Sen. McConnell backs off warning to corporate America and still welcomes its money

Sen. McConnell backs off warning to corporate America and still welcomes its money

The Wall Street Journal reports: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Wednesday backed off his warning that businesses should stay away from politics but reiterated his frustration with some prominent companies’ criticism of Republican-led efforts to pass new election laws. Mr. McConnell had issued a statement on Monday threatening “serious consequences” for corporations that retaliate against GOP bills in Georgia and elsewhere, saying companies were capitulating to pressure from Democratic activists. The Kentucky Republican didn’t name any companies, or specify…

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To be fully human we must also be fully embodied animal

To be fully human we must also be fully embodied animal

Melanie Challenger writes: When I visited my grandmother at the undertakers, an hour or so before her funeral, I was struck by how different death is from sleep. A sleeping individual shimmers with fractional movements. The dead seem to rest in paused animation, so still they look smaller than in life. It’s almost impossible not to feel as if something very like the soul is no longer present. Yet my grandmother had also died with Alzheimer’s. Even in life, something…

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Ancient human migration into Europe revealed via genome analysis

Ancient human migration into Europe revealed via genome analysis

AFP reports: Genetic sequencing of human remains dating back 45,000 years has revealed a previously unknown migration into Europe and showed intermixing with Neanderthals in that period was more common than previously thought. The research is based on analysis of several ancient human remains – including a whole tooth and bone fragments – found in a cave in Bulgaria last year. Genetic sequencing found the remains came from individuals who were more closely linked to present-day populations in east Asia…

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Fears of white people losing out permeate Capitol rioters’ towns, study finds

Fears of white people losing out permeate Capitol rioters’ towns, study finds

The New York Times reports: When the political scientist Robert Pape began studying the issues that motivated the 380 or so people arrested in connection with the attack against the Capitol on Jan. 6, he expected to find that the rioters were driven to violence by the lingering effects of the 2008 Great Recession. But instead he found something very different: Most of the people who took part in the assault came from places, his polling and demographic data showed,…

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‘We are doomed’: Devastation from storms fuels migration in Honduras

‘We are doomed’: Devastation from storms fuels migration in Honduras

The New York Times reports: Children pry at the dirt with sticks, trying to dig out parts of homes that have sunk below ground. Their parents, unable to feed them, scavenge the rubble for remnants of roofs to sell for scrap metal. They live on top of the mud that swallowed fridges, stoves, beds — their entire lives buried beneath them. “We are doomed here,” said Magdalena Flores, a mother of seven, standing on a mattress that peeked out from…

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The racism woven into America’s immigration policies

The racism woven into America’s immigration policies

Caitlin Dickerson writes: When David Dorado Romo was a boy growing up in El Paso, Texas, his great-aunt Adela told him about the day the U.S. Border Patrol melted her favorite shoes. Romo’s aunt was Mexican and had a visa that allowed her to commute into South Texas for her job as a maid. Every week she had to report to a Border Patrol station, in accordance with a program that ran from 1917 into the 1930s requiring most Mexican…

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Yes, the Georgia election law is that bad

Yes, the Georgia election law is that bad

Zack Beauchamp writes: Georgia’s new election law SB 202, which many experts decried as an attack on the fundamental fairness of the state’s elections, was compared to Jim Crow by many leading Democrats. Now some observers are pushing back, arguing the bill falls well short of a democratic apocalyptic. In the New York Times, Nate Cohn concluded that “the law’s voting provisions are unlikely to significantly affect turnout or Democratic chances.” Slate’s Will Saletan notes that some provisions really are…

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The forgotten history of the western Klan

The forgotten history of the western Klan

Kevin Waite writes: The Ku Klux Klan was on the rise in the spring of 1869. Vigilantes could measure their success that season by the carnage they left behind: marauded homesteads, assaulted politicians, a church burned to the ground. According to a local report, insurance companies considered canceling their policies, “owing to the Ku Klux threats.” A school serving students of color was supposedly next on the Klan’s hit list. Such havoc could describe almost any southern state in the…

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Trump and his allies abandon Gaetz

Trump and his allies abandon Gaetz

Politico reports: Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) built a public profile as an unapologetic, unambiguous, omnipresent booster of President Donald Trump. But as his own political career skids toward disaster amid allegations that he had sex with a minor and paid for sex with women of legal age, neither Trump nor anyone in the ex-president’s orbit is rushing to Gaetz’s defense. A group that often instinctively decries any such charge as part of some nefarious, coordinated witch hunt from deep-state operators…

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Does consciousness come from the brain’s electromagnetic field?

Does consciousness come from the brain’s electromagnetic field?

Johnjoe McFadden writes: Some 2,700 years ago in the ancient city of Sam’al, in what is now modern Turkey, an elderly servant of the king sits in a corner of his house and contemplates the nature of his soul. His name is Katumuwa. He stares at a basalt stele made for him, featuring his own graven portrait together with an inscription in ancient Aramaic. It instructs his family, when he dies, to celebrate ‘a feast at this chamber: a bull…

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Biden effort to combat hunger marks ‘a profound change’

Biden effort to combat hunger marks ‘a profound change’

The New York Times reports: With more than one in 10 households reporting that they lack enough to eat, the Biden administration is accelerating a vast campaign of hunger relief that will temporarily increase assistance by tens of billions of dollars and set the stage for what officials envision as lasting expansions of aid. The effort to rush more food assistance to more people is notable both for the scale of its ambition and the variety of its legislative and…

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Virus variants threaten to draw out the pandemic, scientists say

Virus variants threaten to draw out the pandemic, scientists say

The New York Times reports: For weeks, the mood in much of the United States has been buoyant. Cases, hospitalizations and deaths from the coronavirus have fallen steeply from their highs, and millions of people are being newly vaccinated every day. Restaurants, shops and schools have reopened. Some states, like Texas and Florida, have abandoned precautions altogether. In measurable ways, Americans are winning the war against the coronavirus. Powerful vaccines and an accelerating rollout all but guarantee an eventual return…

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Half of Republicans believe false accounts of deadly U.S. Capitol riot, poll finds

Half of Republicans believe false accounts of deadly U.S. Capitol riot, poll finds

Reuters reports: Since the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, former President Donald Trump and his Republican allies have pushed false and misleading accounts to downplay the event that left five dead and scores of others wounded. His supporters appear to have listened. Three months after a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol to try to overturn his November election loss, about half of Republicans believe the siege was largely a non-violent protest or was the handiwork…

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How social media turns online arguments between teens into real-world violence

How social media turns online arguments between teens into real-world violence

Comments and livestreams can lead to physical fights, shootings and even death. Photo illustration by Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images By Caitlin Elsaesser, University of Connecticut The deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in January exposed the power of social media to influence real-world behavior and incite violence. But many adolescents, who spend more time on social media than all other age groups, have known this for years. “On social media, when you argue, something so small can turn…

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