Chicago Tribune
Calling himself a ‘Trumpocrat,’ Rod Blagojevich thanks Trump
Calling himself a “Trumpocrat” and “freed political prisoner,” disgraced ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich used his first full day of freedom Wednesday to thank … Donald Trump for commuting his prison sentence and take the first shot at redefining his legacy.
A now silver-haired Blagojevich, 63, walked outside his Northwest Side home dressed in a blue sweater and jeans. He was joined by his two daughters and wife, Patti, who joked that the news conference started late because Blagojevich couldn’t find his own socks after being away for so long.
Strangers on a train: The highs and lows of my 2-day rail journey from Chicago to LA
At 6 a.m., the sun shoots through the back window of the Amtrak train car like an orange spotlight. Outside, the rails glow against the flat plains of western Kansas. Maybe the light woke me. Or maybe, after four or five times of restlessly opening my eyes, it just happens to be dawn.
I teeter down the aisle of two and a half cars full of people on my way to the Café Car for coffee.
I boarded the 2:50 p.m. Southwest Chief out of Chicago’s Union Station on a Friday. By mid-morning Sunday, we’ll arrive at another Union Station: Los Angeles. I could have flown between the two cities in roughly four hours. But as a frequent flyer all too familiar with the rush and stress of air travel, I was drawn to the idea of a long, slow journey across America by rail. Now, 15 hours into my inaugural long-haul train trip — a $146-dollar (coach class), 44-hour, 2,265-mile excursion through eight states — the experience hasn’t stopped surprising me.
AP News
Trump picks pardon requests from wealthy pals and GOP donors
There’s a common thread among the 11 felons who found favor with … Donald Trump this week — all who were pardoned or set free had advocates among the president’s wealthy friends and political allies.
In at least some cases, including former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and ’80s junk-bond king Michael Milken, Trump has personal relationships with those he granted clemency. In three others he drew on the recommendations of a Tennessee grandmother he’d previously granted clemency at the urging of reality-TV star Kim Kardashian West.
“I rely on recommendations, very importantly,” Trump said Tuesday as he announced his decisions. […]
Tuesday’s announcement from the White House instead often sought to minimize the severity of the crimes that had been committed, and listed the names of GOP mega-donors, celebrities and Fox News personalities who had advocated for the felons to get a break.
UN: Thousands fleeing Syrian offensive, kids dying in cold
Hundreds of thousands of people fleeing a Russian-backed Syrian offensive are being squeezed into ever smaller areas near Turkey’s border “under horrendous conditions” in freezing temperatures that are killing babies and young children, the U.N. humanitarian chief said Wednesday.
Mark Lowcock told the U.N. Security Council that “the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe” in northwest Idlib province, which is the last major rebel stronghold, has “overwhelmed” efforts to provide aid.
He said nearly 900,000 people have been displaced since Dec. 1 when the government offensive began, more than 500,000 of them children.
The Seattle Times
Boeing may give up its major Washington state tax break to avoid European tariffs
Two Washington state legislators on Wednesday introduced bills in the Senate and House that would remove the main aerospace tax break passed 16 years ago to benefit Boeing.
The dramatic shift in direction will help resolve — to Boeing’s advantage — an international trade dispute at the World Trade Organization (WTO). It also averts the potential for the European Union (EU) to impose retaliatory trade tariffs that could affect not only sales of airplanes but also the state’s agricultural products.
While the idea of eliminating the tax breaks will find ready acceptance in Olympia, the bill as presented on behalf of Boeing contains a couple of potential controversial issues related to possible later reinstatement of the tax break or an equivalent measure.
The Denver Post
Solar jobs are on the rise nationally and in Colorado, where new report says workforce grew 5%
After two years of job losses, a new report says the solar industry’s workforce increased nationally by 2.3%. Colorado saw solar jobs increase by nearly 5% in 2019 to a total of 7,174 employees.
An annual survey released Wednesday by The Solar Foundation says the industry employed roughly 250,000 people in 2019, an increase of 5,600 jobs from 2018. The solar industry expanded because of the declining costs of solar technologies, according to the foundation, a nonprofit organization that has conducted 10 annual surveys.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Minnesota pastor leads campaign to try to shift evangelical vote
The Rev. Doug Pagitt jumped on stage at his former Minneapolis church with a message that he and his entourage are repeating across the country: Evangelical voters, you can stay true to your Christian faith but not vote for … Donald Trump.
Their Vote Common Good campaign, conducted from a bright orange bus making stops at every Democratic state primary, represents the small cracks in the evangelical base that helped propel Trump into office. More than 80% of white evangelical Christians voted for Trump in 2016 and continue to support him in his bid for re-election.
Pagitt’s campaign hopes to convince wavering evangelicals that the president’s character and actions are so out of sync with Jesus’ teachings that it’s a moral imperative to remove him from office.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Abrams slams Kemp’s ‘dangerous’ criminal justice policy
Stacey Abrams is expanding her voting rights group’s focus to target “dangerous” proposed budget cuts by Gov. Brian Kemp that she warned could imperil a bipartisan overhaul of Georgia’s criminal justice system.
In a series of tweets late Tuesday, the former gubernatorial contender said her Fair Fight Action organization is “deploying resources to continue the bipartisan criminal justice reforms” that took root during Republican Gov. Nathan Deal’s two terms.
“Eight years of hard, important work whose progress may now be rolled back with Brian Kemp’s dangerous budget cuts,” said Abrams, highlighting proposed cuts to the state’s public defender system, network of accountability courts and mental health programs.
Austin Statesman
UT researchers make ‘critical breakthrough’ in coronavirus vaccine
Researchers at the University of Texas announced Wednesday they have made a critical breakthrough toward developing a vaccine for the new coronavirus, which has resulted in the deaths of 2,000 people and infected 75,000, most of them in mainland China.
The development, which is being published Wednesday in the journal Science, is an essential step toward developing vaccines and antiviral drugs to combat the virus, UT said in a statement.
Jason McLellan, an associate professor of molecular biosciences at UT, led a team of researchers in creating the first 3D atomic scale map of the spike protein — the part of the virus that attaches to and infects human cells. McLellan and his colleagues had a leg up on the process, having already spent many years studying SARS and MERS, viruses that are in the same family as the new coronavirus and have caused outbreaks in the past.
The (Charleston) Post and Courier
Steyer’s cash-fueled 2020 rise has some SC Democrats crying foul: ‘He’s paying people off’
He has blanketed South Carolina’s television airwaves, overflowed mailboxes with glossy fliers, hired some of the state’s most influential legislators as campaign advisers, and purchased thousands of dollars in advertising in black-owned media outlets that have in turn published gushing editorials.
Businessman Tom Steyer’s money-fueled rise in the Palmetto State has thrust him into serious contention ahead of the Feb. 29 “First in the South” primary as he has deployed a multi-million dollar spending spree to an extent unlike anything S.C. political observers can recall.
But it has also set off an increasingly contentious debate over whether the California billionaire is demonstrating his willingness to invest in minority communities or using his extensive personal wealth to buy his way to the top.
The Guardian
New train blockade piles pressure on Trudeau in Wet'suwet'en pipeline fight
Demonstrators opposed to a Canadian gas pipelinehave blockaded another railway line in the west of the country, adding to pressure on Justin Trudeau to solve a two-week protest.
Freight traffic in eastern Canada has already been stopped for days after campaigners blockaded a main line in Ontario. Protesters across the country have taken up the cause of the Wet’suwet’en indigenous people who are seeking to stop the C$6.6bn (US$4.98bn) Coastal GasLink gas pipeline project in British Columbia.
2019 was worst year for US rural hospital closures in a decade, report finds
Hospital closures in rural areas of the US hit their highest point in the past decade last year, with 19 rural hospitals shutting down, according to a new report.
The number of rural hospital closures slowed somewhat during 2016 and 2017 but there has since been an uptick, with 34 facilities shuttering in the past 24 months, the analysis by the Chartis Center for Rural Health found.
Since 2010, 120 rural hospitals have closed, with states in the south faring worst, with Texas, Tennessee and Oklahoma leading the way. The analysis found that hospitals located in states that have not adopted the expansion of Medicaid – a public insurance program that provides health coverage to low-income families and individuals – have a lower average operating margin, putting them at greater risk of closing.
America’s 'recycled' plastic waste is clogging landfills, survey finds
Many plastic items that Americans put in their recycling bins aren’t being recycled at all, according to a major new survey of hundreds of recycling facilities across the US.
The research, conducted by Greenpeace and released on Tuesday, found that out of 367 recycling recovery facilities surveyed none could process coffee pods, fewer than 15% accepted plastic clamshells – such as those used to package fruit, salad or baked goods – and only a tiny percentage took plates, cups, bags and trays.
The findings confirm the results of a Guardian investigation last year, which revealed that numerous types of plastics are being sent straight to landfill in the wake of China’s crackdown on US recycling exports. Greenpeace’s findings also suggest that numerous products labeled as recyclable in fact have virtually no market as new products.
Deutsche Welle
Assange lawyer: Trump 'offered pardon' in exchange for denying Russia role in email leak
Trump offered WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange a pardon if he agreed to say that Russia was not involved in the 2016 Democratic National Committee (DNC) email leak, Assange's lawyer told a court on Wednesday.
At a preliminary hearing in the Westminster Magistrate's court, Assange's barrister in his preliminary hearing, Edward Fitzgerald, referred to a statement by another Assange lawyer, who said that former Republican congressman Dana Rohrabacher had visited Assange while he was at the Ecuadorian Embassy in 2017.
The statement read that Rohrabacher had been sent by the president to offer "a pardon or some other way out, if Mr. Assange ... said Russia had nothing to do with the DNC leaks" in the run up to the 2016 presidential election.
East Africa braces for more locusts
Bernard Makanga's farm was invaded by desert locusts. ''Normally by this time, these beans, they're ready for harvest. But the locusts have destroyed them all,'' he told DW. His neighbor Francis Muliungi's crop is equally devastated. ''There is nothing left to harvest. And there is nothing else that I know how to do. It's just this farm. That's where I get food, where I feed my family and friends, all people," he said.
This is the worst infestation that Kenya has seen in 70 years. Many farmers in the affected regions have lost their crops. Some have started planting again, but they don't know what they will do if the locusts return, which at this point looks very likely, according to environmental experts.
Mongabay
In Bali, young people lead the fight as a plastic plague threatens paradise
Waves roll in over the black volcanic sand on Sogsogan, a beach in southern Bali. Further out, surfers prepare to master the swell. Bali has long been a tropical paradise destination, but the waves, long beaches, palm trees and party lifestyle associated with the island are overshadowed by an intruder disrupting the idyll.
Plastic bottles, single-use containers, and plastic straws are scattered across the beach.
“I paddle through waste when I’m on my board in the water, and on land there are piles of garbage,” says French tourist Lula Marie Seureolu, a regular visitor to Bali since she was a child.
Some days she goes to the beach just to join cleanup activities. “There is plastic everywhere,” she says.
Mining could topple community-managed forests in Mexico: New film
Local forest managers in southeastern Mexico are sounding the alarm that their livelihoods are under threat, as companies press for access to the region’s gold, silver and other minerals.
“They are going to sit here for 15 or 20 years, and they are going to take the gold and silver,” said a member of a local cooperative in a new short film. “They are going to leave us infertile lands, lands without life.”
The film Tesoro Vivo (Living Treasure) by the If Not Us Then Who project follows communities in the region of Sierra Norte de Puebla through their daily lives and as they protest the tidal wave of mining sweeping through their homeland and the exploration for a new gold mining project that is underway. Mining concessions cover nearly 30% of the state of Puebla, where Sierra Norte is located, the project says. Only three other countries in the world have more mining concessions than Mexico.
The Atlantic
Trump has interpreted the Republican-controlled Senate’s vote to acquit as a writ of absolute power
There are two kinds of Republican senators who voted to acquit Donald Trump in his impeachment trial two weeks ago: those who acknowledged he was guilty and voted to acquit anyway, and those who pretended the president had done nothing wrong.
“It was wrong for … Trump to mention former Vice President Biden on that phone call, and it was wrong for him to ask a foreign country to investigate a political rival,” Senator Susan Collins of Maine declared, but added that removing him “could have unpredictable and potentially adverse consequences for public confidence in our electoral process.”
But Collins, like her Republican colleagues Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, was an outlier in admitting the president’s conduct was wrong. Most others in the caucus, like Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, deliberately missed the point, insisting that Democrats wanted the president removed for “pausing aid to Ukraine for a few weeks.”
What all these senators share is a willingness to ignore the nature of the offense.
The Hidden History of Sanders’s Plot to Primary Obama
Bernie sanders got so close to running a primary challenge to President Barack Obama that Senator Harry Reid had to intervene to stop him.
It took Reid two conversations over the summer of 2011 to get Sanders to scrap the idea, according to multiple people who remember the incident, which has not been previously reported.
That summer, Sanders privately discussed a potential primary challenge to Obama with several people, including Patrick Leahy, his fellow Vermont senator. Leahy, alarmed, warned Jim Messina, Obama’s presidential reelection-campaign manager. Obama’s campaign team was “absolutely panicked” by Leahy’s report, Messina told me, since “every president who has gotten a real primary has lost a general [election].”
Ars Technica
Divided, we fall: How ant behavior mimics political polarization
Ants may be tiny critters with tiny brains, but these social insects are capable of collectively organizing themselves into a highly efficient community to ensure the colony survives. And it seems that the social dynamics of how division of labor emerges in an ant colony is similar to how political polarization develops in human social networks, according to a recent paper in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.
"Our findings suggest that division of labor and political polarization—two social phenomena not typically considered together—may actually be driven by the same process," said co-author Chris Tokita, a graduate student in ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton University. "Division of labor is seen as a benefit to societies, while political polarization usually isn't, but we found that the same dynamics could theoretically give rise to them both."
Tokita and his adviser/co-author, Corina Tarnita, were collaborating with a group at Rockefeller University that was using camera tracking to study ants—specifically, how division of labor emerges in very small groups (between 12-16 ants). Their job was to devise a model for a behavioral mechanism that would explain the patterns that the Rockefeller people had observed in their experiments. "Originally, we thought social interactions might play a part," Tokita told Ars. "But it turns out we didn't need to think about social interactions to capture their results."