If democracy is dying, why are Democrats so complacent?

If democracy is dying, why are Democrats so complacent?

Luke Savage writes: If you’ve followed recent Democratic messaging, you’ll have heard that American democracy is under serious attack by the Republican Party, representing an existential threat to the country. If you’ve followed Democratic lawmaking, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the threat is actually a rather piddling one. The disconnect, in this case, isn’t attributable to Democratic embellishment, but to inexcusable complacency. In his first address to Congress, last month, President Joe Biden established three basic themes—each one invoked…

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Why Belarusian journalist Roman Protasevich was snatched from a Ryanair flight

Why Belarusian journalist Roman Protasevich was snatched from a Ryanair flight

Politico reports: Roman Protasevich knew something was wrong when Ryanair flight FR4978 that was supposed to take him from Athens to Vilnius diverted toward Minsk. “Don’t do this. They will kill me. I am a refugee,” he reportedly told a flight attendant on Sunday as the airliner headed to the Belarusian capital escorted by a fighter jet. He had reason to be afraid. When the Ryanair plane eventually landed in Vilnius with a more than seven-hour delay, he was no…

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Other authoritarian dictators will hijack planes too

Other authoritarian dictators will hijack planes too

Anne Applebaum writes: The Belarusian regime abused air-traffic-control procedures that are designed to inform pilots about genuine emergencies in order to kidnap a dissident. In other words, this is a story that belongs alongside the Russian use of radioactive poisons and nerve agents against enemies of the Kremlin in London and Salisbury, England; Saudi Arabia’s brutal murder of one of its citizens inside a consulate in Istanbul; Iranian assassinations of dissidents in the Netherlands and Turkey; and Beijing’s kidnapping and…

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Associated Press employees want answers after reporter’s firing

Associated Press employees want answers after reporter’s firing

Brian Stelter writes: More than 100 employees at the Associated Press have signed an open letter calling for more information about the recent firing of 22-year-old journalist Emily Wilder. Wilder’s ouster, and the newswire’s lack of candor about its cause, has caused a rare uproar inside the storied news organization. Monday’s open letter said the lack of communication about Wilder’s firing “gives us no confidence that any one of us couldn’t be next, sacrificed without explanation. It has left our…

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Spate of anti-Jewish attacks in the U.S. draws calls for more forceful response

Spate of anti-Jewish attacks in the U.S. draws calls for more forceful response

The Washington Post reports: A series of attacks on Jews in the United States in recent days, linked to the conflict between Israel and Hamas, has increased pressure on law enforcement officials, lawmakers and the Biden administration to take more steps to quell antisemitic violence. Since May 10, at least 26 instances of antisemitism have been reported across the United States, from Los Angeles to New York, according to the Anti-Defamation League and news reports. The cases range from protest…

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The Havana Syndrome didn’t stay in Havana

The Havana Syndrome didn’t stay in Havana

Adam Entous writes: In the fall of 2020, [Mark] Vandroff [a retired Navy officer picked by Robert O’Brien, the then new national-security adviser and deputy national-security adviser Matthew Pottinger, to investigate the Havana Syndrome] and his colleagues were shocked by the new cases that came rolling in. One of the most dramatic episodes involved a U.S. military officer stationed in a country with a large Russian presence. As the officer pulled his car into a busy intersection, he suddenly felt…

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Life deep underground and inside other worlds

Life deep underground and inside other worlds

Jordana Cepelewicz writes: Scientists poke and prod at the fringes of habitability in pursuit of life’s limits. To that end, they have tunneled kilometers below Earth’s surface, drilling outward from the bottoms of mine shafts and sinking boreholes deep into ocean sediments. To their surprise, “life was everywhere that we looked,” said Tori Hoehler, a chemist and astrobiologist at NASA’s Ames Research Center. And it was present in staggering quantities: By various estimates, the inhabited subsurface realm has twice the…

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‘The Republicans are the problem’

‘The Republicans are the problem’

John Harwood writes: The essay described congressional extremists, their rejection of truth, a party turning into authoritarians or “an apocalyptic cult.” It bore a striking headline: “Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.” It didn’t mention Marjorie Taylor Greene, the deadly January 6 insurrection or Donald Trump’s Big Lie. In fact, the words “Donald Trump” did not appear at all. Published in 2012, that Washington Post piece demonstrates more than the foresight of its political scientist authors, Tom…

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Facebook calls links to depression inconclusive. These researchers disagree

Facebook calls links to depression inconclusive. These researchers disagree

NPR reports: Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers’ biggest fear as a parent isn’t gun violence, or drunk driving, or anything related to the pandemic. It’s social media. And specifically, the new sense of “brokenness” she hears about in children in her district, and nationwide. Teen depression and suicide rates have been rising for over a decade, and she sees social apps as a major reason. At a hearing this March on Capitol Hill, the Republican congresswoman from Washington confronted Facebook CEO…

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QAnon is spreading amongst evangelicals. These pastors are trying to stop it

QAnon is spreading amongst evangelicals. These pastors are trying to stop it

CNN reports: When Pastor James Kendall stepped on to the stage of his small church in Madera, California he knew that day’s sermon was going to take him in a direction unlike most. He had seen some troubling Facebook posts from members of his congregation. God, he says, was telling him speak out and warn his flock. “I don’t like to get off track and off the Bible,” Kendall said during a sermon on March 7. “But as a pastor…

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Intelligence on sick staff at Wuhan lab fuels debate on Covid-19 origin

Intelligence on sick staff at Wuhan lab fuels debate on Covid-19 origin

The Wall Street Journal reports: Three researchers from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care, according to a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report that could add weight to growing calls for a fuller probe of whether the Covid-19 virus may have escaped from the laboratory. The details of the reporting go beyond a State Department fact sheet, issued during the final days of the Trump administration, which said that several researchers…

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Belarus carries out ‘state hijacking’ to seize dissident from European airliner

Belarus carries out ‘state hijacking’ to seize dissident from European airliner

The New York Times reports: The strongman president of Belarus sent a fighter jet to intercept a European airliner traveling through the country’s airspace on Sunday and ordered the plane to land in the capital, Minsk, where a prominent opposition journalist aboard was then seized, provoking international outrage. The stunning gambit by Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, a brutal and erratic leader who has clung to power despite huge protests against his government last year, was condemned by European officials, who compared…

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Solar storms are back, threatening chaos around the world

Solar storms are back, threatening chaos around the world

The Associated Press reports: A few days ago, millions of tons of super-heated gas shot off from the surface of the sun and hurtled 90 million miles toward Earth. The eruption, called a coronal mass ejection, wasn’t particularly powerful on the space-weather scale, but when it hit the Earth’s magnetic field it triggered the strongest geomagnetic storm seen for years. There wasn’t much disruption this time — few people probably even knew it happened — but it served as a…

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The ‘dark matter’ inside your gut

The ‘dark matter’ inside your gut

Jonathan Jarry writes: There is a kind of dark matter inside our intestinal tract. “Dark matter” is the phrase coined for the matter that is implied to be present in the universe based on physicists’ calculations but that cannot be seen yet. Scientists who study tiny living things are facing their own type of dark matter: invisible microbes that are indirectly detected. They call it “microbial dark matter.” Much has been written about the bacteria that live inside our gut….

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