We begin today with David Gelles of The New York Times reporting on the various national climate emergencies as of late.
Catastrophic floods in the Hudson Valley. An unrelenting heat dome over Phoenix. Ocean temperatures hitting 90 degrees Fahrenheit off the coast of Miami. A surprising deluge in Vermont, a rare tornado in Delaware.
A decade ago, any one of these events would have been seen as an aberration. This week, they are happening simultaneously as climate change fuels extreme weather, prompting Governor Kathy Hochul of New York, a Democrat, to call it “our new normal.” […]
And yet even as storms, fires and floods become increasingly frequent, climate change lives on the periphery for most voters. In a nation focused on inflation, political scandals and celebrity feuds, just 8 percent of Americans identified global warming as the most important issue facing the country, according to a recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll.
As climate disasters become more commonplace, they may be losing their shock value. A 2019 study concluded that people learn to accept extreme weather as normal in as little as two years.
Justin Rowlatt of BBC News reminds us that climate emergencies are taking place all over the world.
In the UK, the June heat didn’t just break all-time records, it smashed them. It was 0.9C hotter than the previous record, set back in 1940. That is a huge margin.
There is a similar story of unprecedented hot weather in North Africa, the Middle East and Asia. […]
When we think about how hot it is, we tend to think about the air temperature, because that’s what we experience in our daily lives.
But most of the heat stored near the surface of the Earth is not in the atmosphere, but in the oceans. And we’ve been seeing some record ocean temperatures this spring and summer.
The North Atlantic, for example, is currently experiencing the highest surface water temperatures ever recorded.
There are, however, other less obvious risks. One of them has to do with the possible effects of rising temperatures on hate speech, harassment, and voluntary homicide, resulting, therefore, in a risk of increased social conflicts.
A researcher of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research Annika Stabmesser, in 2022, published a study in which she analyzed more than 4 billion tweets using machine learning.
Her conclusion: in situations where the temperature reached extreme values, that is, between 42ºC and 45ºC, the prevalence of tweets that included hate speech increased by 22%, when compared to tweets that were made in a context of moderate temperature.
Harvard University researcher Ayushi Narayan, a specialist in labor economics, also conducted a study in which she evaluated the correlation between heat and discriminatory and harassing behavior in the workplace, using a sample of postal service workers in the United States.
On days when the temperature exceeded 32.2 °C, harassing behavior increased by 5%.
Devlin Barrett of The Washington Post reports that Number 45’s need to “delay, delay, delay” a number of present and future legal proceedings starting with a court filing late last night in the classified documents case.
In a 12-page filing late Monday night, Trump’s lawyers Christopher Kise and Todd Blanche claimed that putting the former president on trial later this year for alleged mishandling of classified papers and obstruction will be “unreasonable, telling, and would result in a miscarriage of justice.”
The lawyers argued that no trial date be set for the time being, while the two sides work through pre-trial motions and hearings. To that end, Trump’s defense team offered a host of reasons for pushing the trial into at least 2024, and suggest it should be pushed even further, until after the presidential election in order to ensure a fair jury.
OTOH, it’s important to know whether someone who wants to become the President of the United States “is not a crook.”
University of Chicago law professor Sonja B. Starr writes for The New York Times about the next stages of the battle concerning affirmative action.
The next — and even more important — stage of the battle concerns the future of all race-conscious policymaking. Is it ever permissible for policymakers to pursue goals like racial diversity, even when they use laws and policies that don’t treat individuals differently based on race?
That might sound like an outlandish question even to ask, let alone to answer in the negative. But the first wave of legal cases posing this challenge has already arrived. They concern the admissions policies of highly selective public high schools that sought greater racial diversity through race-neutral means, like showing a preference for poor applicants. The plaintiffs argue that these policies are unconstitutional because, they contend, the goal remains racially discriminatory.
The implication of these cases for the future of higher education has already begun to attract some public attention — and for good reason. The high school admissions policies at issue are effectively the same as those that universities are likely to soon adopt to try to preserve diversity in the post-affirmative action era. Those institutions are almost certain to face similar lawsuits.
But less appreciated is the impact that this legal battle could have beyond school admissions. Race gaps characterize nearly every dimension of U.S. life: life expectancy, maternal mortality, employment rates, income, wealth, environmental exposures, criminal justice involvement and many others. Policymakers routinely seek to close these gaps, even when debating policies that aren’t directly about race, such as environmental regulations, health policy and criminal justice reform.
The EPA defines environmental justice as the fair treatment of all people regardless of race, income or other factors with respect to the development or enforcement of environmental laws.
President Joe Biden’s Administration has been particularly focused on environmental justice in recent years, looking to address situations where large numbers of minority or low-income populations have disproportionately had to bear the burden of things like massive landfills, heavily polluting industrial facilities, “poop trains,” and in the Black Belt, widespread sewage treatment problems.In this case, the federal government chose to focus on the Alabama Department of Public Health and on rural Lowndes County, a majority-Black county of just under 10,000 people in south Alabama.In Lowndes, according to the Justice Department, ADPH “engaged in a consistent pattern of inaction and/or neglect concerning the health risks associated with raw sewage.”
Mackenzie Ryan of the Guardian has a name for the legal maneuvering as described by Ms. Starr: “legal vigilantism”.
After the supreme court’s recent rulings against affirmative action and anti-discrimination precedent, researchers who track the far-right movement are flagging a new model of conservative activism: legal vigilantism, an aggressive, lawsuit-threatening tactic used to intimidate universities and private institutions to comply with the new rulings.Experts have called the decisions a “catalytic event” while far-right groups and influencers are celebrating them with bigoted rhetoric online and mobilizing member support to roll back decades of progressive policy. Despite what they view as significant victories, hardline Trumpist politicians that rely on mining grievances in their quest for power may face a bleak fundraising season. […]Social media posts obtained by the Western States Center, which tracks anti-democracy activity, show far-right groups celebrating the supreme court decisions with anti-government, anti-immigration and anti-LGBTQ+ comments. Lindsay Schubiner, director of programs at Western States Center, reported that far-right groups are bolstering their ability to organize and build grassroots power around bigotry. She pointed to the rise of Moms for Liberty, a well-organized anti-LGBTQ+ group with more than 100,000 self-reported members, as a key group to watch due to its effectiveness in countering inclusionary policies in schools. The far right’s goal, she explained, is a broad rejection of LBGTQ+ people from public life, including elected office, community leadership decisions and their ability to access services.
Dr. Daniel Allington, Reader in Social Analytics at King’s has led the most comprehensive study to date examining the opinions of people with antisemitic views. The study is published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications.
Researchers also found antisemitic views to be more prevalent among people who consider it justifiable to take extreme authoritarian action against political opponents, and people who want to overthrow social order.
The findings suggest that antisemitism may be less closely linked to political beliefs than has previously been implied, and more closely linked to opinions and views on other topics such as religion, ethnic nationalism, and conspiracy theories.
“Whether we look at the left or the right of the political spectrum, we find people who are antisemitic and people who aren’t. Our findings help us to get beyond the question of whether antisemitism is more of a problem on the right or on the left. What we found is that antisemitic views are more likely among conspiracy theorists, revolutionaries, and people who see dictatorship as an acceptable form of government,” said Dr. Daniel Allington, Department of Digital Humanities.
Finally today, Lawrence Price, Divaj Bhardwaj, Nicole Marcus, Alyce Brown, and Cole Reynolds of The Daily Northwestern reports on the firing of Northwestern’s head football coach Pat Fitzgerald following allegations of hazing within the football program and racism.
Fitzgerald had previously been suspended for two weeks without pay after the University announced Friday that an independent investigation into the team indicated hazing reports were “largely supported by evidence.”
The Daily published reports on Saturday and Monday with details of the hazing allegations and additional racism allegations from former players.
“As much as Fitzgerald has meant to our institution and to our student-athletes, we have an obligation – in fact a responsibility – to live by our values,” University President Michael Schill said in a statement following Fitzgerald’s release from the program. “Even when it means making difficult and painful decisions such as this one. We must move forward.”
Schill also officially released limited details from the investigation in the statement, sharing that the University’s investigation included eleven players acknowledging hazing occurred in the program. His statement said the hazing included “forced participation, nudity and sexualized acts of a degrading nature.”
Related: Daily Northwestern: Former NU players describe racist environment in football program by Nicole Markus, Alyce Brown, and Cole Reynolds and Northwestern Baseball Coach Jim Foster accused of creating “abusive” environment, causing transfers by Avani Kalra
Who knew that reporters for the Daily Northwestern worked during the summer quarter?! Something tells me they’ve been on this story for months. Great work!
Also, it’s hard to think of Pat Fitzgerald’s firing without wondering while Kirk Ferentz remains at the University of Iowa. Must be the scintillating offensive game plans.
Have the best possible day, everyone!
Chitown Kev
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