Climate change will displace millions Wildfires tearing across Southern California have forced thousands of residents to evacuate from their homes. Even more people fled ahead of the hurricanes that slammed into Texas and Florida earlier this year, jamming highways and filling hotels. A viral social media post showed a flight-radar picture of people trying to escape Florida and posed a provocative question: What if the adjoining states were countries and didn’t grant escaping migrants refuge? By the middle of this century, experts estimate that climate change is likely to displace between 150 and 300 million people. If this group formed a country, it would be the fourth-largest in the world, with a population nearly as large as that of the United States.
Election interference has been going on for years. The reason? Voter purges In every American election there are some voters who show up to their polling place ready to cast a ballot, only to find their name isn’t on the registration list. The reason? Voter purges, an often flawed effort to update voter rolls by removing voters’ names from registration lists. Virginians fell victim in 2013, when nearly 39,000 voters were removed when the state relied on faulty data to determine which names should be deleted. In 2016 it was New Yorkers, when the New York City board of elections wrongly deleted more than 200,000 names. No area of America is immune, as purges have grown against the backdrop of a controversial supreme court decision in 2013 that gutted federal protections for voters.
Did the U.S. have a record tax haul after Trump tax cuts spurred economic growth? One of President Donald Trump’s favorite talking points is to tout the economic impact of the tax cut bill he signed into law last December. Web posts at friendly outlets have taken up the rallying cry. One of those sites was Patriot News Alerts, a site that says it opposes "the Deep State, the liberal media, social-justice Hollywood, leftist colleges." One post was headlined, "U.S. government reports record tax haul after Trump tax cuts spur economic growth." This story was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed.
Plummeting insect numbers 'threaten collapse of nature' The world’s insects are hurtling down the path to extinction, threatening a “catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems”, according to the first global scientific review. More than 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered, the analysis found. The rate of extinction is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds and reptiles. The total mass of insects is falling by a precipitous 2.5% a year, according to the best data available, suggesting they could vanish within a century. We don’t want billionaires’ charity. We want them to pay their taxes “Charity is a cold, grey loveless thing. If a rich man wants to help the poor, he should pay his taxes gladly, not dole out money at a whim.” It is a phrase commonly ascribed to Clement Attlee – the credit actually belongs to his biographer, Francis Beckett – but it elegantly sums up the case for progressive taxation.
U.S. Not Ranked the 'Cleanest' Country President Donald Trump recently said “we’ve got the cleanest country in the planet right now” when it comes to “clean air” and “clean water.” Rankings compiled by researchers at Yale and Columbia universities say otherwise. Out of 180 countries studied, the U.S. comes in at No. 27 on the 2018 Environmental Performance Index, which scores countries based on their performances in a number of categories covering environmental health and ecosystem vitality. On air quality, the U.S. ranked 10th, and on water and sanitation, it placed 29th. The topic of clean air and water came up in remarks Trump made this week during a campaign-style rally in Charleston, West Virginia.
People who think their opinions are superior to others are most prone to overestimating their relevant knowledge and ignoring chances to learn more By guest blogger Tom Stafford We all know someone who is convinced their opinion is better than everyone else’s on a topic – perhaps, even, that it is the only correct opinion to have. Maybe, on some topics, you are that person. How the black middle class was attacked by Woodrow Wilson’s administration When Woodrow Wilson arrived in the nation’s capital in March 1913, he brought with him an administration loaded with white supremacists. Wilson’s lieutenants segregated offices, harassed black workers and removed black politicians from political appointments held by black men for more than a generation. Racism had always been a part of life in Washington and its government buildings, but the U.S. civil service had never been formally segregated prior to Wilson’s inauguration. More than a century later, Wilson’s racist legacy was called out by protesting students at Princeton University. In response, in November 2015 the university agreed to examine the past of the former university president whose name graces both a residential college and a graduate school.
How the US economy is doing now in four charts While he was on the campaign trail, President Donald Trump promised to grow the country's economy by more than 4% per year, a rate not seen since the mid-2000s. On Friday, his prediction came true. The government reported that gross domestic product grew at a 4.1% annual rate in the second quarter, up from 2.2% in the first quarter. By many metrics, the economy is in excellent shape: Unemployment is near an 18-year low, factories are seeing more orders, and exports are surging.