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When I began Schwartzreport my purpose was to produce an entirely fact-based daily publication in favor of the earth, the inter-connectedness and interdependence of all life, democracy, equality for all, liberty, and things that are life-affirming. Also, to warn my readers about actions, events, and trends that threaten those values. Our country now stands at a crossroads, indeed, the world stands at a crossroads where those values are very much at risk and it is up to each of us who care about wellbeing to do what we can to defend those principles. I want to thank all of you who have contributed to SR, particularly those of you who have scheduled an ongoing monthly contribution. It makes a big difference and is much appreciated. It is one thing to put in the hours each day and to do the work for free, but another to have to cover the rising out-of-pocket costs. For those of you who haven’t done so, but read SR regularly, I ask that you consider supporting it.
This in varying degrees is what is going on in all the MAGAt controlled Red States. The MAGAt Republicans, as they spell out in their Project 2025, are trying to turn the United States into something like Hungary, a fascist pseudo-democracy controlled by a small group of oligarchs. Texas and Florida are leading examples of this treason. The voters in those states and the other Red states have to make a choice. If they elect people like Greg Abbott and Ken Paxton, they better prepare for enormous misery and suffering, particularly girls and women. I hate doing these stories, but SR is about the reality of the trends shaping our lives, so I have no choice.
Voting rights advocates and civil rights leaders believe Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and other state officials are wielding their law enforcement powers to target racial minorities and sideline political rivals. Credit: Jianan Liu / HuffPost / Getty
Cecilia Castellano is a small-business owner and a relative political newcomer in South Texas.
A Democratic candidate for the Texas House of Representatives in a toss-up district, Castellano spends her days making the case for sending an outsider to Austin — and against her Republican opponent, Don McLaughlin Jr., who was endorsed by Donald Trump, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton even before his primary election.
Then, two weeks ago, law enforcement agents from Paxton’s office showed up around dawn at Castellano’s home outside San Antonio, armed with a search warrant and a flashlight they shined into her front window. She had answered the door in pajamas, and in the days since, she has found herself constantly checking the door.
“My son’s room was just a few feet away,” Castellano told HuffPost, still shaken two weeks […]
Criminal Trump in my view is a traitor. I don’t know how he could make his treason any clearer. I don’t understand why corporate media video and print does not actively and openly tell the truth about him.
During an appearance outside a courthouse in New York, Trump accused the DOJ of engaging in a conspiracy to undermine his chances in the 2024 election by implicating Russian operatives.
“This is a long and complicated web but it all goes back to the DOJ and Kamala and Sleepy Joe and all the rest of them,” Trump claimed without citing any evidence. “We have a whole rigged election system, nobody’s ever seen anything like what’s happening. Now I understand yesterday they’re bringing up Russia, Russia, Russia again that they’ve done for years.”
Russia in the 2016 presidential campaign engaged in a well-established influence campaign to tip the election to Trump. Although an investigation of the campaign did not establish a criminal conspiracy between Trump and Russian operatives, it did find that members of Trump’s campaign were aware of and encouraged Russian assistance in getting their candidate elected.
Most infamously, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort met with a Russian operative in Trump Tower after they were promised damaging information about […]
Here, from a vistor to space, is confirmation of what I have been telling your for decades. We live in a matrix of life that is interconnected and interdependent, and we must make fostering wellbeing at every level of the matrix of life if our planet is to be healthy. The astronauts can see this, but individual and corporate greed and the corruption of our politics seem to obscure this truth.
Astronaut Ronald Garan at the McAlister Auditorium at Tulane University, Louisiana. Credit: Erika Goldring / Getty
Geologists and researchers have long studied Earth’s unique features, offering insights into how humanity can improve living conditions. Most of their findings emphasize the importance of protecting our planet and promoting sustainability. But while Earth’s challenges are obvious to those who study it closely, astronauts see things from a much broader perspective. Former NASA astronaut Ron Garan, in an interview with Big Think, shared powerful insights from his view of Earth from space—one that offered a fresh perspective on the planet’s challenges.
Garan’s observations from space shifted the usual way we think about Earth. He began by highlighting that the view of the Earth from space makes things “undeniably clear.” What he mentioned next had people surprised. The former astronaut pointed out that problems such as deforestation, global warming, and climate change, which are seen as profoundly dangerous issues, are just “symptoms” of an underlying root problem. […]
More evidence that the matrix of life is interconnected and interdependent and that the evidence for that is growing year by year. Now will our political system recognize that reality and work to foster wellbeing? Will they do what the whole of humanity is dependent on? I doubt it, and that is why I think we are moving into a crisis we don’t acknowledge because of the corruption and greed that defines American society.
Elephants in Okambara, Namibia that have been tagged with transmitters to track their movements. Credit: Martin Wikelski
Field biologists tend to be a patient lot, often resigned to long days and weeks in the field and committed to experiments that take years to yield results. But even among that dogged crowd, Martin Wikelski stands out.
Back in 2001, sitting on a porch one evening in Panama, the German ornithologist had the germ of an idea for an “internet of animals,” a global system of sensor-wearing wildlife that would reveal the planet’s elusive, nonhuman worlds. He figured he could get it up and running by 2005. Nearly 20 years later, Wikelski may have finally succeeded — after surmounting roadblocks that range from bureaucratic mishaps to technical glitches to a geopolitical crisis. His space-based system, known as ICARUS (International Cooperation for Animal Research Using Space), is now scheduled to launch, in its latest, satellite-based incarnation, on a private rocket sometime in 2025.
The underlying idea of the internet of animals […]
Monique Morrissey and Jennifer Sherer , Research Staff - Economic Policy Institute
Stephan:
The creation of unions was one of the critical steps in creating the middle class in the United States. When workers can join and negotiate collectively they do better. Here is the proof. The Democrats support unions, the MAGAt Republicans are trying to cut them. You should keep that in mind when you vote in November.
Key findings
Nationally, the public-sector pay gap has widened in the last four years.
State and local government employees earned, on average, 17.6% less than similarly educated private-sector employees, compared with a pre-pandemic pay gap of 13.9%.
Even when factoring in more robust public-sector benefits packages, total compensation is approximately 14.5% lower for public-sector workers than for private-sector workers.
Collective bargaining rights for public employees vary widely across states, and this has an effect on pay gaps between public- and private-sector workers. When compared with private-sector workers, public-sector workers with strong bargaining rights (-14.9%) have a narrower pay gap than those with weak (-20.1%) or no bargaining rights (-22.9%).
Why this matters
State and local governments are facing acute and growing staffing shortages as public-sector pay lags farther behind the pay of private-sector workers. Moreover, the public-sector pay gap disproportionately affects women and Black workers, who are more likely to be employed in public-sector jobs and who are disadvantaged in the broader labor market. Strengthening collective bargaining rights for government workers would narrow the pay gap and reduce racial and gender inequality.
How to fix it
At the national level, Congress should pass the Public […]
Jennifer Henderson, Enterprise & Investigative Writer - MedPage Today
Stephan:
Yet another story about the inferiority of the U.S. illness profit system, and how dangerous is is becoming for physicians who try to provide any kind of help for individuals with transgender issues. All of this is happening because of the MAGAt Republican cult and the sexual dysfunctionality of the individuals in this cult.
Threats Against Docs Treating Trans Minors
Kade Goepferd, MD, of Children’s Minnesota Hospital, has received death threats for their work treating transgender youths, NBC News reported
Goepferd is hardly alone. NBC News interviewed a dozen clinicians treating transgender minors in states where it’s still legal, and they raised concerns about legal risks and anti-trans attacks. Many said they’ve had to take additional security measures as anti-trans rhetoric has intensified.
One nonprofit director said there has been a “growing awareness over the last year that the environment is only getting more and more dangerous for providers.”
In Georgia, an arsonist destroyed a transgender care clinic, and the incident is being investigated as a hate crime, the outlet reported. The climate of fear has led many clinics to avoid publicity and increase security measures for staff, including removing staff contact information from websites or considering a complete elimination of their online presence.
“It’s emotionally exhausting to be targeted,” Goepferd told NBC News. “It’s also really sad and painful to watch the patients and families that you care for be targeted.”
Isabel Rosales, John Miller, Nick Valencia, Dakin Andone and Sharif Paget, , Reporters - CNN
Stephan:
The first week of school, students have barely gotten their new text books, and we have already had a school mass murder; the 45th school mass murder this year. And where did a 14-year-old get the gun? And yet in states controlled by Republicans it is getting easier and easier to carry a concealed gun with no license, no training, and to own an assault rifle war weapon. What kind of politician sees these mass shootings happen, and yet chooses to do nothing about it? Look at the difference in the responses of Harris and criminal Trump.
Apalacchee High School Students Credit: Apalachee High School
WINDER, GEORGIA — The 14-year-old suspect in the fatal mass shooting at a Winder, Georgia, high school has been identified as Colt Gray, Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey said at an afternoon news conference.
The suspect is a student at Apalachee High School who will be charged with murder and will be handled as an adult as he moves through the criminal justice system, Hosey and Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith added.
Two teachers and two students were killed, Hosey said. Nine other victims were taken to hospitals, according to the officials.
The gunfire sent students and faculty desperately scurrying for cover as schools across the county went into lockdown and parents scrambled for information.
Wednesday’s shooting is the deadliest of the 45 school shootings so far this calendar year, according to a CNN analysis. It is one of 11 school shootings with four or more deaths since 2008, when CNN first started tracking school shootings.
Maya Rossin-Slater, Research Scientist - Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research
Stephan:
This paper was published in 2022, but is the latest I could find, in the academic literature, and I doubt very much its conclusions have changed in the subsquent months. Fear of being shot while in school, according to Pew Research Center is now a top concern of American students. My wife and I were talking about this having tea this afternoon, trying to imagine what it would be like to be afraid of being shot in school, something unheard of when we were in school. Or how we would counsel and comfort our children if we had young children today. I just don’t, can’t, comprehend how this continues with nothing being done.
School shooting survivors Credit: ABC News
Key Takeaways
More than 100,000 American children attended a school at which a shooting took place in 2018 and 2019.
Research indicates a higher rate of antidepressant use among those exposed to a school shooting in the years following the gun violence.
School shootings lead to drops in student enrollment and a decline in average test scores.
School shootings also lead to an increase in student absenteeism and the likelihood of needing to repeat a grade in the two following years.
Students exposed to shootings at their schools are less likely to graduate high school, go to college, and graduate college, and they are less likely to be employed and have lower earnings in their mid-20s.
s America reels from yet another school shooting — this one at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas — much of the public discussion has centered on the lives lost: 19 children and 2 teachers. The Uvalde massacre is the second deadliest on record, following the 2012 […]
