Christofascist White supremacist, anti LGBTQ Republican Governor Ron DeSantis seems to be focused on turning Florida into Viktor Orban’s Hungary, and this is how Florida and the U.S. look to the people of Israel, and much of the rest of the world. How does that sit with you?
Christofascist White supremacist Republican Florida Governor. Ron DeSantis waves during ‘The Jerusalem Post’ conference titled ‘Celebrate the Faces of Israel’ at the Museum of Tolerance Jerusalem last week. Credit: Reuters
Florida’s state education department rejected two new Holocaust-focused textbooks for classroom use, while forcing at least one other textbook to alter a passage about the Hebrew Bible in order to meet state approval.
The books were rejected as part of a broader review of new K-12 social studies material. According to documents provided by the state, the education department did not approve any new texts on the Holocaust this year. Reached by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, a spokesperson at the department’s press office was unable to confirm whether there are older Holocaust textbooks already in use that can still be taught in the state.
Clamp down on ‘woke indoctrination’
Under Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, the state has made an effort to clamp down on what he calls “woke indoctrination,” mostly regarding race and gender. The textbooks’ rejection is the latest example of how that drive is affecting Jewish topics as […]
As the MAGAts try to take over America focusing on all their fantasies and obsessions, their greed, and quests for power, the really important things are going unaddressed. We must reclaim our country and get it back on the right track, centered on fostering wellbeing. Think about what you can do to make that happen.
A North Atlantic right whale mother and calf swim in waters near Wassaw Island, Georgia. The animals are critically endangered. Credit: Georgia Dept of Natural Resources / AP
The global loss of wildlife is “significantly more alarming” than previously thought, according to a new study that found almost half the planet’s species are experiencing rapid population declines.
The main factor is the destruction of wild landscapes to make way for farms, towns, cities and roads, but climate change is also an important driver of species decline and is predicted to have an increasingly worse impact as the world warms.
The study’s authors analyzed more than 70,000 species across the globe – spanning mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish and insects – to determine whether their populations have been growing, shrinking or remaining steady over time.
Josh Partlow , Reporter - Microsoft Start / The Washington Post
Stephan:
If you read me regularly you know I have been following the Colorado River water issue closely because it holds implications for the entire country. Well, here is some good news, not great news, but good news. The Biden Administration has finally been able to get the seven states that rely on the Colorado for their water to come to terms. Here’s the story.
States reach deal with Biden to protect drought-stricken Colorado River. Credit: Joshua Lott / The Washington Post
The states along the Colorado River — a vital source of water and electricity for the American West — reached an agreement with the Biden administration to conserve an unprecedented amount of their water supply in exchange for $1.2 billion in federal funding, state and federal officials said Monday.
After nearly a year of negotiations and multiple missed deadlines, the deal is a temporary solution intended to protect the country’s largest reservoirs — Lake Powell and Lake Mead — from dropping to critical levels over the next three years. These reservoirs have fallen dramatically as the warming climate and the past two decades of drought have reduced the river’s natural flow by about 20 percent.
To stabilize the river, the three states that make up the Lower Basin — California, Arizona and Nevada — have agreed to voluntarily conserve 3 million acre-feet of water over the next three years, which amounts […]
What I don’t get, and never have, is the sheer nastiness of Republicans. What kind of person cuts off food to children so they can reduce the tax rates of the uber-rich? I just don’t understand the cruelty. But there it is.
A woman with two children waits to receive a box of food assistance from the Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida at a mobile food drop event at the Impact Outreach Ministry in Orlando. Credit: Paul Hennessy / NurPhoto / Getty
As Republican lawmakers on Friday walked away from negotiations over raising the United States’ arbitrary debt limit, claiming the Biden administration has been “unreasonable” in its refusal to accept steep spending cuts, a new survey showed how a majority of U.S. families are already struggling to afford essentials that would become even less accessible if the GOP gets its way.
ParentsTogether Action on Friday released the results of a survey taken this week of nearly 500 low- and middle-income families, finding that 75% of parents who benefit from the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) would be unable to provide their families with nutritious foods without the program, whose funding would be reduced by 12%—$800 million—under the debt ceiling plan put forward by the Republicans.
Ezra Klein podcast with Jean Twenge , - The New York Times
Stephan:
The Republican culture wars, with its White supremacy, sexism, anti-abortion, anti-immigrant lies, and anti-climate change whining is producing an unanticipated effect, the depression and sadness that has blossomed like a toxic plant amongst American young people, the majority of whom now see America as an unfair rather nasty country. The toxicity of the Republican Party has changed the culture of the United States, and it is going to have longterm implications. The young today see a bleak future, and who can blame them.
Depressed teenager Credit: freepik
So before we jump in today, I want to tell you about something The New York Times has been working on for a while. And I’m going to level with you — that when they started telling me about this project, I was very skeptical of it, which made for a couple of awkward internal conversations, because what I understood them to be working on was a podcast app. And I thought to myself, who needs another podcast app? There are plenty of them on the market already. None of them are great, but they’re fine.
And then they gave me the new app as a beta tester, and I realized that I was wrong about what they were building, at least partly wrong, because what they actually built is something nobody has created yet, which is a portal to the world of audio journalism. There are podcasts, including this one, but also stories, essays, profiles. You can listen to digests of the news, and to full news stories, and to […]
