Stephan: I absolutely agree with Laurence Tribe. Why isn't Donald Trump in a criminal trial as I write this? Why does Bill Barr still have a law license? Why have none of Trump's orcs been held accountable?
As far as I can see Americans just don't realize, or maybe they don't care, how corrupt the Trump administration, and virtually everyone involved with it, was. Why are none of these people in prison?
Judge Merrick Garland testifies before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on his nomination to be US Attorney General Credit: AFP
After the 2010 elections, for the first time since the peak of the Jim Crow era, states across the country began to enact laws making it more difficult to vote. This wave of voter suppression was intertwined with race and the nation’s changing racial demographics and was, at least in part, a backlash against rising turnout among communities of color contributing to the election of the nation’s first Black president. Efforts to suppress the votes of communities of color accelerated in 2013, when the Supreme Court gutted a key part of the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder. In the eight years since, and especially […]
Stephan: The White Supremacy christofascist cult that once was the Republican Party is focused on staying in power and creating a faux democracy authoritarian system that allows it to stay in power. That is the entire reason gerrymandering is occurring in all states they control. If you want to live in a democratic country you better find some way to volunteer and stand up for the continuation of democracy, because otherwise we are going to become a fascist authoritarian nation.
Credit: Stephanie Keith / Getty
The results of the 2020 Census are in, and the big takeaway is clear: The multiracial future of America is no longer “the future.” It’s the here and now. Big cities like Boston and New York became more diverse over the last decade, but some of the most profound changes took place in the nation’s suburbs. Suburban towns like Duluth, Georgia, and Sugar Land, Texas, which were once known as bastions of white flight, have now become among the most diverse places in the country. Indeed, half of all people of color in metro areas now reside in suburbs rather than in urban city cores. The politics of suburban America have already started to feel the impact.
But the growing diversity of America has also produced backlash, and a threat to the emerging multiracial America that is clear and present without swift congressional action.
A record number of restrictive voting measures are moving through state legislatures. And in the suburbs, where multiracial coalitions have increasingly started to compete for and […]
Stephan: As I watched the coverage of Hurricane Ida in Louisiana I thought how much more pain, sufffering and death was going to occur because so many people in that state did not have the good sense to get vaccinated so the hospitals already filled to capacity with the unvaccinated, are unable to cope with what the hurricane has produced. The anti-science misinformation that is the hallmark of Republican politicians and media like Fox and NewsMax has left the state in a perilous situation that need not have happened.
President Donald J. Trump, joined by Vice President Mike Pence, receives a briefing update on Hurricane Dorian as it approaches the U.S. mainland Thursday, Aug. 29, 2019, in the Oval Office of the White House. Credit: Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)
It is an understatement to say there is a lot going on right now. The two biggest stories over the weekend were the winding up of the dangerous airlift out of Afghanistan and the arrival of an epic hurricane hitting the Gulf Coast on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.
Now is a dangerous time — but judging from the news coverage, I don’t think we’ve fully grasped just how much danger
In a number of states, this latest COVID-19 surge, driven by the lethal Delta variant, has now surpassed the deadly surge of last winter. In two hard-hit states, the massive hurricane is coinciding with an equally massive surge in hospitalizations, making for an extremely volatile situation.
According to LAIlluminator, which covers Louisiana state and local government, hospitals have been at capacity […]
Stephan: The worst part of the Republican anti-science campaign is that it is leaving us unprepared for what is happening. We spent two trillion in Afghanistan. We should spend five times that, or more, preparing for climate change
Locusts ravage an area in Samburu County, Kenya, in April 2020, part of a wave of infestation in eastern Africa. Credit: Luis Tato for The Washington Post
A fatal virus and a massive economic downturn did not stop planet-warming gases in the atmosphere last year from rising to their highest levels in human history, researchers say. Barely a year after the coronavirus grounded planes, shuttered factories and brought road traffic to a standstill, the associated drop in carbon emissions is all but undetectable to scientists studying our air.
In fact, according to the newly released “State of the Climate in 2020” report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Earth is arguably in worse shape than it’s been.
While humanity grappled with the deadliest pandemic in a century, many metrics of the planet’s health showed catastrophic decline in 2020. Average global temperatures rivaled the hottest. Mysterious sources of methane sent atmospheric concentrations of the gas spiking to unprecedented highs. Sea levels were the highest on record; fires ravaged the American West; and
Stephan: This ought to alarm us all, but almost none of the major media corporations gave it much, if any, coverage. The earth's meta-systems are rapidly changing and the implications for human civilization are profound. as we are beginning to find out, even as the Republicans in Congress are vowing not to vote for the legislation Biden and Pelosi are trying to get through Congress to prepare for what is coming.
An evacuated resident points in the direction of his home following a flash flood, which came as Tropical Storm Henri made landfall, in Helmetta, New Jersey on August 22, 2021. Credit: Tom Brenner/AFP/Getty
Bolstering the case for meaningful climate action, a major report released Wednesday found that Earth’s atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations and sea levels both hit record highs in 2020.
“This situation is urgent, but it’s not hopeless. We have an opportunity to lead the global response in the fight against the climate crisis—we cannot afford to waste it.” —Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson
Based on the contributions of more than 530 scientists from over 60 countries and compiled by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), State of the Climate in 2020 is the 31st installment of the leading annual evaluation of the global climate system.
“The major indicators of climate change,” officials from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information pointed out in a statement, “continued to reflect trends consistent with a warming planet. Several markers such as sea level, ocean heat content, and permafrost once again broke records set just one year prior.”
