The MAGAt Republican attempt to subvert our historical system of government has become so blatant that it ought to be a leading story in the all the media. It isn’t. I don’t know whether it is because most journalists don’t comprehend it, or because they are being told to concentrate on something else. Whatever the cause it is happening in front of our faces, and Americans don’t seem to see it. It is absolutely essential, however, if we are to survive as a democracy that both the House and the Senate come out of this election with strong Democratic majorities, and what worries me is that I am not sure that is going to happen.
Heritage has aggressively publicized its Project 2025, a set of policy proposals established with an eye toward being a blueprint for a Trump White House. Credit: Nell Redmond / AP
A nonprofit organization aligned with former President Donald Trump that has played a major role in preparations for his potential second term is merging with a key group that works with Senate Republicans.
The America First Policy Institute is combining with the Senate Working Group, the two organizations announced Wednesday. The merger will expand AFPI’s profile in Washington, further solidifying its relationship with the congressional wing of the GOP.
AFPI has aggressively promoted pro-Trump policies during his post-presidency, and its leaders have taken senior positions in the former president’s transition operation. Linda McMahon, a Trump cabinet member and AFPI chair, was recently named a co-chair of Trump’s transition team. Doug Hoelscher and Michael Rigas, who served in the Trump administration and at AFPI, are also working on the transition effort.
With the possible reelection of Trump, the organization is looking to deepen its ties to Senate Republicans, who would […]
The central problem of the human species appears to be greed. It simply overwhelms all other considerations. Scientists have known for decades, and repeatedly told politicians that humans are destroying Earth’s ecosystems, and the matrix of life. Why? Greed. As things are proceeding I think it is going to destroy whole societies, particularly in South America simply can’t overcome greed and the corruption it produces. Consider this report as an example of what I mean.
This photo gives an aerial view of deforestation in the western Amazon region of Brazil Credit: Carl de Souza / AFP
The South American jungle, spanning nine countries, is seen as crucial to the fight against climate change due to its ability to absorb planet-warming carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
RAISG experts reported an “accelerated transformation” of the Amazon, with an “alarming increase” in the use of land previously occupied by forest for mining, crops, or livestock.
“A large number of ecosystems have disappeared to give way to immense expanses of pastures, soybean fields or other monocultures, or have been transformed into craters for gold mining,” they said.
“With the loss of the forest, we emit more carbon into the atmosphere and this disrupts an entire ecosystem that regulates the climate and the hydrological cycle, clearly affecting temperatures,” Sandra Rio Caceres, from the Institute of the Common Good — a Peruvian association that took part in the study — told AFP.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, one of the most important social trends was the commitment to public education. That is no longer the case. The MAGAt Republican Party wants to end public education and turn it into a profit-making indoctrination system that pushes fascist fantasies and a kind of perverted Christianity. Here is yet another example of this truth.
Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Wachiwit and Rose Carson / Getty
Mary, a high school English teacher of 20 years, has dealt with her share of parental objections toward books. From the mother who worried The Crucible contained witchcraft to the father who questioned Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray because Wilde was gay, Mary has practiced explaining, advocating for, and negotiating her book selections over the decades. “Almost every English teacher will encounter parental complaints about a text choice at some point,” Mary described to me. “They are sometimes frustrating, but they are not typically difficult to handle.”
They are also nothing like what many teachers today are up against, and not just in red states. The media spectacles that have been documented in school board meetings—and the countless quieter yet equally high-pressure scenes the public never sees—are far from over. In the course of working on a book, Teaching in a Time of Book Bans: Lessons From Teachers and Librarians, I interviewed school faculty from across the country about their recent experiences with censorship. For the […]
I have been predicting this for a decade, and now it is here. If I could see it coming surely the pharmaceutical corporations and politicians could see it. Where is the necessary research? Oh, since the government pays for most of it, and few politicians wanted to see it or allocate the money, as this article describes, tens of millions are going to die.
A sample that tested positive for tuberculosis is seen from a microscope in Buenos Aires, Argentina, March 29, 2019. Cases of the “white death” illness, closely linked to poverty, malnutrition and poor housing, have been on the rise since the turn of the decade as Latin America’s third largest economy has grappled with repeat recessions and inflation. Credit: Magali Druscovich / Reuters
Bacterial illnesses that are resistant to available antibiotic medicines will cause more than 39 million deaths worldwide over the next 25 years and indirectly contribute to an additional 169 million deaths, according to a forecast published on Monday.
By 2050, annual death tolls attributed directly to antibiotic resistance, or associated with it, will reach 1.91 million and 8.22 million, respectively, if remediation measures are not in place, an international team of researchers reported in The Lancet.
Those annual numbers represent increases of nearly 68% and 75% per year, respectively, over death tolls directly and indirectly attributed to antibiotic resistance in 2022, the researchers with the Global Research on Antimicrobial Resistance Project wrote.
Here is some good news for California. I hope other states will soon follow suit. This is the sort of wellbeing fostering decision politicians ought to be making, and so few do.
A plastic bag sits along a roadside in Sacramento, California. Credit: Rich Pedroncelli / AP
“Paper or plastic” will no longer be a choice at grocery store checkout lines in California under a new law signed on Sunday by the governor, Gavin Newsom, that bans all plastic shopping bags.
California had already banned thin plastic shopping bags at supermarkets and other stores, but shoppers could purchase bags made with a thicker plastic that purportedly made them reusable and recyclable.
The new measure, approved by state legislators last month, bans all plastic shopping bags starting in 2026. Consumers who don’t bring their own bags will now simply be asked if they want a paper bag.
State senator Catherine Blakespear, one of the bill’s supporters, said people were not reusing or recycling any plastic bags. She pointed to a state study that found that the amount of plastic shopping bags trashed a person grew from 8lb (3.6kg) a year in 2004 to 11lb a year in 2021.
Blakespear, a Democrat from Encinitas, said the previous bag ban passed a decade ago didn’t reduce the overall use of plastic.
