Major Rollback Threatens Conservation in Public Land Management

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Major Rollback Threatens Conservation in Public Land Management (Maria)

The author writes, “On May 11, the Trump administration announced its rescission of the Public Lands Rule, rolling back protections on shared public lands across the West and backing away from the Bureau of Land Management’s obligations to steward these lands under a multiple-use mandate that puts conservation on an equal footing with other uses. The move upends a balanced land management approach away from wildlife conservation, cultural resource protection and recreational use in favor of oil and gas drilling, mining and development on millions of acres of public lands.”

Samuel Alito’s Voting Rights Act Ruling Cited Misleading Data From DOJ (DonkeyHotey)

From The Guardian: “The claims Samuel Alito, a Supreme Court justice, made about voter turnout in Louisiana in a landmark Voting Rights Act case were based on a misleading data analysis, a Guardian review has found. In his opinion gutting section 2 of the Voting Rights Act … Alito said that Black voter turnout had exceeded white voter turnout in two of the five most recent presidential elections, both nationally and in Louisiana. Alito’s claim was copied almost verbatim from a friend-of-the-court brief filed by the justice department. It was a critical data point Alito used to make the argument that the kind of discrimination that once made the Voting Rights Act necessary no longer exists. … But a review of turnout and racial data in Louisiana reveals that assertion relies on an unusual methodology.” 

How Virginia Democrats Can Overturn the Redistricting Ruling: Retire the Supreme Court (Al)

From The Downballot: “Virginia Democrats are looking for a way to overturn the state Supreme Court’s … decision invalidating the constitutional amendment temporarily adopting new congressional districts that a majority of voters ratified last month. They have a simple — and lawful — solution: Send the entire court into early retirement. Article VI, Section 9, of the Virginia Constitution gives the legislature unlimited authority to set the retirement age for judges. It specifies, ‘The General Assembly may also provide for the mandatory retirement of justices and judges after they reach a prescribed age, beyond which they shall not serve, regardless of the term to which elected or appointed.’” 

Trump’s Mass Deportation Machine Isn’t Helping Native-Born Workers (Dana)

From The New Republic: “The Trump theory is that if you take jobs away from undocumented immigrants then those same jobs will be filled by native-born Americans. (For some reason, legal immigrants don’t figure into Trump’s calculus.) Perhaps that would happen if the unemployment rate were to rise very high. But that isn’t happening. … What’s happening instead is that American-born workers with educational attainment comparable to that of undocumented workers are losing their immigrant-adjacent jobs because their jobs depend on there being enough undocumented workers to get the job done.” 

Scientists Discover a Hydraulic Link Between the Abdomen and the Brain (Reader Jim)

The author writes, “A recent study published in Nature Neuroscience suggests that the brain is more mechanically connected to the body than previously appreciated. Scientists found that abdominal muscle contractions compress blood vessels connected to the spine and brain, pushing fluid that gently moves the brain within the skull. This physical swaying provides evidence for how exercise might benefit brain health by washing away cellular waste.” 

A Citizen Campaign Returns Iconic Kiwi Birds to New Zealand’s Capital After a Century-Long Absence (Reader Steve)

The author writes, “The kiwi, New Zealand’s sacred national bird, vanished from the hills around Wellington more than a century ago. Now the capital’s residents are waging an improbable citizen campaign to return the endangered flightless birds to the city. ‘They are a part of who we are and our sense of belonging here,’ said Paul Ward, founder of the Capital Kiwi Project, a charitable trust. ‘But they’ve been gone from these hills for well over a century and we decided as Wellingtonians that wasn’t right.’”