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- Why Mandatory Green Policies Often Backfire
This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Combating climate change can feel particularly difficult these days. Countries, states, and municipalities across the globe are missing greenhouse emission reduction targets, and in the United States, President Donald Trump has rolled back key elements of his predecessor’s climate agenda. Given the trajectory, it might be tempting for pro-climate policymakers to turn to more aggressive measures of getting people to take action, such as mandates, bans, or restrictions. People would then have to save the planet. But a study published last week in the journal Nature Sustainability suggests that approach can carry real risks. It found that climate policies aimed at forcing lifestyle changes—such as bans on driving in urban centers—can backfire by weakening people’s existing pro-environmental values and triggering political backlash, even among those who already care about climate change. The findings suggest that how climate policy is designed… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.2 days ago - Misconduct Expert Says State Has the Right to Charge ICE Officer Who Killed Renee GoodAfter an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis this week, firing his weapon as she attempted to drive away, protesters have amassed around the country, many wondering: Can that officer be taken to court? The Trump administration, predictably, says the agent, Jonathan Ross, is immune from prosecution. “You have a federal law enforcement official engaging in federal law enforcement action,” Vice President JD Vance told reporters on Thursday. “That guy is protected by absolute immunity. He was doing his job.” But what do independent attorneys say? After the shooting, I reached out to Robert Bennett, a veteran lawyer in Minneapolis who has worked on hundreds of federal police misconduct cases during his 50-year career. “I’ve deposed thousands of police officers,” he says. “ICE agents do not have absolute immunity.” Bennett says the state of Minnesota has the right to prosecute an ICE agent who commits misconduct.… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.2 days ago
- I’m Not From the Government but I’m Here to Help
Photographs by Jason AndrewPeople look at you differently when you carry a Geiger counter. Or, at least, when you carry a Geiger counter and exclaim things like “Much less radiation here than you might expect!” But how else are you to know that the radiation in your food is at acceptable levels?They have government inspectors for this, you might say. It is their job.That was before Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency started hacking away at our bureaucracy. Before the federal government was shut down for much of the fall. And before I bought a Geiger counter to do my own food inspections.For a while—maybe since 1883, when the Pendleton Act created a merit-based civil service of experts—we, as a nation, thought to ourselves: Life is too short for everyone to inspect their own food. Let the government handle this. But then along came the Trump administration to wonder: What… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.3 days ago - Deadly Force on a Frozen Street
Aidan Perzana woke up to honking vehicles and looked out his window just as ICE officers surrounded an SUV. The 31-year-old data engineer told me he saw the officers moving to the side of the vehicle as the driver attempted to pull away. “There was not a thought in my mind that she was going to hit one of them,” he said. “I was surprised to hear the gunshots.”Videos circulating on social media showed more of the confrontation. They start like so many of the chaotic clips from Chicago, Los Angeles, Charlotte, and other cities where President Donald Trump has ordered Border Patrol agents and ICE officers to ramp up arrests. Heavily armed federal agents in body armor and masks fill neighborhood streets and crowds gather; bystanders hold up cellphones; protesters blow whistles and honk car horns.It’s not clear how Renee Nicole Good’s SUV ended up in the street between… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.4 days ago - Does Congress Even Exist Anymore?Representative Seth Moulton is a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, but he learned about the U.S. military’s middle-of-the-night capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro the same way many Americans did: A friend who saw the news on the internet texted him.“That is not the way Congress is supposed to be notified of operations by the Department of Defense,” Moulton, a Democrat from Massachusetts, told us wryly. Still, Moulton was surprised neither by the Trump administration’s decision to attack Venezuela nor by the fact that it declined to give Congress a heads-up about the mission, much less seek its approval. A Marine who served four tours of duty in Iraq, Moulton had watched for months as the military stationed warships off Venezuela’s coast, and he gave little credence to the insistence of senior administration officials, in classified briefings to lawmakers, that they were not planning to take out… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.4 days ago
- Foolery, Foppery, and FineryAs president, George Washington received visitors once a week, for exactly half an hour. These “levees,” as they were called, were not loose occasions. Washington stood by the fireplace in a dining room cleared of its chairs. Dressed in a black velvet suit, hair powdered, hat in hand, he greeted guests with a formal bow. Handshakes, familiar and egalitarian, were prohibited. Conversation was sparse. The president, per Alexander Hamilton’s instructions, might talk “cursorily on indifferent subjects,” but nothing more. Then, after having been seen by the guests, he was to promptly “disappear.”If little was said at Washington’s levees, much was said about them, beginning with the fact that the entire practice was imported from the royal courts of Europe. For Hamilton and others close to Washington, this was precisely the point. The public needed to appreciate the full “dignity of the office,” a goal best accomplished by setting a “high… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.4 days ago
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