Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
I have tried not to be joyful over the illness and death of my political opponents (or of anybody I don’t like), or to rejoice at their deaths. Yes, I wish Donald Trump was gone, but not via some horrible illness. After all, these are human beings and have feelings as well as families who (by and large) love them, and those people will suffer, too. Further, as a determinist, I realize that these people couldn’t have done other than what they did. That doesn’t mean I excuse their doings, for I am so constituted as to excoriate them, and excoriation (and reward) can change people’s behavior.
But I’ve heard many people wish not just for Trump’s death, but for a painful, agonizing death. This is a staple for all Republicans on certain odious websites, one of which celebrated Mitch McConnell’s illness
The only optimistic news I’ve seen is that Mitch McConnell, one of the architects of the conservative dominance of the Supreme Court, may be dying.
. . . . So maybe a slow, miserable death…but not too painful, since his mind is probably mostly gone. We’ve got time to get some champagne and caviar before his demise! The most generous thing I can say is that I wish he’d retired to the happy bosom of his family and a life of relaxation a decade or two ago. As it is, he overstayed his tenure, and to what end? The poisoning of his beloved Republican party.
Now McConnell is still sitting in the Senate, and it’s fine to wish him gone, and even to say that you’re not very sad if he dies. But to wish for a “painful agonizing death”? I’m sure that if by some magic had the power to inflict that, they wouldn’t think twice.
These are the same kind of people who applauded Luigi Mangione for killing Brian Thompson, which is an even more odious behavior.
Now you can explain why people’s death have removed a deleterious element from society, as Hitchens did for Jerry Falwell, but I see that as different from wishing them to die or suffer while they’re still alive.
But you may feel differently. Let’s take some polls!
Is it okay to wish for the death of your political/ideological opponents, or of people you don't like
Is it okay to wish for a "painful and agonizing death", or other forms of physical suffering, on your political/ideological opponents or people you dislike?
I’ve watched with alarm the increase in the number of members and political candidates affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), whose membership has swelled from 6,000 members in 1982 to 110,000 members this year. I don’t know anybody affiliated with that party, but the positions espoused by their candidates are so extreme that they often come close to lunacy, as in the case of Darializa Avila Chevaler, likely to be elecetd a Congresswoman come fall. They favor open borders, an end to incarceration and most policing, and, to a man and woman, they are strongly anti-Israel. These stands, which come close to antisemitism, used to bar candidates from election, but now are de rigueur for DSAers.
DSA candidates are “progressive,” but in an authoritarian way, and in that respect they are no advance over classic liberals or the “mainstream” Democratic Party—if there still is one! Zohran Mamdani, the Mayor of NYC and a DSA member, has been dubbed a “kingmaker”, as the candidates he’s endorsed have won by substantial margins in the primaries. My only consolation is that these are primaries in blue states, though an apparently loony DSAer, Melat Kiros, won a House primary in Colorado a light-blue state. In all of these cases, the DSA candidate is predicted to defeat the Republican in November.
Will this invidious party spread? We already have DSAers in Congress: Rashida Tlaib and AOC, both of whom I detest. Bernie Sanders, though not a member of DSA, is affiliated with them. That’s a small number, but it is going to get larger: DSAers in Congress will at least double next year.
In a new article in The Atlantic, staff writer Jonathan Chait describes the principles and history of the DSA, both of which should scare the bejeezus out of any liberal or mainstream Democrat. Click below to read the article for free:
Some quotes;
The general idea that Democratic Party loyalists seem to have about members of the Democratic Socialists of America is that they’re a lot like Democrats, but perhaps a bit more passionate. Voters in New York City are “not afraid of the term democratic socialism,” Joy Behar recently said on The View, to applause. “Social Security is democratic socialism. Partly, unemployment insurance is. The people who pick up your garbage, the people who take the fire out at your house—all of these things are democratic socialism.”
It’s true that the DSA has areas of ideological overlap with the Democratic Party, and would at least directionally support classic Democratic policies such as a higher minimum wage, defending social spending, and opposing the Trump administration. But the DSA’s version of democratic socialism goes far beyond routine public functions such as garbage collection and Social Security (which most Republicans, not to mention Democrats, support), or even aspirational policies such as Medicare for All.
The DSA, in fact, seems to despise the Democratic Party. Darializa Avila Chevalier has called Joe Biden a “rapist” and wrote “Fuck Kamala Harris” on social media. She proceeded to be nominated for a House race in New York last week by Democratic voters who presumably do not all share those feelings. The DSA now includes a growing caucus of supporters in Congress, has mayoral candidates well positioned to win in several big cities, and has plans to throw its weight behind a yet-to-be-determined presidential candidate in 2028.
The DSA’s feelings about Democrats encompass not only the party’s leadership but also the philosophical commitments that have guided it since the New Deal: a mixed economy undergirded by democratic values. Chevalier, for instance, joined a post–October 7 celebratory rally and portrayed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a defensive response to Western “bullying.” She previously called for seizing land and the means of production and has repeatedly praised communism.
These positions are not holdovers from the idealism of youth or a bygone “woke” era. They are a by-product of the DSA’s core ideology. The DSA has become a force in Democratic Party politics even as it has grown more hostile to the party, more illiberal, and more dogmatic.
The writer and activist Michael Harrington helped found the DSA in 1982. His goal was to build a socialist movement that would eventually pull the Democratic Party toward more humane domestic and foreign policies. He believed that a commitment to freedom of speech, elections, and other democratic norms was an absolute requirement for any socialist organization. And generations of bitter experience taught Harrington and his allies that socialist organizations had failed because they allowed communists to infiltrate them and take control of their organizing structures. Its founding bylaws accordingly permitted the expulsion of members who were “under the discipline of any self-defined democratic-centralist organization,” a slightly jargonish way of describing communists.
As Chait describes, the DSA fractured after October 7, 2023 when Hamas attacked Israel. Now the organization is pretty much anti-Israel and even sides with terrorists groups (and no, its Jew hatred is based on more than Netanyahu—it’s anti-Zionism, equivalent to antisemitism):
In 2025, the group’s convention voted to officially remove its founding language allowing for the expulsion of members who worked for communist cells, and added a provision calling the Palestinian “right to resistance” a central tenet of the DSA. Having dismantled the guardrails that Harrington built to exclude communists, the group established new guardrails to exclude anybody opposed to Israel’s destruction. “Michael Harrington’s DSA is dead,” a dispatch from the proceedings gloated.
Now, Chait says, more that half of DSA members openly identify as communists, which means that they want authoritarian power (the dictatorship of the proletariat), though some like Mamdani or Tlaib disguise their antidemocratic aims well, supporting uncontroversial ideas like public health care and transportation. But that’s just the veneer:
In 2025, the group’s convention voted to officially remove its founding language allowing for the expulsion of members who worked for communist cells, and added a provision calling the Palestinian “right to resistance” a central tenet of the DSA. Having dismantled the guardrails that Harrington built to exclude communists, the group established new guardrails to exclude anybody opposed to Israel’s destruction. “Michael Harrington’s DSA is dead,” a dispatch from the proceedings gloated.
And do you know about the “dirty break”?
The DSA’s long-term strategy is to exploit the Democratic Party’s ballot access and reservoir of voters to build its following, and then, after it gains enough power, break off to form its own party, after which the husk of the old Democratic Party would wither and die. This gambit is called the “dirty break,” a term coined by a 2017 article in the left-wing magazine Jacobin.
Not all DSA officials agree on the dirty break. Some still cling to Harrington’s vision of pushing the Democrats leftward. Others favor an immediate split into a third party (a “clean break”). But as Peter Sterne, a onetime DSA member who now reports on New York politics, has written, “The DSA’s current strategy is a ‘dirty break’: gradually build up the necessary partylike infrastructure to eventually break away from the Democrats entirely, while still running candidates in Democratic primaries for now.”
In the meantime, the organization has displayed patience. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the movement’s most valuable political asset, has moved cautiously in office and avoided dramatic policy changes, building political support that he has spent on backing DSA challenges to mainstream Democrats.
. . .Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a DSA member, recently appeared on MS NOW, a favorite network for normie liberals, where she blamed Democratic members of Congress for discord with new left-wing nominees. “You,” she said, addressing her incumbent colleagues, “are creating the antagonistic dynamic that we do not need. These are two young, talented, intelligent women that got elected against all odds, against millions of dollars. Perhaps there is something we can learn from them.”
The norm that AOC is trying to create is a ratchet that pushes the Democratic Party ever leftward. The DSA is permitted to excoriate the party, but non-socialist Democrats cannot respond in kind. Moderate Democrats are permitted to exist, at least for now, but the ideological pressure runs in one direction.
Now the last bit might be an exaggeration (I love how AOC slots herself in the group of desirables), but it doesn’t seem far from the truth. Thankfully, at present Democrats as a whole are not behind the DSA:
At the most superficial level, the DSA influx has associated Democrats with a series of kooky beliefs and statements. Although Democratic voters approve of the DSA, voters as a whole do not. A national poll found the group’s approval at 21 percent, and 48 percent disapproved. (The same poll had 36 percent approval of the Democrats.) Its specific platform components are if anything less popular. The DSA’s leadership has approved a platform, set to be ratified at its convention next month, calling for “abolishing the carceral forces of the capitalist state,” opening borders, moving to public ownership for the largest corporations, establishing a 32-hour workweek, and defunding the Pentagon.
So why should we be scared? For two reasons. First, those of us who sympathize with Israel have watched with despair as antisemitism (excuse me: “anti-Zionism”) has seeped into the mainstream Democratic Party, and that’s partly the result of the DSA. More important, the DSA is antidemocratic and antiliberal, and woe to us if they get elected. Even so-called mainstream Democrats, like Kamala “Coconut Tree” Harris, are schmoozing with Democratic Socialists, trying to inject some pro-Palestinian notes and more progressivism into their campaigns. Click, read and weep: here’s an article from the Jerusalem Post:
I don’t think Harris has a snowball’s chance in hell of even being a Presidential/VP candidate in 2028, but who knows what will happen in the next two years? After all, Democrats embraced her candidacy in the last election, and then what happened? Here’s Chait’s conclusion about the DSA, and why we should fear it:
What the DSA demands of the Democrats is not merely to advocate more generous social policies, or more cautious foreign affairs, but to welcome, or at least accept, authoritarians as their coalition partners. Democrats are likely to face the same kind of pressure that Republicans confronted with MAGA’s hostile takeover: first to ignore their allies’ sinister goals, and then to rationalize and eventually justify them.
As authoritarian elements gain strength, they become more essential to the success of a political coalition, and the price of confronting them rises. The Republican Party has long since passed the point of no return. The easiest time to draw clear moral lines against the encroachment of illiberalism within one’s own camp is at the beginning.
Today’s photos continue the series taken by reader Ephraim Heller in Namibia. His captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
Today I continue my series on a May-June 2026 visit to Namibia. I’m organizing the posts by habitat, in the order of our visits, so that you get a sense of the ecosystems. Today’s post features Damaraland, a 48,000 km² region in the northwest of the country.
Damaraland is not a formal administrative region, but a geographic and cultural designation. It is a jumble of granite kopjes, basalt plateaus, flat-topped mountains, broad gravel plains, and eroded canyon systems. Like much of Namibia, it is desert. Here is an aerial view, taken from the window of a small airplane:
Life is sparse here. A handful of ephemeral rivers cross Damaraland, cutting westward from the interior highlands to the Skeleton Coast along the Atlantic Ocean. These rivers flow above ground for only a few days per year following significant inland rainfall, but each bed sits atop an alluvial aquifer that retains water from flood events for months to years. This subsurface water sustains a few trees, shrubs, and animals along the riverbeds. Here’s another aerial view showing the path of an ephemeral river:
By far the coolest critter I found was the longleg armoured corncricket (Acanthoplus longipes), which has superpowers. It is a large, flightless katydid brandishing big, spiny legs and a heavily armored (American spelling) pronotum. When attacked, individuals autohaemorrhage, shooting a jet of toxic hemolymph from the leg joints toward attackers. I wish I had a superpower like that:
Naturally, any creature with such a magnificent superpower fluoresces under UV light:
Frankly, the rest of this post is anticlimactic. What could possibly beat a longleg armoured corncricket? Not a pretty brush jewel beetle (Julodis humeralis):
A Namib rock agama (Agama planiceps) doesn’t beat a longleg armoured corncricket, not even when it is chowing down on a bug:
One night I went on a walk to see what would fluoresce under my UV light. I found this gecko. Sure, fluorescence is cool and I wish I could do it, but does this gecko autohaemorrhage? No, it does not. The folks at iNaturalist couldn’t identify it – apparently one needs the visible spectrum to make a positive ID:
This is tentatively identified as an orange lesser-thicktail scorpion (Uroplectes planimanus), another critter with the minor UV-fluorescence superpower. Interestingly, researchers do not know why scorpions evolved fluorescence.
Now for the birds. Sadly, they have no superpowers at all. Our lodge had a water feature that was the only surface water for miles around. I spent hours watching the birds bathe and drink.
A violet-backed starling (Cinnyricinclus leucogaster). The color is produced not by pigment but by thin-film interference: stacks of hollow melanosomes in the feather barbules refract light at specific wavelengths. The male can modulate its apparent coloration through posture:
The southern masked weaver (Ploceus velatus). Egg color varies among females, allegedly as a defense against brood parasitism by the Diederik cuckoo. Because the cuckoo cannot know egg color before entering the nest, color polymorphism in the weaver population raises the probability of parasite detection and egg ejection. Not a superpower, but cool nonetheless. I just like the bokeh in this photo:
Finally, the requisite Namibian desert night sky photos:
Welcome to Thursday, July 2, 2026, and it’s National Freedom from Fear of Speaking Day. Many people have a phobia about speaking in public, but the gentleman in the painting below overcame it to have his say in a town meeting. This is of course Norman Rockwell’s “Freedom of Speech” painting (the original), one of his famous 1943 series of “Four Freedoms“, all on display at the Rockwell Museum at Stockbridge, MA. I photographed this along with another fearless speaker in 2012 meeting, “Moving Naturalism Forward,” organized by physicist Sean Carroll in Stockbridge.
This is what Wikipedia says about the painting:
Freedom of Speech depicts a scene of a 1942 Arlington town meeting in which Jim Edgerton, the lone dissenter to the town selectmen’s announced plans to build a new school, as the old one had burned down, was accorded the floor as a matter of protocol. Edgerton supported the rebuilding process but was concerned about the tax burden of the proposal, as his family farm had been ravaged by disease. A memory of this scene struck Rockwell as an excellent fit for illustrating “freedom of speech”, and inspired him to use his Vermont neighbors as models for the entire Four Freedoms series.
The blue-collar speaker wears a plaid shirt and suede jacket, with dirty hands and a darker complexion than others in attendance. The other attendees are wearing white shirts, ties and jackets. One of the men in the painting is holding a document that reveals a subject of the meeting as “a discussion of the town’s annual report”. Edgerton’s youth and workmanlike hands are fashioned with a worn and stained jacket, while the other attendees appear to be older and more neatly and formally dressed. According to Bruce Cole of The Wall Street Journal, Edgerton is shown “standing tall, his mouth open, his shining eyes transfixed, he speaks his mind, untrammeled and unafraid”, and his face resembles Abraham Lincoln. According to Robert Scholes, the work shows audience members in rapt attention with admiration of the speaker, who resembles a Gary Cooper or Jimmy Stewart character in a Frank Capra film. According to John Updike, the work is painted without any painterly brushwork.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the July 2 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
Footy news: The U.S. beat Bosnia and Herzogovina 2-0, securing its first win in the knockout round since 2002. But there’s some bad news about red cards:
First, the good news: The United States men’s national team beat Bosnia-Herzegovina 2-0 in the World Cup round of 32 Wednesday night.
Now, the problematic: If the Americans are going to continue advancing, they will have to do it without their top goal scorer.
Folarin Balogun scored what proved to be the decisive goal for the U.S. just before halftime — his third of the tournament — but was then sent off just after the hour mark in a controversial decision that will see him suspended for the round-of-16 match against Belgium.
“It wasn’t a perfect day by any means,” defender Chris Richard said. “But it was our day.”
The red card came after Balogun collided with Bosnian defender Tarik Muharemovic just inside the U.S. attacking third. Both players were on the ground initially, but then the referee, Raphael Claus of Brazil, was called to the monitor by the video assistant referee.
After watching the slow-motion footage, Claus determined that Balogun had raked his cleats down Muharemovic’s leg and onto his foot and ankle, sending him off for serious foul play. Balogun looked shocked; he trudged to the sideline and was consoled by Christian Pulisic and Timothy Weah.
“We had to dig deep for that one,” Pulisic said. “It didn’t go exactly to plan with the red card, but that just shows what a good team we are. We said in the hydration break, you know, this is what it takes to be a really strong team. And, we were able to do it.”
Balogun is the fifth American to receive a red card at a World Cup and is the first player from any country to score and receive a red card in the same knockout game since France’s Zinedine Zidane in the 2006 final.
Ah, I remember Zidane kicked out for headbutting an Italian player after they exchanged “words.” Here are 15 minutes of highlights from the game above: the two plays leading to U.S. goals are at 4:50 and 10:51 (penalty kick); the red-card play at 6:56. (The U.S. scored two goals that were erased by offside calls.) The U.S. won despite losing a top scorer for the last 30 minutes of the game, and we’ll now advance to the round of 16.
Republicans are hampered by the unpopularity of President Trump and his diminished standing on the economy, while most of the Democratic candidates are so far running ahead of their party’s own struggling brand, the polls show.
Winning the Senate remains a stiff challenge for Democrats. Republicans hold 53 seats, meaning that Democrats would need to flip at least four seats while defending all of their own vulnerable ones.
The Times/Siena polls looked at the six states that are considered to be the Democratic Party’s best shots at flipping Republican-held seats: Alaska, Iowa, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas. The surveys found that while all six states are close enough to be competitive, if the election were held today Republicans would be favored in enough states to keep control of the Senate.
But the new polls suggest that Democrats have a path.
Mr. Trump carried five of the states in 2024, and if all six states were considered together he won them by an average of eight percentage points. In the polls, the average of the Senate races in those six states was a tie, with 47 percent for both Republicans and Democrats. The shift shows how far the political environment has tilted in the Democrats’ direction ahead of the midterm elections.
The Times/Siena polls show Democrats with a slim edge in Maine and a more substantial lead in North Carolina. Republican candidates lead narrowly in three states: Alaska, Iowa and Ohio. Texas is tied.
Voters across all six battlegrounds were thoroughly frustrated by rising prices — and many blamed Mr. Trump. Only 36 percent of voters approved of his handling of cost-of-living issues, including an abysmal 24 percent among independent voters.
What would it mean if Democrats took the Senate? Well, it would prevent passage of bills that are initiated by Trump. (This assumes that parties would vote as a bloc.) And if the House becomes Democratic as well, then bills that Democrats like and passed in both houses would go to the President’s desk, where he’d veto them; and a veto could not be overriden. We’d thus have a divided government, but if you dislike Trump, his initiatives and appointments would have a smaller chance of passing. I am making no predictions about any changes in Congress as I’m no pundit.
It’s Wednesday, July 1, and the godfather of neoconservatism, Irving Kristol, famously defined a conservative as “a liberal who has been mugged by reality.” An Iran hawk is made the same way. According to The Wall Street Journal, Donald Trump reviewed military options for a full-scale war against Iran to “finish the job,” but has decided, for now, not to move forward.
The Wall Street Journal article is here, and is archived here.
The report says Trump is concerned that renewed military conflict could hurt the chances of a diplomatic resolution and of dismantling Iran’s nuclear program, and that he’s shown willingness to let indirect talks in Qatar run past the August 18 deadline. He is said to be fine with continuing limited strikes on Iranian targets if Tehran violates the current temporary deal—as it already has, repeatedly.
How are those negotiations going?
Not well. It seems JD Vance’s “historic” face-to-face achievement was a one-off. Washington has been quietly downgraded from talking to the Great Satan to negotiating with the Little Satan instead—a senior Qatari official confirmed that U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met Qatari officials in Doha, but there are currently no high-level U.S.-Iran meetings scheduled.
How are those negotiations going?
Not well. It seems JD Vance’s “historic” face-to-face achievement was a one-off. Washington has been quietly downgraded from talking to the Great Satan to negotiating with the Little Satan instead—a senior Qatari official confirmed that U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met Qatari officials in Doha, but there are currently no high-level U.S.-Iran meetings scheduled.
Faced with Iran publicly denying that peace talks even exist, Vance is denying reality right back, insisting it’s merely a “Persian negotiating tactic.” He’s not wrong that rejectionism is a tactic—he’s just wrong about what it’s negotiating for. Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, confirmed the delegation will skip U.S. officials entirely, meeting only the Qataris in Doha to talk about unfreezing Iran’s own assets. The tactic isn’t stalling for a better peace. It’s stalling for a better payment: extract the MoU concessions first, discuss the nuclear file never.
Iranian officials have shown no willingness to meet U.S. nuclear demands, focusing instead on asserting control over the Strait of Hormuz. Iran says it will impose its “sovereignty and new policy” there regardless of whether it reaches an agreement with Oman, calling the strait a purely internal matter. Reports differ on the nature of the proposed transit fees—Iran calls them mandatory, a regional diplomat calls them voluntary, and Oman’s foreign minister rejects fees outright but leaves room for “maritime service” mechanisms such as safety and pollution measures. Regardless of that distinction, Iran seems set on asserting authority over the waterway: it has already indicated that ships paying “security fees” and following IRGC protocols would get priority transit, while others face delays.
Iran will not make a deal the U.S. can accept. That’s the reality. The only question left is how many more “historic” handshakes, Doha detours, and denied peace talks it takes before that reality mugs Vance the way it mugged every liberal Kristol had in mind.
What Segal is saying is that Iran won’t even make a deal that gives Trump ammunition for saying he achieve his goal that “Iran will never have nuclear weapons”—much less anything else he could brag about. If Trump is unwilling to admit defeat or pretend that a total defeat is a total victory, he’d have to go back to war.
Democratic dissatisfaction with the status quo percolated through Colorado’s primaries Tuesday as a socialist defeated a longtime congresswoman and Sen. Michael Bennet lost his gubernatorial bid to the state’s combative attorney general.
Melat Kiros, a 29-year-old Democratic socialist, toppled Rep. Diana DeGette, 68, for a Denver congressional seat, according to the Associated Press. Her win is the latest advance for a socialist groundswell that is forcing a reckoning for Democrats. Bennet lost to Phil Weiser, who assailed Bennet’s votes to confirm some of President Trump’s nominees and increase funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and criticized his support from wealthy donors.
“The incumbents that are there right now are too complacent,” Kiros said in an interview Tuesday ahead of the election. “I think what we’re seeing is a reckoning and a referendum, frankly, on the leadership of the party to actually fight for the policies that the voters care about.”
Colorado is the latest flashpoint in a Democratic civil war. A slate of left-wing candidates toppled Democratic House incumbents or won crowded races in New York last week, riding endorsements from New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. In Maine, Graham Platner won the Democratic primary in June, putting a progressive with a working-class message—and a complicated past—on the ballot for Democrats in one of the most competitive Senate seats in the November midterm elections.
The victories in New York set off alarm bells for centrists, and the elections in Colorado served as a barometer for whether progressive candidates appeal to voters outside coastal metropolitan areas. Kiros topped DeGette 51% to 42% with 93% of the vote counted, the AP reported. Weiser led Bennet 56% to 44%.
Centrists scored at least one win Tuesday as Sen. John Hickenlooper fought off a primary challenge from the left. Hickenlooper’s easy victory came in a race that was seen as closer than expected in the final stretch.
Them’s big leads for the progressives, too! I’m not sure why the Democratic party is moving leftwards, which I don’t think is a good way to win Presidential elections, at least. Perhaps the Party is so frustrated with having lost both the Presidency and all of Congress that its members are taking any new direction, especially one that smells like “greater change.” And of course we know now that it’s no impediment to winning if you hate Israel: here’s what Grok tells me about Kiros’s stand on the Jewish nation:
She advocates ending all U.S. military aid to Israel (including defensive systems like Iron Dome), accuses Israel of apartheid, occupation, colonialism, and genocide in Gaza, and calls for an arms embargo. Her positions have been a central part of her campaign, which is backed by groups like the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and Justice Democrats. She frames U.S. support for Israel as complicity in what she describes as genocide and ethnic cleansing.
Dansky was once senior counsel for the ACLU Center of Justice. In this case she was on the other side of the ACLU, whose attorneys (including co-director of LGBTQ and HIV rights, Chase Strangio) argued against the state bans. The ACLU has also split with former feminist allies by arguing for the housing of biological men in women’s prisons, including those with records of violent sex offenses. These efforts in trying to force society to reimagine biology are clearly failing, but the outraged reaction yesterday shows the fight isn’t over. NBC described the decision as a “major blow to LGBTQ rights,” and former VP contender Tim Walz claimed the “Supreme Court says schools can be cruelto my trans kids”: [note that the NBC link does not go to NBC]
Cruel is an extraordinary word to describe the act of allowing states to object to a radical social program that was implemented virtually everywhere ahead of both scientific and (especially) political consensus. The numbers aren’t close. A New York Times/Ipsos poll last year found 79% of Americans, including 67% of Democrats, are opposed to “athletes who were male at birth” participating in women’s sports. The same poll found 71% of all Americans, including 54% of Democrats, believe no one under 18 should have access to puberty blockers. This was after exposure to years of movement messaging.
Strangio and the ACLU don’t see that they’re asking for something people can’t give them, even if they wanted to, namely the honest belief that people who’ve transitioned have literally changed sexes. The gambit failed for the same reason Spanish speakers rejected “Latinx.”
As with Latinx, activists tried to lobby “sex assigned at birth” into reality, only to have the population spit it back out as “biological sex.” The court just recognized another thing that was uncontroversial until ten minutes ago. Yes, a small percentage of human beings have intersex characterstics, but most of the world’s population can’t be forced to unlearn what it intrinsically knows. Knowing which gametes your body cranks out is another form of “lived experience,” one is irrelevant to activists, apparently, because it’s “normative.” People know they weren’t “assigned” a sex by hospital clerks. Some people tried to think that way. It just didn’t take.
Activists could have started with a proposition: given that sex is binary, what can society do to accomodate people who experience dysphoria and wish to live under a new identity? The same Americans who accepted gay marriage fairly quickly after Obergefell v. Hodges11 years ago likely would have extended as far as they could without jumping into a factual or scientific abyss, on issues ranging from expanded insurance to easier routes to housing or identification. Instead, activists treated access for biological males to women’s locker rooms, sports rosters, even prisons as settled rights matters, against which only right-wing Christian patriarchal bigots could possibly object. Unless 80% of Americans are bigots, a lot of apologies are owed.
With regard to the climate by activists like the ACLU’s Chase Strangio, Taibbi concludes:
This has been a constant theme, that criticism is murder, disagreement bigotry. Everything that wasn’t an instant salute was deemed evidence of lurking genocidal hatred. Even a lifelong trans advocate like Canada’s Dr. Kenneth Zucker had his career ruined for the crime of believing some dysphoria cases dissipate with time. This couldn’t be tolerated because it clashed with the linguistic imperative of “gender-affirming care.” It isn’t rational to insist no troubled boys or girls might eventually become happy ones, just as it isn’t rational to keep denying hormones make hitting the fastball easier.
Having produced a textbook history lesson in how not to persuade, the movement won’t reconsider its aims. Instead, bet on activists searching for ways to bypass the problem of persuasion altogether. A Vox headline yesterday suggested the loss was a “cautionary tale for all left-leaning lawyers.” For a moment it seemed a mainstream pundit was going to suggest not using courts to force into being policies that majorities in both parties reject. Instead, Ian Millheiser’s point was that the left shouldn’t bring cases to this Supreme Court. Why ask permission, when you’re sure you’re right?
The Supreme Court’s ruling Tuesday upholding state bans on transgender athletes in women’s sports is prompting questions about whether trans rights litigators have made strategic missteps, saddling the ascendant legal movement with sweeping precedents that could hurt their cause for years to come.
Critics, including some trans rights advocates, say the movement has rushed to tee up causes that the court’s 6-3 conservative majority is not ready to embrace — particularly expanded rights for trans athletes, which polls show most Americans oppose. Given the high court’s solidly conservative record on LGBTQ+ issues, some supporters of trans rights are delivering a sobering message: Keep cases away from the Supreme Court.
“The question right now is not whether transgender advocates should fight or not fight — it’s whether going to hostile courts is the most prudent move,” said Duncan Hosie, a fellow at the Stanford Constitutional Law Center and a supporter of legal protections for trans people.
Given the Supreme Court’s opinions last year upholding bans on transition care for minors and this week’s ruling on trans athletes, Hosie said, it’s clear that “courts are not the most prudent move.”
Tuesday’s decision found that states can separate teams based on “biological sex” without offending the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection and Title IX, a landmark 1972 antidiscrimination law involving education.
The court’s six conservatives led the opinion, but even the court’s liberal justices agreed that such bans do not violate Title IX. They disagreed with the majority’s finding that the bans withstood scrutiny under the equal protection clause.
The ruling capped a year of setbacks for the LGBTQ+ movement, which included a ruling against state bans on “conversion therapy” for gay and trans minors, as well as an order temporarily halting California policies that discouraged notification of parents when their children were socially transitioning at school.
Litigators filing lawsuits on behalf of transgender plaintiffs say they face a frustrating dilemma. On one hand, the Trump administration and Republican-led states have implemented policies sharply restricting the rights of transgender people, and activists say those edicts must be fought.
On the other hand, lawsuits challenging these policies are routinely reaching the Supreme Court and resulting in precedents that are detrimental to trans rights, covering the entire country and potentially lasting for decades.
Chase Strangio, co-director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s LGBT & HIV Project, said he recognizes the movement needs to “adapt.” But there are no easy answers, Strangio said, when “you have every branch of [the federal] government stacked against you.“
I’m not sure that going to the courts is the big problem; rather, it’s the uber-activism of the gender movement, so that it pushes things that aren’t widely accepted, like the participation of biological men in women’s sports and the “right” to affirmative care. And that’s on top of some activists’ assertions that are misleading and irrelevant, like “all this legislation is trying to erase trans people” or “there aren’t that many trans athletes, anyway.” It’s the promotion of laws and practices that Americans don’t buy that is what brings these things to court. Of course there are some bigots fighting the activists, but arguing that Americans in general are anti-trans and want trans people contravenes what we see with our own eyes. Listen to the rhetoric of Chase Strangio, a trans lawyer for the ACLU, commenting on the Supreme Court case:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej is, as always, cynical:
Hili: The radio said it was going to rain.
Andrzej: People say a lot of things.
In Polish
Hili: Mówili w radiu, że będzie padał deszcz.
Ja: Ludzie różne rzeczy mówią.
From Luana: the newly-elected Democratic candidate for Representative in New York. This is what our party has come to:
“There is no money for schools, or childhood poverty”
These people live in a made up world. NYC spends 44k per year, per child on public school that leaves them illiterate. https://t.co/1jTfSekuoO
This Hungarian Jewish girl was gassed as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was 2 years old, and would be 84 today had she lived. https://t.co/AVLPSetKRP
An addition to the "Awesomely Peculiar Hall of Fame" — extremely rare sighting of a barreleye fish, & first footage of this species, Winteria telescopa, alive in situ. Filmed during the #Doldrums expedition at 710 m. Read more about tubular eyes & a light organ here:youtube.com/shorts/1bhh3…
In a decision split along ideological lines yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that state bans on trans-identified boys and men competing in girl’s and women’s sports were Constitutionally legal. Although the judges were unanimous in arguing that those laws did not violate Civil Rights laws (Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education), they split 6-3 on the crucial issue of whether those bans were Constitutional. In other words, the judges ruled unanimously that the bans were permissible, but three dissented from the view that bans were constitutional. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the Court’s majority opinion, while the dissenters were Jackson, Sotomayor, and Kagan.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that states can exclude transgender athletes from women’s and girls’ sports teams. The justices ruled unanimously that laws enacted by Idaho and West Virginia do not violate federal civil rights laws, but they divided over whether the West Virginia law violates the Constitution, at least with regard to the athlete in the case before the court.
In his 29-page opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that “[c]onsistent with Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause, we hold that the States may maintain women’s and girls’ sports for biological females. They may determine eligibility for women’s and girls’ sports based on biological sex. The Constitution and Title IX do not require an overhaul of women’s and girls’ sports throughout America.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in an opinion joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, contended that “the majority extends great sympathy to those it favors: the young cisgender girls and women who play sports. I share that sympathy. Playing sports can lead to benefits that are immeasurable, and many are understandably invested in ensuring that competition stays fair and safe. Because the majority, however, inflicts a hardship on those it disfavors without giving them the fair and full opportunity the Constitution requires to litigate their contentions, I respectfully dissent.”
The court’s decision in West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox came just over a year after the Supreme Court, also by a vote of 6-3, upheld a Tennessee law banning the use of puberty blockers and hormone therapy by transgender teenagers.
Tuesday’s ruling centers on two laws that limit participation on women’s and girls’ teams. Idaho enacted the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act in 2020. The law bars transgender women and girls from participating on any women’s and girls’ sports teams in public schools, from elementary school through college. Idaho was the first state to pass such a law; since then, 25 other states have enacted similar bans.
The West Virginia Legislature passed that state’s law, known as the Save Women’s Sports Act, in 2022. The law prohibits transgender women and girls from participating on women’s and girls’ sports team in public secondary schools and colleges.
There are two challengers in two separate cases, which were argued on the same day in January. One challenger is Lindsay Hecox, who filed this lawsuit because she wanted to try out for the women’s track and cross-country teams at Boise State University in Idaho. Hecox did not make the NCAA teams at BSU but competed in women’s soccer at the club level.
The other challenger is Becky Pepper-Jackson, identified in court filings only as B.P.J., a 15-year-old high school student who has publicly identified as female since the third grade. Pepper-Jackson takes medicine to stave off the onset of male puberty and has also begun to receive hormone therapy with estrogen. Pepper-Jackson’s mother, Heather Jackson, went to federal court in West Virginia when she learned that her state’s law would bar Pepper-Jackson from participating on the girls’ middle school sports teams.
Tuesday’s decision left lots of questions unresolved, however. Can states ban transgender kids from playing sports in grammar school, when boys and girls routinely play on the same teams? And when it comes to high school or college, what about club sports, and recreational leagues, as opposed to varsity sports?
At present, 27 U.S. states ban trans-identified boys or men from participating as female athletes, and all polls show that a majority of Americans favor these laws. (This suggests that more states will pass them now that they know the bans can pass legal muster) A 2025 Pew Poll, for instance, showed that 66% of Americans favor or strongly favor requiring transgender athletes to compete on the teams that match their sex “assigned” (actually, ‘recognized’) at birth. At the same time, 56% of Americans “express support for policies aimed at protecting trans people from discrimination in jobs, housing and public spaces.”
I am with the majority of American on both of these questions. I feel strongly that trans people should be protected from discrimination in the areas listed above. and more, and have said such repeatedly. On the other hand, I have opposed allowing trans-identified males to participate in women’s sports (grade-school sports is still an open question for me) because of the evidence that pre-puberty boys have athletic advantages over pre-puberty girls of the same age, along with with the evidence that trans-identified males who have taken cross-sex hormones or puberty blockers retain athletic advantages over biological females in nearly all metrics important in winning. Likewise, I oppose confining trans-identified males in women’s prisons (this is another tough one, as they also can be attacked in men’s prisons) or forcing a women who’s been raped or abused to have a counselor who is a biological male.
Those are three cases in which there is a conflict of “rights” and interests, and a fair adjudication of these conflicts seems to me to require segregation of spaces for biological women alone. With regard to athletics, I’ve discussed on this site several solutions for trans-identified males, including an “other” league or allowing them to compete in the “men’s” category. No solution is perfect, but the solution that allows biological men to compete against women is palpably unfair to women, and (to me) that trumps any “rights” of men to compete against women. But even this stand has led some to demonize me; I was, for example, publicly demonized as “anti-trans” by the head of my department’s DEI committee.
It’s disappointing but predictable that the ACLU (Senior Counsel Joshua A. Block of the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project) argued before the Court to overturn the laws. And it’s also predictable that the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) has characterized the decision as “religiously motivated” (click on their announcement below) and decried it on those grounds) but also argued that the ruling is “anti trans”. In fact, the FFRF has become a politically “progressive” organization that will try to find a Christian nationalist motive behind any decision they find ideologically unpalatable.
Yes, certainly some people who oppose trans-identified males competing against girls and women do have religious motivations. But I don’t. My motivations involve considerations of fairness, and surely many of the the two-thirds of Americans who agree with me do so on grounds not of Christian nationalism, but of fairness.
A quote from the FFRF announcement (bolding is mine):
The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling today against transgender students in two consolidated cases will cause immediate and lasting harm to vulnerable children across the country.
The cases, Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J., challenged Idaho and West Virginia laws barring transgender students from girls’ and women’s sports teams in public schools and colleges. In upholding the bans, the court accepted sweeping generalizations about sex and gender while disregarding the real-world impact on individual students.
“This decision confirms what was evident at oral argument: These laws are not about fairness in sports, but about enforcing a particular religious ideology through state power,” says Deputy Legal Director Liz Cavell. “Public schools should be places of inclusion and equal opportunity, not testing grounds for religious dogma that harms children.”
FFRF notes that both cases were advanced with the direct involvement of Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian nationalist legal organization that has made restricting LGBTQ+ rights a central part of its mission. ADF attorneys represented and supported Idaho and West Virginia throughout the litigation, underscoring that these cases are part of a broader religious campaign rather than a genuine effort to regulate athletics.
In its decision, the court adopted the states’ framing that athletic eligibility must be determined solely by sex assigned at birth, rejecting arguments grounded in medical evidence. The majority minimized the relevance of gender identity and dismissed evidence showing that many transgender girls, particularly those who have undergone estrogen-driven puberty, do not possess the athletic advantages the laws purport to address.
FFRF warns that although the court framed its analysis as one of statutory interpretation and equal protection, the ruling will inevitably be embraced by religious organizations that have spent years seeking to codify their theological views about sex and gender into civil law. The decision removes an important constitutional safeguard for transgender students while advancing a legal agenda long championed by religious-right advocacy groups.
. . . FFRF notes that support for restrictions on LGBTQ+ rights is highest among the country’s most religious populations, while religiously unaffiliated Americans consistently express the strongest support for LGBTQ+ equality. Acceptance drops sharply among evangelical Protestants and frequent churchgoers. Religious beliefs have historically been used to justify discriminatory laws, from bans on interracial marriage to the criminalization of same-sex relationships, and now reappear in legislation targeting transgender youth.
It goes on, but it’s misguided because it completely ignores the problem of safeguards for biological women, peppering the FFRF’s statement with frequent references to Christian nationalism and religion. As I said, for many Americans this is not the point nor the motivation. For me (and I suspect most other people), this ruling is not a wedge to demolish trans rights, but a buttress to support women’s rights.
Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “aspects,” came with a note: “Thankfully, that Anti-Muslim Hostility Tsar seems to be taking his time arriving.”
Yes, the British Government was going to appoint a “tsar” to oversee and police anti-Muslim hostility, but the position remains unfilled. The Muslim Council of Britain is complaining (their bolding):
The Muslim Council of Britain has written to Steve Reed, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government on the government’s prolonged delay in appointing the Special Representative on Anti-Muslim Hostility which was promised when they launched the Protecting What Matters Social Cohesion Strategy exactly three months ago on 8th March 2026. Despite this, the pledged role of a tsar or Special Representative on Anti-Muslim Hostility to date remains entirely unfilled, with no clear Terms of Reference, no allocated budget and no transparent path forward.
The British Muslim community continues to face a widening climate of discrimination, hostility and threats to physical safety. Since March 2026 alone, notable anti-Muslim incidents across the UK have occurred on average at least once a week which the Muslim Council of Britain which are outlined in the letter which can be read below.
Welcome to July: it’s Wednesday, July 1, 2026 and a Hump Day (“Dies Gibbosus” in Latin). To mark the month’s beginning, I’ll put up the illustration for the month from the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. This one shows the Palace of Poitiers, much of which is still standing, with reaping and sheep-shearing in the foreground. Click to enlarge.
Limbourg brothers, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Click on today’s Google Doodle to read about some historic World Cup penalty shootouts:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the July 1 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
Footy news: With Germany and the Netherlands now out of the world cup, France advanced by beating Sweden 3-0. Kylian Mbappé tied Messi for most goals in a World Cup tournament: 6.
Kylian Mbappe helped book France’s place in the World Cup round of 16 by taking his tournament total to six goals in a slick 3-0 victory over Sweden.
France’s procession through the group stages looked ominous for their rivals, with Mbappe starring in a show that contained a support cast just as entertaining. In New Jersey, Michael Olise proved to be the outstanding sidekick.
Such momentum was impossible to contain for a Sweden side that had blown hot and cold before and during this tournament, unable to meet the standard required to cause the favourites any genuine problems. They managed just two efforts on target in a horribly one-sided tie.
With Didier Deschamps back on the touchline following the passing of his mother, Mbappe rose highest to the elevated occasion, scoring either side of the break in a performance dripping with class.
He sliced through Sweden’s deficient defence to beat Jacob Zetterstrom for the opener in the first half, and linked with Olise to score France’s third late on, finishing off the move with a curling far-post finish off the left – reminiscent of the great Thierry Henry.
Here are the highlights, with the goals noted by time on the video: 8:20, 10:32, and 12:40 (the last by Mbappé tying Messi’s record):
*In a “bipartisan” 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court handed Trump a big defeat yesterday, but also gave him—as well as those of us who don’t want to see biological men competing in women’s sports—a victory. We’ll talk about the sports decision in the next post, and below we’ll concentrate on the Court’s decision to allow birthright citizenship (i.e., babies born in America are American citizens), something that Trump opposed. You can see the full Court decision on birthright, including dissents, here.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down President Trump’s attempt to curtail birthright citizenship, a rejection of his most aggressive crackdown on illegal immigration.
The decision rebuffs Trump’s bid to upend the deep-rooted understanding that virtually everyone born on American soil is automatically a U.S. citizen. That understanding, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, was enshrined in the Constitution in 1868.
“Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights—to freely participate in our political community,” Roberts wrote. “The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to every free-born person in this land. We keep that promise today.”
Six justices—three conservatives and three liberals—ruled against Trump, though only five did so on constitutional grounds. The court’s three most conservative justices dissented.
The case challenged an executive order that Trump issued on the first day of his second term. It declared that future children born in the U.S. wouldn’t be considered citizens if their parents were living in the country illegally or were visiting the country on temporary visas.
The executive order never took effect. It was quickly blocked by multiple lower courts because it appeared to conflict with the 14th Amendment, which states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”
The executive order also seemed to contravene an 1898 Supreme Court decision that confirmed that U.S.-born children of immigrant parents are entitled to American citizenship.
. . .The three members of the court’s right flank—Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch—dissented.
“This is one of the most important decisions in the history of the Court, and in my judgment, the Court has made a serious mistake,” Alito wrote. “As interpreted by the Court today, the Fourteenth Amendment confers citizenship on virtually everyone who happens to be born in this country, including the children of ‘birth tourists.’”
I predicted this decision a long time ago, for the Constitution is very clear on it. leaving little wiggle room, though Thomas et al. found some. Here’s the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment, and bolding is mine:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Now we didn’t have birth tourism then, but even “originalists” would have to stretch to guess that the Founders would deny citizenship to the children of immigrants, even short-term ones. In other words, I agree with this decision.
The U.S. has brokered another Middle East deal and, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio taking the lead, this time the deal tries to box Iran out. The U.S.-Israel-Lebanon Trilateral Framework signed Friday focuses on the only real way for Beirut to regain its sovereignty: disarming Hezbollah, Tehran’s Lebanese Shiite proxy.
The framework begins as follows: “Israel and Lebanon affirm the right of each state to exist in peace, and their mutual desire to live in security as neighboring sovereign states.” This should be boilerplate, but it’s a rare Lebanese recognition of Israeli sovereignty. As recently as 2022, a Biden Administration-mediated maritime deal had to be split into two separate documents to let Lebanon pretend it wasn’t reaching an agreement with Israel.
The framework also recognizes the legitimacy of the Israel Defense Forces presence in southern Lebanon until Hezbollah is disarmed, at which point Israel will withdraw fully. This begins with two small “pilot zones” the IDF will hand to the Lebanese Armed Forces, which are charged with disarming “non-state armed groups”—the preferred Lebanese euphemism for Hezbollah—and dismantling terror infrastructure.
Lebanon and its army have been reluctant to confront Hezbollah and continue to speak of “stability,” the usual code for accommodation. The terrorist group maintains its Shiite support base and defies state authority, starting destructive wars and answering only to Iran. Hezbollah refuses disarmament and threatens civil war if Beirut tries.
But after losing two wars with Israel, Hezbollah is also weak. The pilot zones are Lebanon’s best chance to make progress—especially if it can replace its foot-dragging top general.
For Israel the two small zones are a worthwhile bet and a hedge against Iranian demands for an immediate Israeli withdrawal. Now Lebanon’s government has reaffirmed that Hezbollah’s disarmament must come first.
Who can disagree with this agreement, in which Lebanon recognizes Israel’s sovereignty and pushes Hezbollah to disarm, allowing Israel to remain in Southern Lebanon until that disarmament happens? And it separates Hezbollah from the tentative and stupid “Memorandum of Understanding” of the U.S. and Iran, in which Iran demanded that Hezbollah freedom was part of the deal. Allowing that is equivalent to allowing terrorists to continue operating and striking northern Israel.
More than six months after Donald Trump’s U.S.-led Board of Peace was signed into being at Davos, the body charged with rebuilding Gaza and replacing Hamas is rich in plans and short on the one thing that would let it act: a way in.
Its representatives gathered this week at a resort in Cyprus for what an Arab diplomat and a Palestinian official described to The Times of Israel as a chance to “recalibrate” after a rocky start—though an official insisted the meeting was routine and the process broadly on track. The session followed a previously unreported workshop in the Egyptian coastal town of Ain Sokhna, attended by the full roster of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, the dozen-plus Palestinian technocrats meant to govern the Strip. Six months after they were unveiled, they are “managing” it from a hotel in Cairo.
Unsurprisingly, the core barrier to progress is disarmament. The Board’s Gaza envoy, Nickolay Mladenov, blames Hamas’s refusal to give up its weapons. The disarmament plan presented in March lays out an eight-month sequence: the NCAG takes security control, Israel pulls back heavy weapons, an international force deploys, and Israeli troops leave only once Gaza is “verified” free of arms. Hamas has shifted from flat rejection toward offering to surrender its police weapons and remaining heavy arms first—but the tens of thousands of AK-47s held by its military wing remain the sticking point. Translation: they are happy to hand over governance so long as they remain the real power in the Strip.
Mediators told The Times of Israel they could eventually coax a “yes, but” from Hamas; the open question is whether Washington would treat that as enough to lean on Israel.
The vacuum has birthed a “Plan B”: building “temporary communities” in the Israeli-occupied “green zone,” beginning on the ruins of Rafah. It’s a gamble—unclear whether Palestinians will agree to move to the Israeli-held side of the Strip, or whether the NCAG would forfeit its legitimacy by governing under occupation.
Even after six months—and what I’m sure was a lovely retreat in Cyprus—the facts on the ground in Gaza have barely changed. Recent events have certainly not been conducive to progress. Of the $17 billion pledged at a February donor conference, only a sliver has landed. Everyone was distracted by the small matter of the Iran war, and the Gulf states suddenly were faced with higher spending priorities. The war has also shifted the government’s—and, more importantly, Trump’s—attention away from the Strip. Virtually all of the diplomatic progress on the Gaza front has come from Trump’s sheer force of will, and short of Hamas blocking a major shipping route, I wouldn’t forecast a major redirection toward Gaza any time soon.
As I recall, under the initial agreement, Hamas was supposed to disarm and disband by January of this year, but of course nobody with two neurons to rub together believed that Hamas would disarm. I can’t see them willingly surrendering arms—or power—under any circumstances but military coercion, and that has already been tried. The only possibility I can think of would be economic leverage that would make the people of Gaza get rid of Hamas themselves, but that is not going to happen.
*The NYT reports on a new study in Current Biology that clarifies the origin of turtles, which was previously controversial as the morphological evidence contradicted the genetic evidence. The genetic evidence seems to be right now, as researchers have matching morphological and genetic evidence that turtles descended from a common ancestor that also gave rise to dinosaurs as well as modern crocodilians and turtles (article archived here).
Turtles are weird. They move around in their own armored sanctuary, have adapted to living on land and in water and are among the longest-living animals on the planet. Their anatomy is so unusual that it’s difficult to pinpoint where they belong on the tree of life. Where do they come from? Who, scientists would love to know, is their common ancestor?
Many paleontologists have asserted that turtles originated with an ancient reptile, Eunotosaurus africanus, which lived 260 million years ago and had a broad set of ribs that later developed into a shell. Other studies that focused on genetic evidence, however, have suggested that turtles are actually more similar to crocodiles and birds, and may share a common ancestor with them.
“Turtle origins have always been a tough nut to crack,” said Xavier A. Jenkins, a postdoctoral fellow at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
In a new study in Current Biology, Dr. Jenkins and his colleagues claim to have resolved the longstanding debate. They suggest that turtles are not holdovers from the ancient Eunotosaurus, but are instead members of a group of reptiles called archosauromorphsthat also includes ancient birds, crocodiles, pterosaurs and dinosaurs. And this time, the researchers have the anatomical evidence to match the DNA.
. . .In total, Dr. Jenkins and his team examined 226 ancient turtle, archosaur and Eunotosaurus specimens to look for characteristics that would classify them as either turtles or not. The researchers used an X-ray technology to go inside of each fossil and digitally move bones that obstructed their view.
Then, they compared all known specimens of Eunotosaurus with archaic turtle specimens, like Proganochelys, which lived 210 million years ago and was one of the first turtles to have a shell, and Pappochelys, which lived 240 million years ago and had bones on its belly that were fused together but no top shell.
The researchers found that in the earliest turtles and other archosaurs, like crocodiles and birds, the cases that formed the protective barrier around the brain, had a bone called a laterosphenoid, which connects the side of the brain to the top of the skull. Eunotosaurus and early reptiles lacked this bone, as well as a hooked fifth metatarsal, located on the foot.
. , ,Turtles, ancestral birds and crocodiles also have a free-floating stapes, a rodlike bone found in the ear that allows for more complex hearing. Early reptiles like Eunotosaurushad a thicker stapes that was firmly attached and made for a poor sense of hearing.
Taken together, these observations show that the earliest turtles “have lots more similarities to birds and crocodiles than we previously thought,” said Jonah Choiniere, who worked on the study and is a professor of comparative paleobiology at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. Their skulls, hearing and feet all point to archosaurs as a common ancestor.
But as comprehensive as the paper might be, it hasn’t yet quieted the origin debate among paleontologists.
Tyler Lyson, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science who was not involved in the study, said he doesn’t agree that Eunotosaurus was not a turtle (he published that it was, in 2016). But he said he still welcomes the research: “Ultimately, I don’t agree with their conclusions, but it’s a good step forward in the debate.”
Here’s a reconstruction of Eunotosaurus from Wikipedia. It was about a foot long, had those broad ribs, forming a plate, that made people assume it was a turtle, but now is thought to be a distraction from turtle ancestry:
Here’s a figure from the paper showing modern turtles (Testudinata) more closely related to modern crocodiles and birds than to Eunotosaurus (with the yellow star), which appears to be part of a lineage that went extinct without producing modern representatives. A more valid transitional form appears (as molecular evidence suggested) to be Pappochelys(“grandfather turtle” in Greek), indicated with B at the top of the diagram and the black star in the phylogeny. The flattened ribs on the top of Eunotosaurus and Pappochlys appear to be a case of independent evolution: “convergent evolution.”
(From paper): Figure 4 Simplified cladogram of early reptiles showing the placement of E. africanus and stem turtles (A–C) Red occurrence lines indicate taxa previously proposed as stem turtles; blue lines denote unambiguous stem turtles. The placement of Sauropterygia within Archosauromorpha follows our parsimony analysis, although they are found as lepidosauromorphs in the Bayesian analysis. Posterior probabilities > 0.50 are labeled below nodes (also see Figure S3). Skeletal reconstructions of (A) Protorosaurus speneri, (B) Pappochelys rosinae, and (C) Proganochelys quenstedti depict the hypothesized evolutionary transition from a protorosaur-like ancestor to early turtles. Skeletal reconstruction of P. speneri and P. rosinae by LiterallyMiguel, and P. quenstedti derived from Gaffney.46 Silhouettes are available from Phylopic (www.phylopic.org) under CC BY 3.0 licenses or within public domain.
When I first started teaching evolution 44 years ago, I used to tell my students that some groups, like rabbits and turtles, were not known to have any fossil transitional forms—that both groups appeared in the fossil record without clear ancestors. Well, now we have them both for turtles, as shown above, and for rabbits.
*The Bird History Substack site has a great list of “The 100 Greatest Bird Names of All Time“, compiled by Robert Francis (h/t Ginger K.). The list is great, and here are some of my favorite common bird names:
There are many more; go see for yourself. And here are two Flightless Steamer Ducks (also called Fuegian Steamer Ducks) that I photographed in the Falklands in 2019. Look at their tiny wings!
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the boys are after rodents:
Szaron: Either it’s just me, or there’s a mouse over there. Hili: You’re imagining things.
In Polish:
Szaron: Albo mi się zdaje, albo tam jest mysz.
Hili: Przywidziało ci się.
Masih continues, rightly, to criticize Trump for not helping the people of Iran in his many “deals”. Here are six minutes of Masih railing against Trump and Vance. At least read her text:
I criticized Obama. I criticized Biden for handing billions to the mullahs. And I have no fear to say it now: Trump and JD Vance are doing the same, handing money to a regime they themselves called the greatest sponsor of terrorism on earth.
And two from Dr. Cobb. I think Breugel just imagined those bats:
Natural history on canvas: Brueghel knew about bird-eating noctule batsJust published in @pnas.org, OA for all eyesLed by the one-and-only @romero-vidal.bsky.social, with the amazing @elena-tena.bsky.social and Sonia Sánchez-Navarro@ebdonana.bsky.social LINK: http://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/…
