Today’s Lineup
Trump’s team keeps sharing their plans to remake the federal government, acknowledging the people who were living near the Trinity nuclear detonation, the growing surveillance threats impacting people seeking reproductive or gender-affirming health care, Paramount spikes a documentary about Governor Ron DeSantis’ work at Guantanamo, school board meetings become a flash point for anger and violence, a Constitutional Convention is a bad idea, another step closer for the Anthropocene, the Major Questions Doctrine, and addressing the high number of ACL injuries in women’s soccer.
#1
Trump is planning to ratchet up the authoritarianism in a second term (Jonathan M. Katz, The Racket)
We are in a position never imagined before in U.S. history: a former president — twice impeached, the perpetrator of a failed coup to overturn the election he lost, and facing a ballooning list of federal and state indictments — is again seeking the highest office in the land. And, barring something truly extraordinary (i.e., he dies), Donald Trump looks almost certain to nab his third straight GOP nomination. This is what happens when you have been deemed by a critical mass of the voting base “a national chief who alone is capable of incarnating the group’s destiny,” as Robert O. Paxton wrote of a certain kind of political figure. Seeing as he will almost certainly be going up against an 81-year-old incumbent (same caveat as above) whose approval rating seems to permanently hover around 40 percent, the chances of a second Trump term can not be dismissed.
Given all of that, one of the potentially most important political stories of our era dropped this week in the New York Times. Its headline was “Trump and Allies Forge Plans to Increase Presidential Power in 2025.” Because it’s the Times covering a reactionary politician, the story, by Jonathan Swan, Charlie Savage, and Maggie Haberman, is an exercise in understatement…
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
Donald Trump’s supporters are not hiding their plans for an authoritarian makeover of the federal government. We need to take seriously the revelations in the New York Times story Katz mentions. The story demonstrates how Trump’s current advisors have learned critical lessons from Trump’s chaotic transition and first term. They are telling the public how they plan to politicize vast swaths of the civil service, ensure the Justice Department responds to White House demands, and bring independent agencies under Trump’s direct control. As The Economist noted, “a professional corps of America First populists are dedicating themselves to ensuring that Trump Two will be disciplined and focused on getting things done.” They want to ensure there won’t be any “adults” in place to try to slow down or prevent Trump’s plans. What the Trump campaign and supporters are sharing makes the stakes of the next election clear—and these are just the plans they are willing to share in public. Defeating Trump is necessary to prevent our country from becoming an illiberal democracy where the executive ignores constitutional limits, individual rights are no longer protected, and the authoritarians manipulate future elections to ensure they stay in power.
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#2
Survivors of America’s first atomic bomb test want their place in history (Kelsey Atherton, Popular Science)
Gilmore’s story is one of many collected by the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium. The organization was founded in 2005 by residents Tina Cordova and the late Fred Tyler, with the express aim of compiling information about the impacts of the Trinity test on people in the area. Tularosa is a village in Southern New Mexico, about a three-hour drive south of Albuquerque or a 90-minute drive northeast from Las Cruces. The town sits next to the White Sands Missile Range, and, as the crow flies, is about 50 miles from the Trinity Site. The White Sands Range summary of the 2017 visit says the site was selected because of its remote location, though the page also notes that when locals asked about the explosion, the test “was covered up with the story of an explosion at an ammunition dump.”
“Trinity Site,” a pamphlet available for visitors to the location, notes that it was selected from one of eight possible locations in California, Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado in part because the land was already under the control of the federal government as part of the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range, established in 1942. (Later, the Army tested captured V-2 rockets at the range, and today it houses everything from missile testing to a DARPA-designed Air Force observatory.) “The secluded Jornada del Muerto was perfect as it provided isolation for secrecy and safety, but was still close to Los Alamos for easy commuting back and forth,” notes the pamphlet.
Cordova disputes that characterization. “We know from the census data that there were 40,000 people living in the four counties surrounding Trinity at the time of the test,” she said. “That’s not remote and uninhabited.”
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
Before the release of the new movie Oppenheimer, Kelsey Atherton reminded his followers on BlueSky about this article he wrote about the world’s first victims of a nuclear explosion: the Tularosa Basin Downwinders. In his article, Atherton interviews people living in the area where the Trinity test happened. The people there were primarily left in the dark about the fallout that would impact their farms. It was not an uninhabited space. There was a surge in cancers. The federal government purchased cattle in the area to observe the impact of radiation exposure on them. Yet people in New Mexico have been excluded from a federal government compensation program for people exposed to the Cold War’s nuclear tests. This part of the dawn of the atomic age must be told and reckoned with. We must acknowledge that there were people there and that generations of people in New Mexico have lived with the health and economic consequences of the start of the atomic age.
#3
New Report Warns Of Growing Surveillance Threat For Abortions Or Gender-Affirming Care (Lil Kalish, HuffPost)
Patients seeking abortion or gender-affirming care out of state face increased threats of surveillance — and criminalization — from law enforcement and state officials, a new report shows.
For more than a year, abortion and privacy advocates have been sounding the alarm about how pregnant people could be tracked and prosecuted for seeking care after the Supreme Court upended federal abortion access with the fall of Roe v. Wade in 2022.
…
The S.T.O.P. report found that officials today have many more data points to pull from in cross-state investigations, such as vehicle information from private car or rideshare apps, flight records or automatic license plate readers that can pull photos and time and date stamps of a car’s location.
The report examined common forms of transportation and accommodation that people might use when crossing state lines, such as private car travel, air travel, or public transit like buses and trains. For accommodation, the types included hotels or staying in private homes. For each mode of travel or housing, the report investigated two key questions: How much of an information trail did it leave, and how vulnerable was it to profiling?
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
Governments in red states will use all the tools available to punish the people who go to other states to get these necessary reproductive and gender-affirming healthcare services. As this new report from the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project explains, “prosecutors and state officials can use countless surveillance tools, from automated license plate readers to street cameras, to identify and track those seeking, facilitating, or assisting out- of-state care.” It is quite clear we cannot trust technology companies to protect their users’ privacy. Since the federal government won’t take action, we need more from state governments in states that provide these healthcare services to out-of-state people. We must ensure that the people who need these services know the best ways to protect themselves from these invasions of their privacy.
#4
How Paramount buried a Vice documentary on Ron DeSantis at Guantanamo Bay (Max Tani, Semafor)
Showtime slated “The Guantanamo Candidate,” a 30 minute-long episode of its Vice documentary series, for May 28.
The episode opens with a shot of the outside the US prison complex at the southern tip of Cuba, where Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis served as a lawyer from March 2006 to January 2007.
Vice reporters had secured on camera interviews with a former detainee, Mansoor Adayfi, and a guard at the prison, staff sergeant Joe Hickman. Both said they remembered seeing DeSantis at the prison during a controversial detainee hunger strike. The Vice crew traveled to Guantanamo Bay to attempt to try to speak to military staff, and made several attempts to ask DeSantis about the allegations directly, eventually confronting him at a press conference in Israel, according to a detailed description provided to Semafor.
But Showtime viewers who turned on their televisions May 28 never saw the episode.
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign focuses on his service as a Navy attorney. So I think we should know more about what he did there—and whether he approved of the forced feeding of detainees and other potential war crimes. I previously mentioned this Guardian article by Julian Borger and Oliver Laughland that examined DeSantis’ Guantanamo work. Troubling is one word for what they found. Now we need to find out more about why a Paramount lobbyist raised concerns about this spiked episode. Did DeSantis’ campaign issue any threats? Was Paramount worried about getting the treatment DeSantis has leveled at Disney?
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#5
How School Board Meetings Became Flashpoints for Anger and Chaos Across the Country (Nicole Carr and Lucas Waldron, ProPublica)
Time and again over the last two years, parents and protesters have derailed school board meetings across the country. Once considered tame, even boring, the meetings have become polarized battlegrounds over COVID-19 safety measures, LGBTQ+ student rights, “obscene” library books and attempts to teach children about systemic racism in America.
On dozens of occasions, the tensions at the meetings have escalated into not just shouting matches and threats but also arrests and criminal charges.
ProPublica identified nearly 90 incidents in 30 states going back to the spring of 2021. (That’s when the majority of boards resumed gathering in-person after predominantly holding meetings virtually.) Our examination — the first wide-ranging analysis of school board unrest — found that at least 59 people were arrested or charged over an 18-month period, from May 2021 to November 2022. Prosecutors dismissed the vast majority of the cases, most of them involving charges of trespassing, resisting an officer or disrupting a public meeting. Almost all of the incidents were in suburban districts, and nearly every participant was white.
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
I’ve discussed how right-wing and MAGA activists have focused on school boards across the country over the past few years. I’ve mentioned the rise of the radical right-wing Moms for Liberty organization. We have watched parents seek to intimidate school board members with their actions at school board meetings. In California, where no Republican has won statewide office since November 2006, the state GOP announced its intention to focus on school board races to try to make gains. California’s State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tony Thurmond, was forced to leave a school board meeting last week in Chino Valley after the new school board president accused him of supporting policies that “pervert students.” The Chino Valley School Board’s action likely violated California’s open-meetings law. I cannot emphasize just how important school board elections—and other down-ballot races—are each election cycle.
#6
Some Dems worry Newsom’s 28th Amendment plan could open a constitutional Pandora’s box (Shira Stein and Sophia Bollag, The San Francisco Chronicle)
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s push to enact national gun control measures through an unprecedented constitutional convention has rankled some members of his own party who worry it could open a Pandora’s box of prospective changes to the U.S. Constitution.
Newsom’s proposed 28th Amendment would raise the federal age to buy a gun to 21, mandate background checks for firearms buyers, impose a waiting period for gun purchases and ban assault weapons. To do it, Newsom wants to call a constitutional convention on the subject, an untested mechanism that would be triggered if two-thirds of state legislatures call for one. There hasn’t been a constitutional convention since the Constitution was adopted in 1789, meaning it’s not clear how one would actually function if it were called in modern times.
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
I think Democrats in safe seats must take advantage of their positions to push for more liberal policies about controversial subjects. Such actions help open the Overton Window that includes what is politically acceptable for political debate at a certain time. Conservatives have taken initially unthinkable ideas and then transformed them into mainstream policies within the GOP. So while I agree with Newsom’s focus on gun safety, I am terrified of his suggestion to invoke an Article V Constitutional Convention. I remember just how close radical right-wing activists and their wealthy donors came to invoking an Article V Constitutional Convention just a few years ago. Former Senator Russ Feingold and legal scholar Peter Prindiville released a book in August 2022—only 11 months ago—called The Constitution in Jeopardy to warn people about what could happen. As Feingold told the New York Times in an article about the book’s release, “There are smart people and a few on the progressive side who are willing to roll the dice. For me, it is crazy to take the chance.” There are no rules for such a Convention outlined in the Constitution, so it is extremely risky to suggest that such an event could be restricted to one subject. We need to talk about gun safety. We need reforms. But I fear this is a dangerous way to frame this necessary conversation.
#7
Scientists say they’ve found a site that marks a new chapter in Earth’s history (Katie Hunt, CNN)
Scientists have identified the geological site that they say best reflects a proposed new epoch called the Anthropocene — a major step toward changing the official timeline of Earth’s history.
The term Anthropocene, first proposed in 2000 to reflect how profoundly human activity has altered the world, has become a commonly used academic buzzword uniting different fields of study.
“When it’s 8 billion people all having an impact on the planet, there’s bound to be a repercussion,” said Colin Waters, an honorary professor at the Geography, Geology and the Environment School at the University of Leicester and chair of the Anthropocene Working Group.
“We’ve moved into this new Earth state and that should be defined by a new geological epoch,” Waters added.
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
How much of an impact have humans had on our planet? We know it is large, but is it significant enough to be noticeable within Earth’s geological record? Geologists have divided the 4.5 billion history of the Earth into eons, eras, periods, epochs, and ages to define the planet’s evolution. We currently live in the:
- Phanerozoic eon (which began 538.8 million years ago),
- Cenozoic era (which began 66 million years ago with the asteroid impact that led to a mass extinction of the dinosaurs and three-quarters of all plant and animal species),
- Quarternary period (which began 2.6 million years ago),
- Holocene epoch (which began 11,700 years ago at the end of the last ice age), and
- Maghalayan age (which began 4,200 years ago).
There has been an active debate about whether the impact of humans has created a new epoch, the Anthropocene. A working group of geologists has identified a so-called “golden spike” at the bottom of a lake in the Toronto suburbs that demonstrates in the 1950s a clear distinction in the geologic record—including remnants of the radiation from nuclear weapons tests. The recommendation will now go to the International Commission on Stratigraphy and then the International Union of Geological Sciences for consideration and votes about whether to designate this new human-influenced epoch.
#8
How the Supreme Court put itself in charge of the executive branch (Ian Millhiser, Vox)
In the less than three years since President Joe Biden took office, the Supreme Court has effectively seized control over federal housing policy, decided which workers must be vaccinated against Covid-19, stripped the EPA of much of its power to fight climate change, and rewritten a federal law permitting the secretary of education to modify or forgive student loans.
In each of these decisions, the Court relied on something known as the “major questions doctrine,” which allows the Court to effectively veto any action by a federal agency that five justices deem to be too economically significant or too politically controversial.
This major questions doctrine, at least as it is understood by the Court’s current majority, emerged almost from thin air in the past several years. And it has been wielded almost exclusively by Republican-appointed justices to invalidate policies created by a Democratic administration. This doctrine is mentioned nowhere in the Constitution. Nor is it mentioned in any federal statute. It appears to have been completely made up by justices who want to wield outsize control over federal policy.
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
Millheiser does an excellent job explaining the impact and implications of the Major Questions Doctrine. The 6-3 right-wing Supreme Court majority is using this new doctrine to restrict the policies Democratic Administrations can pursue. (This Court didn’t use it to object to the expansions of executive power under President Trump. Subtle.) It is a political tool the conservative Justices are using to control Democratic presidents and Congresses. We should be clear about this dynamic as we consider prioritizing pushing for reforms to restore the Constitutional checks and balances among the three branches of our federal government.
#9
Team ACL: The growing women’s soccer club that no player wants to join (Ella Brockway, The Washington Post)
Studies show female athletes are two to eight times as likely as male athletes to tear an ACL, one of the bands of tissue that connect the femur and tibia at the knee. Since 2021, at least 87 players from eight of the world’s top women’s soccer leagues have torn their ACLs. Some of the sport’s biggest stars — such as U.S. attacker Catarina Macario, Dutch star Vivianne Miedema and the English duo of Beth Mead and Leah Williamson — will miss the World Cup because of this injury.
This recent wave is not a statistical anomaly but further proof of an ongoing issue that has no simple solution. Addressing it, many in the sport say, requires a zoomed-out approach that begins at soccer’s lowest levels and peels back all the layers of a gendered problem, from the physiological to the environmental.
In a moment of global growth for women’s sports, the ACL crisis strikes at the heart of a broader challenge. How can the infrastructure of women’s sports not simply replicate what exists for men’s sports but be optimized for female athletes? At the top levels of women’s soccer, players argue, such resources have not yet been provided.
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
The 2023 Women’s World Cup kicked off last Thursday, and we have seen some exciting action. It is essential that the focus on the sport leads to more study and action to figure out why so many women’s soccer players injure their ACLs. While an ACL injury may not be as devastating as it would have been even ten years ago thanks to advances in medicine, it still leads to nearly a year of rehabilitation and no guarantee that a player will be able to reach their previous level of performance. It is well past time to provide the resources necessary to help make this sport safer. Fans should be able to see the best players on the pitch as often as possible.
Post-Game Comments
Today’s Thought from my Readwise collection:
“That the human project since its birth, and human flourishing in general, seems to have played out at the expense of the rest of the natural world is one of the stark and unsettling discoveries of science.”—Peter Brannen, The Ends of the World
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