This and that for your Thursday reading.
- Don Moynihan concludes that the U.S. has lost any pretense to being a functioning democracy. And Zachary Beau discusses how Donald Trump is being allowed to undermine any institutions which would provide a check on an out-of-control executive.
- David Dayen writes about the need to judge Trump based on his actual policies and their consequences rather than some convoluted effort to validate them, while Paul Krugman warns that the apparent willingness of markets to tolerate Trump's arbitrary actions in the short term doesn't mean the eventual consequences won't be dire. Jason Koebler examines the U.S. impact of Trump's attack on small international trade, while Campbell McDiarmid reports on the Canadian retailers looking to route their business elsewhere. And Jon Henley reports on the numerous postal services which have simply decided to stop making parcel shipments to the U.S.
- Meghan Bartels discusses the limited availability of COVID-19 vaccines this fall even as a new wave is set to surge. And Charlie McGill points out that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s priority seems to be to turn all citizens into data collection devices for corporate use, rather than paying any attention to the policies which would keep people healthy.
- Nitasha Tiku, Will Oremus, Elizabeth Dwoskin report on the nine-figure propaganda campaign being assembled to avoid any meaningful regulation of AI in the U.S. And Joey Grostern discusses how AI is contributing to the generation of climate denialist slop.
- World Weather Attribution examines how the climate breakdown is exacerbating wildfires in Turkiye, Cyprus and Greece even in the face of mitigation measures, while Nicole Mortillaro reports on new research showing that wildfires are resulting in worsening air pollution in Canada. And Dale Smith notes that increased droughts represent another key reason to pursue immediate climate action, while Rosa Galvez points out that any government with an iota of respect for the rule of law may soon have little choice.
- But needless to say, the Trump regime is no such government - and Lisa Friedman reports on its attempts to bully the rest of the world into extending the use of dirty fossil fuels. And while Linda McQuaig points out that reliance on market forces has been a major problem in our climate policy to date, Tom Parkin highlights the absurdity of talking about additional oil export pipelines when the previous emission-increasing boondoggle is still far from full capacity.