Commentary

As former President Donald Trump edges closer to clinching the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, research has shown that a second Trump presidency is likely to damage American democracy even more than his first term did. The reason has less to do with Trump and his ambitions than with how power dynamics have shifted within the Republican Party.

The centrality of race to our politics is clear in the current presidential campaign. The U.S. is not now “post racial,” free from racial prejudices or discrimination, nor has it ever been. Nor is it easy to argue seriously that white people are more discriminated against than Black Americans.

To get the rare perspective of a former federal judge on the oral arguments at the Supreme Court, The Conversation U.S. spoke with John E. Jones III. He is the president of Dickinson College and a retired federal judge appointed by President George W. Bush and confirmed unanimously by the U.S. Senate in 2002. The case is about former President Donald Trump’s claim that he should be allowed on the presidential ballot in Colorado – and other states – because the language of the 14th Amendment does not apply to him.

Across cities in the U.S., one commonality stands out: Nearly universally, the percentage of elected officials who are white is higher than the white share of the population. This overrepresentation persists from the early 1990s to more recent years among mayors.

Trump can be criminally prosecuted for the actions he took to overturn the 2020 election. Whether the case makes it to trial or results in a conviction, what happens to all the other pending cases involving Trump, and whether the former president is returned to the White House, are unanswered questions so far. The Supreme Court will surely be asked to provide some of those answers.

Biden’s Mother Emanuel speech should rank with some of the most important speeches in our history. Biden acknowledged that he is not only running against the GOP front-runner Donald Trump but also against a “second lost cause” myth.

Most people don’t set out to use more plastic. So the best solutions help consumers achieve their goals and make access to reusable bags easier. The key is to determine the biggest impediment to shoppers bringing reusable bags.

Defenders of Confederate monuments like Donald Trump have argued that the statues should be left standing to educate future generations. But since the end of the Civil War, journalists at Black newspapers have told a different story. The statues were never designed to tell the truth about the Civil War. Instead, the monuments were built to enshrine the myth of the “Lost Cause,” the false claim that white Southerners nobly fought for states’ rights – and not to preserve slavery.

Practically, the odds of Biden changing course now look small. The two main reasons for pressing ahead haven’t changed since Biden announced his reelection bid last April. First, Biden is the only candidate who’s proven that he can beat Trump. Second, there’s no obvious heir apparent.

Public opinion data suggests that most Americans think Taylor Swift is good for the NFL. But with her beau Travis Kelce’s Kansas City Chiefs heading to a fourth Super Bowl in five years, and with Swift herself reportedly preparing for a journey across the globe to cheer him on in the big game, the right-wing talk machine has gone into overdrive.

The Middle Ages as typically imagined in cinema, television, literature and Romantic paintings are dark and sinister, plagued by the diseases that ravaged Europe, with filthy, unhealthy cities and buildings. Research by Medieval scholars in recent decades – combined with new digital reconstruction techniques – has shattered these myths, presenting us with a wholly different picture.

People with obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD for short, are 82% more likely to die earlier – from natural or unnatural causes – than people without the condition, a new study reveals. OCD affects about 2% of the population. The disorder significantly impairs daily life, affecting relationships, social activities and the general ability to function.

In Middle Eastern geopolitics, Iran’s strategy of aligning with violent nonstate actors – notably Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen – influences the regional balance of power. But to what extent?

The West claims it champions a liberal rules-based international order and human rights on the global stage. This rhetoric now appears completely disingenuous to most of the Global South. Even as Russia escalates its violence against civilians and infrastructure in Ukraine, most Global South states find the American condemnation of Russia grotesquely hypocritical as the United States supports Israel’s war in Gaza and attacks on civilians that are even more devastating than Russia’s.

The theme for the 2024 Holocaust Memorial Day, which takes place on January 27, is the “fragility of freedom”. This year is an especially poignant one, marking 80 years since the deportation and murder of Hungarian Jews, when the gas chambers of Auschwitz were working at full capacity, and also the 30th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide.

Evidence suggests that less than 1% of transgender people who undergo gender-affirming surgery report regret. That proportion is even more striking when compared to the fact that 14.4% of the broader population reports regret after similar surgeries. For example, studies have found that between 5% and 14% of all women who receive mastectomies to reduce the risk of developing breast cancer say they regretted doing so.

By the mid-2000s, roughly one to four per cent of obituaries mentioned pets. Since 2015, this number has climbed as high as 15 per cent. As obituaries grow longer and more detailed, it only seems fair that animals get some attention. It has become more common to mention someone’s pet, or love of animals. Passages also grow more detailed. Beyond the pet’s name, we learn whether they were a “hoity-toity poodle,” a “loyal companion” or “the best dog ever.”

At the top of the list sits China with 44 in detention, followed by Myanmar (43), Belarus (28), Russia (22), and Vietnam (19). Israel and Iran share sixth place with 17 each. The journalists Israel detained were all from the occupied West Bank, all Palestinian, and all arrested after Hamas’s horrific attacks from Gaza on October 7. But we know very little about why they were detained.

Jeff Sharlet’s “The Undertow” tells how the cultural divisions in American society could allow such a thing as the storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters to happen. (And how, despite everything that’s happened since, he remains the Republican frontrunner for the 2024 presidential race.) Sharlet believes that event is part of a “slow civil war” that threatens the future of the American republic.

Extreme cold-weather events often occur in association with changes to another river of air high above the jet stream: the stratospheric polar vortex, a great stream of air moving around the North Pole in the middle of the stratosphere. When this stratospheric vortex becomes disrupted or stretched in part due to warming, it can distort the jet stream as well, pushing it southward in some areas and causing cold air outbreaks.

The most common microplastics in the environment are microfibers – plastic fragments shaped like tiny threads or filaments. Microfibers come from many sources, including cigarette butts, fishing nets and ropes, but the biggest source is synthetic fabrics, which constantly shed them.

The Houthis stand to gain politically from these U.S.-U.K. attacks as they support a narrative that the group has been cultivating: that they are freedom fighters fighting Western imperialism in the Muslim world.

Attention to organizing is a shift for the Trump campaign. Today, it looks nothing like the scattershot campaign from 2016, the only other time Trump has waged a nomination battle in the state. Trump’s nod to organizing is noteworthy and is at odds with his brand, which is more focused on stirring the pot and agitating, rather than painstakingly building an infrastructure.

Nations are competing to exploit lunar and asteroid mineral resources. Private corporations and space billionaires are increasingly being touted as the way forward. After the Moon, Mars is the next world in line for “conquest”. The contemporary movement known as longtermism promotes living on other planets as insurance against existential risk, in a far future where humans (or some form of them) spread to fill the galaxies.

Nonprofit boards should require their members to take turns serving as “designated contrarians.” When it’s their turn for this role, board members would be responsible for asking critical questions and pushing for deeper debate about organizational decisions.

Three months after the current conflict began, civilians have borne the brunt of the violence on both sides, with the deaths of more than 22,000 Palestinians in Gaza and 1,200 Israelis. Some 85% of Gazans have also been displaced and a quarter of the population is facing a famine, according to the United Nations. The conflict still has a long way to run and may be headed towards stalemate.

The immense popularity of #JeSuisCharlie is a prime example of how the technology available to us can shape our understanding of shared experiences. The hashtag #JeSuisCharlie capitalised on these. It was widely adopted by those defending free expression, but a flurry of counter-narratives quickly emerged providing alternative perspectives on the attack.

The English war poet Wilfred Owen once wrote, “Celebrity is the last infirmity I desire.” Killed in France at the age of 25, unpublished and unknown, “celebrity” for Owen was a posthumous phenomenon. By contrast, celebrity status for the Irish poet Seamus Heaney – “Famous Seamus” – came early in his life.