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Daily Archives: September 12, 2022

Congress may force election deniers to get a lot more creative

Vox: “The human mind is ingenious. It can create towering works of art and make remarkable scientific discoveries. It is, as we saw in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, also capable of inventing new ways to undermine American democracy by abusing our existing election laws, and turning orderly presidential elections into anarchy and chaos. It’s beyond the ken of lawmakers, or perhaps anyone, to try to sniff out every potential avenue for havoc. But they can fix obvious defects in presidential elections once they have been exploited. The Electoral Count Reform Act currently before the Senate is an effort to do that, fitting into a long history of legislative action following a breakdown in the existing laws. It’s not a bold reinvention of the American electoral system, but a series of bureaucratic reforms, requiring careful legal craftwork, intended to patch frays and holes in the United States Code. To do that, it updates antiquated language, clarifies contested issues, and streamlines the process to follow if a once-in-a-century political crisis occurs. The new legislation is not intended as a foolproof fix to avoid future issues — after all, who could have predicted that a mob featuring a man in a Viking costume would storm the Capitol chanting “hang Mike Pence”? But it does eliminate many of the ambiguities exploited by Trump and his allies in the 2020 election and ensures that anyone intent on trying to reverse a presidential election in the future will have to rely on their own ingenuity, and not the road map of 2020…”

One of Long COVID’s Worst Symptoms Is Also Its Most Misunderstood

The Atlantic: “Brain fog isn’t like a hangover or depression. It’s a disorder of executive function that makes basic cognitive tasks absurdly hard…And despite its nebulous name, brain fog is not an umbrella term for every possible mental problem. At its core, Hellmuth said, it is almost always a disorder of “executive function”—the set of… Continue Reading

OpenSecrets launches new tool to track ballot measures across the country

“OpenSecrets has launched a new tool to track ballot measures across the country as part of a continuing effort to integrate state level data following the merger with the Center for Responsive Politics and the National Institute on Money in Politics.  The tool features an interactive map that will help users explore ballot measure data… Continue Reading

Chronicling America Reaches 50 States

Library of Congress: “Chronicling America, the searchable online database of historic American newspapers, will soon include digitized newspapers from all 50 U.S. states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and housed and maintained online at the Library of Congress, Chronicling America offers free… Continue Reading

For media publishers, Twitter still dominates on social

Axios: “Twitter is still the place where media publishers collectively have the largest audiences, followed by Facebook and Instagram, according to an Axios analysis of 82 major news, entertainment and sports publishers. Why it matters: While some publishers are finding quick success on TikTok, the platform yields fewer overall followers for publishers than other social… Continue Reading

The Civil Rights Digital Library Relaunches With A New Look And Fifteen Years Of Updated Content

“A premier online compilation of digital civil rights content is relaunching with a new look and thousands of additional pieces of history. The milestone marks a new era for the Civil Rights Digital Library (CRDL). This project brings together more than 200 libraries, archives, and museums to provide free online access to historical materials documenting… Continue Reading

Understanding the decline in poverty will help us continue the decline

Clinical Trends: “The past quarter century witnessed an unprecedented decline in child poverty rates. In 1993, the initial year of this decline, more than one in four children in the United States lived in families whose economic resources—including household income and government benefits—were below the federal government’s Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) threshold. Twenty-six years later,… Continue Reading

50 million people worldwide in modern slavery

International Labor Organization: “Fifty million people were living in modern slavery in 2021, according to the latest Global Estimates of Modern Slavery. Of these people, 28 million were in forced labour and 22 million were trapped in forced marriage. The number of people in modern slavery has risen significantly in the last five years. 10… Continue Reading