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Weaponizing the debt ceiling: How MAGA Republicans will inflict economic ruin just to maintain power

Weaponizing the debt ceiling: How MAGA Republicans will inflict economic ruin just to maintain power

Posted by | Oct 5, 2022

The Senate approved a short-term extension of government funding to prevent a shutdown on September 29. The deal funds the government until December 16 and also provides about $12 billion in aid to Ukraine as it fights off Russia’s invasion. The House is expected to pass the measure tomorrow. Behind this measure is a potential nightmare scenario. MAGA Republicans have already threatened to refuse to fund the government unless President Joe Biden and the Democrats reverse all their policies. If Republicans take control of either the House or the Senate—or both—in the midterms, they have the potential to throw...

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The stigma of treatment: Why refugees dealing with trauma often face obstacles to mental health care

The stigma of treatment: Why refugees dealing with trauma often face obstacles to mental health care

Posted by | Oct 5, 2022

As a young boy living in what was then Zaire, Bertine Bahige remembers watching refugees flee from the Rwandan genocide in 1994 by crossing a river that forms the two Central African nations’ border. Bahige’s harrowing refugee journey began when he was kidnapped and forced to become a child soldier when war broke out in his country, which became the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1997. He escaped at age 15 to a Mozambique refugee camp, where he lived for five years until he arrived in Baltimore in 2004 through a refugee resettlement program. Bahige, now 42, said the way...

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Tearing our nation apart: Why Americans fail to understand that crime is connected to inequality

Tearing our nation apart: Why Americans fail to understand that crime is connected to inequality

Posted by | Oct 4, 2022

I have previously written about how Democrats must engage with the topic of crime, and now new reports document how the GOP intends to use crime as their major wedge issue in this November’s election. But the conversation does us a disservice if it is limited to crime and punishment. We must consider what is driving crime and the social breakdown of which it is a symptom. Most people think crime (particularly property crime) is caused by poverty, like the poor people portrayed in Les Misérables stealing food for their children. But Louis XVI’s policies had both increased poverty in France...

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Ukraine responds to Russia’s declaration of war against Western democracies with NATO application

Ukraine responds to Russia’s declaration of war against Western democracies with NATO application

Posted by | Oct 3, 2022

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy formally applied for NATO membership on September 20, along with a public statement. The application came after the Russian dictator signed an illegal decrees to annex four Ukrainian territories, a move widely believed to reflect Putin’s desire to distract from his failed war effort. After a two-month stalemate, earlier this month Ukraine launched a game-changing counteroffensive against the Russians occupying their eastern territories of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia. Over the summer, Ukrainian forces destroyed Russian arms, command centers, and supplies behind Russian lines with U.S.-supplied long-range High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), then began...

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The War on Education: How dismantling public schools further divides Americans into a caste system

The War on Education: How dismantling public schools further divides Americans into a caste system

Posted by | Oct 2, 2022

A new report finds that DeSantis’ Florida will, this 2022-2023 school year, move $1.3 billion in taxpayer money originally destined for public schools to private schools. This will gut the public school budgets across the state by roughly 10 percent. Florida is not unique in this: it is happening all across the nation. Public education in America is in a crisis and has been for some time. It is a crisis Republicans across the country are doing everything they can to make worse. In many ways today’s conservative war on public education dates back to the 1950s when, in...

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A skeptical Corn Belt: Researchers seek methods to unobtrusively install solar stations on farmland

A skeptical Corn Belt: Researchers seek methods to unobtrusively install solar stations on farmland

Posted by | Oct 1, 2022

Extensive land across the Midwest could be used for solar power, but instead is tied up in row crops. Researchers have examined how to build solar panels without taking out that cropland. Sprouting out of the corn like a super crop are four arrays of solar panels standing 20 feet high and towering above the stalks growing below. They look both out of place, technology amid nature, and as though they have always been there. After all, both the corn and the panels are harvesting the sun. “Either way, they are storing solar energy,” said Mitch Tuinstra, a professor...

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