Police raid London Quaker meeting house

Novara Media -  Police have raided a Quaker meeting house and arrested six young people meeting to discuss concerns about the climate crisis and the Gaza genocide.

On 27 March, more than 20 officers - some carrying tasers - reportedly forced their way into Westminster Meeting House in central London. According to Quakers in Britain, the officers “broke open the front door without warning or ringing the bell first, searching the whole building and arresting six women attending the meeting in a hired room”.

 

Paul Parker, recording clerk for Quakers in Britain, said: “No-one has been arrested in a Quaker meeting house in living memory.”

 

“This aggressive violation of our place of worship and the forceful removal of young people holding a protest group meeting clearly shows what happens when society criminalises protest.”

Environment

Climate Change Has Exposed Over 1,000 More Miles of Greenland’s Coastline in 20 Years

Barent Observer - Research from the Norwegian Polar Institute studied ice loss from calving glaciers in the Arctic, focusing on the Austfonna ice cap in Svalbard. Researchers combined satellite data with ocean records and runoff models from 2018-2022. They found that melting and breaking happen mainly in autumn, even for fast-flowing glaciers. In contrast to earlier findings, ocean temperature rather than air temperature is the primary cause of ice loss. Austfonna is Europe's third-largest glacier by area and volume. The study reveals that this glacier has continued to melt year-round, even during the dark and colder months of winter and fall. Based on this study, continued ocean and atmospheric warming can drive greater ice loss and sea-level rise even in high latitude polar regions.

Court Safeguards Transgender Airmen from Policy Threats

 Newsworthy News - Federal judges have temporarily halted the Trump administration’s attempt to dismiss transgender service members from the U.S. military, setting the stage for a protracted legal battle over military readiness and constitutional rights.

• U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Department of Defense from implementing a policy to remove transgender service members.
• A separate ruling by Judge Christine O’Hearn specifically protects two Air Force members, Master Sgt. Logan Ireland and Staff Sgt. Nicholas Bear Bade, from dismissal.
• The Pentagon had begun implementing President Trump’s executive order with policy memos labeling gender dysphoria as “incompatible” with military service.
• The Department of Defense estimates 4,240 active duty service members have gender dysphoria, while independent research suggests the number of transgender troops may be around 14,700.
• A 2016 RAND Corp. study found no negative impact from allowing transgender individuals to serve in the military.

 

Trump hit with two law suits in an hour

 New Republic - Donald Trump got whacked by two lawsuits Friday from major law firms challenging his executive orders targeting them for defending clients and causes he dislikes or employing lawyers he’s deemed as enemies.  WilmerHale and Jenner & Block both filed suits against the Trump administration over a pair of retaliatory executive orders allegedly “addressing risks” from the two firms, after Trump previously targeted three other firms.

Trump Admin Spies on Social Media of Foreign Students

Ken Klippenstein -  The Trump administration is requiring that foreign students studying in, or seeking to study in the United States, pass an ideological test in order to obtain a visa, according to a “sensitive” State Department directive issued by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and which I obtained.

The crackdown, instituted on Tuesday, makes it “mandatory” for consular officers and State Department personnel to conduct a “social media review” — including screenshotting posts — of new and returning student visa applicants for any evidence of terrorist connections. Such connections are defined broadly to include “advocating for, sympathizing with, or persuading others to endorse or espouse terrorist activities or support” a terrorist organization. Though the document doesn’t explicitly define what counts as advocacy, it mentions “conduct that bears a hostile attitude toward U.S. citizens or U.S. culture (including government, institutions, or founding principles).”

Specific reference is made to students seeking to participate “in pro-Hamas events,” which is how the Trump administration has characterized student protests against the war in Gaza.

"When you apply to enter the United States and you get a visa, you are a guest,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on March 16 in remarks quoted in the directive “If you tell us when you apply for a visa, I'm coming to the U.S. to participate in pro-Hamas events, that runs counter to the foreign policy interest of the United States ….. if you had told us you were going to do that, we never would have given you the visa."

The order to “comprehensively review and screen every visa applicant” appears directed at Palestinian and other foreign students who are “sympathetic” to Hamas, but typical of every government directive, it also opens the door for broader ideological vetting. It also directs the social media of visa applicants to be assessed for “potential security and non-security related ineligibilities [that] pose a threat to U.S. national security.”

Stupid Trump stuff

Trump: “I was sort of like a hot guy. I was hot as a pistol. I think I was hotter than I am now and I became president. Okay. I don't know. I said to somebody, was I hotter before or hotter now? I don't know.” (2024)

Syracuse. com  - President Joe Biden tweeted late on New Year’s Eve 2022 that he was “ready to get things done” in the coming New Year. Among the thousands of people to reply to the post was John A. Sarcone III, a lawyer in private practice in Westchester County.

“Traitor should be tried for treason,” he wrote. “Worst person to occupy the White House.”

It’s the same John Sarcone who once tweeted that former President Barack Obama should be “the first illegal alien deported.” He’s called for Hillary Clinton to be jailed for treason.

Now President Donald Trump’s administration has placed Sarcone in charge of an office that handles criminal prosecutions across 32 counties in Upstate New York, including in the Syracuse area.

Polling

 Newsweek - According to the most recent poll conducted by YouGov and Yahoo between March 20-24 among 1,677 U.S. adults, Trump's approval rating over his handling of the economy now stands at 39 percent, while 51 percent disapprove. This marks the lowest economic approval rating Trump has seen in recent years, even lower than during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in May and June of 2020, when 49 percent approved and 45 percent disapproved of his economic handling, according to YouGov and Yahoo.

The latest numbers reflect growing concerns about the state of the U.S. economy, with most Americans either believing the nation is already in a recession (26 percent) or headed toward one (26 percent). Only 26 percent of Americans currently rate the economy as "excellent" or "good," while a staggering 70 percent rate it as "fair" or "poor." These figures represent a slight decline from preelection assessments, when 30 percent of Americans rated the economy positively and 67 percent viewed it as fair or poor.

Trump takes aim at collective bargaining for federal employees

Washington Times - President Trump took aim at collective bargaining for federal employees in certain agencies with an executive order he signed Thursday.

The order, which was taken to “enhance the national security” of the U.S., applies to numerous agencies and their subdivisions, including the departments of State, Defense, Justice, Health and Human Services, Commerce, Veterans Affairs and Energy, plus parts of Homeland Security.

“President Trump is taking action to ensure that agencies vital to national security can execute their missions without delay and protect the American people,” a fact sheet put out by the White House said. “The President needs a responsive and accountable civil service to protect our national security.”

The order argues that the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 lets the president take such measures.

“President Trump refuses to let union obstruction interfere with his efforts to protect Americans and our national interests,” the fact sheet said.

It noted that Veterans Affairs’ “unions have filed 70 national and local grievances over President Trump’s policies since the inauguration — an average of over one a day.”

American Federation of Government Employees National President Everett Kelley condemned the executive order and said the group is “preparing immediate legal action and will fight relentlessly to protect our rights, our members and all working Americans from these unprecedented attacks.”

He added, “President Trump’s latest executive order is a disgraceful and retaliatory attack on the rights of hundreds of thousands of patriotic American civil servants — nearly one-third of whom are veterans — simply because they are members of a union that stands up to his harmful policies.”

Science

 Slashdot - A Nature survey has found that three-quarters of responding U.S. scientists are considering leaving the nation following disruptions to science under the Trump administration.   Out of 1,608 respondents, 75.3% said they were contemplating leaving the country. Scientists cited concerns over research funding and the general treatment of science as contributing factors for their reasoning. Europe and Canada were mentioned as potential destinations for those looking for opportunities abroad.

Mayors of major cities back ranked choice voting

Fair Vote - Mayors of big cities across the country are coming out in support of ranked choice voting (RCV). RCV is currently used in 46 U.S. cities, including the most populous cities in seven states. Several mayors of these cities, as well as mayors in other states’ largest cities – including Boston, Detroit, Denver, and Chicago – have expressed support for RCV. 

RCV has proven particularly popular condensing two-round city elections into a single, higher-turnout election. With RCV, voters can select a majority winner in one round – if no candidate wins more than half of voters’ first choices, an “instant runoff” is held using voters’ backup choices.

 

Trump regime

 Trump pushes to control all of Ukraine’s mineral and energy assets in sweeping new demands

Six small morsels of hope

 

The Trump regime and death

 New Republic - Condemning public health restrictions, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick said, “There are more important things than living.” Patrick, who has proudly stood by that ghoulish statement, meant that the government had a higher obligation to keep the capitalist economy moving than to save any of its citizens from premature death. This sounded shocking to many people at the time, but it’s a philosophy that Trump, Musk, DOGE and company have now fully embraced.

Our nation’s founders would not have agreed. The point of human society and government, wrote John Locke, the seventeenth-century Enlightenment theorist from whom Thomas Jefferson and other American founding thinkers got many of their ideas, was that people need to band together in community to protect each person’s “life, liberty and property.”

Meanwhile. . .

Nice News  - A study found that young men who wore socks to bed fell asleep about eight minutes faster than those who went sock-free. They also snoozed for roughly a half-hour longer and woke up less frequently in the night. ​

 President Donald Trump on Thursday announced he would withdraw the nomination of New York Rep. Elise Stefanik to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, citing a need for Republicans to keep her seat amid narrow margins in the House. Read more...

Smithsonian now a Trump target

CNN -  President Trump is now targeting the Smithsonian Institution, which he claims advances “divisive narratives.” In an executive order signed on Thursday, Trump expressed his ire about exhibits featured in the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum. He put Vice President JD Vance in charge of overseeing efforts to “remove improper ideology” from all areas of the institution, including its museums, education and research centers and the National Zoo. He also ordered the interior secretary to determine whether public monuments, memorials, statues or markers have been removed or changed since 2020 to “perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history" and restore the original ones.

Trump goes after Department of Health and Human Services

NPR-  The Trump administration announced yesterday that it is planning a major restructuring of the Department of Health and Human Services, including cutting 20,000 employees. HHS includes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Medicare and Medicaid, the National Institutes of Health, and other smaller divisions. HHS states that the job cuts will save $1.8 billion. 

NPR’s Selena Simmons-Duffin says her inbox was flooded with shocked responses to the news yesterday from Democratic lawmakers, nurses groups, public health groups and more. “They say this isn’t an overhaul; it's a wrecking ball.” The hardest hit agencies will be the CDC, FDA and the Administration for Community Living, which helps seniors and people with disabilities live independently. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said they have two goals with the restructuring: saving taxpayers' money and improving their quality of service.

Trumpists go after foreign students

 NBC News - The State Department has revoked 300 or more student visas, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, as the White House increasingly targets foreign-born students whose main transgression seems to be activism. 

Around the country, scholars have been picked up and held in detention centers, sometimes far from their homes with little warning and often with few details about why they are being detained. The State Department has used an immigration provision that dates to the Cold War to justify some of the detentions. Federal officials can also revoke a student visa if they deem the student a threat.

"It might be more than 300 at this point," Rubio said of the number of students whose visas have been revoked. "We do it every day. Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visas."

This week, Tufts University doctoral student Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish national who was in the country with a valid student visa was pulled off the street. Ozturk co-authored an opinion essay in the Tufts student newspaper last year criticizing the university for how it responded to student demands.

How Kennedy's FDA And CDC Cuts Imperil Your Family's Health

The forgotten art of squatting

Pocket - In much of the developed world, resting is synonymous with sitting. We sit in desk chairs, eat from dining chairs, commute seated in cars or on trains, and then come home to watch Netflix from comfy couches. With brief respites for walking from one chair to another, or short intervals for frenzied exercise, we spend our days mostly sitting. This devotion to placing our backsides in chairs makes us an outlier, both globally and historically. In the past half century, epidemiologists have been forced to shift how they study movement patterns. In modern times, the sheer amount of sitting we do is a separate problem from the amount of exercise we get.

Our failure to squat has biomechanical and physiological implications, but it also points to something bigger. In a world where we spend so much time in our heads, in the cloud, on our phones, the absence of squatting leaves us bereft of the grounding force that the posture has provided since our hominid ancestors first got up off the floor. In other words: If what we want is to be well, it might be time for us to get low.

To be clear, squatting isn’t just an artifact of our evolutionary history. A large swath of the planet’s population still does it on a daily basis, whether to rest, to pray, to cook, to share a meal, or to use the toilet. (Squat-style toilets are the norm in Asia, and pit latrines in rural areas all over the world require squatting.) As they learn to walk, toddlers from New Jersey to Papua New Guinea squat—and stand up from a squat—with grace and ease. In countries where hospitals are not widespread, squatting is also a position associated with that most fundamental part of life: birth.

It’s not specifically the West that no longer squats; it’s the rich and middle classes all over the world. My Quartz colleague, Akshat Rathi, originally from India, remarked that the guru’s observation would be “as true among the rich in Indian cities as it is in the West.”

 

Courts and Trump

Independent, UK -   A second federal judge has blocked Donald Trump’s ban on transgender service members in the U.S. military, a “plainly” discriminatory directive with “no evidence” to support the administration’s claims, according to the ruling.  “The government’s arguments are not persuasive, and it is not an especially close question on this record,” George W. Bush-appointed District Judge Benjamin Settle wrote in a 65-page opinion Thursday. 

 Roll Call - A federal judge in Washington ordered Trump administration officials Thursday to temporarily preserve records of a leaked Signal group chat where senior officials discussed sensitive information about a military action against the Houthis.

Judge James E. Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said he would enter the order in a lawsuit that alleges potential violations of the Federal Records Act, which requires agencies to retain records of their deliberations and decisions.

The order is set to last for two weeks and could be the start of further court action over whether Trump officials’ use of Signal or other messaging apps runs afoul of the records law.

Fired FTC commissioner hits back

 The Guardian - The US is in the midst of an extraordinary battle between “the rule of law versus the rule of billionaires”, a top Democratic government official and attorney has warned, after his unprecedented firing by Donald Trump.

Alvaro Bedoya, abruptly terminated as a commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) last week, sounded a “blinking red alarm” over backroom “quid pro quo” dealmaking he said appears to be taking place inside the Trump administration.

Bedoya and his colleague, commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, another Democrat, were fired from the FTC, Washington’s top antitrust watchdog. Both Bedoya and Slaughter have sued the administration over their respective dismissals, which they argue were illegal.

In an interview with the Guardian, Bedoya expressed fear that his firing is a sign of billionaires’ growing power over the federal government. “This isn’t about progressive versus conservative,” he said. “This is about the rule of law versus the rule of billionaires.”

Independent and bipartisan agencies like the FTC are typically shielded from direct control by the White House. Supreme court precedents interpret the FTC Act’s terms, which only allow the president to remove FTC commissioners for “insufficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance” in office.

Black woman develops 'Black Amazon' app

Good Good Good - Recent diversity, equity, and inclusion rollbacks have led many Americans to reconsider their relationship with major retailers like Amazon and Target.
But Dacia Petrie has been waiting for this moment since 2018.

The UI and web designer started her journey as many young women do: with an Instagram page. Here, she curated Black-owned businesses and prominent Black leaders to profile and highlight. 

After enrolling in web design courses at Spelman University, she later launched her app and website Black Nile in 2021.

“I saw somebody in the comments saying that they’re looking for a Black Amazon,” Petrie said in a recent TikTok video.

“Sister, I’mma hold your hand when I say this. This ain’t Amazon. It’s Black Nile.”

The app’s website goes on to add that “The Nile holds a profound symbolism, rich with layers of meaning that resonate deeply with our faith in Christ, our heritage, and unique plight in history.”

Climate

 Axios - The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is moving the Climate Prediction Center underneath a larger entity, known as the Weather Prediction Center, according to an email viewed by Axios.

The move was partly motivated by a desire to protect CPC, which because of its name is considered vulnerable to the Trump administration's budget ax, according to NOAA sources who spoke on condition of anonymity. Other federal agencies have ended funding for climate studies and taken climate change-related datasets offline based on President Trump's executive orders.

Religion

 Visual Capitalist - The Religious Landscape Study (RLS) was conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2007, 2014, and 2023–24. The study surveys more than 35,000 Americans across all 50 states about their religious affiliations.

After many years of steady decline, the share of Americans who identify as Christian shows signs of leveling off—at least temporarily.

According to the study, the percentage of U.S. adults identifying as Christian declined from 78% in 2007 to 63% in 2023-24. Since 2020, the percentage has remained relatively stable, fluctuating between 62% and 64%.

Religious Group	Percentage
Evangelical Protestant	23%
Catholic	19%
Mainline Protestant	11%
Black Protestant	5%
Other Christian	3%
Latter-day Saints	2%
Jewish	2%
Muslim	1%
Buddhist	1%
Hindu	1%
Other World Religions	2%
Atheist	5%
Agnostic	6%
Nothing in Particular	19%

Word

Via U.S. Democratic Socialists