Jessica Glenza, National Correspondent - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: The Republican Party in service to the evangelical christofascist community continues to seek the overthrow of Roe vs Wade as part of the party's commitment to male dominance. That may sound partisan, but it is not. Here are the facts.
This year, since Donald Trump lost re-election and the Republican party has split into warring factions, the spectrum of anti-abortion legislation has come to reflect that intra-party feud. Credit: Will Oliver/EPA
At a church-style rally in Arizona, the state Republican lawmaker Walter Blackman described his “perfect” legislative proposal: to prosecute women who have abortions for homicide alongside the doctors who provide them.
“We are not going to amend this bill,” Blackman said in January. “This is a perfect bill. I just want to tell you that now.” Nine of Blackman’s colleagues signed on to the bill.
The bill was just one of nine more Arizona bills designed to ban, restrict or undermine abortion rights – ranging from funding religious crisis pregnancy clinics which oppose abortion to banning abortion at six weeks, before most women know they are pregnant.
“It’s nothing less than appalling,” said Dr Julia Kwatra, an obstetrician and gynecologist who has […]
Stephan: In my view, this impeachment trial is not just about Trump. I think the entire Republican Party is on trial and looking increasingly cowardly and lacking in ethics, as this report makes obvious. How can one possibly vote in a trial if one does not attend the presentations both sides make? If you don't attend you should not be allowed to vote.
Republican senator Lindsey Graham
Fifteen of the 50 Republican Senators refused to show up for at least “the first few hours” of Thursday’s arguments by the Democratic managers in the Senate impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump, CNN’s Manu Raju and Forbes report.
That’s 30 percent of the Republican caucus in the Senate, or nearly one-third of the GOP members.
“Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) were both away from their desks, for instance, while Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho) was in the basement on his phone, CNN’s Manu Raju reported,” Forbes adds.
“Many within the chamber were preoccupied with other activities: Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) were reading papers, while, according to CNN’s Jeremy Herb, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) ‘had a blank map of Asia on his desk and was writing on it like he was filling in the names of the countries.’”
Worse, at least one Republican Senator has already violated his oath to deliver “impartial justice.”
Senators are required to swear or affirm that he or she will “do impartial […]
Melissa S. Kearney and Phillip B. Levine, Senior Fellow Brookings Institution | Professor of Economics - Wellesley College - The Brookings Institution
Stephan: Here is an aspect of the pandemic which few have even considered, a steep decline in the birthrate, but which will, in the future, have an increasing importance.
On June of 2020, three months after the COVID pandemic began in earnest in the United States, we wrote a report suggesting that the public health crisis and associated recession would result in 300,000 to 500,000 fewer births in 2021. Six months later, we have been asked several times if we have an updated estimate. We have revisited the issue and stand by our initial prediction of a large reduction in births. Based on our previous methodology and a labor market that improved somewhat more quickly than we anticipated, we place more emphasis on the lower range of our original estimate, likely closer to 300,000 fewer births. However, additional factors that we did not incorporate into our model – in particular, ongoing school and day care closures – might very well mean a larger reduction in births than that.
CORROBORATING EVIDENCE
It will still be several months before birth data will become available that will enable us to count the “missing” births. Additional survey evidence has come out, though, since we released our initial report that supports a coming baby bust. […]
Richard Silber and Liam Torpy, Founder and Executive Director of the Himalayan Clime and Science Institute | Senior Program Director of the Himalayan Clime and Science Institute - The New York Times
Stephan: The Himalayas may seem far away and another world, but what is happening there should warn and alarm the rest of us because this is where climate change is going to take us, and we are woefully unprepared.
The Tapovan dam in India on Tuesday, two days after a portion of the Nanda Devi glacier snapped off, releasing water trapped behind the dam, in the state of Uttarakhand. Credit: Associated Press
On Sunday, a glacier in the Indian Himalayas burst apart, releasing a torrential flood that destroyed one hydroelectric dam project and damaged another, killed at least 32 people and left nearly 200 people missing and likely dead. Half a world away, this event might seem easy to disregard as yet another distant catastrophe — tragic yet unrelated to our daily lives.
In the Western world, we should not be so sanguine. The disaster was a direct result of extreme climate change in the world’s highest mountains. The rapid warming there offers a warning of the potential consequences for the United States and the rest of the world as greenhouse gases continue to heat the planet.
Since taking office, President Biden has sought to reaffirm what scientists have been saying for decades: An effective climate response must be guided by strong research. As his administration works to restore […]
Stephan: Tucker Carlson, by the admission of Fox in court is a propagandist not a journalist. But he is the most-watched personality on Fox, and so millions of people who cannot make the distinction between propaganda and actual journalism are influenced by what he says. This is how crazy Fox has become. I think that if a corporation presents itsself as a news organization it ought to be criminally liable if it consistently presents disinformation.
Fox propagandist Tucker Carlson and criminal Donald Trump Credit: Salon/Getty
On Wednesday evening, Fox News host Tucker Carlson treated his viewers to a bizarre rant tying together former President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial with denial that George Floyd was killed by the Minneapolis Police.
“So what does all of this mean, exactly?” said Carlson. “We’re not sure what it means, and we’re not going to speculate. What we do know for certain is that the known facts of what happened on Jan. 6 deviate in very important ways from the story they are now telling us, including the story they told us today in the impeachment hearing. And in many places, the known facts bear no resemblance to the story they’re telling — they’re just flat-out lying. There’s no question about that. The question is, why would they lie about this?”‘
“For an answer, think back to last spring, beginning of Memorial Day,” said Carlson. “BLM and their sponsors in Corporate America completely changed this country, they changed this country more in five months than it changed in the previous fifty years. […]
