Author: Reporter

Empathy is usually regarded as a virtue, a key to human decency and kindness. And yet, with increasing momentum, voices on the Christian right are preaching that it has become a vice. For them, empathy is a cudgel for the left: It can manipulate caring people into accepting all manner of sins according to a conservative Christian perspective, including abortion access, LGBTQ+ rights, illegal immigration, and certain views on social and racial justice. “Empathy becomes toxic when it encourages you to affirm sin, validate lies or support destructive policies,” said Allie Beth Stuckey, author of “Toxic Empathy: How Progressives...

A man captured on camera hurling a sandwich at a federal agent in DC has been charged with a misdemeanor offense after prosecutors failed to convince a grand jury to return a more serious felony indictment, according to court papers filed on August 28. The move is a blow to the Trump regime, which had highlighted the felony assault case against Sean Charles Dunn to show it would aggressively prosecute violence against law enforcement — even after Trump pardoned January 6 rioters who brutally attacked officers with poles and other makeshift weapons. The White House had spotlighted Dunn’s case...

Sweat covers Isaac Barnes’s face under his beekeeper’s veil as he hauls boxes of honeycomb from his hives to his truck. It’s a workout in what feels like a sauna as the late-morning June temperatures rise. Though Barnes was hot, his bees were even hotter. Their body temperatures can be up to 27 degrees Fahrenheit (about 15 Celsius) higher than the air around them. As global temperatures rise under climate change, scientists are trying to better understand the effects on managed and wild bees as they pollinate crops, gather nectar, make honey and reproduce. They noticed flying bees gathering...

The sternly worded statements and letters are filled with indignation and outrage: Republican U.S. lawmakers say Canada has done too little to contain wildfires and smoke that have fouled the air in several states this summer. “Instead of enjoying family vacations at Michigan’s beautiful lakes and campgrounds, for the third summer in a row, Michiganders are forced to breathe hazardous air as a result of Canada’s failure to prevent and control wildfires,” read a statement from the state’s GOP congressional delegation, echoing similar missives from Republicans in Iowa, New York, North Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin. They’ve demanded more forest...

The late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said that if it were up to him, he would jail “every sandal-wearing, scruffy-bearded weirdo who burns the American flag.” But the Constitution, the conservative hero noted in 2015, protects flag-burning as a form of free speech. And importantly: “I am not king” who can outlaw the act single-handedly. Neither is President Donald Trump. So on August 25, he signed an executive order that sets out to challenge the 5-4 Supreme Court decision that has stood since 1989, when Scalia joined the majority ruling that flag burning is a protected exercise of...