioxide levels hit 50% higher than preindustrial time

Carbon dioxide levels hit 50% higher than preindustrial time

The Associated Press reports: The annual peak of global heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the air has reached another dangerous milestone: 50% higher than when the industrial age began. And the average rate of increase is faster than ever, scientists reported Monday. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the average carbon dioxide level for May was 419.13 parts per million. That’s 1.82 parts per million higher than May 2020 and 50% higher than the stable pre-industrial levels of 280 parts…

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Accelerationist thinking is proliferating in ways that could destabilize democracy

Accelerationist thinking is proliferating in ways that could destabilize democracy

The New York Times reports: For QAnon it is “The Storm,” when mass violence will topple the elite cabal of pedophiles who they imagine to be running the government. White-power groups in the United States have long promised a catastrophic race war. And in Germany and Austria, neo-Nazis herald an imagined putsch on “Day X” — when the democratic order collapses and they take over. All are examples of “accelerationist” ideologies, which promise a moment when the institutions of government,…

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Manchin’s incoherent case for letting Republicans destroy democracy

Manchin’s incoherent case for letting Republicans destroy democracy

Jonathan Chait writes: What does Joe Manchin want? The inscrutable whims of the West Virginia senator and 50th Senate vote have always controlled the future of the Biden administration’s domestic agenda. As such, Manchin’s desires are the subject of daily speculation and the vessel into which his party has projected a mix of hope and rage. It would be a relief of sorts if Manchin would simply tell us what he wants. The problem is that his statements frequently conflict…

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In Arizona 2020 election review, risks for Republicans, and democracy

In Arizona 2020 election review, risks for Republicans, and democracy

The New York Times reports: Rob Goins is 57, a former Marine and a lifelong Republican in a right-leaning jigsaw of golf courses, strip malls and gated retirement communities pieced together in the Arizona desert. But ask about the Republican-backed review of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s 2020 election victory here in Maricopa County, and Mr. Goins rejects the party line. “There’s a lot of folks out there trying to make something out of nothing,” he said recently as he loaded…

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The value of the Hubble Constant and the fate of the universe

The value of the Hubble Constant and the fate of the universe

Corey S Powell writes: What determines our fate? To the Stoic Greek philosophers, fate is the external product of divine will, ‘the thread of your destiny’. To transcendentalists such as Henry David Thoreau, it is an inward matter of self-determination, of ‘what a man thinks of himself’. To modern cosmologists, fate is something else entirely: a sweeping, impersonal physical process that can be boiled down into a single, momentous number known as the Hubble Constant. The Hubble Constant can be…

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