Late last month, shortly after the US Supreme Court stripped away federal protection for abortion rights, Dr. Christina Francis, an OB/GYN based in Fort Wayne, Indiana, took to Instagram with an urgent message: She wanted her followers to know that even in states where abortion will soon be illegal, doctors still would be able to terminate pregnancies to save the life of the mother. “Treating ectopic pregnancies or miscarriages or other life-threatening conditions in pregnancy is not the same thing as an abortion,” she said in a video she took of herself from inside a car. “This is very important to clear up because I know that many women are feeling fearful that they might not be able to receive life-saving care if they need it.” Commenters thanked Dr. Francis for her clarification. “The amount of people that don’t know the difference is disturbing,” said one. “So many people spreading false information. Thank you for sharing and educating!”

It’s not hard to see why the post took off: It came across as authoritative and reassuring during a period of great uncertainty. After the repeal of Roe v. Wade, many women and OBYGNs are very worried that they soon won’t be allowed to treat serious complications of pregnancy—like ectopic pregnancy, where a fertilized egg grows outside the womb. If left unattended because of concerns that removing it would be against laws prohibiting abortions, an ectopic pregnancy can potentially kill the mother if the pregnancy’s growth splits the fallopian tube in which it is most commonly housed. The calm clarity from Dr. Francis gave the impression of offering a clear path forward. In the days after she posted her video, it went viral on Instagram and TikTok.

But Dr. Francis left out a few key pieces of information about herself: She is a member of the anti-choice organization American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG), as well as the anti-choice think tank Charlotte Lozier Institute. Her video was part of an all-out disinformation campaign by the anti-abortion movement to minimize the impact of the ruling on Roe—with an assist from powerful social media influencers who built their brand by spreading disinformation about Covid.

In addition to claiming that the law won’t affect pregnant women whose life is in danger, some influencers promote other false narratives downplaying the potential ramifications of the decision, assuring their followers that their access to contraceptives will be untouched, and their own lives won’t change. But that’s misleading, says Dr. Marta Perez, a board-certified OBGYN based in Austin, Texas. Now that Roe has been repealed, she explains, “even normal reproductive health care is going to have an extra layer of complexity and barriers.” People dealing with unexpectedly thorny pregnancies will have a harder time finding the care and treatment they need, no matter what their views on abortion might be. And there is some indication that not everyone would support abortions for conditions that endanger mothers: On July 16, three weeks after the Dobbs decision, Idaho Republicans at their annual convention voted to reject an amendment to their platform that would have made an exception to allow abortions that would save the life of the mother. The margins weren’t even close: 412 delegates voted no to the amendment, while just 164 voted yes.

But even in places that do favor such exemptions, the difference between an abortion and a lifesaving pregnancy termination is not as stark as anti-abortion crusaders claim, Dr. Perez says. “Anyone who has worked in reproductive healthcare,” she says, “has had a patient who has told the doctor, ‘I’m anti-abortion,’ and has [later] needed or wanted an abortion.”

About one hour into Thursday’s primetime hearing on the January 6 insurrection, Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) drew viewers’ attention to one of the most infamous images from January 6—a photo of Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, pumping his fist at a crowd of soon-to-be rioters before he entered the Capitol that morning. 

Hawley was a significant player in the events of that day. As I reported in a profile of Hawley for the magazine, the ultra-ambitious Hawley had deceived conservative audiences about the outcome of the election over the preceding weeks (refusing, for instance, to say whether Biden actually would be the next president), and egged on Trump’s efforts to overturn the election by signaling his intention to object to the certification of the Electoral College results. The fist pump became a symbol for how Republicans brought the nation to that point.

But then Luria showed a previously unseen image of Hawley that day—a clip of the young senator running through a corridor to escape the mob he’d cheered on hours earlier.

The story of #January6th in two Josh Hawley moments. pic.twitter.com/mQJq3cUy6z

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) July 22, 2022

When it comes to one of the most—or perhaps the most—important elements of the January 6 tragedy, the House select committee investigating the matter was largely not needed. The whole world already knows what Donald Trump did while the armed mob that he summoned and directed to the Capitol was savagely assaulting law enforcement officers, ransacking Congress, and trying to defeat the constitutional order: nothing.

Usually an investigation needs to determine who did what and when, but in this instance the basic story is already established. For a long stretch of the insurrectionist attack, Trump took no steps to halt it or to protect the police battling the fight-for-Trump terrorists or the elected officials inside the building, including his own vice president. Perhaps Trump’s worst action throughout his whole effort to overturn the election, this profound dereliction of duty is undeniable. We all saw what didn’t happen. In full public view, Trump did not abide by his oath of office and failed to defend the Constitution and the US government. No subpoena nor any testimony is necessary to prove this fundamental truth. 

Yet, the January 6 committee on Thursday night disclosed new details that rendered the picture of Trump’s worst day as president even worse. It revealed that from the time he returned to the White House after spreading his Big Lie at a rally—and being prevented by the Secret Service from joining the armed mob heading to the Capitol—he ensconced himself in his West Wing dining room for hours. There he watched the riot on Fox News and made not a single call to the military, law enforcement, or Washington, DC, government officials. He rejected numerous pleas from aides, advisers, Republican members of Congress, and family members (Ivanka and Donald Jr.) to intervene and call off the insurrectionists rampaging in the Capitol. Instead, he phoned Republican senators, as part of his scheme to forestall certification of the electoral count. And he spoke at least twice with Rudy Giuliani, his consigliere.

About what? That’s not known. But it’s a good guess that it was about how the riot could be exploited to halt or delay the certification. The committee also noted that there are no official records of what Trump did during these hours and no call records document who else he spoke to. (The committee learned about the Giuliani calls from the lawyer’s own phone records.) 

Through assorted testimony and evidence, the committee made it plain: Trump purposefully did nothing to end the raid. He wanted the violence at the Capitol to continue. As Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) put it, “President Trump did not fail to act [on January 6]… He chose not to act.” Kinzinger and other committee members noted there can be no greater indictment of a president than that he refused to defend America’s own government.

In mid-July, Sri Lanka’s government fell, with former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa bolting the country on a pre-dawn flight while protesters frolicked in the pool of his lavish mansion. The island nation of 22 million people, once one of the most prosperous in South Asia, had plunged into a severe economic crisis, characterized by empty grocery shelves, days’ long lines for gasoline, planned electricity outages lasting up to seven hours, and mass protests against the government. What happened? According to one prominent theory, it was all the result of a fateful decree Rajapaksa made in April 2021 to ban synthetic fertilizers and force the nation’s farmers—prodigious producers of rice and tea, among other crops—to embrace organic agriculture. 

Writing in The Wall Street Journal opinion page on July 14, Tunku Varadarajan, a fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute and at Columbia University’s Center on Capitalism and Society, summarized the case like this: “In an uprising that has its roots in Mr. Rajapaksa’s imperious decision to impose organic farming on the entire country—which led to widespread hunger after the agricultural economy collapsed—Sri Lanka’s people have wrought the first contra-organic national uprising in history.” 

Similar takes have emerged from Fox News personality Tucker Carlson, who characterized Rajapaksa’s push for organic agriculture as a disaster-inducing “green new deal,” equating it to the stalled, never-implemented proposal by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D.-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D.-Mass.) (even though their GND never included a fertilizer ban or an organic mandate); and from members of the “ecomodernist” movement—a crew, centered around the Breakthrough Institute think-tank, that favors technology-centered, nuclear-powered responses to environmental crises. In a July 9 post on his Substack blog, Michael Shellenberger, the Breakthrough Institute’s co-founder and former president, opined that the “underlying reason for the fall of Sri Lanka is that its leaders fell under the spell of Western green elites peddling organic agriculture.” 

Back in March, months before Rajapaksa’s inglorious exit, the prestigious magazine Foreign Policy ran a similar take on Sri Lanka’s then-already-mounting crisis. Co-authored by BTI executive director Ted Nordhaus, the article suggested that the “ill-conceived national experiment in organic agriculture” had triggered a range of ills—everything from a tumbling currency to rising inflation and poverty rates. 

Did that piece foretell the sequence of events that brought down Rajapaksa? And does the situation prove that any push to slash reliance in agrichemicals anywhere will produce “only misery,” as Nordhaus insisted? Unlike the Fox News and Wall Street Journal commentators, Nordhaus and Shellenberger both acknowledged that factors apart from organic agriculture played roles in Sri Lanka’s meltdown. But the two deans of ecomodernism also took pains to place the blame squarely on the removal of agrichemicals. Spoiler: Things on the ground in Sri Lanka were quite a bit more complicated than what these tirades suggest. 

When Donald Trump won in 2016, after fully not expecting to upon announcing his run, the transition period was a chaotic mess, leaving hundreds of government positions unfilled. This time around, Trump’s allies won’t be asleep at the wheel, according to a new Axios report. But the result might be the same.

Trump’s team is planning on “purging potentially thousands of civil servants and filling career posts with loyalists to him and his ‘America First’ ideology,” Axios‘ Jonathan Swan reported in a lengthy piece Friday morning. 

Using an executive order that would make it easier for Trump to fire federal employees, his White House would proceed to remake the Executive Branch in his image, ultimately turning over “thousands of mid-level staff jobs.” Here’s Axios on the plan (bolding in original):

The impact could go well beyond typical conservative targets such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Internal Revenue Service. Trump allies are working on plans that would potentially strip layers at the Justice Department—including the FBI, and reaching into national security, intelligence, the State Department and the Pentagon, sources close to the former president say.

The result would be a fully-politicized civil service that, in effect, proves Trump’s own conspiracy theory correct. Once a MAGA Corps is installed, there would be a “Deep State,” just one loyal to Trump. Then his successor has the choice, as the report lays out, of “whether to replace them with her or his own loyalists, or revert to a traditional bureaucracy.”

In February, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy announced his plan to buy a badly needed new United States Postal Service delivery fleet. There was just one problem: Ninety percent of the trucks would be gas-powered, with fuel efficiency ratings less than half a mile per gallon better than those of the existing fleet.

Environmental groups sued. Lawmakers tried to step in. And then, earlier this week, the USPS announced a breakthrough: The agency said that 40 percent of its new fleet would be electric. That’s a smaller proportion of electric mail trucks than environmentalists wanted—a House bill called for 75 percent—but it’s more than double what anyone expected under DeJoy’s plan.

In March, the USPS said that its initial procurement of 50,000 trucks from manufacturer Oshkosh Defense would include 10,019 battery electric vehicles. Now, the agency is aiming to buy 25,000 electric trucks. It also will supplement its fleet with 34,500 commercially available trucks—trucks that aren’t made-to-order for the USPS—”including as many [battery electric vehicles] as are commercially available and satisfy operational needs.”

The announcement is a big step toward fulfilling President Biden’s goal of phasing out federal agencies’ use of gas-powered trucks. But proponents of an electric fleet argue that 40 percent emissions free vehicles is not enough. 

“Investing in an outdated technology never made sense, and I am glad the Postmaster General is belatedly coming to that commonsense realization,” Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), who introduced the House bill calling for an electric fleet, said in a statement. “We still have more work to do, and Congress will continue to help push the USPS to a modern, green fleet.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) introduced a bill Thursday to legalize weed on the federal level, finally opening the floodgates to a conversation that activists (and stoners) have been working toward for decades. 

The Senate bill goes further than just pure legalization too. It “expunges federal cannabis-related records and creates funding for law enforcement departments to fight illegal cannabis cultivation,” Politico reported. 

But the chances of any of this becoming law are still slim. The bill is not expected to clear the 60-vote threshold for most legislation in the Senate. A minority of Democrats, including some from states that have already legalized weed, are not on board with changing federal law. Politico has the details:

Democratic Sen. Jon Tester, for example, represents a state where weed is legal—Montana—and says he does not support federal decriminalization. A handful of other Democrats told POLITICO that they are against legalization or are undecided, including Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Bob Casey (D-Pa.). 

That’s a huge bummer, but not entirely unexpected when you consider the demographics of Congress. As my colleague Abigail Weinberg so succinctly put it earlier this year: old people are much less inclined to support weed legalization and the Senate is really old…”11 senators over the age of 75″ levels of old.

Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon was convicted Friday of defying a subpoena from the congressional committee investigating the January 6 insurrection. For all the sound and fury from Bannon about Justice Department overreach, the case wrapped with an almost inhuman speed. A jury in Washington, DC only had to deliberate for less than three hours before finding him guilty on two counts of contempt of Congress.

For months, Bannon had refused to provide documents to the committee or submit for a deposition despite being central to many of the key events prior to the insurrection.

As Mother Jones reported last week, Bannon was recorded prior to Election Day predicting that former President Donald Trump would falsely declare victory. On his podcast, War Room, he has also repeatedly accused Joe Biden of being an illegitimate president and said “stolen elections have catastrophic consequences.” 

Yep, that was our scoop you just heard as Liz Cheney closes the #January6thHearings.

Reporter @dfriedman33 got ahold of leaked audio of Steve Bannon confirming Trump had a plan to declare electoral victory, even if he was losing. Listen here:pic.twitter.com/ARr3M4qAjH

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

A quarter of Europe’s breeding seabirds spend spring in the UK, turning our coastline into a giant maternity unit. These noisy outcrops usually stink of bird poo. However, this year has been different. “Instead of the smell of guano, it’s the smell of death,” says Gwen Potter, a National Trust countryside manager working on the Farne Islands, off the coast of Northumberland. “It’s completely horrendous.”

This annual congregation of life has turned into a super-spreader event, as a highly pathogenic avian influenza, H5N1—also known as bird flu—sweeps through populations of breeding birds, causing devastating losses. More than 300 outbreaks have been reported in UK seabird colonies, and dozens of coastal sites have closed to the public.

The Farne Islands are home to 200,000 seabirds, including Arctic terns, Atlantic puffins, guillemots, kittiwakes, and razorbills. Potter is one of many conservationists swapping binoculars for a hazmat suit, picking up the bodies of birds she has spent her career trying to protect. Birds will sit on the ground, unable to move, twisting into unnatural positions, before dying. It is happening with chicks, too, still gently trying to flap as they die. “It sweeps through, takes everything in its path. It doesn’t seem to spare anything, really…We’ve collected thousands of dead birds, and that’s the tip of the iceberg. It’s just the scale of it which is hard to grasp,” she says.

Early observations suggest that how closely the bird’s nest is a key factor in how quickly the virus is transmitted. Guillemots nest quite densely, and kittiwakes are often next to them, which makes them vulnerable, although there is more space between them. Terns also nest densely and already 25 percent of the 350 sandwich terns on the Farne Islands are thought to have died, according to Potter. Some seabird chicks jump into the sea prematurely if their parents have died, while others starve in the nest.

In his decision to help gut Roe v. Wade, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the Supreme Court “should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell”—cases that enshrined Americans’ right to contraception, to intimate same-sex relationships, and to marriage equality. In the past week, Democrats have raced to codify same-sex marriage, culminating in Tuesday’s passage of the Respect for Marriage Act in the House.

Now, the bill rests in the hands of the Senate, where it’s not yet clear if enough Republicans will support the bill and help it avoid a 60-vote filibuster. What would happen if it doesn’t pass? Currently, there are at least 32 states—Arizona, Louisiana, and Ohio among them—that have either constitutional amendments, state laws, or both that prohibit same-sex marriage. The Obergefell v. Hodges ruling rendered these defunct in 2015, but if the Supreme Court were to overturn that decision, same-sex marriage would be instantly banned in at least 25 of those states—putting thousands of couples at risk.

Marriages, of course, are more than just white cakes and wedding rings. Everything from child custody to property rights can depend on whether a couple is married. In fact, a 2004 study from the US Government Accountability Office found that there are 1,138 statutes and provisions where marriage status is a factor in receiving benefits, rights, or privileges. Before the legalization of same-sex marriage, gay couples often would face discrimination and have their rights denied by various legal bodies.

“From taxes to Social Security benefits to retirement benefits,” said Mary Bauer, the executive director of the Virginia ACLU. “(There are) all sorts of things that are built into our kind of structure of laws and systems. Spouses have a legal privilege that is incredibly important in many practical and moral ways. We’ve heard all sorts of all sorts of stories about families that are treated as though they are not families. ” 

“There’s kind of a million ways that this plays out…people have to fight for the right to be recognized as their child’s parent,” she added. “That is, as we all regard now, nonsensical, discriminatory, bigoted, and unacceptable.” 

After agreeing to buy Twitter for $44 billion, Elon Musk has decided that the deal is off. But his attempt to break this agreement has roiled the tech company and set up a future riddled with legal headaches and uncertainty. The mood inside Twitter is grim, as the Washington Post reported Saturday: 

In April, Musk offered to take the company private at $54.20 a share—valuing the company’s shares at more than a 50% premium—but in the days since, the stock (and morale inside the company) has plunged. He’s used his personal Twitter to amplify criticism of Twitter executives (not including the ones who have jumped ship). He also promised to restore Donald Trump’s account and raised a ruckus over the company’s handling of bot accounts. 

The bots are angry at being counted

With Donald Trump set to waive his claim to executive privilege, onetime adviser Steve Bannon may be due for a date before Congress. Trump had fought to prevent Bannon, a ringleader of the conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election, from appearing before the Congressional committee investigating the pro-Trump insurrection on January 6. Still, sources told the Washington Post that Trump now is “considering sending a letter” to Bannon that would clear the way for his testimony. 

Per the Post‘s reporting:

The letter would reiterate that Trump invoked executive privilege in September 2021, when Bannon was first subpoenaed by the House committee. But it would say that the former president is now willing to give up that claim—the validity of which has been disputed—if Bannon can reach an agreement on the terms of an appearance before the panel.

Bannon defied that original Congressional subpoena, leading to his indictment in November on contempt charges. For months, Bannon has fruitlessly tried to get his case dismissed while portraying himself as a victim of overzealous Justice Department prosecutors. 

Whether Trump even has the right to withhold his testimony through executive privilege is subject to debate. (Bannon had been long gone from the White House by the time of January 6.) Given how the testimony of so many former members of his administration only further added to Trump’s culpability, Bannon might offer Trump an opportunity to put one of his most ardent True Believers in the spotlight while under oath.

As Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with his Chinese counterpart for a rare, bilateral chat on Saturday, the Associated Press said the two countries were seeking “to calm rising tensions on many fronts.” After a five-hour meeting in Indonesia, where talks were “exceptionally candid,” per Bloomberg, it doesn’t appear the rivals are any closer to navigating their increasingly adversarial relationship.

Blinken, in comments to reporters after his discussion with Foreign Minister Wang Yi of China, focused on the Chinese government’s unique position in the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. Despite pledging support to Ukraine and claiming to be neutral, China has continued buying Russian oil and used its state propaganda to amplify Vladimir Putin’s talking points. 

“It’s pretty hard to be neutral when it comes to this aggression,” Blinken said. “There is a clear aggressor. There is a clear victim.” More to the point, China’s actions do not resemble those of a neutral party. As Blinken pointed out, Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping released a lengthy statement of friendship in early February, when Putin was widely reported to be preparing for an invasion of Ukraine. 

In the weeks since the start of the war, China has resisted helping the United States isolate Russia and has often used Putin’s own criticisms of the West to justify its stance, like when state media borrowed his description of the United States as an “empire of lies.” Blinken said he “tried to convey” to Wang that “this really is a moment where we all have to stand up” to condemn Russia’s aggression and push to end the war. “I won’t characterize his response,” Blinken added. 

China’s official readout of the meeting included a familiar list of grievances, including the claim that “many people thus argue that the United States is taking on growing China-phobia.” It also noted that Wang “refuted the United States’ erroneous views on Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and maritime issues, among others.”