James.galbraith

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A huge number of people still heat their homes with fossil fuels. There’s a better way.

Experts call it the “cold crunch.” As temperatures rise in regions that historically haven’t needed indoor cooling, global demand for air-conditioning units is expected to skyrocket. Indoor cooling is already the fastest-growing use of energy in buildings. But the emissions associated with cooling buildings are tiny compared to those from heating buildings — and that’s because our heat is still largely generated by burning fossil fuels while air-conditioning uses electricity.

The way we heat our homes and buildings is one of the biggest contributors to climate change. But a solution may actually come from the rush of consumers looking to buy AC for the first time. They’re a huge market for a different kind of system: the electric heat pump. A heat pump works like a two-way air conditioner, using electricity and a chemical refrigerant to transfer heat either into or out of a building. Instead of using fossil fuels to generate heat, it uses electricity to transfer heat, and it does it efficiently. And if heat pumps are widely adopted, they could make a major impact on the carbon emissions generated by buildings.

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China's central bank said on Friday that all cryptocurrency-related transactions are illegal in the country and they must be banned, citing concerns around national security and "safety of people's assets." From a report: The world's most populated nation also said that foreign exchanges are banned from providing services to users in the country. [...] The People's Bank of China separately ordered internet, financial and payment companies from facilitating cryptocurrency trading on their platforms. The central bank said cryptocurrencies cannot be circulated in the market as they are not fiat currency. Offenders, the central bank warned, will be "investigated for criminal liability in accordance with the law."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Samoa is joining Japan, India, and China in scrapping daylight saving time, which was first proposed in 1895 so entomologist and astronomer George Hudson could study insects at night. "Hudson is dead, so daylight saving is no longer necessary," writes Mark Frauenfelder via BoingBoing. "It's time for the rest of the world to wake up and do the same." Time and Date reports: "The Ministry hereby advises that the Daylight Saving Time (DST) policy has ceased as per Cabinet Decision [...]. There will be no activation of the Daylight Saving Time policy for this year." The announcement (PDF) came from the Government of Samoa on September 20, 2021, following a decision made by Samoa's new Government Cabinet on September 15, 2021. DST was implemented in 2010 by the previous Government of Samoa to give more time after work to tend to their plantations, promote public health, and save fuel. Instead, it "[...] defeated its own goals by being used by people to socialize more," according to the Samoa Observer.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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A Texas school board voted unanimously on Monday not to extend the contract of a Black principal once targeted for posting on Facebook photos of him kissing his wife, a white woman, and again targeted with accusations he taught critical race theory. Colleyville Heritage High School principal James Whitfield was initially placed on leave for reasons Grapevine-Colleyville ISD Superintendent Robin Ryan would only describe as "a personnel matter," according to The Dallas Morning News. At the recent board meeting, the district announced that its recommendation not to renew Whitfield’s contract was based on allegations he deleted emails, was insubordinate, was dishonest with media outlets, and didn't cooperate with an internal investigation, NBC DFW reported.

Ryan said the 7-0 vote was simply a "procedural" step to make way for Whitfield to present his case, which students, parents, and other community members started to do during the public commenting period. Thirty-five of them spoke in support of Whitfield, with no one speaking in opposition, NBC DFW reported. "The decision is yours,” resident David Benedetto said at the meeting. “Make it the right one and the one that history can look back on proudly."

Whitfield is the first Black principal to lead Colleyville Heritage High School. He has repeatedly denied what he calls “baseless allegations” raised at a school board meeting that he has been teaching critical race theory. The framework maintains the U.S. legal system, and the laws it has produced are rooted in racism. And while stories like Whitfield’s ironically point to just how much truth there is in the theory, educators have been banned from teaching the framework in many places, including Texas, as Republicans use misunderstandings about the theory as a means of further whitewashing history instruction. 

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law a bill over the summer that states a teacher "may not be compelled to discuss" current events or controversial issues of social affairs. If a teacher chooses to discuss such topics, that educator should "explore the topic from diverse and contending perspectives without giving deference to any one perspective." The law, which went into effect on September 1, is Texas’ version of a ban on teaching the impacts of slavery, the Republican branding on critical race theory. Legislators don’t mention the framework by name in their ban. No, that would be a bit too on the nose for Republicans. They instead passed general language that, on a first skim, may not seem alarming but, in actuality, limits conversation in a way that fails to serve students of color in particular, and all students to some degree.

Republicans weren’t successful in their attempt to practically remove women and people of color from a portion of the required social studies curriculum outright. Still, they were able to pass as part of the legislation a ban on Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones' "1619 Project." The project correctly asserts that “no aspect of the country” has been “untouched by the years of slavery” that followed the first slave ship’s arrival to the coastal port of the English colony of Virginia in August of 1619. Other concepts banned in the law are that which show the "advent of slavery" is the "true founding of the United States" or that “an individual, by virtue of the individual ’s race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex.”

The Texas chapter of the American Federation of Teachers called the legislation a “terrible example for our schoolchildren” in a statement released in May. “The specific references by Republicans to banning Critical Race Theory and the 1619 Project make it clear that they want this to be a wedge issue for state and local political races,” the federation wrote. “The bill is part of a national movement by conservatives trying to sow a narrative of students being indoctrinated by teachers. Our members rightfully have expressed outrage against this insult of their professionalism to provide balanced conversations with students on controversial issues.

“Texas AFT and more than 70 other educational organizations oppose this bill.”

Whitfield told board members at the meeting regarding his job: "I stand before you today no different than I was when I came in '18-'19. I'm an advocate for all kids. I believe every student regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, whatever bucket you want to put them in, I believe they should have access to excellent equitable education. Yes, I said those words."

Members of the Next Generation Action Network, a lobbying group for social change, wore red T-shirts at the meeting, which they attended in support of Whitfield. NBC DFW reported that they were asked to turn their shirts inside out because they violated a rule prohibiting "signage" at board meetings. “The fight ain’t over. It’s just beginning,” one activist could be seen shouting after the meeting adjourned. Another protester shouted: “Dr. Ryan, you attacked the credibility of a good man. You are wrong. You are wrong, and you have to sleep with that.”

Whitfield wrote in a Facebook post responding to allegations against him on July 31 that he is not the critical race theory “Boogeyman.” “I am the first African American to assume the role of Principal at my current school in its 25-year history, and I am keenly aware of how much fear this strikes in the hearts of a small minority who would much rather things go back to the way they used to be,” he wrote. “But here’s the deal – I’m here, so let’s dive into their claims about me.”

Whitfield said his critics disproved of his support of the Southern Poverty Law Center, specifically his recommendation of author Lonnie Bunch III’s A Fool’s Errand: Creating the National Museum of African American History and Culture in the Age of Bush, Obama, and Trump. They disapproved of his call to end systemic racism following the murder of George Floyd, and they disproved of photos he took with his wife on a beach in Mexico, where they were celebrating their fifth anniversary. Whitfield was asked to take the photos down, and having just earned the principalship position on June 27, 2019, he obliged.

“It was at this moment that I knew the attack that we currently endure, was coming,” he said in the Facebook post later recounting the experience. “There are numerous examples of these sorts of racist threats and statements directed my way, but I continued to take the high road and focus on my mission and purpose, as nothing was ever done to alleviate or deter these threats on my behalf.”

Attorney David Henderson, who is representing Whitfield, said in a statement released on Wednesday that he’s rarely seen a Board of Trustees "mislead the public" the way the Grapevine-Colleyville school board did. Henderson also said the trustees "mischaracterized its decision as a 'procedural step.'" "However, the Board’s vote is final. Dr. Whitfield must successfully appeal the Board's decision to avoid effectively being fired as principal of Colleyville-Heritage High School," Henderson said. "Most Americans believe people deserve a fair hearing before being condemned. GCISD was only willing to grant Dr. Whitfield sixty seconds. Additionally, it refused to explain why it opposed him until more than an hour after he spoke. GCISD's ongoing lack of transparency and unfair treatment have forced Dr. Whitfield to seek a more level playing field where he will finally receive due process."

RELATED: Principal targeted for photos of him kissing white wife put on paid leave over critical race theory

RELATED: Texas governor aims to take 'I Have a Dream' speech out of schools, and that's not all

Searching for a way forward on his legacy bills, President Joe Biden held a meeting Wednesday at the White House with centrist and progressive Democrats from both chambers.  

It included progressive leaders such as Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington State and Senate Budget Committee Chair Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Centrist Democrats included, among others, Rep. Stephanie Murphy of Florida and, of course, Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.

The biggest news coming out of that meeting was the fact that the president asked centrists to name their price on the $3.5 trillion budget bill, which will have to be passed along party lines.

“He just basically said find a number you’re comfortable with,” Manchin said, according to The Hill. Biden’s message was, “Please just work on it. Give me a number,” added Manchin.

Another way of putting Biden's question is: What programs would you cut? Saving the planet? Providing Americans with affordable health care, child care, and prescription drugs? 

As Jayapal, who leads the 100-member progressive caucus, told NPR, “If there’s something that somebody wants to cut out from those priorities, then they need to let us know."

By Thursday, Manchin had obviously done some deep thinking about that question. Asked by reporters if he was getting closer to knowing his bottom line, Manchin said he was still trying to figure out "what the need is." 

Gee, not like Manchin didn't know weeks ago this would all come down to him finally detailing his ongoing nonspecific objections.  

Earlier Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York announced that the White House and Senate Democrats had coalesced around a "framework" for the revenue side of the $3.5 trillion budget bill. In other words, they had some clarity around where they would raise taxes in order to fund the Build Back Better bill.

Manchin also pooh-poohed that idea to reporters. 

"We don't know what they're taking about," he said. 

Thanks for nothing, Joe.

Manchin aside, the goal coming out of the White House meeting was for centrists and progressives to try to come to an agreement on priorities by as early as next week.

"I think it would be great to have a framework on Monday, and I think the president would agree with that," said Sen. Jon Tester of Montana, a moderate who also attended the meeting with Biden.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's ideal, according to Punchbowl News, is also to pound out a compromise framework by Monday—though that’s certainly a tall order.

Monday is also the day by which Pelosi promised House centrists a vote on the trillion-dollar bipartisan infrastructure bill. Following her weekly press conference Thursday, the speaker was noncommittal about the timing of that vote with journalist Jake Sherman. 

Pelosi is clearly walking a line in her caucus between centrists, who want the Monday vote, and progressives, who are hoping to buy a bit more time for coming to an agreement on the Democrats-only budget bill.

“We’re saying, let’s get this done,” Jayapal said. “We need a little bit more time, just maybe two weeks, three weeks, but we can do this.”

In an MSNBC interview Thursday, Jayapal did offer at least one potential path forward on scaling down the overall size of the $3.5 trillion investment: Instead of cutting programs, she said she would prefer to fund everything but for a shorter time period in some cases to cut back on costs.

"I would rather make sure that we shorten the timeframe," Jayapal explained. "Let Americans see that we're getting the benefits out immediately and see how their life changes."

The hope is that once voters see how much these investments improve their lives, the political pressure to continue the programs will motivate lawmakers to extend them.

"I think Americans will realize, No, we don't want to give this up," she added.

Despite a series of obstacles that need to be overcome on the tightest of deadlines, Pelosi said Thursday she was "confident" Democrats would deliver on both bills—the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the Democrats-only human infrastructure bill.

"It always happens the same way—all this bluster and this and that," Pelosi said, waving around her arms. "But at the end of the day, we will be unified for the American people.”

 

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Depending on the day, it often feels like there are countless topics to discuss when it comes to Rep. Lauren Boebert, our very own gun-toting, QAnon-loving, Donald Trump-lackey freshman representative of Colorado. As Daily Kos previously covered, eyes were on Boebert after her income disclosure reports revealed that her husband, Jayson Boebert, apparently failed to disclose more than $400,000 in income from energy consulting in 2020, with another $400,000 the year before that. Now, Boebert’s campaign filings are once again making headlines.

According to new filings with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), Boebert paid rent and utilities with campaign funds, as reported by The Denver Channel. If that sounds like a violation of federal campaign finance laws to you, you’re right! The filings show Boebert reimbursed her campaign in four payments, including two for $2,000 each and two more at $1,325 each, totaling $6,650, made in May and June of 2021. Why were the payments originally made, and to whom? Let’s look at what we know—and what we don’t—below.

The payments were reportedly made to Jon Pacheco, whose address is listed as the same property as Boebert’s gun-themed restaurant (yes, really), “Shooter’s Grill.”

At this point, we don’t know a whole lot more. FEC officials have already reached out to the campaign for clarification about the July campaign finance report, and according to Jake Settle, a spokesperson for Boebert who spoke to Forbes about the incident, the payments have been described as a “personal expense.” That lines up with how the Venmo payments were identified on the report, as “Personal expense of Lauren Boebert billed to campaign account in error.” This description also notes the expenses have been reimbursed. 

However, as reported by Business Insider, simply reimbursing the expense is not necessarily the end of the road. While the spokesperson did not specifically comment on Boebert’s situation, they told the outlet that campaigns can still face legal action if they use funds for personal reasons, even if those funds are later reimbursed. 

In addition to her husband’s before-mentioned energy sector consulting income, Boebert also raised some eyebrows regarding reporting her gas mileage expenses, at first claiming she drove more than 38,000 miles in just three months while on the campaign trail. To put this distance into perspective, that would be like driving across her home state of Colorado more than eight times per month. She also claimed more than $20,000 in reimbursement expenses, significantly more than her predecessors, as reported by The Denver Post at the time. Boebert maintained that her driving around and meeting folks face to face is what made her popular with constituents. 

More information about the rent and utility payments, at least, may come out in the campaign’s next finance report, which is due in October. 

Even supposedly good-faith Republicans can't bring themselves to do the right thing.

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On Tuesday, a two-page memo was revealed in which attorney John Eastman detailed a plan for overthrowing the election and handing the nation to Donald Trump in an authoritarian coup. This week, the American Political Science Society is giving Eastman a pair of speaking gigs to talk about the “the 2020 elections and the state of American conservatism” along with “the Supreme Court’s current and future direction.” In addition to this plum assignment, Eastman remains a chairman at the Federalist Society, a board member at the Claremont Institute, and a director of the Public Interest Legal Foundation.

As one of the top members of the Federalist Society, Eastman is perfectly positioned to talk about the future direction of the Supreme Court. Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett were all hand-selected by the Federalist Society. 

Claremont, where Eastman serves on the board, has been named as the Republican “think tank” that has done more than any other to “build a philosophical case for Trump’s brand of conservatism.” Claremont is also the source of a recent manifesto declaring that “most people living in the United States today—certainly more than half—are not Americans in any meaningful sense of the term.” Which certainly explains the state of conservatism.

If the Public Interest Legal Foundation isn’t as familiar as the first two, don’t worry—it’s not about anything reasonable. The Public Interest Legal Foundation exists as a front for Republicans to sue local and state governments demanding that voters be purged from election rolls. So it fits right in.

In most nations, being caught red-handed outlining a coup has some negative repercussions. In the United States, it’s the definition of a conservative all-star because conservatism no longer has anything to do with fiscal policy, or social policy, or any other kind of policy. It only has to do with power. Or, as the conservatives are more than willing to explain, conservatism is dead.

In his explanation of why most of America isn’t America, Eastman’s fellow board member Glenn Ellmers doesn’t shy away from making it clear that being a modern conservative isn’t about holding any policy position. These are things that concern “intellectuals, journalists, and the world of think tanks,” but in terms of the movement that the Claremont Institute and others are pushing, all of this is “a distraction” and “mostly irrelevant.” Political positions simply don’t play into what they’re about.

The same thing is true of the Republican Party, as “apart from Trump, the party does not really care“ about the people who want to restore “the one, authentic America.”

Conservatism, say the conservatives, is dead. That’s because “the original America is more or less gone.” There’s no point trying to conserve anything because “mainline churches, universities, popular culture, and the corporate world are rotten to the core.” This isn’t a fight about politics. No modern conservative is genuinely concerned about the national debt, or devoting one second to thinking about the best way to deal with Social Security. All that is done.

What Ellmers is calling for isn’t a fight over policies, or a fight at the polls, but simply a fight. “Learn some useful skills, stay healthy, and get strong,” writes Ellmers. “One of my favorite weightlifting coaches likes to say, ‘Strong people are harder to kill, and more useful generally.’”

In a perverse sort of way, Ellmers’ essay is right: Something has died. That something is conservatism as a political movement. In a way, it’s almost refreshing about how clear conservatives are on that point.

Long devoid of any mores or intellectual heart, that movement was easily hijacked by a reality show reject who played on racism, xenophobia, and the primal joy of smashing things. See that carefully constructed structure of regulations that balance social, economic, and environmental concerns? Let’s burn it! Look at this delicate spun glass cage of diplomacy, crafted over decades. Let’s smash it! 

All John Eastman did in his memo laying out the means for Mike Pence to overturn the legal results of an election was to extend that burn it, smash it mentality to American democracy. Democracy is fragile. It has to be fragile. It’s an agreement among the governed that they will participate in their own governing. It’s a system that requires, and is in fact based on, the idea that adult citizens of a society will act like adult citizens of a society, and place the concerns of that society over their individual desires.

Trump supporters are being extremely upfront in making it clear: They’re not playing by those rules. What Eastman laid in front of Pence is just another page of what Ellmers spelled out in his essay: There are Americans who no longer want to make any compromise for the greater good. They don’t believe there is a greater good. They don’t have policy concerns. They don’t place their faith with churches, universities, or even corporations. That doesn’t make them, as Ellmers might say, “not Americans.” It makes them dangerous Americans.

As Alfred explained to Bruce Wayne when describing the Joker, “Some men aren't looking for anything logical … Some men just want to watch the world burn.”

That statement, more than anything about abortion, or tax policy, or even guns, defines what it means to be conservative today; what it takes to be a rising star in the Republican Party; what’s required to be a pundit on Newsmax or OANN. The core belief is not that anything needs to be conserved, but that American democracy has got to go.

Which makes Eastman, who sat in the White House and provided a detailed six-point plan for America’s destruction, their perfect spokesman.

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Congress has one week to prevent a government shutdown, and Republicans are basically sitting back and saying, “Bring on the shutdown.” 

The House passed a bill on Tuesday to extend federal funding into December and suspend the debt limit until December 2022, but Senate Republicans plan to filibuster that, not because they oppose those things—Republicans voted to raise the debt ceiling three times under Donald Trump and know it needs to happen again—but because they want to force Democrats to unilaterally suspend the debt limit. Why do Republicans want Democrats to unilaterally suspend the debt limit? So Republicans can whine about how mean and autocratic Democrats are.

Got that? Republicans will shut down the government to avoid doing a thing that they want someone else to do. They’re not trying to prevent the debt limit from being raised, they’re just trying to control how it happens.

This is partly just Republicans being obstructionist asshats, as per usual—Republicans have repeatedly forced government shutdowns since the 1990s (and it has usually cost them public support) and taken the government hostage in ways just like this. But it’s also a ploy to put pressure on the major budget reconciliation bill Democrats are negotiating. That can pass the Senate with a simple majority vote, meaning Republicans can’t filibuster it, so Republicans are saying Democrats should just put the debt limit suspension in the reconciliation bill and proceed without Republican votes. 

“They have the House, the Senate and the presidency. It’s their obligation to govern,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell recently said, which is an interesting explanation of his intention to try to block Democrats from governing wherever and whenever possible. If he wants to contribute votes to abolishing the filibuster so that Democrats can pass anything in the Senate without Republican votes, then I’m sure Democrats would be happy to govern!

With Republicans planning a filibuster on the debt ceiling, “I assume Democrats go to the drawing board,” Sen. John Thune told The Hill.

The drawing board Republicans want Democrats to go to is that reconciliation bill, but there’s no guarantee Democrats can have it ready in time to avoid the U.S. bumping up against the debt ceiling and defaulting on its obligations.

That would be a disaster.

“Failing to increase the debt limit would have catastrophic economic consequences,” according to the Treasury Department, while the White House pointed out a long list of programs that could be cut off, including disaster relief, Medicaid, infrastructure funding, education, public health, child nutrition, and more.

“No one would be spared,” Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, told CNN. “It would be such a self-imposed disaster that we wouldn't recover from, all at a time when our role in the world is already being questioned.”

This needs to get done. Democrats—thanks in large part to Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema—aren’t close enough to having a reconciliation bill ready to stick the debt limit in there and pass it before the U.S. defaults on its obligations. But Democrats also think, on principle, that Republicans should be part of what has been a bipartisan process literally dozens of times, and is now needed overwhelmingly because of government spending passed under Trump and with a Republican-controlled Senate.

“Are we hostage to Republicans who are threatening to blow up a part of the economic system because they want to do that for politics?” asked Sen. Elizabeth Warren. “That’s just not where we should be as a nation.”

It’s not. The question is how to get the hostage out of Republican control.

The James Webb Space Telescope will be 100 times as powerful as the Hubble. It will change how we see the universe.

Exploring strange new worlds. Understanding the origins of the universe. Searching for life in the galaxy. These are not the plot of a new science fiction movie, but the mission objectives of the James Webb Space Telescope, the long-awaited successor to the Hubble Space Telescope.

On Christmas, NASA launched the Webb from French Guiana in partnership with the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. Now the telescope is on its way to a point nearly a million miles away from the Earth.

On its journey, the telescope has to complete a difficult mechanical maneuver: assembling itself. The telescope is so large it needed to launch folded up inside a rocket. Over the course of several weeks, it needs to unfurl its various components, from its sunshield to its mirrors. According to NASA, more than 300 potential technical problems, or “single point failures,” could potentially doom the mission.

But when it fully deploys in space, the Webb will usher in a new age of astronomy, scientists say, and show humanity things it has never seen before.

“The Webb represents the culmination of decades, if not centuries, of astronomy,” says Sara Seager, a planetary scientist and astrophysicist at MIT. “We’ve been waiting for this a very long time.”

Scientists started thinking about a follow-up even before the Hubble Space Telescope launched in 1990. After more than three decades in space, it’s unclear how much longer this boundary-breaking satellite will be able to scan and photograph the universe.

The Webb was originally supposed to launch in 2010 and cost around $1 billion. Its price tag ballooned to $10 billion, and it’s way overdue. But the wait will be worth it, at least according to the scientists who expect new and revealing glimpses of our universe.

“We’re going right up to the edge of the observable universe with Webb,” says Caitlin Casey, an assistant professor of astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin. “And yeah, we’re excited to see what’s there.”

The Webb will surpass the Hubble in several ways. It will allow astronomers to look not only farther out in space but also further back in time: It will search for the first stars and galaxies of the universe. It will allow scientists to make careful studies of numerous exoplanets — planets that orbit stars other than our sun — and even embark on a search for signs of life there.

The Webb is a machine for answering unanswered questions about the universe, for exploring what has been unexplorable until now. Here’s a guide to what the Webb is capable of.

The Webb’s golden mirror is a giant leap for telescopes of its kind

NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), A. Nota (ESA/STScI), and the Westerlund 2 Science Team

The launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, named after famed astronomer Edwin Hubble, was itself a huge leap forward for astronomy. Here on Earth, astronomers seek out remote mountaintops and deserts to build major telescopes for the best chance of viewing a dark sky away from pollution and bright lights. But their view is still marred by the slight haze and luminescence of the Earth’s atmosphere. Space is “the ultimate mountaintop,” as NASA explains. There’s no better view of space than the one from, well, space.

Hubble has meant so much during its 30-year run. For one thing, it’s sent us unforgettable, jaw-droppingly beautiful images like those of the Lagoon Nebula and the Pillars of Creation.

NASA, ESA, and STScI

It’s also taught us about the age of the universe, about what happens when stars explode, about black holes. It helped establish many of the boundaries that the Webb hopes to push. Most powerfully, its observations have led scientists to believe the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, propelled by something so mysterious that scientists simply call it “dark energy.”

The Webb is, controversially, named for the man who led NASA in the decade leading up to the moon landing. James Webb, its namesake, was a government bureaucrat at a time when it was federal policy to fire gay staffers. While current NASA administrator Bill Nelson has said that the agency has “found no evidence at this time that warrants changing the name of the James Webb Space Telescope,” more than 1,700 people have signed a petition accusing Webb of complicity in a discriminatory policy.

Namesake aside, the technological achievement of NASA’s newest telescope is uncontroversial. It’s set to take the success of the Hubble a step further.

“What we’re going to get is a telescope that’s about 100 times more powerful than Hubble,” says Amber Straughn, an astrophysicist at NASA who works on the Webb.

Michael McClare/Aaron E. Lepsch/Krystofer Kim via NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

How?

The Webb improves on Hubble in two key ways. The first is just its size: Hubble was about the size of a school bus, whereas Webb is more like the size of a tennis court. “This thing is enormous,” Straughn says. “Webb is by far the biggest telescope NASA’s ever attempted to send into space.”

But it’s not just the total size of the contraption that matters. When it comes to reflecting telescopes, the key component is the size of its curved mirror. “You could sort of think of a telescope mirror like a light bucket,” Straughn says. The more light you can collect in this bucket, the fainter and farther-away things you can see in the universe.

Hubble’s mirror was an impressive 7.8 feet in diameter. Webb’s beautiful, gold-hued mirrors combine for a diameter of 21.3 feet. Overall, that amounts to more than six times the light-collecting area.

NASA

What does that mean in practice? Well, consider one of Hubble’s most famous images, the Deep Field. In 1995, scientists set the Hubble to stare off into a teeny-tiny patch of sky (about the size of the head of a pinhead, held at arm's length from the viewer) and capture as much light as it could from that one spot.

The image that came back was astounding. Hubble uncovered thousands of galaxies in this teensy patch of sky, helping us refine the number of galaxies thought to exist in the universe.

NASA, ESA, R. Bouwens, and G. Illingworth

This photograph also revealed Hubble’s larger power — as a time machine. In astronomy, the farther away things are, the older they are (because light from faraway places takes a very long time to travel to Earth). That means this Hubble Deep Field is not only a snapshot of space: It also contains the history of our universe. Galaxies in this image appear to us as they were billions of years ago.

“What Webb will do is take that field and go even further,” UT Austin’s Casey explains. “So the tiny specks of light in the background of the Hubble Deep Field will brighten and become more detailed, we’ll be able to see spiral arms, we’ll be able to see structure, and then we’ll get more specks of light even further in the past. We’re seeing farther back in time with Webb.”

With Webb, astronomers like Casey will be able to see so far back that they’ll potentially spot the very first stars and galaxies. Hubble has seen light dating to about 400 million years after the Big Bang, which took about 13.3 billion years to reach us.

“That’s far! But Webb has the capability to take us to 250 million years after the Big Bang,” explains Casey, who has been approved to work with the Webb Space Telescope. “It might not sound like a big difference. What’s a few hundred million years between friends? Actually, it’s the difference between seeing the first stars that ever turned on [and] arriving a bit too late after the funeral.”

Astronomers call this period when the first starlight shone through the universe “cosmic dawn.” With the Webb, humanity will be able to glimpse at it for the very first time.

Beyond that are barriers through which even the Webb cannot see. Prior to the first starlight, the universe was shrouded by a “dense, obscuring fog of primordial gas,” as the National Science Foundation explains. There’s no light that reaches our telescopes from this time, which is called the cosmic dark ages.

(There is some background radiation from the Big Bang called the cosmic microwave background, a faint glow that shines to us from before the dark ages. But for the most part, the dark ages is a blank spot in our timeline of the universe.)

Casey and other astronomers hope the Webb will help them understand the end of the dark ages and figure out what caused this fog to lift, ushering in cosmic dawn. Scientists suspect the starlight from the earliest galaxies did it.

“If you have a cloud of gas and it encounters energetic light, that energetic light will ionize that gas and disassociate that cloud,” Casey says. “And so if that light just has turned on, it then hits that gas and really transforms the entire universe from a dark place to a light place.”

The Webb telescope sees infrared light — which can be very, very old

NASA/Chris Gunn

The Webb’s other advantage is the type of light it collects.

Light comes in a lot of different varieties. The human eye can see only a narrow band known as visible light, but the universe contains lots and lots of light outside this range, including the higher-frequency, higher-energy forms: ultraviolet, gamma rays. Then there’s the lower-energy light with longer wavelengths: infrared, microwaves, radio.

The Hubble Space Telescope collects visible light, ultraviolet, and a little bit of infrared. The Webb is primarily an infrared telescope, so it sees light that’s in a longer wavelength than what our eyes can see. This seems nerdy and technical, but it’s actually what allows Webb to look further back in time than the Hubble.

Infrared light is often very old light, due to a phenomenon call redshifting. When a light source is moving away from a viewer, it gets stretched out, morphing into a longer and longer wavelength, growing redder. (The opposite is true as well: As a light source grows closer, the wavelengths shorten, growing bluer.) It’s similar to what happens when a siren goes by: The pitch increases as the siren approaches, then decreases as it trails away.

Because space is constantly expanding, the farthest things away from us in the universe are moving away from us. “And as light travels through space from those distant galaxies, the light is literally stretched by the expansion of space,” Straughn says.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (Caltech-IPAC)

Imagine a star that’s really far away. The light from that star may start off in the visible spectrum, but it gets stretched on its journey to us. It grows redder and redder. “So when we see distant galaxies with Hubble, they’re sort of these little, tiny red nuggets,” Straughn says. Eventually, these very distant, old galaxies grow so red that they drop into the infrared spectrum. Webb can see this ancient light that has become invisible to the human eye.

Conveniently, infrared light has other uses as well. It’s a really good type of light to use to look at exoplanets. For instance, if you were on a planet that orbits another star and wanted to see Earth, visible light wouldn’t be your best bet.

“The Earth peaks in the infrared,” says Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory astronomer Kevin Stevenson, who plans to use the Webb in his research. So if we want to be able to study an Earth-like planet in another solar system, “What we really want to do is observe at infrared wavelengths, because that’s where the light from the Earth is being emitted.”

Exoplanet scientists like Stevenson are going to use the Webb to analyze the atmospheres of these worlds: The Webb is capable of determining some of the chemicals in their atmospheres. “We can detect water, CO, CO2, methane,” Stevenson says. While those aren’t definitive signs of life on their own, they could begin to ask fascinating questions: What created that methane and carbon dioxide? Could it have been life?

“We all want to find another Earth, don’t we?” Stevenson says. “The prospect of answering the question ‘are we alone?’ has been something that we’ve been asking ourselves for centuries. And I think with James Webb, this will provide us the first opportunity to really answer that question.”

This $10 billion gadget better not break

Scientists are clearly raring to go, but the Webb revolution has taken a while. One reason for all the launch delays had to do with contractor snafus. But a big source of all of them, NASA’s Straughn says, is the complexity of the Webb itself.

“Because it’s so big, there aren’t any rockets that are big enough to launch it fully deployed,” Straughn says. That’s why the telescope had to be folded up to fit inside a rocket. “So that whole process of building a deployable telescope in space is the source of a lot of the engineering challenges.”

Upping the stakes is the fact that while Hubble was launched to around 340 miles above the Earth, Webb will be almost a million miles away — four times the distance from the Earth to the moon.

It means Webb will be unserviceable by human hands if it breaks. That’s scary, considering the history of the Hubble. Shortly after the Hubble launched in 1990, engineers realized there was a problem with its mirror; the telescope’s initial images came back fuzzy, and astronauts had to launch a space shuttle to fix it. That won’t be possible with the Webb. It just has to work.

It will be far away for good reason. Because Webb is an infrared telescope, it needs to be kept cold. The Earth itself is warm and glows in infrared. “Anything warm glows in infrared light,” Straughn says. “If the telescope was warm, it would just glow and see itself.”

The Webb will orbit around what’s called a Lagrange point. This is a point in space where the telescope can keep cold and, critically, also stay in line with the Earth as both orbit around the sun.

Michael McClare/Aaron E. Lepsch/Josh Masters via NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Remarkably, any scientist around the world can apply to use the Webb Space Telescope, provided they write up a project proposal that passes peer review. It’s pretty competitive. In 2020, the Space Telescope Science Institute, which operates space telescopes from John Hopkins University in Maryland, put out a call for proposals for Webb’s first observing run. About a quarter of the proposals were accepted.

“It feels like part of me is still stunned,” says Lisa Dang, a physics PhD student at McGill University who was one of the lucky few to get approved to use the Webb. “And the other part is having this imposter syndrome — like, these data better be really amazing.”

Dang is set to study one of the most extreme planets ever discovered: K2-141 b, a planet 202 light-years from Earth and so close to its host star that its surface is believed to be covered by an ocean of lava. If it has clouds, they are likely made out of vaporized rock, which could then precipitate out “rock rain.” Not much is confirmed about this lava planet, but Dang will use the Webb to study its atmosphere and see what’s possible on this extreme world.

Winning the project proposal “made me feel like an astronomer for the first time,” Dang says. “But it also makes K2-141 b very real suddenly.”

This is the power of an unprecedented telescope such as the Webb. It will help astronomers like Dang fill in the blank spaces of the cosmos.

“It’s wild, when you think about it, that we’re able to piece together the history of what happened before the Earth or the sun even existed,” Casey says.

If all goes according to plan, these kinds of breakthroughs could come in a matter of months.

Update, January 4: This story has been updated with news on the James Webb Space Telescope’s launch and the controversy surrounding the naming of the telescope.

Pfizer's CEO sent a video message to company employees urging them to fight proposed government drug price negotiations and expressing frustration with Congress, which is considering using the projected savings to help pay for a $3.5 trillion social spending package.

Albert Bourla said he was "particularly disappointed" that a House Democratic leadership-backed drug pricing plan and similar proposals "will have a little positive impact on patients where it really matters at the pharmacy," according to the three-minute video, a copy of which was obtained by POLITICO.

While Bourla echoed complaints previously raised by pharmaceutical companies about proposed reforms slowing new drug development, he framed advocacy against the measures as another effort for his staff on the back of an exceptional year in which the company's Covid-19 vaccine became a keystone of the global pandemic response.

“When we asked the Pfizer colleagues to develop a Covid-19 vaccine in less than a year, you did. When we asked you to rapidly expand manufacturing so we can produce 3, 4 billion doses per year, you did it,” Bourla said. “Now, we are asking you to do something equally important to educate yourself regarding policies that will help our breakthroughs get into the hands of those who need them, while protecting our sector’s ability to develop those breakthroughs in the first place.”

He added that the company would share methods to raise awareness on the issue in the next few days.

The emailed video included a link labeled “CLICK HERE To e-mail your Member of Congress today.” A disclaimer at the bottom read: “Participation in any Pfizer Grassroots mobilization is completely voluntary and is not a requirement of your employment at Pfizer.”

Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s drug pricing plan, H.R. 3 (117), would direct the government to negotiate prices on a set number of high-cost drugs, a move the Congressional Budget Office estimates could save more than $450 billion over 10 years. Congressional Democrats are proposing to use the projects savings to pay for the party's other health care priorities, including a more than $300 billion expansion of Medicare to include vision, dental and hearing care. But budget experts also projected that the price controls would result in eight fewer new medicines coming to market over 10 years, and 30 fewer in the subsequent decade.

Bourla’s call to action is the latest as pharmaceutical companies mobilize to fight Democrats’ proposed drug pricing reforms. The industry's big Washington lobby PhRMA on Sept. 15 issued a letter signed by every member company that argued that manufacturers' ability to innovate is “under attack.” The lobby launched a seven-figure television and web ad campaign the same week, including ads in POLITICO.

House Democratic leaders meanwhile are forging ahead with price negotiation in their social spending package despite dissent from within their caucus. But Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.), who is leading the House opposition among Democrats, said this week that he is shopping a narrower version of drug price negotiations to other lawmakers, including Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who's argued for a smaller package.

Pfizer and other pharmaceutical companies have backed narrower measures aimed at lower drug prices, such as eliminating rebates they pay to pharmacy benefit managers and capping out-of-pocket costs for patients. While the latter enjoys broad support, the former comes with a projected cost of nearly $200 billion that has also divided lawmakers.

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Mitch McConnell has a gift for destroying things. He's destroyed the Senate as a political institution that was once functional. He's destroyed the Supreme Court as a relatively apolitical institution in which Americans once had some level of trust. And by destroying the Senate and the Supreme Court, he's taken a hatchet to U.S. democracy, which is currently hanging by a thread.

Next up for McConnell: destroying the global economy. Causing an economic Chernobyl by failing to raise the U.S. debt ceiling seems like a bad idea. Except from a political terrorist’s POV: Republicans would be able to blame it on Democrats, so who cares if the global economy tanks, lives are ruined, and people starve?

On Wednesday, McConnell—leaving out some choice details—explained how it all works in a political terrorist’s worldview.

“We all agree America must never default, the debt ceiling will need to be raised,” McConnell began. “We have a Democratic president, a Democratic House, Democratic Senate." Much like Republicans controlled everything in 2017/2018.

McConnell then said Democrats had operated on "a partisan basis" to pass the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill—which was exactly what Republicans did to pass their 2017 tax giveaway to the rich on a party-line vote. The main difference between the two bills was this: Democrats passed pandemic aid to shore up the economy, feed people, get the nation vaccinated, and save lives amid a global plague. Republicans passed their lavish tax cuts to enrich fat cats—and added some $2 trillion to the national debt in the process.

McConnell also speciously included the "reckless" Build Back Better Act, which hasn't even been passed into law yet so it's irrelevant to the issue of the national debt already amassed. 

"So my advice to this Democratic government," McConnell said, "don’t play Russian roulette with our economy. Step up and raise the debt ceiling to cover all that you’ve been engaged in all year long." 

Oh, lookey, Mitchy left out the nearly $8 trillion in debt Republicans led the way in racking up during Donald Trump's 4-year tenure. Imagine that—epic Mitch memory fail on a historic ballooning of the debt under GOP rule. How perfectly deceitful of him.

"So no effort to describe our position as irresponsible makes any sense," McConnell continued, "because the facts are indisputable. This is a totally Democratic government, they have an obligation to raise the debt ceiling, and they will do it."

Ah, yes, and the classic killing of another congressional norm on Mitch McConnell's watch. The debt ceiling has been raised or suspended some 80 times since 1960—almost always on a bipartisan basis, regardless of who's in the White House, who controls Congress, and who racked up the debt. Congress last suspended the debt ceiling in August 2019 in a bipartisan budget bill. In fact, the lion's share of the nation’s most recent debt happened on Trump's watch, but now McConnell says Democrats and Democrats alone must clean up the GOP's mess. 

So, apparently, Democrats must go it alone. And this is where McConnell's treachery gets extra special. Democrats have just enough senators to raise the debt ceiling on a party-line vote except that... wait for it... Republicans plan to filibuster the bill, so it would require ten GOP senators to clear the procedural hurdle—rendering it out of reach for Democrats alone.

From NBC News: “Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, promised to filibuster it, saying there is ‘no universe’ in which he would consent to allowing a simple majority vote on extending the debt limit.”

Nice. So here's McConnell's logic: Democrats are solely responsible for paying the debts racked up under Republican rule, and they must do it and conceivably could do it, except that my GOP caucus and I won't let them do it. 

As McConnell said, “No effort to describe our position as irresponsible makes any sense.”

Agreed, irresponsible really doesn't do Mitch McConnell's political terrorism justice.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has warned employees about leaking company information. Cook's memo: Dear Team, It was great to connect with you at the global employee meeting on Friday. There was much to celebrate, from our remarkable new product line-up to our values driven work around climate change, racial equity, and privacy. It was a good opportunity to reflect on our many accomplishments and to have a discussion about what's been on your mind. I'm writing today because I've heard from so many of you were incredibly frustrated to see the contents of the meeting leak to reporters. This comes after a product launch in which most of the details of our announcements were also leaked to the press. I want you to know that I share your frustration. These opportunities to connect as a team are really important. But they only work if we can trust that the content will stay within Apple. I want to reassure you that we are doing everything in our power to identify those who leaked. As you know, we do not tolerate disclosures of confidential information, whether it's product IP or the details of a confidential meeting. We know that the leakers constitute a small number of people. We also know that people who leak confidential information do not belong here. As we look forward, I want to thank you for all you've done to make our products a reality and all you will do to get them into customers' hands. Yesterday we released iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and watchOS 8, and Friday marks the moment when we share some of our incredible new products with the world. There's nothing better than that. We'll continue to measure our contributions in the lives we change, the connections we foster, and the work we do to leave the world a better place.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There is only one answer to this sort of bad faith: A procedural punch in the teeth.

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On the afternoon of July 23, an Army veteran named Kyle Vinson is sitting on a curb in Aurora, Colorado, when two police officers confront him. “Stay down! Roll over on your face,” one of the officers yells. He has his gun drawn. The officer shoves Vinson to the ground and holds him there. “Whoa. What the hell did I do, dude?” Vinson asks. He puts his hands up. The police are responding to a trespassing report and tell Vinson that there is a warrant out for his arrest. A minute later, the officer pistol-whips him. He eventually chokes Vinson to the point where he is gasping for air. While gripping Vinson’s neck, the officer threatens him: “If you move, I’ll shoot you.” By that point, Vinson’s head is covered in his own blood.

What happened to Vinson this past summer—captured on the officer’s own body cam—is an all-too-common experience for Black men in America. What happened in the days that followed, however, was far more unusual. The chief of the Aurora Police Department, Vanessa Wilson, quickly released the officer’s body-cam footage and abjectly apologized to Vinson in a news conference. The officer who brutalized him, John Haubert, was charged with assault and resigned from the police force the same week. Haubert’s partner on the scene, Francine Martinez, was charged under state law with failing to intervene on Vinson’s behalf.

For advocates of police reform in Colorado, the swift response to Vinson’s assault offered unmistakable evidence that a first-in-the-nation law they lobbied to enact last year is working. “What you’re seeing is just a greater willingness to bring criminal charges against police officers,” one of Vinson’s attorneys, Qusair Mohamedbhai, told me. “That’s a direct impact of the legislature passing these bills.”

The Enhance Law Enforcement Integrity Act, which moved rapidly through Colorado’s Democratic-led legislature while protesters marched outside the state capitol in Denver during a wave of nationwide demonstrations, touches nearly every aspect of policing. It requires officers to wear body cameras at all times and for departments to promptly release footage of incidents. It redefines the use of force by police, stiffens penalties for misconduct, and exposes officers to personal liability if they violate a person’s constitutional rights.

[Read: The state where protests have already forced major police reform]

Many of the law’s provisions have yet to fully take effect. But signs of its early impact are everywhere, and nowhere more so than in Aurora, the city of 385,000 residents just east of Denver where 23-year-old Elijah McClain died two summers ago after police forced him to the ground and paramedics injected him with ketamine. The protests that swept the nation after George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis brought renewed attention to McClain’s death nearly a year earlier, prompting Colorado lawmakers to act. Governor Jared Polis separately directed the state attorney general, Phil Weiser, to reexamine the McClain case, and earlier this month, Weiser brought charges against five police officers and paramedics in his death. Last week, under authority granted to him by the 2020 law, Weiser issued a 118-page report finding that the Aurora police had engaged in “a pattern and practice of racially biased policing, using excessive force, and failing to record required information when it interacts with the community.” Weiser’s office is now moving to force Aurora to change its policies and subject the city to more state oversight.

Aurora is also the site of the first test of the new law’s provision allowing victims of police violence to sue officers for damages. In January, lawyers filed suit on behalf of Brittany Gilliam against the city of Aurora and the five police officers who last August handcuffed her at gunpoint in front of her children after they wrongly identified the family’s car as stolen.

If the immediate goal of Colorado’s law is to bring more transparency and accountability to law enforcement, then the state’s experience, particularly in Aurora, offers hope to reformers across the country. But on the broader aim of the legislation—to permanently change the culture of policing—the initial impact is hazier. “The honest answer is there’s still a lot to be played out,” Weiser told me. Gilliam may see faster justice in court because of the new law, and the officers who mistreated Vinson are facing consequences they might not have otherwise. Yet the mere fact that these disturbing incidents occurred at all, and that they both involved the troubled police force that inspired the law, is a testament to the limits of its reach. “That’s just the tip of the iceberg. They have been involved in way more incidents than even that,” Gilliam’s lawyer, David Lane, told me of the Aurora police. “They don’t view their duty as to protect and serve—they view their duty as to occupy and intimidate.”

The Aurora Police Department cooperated with Weiser’s investigation and is so far not fighting his push for further reforms. “We acknowledge there are changes to be made,” Wilson, the police chief, said in response to the report. She declined a request to be interviewed for this story. “Chief Wilson is a big proponent of police reform, and moving our agency forward, which she has demonstrated by holding numerous officers accountable to their actions,” Matthew Longshore, a spokesperson for the department, wrote to me in an email.

In his report, Weiser found that the Aurora police were failing to comply with the 2020 law’s requirement that it document every officer interaction with the public and that it was providing inadequate guidance to its officers on when a stop was appropriate. This was the attorney general’s first major investigation of the new law.

If Aurora wasn’t complying, I asked him, did he worry that other departments were ignoring it too? “That’s a very good question,” Weiser replied.

Leslie Herod, the Democratic state representative who helped write the 2020 law, told me she had been pleased by its implementation and its initial impact. More officers have been charged with misconduct since its enactment, she said, and more officers were intervening or reporting misconduct to avoid penalties the law put in place. “I do believe it’s working,” Herod said. “There’s still work to be done, but we’re moving in the right direction.” Reports from multiple Colorado police departments of an exodus of officers partly as a result of the law, she said, was more evidence of its impact. “It’s going to take time to weed these folks out, but we are seeing change,” Herod said.

For Kyle Vinson and Brittany Gilliam, each recovering from the physical and emotional trauma of their encounter with Aurora police, the law has helped bring the promise of justice that could be fulfilled in criminal and civil trials. The true test of Colorado’s reform and of the many other states that have acted to improve policing, however, won’t be determined by courtroom verdicts. Their success or failure will depend on whether, over time, those kinds of charges and lawsuits against badly behaving cops are rendered unnecessary altogether.

New research published in the journal American Political Science Review revealed that people who expressed extreme dislike toward Democratically-aligned minority groups were more likely to approve of Donald Trump when he made his way into politics — regardless of their party alignment. Animosity toward these groups did not predict support for other Republican candidates, suggesting the effect is unique to Trump. Study authors Lilliana Mason and her colleagues note that American political parties are becoming further divided on key aspects of identity such as race and religion. It follows that …

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House Republican Conference chair Elise Stefanik wouldn’t dare call out Jan. 6 insurrectionists and their failed attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, won fair and square by President Joe Biden. That’s how she got her current gig, after all. So she’s instead stooping to calling undocumented immigrants the actual insurrectionists—and echoing a white supremacist conspiracy theory in the process.

“Radical Democrats are planning their most aggressive move yet: a PERMANENT ELECTION INSURRECTION,” Elise for Congress claimed in one Facebook ad last week, according to Zachary Mueller of America’s Voice. “Their plan to grant amnesty to 11 MILLION illegal immigrants will overthrow our current electorate and create a permanent liberal majority in Washington.” Just days later, Stefanik doubled down.

“After national press attention condemning Stefanik's use of the white nationalist 'replacement theory' in her Fbook ads warning of an ‘election insurrection’ ... she has doubled down and is STILL running these ads,” Mueller tweeted Monday. “In total, Stefanik paid Facebook to show these xenophobic dog-whistle ads to over a million Facebook users, all but 5% of whom lived outside New York with the majority being over the age of 55,” he wrote last week. “Stefanik is not using these ads to communicate a message to voters in her district,” he notes. “Instead, she is targeting older Americans across the country who react positively to online racialized fear-mongering.” 

Daily Kos’ Dave Neiwert has written extensively on “replacement theory,” a white supremacist conspiracy theory “also has been credited with inspiring multiple acts of mass murder and terrorism,” he noted earlier this year. This white supremacist belief has more recently found a home on Fox News via Tucker Carlson. It also found a home among the House Republican caucus way before Stefanik’s disgusting ads, echoed by Pennsylvania’s Scott Perry in April.

“For many Americans,” The Washington Post reports Perry said during a hearing on Central American migration, “what seems to be happening or what they believe right now is happening is, what appears to them is we’re replacing national-born American—native-born Americans to permanently transform the landscape of this very nation.” Like the Post noted, never mind that it was Perry, like Stefanik, who sought to “transform the landscape of this very nation” by supporting overturning the election. Facts, smacts.

Among the national press attention that slammed Stefanik’s ads came from her hometown newspaper, which “offered a scathing response” to her rhetoric, HuffPost reported. “Quite a choice of words, of course, considering that the country is still suffering the aftershocks of the Jan. 6 insurrection in Washington by supporters of Mr. Trump who tried to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election,” The Times Union Editorial Board said. “The Harvard-educated Ms. Stefanik surely knows the sordid history and context of this.”

That suggests that Stefanik should know better, and indeed, Stefanik is on the record criticizing the previous president as of just a few years ago. “In fact, at times Stefanik sounded practically like a Never Trumper, as she called on Trump to recognize that Russia had attacked the 2016 election to help him, urged him to release his tax returns, and assailed him for his comments about women,” Mother Jones reported in May. Some might argue that Stefanik is a weathervane adjusting to whatever winds are necessary to hold onto power. Or maybe, just maybe, Stefanik’s now finally showing us exactly who she is.

Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona apparently doesn't want a future in politics. One has to win the votes of at least one party or another to do that, and Sinema is all but guaranteeing herself a primary challenge on the left.

Sinema was a general pain in the butt during President Joe Biden's urgent efforts earlier this year to pass pandemic relief, but Biden and other Democrats still got most of the what they wanted out of that $1.9 trillion measure. It wasn't perfect, but it included direct payments, an extension of unemployment benefits, child tax credits (i.e. a tax cut for American families), and COVID-19 funds for schools, municipalities and states, among other initiatives.

Next, Sinema insisted on taking a central role in negotiating a trillion-dollar bipartisan infrastructure bill that progressive Democrats panned and would have much rather simply rolled into the larger Democrats-only budget bill. 

But progressives voted to advance that bill anyway with the understanding that the $3.5 trillion budget bill would include key priorities like Medicare expansion, climate change initiatives, affordable child care, and paid family leave, among many others.

For over a month, Sinema has been signaling general discontent over the size of the budget bill—which will mostly be paid for anyway. But over the past week, Sinema has made it clear she wants to take a hatchet to several of progressive Democrats' biggest priorities, which also happen to be wildly popular with voters and great politics for the midterms.

Overall, Sinema's objections to the big-picture investment along with key provisions in the $3.5 trillion budget bill have helped provide cover for a swath of moderate congressional Democrats to voice their own objections and potentially talk themselves out of voting for it. Simply put, Sinema is stirring the pot to no good effect and could wind up tanking both the $3.5 trillion budget bill and the bipartisan infrastructure bill.

But let's start with the provision allowing Medicare to negotiate lower prescription drug prices, which polls at nearly 90% according to the Kaiser Family Foundation—a big part of the reason why vulnerable Democrats in swing seats are desperate to include it in the Democrats-only bill. A recent Gallup survey also found that roughly 7% of Americans have been unable to pay for prescribed drugs over the last three months and 10% have been skipping doses to keep medical costs under control.

The drug pricing provision is almost assuredly the most popular provision in the bill, but Sinema has reportedly told the White House she objects to the versions in the House and Senate bills along with one that has been advanced by a House moderate as an alternative. The drug pricing provision is also critical to funding the bill. Democrats estimate it could save the government anywhere from $500 billion to $700 billion, which they intend to invest in expanding Medicare coverage to hearing, dental, and vision care.

Four House Democrats on key committees voted against the drug pricing provision last week—a move Sinema's opposition surely encouraged. 

But Sinema hasn't stopped there. Now she wants to add restrictions around who's eligible for federal help with pre-K and community college—which Biden originally hoped to make accessible across the board. It's all targeted toward reducing the size of the $3.5 trillion investment—which again, doesn't need to be a focus since Democrats plan to raise taxes on the nation's wealthiest individuals and corporations to pay for the bill. Why not simply find a way to fund important safety-net provisions rather than whittle them down?

The broader question politically, is WTF is Sinema doing? She is almost certainly inviting a Democratic primary in 2024. Her maneuvering is so bizarre that some people posit she's planning on getting out of politics altogether and instead landing a lucrative lobbying gig. Just today, a politically astute resident in Arizona made the case on TPM that Sinema might be planning to go independent. The one silver lining in that TPM piece is the fact Sinema has repeatedly been getting credit for already delivering for Arizonans based on the bipartisan infrastructure bill (that isn’t even law yet). If she manages to tank that bill, that point of praise would entirely dry up—which would be a political disaster for her.

If Sinema is planning on staying in politics, it seems a horrible misread of the politics to tick off Democrats in your own state while taking a whack at a drug pricing provision that is almost universally popular among voters across the political spectrum. And according to Civiqs tracking, Democrats are really ticked off.

As Daily Kos has covered, the novel coronavirus pandemic has not slowed down Republican efforts to exclude and discriminate against trans folks. It’s quite clear that many in the GOP have been eager to distract from Republican pandemic failures and decided to latch onto anti-trans hysteria about youth sports as a means of keeping people’s rage occupied. While conservatives are quick to spew hateful rhetoric both online and in-person, real trans people—including children and teenagers—are struggling to find safe, accessible spaces to survive.

Over the summer, the Biden administration issued federal guidance meant to protect openly LGBTQ+ workers, which is a significant step forward. For example, the guidance specifies that the misuse of a worker’s pronouns and name can be considered harassment in some instances and that workers should be allowed to use the bathrooms, showers, and locker rooms that align with their gender identity. That’s great. What isn’t great? As of Monday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, is suing the administration over it, as covered by the Texas Tribune. And he isn’t alone.

First, let’s look at a bit of the guidance that has Republicans so riled up. “If an employer has separate bathrooms,” the guidance states in part. “Locker rooms, or showers for men and women, all men (including transgender men) should be allowed to use the men’s facilities, and all women (including transgender women) should be allowed to use the women’s facilities.” Seems reasonable. 

So, on what grounds is Paxton suing? It’s pretty technical but not unusual for Republicans at this point. For context, 20 Republican-led states joined a lawsuit challenging the same guidance in the past few months alone. More than 20 Republican state attorneys general also signed a letter against the EEOC guidance, claiming it will only cause unnecessary confusion. 

According to the Texas lawsuit, Paxton is arguing that the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination against employees on the basis of sex.

How so? The lawsuit argues that the EEOC lacks authority to issue this guidance, claiming that the Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County was too narrow to apply. Paxton describes the guidance as “unacceptable” as well as “illegal.” In a statement, Paxton insisted that: “If the Biden Administration thinks they can force states to comply with their political agenda, my office will fight against their radical attempt at social change.” Ah yes, the old political agenda of… giving people basic rights, protections, and respect. This shouldn’t be “radical,” but in this country, it certainly is. 

Unsurprisingly, Paxton also went the old, disingenuous “women and children” route, adding, “States should be able to choose protection of privacy for their employers over subjective views of gender, and this illegal guidance puts many women and children at risk.” What about trans women and girls who are at risk for harassment and abuse? Not a peep, of course.