And another day of menaces to democracy, the big question of “why,” Texans support abortion, cellphone tracking, the heat index, cities in fear of running out of water, tragic outcomes for the mentally ill, and getting $95,000 for being a horrible person comes to a close:
“The rich can literally claim tax deductions for owning a yacht, but conservatives have the nerve to call $10,000 student debt forgiveness a handout?” -- Robert Reich
Deaths
US: 1,072,125 (+705)
World: 6,498,459 (+2569)
Cases
US: 96,465,126 (+117,155)
World: 608,700,634 (+678,100)
Biden sounds newly strong alarm: Trumpism menaces democracy. President Joe Biden charged in a prime-time address Thursday that the “extreme ideology” of Donald Trump and his adherents “threatens the very foundation of our republic,” as he summoned Americans of all stripes to help counter what he sketched as dark forces within the Republican Party trying to subvert democracy. -- Oh they are trying to subvert democracy. There is no doubt about that.
Trump Stole Secret Government Documents. The Big Question Is Why. Though one can never discount incompetence in the course of such matters, the known evidence suggests Trump really, really wanted to keep these papers. In its legal filings following the FBI raid on Trump’s club, though, the Justice Department has not presented its view of Trump’s motives. But that hasn’t stopped a frenzy of speculation on the internet. Nor should it. Given that Trump ran for president in 2016 charging that Hillary Clinton had harmed national security by using a personal server for her email when she was secretary of state and vowing that he would “enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information,” this scandal is yet the latest sign of the brazen hypocrisy and blatant corruption at the root of his MAGA demagoguery and its embrace by the Republican Party. This affair warrants full examination, and that includes the reasons for Trump’s apparent flouting of the law. So let’s look at a few possible explanations.
Poll: One year after SB 8, Texans express strong support for abortion rights. One year after Texas implemented what was then the most restrictive abortion law in the country, a majority of Texas voters are expressing strong support for abortion rights. In a new survey, six in 10 voters said they support abortion being "available in all or most cases," and many say abortion will be a motivating issue at the ballot box in November. Meanwhile, 11% say they favor a total ban on abortion. -- Let’s hope Texas rights this incredible wrong.
430,000 Britons have long Covid two years after infection. Certain groups are at a higher risk of long Covid than others. These included people aged 35 to 69 years; women; people living in more deprived areas; those working in social care; and those with another activity limiting health condition or disability, who are proportionately more likely to suffer with long Covid than other groups.
Local law enforcement agencies from suburban Southern California to rural North Carolina have been using an obscure cellphone tracking tool, at times without search warrants, that gives them the power to follow people’s movements months back in time, according to public records and internal emails obtained by The Associated Press. Police have used “Fog Reveal” to search hundreds of billions of records from 250 million mobile devices, and harnessed the data to create location analyses known among law enforcement as “patterns of life,” according to thousands of pages of records about the company.
In video, Afghan woman accuses Taliban official of rape. An Afghan woman accused a senior Taliban official of forcing her into marriage and raping her repeatedly in a video that appeared on social media this week. In the video, the woman, who identified herself only by her first name Elaha, wept as she described being beaten and raped by former Taliban Interior Ministry spokesman Saeed Khosti. She said she was speaking from an apartment in Kabul where the Taliban had confined her after she tried to escape the country, and she pleaded for rescue. “These may be my last words. He will kill me, but it is better to die once than to die every time,” she said in the video, which surfaced on Tuesday. Elaha’s situation since making the video public is not certain.
Russian oil executive dies after falling from Moscow window. A prominent Russian oil executive died on Thursday after reportedly falling out of a hospital window in Moscow, stoking suspicions of foul play, given how frequently vocal critics of the Kremlin have been shot, poisoned or thrown out of windows.
Texas’ heat index could reach 125 degrees over the next 30 years, study finds. The heat index will reach 125 degrees at least once per year within the next 30 years in most Texas counties. Heat index is the temperature felt by the human body when relative humidity is combined with the air temperature. Texas will see more days with a heat index over 100 than 46 other states as more than 13% of Americans are expected to be affected by extreme heat.
DRIED UP: Texas cities in fear of running out of water. But the Texas Water Development Board’s planning process has traditionally looked backward, not forward, in envisioning the worst-case scenario that managers should plan for. “By not considering climate change, we’re counting on water that’s probably not going to be there in the future,” Mace told KXAN said. “And so that increases the risk of reservoirs going dry, and of people losing their water supplies.”
After Sarah Palin's election loss, Sen. Tom Cotton calls ranked-choice voting 'a scam'. — To MAGA Republicans, every election is “rigged” if they lose.
‘Tragic outcomes’: Mentally ill face fatal risk with police. Time and time again across the U.S., people experiencing mental health crises are being killed by police, but the exact number remains unknown because of a yawning governmental information gap…Nearly one in five U.S. adults has a mental illness, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Yet people with untreated mental illness are 16 times more likely to be killed during a police encounter than other people approached by law enforcement, the Treatment Advocacy Center said in a 2015 report.
Teacher gets $95,000 to settle lawsuit over refusal to use student's preferred name. A Kansas teacher who argued she had a religious belief that prevented her from calling transgender or nonbinary students by their preferred names and pronouns reached a $95,000 settlement with school district officials, according to a release from the teacher's attorneys. -- To be clear: this teacher got $95,000 for saying she was not going to call students by what they preferred to be called. This is total bullshit, and an abuse of claiming religious belief.
‘Historic’ James Webb images show exoplanet in unprecedented detail. The observations, which astronomers said marked a “historic moment for astronomy”, are the first direct images of a planet beyond our solar system by Nasa’s $10bn (£8.65bn) James Webb space telescope. They are also the first images of an exoplanet using infrared light, which gives a far more precise indication of a planet’s mass and temperature and will allow astronomers to detect the movement of clouds drifting across the planet’s sky.
Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.
Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.
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