How US Government Funds Meant to Stop Poaching May Have Ended up Funding Torture
This story was originally published by HuffPost and is shared here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The House Natural Resources Committee has launched a bipartisan investigation into whether federal conservation grants support organizations linked to alleged human rights abuses overseas. The probe follows a BuzzFeed News investigation in March that found the World Wide Fund for Nature,…
Trump’s Immigration Deal With Mexico Is a Nothingburger
The New York Times confirms what I said last night: The deal to avert tariffs that President Trump announced with great fanfare on Friday night consists largely of actions that Mexico had already promised to take in prior discussions with the United States over the past several months, according to officials from both countries who…
Newly Discovered Whitey Bulger Letters Reveal His Love of Trump
US Marshals Service/AP Nearly eight months after notorious Boston criminal James “Whitey” Bulger was found dead in federal prison, NBC News uncovered letters from the mob boss that detailed his failing health, his longtime girlfriend, and, notably, his praise for Donald Trump. In several letters from prison, Bulger revealed that he enjoyed Trump’s contentious relationship…
We Need More Exciting Tennis
This teaser on the front page of the New York Times tells the story of the current state of women’s tennis: The winner of the French Open was a woman who gave up the sport a few years ago and is currently ranked #8. The runner-up was a woman ranked #38. Aside from Barty, none…
The Public Mood Is Very Liberal. But Why?
Every year, James Stimson, a political science professor at the University of North Carolina, updates his public mood index. It’s getting a lot of attention this year because it shows that the public mood is the most liberal it’s been in the entire postwar era: I’ve added markers to all the midterm election years just…
Reducing Lead Levels In Kids Reduces Crime When They Grow Up
A couple of years ago I wrote about a very powerful study that examined the effect of lead poisoning in children on crime rates later in life. It was done by Stephen Billings and Kevin Schnepel, who used data from North Carolina to construct two randomly selected groups of kids, one that received intervention for…