The End of America as a Center of Science

https://kottke.org/25/07/the-end-of-america-as-a-center-of-science

Ross Anderson writes about how scientific empires, from the ancient Sumerians to the Nazis to the Soviet Union in the 1950s, have crumbled (or been willfully dismantled by ideologues) and the clear signs that the same thing is happening here in the United States under the conservative regime.

The very best scientists are like elite basketball players: They come to America from all over the world so that they can spend their prime years working alongside top talent. “It’s very hard to find a leading scientist who has not done at least some research in the U.S. as an undergraduate or graduate student or postdoc or faculty,” Michael Gordin, a historian of science and the dean of Princeton University’s undergraduate academics, told me. That may no longer be the case a generation from now.

Foreign researchers have recently been made to feel unwelcome in the U.S. They have been surveilled and harassed. The Trump administration has made it more difficult for research institutions to enroll them. Top universities have been placed under federal investigation. Their accreditation and tax-exempt status have been threatened. The Trump administration has proposed severe budget cuts at the agencies that fund American science — the NSF, the NIH, and NASA, among others — and laid off staffers in large numbers. Existing research grants have been canceled or suspended en masse. Committees of expert scientists that once advised the government have been disbanded. In May, the president ordered that all federally funded research meet higher standards for rigor and reproducibility — or else be subject to correction by political appointees.

And so:

Funding for American science has fluctuated in the decades since [World War II]. It spiked after Sputnik and dipped at the end of the Cold War. But until Trump took power for the second time and began his multipronged assault on America’s research institutions, broad support for science was a given under both Democratic and Republican administrations. Trump’s interference in the sciences is something new. It shares features with the science-damaging policies of Stalin and Hitler, says David Wootton, a historian of science at the University of York. But in the English-speaking world, it has no precedent, he told me: “This is an unparalleled destruction from within.”

Tags: Donald Trump · politics · Ross Anderson · science · USA

Englisch

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July 31, 2025 at 05:57PM

To See How America Unraveled, Go Back Five Years

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/07/george-floyd-summer-2020-riots/683697/

The social-justice movement that began in earnest with Trayvon Martin’s shooting in 2012, and culminated eight years later, after George Floyd’s murder, once looked unstoppable. By the summer of 2020, a slew of recorded killings of Black people had seemed to convince a pivotal bloc of Americans that the persistence of racial injustice was both inarguable and intolerable.

Yet the ensuing riots—and the disorder they appeared to countenance—prefigured a surge of white grievance that still hasn’t subsided. Throughout the summer of 2020, many on the left exalted lawlessness and violence as pardonable offenses, if not political virtues. Within a few months, this impulse had migrated to the right, yielding even worse damage to the liberal order, most notably on January 6, 2021. The mass unrest of the preceding year certainly did not cause the sacking of the Capitol. But that winter siege amounted to an outgrowth of the summer revolt—the rotten fruit of imitation.

This article has been adapted from Williams’s forthcoming book.

At the moment of his death, two George Floyds came into public view. First, there was the mortal man, the son and brother, unemployed when law enforcement encountered him dozing in a parked car that long May weekend in Minneapolis. Methamphetamines and fentanyl flowed through his system. Moments earlier, he had allegedly passed a counterfeit banknote, which even the cashier seemed embarrassed to report. This George Floyd had survived a bout of COVID-19, only to be asphyxiated in broad daylight by a police officer he’d once worked with at a nightclub. The mortal man’s biography fixed him in a specific time, when the coronavirus pandemic—and Donald Trump’s mismanagement of it—had primed the nation for protest.

Then there’s the immortal George Floyd, whose last breaths exist in a wretched loop that can be conjured on our screens. The man spawned a meme, as Richard Dawkins defined the term—an idea that spreads by means of imitation. In a 10-minute-and-eight-second clip, many Americans found evidence of an idea that had long simmered in the national psyche: By perpetrating violence, the state forfeits its legitimacy and must be resisted, even if that means inflicting violence in return. This immortal Floyd was put to death by horizontal crucifixion in a midwestern Golgotha. A man who died for all Americans on that squalid pavement, not asking why his father had forsaken him but calling for his deceased mother instead.

David A. Graham: George Floyd’s murder changed Americans’ views on policing

Floyd’s killing inspired a summer of revolt that seemed, to much of the country, obviously justified. The postracial promise of the Barack Obama era had subsided. Some Black Americans and many more of their supporters saw little hope of achieving equality, let alone safety, without rebellion. The following January, this same underlying idea—that the unheard must speak through violence—was used to justify terrible wrong. (A different group of Americans naturally regarded that wrong as indisputably right.) In this way, the summer of 2020 and the siege of the Capitol are fratricidal twins. They imbued all factions of American society with antipathy and certitude, a perilous combination that continues to touch virtually every aspect of our public lives, and much of our private ones also.

During the season of rebellion that followed Floyd’s death, nearly 8,000 Black Lives Matter rallies took place across the nation—not to mention the mass protests that erupted in places as far away as Paris, Amsterdam, London, Seoul, Taiwan, and Helsinki. Millions of Americans rose up, disgusted by what they saw, taking part in what was likely the largest demonstration against racism in the history of humanity.

Hundreds of the protests in the United States involved violence or property destruction, or both—a fact that much of the media addressed by noting that most of the protests were peaceful. That incessant refrain was true, but it obscured the extent of the bedlam that Americans of all political persuasions were witnessing. In Minnesota, the Twin Cities alone incurred some $500 million in damage.

Much of this chaos was unrelated to racial injustice. In New York City, one week after Floyd’s death, “hundreds of people who had no apparent connection to the protests commanded the streets of Manhattan’s SoHo district,” The Intercept reported. “They looted businesses, and robbed each other, with impunity. Burglar alarms blended with the roaring of getaway engines, the chaotic medley punctuated every few moments by tumbling plywood, crashing plate glass, and grating steel. Then a gunshot went off, as a 21-year-old man was shot.” That same night, an off-duty security guard told a New York Times reporter, “I don’t think this has anything to do with Black Lives Matter. It’s just chaos. People are just using this as an excuse to act crazy.” The reporter noted that “the man declined to give his name, because he, too, was looting.”

Why did all this come to pass in the summer of 2020 but not after any number of previous killings? In 2014, a New York City police officer, Daniel Pantaleo, dragged the unarmed Eric Garner to the sidewalk for the crime of peddling loose cigarettes, compressing Garner’s windpipe beneath his forearm, deafening himself to the dying man’s protests. That was when Americans first heard the phrase I can’t breathe, which Floyd would echo in Minneapolis (and protesters in Paris would learn to chant in English).

Two years later, Philando Castile bled out on Facebook Live in front of his girlfriend and her daughter. Castile had done nothing wrong; in fact he’d done everything right, calmly announcing after being pulled over that he was carrying a licensed firearm. Protests broke out when a jury found the cop who’d shot Castile not guilty, but they didn’t compare to what was coming.

Sue Rahr: The myth propelling America’s violent police culture

These are just two examples from a long list of Black men, women, and children whose outrageous deaths could well have triggered sustained nationwide protest. But none of them did—not until the pandemic overturned American life. By May 2020, many of us were sidelined from our daily routines, homeschooling and working remotely or panicking about not working, anxious about a juvenile president whose ineptitude had turned lethal.

That’s when a fatal confrontation in Georgia came across our screens. Ahmaud Arbery, a young Georgia man, had been ambushed and shot while jogging in a predominantly white neighborhood. A few weeks after Arbery was killed, Kentucky police broke into the home of a young medic named Breonna Taylor and shot her to death. Then the turning point: Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck.

“To draw momentous conclusions from a single video shot on the sidewalks of Minneapolis might seem excessive,” the author Paul Berman wrote in the journal Liberties. “Yet that is how it is with the historic moments of overnight political conversion.” Berman cited the case of Anthony Burns, who’d fled slavery in Virginia and been captured in Boston, where his ensuing trial inspired protests that drew national attention and galvanized the abolitionist movement. “There were four million slaves in 1854,” Berman wrote, “but the arrest of a single one proved to be the incendiary event.”

For a significant portion of the American left and center—and even some of the right—the possibility that the country had a racial sickness suddenly seemed undeniable. Many in this group were white people aware of the disproportionate toll COVID-19 was taking on communities they did not belong to. In those early months of the pandemic, whatever illusions these Americans may have had about the robustness of their society, and the general direction of progress within it, was obliterated.

Secular social-justice rhetoric took on a religious fervor. In particular, “whiteness” was reconceived as an original sin. Adherents of this idea became convinced that they were implicated in a constellation of racism and implicit bias. And they believed that these structures had allowed a madman like Trump to hazard American lives with the same lack of concern that a policeman evinced as he knelt on the neck of a handcuffed, writhing civilian.

These Americans felt the need to revolt against something. While Trump and his supporters rebelled against stay-at-home orders, progressives found their own outlet for rebellion in the protest against police brutality. They saw their opponents on the right as exacerbating a scourge that disproportionately killed Black people, whose lives they saw themselves as fighting to save. This dichotomy opened a furious new front in intra-white status jockeying. It created a renewed opportunity for “those who see themselves as (for lack of a better term) upper-whites,” as Reihan Salam wrote in 2018, “to disaffiliate themselves from those they’ve deemed lower-whites.”

An understandable and even noble regard for the health and safety of Black communities metastasized into something else: an oppressive moral panic in response to Floyd’s murder that chased after all real and perceived racial inequity, and resorted to violence and property destruction to make its argument. It helped spawn a counterreaction that America still hasn’t escaped.

I’ve rarely felt farther from America than when I was hunched over my smartphone in Paris, watching dozens of people scale the sides of the Capitol.

As I witnessed the event in real time—and replayed clips over and over again—I was struck by its artificiality. Rioters wore costumes, draping themselves in tawdry Trump paraphernalia and Stars and Stripes; some came dressed as Founding Fathers. Many wore expressions of disbelief as they meandered the halls of Congress, marveling like tourists amid the pandemonium. O

New congressional texas map redistricting 00483086

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/30/new-congressional-texas-map-redistricting-00483086

We couldn’t extract the content of this article. Here is the URL so you can access it: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/30/new-congressional-texas-map-redistricting-00483086

via

July 31, 2025 at 07:25AM

How late-night television lost its relevance

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/tv/2025/07/30/late-night-tv-decline-colbert-trump-paramount/

Late night isn’t dead. Yet.

But its future, which was never exactly bright, might be cratering. The hoary format’s downward slide has, up until this point, been comparatively slow, with advertising dollars dwindling and viewership declining as audiences drift to faster, more casual platforms. But the financial pressures, together with a vengeful president and a corporate culture willing to appease him, might be more than the genre can withstand.

via Television https://www.washingtonpost.com

July 30, 2025 at 04:24PM

What Kamala Harris’s Decision for Governor Means for 2028

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/30/us/politics/kamala-harris-2028-democrats.html

What Kamala Harris’s Decision for Governor Means for 2028

nytimes.com

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July 31, 2025 at 03:25AM

Isaac Asimov Predicts in 1964 What the World Will Look Like in 2014

https://www.openculture.com/2025/07/isaac-asimov-predicts-in-1964-what-the-world-will-look-like-in-2014.html

Image by Rochester Institute of Technology, via Wikimedia Commons

When New York City hosted The World’s Fair in 1964, Isaac Asimov, the prolific sci-fi author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, took the opportunity to wonder what the world would look like 50 years hence — assuming the world survived the nuclear threats of the Cold War. Writing in The New York Times, Asimov imagined a world that you might partly recognize today, a world where:

“Gadgetry will continue to relieve mankind of tedious jobs. Kitchen units will be devised that will prepare ‘automeals,’ heating water and converting it to coffee; toasting bread; frying, poaching or scrambling eggs, grilling bacon, and so on. Breakfasts will be ‘ordered’ the night before to be ready by a specified hour the next morning.”

“Communications will become sight-sound and you will see as well as hear the person you telephone. The screen can be used not only to see the people you call but also for studying documents and photographs and reading passages from books. Synchronous satellites, hovering in space will make it possible for you to direct-dial any spot on earth, including the weather stations in Antarctica.”

“[M]en will continue to withdraw from nature in order to create an environment that will suit them better. By 2014, electroluminescent panels will be in common use. Ceilings and walls will glow softly, and in a variety of colors that will change at the touch of a push button.”

“Robots will neither be common nor very good in 2014, but they will be in existence.”

“The appliances of 2014 will have no electric cords, of course, for they will be powered by long-lived batteries running on radioisotopes.”

“[H]ighways … in the more advanced sections of the world will have passed their peak in 2014; there will be increasing emphasis on transportation that makes the least possible contact with the surface. There will be aircraft, of course, but even ground travel will increasingly take to the air a foot or two off the ground.”

“[V]ehicles with ‘Robot-brains’ … can be set for particular destinations … that will then proceed there without interference by the slow reflexes of a human driver.”

“[W]all screens will have replaced the ordinary set; but transparent cubes will be making their appearance in which three-dimensional viewing will be possible.”

“[T]he world population will be 6,500,000,000 and the population of the United States will be 350,000,000.” And later he warns that if the population growth continues unchecked, “All earth will be a single choked Manhattan by A.D. 2450 and society will collapse long before that!” As a result, “There will, therefore, be a worldwide propaganda drive in favor of birth control by rational and humane methods and, by 2014, it will undoubtedly have taken serious effect.” [See our Walt Disney Family Planning cartoon from earlier this week.]

“Ordinary agriculture will keep up with great difficulty and there will be ‘farms’ turning to the more efficient micro-organisms. Processed yeast and algae products will be available in a variety of flavors.”

“The world of A.D. 2014 will have few routine jobs that cannot be done better by some machine than by any human being. Mankind will therefore have become largely a race of machine tenders. Schools will have to be oriented in this direction.… All the high-school students will be taught the fundamentals of computer technology will become proficient in binary arithmetic and will be trained to perfection in the use of the computer languages that will have developed out of those like the contemporary “Fortran.”

“[M]ankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom, a disease spreading more widely each year and growing in intensity. This will have serious mental, emotional and sociological consequences, and I dare say that psychiatry will be far and away the most important medical specialty in 2014.”

 “[T]he most glorious single word in the vocabulary will have become work!” in our “a society of enforced leisure.”

Isaac Asimov wasn’t the only person during the 60s who peered into the future in a fairly prescient way. You can find a few more on-the-mark predictions from contemporaries below:

Sci-Fi Writer Arthur C. Clarke Predicts the Future in 1964

Marshall McLuhan Predicts That Electronic Media Will Displace the Book & Create Sweeping Changes in Our Everyday Lives (1960)

Walter Cronkite Imagines the Home of the 21st Century … Back in 1967

The Internet Imagined in 1969

Note: An earlier version of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

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July 29, 2025 at 11:39AM

The Epstein Files Timeline Raises Real Questions for Trump

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/07/25/trump-epstein-files-timeline-column-00475334

The revelation this week from The Wall Street Journal about Donald Trump and the so-called Epstein files was shocking — and, for those following the administration closely in recent weeks, not shocking at all.

According to the Journal, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told Trump during a White House meeting in May that his name appeared multiple times in the Epstein files. The fallout continues as we speak, with the White House and Republicans in Congress facing that age-old Washington question: What did they know, and when did they know it?

That question is likely to continue to dog the administration and its allies as more information emerges, and their statements in recent weeks and months are likely to attract more scrutiny amid growing questions about whether the administration deliberately attempted to mislead the American public and downplay information in the Justice Department’s possession about Trump’s relationship with and connections to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

We have gathered below some of the most significant statements that Trump and his senior officials have made on the topic, focusing in particular on what they have said since Trump returned to office.

Several key themes emerge. Head straight to the timeline here.

For starters, there is a conspicuous rhetorical shift that occurs after May, when Bondi and Blanche reportedly briefed Trump. The administration’s statements became more terse, and Trump in particular began pointing the finger at people — the Democratic Party and the mainstream media — that had little to nothing to do with the Epstein frenzy.

Even before May, Trump himself tended to add qualifiers to his statements that he does not typically use when he talks about investigations — like the probe intothe origins of the Trump-Russia investigation by special counsel John Durham — that are of interest to him.

In an interview with Fox News last June during the heat of the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump said that he would release more information if reelected but hastened to add that he was concerned about the impact of revealing more material on third parties and the possibility that there might be “phony stuff” in the government’s investigative files. More recently, Trump has said that he supports the release of “credible” information and “pertinent” grand jury testimony while accusing the media of focusing on old news.

These are concerns that Trump does not typically invoke in other settings. Taken together, Trump’s comments suggest the possibility that he suspected that there may be politically damaging information about him in the files and wanted to preemptively discredit revelations about him. Following the reported briefing in May, Trump appears to have sought to narrow the government’s public disclosures to avoid releasing information. Trump has not been accused of any wrongdoing linked to Epstein.

White House communications director Steven Cheung pushed back on this column, saying that it’s “nothing more than out-of-context frame grabs of innocuous videos and pictures of widely attended events to disgustingly infer something nefarious.”

“The fact is that The President kicked him out of his club for being a creep. This is nothing more than a continuation of the fake news stories concocted by the Democrats and the liberal media,” he said.

The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment but a Justice Department spokesperson previously called the Journal’s story “a collection of falsehoods and innuendo.”

Moreover, since Trump’s inauguration, Trump and his senior officials have provided increasingly terse comments, shifting goalposts, changes in public expectation-setting and at times non sequiturs. There has been a conspicuous move-along, nothing-to-see-here approach to the subject that now appears more deliberate.

Bondi, for instance, said in early May that there are “tens of thousands of videos of Epstein with children or child porn,” but no credible media outlet or political figure has ever suggested that any such material should be released. The question for people focused on this issue has been — has always been — what is in the government’s other investigative material, including witness statements, written correspondence, financial records and flight logs, among other things.

Over the last week, the Trump administration’s public-facing efforts to gather and provide more information have also been curious on their face. The administration has moved to unseal grand jury testimony and is seeking information from Epstein’s co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of child sex trafficking and other crimes and is now serving a federal 20-year prison sentence.

These efforts have one conspicuous thing in common: The results are out of the government’s control. A Florida judge this week denied the Justice Department’s request to unseal the grand jury testimony, and Maxwell is unlikely to generate credible information that the government can act upon given her serious credibility problems, as well as her motive to lie or otherwise shade information to curry favor with the Trump administration in the hopes of a pardon or commutation of her sentence.

In fact, there is no need for the government to do either of these things to satisfy those clamoring for more information. The vast majority of information in the government’s possession is not grand jury testimony, and it is not with Maxwell. On their face, these appear to be efforts to satisfy the public — to look like they are doing something — without generating a meaningful volume of new or credible information, and without providing some portion of the large volume of material in the government’s possession that, as a legal matter, they do not need anyone’s permission to release.

Jan. 30

Kash Patel vows to expose Epstein connections

During his Senate confirmation hearing to be FBI director, Kash Patel responded to Sen. Marsha Blackburn’s question on investigating “who worked with Jeffrey Epstein in building these sex trafficking rings” by saying, “I will do everything, if confirmed as FBI director, to make sure the American public knows the full weight of what happened in the past and how we are going to countermand missing children and exploited children going forward.”

Patel’s commitment followed a lengthy history of his own stoking interest in conspiracy theories surrounding the Epstein investigation and Epstein’s death.

Feb. 21

Pam Bondi says client list is “sitting on my desk”

Asked on Fox News if the DOJ would publish Epstein’s client list, Pam Bondi replied: “It’s sitting on my desk right now to review. That’s been a directive by President Trump.” Bondi and the White House have since said that the attorney general was referring to the entire tranche of documents related to the Epstein prosecution, rather than a “client list.”

Bondi’s comments to Fox continue to dog her. The DOJ and FBI have since said that there is no “client list,” but that does not address the possibility that there is information in the government’s possession linking prominent individuals like Trump to Epstein in unsavory or embarrassing ways.

Feb. 27

Bondi hands out “The Epstein Files: Phase 1” binders

At a White House event for MAGA influencers, Bondi distributed declassified binders containing documents related to the Epstein case. However, little of the contents provided new information.

Bondi’s theatrical display appears to have backfired spectacularly. Conservative influencers expressed frustration with the limited release of new information. And despite the “Phase 1” label on the binders, there have been no subsequent phases of disclosures.

Unspecified day in May

Bondi reportedly tells Trump his name appears in the Epstein files

The Wall Street Journal reports that some time in May, Bondi told Trump at a briefing that his name appears multiple times in Epstein files, including in potential instances of hearsay about Trump, who had previously socialized with Epstein.

The precise date of this reported meeting has yet to be identified, but it may have triggered a critical inflection point in the administration’s handling of the issue and its public statements on the subject.

May 7

Bondi references “tens of thousands of videos”

Bondi told reporters at the White House, “There are tens of thousands of videos of Epstein with children or child porn and there are hundreds of victims.”

Bondi’s comment is of course disturbing. But no credible figure has ever suggested that material like this should be publicly released.

July 7

DOJ memo: There was no “client list,” and Epstein’s death was a suicide

The DOJ released a memo stating there was no “client list,” and no evidence of foul play in Epstein’s death.

The administration seemed to want to put the issue to bed quietly with this relatively terse and unsigned joint DOJ-FBI memo. “Case closed” was the notion. But it quickly fueled an outcry among Trump supporters who had long believed that Epstein was murdered and that he kept a list of pedophile clients.

July 8

Trump calls Epstein questions a “desecration”

Pressed by reporters about Epstein, Trump lashed out, calling media focus a “desecration” in light of the Texas flooding. "Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy's been talked about for years," Trump said. "Are people still talking about this guy? This creep? That is unbelievable.”

Trump’s apparent frustration with the continued focus on Epstein was out of character. Trump is well known to fixate on things in the past when they interest him. (He is still talking about the Trump-Russia investigation from his first term.) On top of that, public interest in Epstein has been

New York Times’ Style Guide Substitutions for “The President Lied”

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/new-york-times-style-guide-substitutions-for-the-president-lied

“The president, offering no evidence, insisted upon his version of the story.”

“The president extemporized with a blithe disregard for established fact.”

“Confounding experts and antagonizing the historical record, the president painted his own, rosier portrait of events.”

“The president, perhaps inadvertently, wound up smudging the line between empirical verification and his own boundless optimism.”

“The president once again found himself galloping ahead of reality’s leisurely pace.”

“The president dabbled anew in the shallow pond of misrepresentation, filling his beak with succulent morsels hidden among the reeds.”

“The president’s most recent encounter with the specter of honesty caught him wrong-footed.”

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and the president? The president took the one less truthful.”

“Quantum physicists posit the existence of infinite universes, so it is entirely within reason that one or more such contained the timeline described by the president, and we look forward to seeing it.”

“Mrs. Clinton lied. The president followed suit.”

via McSweeney's Internet Tendency

July 28, 2025 at 07:19PM

New York Times’ Style Guide Substitutions for “The President Violated the Constitution”

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/new-york-times-style-guide-substitutions-for-the-president-violated-the-constitution

“The president remained steadfast in his novel interpretation of constitutional law.”

“Faced with the choice between clinging to the letter of the law and marching to the beat of his own legal drum, the president chose the latter.”

“The president’s solutions-focused approach to legal roadblocks necessitated thinking outside the constitutional box.”

“Perhaps unaware that he had sailed beyond the Constitution’s horizons, the president found himself drifting further and further from legal terra firma.”

“The president followed the Constitution the way a jazz pianist might follow a standard chart—treating its chords as suggestions upon which to solo as he saw fit.”

“In a feat of legal engineering, the president stressed the Constitution’s support structures past what experts considered their maximum load.”

“The president, tiptoeing precipitously down the sidelines of legality, inadvertently ran the constitutional football out of bounds.”

“As a tailor might stitch together a suit from pieces of textile, so too did the president fashion himself a bespoke garment from the supple threads of the nation’s legal fabric.”

“The president realized that the framework for governance that the Founding Fathers had laid forth appeared to preclude an action that he wished to take. Viewing this encumbrance as unintended on their part, the president disregarded their erroneous guardrail and pressed on.”

“The president did nothing that his crooked, senile predecessor hadn’t already done before.”

See also:

New York Times’ Style Guide Substitutions for ‘The President Lied’

via McSweeney’s https://www.mcsweeneys.net/

June 3, 2025 at 08:03PM

A Democrat for the Trump Era

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/07/jasmine-crockett-democrats/683652/

All the comforts of a Waldorf Astoria city-view suite did not, at that moment, seem to cheer Jasmine Crockett. The 44-year-old Texas Democrat known for her viral comebacks was frowning as she walked into her hotel room in Atlanta last month. She glanced around before pulling an aide into the bathroom, where I could hear them whispering. Minutes later, she reemerged, ready to unload.

She was losing her race to serve as the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, she told me, a job she felt well suited for. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus were planning to vote for the senior-most person in the race, even though that person wasn’t actually a Black Caucus member, Crockett complained. California members were siding with the California candidate. One member was supporting someone else in the race, she said, even though “that person did the worst” in their pitch to the caucus. Crockett was starting to feel a little used. Some of her colleagues were “reaching out and asking for donations,” she said, but those same colleagues “won’t even send me a text back” about the Oversight job.

To Crockett, the race had become a small-scale version of the Democratic Party’s bigger predicament. Her colleagues still haven’t learned what, to her, is obvious: Democrats need sharper, fiercer communicators. “It’s like, there’s one clear person in the race that has the largest social-media following,” Crockett told me.

In poll after poll since Donald Trump’s reelection, Democratic voters have said they want a fighter, and Crockett, a former attorney who represents the Dallas area, has spent two and a half years in Congress trying to be one. Through her hearing-room quips and social-media insults, she’s become known, at least in MSNBC-watching households, as a leading general in the battle against Trump. The president is aware of this. He has repeatedly called Crockett a “low-IQ” individual; she has dubbed him a “buffoon” and “Putin’s hoe.” Perhaps the best-known Crockett clapback came last year during a hearing, after Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia made fun of Crockett’s fake eyelashes. Crockett, seeming to relish the moment, leaned into the mic and blasted Greene’s “bleach-blond, bad-built, butch body.” Crockett trademarked the phrase—which she now refers to as “B6”—and started selling T-shirts.

At the time, I wrote that the episode was embarrassing for everyone involved. But clearly it resonated. Crockett has become a national figure. Last year, she gave a keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention and was a national co-chair of Kamala Harris’s campaign. This year, she has been a fixture on cable news and talk shows as well as a top party fundraiser; she was in Atlanta, in part, for a meet and greet with local donors. At an anti-Trump protest on the National Mall in April, I saw several demonstrators wearing B6 shirts. Others carried signs with Crockett’s face on them.

Crockett is testing out the coarser, insult-comedy-style attacks that the GOP has embraced under Trump, the general idea being that when the Republicans go low, the Democrats should meet them there. That approach, her supporters say, appeals to people who drifted away from the Democrats in 2024, including many young and Black voters. “What establishment Democrats see as undignified,” Max Burns, a progressive political strategist, told me, “disillusioned Democrats see that as a small victory.” Republicans understand this, Crockett said: “Marjorie is not liked by her caucus, but they get her value, and so they gave her a committee chairmanship.”

Perhaps inadvertently, Crockett seemed to be acknowledging something I heard from others in my reporting: that the forthrightness her supporters love might undermine her relationships within the party. Some of Crockett’s fellow Democrats worry that her rhetoric could alienate the more moderate voters the party needs to win back. In the same week that Democratic leadership had instructed members to focus on Medicaid cuts and tax breaks for billionaires, Crockett referred to Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who uses a wheelchair, as “Governor Hot Wheels.” (Crockett claimed that she was referring to Abbott’s busing of migrants.) In an interview with Vanity Fair after the 2024 election, Crockett said that Hispanic Trump supporters had “almost like a slave mentality.” She later told a CNN host that she was tired of “white tears” and the “mediocre white boys” who are upset by DEI.

Unsurprisingly, Trump himself seems eager to elevate Crockett. “They say she’s the face of the party,” the president told my Atlantic colleagues recently. “If she’s what they have to offer, they don’t have a chance.” Some of the Republican targeting of Crockett is clearly rooted in racism; online, Trump’s supporters constantly refer to her as “ghetto” and make fun of her hair.

[From the June 2025 issue: ‘I run the country and the world’]

None of this appears to be giving Crockett any pause. The first time I met her, a month before our conversation in Atlanta, she was accepting a Webby Award, in part for a viral exchange in which she’d referred to Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina as “child” and Mace suggested they “take it outside.” Backstage, in a downtown-Manhattan ballroom, I asked Crockett whether she ever had regrets about her public comments. She raised her eyebrows and replied, “I don’t second-guess shit.”

This spring, I watched Crockett test her theory of politics in a series of public appearances. At the Webbys, most of her fellow award winners were celebrities and influencers, but only Crockett received a standing ovation. A week later, Crockett flamed Republicans and the Trump administration during a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing about Immigration and Customs Enforcement. A 15-minute clip of her upbraiding ICE agents—“These people are out of control!”—has racked up more than 797,000 views on YouTube; I know this because she told me. On TikTok and Instagram, Crockett has one of the highest follower counts of any House member, and she monitors social-media engagement like a day trader checks her portfolio. She is highly conscious, too, of her self-presentation. During many of our conversations, Crockett wore acrylic nails painted with the word RESIST, and a set of heavy lashes over her brown eyes. The lock screen on her phone is a headshot of herself.

Representative Jasmine Crockett rides in a vehicle after attending events in the Atlanta area last month. (Photograph by Melissa Golden for The Atlantic)

Behind the scenes, the congresswoman speaks casually. At the Waldorf, I watched her deliver a quick Oversight-campaign pitch via Zoom. It was a virtual meeting of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, she’d explained to me beforehand. But then, after the call, she wasn’t sure. “CAPAC is the Asian caucus, right?” she asked. “Yes,” the aide confirmed. “That would’ve been bad,” Crockett said with a laugh. She can also be brusque. During our interview at the Waldorf, she dialed up a staffer in D.C. in front of me and scolded him for an unclear note on her schedule. Another time, in the car, after an aide brought Crockett a paper bag full of food from a fundraiser, she peered inside, scrunched her nose, and said, “This looks like crap.”

Still, Crockett is often more thoughtful in person than she might appear in clips. Once, after a hearing, I watched as she responded to a request for comment with a tight 90-second answer about faith and service. Another time, a reporter who was filming her tried to provoke her by asking what she would say to people who think she is “mentally ill.” “They can think whatever they want to, because as of now, we live in a democracy,” Crockett answered calmly, before taking another question. “I don’t want people to lose sight of the fact that this is someone with a very fine, legally trained mind,” Representative Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, a mentor of Crockett’s, told me.

Crockett’s Republican critics like to say that she’s a private-school girl playing a plainspoken Texas brawler for social-media clout. They’re not wrong about her background. Crockett grew up an only child in St. Louis, not Dallas, and attended private high school before enrolling at Rhodes College, a small liberal-arts school in Tennessee. When Crockett was young, her father was a life-insurance salesman and a teacher, she told me, and she has talked often about his work as a preacher; her mother, she said, still works for the IRS. Crockett’s stage presence precedes her political career. At Rhodes, from which she graduated in 2003, she was recruited to the mock-trial program after a team leader watched her enthusiastic performance as the narrator Ronnette in Little Shop of Horrors, her former coach, Marcus Pohlmann, told me. She won a national award during her first and only year in the program.

As Crockett tells it, she became interested in the law after she and a few other Black students at Rhodes received anonymous letters containing racist threats. The school hired a Black female attorney from the Cochran Firm, a national personal-injury-law group, to handle the case, Crockett told me. The attorney became Crockett’s “shero,” she said, and inspired her to attend law school herself. When I asked for the name of her shero so that I could interview her, Crockett told me that she did not remember. I reached out to a former Cochran Firm attorney in Tennessee who fit Crockett’s description; she remembered the incident in broad terms but was not sure if she had worked on the case or with Crockett. Although Rhodes College had no specific records of the incident, two people who worked at the college at the time told me that they recalled it.

Crockett worked for a few years as a public defender in deep-red Bowie County, Texas, before starting her own law firm, wh

The key to understanding Trump? It’s not what you think

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/jul/27/trump-deals-trade-economy

Donald Trump embodies dealmaking as the essence of a particular form of entrepreneurship. Every deal begins with his needs and every deal feeds his wants. He thus appears to be like other super-rich people: seemingly bottomlessly greedy, chasing the next buck as if it is the last buck, even when they have met every criterion of satiation.

But Trump is different, because his brand of greed harks back to an idea of leadership that is primarily about adversarial dealmaking, rather than about innovation or improved managerial techniques. Trump’s entire career is built on deals, and his own narcissism is tied up with dealmaking. This is because of his early socialization into his father’s real-estate dealings in and around New York. Real estate in the United States, unlike the money-making modes of super-rich individuals in other countries, relies on deals based on personal reputation, speculation on future asset values, and the ability to launder spotty career records. Profits and losses over time can be hard to identify and quantify precisely, as Trump’s auditors and opponents have often confirmed, since profits, which depend on speculation and unknown future value, are by definition uncertain.

Trump’s incessant boasts about being an apex dealmaker cast light on almost every aspect of his approach to his presidential decision-making. Numerous observers have long cast doubt on Trump’s image as a consummate dealmaker, pointing to his many failures in his long real-estate career, his abortive political and diplomatic deals, his backsliding and reversals, and his overblown claims about deals in progress. But these criticisms miss the point.

Trump has figured out to an exceptional degree that dealmaking does not need to be successful in order to massively increase his wealth

Deals, whether in finance, real estate, or in any other part of the economy, are just one step in the process of reaching full-fledged, binding agreements subject to the force of law. They are a stage in the negotiation process that has no force until it is finalized as a contract. It is, at best, an agreement to agree, which can turn out to be premature, poorly conceived or unacceptable to one or other party. Put another way, it is an engagement, not a wedding. A deal allows a negotiator like Trump to claim victory and blame the other party or some other contextual variable if things do not work out.

In fact, in the hands of someone like Trump, deals are ways to evade, postpone or subvert the efficient work of markets. Trump does not like markets, precisely because they are impersonal and invisible. Their results – for corporations, entrepreneurs, investors and shareholders – are subject to clear measures of success and failure.

Because deals are personal, adversarial and incomplete, they are perfect grist for Trump’s relentless publicity machine, and allow him to polish his brand, massage his ego and signal his prowess to opponents – without the regulations and measurable consequences of regular market risks. The downside risk for an aborted or interrupted deal is negligible, and the upside is guaranteed by the legal power of fully completed contracts.

Trump has figured out to an exceptional degree that dealmaking does not need to be successful in order to massively increase his wealth. Whether or not true, his claims to successful deals are the key to his brand and profitmaking worldwide, either directly or through the business endeavors of his sons. These range from his latest Trump perfume and Trump mobile telephone services, his Maga accessories, Trump golf courses around the world, his real estate and resorts, and of course his highly profitable cryptocurrency holdings. In every case, his deals either lead to further deals, which service his branding machine, or they lead to direct increases in his personal and corporate wealth. Deals, successful or not, are Trump’s magic means to amass money and feed his avarice.

Avarice is a vice with a long history in Christian theology. It is widely defined as an excess of greed, an inordinate level of greed, an insatiable greed. It has been viewed by economic historians as a passion that must be curbed and replaced by calculated, moderated self-interest in order for the rationality of the modern market to function as a dominant economic principle. From this perspective, greed can have numerous objects – such as food, sex and power – whereas avarice is single-minded in its focus on money.

Trump exemplifies this focus. Though he has to function in a world where avarice is meant to be regulated by the market mechanisms of price and competition, he has managed to successfully pursue his avarice with little obstacle.

This driving desire defines Trump’s “egonomics” – the intimate connection between his narcissistic urges and his wish for increasing his stock of money. The governing principles of his economic policy have nothing to do with America getting its due, as his messaging about tariffs argues, or about restoring dignity to the working class, as he signals to his Maga base. Nor are they about power or prestige. The object of everything he does is money, and in the service of the boundlessness of money, which Trump has made the defining object of his desire. Other commodities are of interest to him only insofar as they serve his desire to acquire, hoard and increase his stock – of money.

The first – and most soothing – theory is that Trump wants money to buy power – more of it, perhaps all of it. More power than China, than his generals, than Harvard. We all know power – via our parents, our teachers, our bosses, our police. It is a force we understand, a pull we recognize. If Trump only wants more of something that many people have, and even more want, he is legible, he is like us.

But power for what? To do what? To get what?

There can be no glory for [Trump] which is not tainted by the mediocrity of his competitors

Perhaps he is chasing an unassailable place in history, both human and eternal. So then it is not just power he endlessly chases, but glory. For this we have some evidence in the clownish thesaurus of words that he uses to describe his achievements, his looks, his wit, his wisdom, his all-round superhumanity: best, most, only, incredible, ever, more. In this orgy of superlatives, he is always curled high up in the clouds, like a Maurice Sendak toddler. But since Trump, from his perspective, brooks no real competition in life, in politics, in real estate, or even in history, there can be no glory for him which is not tainted by the mediocrity of his competitors. And true glory usually requires some form of self-sacrifice, some sense of compassion, some ability to transcend oneself. Given his woeful deficits in these areas, the glory game cannot be the key to understanding Trump.

And so we go to a more familiar space: the realm of prestige, status and stardom. This realm is wired into competitions, tournaments and casinos of every sort, where winning is well-defined, losing is for losers and there is usually only one survivor and one winner who takes all. The competition for status is as old as recorded human history and accompanies every human society that has had leaders and followers, more and less skilled competitors for food, shelter and sexual partners. It begins with simple rules for coming out on top and evolves over time into the most elaborate forms of status competition, often driven by males – including wartime exploits, trophy wives, palatial homes and bottomless conspicuous consumption.

These tournaments of value can be observed in settings as disparate as auctions, horse races, philanthropic gifts and corporate mergers and acquisitions. There is widespread consensus among thinkers from many eras and regions that status is a limited good, which has its own economics of supply and demand, distinct from those of pecuniary gain. This insight looks, at first, like the key to Trump.

But attractive as this argument may seem, it too is a red herring.

Among Trump’s own tactics, the one he loves to use most is tariffs. Trump’s obstinate insistence on tariffs as the key to restoring American manufacturing, swelling the US treasury and reducing American consumer prices has flummoxed most mainstream economists. Tariffs are for Trump the ideal way to combine dealmaking, status-grabbing and his penchant for money as its own bottomless value.

It is evident that Trump’s understanding of the trade-offs of globalization is rudimentary and often internally contradictory. Indeed, he shows signs of believing that making deals of any sort requires only outsize confidence, charismatic force and bottomless access to financial backing. In fact, Trump’s view of himself as an incomparable dealmaker (a claim at odds with his many entrepreneurial disasters) conceals his deep distaste of real markets – in which a large apparatus of binding promises, the tendency to stable price equilibria, and the connection of supply and demand through pricing – can frustrate his brand of deal-making, which is always oriented to maximizing his personal prestige.

Trump’s deep-seated desire to be the winner who takes all in the global prestige economy sheds some light on his weaponization of tariffs. We can catch a glimpse of this logic in a most unlikely context. It was captured in detail by one of the fathers of British social anthropology, Bronisław Malinowski, in his 1922 book on a unique trading system that he found in the Trobriand Islands of Oceania, on several trips there in the years between 1915 and 1917. This anthropological classic, Argonauts of the Western Pacific, casts new light on Trump’s tariff mania.

What Malinowski described is a system of trading across about 18 coral islands within a 175 sq mile (453 sq km) area, between “big men”, leader

Demand for weight loss drugs is becoming unsustainable, say pharmacists

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jul/28/demand-for-weight-loss-drugs-is-becoming-unsustainable-say-pharmacists

Demand for weight loss drugs is becoming so “unsustainable” that demand may soon outstrip supply, pharmacists have warned.

The National Pharmacy Association (NPA) said supply problems could encourage people to turn to unregulated online sources, despite the risks involved.

The number of people in the UK using drugs such as Wegovy and Mounjaro has soared to well above a million, with most patients paying to get them privately.

During April, 1.6m packs of Mounjaro and Wegovy were bought in Britain, with the number thought to correlate closely with the number of people using them.

“Spiralling demand for weight loss medication risks going far beyond what is clinically deliverable”, the NPA said.

The drugs might need to be reserved for those in greatest need because they are so overweight instead of being given to the “worried well”, it added.

New polling has found that 21% of Britons have tried to get hold of the medications over the past year, a figure that rises to 35% among 18- to 34-year-olds.

The same survey found that 41% of all age groups would use them if they were free on the NHS. This figure rose to 64% among those aged 25-34.

Savanta interviewed a representative sample of 2,002 adults aged 18 or over online from 20-23 June for the NPA, which represents 6,000 independent pharmacies.

“Weight loss jabs are one of the biggest drug innovations this century but growing demand for weight loss treatment highlights the need to make sure this is appropriate for those who want it,” said Olivier Picard, the NPA’s chair.

“It’s clear from this polling that more people are interested in getting weight loss jabs than can benefit from weight loss medication.”

Supply of the medicines has been hit by shortages in some parts of the UK, including for higher doses of Mounjaro, the NPA said. Supply has been restricted to some pharmacies, which has stopped some new patients from going on to the drugs.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, the UK’s drugs watchdog, has warned patients to obtain the drugs only with a doctor’s prescription, and not from beauty parlours or websites.

A Department of Health spokesperson said more people would be able to obtain “revolutionary” weight loss jabs over the next few years.

“Weight loss drugs are a powerful tool in tackling the obesity crisis head-on as part of our 10-year health plan”, they added.

“This government is committed to ensuring that more people have access to these revolutionary drugs when needed, and crucially that they are able to do so in a safe and controlled way. We will ensure that those most in need will receive treatment first.”

About 220,000 people in England are due to be offered tirzepatide, a diabetes drug that promotes weight loss, over the next three years.

Pharmacies already provide about 85% of all weight loss drugs and need to be closely involved in the expansion of access, Picard added.

“The government should use the massive untapped expertise and skills of pharmacists to help speed up the NHS’s weight loss medication programme to millions of the most in need patients,” he said.

via The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/au

July 28, 2025 at 02:09AM

untitled

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250723-how-do-the-microplastics-in-our-bodies-affect-our-health

According to one famous estimate, we might consume up to 52,000 microplastics per year, and while that precise figure has been subsequently challenged, it's clear that they are entering the human body in significant quantities. Whether ingested through our food, the liquids we drink, or absorbed from the air we breathe, microplastics have become ubiquitous. They have been found in bodily fluids from saliva and blood to sputum and breast milk, along with an array of organs including the liver, kidneys, spleen, brain and even the insides of our bones. This steady convergence of evidence has all pointed to one question – what exactly is all this plastic doing to our health?

via www.bbc.com https://www.bbc.com

July 27, 2025 at 09:27AM

Ice deportations civil war history 00473752

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/07/26/ice-deportations-civil-war-history-00473752

We couldn’t extract the content of this article. Here is the URL so you can access it: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/07/26/ice-deportations-civil-war-history-00473752

via

July 26, 2025 at 06:09PM

3 Games to Amp Up Reading Instruction

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpaNNa3aj88

Gamifying literacy and phonics lessons teaches students valuable social-emotional skills, gives them regular movement breaks, and increases their engagement.

Kathy-Ann St. Hill-St. Lawrence (or “Ms. Saint” as she’s called by her students) is passionate about literacy. She knows keeping it playful is critical for learning. In her 2nd-grade class at Harford Heights Elementary in Baltimore, MD, she sprinkles in fun games to reinforce new concepts during direct reading instruction.

For more strategies on literacy, visit: https://www.edutopia.org/topic/literacy

Join the Edutopia community today to get articles, videos, and more delivered via email every Wednesday—all tailored to you and your unique role: https://edut.to/3wEVHUh

Follow us here: Official Website: https://edutopia.org  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/edutopia Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/edutopia Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/edutopia BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/edutopia.org

literacy #gamebasedlearning #teachingstrategies

© 2025 George Lucas Educational Foundation

Schule

via SCH ::: Edutopia https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdksaQxXH13BMeHo09MorBg

July 25, 2025 at 09:18PM

Geister und Spuk in Großbritannien

https://www.swr.de/swr1/geister-und-spuk-in-grossbritannien-100.html

In Großbritannien glauben gut 40 Prozent der Menschen an Geister. Besonders gerne leben diese in alten Schlössern wie Hampton Court.

Religion

via SWR1 Sonntagmorgen https://www.swr.de/swr1/sonntagmorgen-podcast-102.html

July 25, 2025 at 12:13PM

How the Trump administration has reshaped education policy

https://www.npr.org/2025/07/25/nx-s1-5479202/how-the-trump-administration-has-reshaped-education-policy

In just six months, the Trump administration has profoundly reshaped federal education policy.

Schule

via NPR Topics: Education https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1013

July 25, 2025 at 10:19AM

Six months in, how Trump has changed the Education Department.

https://www.npr.org/2025/07/24/1256157836/six-months-in-how-trump-has-changed-the-education-department

Federal education policy has seen a lot of changes since President Trump's inauguration. For example, the Department of Education itself, which Trump has vowed to close.

But that hasn't stopped the Trump administration from also wielding the Department's power. Most recently, by withholding billions of dollars for K-12 schools.

The Trump administration has drastically changed the federal government's role in education. What does that mean for American classrooms?

For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.

Email us at considerthis@npr.org.

(Image credit: J. David Ake)

Schule

via NPR Topics: Education https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1013

July 24, 2025 at 11:52PM

From Moscow to Mar-a-Lago: How Trump is Adopting Putin’s Media Playbook

https://jackhassard.org/from-moscow-to-mar-a-lago-how-trump-is-adopting-putins-media-playbook/

In the 1990s, I directed the Global Thinking Project. This was a collaborative network of educators across the United States and Russia. During this time, I observed firsthand the rise of a new Russia. Among its most hopeful signs was the emergence of a vibrant and independent press.

Newspapers like Novaya Gazeta and the Moscow Times brought investigative journalism to the Russian public. Radio voices like Echo of Moscow and independent television channels delivered hard truths. This marked a significant change after decades of Soviet silence punctuated with massive propaganda.

But that era of openness was short-lived. All independent TV channels, except cable entertainment channels, were banned from the air. Independent newspapers are also banned, although the Moscow Times, in Amsterdam, is an independent English-language and Russian-language online newspaper. Novaya Gazeta also publishes its newspaper online.

Under Vladimir Putin, this experiment in democratic accountability was gradually—but ruthlessly—shut down. The result is today’s reality: a state-dominated propaganda machine, near-total censorship, and the criminalization of dissent.

Trump follows his leader

It is now clear: Donald Trump sees that model not as a cautionary tale—but as a blueprint. Trump’s Long War showcases his disdain for independent media. This attitude has been one of the most consistent elements of his political career. He has:

Called the press the “enemy of the people” (echoing Stalinist language),

Repeatedly suggested jailing reporters or revoking press credentials.

Announcing that the White House will have full control over which journalists can access the press pool. Booted AP out because they don’t use the phrase “Gulf of America.”

Flooded the courts with defamation suits, and

Praised authoritarian leaders—Putin, Orbán, Erdo?an—for their iron-fisted control of the media.

Stephen Colbert

Trump’s recent celebration of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’s cancellation—after Colbert criticized Trump’s influence over CBS—signals a new phase. He claimed Colbert’s firing was deserved for being “untalented” and promised “Jimmy Kimmel is NEXT… Fallon will be gone.”

These aren’t random outbursts. They’re warning shots.

Russia’s Press Freedom Timeline

“1983–1999: Explosion of independent media after Soviet collapse 2000: Putin becomes president

2001–2006: Independent TV channels like NTV were taken over

2006: Journalist Anna Politkovskaya was murdered

2012–2016: “Foreign Agent” laws passed; state control expands

2022–now: Full criminalization of dissent; media exodus after Ukraine invasion

Russia now ranks 162nd out of 180 in RSF’s (Reporters without Borders) World Press Freedom Index.

U.S. Press Freedom Erosion—Trump Era

2017: Trump begins calling media “enemy of the people”

2018–2020: Dozens of reporters physically attacked at rallies; lawsuits increase

2021: MAGA rioters assault journalists at the Capitol January 6 Riot, not to mention the arrack on Capitol police.

2023–2025: Conservative outlets pushed to successfully finish defund NPR/PBS; Trump threatens FCC licenses

2025: Late-night hosts targeted after criticizing Trump; Colbert’s show canceled by CBS/Paramount.

U.S. press freedom ranking fell from 43rd (2016) to 55th (2024) — Reporters Without Borders

From Dissent to Silence: What Putin Built—and Trump Wants

Putin’s model for media control involved four strategies, all of which Trump is now emulating:

Delegitimize independent journalism Label it as fake, corrupt, or foreign-funded.

Create loyalist alternatives Fill the vacuum with state-aligned media or MAGA-friendly platforms (e.g., Truth Social, FOX, lOANN, Newsmax).

Use lawsuits and legal threats SLAPP suits (A Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) and vague laws are weaponized against reporters.

Pressure corporations This is seen in CBS’s payout to settle Trump’s meritless lawsuit just before Colbert was dropped. Trump’s behavior is a slow-motion replay of Putin’s rise. He does not need to rewrite the Constitution to control the media—he only needs to intimidate, delegitimize, and consolidate.

The View from Global Thinking

Citizen Diplomacy tells the full story of our work with Americans and Russians (Soviet at first) 1983-2001

I reflect on those years working with Russian educators, students, and families who believed in an open society. We traded letters, data, and stories across borders—embracing dialogue, science, and truth. We made annual visits to and from America and Russia, highlighted by student-teacher exchanges over many years. What became of that hopeful era? In Russia, a crackdown. In America, a creeping echo. We must remember: authoritarianism thrives where the truth dies in silence. If we abandon independent journalism, we abandon accountability—and democracy itself.

What Can Be Done

Support independent, nonprofit journalism (e.g., ProPublica, Democracy Now, The Intercept, Substack, Lucid, The Contrarian. Note: there is a growing number of independent journalists, professors, small progressive-leaning companies, organizations, and institutes. Thousands of government workers across the spectrum of deep and wide knowledge bases are actively fighting the Trump autocracy, especially the largest police force, which round up people for no other reason than the color of their skin or their language. They detain them. Provide no legal counsel. And send them to a US concentration camp, such as Alligator Alley in Florida.;

Protect whistleblowers and press shields.

Push back on efforts to defund public media.

Educate students to recognize propaganda vs. investigative reporting.

Call out threats to free expression as red flags for authoritarian drift.

Please feel free to reach out to me by filing a comment.

Schule

via The Art of Teaching Science Blog https://jackhassard.org/

July 24, 2025 at 06:43AM

11 tips for becoming a columnist

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/07/23/column-writing-tips-media-rampell/

So you wanna be a columnist, eh?

Young aspiring journalists and wizened elders often ask how I scored this sweet gig. Truth is, I don’t entirely know. There’s no chance of replicating the particular mix of skill, work and (mostly) serendipity that contributed to my path here.

Still, I can offer advice to other lucky pundits who land this perch. Lord knows my own track record is far from perfect, but here are 11 pointers and principles I’ve aspired to:

via Catherine Rampell https://www.washingtonpost.com

July 23, 2025 at 08:42PM

The Perverse Economics of Assisted Suicide

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/22/opinion/assisted-suicide-economics.html

In an aging world, assisted suicide may look to governments like a cost-saving measure.

via NYT > Top Stories https://www.nytimes.com

July 22, 2025 at 07:27AM

Trump administration released FBI records on MLK Jr. despite his family’s opposition

https://religionnews.com/2025/07/21/trump-administration-released-fbi-records-on-mlk-jr-despite-his-familys-opposition/

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has released records of the FBI’s surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr., despite opposition from the slain Nobel laureate’s family and the civil rights group that he led until his 1968 assassination.

The release involves more than 240,000 pages of records that had been under a court-imposed seal since 1977, when the FBI first gathered the records and turned them over to the National Archives and Records Administration.

King’s family, including his two living children, Martin III and Bernice, were given advance notice of the release and had their own teams reviewing the records ahead of the public disclosure.

In a lengthy statement released Monday, the two living King children called their father’s case a “captivating public curiosity for decades.” But the pair emphasized the personal nature of the matter and urged that “these files must be viewed within their full historical context.”

“As the children of Dr. King and Mrs. Coretta Scott King, his tragic death has been an intensely personal grief — a devastating loss for his wife, children, and the granddaughter he never met — an absence our family has endured for over 57 years,” they wrote. “We ask those who engage with the release of these files to do so with empathy, restraint, and respect for our family’s continuing grief.”

Bernice King was five years old when her father was killed. Martin III was 10.

President Donald Trump promised as a candidate to release files related to President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 assassination. When Trump took office in January, he signed an executive order to declassify the JFK records, along with those associated with Robert F. Kennedy’s and King’s 1968 assassinations.

The government unsealed the JFK records in March and disclosed some RFK files in April.

Besides fulfilling the intent of his January executive order, the latest release serves as another alternative headline for Trump as he tries to mollify supporters angry over his administration’s handling of records concerning the sex trafficking investigation of Jeffrey Epstein, who killed himself behind bars while awaiting trial in 2019, during Trump’s first presidency. Trump last Friday ordered the Justice Department to release grand jury testimony but stopped short of unsealing the entire case file.

The King records, meanwhile, were initially intended to be sealed until 2027, until Justice Department attorneys asked a federal judge to lift the sealing order ahead of its expiration date.

Scholars, history buffs and journalists have been preparing to study the documents to find new information about his assassination on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee.

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which King co-founded in 1957 as the Civil Rights Movement blossomed, opposed the release. They, along with King’s family, argued that the FBI illegally surveilled King and other civil rights figures, tapping their offices and phone lines with the aim of discrediting them and their movement.

It has long been established that then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was intensely interested if not obsessed with King and others that he considered radicals. FBI records released previously show how Hoover’s bureau wiretapped King’s telephone lines, bugged his hotel rooms and used informants to get information against him.

“He was relentlessly targeted by an invasive, predatory, and deeply disturbing disinformation and surveillance campaign orchestrated by J. Edgar Hoover through the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),” the King children said in their statement.

“The intent of the government’s COINTELPRO campaign was not only to monitor, but to discredit, dismantle and destroy Dr. King’s reputation and the broader American Civil Rights Movement,” they continued. “These actions were not only invasions of privacy, but intentional assaults on the truth — undermining the dignity and freedoms of private citizens who fought for justice, designed to neutralize those who dared to challenge the status quo.”

Opposition to King intensified even after the Civil Rights Movement compelled Congress and President Lyndon B. Johnson to enact the Civil Right Act of 1964 and the Voting Right Act of 1965. After those landmark victories, King turned much of his attention to economic justice and international peace. He was an outspoken critic of rapacious capitalism and the Vietnam War. King argued that political rights alone were not enough in an uneven economy. Many establishment figures like Hoover viewed King as a communist threat.

King was assassinated as he was aiding striking sanitation workers in Memphis, part of his explicit turn toward economic justice.

James Earl Ray plead guilty to assassinating King. He later renounced that plea and maintained his innocence until his death in 1998.

Members of King’s family, and others, have questioned whether Ray acted alone, or if he was even involved. King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, asked for the probe to be reopened, and in 1998, then-Attorney General Janet Reno directed the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department to take a new look. The Justice Department said it “found nothing to disturb the 1969 judicial determination that James Earl Ray murdered Dr. King.”

Religion

via RNS https://religionnews.com/

July 21, 2025 at 11:12PM

This Is the Presidency John Roberts Has Built

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/07/supreme-court-roberts-trump-dictator/683576/

No one on the Supreme Court has gone further to enable Donald Trump’s extreme exercise of presidential power than the chief justice of the United States, John Roberts. Associate justices have also written some important opinions shaping executive power, and the Court has issued ever more important unsigned orders, but the most transformative opinions—the opinions that directly legitimize Trump’s unprecedented uses of power—are Roberts’s handiwork. This is not happenstance. Under Supreme Court practice, the most senior justice in the majority—which is always the chief justice when he so votes—determines who will write the main opinion. Roberts reserved these milestones for himself.

And what milestones they have been. Roberts upheld the first Trump administration’s “Muslim ban” on the grounds that the president’s national-security role precludes courts from taking account of the bigotry undergirding an immigration order. He remanded a lower court’s enforcement of a congressional subpoena for Trump’s financial information, writing that “without limits on its subpoena powers,” Congress could exert “imperious” control over the executive branch and “aggrandize itself at the President’s expense.” He has come close to giving the president an untrammeled right to fire any officer in the executive branch at will. And he took the lead in inventing a presidential immunity from criminal prosecution that could exempt the president from accountability for even the most corrupt exercises of his official functions.

Going beyond the precise holdings in these cases, Roberts’s superfluous rhetoric about the presidency has cast the chief executive in all-but-monarchical terms. The upshot is a view of the Constitution that, in operation, comes uncomfortably close to vindicating Trump’s: “I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.” Trump’s confidence is surely bolstered also by the Roberts Court’s unsigned per curiam opinions blocking even temporary relief from his sweeping actions. In May, the Court held that Trump orders removing two federal officials at key independent agencies could remain in place while the issue of their legality makes its way through the judiciary. In June, it allowed the administration to proceed with so-called third-country deportations—that is, deporting undocumented noncitizens summarily to countries to which they had no prior connection, but where they might well face torture. On July 8, the Court effectively allowed Trump to proceed with a massive restructuring of the federal executive branch, notwithstanding that the power over executive-branch organization belongs to Congress, not the president. On July 14, the conservative majority allowed the sabotaging of the Department of Education to proceed. Trump’s use of executive power is not a distortion of the Roberts Court’s theory of the presidency; it is the Court’s theory of the presidency, come to life.

[Adam Serwer: Why Trump thanked John Roberts]

What America is witnessing is a remaking of the American presidency into something closer to a dictatorship. Trump is enacting this change and taking advantage of its possibilities, but he is not the inventor of its claim to constitutional legitimacy. That project is the work of John Roberts.

Ronald Reagan won the presidency in 1980 while Roberts was clerking for then–Associate Justice William H. Rehnquist, who represented, at the time, the far right on the Burger Court. Following his clerkship year, Roberts joined the Reagan administration as a special assistant to the attorney general, and then in short order was recruited in 1982 to join Reagan’s White House staff as an associate counsel to the president. That same year, the Federalist Society was founded, and those two entities together—the Reagan administration and the Federalist Society—accelerated the mainstreaming of what until then had been a marginal view of presidential authority under the Constitution: “unitary-executive theory.” The core idea of the unitary executive was that the president, as the single head of the executive branch, was entitled to direct how all discretionary authorities of that branch would be exercised. On every question, the president would be, as George W. Bush later said, “the decider.”

In practical terms, debates over unitary-executive theory have centered on how far the president can go in firing people: Can he fire anyone at will, or may Congress protect at least some officials from discharge unless the president can show good cause for dismissal? Good cause is most often specified in the law as “inefficiency, malfeasance, or neglect.” At-will removal power would allow a president to purge the government of any resistance to his agenda. Roberts has all but made at-will removal the president’s constitutionally guaranteed prerogative, and his rhetoric goes further yet. His opinions taken together create a dangerously authoritarian and largely ahistorical narrative about the constitutional presidency.

In Roberts’s story, the president “alone composes a branch of government” and holds the “entirety” of executive power. All of the federal civil service—the thousands of administrative officers who wield executive power—do so on the president’s behalf. What gives this system “legitimacy and accountability” is that “We, the People” get to vote for president. The thousands of subordinate officers involved in administering the federal government are accountable to “We, the People” only because they are tied to the president through “a clear and effective chain of command.” The point of absolute-removal power is precisely to enable the president to keep his underlings in line. The powers of removal and supervision, Roberts writes, are “conclusive and preclusive.” That is to say, at least in Roberts’s narrative, Congress may not regulate the president’s supervisory powers by statute, and courts may not examine their exercise.

The alternative to this narrative—the understanding of the constitutional presidency that, at least in broad strokes, had represented conventional wisdom until the advent of the Roberts Court—is an account of executive power woven into a system of checks and balances. Article II vests executive power in a president, to be sure. It assigns the president a number of exclusive roles, such as the negotiation of treaties and serving as commander in chief of the Army and Navy. But Article II also envisions a branch that includes “executive departments.” These departments have “duties,” most of which are to be set forth in statutes. Fulfilling statutory duties is the job of the agencies, which, in doing their work, act not on behalf of the president, but on behalf of Congress. The president’s role in this scheme is one of supervision, not command. He is charged to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” The Constitution underscores the president’s supervisory position by providing that he may “require the opinion, in writing, of the principal officer in each of the executive departments, upon any subject relating to the duties of their respective offices.” This is not at all a one-person branch of government, and its design is not the prerogative of the president, but of Congress.

[Aziz Huq: The Court’s liberals are trying to tell Americans something]

In 1980 and perhaps even now, unitary-executive theory would seem an odd position for conservatives and libertarians—the Federalist Society base—to adopt. But by then a strong presidency seemed the best and perhaps only route for yanking the American government in a much more conservative direction. During the 1960s and ’70s, Congress, prodded on by a host of different social movements, enacted a panoply of statutory authorities that enabled ambitious liberal presidents to advance significant progressive policies. A president intent on rolling back that agenda would find doing so difficult. There exists no general statutory authority for shrinking government, and deregulation on a rule-by-rule basis is slow going and often legally vulnerable. Conservatives found their solution in Article II of the Constitution, which, if creatively reinterpreted, might give the president more authority to unilaterally undermine the regulatory state.

Over the next two decades, the conservative legal movement further developed its arguments for the unitary executive, the Federalist Society grew and became a powerful credentialing institution for the right, and Roberts’s career soared, culminating in 2005 with his appointment as chief justice.

Roberts has not approached his work timidly. In the two decades of his tenure thus far, his opinions on executive power have created what might be called a proto-authoritarian canon, lending constitutional legitimacy to a kind of presidency that brooks no dissent, treats Congress as a subordinate institution, and need answer to no one except possibly to the Supreme Court itself.

It is hard to overstate how much is wrong in Roberts’s narrative of the presidency. It muddles constitutional text. It flouts constitutional history. It is willfully ignorant of the risks of authoritarianism in a polarized, populist age. Its very premise—that the Constitution creates a one-person branch of government—is provably untrue by just reading the Constitution, which, again, refers to “executive departments.” The president’s constitutional role does not require at-will removal power, except in the cases of those few officials who directly assist the president in fulfilling specific Article II roles. For all others—the overwhelming majority of government officers and employees—the president needs only the power to discharge persons who have failed to faithfully execute the law, thus providing “good cause” for their removal. The conditions under which the presid

7 Memorable God Moments on ‘The Late Show’

https://relevantmagazine.com/culture/7-memorable-god-moments-on-the-late-show/

The end of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert isn’t just a scheduling shift — it’s the loss of one of mainstream television’s only places where genuine faith conversations happened without irony.

Colbert, once a Sunday school teacher, regularly made space for spiritual reflection between celebrity promo and punchlines. Whether the conversation was about Jesus, prayer, fasting or forgiveness, Colbert asked questions that went deeper than the typical “What’s next for you?” — and more often than not, guests met him there.

Here are seven thoughtful and honest faith moments from a show that never advertised itself as spiritual, but often was anyway because of its host.

Jim Gaffigan on his faith in Jesus during hard seasons

Jim Gaffigan might be the only comedian who can weave stand-up about prayer emojis into a sincere conversation about faith. “So you’re praying for me, but you’re too lazy to type out ‘I’m praying for you?’” he joked, earning a laugh from Colbert.

From there, Colbert began asking Gaffigan about his relationship with God, which Gaffigan was excited about.

“This is the only show in America where it turns to faith,” Gaffigan laughed. “And by the way, I love it.”

But he didn’t deflect. He opened up about his relationship with Jesus and the role faith played when his wife, Jeannie, was diagnosed with a life-threatening brain tumor.

Chris Pratt on spiritual discipline and surviving the spotlight

During a conversation that started with jokes about giving up sugar and ended with a reflection on spiritual burnout, Chris Pratt gave one of his most honest interviews about faith.

He had just completed the Daniel Fast, a 21-day biblical diet rooted in the Old Testament. Colbert teased him — “Daniel’s challenge was lions, not carbs” — but Pratt was surprisingly open.

“It was actually amazing,” he said, but admitted the challenge wasn’t food. It was pressure. “Sometimes [fame] does feel like a lion’s den,” he said.

Then Pratt shared a quote that had resonated with him recently: “If the spotlight that’s shining on you is brighter than the light that comes from within you, it will kill you.” It’s a line from Christine Caine that has since gone viral — and for good reason. In a culture obsessed with platform, it was a needed reminder that character still matters.

Paul Walter Hauser on sobriety, spirituality and second chances

It’s not often that an Emmy-winning actor sits on a late-night couch and immediately volunteers that his life fell apart during a shoot — but that’s exactly what Paul Walter Hauser did.

While filming Black Bird in 2023, a dark psychological drama in which he played a serial killer, Hauser told Colbert he was unraveling behind the scenes.

“I was not the best version of myself — to put it vague and safe,” he admitted.

But it was during that same shoot that he decided to get sober.

“There’s an atmosphere of dark spirituality [in New Orleans],” Hauser said. “So I got sober in the middle of the shoot and I started going to therapy. It was the catalyst for all these wonderful things that happened, including healing my family.”

Hauser didn’t shy away from the details. He pointed to the “I Am Second” bracelet on his wrist and urged viewers to watch the testimony video he and his wife recorded together.

Jimmy Carter on why he prayed for President Trump

When former President Jimmy Carter visited The Late Show in 2018, he wasn’t there to talk theology — but with Colbert behind the desk, it was inevitable.

The conversation started predictably enough: Carter was promoting his new book and offering some pointed thoughts on the political climate. But then Colbert, never one to avoid the awkward question, leaned in and asked, “Do you pray for Donald Trump?”

“I pray that he’ll be a good president and that he’ll keep our country at peace,” Carter said, “that he’ll refrain from using nuclear weapons, and that he will promote human rights.”

Andrew Garfield on Jesus, fasting and the faith found in doubt

Garfield came to the Late Show in 2017 to talk about Silence, Martin Scorsese’s film about Christian persecution in 17th-century Japan. But the real story was how preparing for the role led him to confront his own beliefs.

The actor spent a year studying with Jesuit priest the Rev. James Martin, engaging in spiritual exercises that, as Garfield described it, created a deep inner relationship with Jesus.

“It was this transformational process … where you place yourself in each New Testament scene,” he explained.

He spoke at length about finding God in ordinary things — “in the tree that was cut down to make this table” — and wrestled with the tension between belief and uncertainty.

“A life of faith is not a life of certainty,” he told Colbert. “Certainty starts war. Certainty says, ‘I know and you don’t.’ That’s terrifying to me.”

Mel Gibson and Colbert on the resurrection and the mystery of faith

When Mel Gibson sat down with Colbert in 2015, the conversation started with a plug for Hacksaw Ridge and ended somewhere in the theological deep end.

Gibson revealed that he was working on a sequel to The Passion of the Christ, titled Resurrection — but said it wouldn’t just retell the Easter story.

“It’s not just some chronological telling of just that event,” Gibson explained. “What happened in those three days? That’s worth thinking about.”

Colbert, no stranger to resurrection theology himself, leaned in. Together, they speculated on what those three days could mean, not just cinematically but spiritually.

Steph Curry on purpose, pressure and Philippians

Steph Curry has always made it clear he plays for something bigger than basketball — but on The Late Show, he broke it down.

Colbert asked about the “413” written on his shoes — a reference to Philippians 4:13.

“That’s my source of strength and determination and my purpose,” Curry said. “You’re always searching for purpose and why you’re here — and for me, that’s it.”

It was a quiet moment of clarity from one of the most competitive athletes alive, explaining the real reason he shows up.

In a media landscape that rarely takes belief seriously, Colbert created space for questions about God, doubt, purpose and grace — and he did it in front of millions, night after night.

Religion

via REL ::: RELEVANT http://www.relevantmagazine.com/rss/relevantmagazine.xml

July 18, 2025 at 05:18PM

New York’s mayoral race exposes the deep roots of American Islamophobia | Ahmed Moor

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/18/zohran-mamdani-islamophobia-new-york-mayor

My only interaction with the FBI came soon after 11 September 2001. A man and woman visited my family’s home in Philadelphia – we had recently moved from Palestine – showed their credentials and asked to enter. My parents invited them in and a conversation about political views followed. They left soon afterwards but I knew we were suspect, and I understood why.

At the time, I was in high school. Two or three years later, one of my sisters, who wore the hijab then, was confronted by an elderly white man at a department store. “What’s the significance of the trash you’re wearing on your head?” he asked.

Just a few years ago I was traveling through JFK airport from a trip abroad. I was pulled out of line for a side conversation – a semi-regular occurrence – when a policeman with a bull face said: “Do you hate America?”

Pure bait.

Watching Zohran Mamdani’s treatment in the run-up to his commanding victory over the Democratic establishment caused me to reflect on these experiences.

In Mamdani’s case, the frenzy started when an Andrew Cuomo-affiliated group lengthened and darkened his beard in an ad.

And there were clumsy efforts to associate Mamdani with antisemitism. Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democratic senator from New York, went on the radio to claim Mamdani had raised concern among Jewish New Yorkers and made “references to global jihad”, whatever that means. Democrats, activists and voters were outraged at the smear, and Gillibrand apologized.

But it was Mamdani’s victory in the primary – and the national attention he has justifiably received – that caused the sluice gates to open.

Brandon Gill, a representative from Texas, posted a video of the young democratic socialist eating biryani with his hand, appending a note, saying: “Civilized people in America don’t eat like this.”

Andy Ogles, another Republican congressman, has called for Mamdani’s citizenship to be withdrawn, a new front in the Republican war on everything. Meanwhile, Randy Fine, a Florida representative, has decried the emerging “caliphate” of New York. Comically – you have to have a sense of humor about some things – Marjorie Taylor Green posted a picture of the Statue of Liberty cloaked in the niqab.

Nor have the Democrats relented, despite Gillibrand’s grassroots censure. The strategist James Carville has commented about the “fact that [Mamdani] won’t denounce” the “intifada”: “Come on man,” he said, “just get it out your mouth.”

Mamdani’s rise, which is a threat to a weak Democratic leadership, will only invite more racist attacks. This is Trump’s America now; bad faith arguments and unmasked bigotry have attained new heights in public discussions.

But Islamophobia has deep institutional roots. The phenomenon, a messy amalgam of racist tropes ensnaring Sikhs, assorted South Asians and Middle Easterners, is durable and widespread. Hopes that Barack Hussein Obama’s election in 2008 would take the edge off were premature.

It’s worth examining why.

At an individual level, prejudice exists among all kinds of people: no one is immune to its effects, or to effecting it. I’ve encountered racism directed at white people, Black people, Indians, east Asians and just about everyone else.

The psychologist Daniel Kahneman shed some light on prejudice in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow. He and his colleagues concluded through rigorous experimentation that people rely on intuitive systems and mental shortcuts in making certain kinds of quick decisions. Often, those intuitive beliefs are based on existing stereotypes and biases. You can’t contain all the information in the world in your head, so you rely on representations for things to navigate a complex and information-rich environment. Heuristics, in other words.

But if all prejudice is created equal, it doesn’t stay that way for long. A powerful person’s racism exerts greater leverage than the ordinary prejudice of a recent immigrant who disapproves of interracial relationships.

That’s because power is defined, in part, through the ability to participate in and shape institutions, which are themselves containers of cultural DNA. They reproduce assumptions that exist among a critical mass of their participants.

It is institutions that form the basis for structural racism – a cohesive, majoritarian racism that devalues certain lives through a society’s ordinary operations. Structural racism is dangerous in a way that the personal prejudices of marginalized people cannot possibly be, if only because of how power is organized in society.

A critic might argue that there is a basis for regarding Muslims with suspicion. People who serve in the national defense or security establishment, for instance, might perceive a real-world basis for adopting what might be considered biased or racist views.

Consider the fact that all of the men who perpetrated the attacks on New York in September 24 years ago were Middle Eastern and Muslim. Heuristic thinking might suggest a travel ban that assumes all Muslim men, or even men from the Middle East, are a potential source of terror will secure the US. It’s a logical argument: preventing all Muslims from entering the US will prevent all the domestic crimes perpetrated by Muslims.

But a corollary exists: all able-bodied white males between the ages of 11 and 70 are potential mass shooters or insurrectionists. We may protect our school-aged children and our constitutional democracy by preventing members of that group from accessing guns.

The illogic of Islamophobia lies in the breach: the arguments, which are constructed along roughly similar lines, have very different chances of impacting policy in this country.

That’s because the FBI and local law enforcement – and the leaderships of the Democratic and Republican parties – contain a complex and copious set of information about the range of behaviors that white men may participate in, as compared with Muslim men. Yes, white men kill children at schools, but they do a lot of other things besides.

Mamdani, through his visibility, charm and unflagging cheerfulness presents a new source of information about Muslim men in America. The decision by Cuomo affiliates to try to exploit the gap in information about Muslims – to rely on a racist heuristic – by darkening Mamdani’s beard was a cynical one.

But it failed through the superior communications of the candidate himself. Mamdani was visible and is likable. He succeeded in reaching voters on his own terms and new information has succeeded in short-circuiting old ideas, at least for now.

Religion

via World news: Religion | guardian.co.uk https://www.theguardian.com/world/religion

July 18, 2025 at 02:07PM

Is Colbert’s Ouster Really Just a ‘Financial Decision’?

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/07/colbert-ouster-cbc-trump/683593/

Building an empire takes decades. Destroying it can only take a few years, and sometimes the vandals are in the palace, not outside the gates.

For much of the 20th century, American broadcast television revolved around three networks: NBC, ABC, and CBS. William S. Paley, CBS’s longtime CEO, made sure that his company—the Columbia Broadcasting Service—was a leader among them. The network was home to Edward R. Murrow, who brought World War II in Europe home to Americans on CBS Radio; after the war, Murrow’s reporting played a pivotal role in bringing down Senator Joseph McCarthy. Walter Cronkite dominated American evenings from his perch at the Evening News. And from the days of Mike Wallace to the more recent era of Lesley Stahl and Scott Pelley, 60 Minutes set the standard for longform television reporting.

Yet CBS’s current ownership seems determined to demolish this legacy. This evening, the network announced plans to end The Late Show With Stephen Colbert when the host’s contract ends next May. Late-night personalities come and go, but usually that happens when their ratings sag. Colbert, however, has consistently led competitors in his timeslot. CBS said this was “purely a financial decision,” made as traditional linear television fades.

Perhaps this is true, but the network that once made Cronkite the most trusted man in America no longer gets the benefit of the doubt. CBS’s owners have made a series of decisions capitulating to President Donald Trump, and the surprise choice to allow Colbert—a consistent, prominent Trump critic—to walk seems like part of that pattern.

One reasonable starting date for the trouble would be 2016. That was both the year that Trump was first elected president and the year that Sumner Redstone, the cussed but aging owner of CBS’s parent company Paramount, surrendered control to his daughter, Shari Redstone. In 2023, Shari Redstone began seeking a buyer for the company, eventually striking a deal, in 2024, with Skydance. The merger requires federal approval.

During the 2024 presidential campaign, 60 Minutes interviewed Kamala Harris, Trump’s Democratic opponent. Trump sued CBS, alleging that the network improperly edited her interview. As supposed evidence, he cited different excerpts of the interview that had aired on different CBS shows. (If CBS was seeking to hide anything, then airing the clips on their network wasn’t a very effective way to do it.) He demanded $20 billion, a sum that was preposterous especially because—as most First Amendment lawyers agreed—the suit had no merit.

But Trump had major leverage: He won the November presidential election, giving him a role in approving the proposed Skydance-Paramount merger. During his first term, he’d already demonstrated his willingness to use his approval power to punish political opponents in the media, unsuccessfully seeking to block the merger of AT&T and Time Warner.

Since the election, CBS has seemed eager to please Trump however it can, though the company continues to insist the merger has no bearing on its decisions. The network handed over transcripts of the 60 Minutes interview to Brendan Carr, the close Trump ally appointed to lead the Federal Communications Commission. In April, 60 Minutes chief Bill Owens, a widely respected journalist, stepped down. “It’s clear the company is done with me,” he told staff during a meeting. In a memo, he elaborated: “Over the past months, it has become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it, to make independent decisions based on what was right for ‘60 Minutes,’ right for the audience.” Some of the shows’ reporters, who are not prone to histrionic statements or partisanship, raised alarms in interviews and speeches.

Earlier this month, CBS agreed to a $16 million settlement to end Trump’s lawsuit. The agreement doesn’t pay Trump directly, but the network agreed to pay legal fees for him and a co-plaintiff, and to contribute to Trump’s future presidential library. Trump has stated that the deal also includes unspecified “advertising,” reportedly for public-service announcements that boost Trump-approved causes. Paramount denies this. Now comes Colbert’s departure. If the reasons are truly financial, one wonders how his salary compares to the money spent to settle a dubious lawsuit.

The president now seems favorably disposed toward the merger. Last month, he spoke highly of Skydance head David Ellison, who is the son of Oracle founder and Trump pal Larry Ellison. Still, the deal has not yet been approved by the FCC.

Paramount and Skydance’s executives have demonstrated that they aren’t interested in defending CBS’s journalism or its editorial independence, to the detriment not only of the network’s historical reputation but also the many excellent journalists still working there. Journalism, along with Colbert’s program, make up only a small portion of Paramount’s portfolio, and so business executives might view sacrificing them to preserve a deal as a prudent, if cold-blooded, maneuver.

But the recent experience of another Columbia—Columbia University—offers a warning. When assailed by the Trump administration, the university’s administration struck a conciliatory stance, trying to make a deal with the president. The capitulation only encouraged Trump, who then sought a judicial decree for oversight of the school. (The two parties are still in talks.) What happened at Columbia is the same thing Trump has done to many other adversaries: If you give him an inch, he’ll take a yard, and immediately scheme to grab a mile, too. Institutions that are willing to sacrifice their values for the government’s favor are likely to end up with neither.

via Best of The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/

July 18, 2025 at 05:07AM

Dictionary.com “devastated” paid users by abruptly deleting saved words lists

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/07/dictionary-com-devastated-paid-users-by-abruptly-deleting-saved-words-lists/

Logophiles are "devastated" after Dictionary.com deleted their logs of favorited words that they carefully crafted for years. The company deleted all accounts, as well as the only ways to use Dictionary.com without seeing ads —even if you previously paid for an ad-free experience.

Dictionary.com offers a free dictionary through its website and free Android and iOS apps. It used to offer paid-for mobile apps, called Dictionary.com Pro, that let users set up accounts, use the app without ads, and enabled other features (like grammar tips and science and rhyming dictionaries) that are gone now. Dictionary.com's premium apps also let people download an offline dictionary (its free apps used to let you buy a downloadable dictionary as a one-time purchase), but offline the dictionaries aren't available anymore.

Accounts axed abruptly

About a year ago, claims of Dictionary.com’s apps being buggy surfaced online. We also found at least one person claiming that they were unable to buy an ad-free upgrade at that time.

Reports of Dictionary.com accounts being deleted and the apps not working as expected, and with much of its content removed, started appearing online about two months ago. Users reported being unable to log in and access premium features, like saved words. Soon after, Dictionary.com’s premium apps were removed from Google Play and Apple's App Store. The premium version was available for download for $6 as recently as March 23, per the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

A Reddit user who described themselves as a premium customer said they reached out to Dictionary.com’s support email and received a response saying, in part:

After careful consideration, user accounts within the Dictionary.com app have been discontinued. As a result, users are no longer able to sign in to their accounts, and any saved word lists are no longer available.

Unfortunately, since the coding technology that was used in the previous app version is different from what is used in the new app, it is not possible to recover word lists.

This change was part of our recent app update to improve the design, speed, and functionality of the Dictionary.com app. While we understand that this changes how you use Dictionary.com, we are hopeful that you will find the overall improvements provide faster search, additional content, and a better design.

Another person online supposedly received a similar message. Some people said they were unable to get in contact with Dictionary.com. Ars Technica tried contacting Dictionary.com through multiple messages to its support team, the press office of parent company IXL Learning, and The Dictionary Media Group, which IXL launched after acquiring Dictionary.com in 2024 and includes websites like Vocabulary.com, Multiplication.com, and HomeschoolMath.net. We didn't receive any response.

Technologie

via Ars Technica - All content https://arstechnica.com

July 18, 2025 at 12:57AM

‘Late Show With Stephen Colbert’ Is Being Canceled by CBS

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/17/business/stephen-colbert-late-show-ending.html

The show will end in May, the network said, calling it “a purely financial decision.”

via NYT > Top Stories https://www.nytimes.com

July 18, 2025 at 02:24AM

untitled

https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/europa/deutschland-grossbritannien-freundschaftsvertrag-100.html

                Britisch-deutscher Vertrag
                27 Seiten für die Freundschaft

Stand: 17.07.2025 15:47 Uhr

    Für Bundeskanzler Merz ist es ein "historischer Tag": Deutschland und Großbritannien haben einen gemeinsamen Freundschaftsvertrag geschlossen. Der verspricht mehr Handel, mehr Austausch - und vor allem mehr Sicherheit.

Im Victoria und Albert Museum in London haben Bundeskanzler Friedrich Merz und der britische Premierminister Keir Starmer einen sogenannten Freundschaftsvertrag für ihre Länder unterzeichnet. 27 Seiten, welche die deutsch-britische Partnerschaft nicht nur untermauern, sondern auch erweitern sollen.

So wird als Ziel des Vertrags formuliert, beide Länder würden "von dem Wunsch geleitet, angesichts grundlegender Veränderungen des geopolitischen Umfelds ihre Kräfte zu bündeln, um ihren Bürgerinnen und Bürgern sowie ihren offenen, demokratischen Gesellschaften eine von Wohlstand, Sicherheit und Nachhaltigkeit geprägte Zukunft zu bieten".

Starmer lobt Vertrag als "ersten seiner Art"

Merz sprach von einem "historischen Tag" für die Beziehungen zwischen Deutschland und Großbritannien. Ein solcher Vertrag sei seinen Worten zufolge überfällig gewesen. "Wir wollen enger zusammenarbeiten, insbesondere nach dem Austritt des Vereinigten Königreichs aus der Europäischen Union", betonte der CDU-Politiker. Und diese Zusammenarbeit solle sich auf verschiedene Bereiche erstrecken - Außen- und Innenpolitik, Wirtschaft, Technologie und auch Migrationspolitik. Die konkreten Pläne für die künftig engere Kooperation wurden in einem eigenen Aktionsplan zusammengefasst.

Auch Starmer lobte den Vertrag als den "ersten seiner Art". Er werde "Großbritannien und Deutschland näher zusammenbringen als je zuvor".

Auch mit Frankreich sucht London den Schulterschluss

Ein kurzer Rückblick: Zum Jahreswechsel 2020/2021 trat der von den Briten mehrheitlich gewollte sogenannte Brexit in Kraft. Seit dem Austritt aus der EU versucht Großbritannien die Bindungen zu EU-Mitgliedern durch bilaterale Abkommen zu stärken.

Deutschland ist dabei einer der wichtigsten, aber nicht der einzige Partner, mit dem die britische Regierung einen engeren Schulterschluss sucht. Dazu zählt vor allem auch Frankreich - neben Großbritannien die einzige Nuklearmacht in Europa. Allein seit Monatsbeginn vereinbarten London und Paris, sich in Verteidigungsfragen und beim Punkt nukleare Abschreckung enger miteinander abstimmen zu wollen. Auch beim Thema Migration rücken beide Länder zusammen und einigten sich zuletzt auf eine Art Tauschsystem, in der Hoffnung, die Migration über den Ärmelkanal einzudämmen.

Vertrag verspricht Sicherheit

Der Wunsch nach einer engeren deutsch-britischen Zusammenarbeit ist durchaus beidseitig. Wiederholt hatte Merz bereits die Bedeutung von Großbritannien als strategischen Partner betont. Und die britische Regierung hatte bereits kurz nach Amtsantritt von Starmer den Wunsch nach einer intensiveren Kooperation verdeutlicht. Nicht umsonst reiste im Juli des vergangenen Jahres der damals neu ins Amt des britischen Außenministers gekommene David Lammy als erstes nach Berlin - zu Gespächen mit der damaligen Bundesaußenministerin Annalena Baerbock

Neben wirtschaftliche Vorteilen verspricht der geschlossene Freundschaftsvertrag vor allem eines: Sicherheit. Im Hinblick auf eine durch den Angriffskrieg gegen die Ukraine deutlich gewordene mögliche russische Bedrohung. So wurde im Vertrag auch das "tiefe Bekenntnis zur gegenseitigen Verteidigung" festgeschrieben, mitsamt der Zusage, dass sich beide Länder "im Fall eines bewaffneten Angriffs auf die andere Vertragspartei" gegenseitig beistehen - "auch durch militärische Mittel".

Und auch gegen den Unsicherheitsfaktor Donald Trump versprechen sich Deutschland und Großbritannien durch das Zusammenrücken als Handelspartner mehr Stabilität. Da ist die Zollpolitik des US-Präsidenten, die Sorgen schürt und die beständige Frage, wie sehr die NATO-Verbündeten noch auf die USA als Bündnispartner zählen können.

via tagesschau.de https://www.tagesschau.de

July 17, 2025 at 10:10PM

Democrats are right to call for the release of the Epstein files

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/07/16/democrats-epstein-files-trump/

Pat Dennis is president of American Bridge 21st Century.

Everyone in America watched Donald Trump ride back to the presidency on his superpower: the benefit of the doubt. Even voters who didn’t approve of him as a person trusted that he was an outsider, that he was telling the truth about shaking up the old system and holding the powerful to account.

via Opinions https://www.washingtonpost.com

July 16, 2025 at 10:31PM