UNDERNEWS

Climate change

2026-08-06T12:14:00.138-04:00

AP- Airline passengers know to expect possible flight delays when weather forecasts call for thunderstorms, heavy snow or strong wind. The omens are less obvious on a hot summer day with clear skies.

Yet extreme heat also disrupts flights and travel plans. On the hottest days, thinner air can make it harder for aircraft to get off the ground safely. Airlines may have to lighten the load by removing passengers or cargo, or carrying less fuel.

The snag is well known at airports in desert climates around the world, from the U.S. Southwest to the Middle East. But even less extreme heat can create similar challenges at airports with higher elevations or shorter runways. Researchers say human-caused climate change could make such disruptions more common.

With heat waves searing parts of the United States and Europe this summer, Las Vegas illustrated how extreme heat can interfere with air travel. American Airlines offered compensation to customers who voluntarily gave up their seats on a July 24 flight from Harry Reid International Airport after temperatures reached 114 degrees Fahrenheit (47 degrees Celsius).

The airline described reducing a plane’s weight as a standard industry practice in hot-weather destinations when conditions require it to ensure a safe takeoff. The explanation comes down to physics.

Hot air is thinner than cool air, making it harder for a plane’s wings to generate lift and for jet engines to generate the thrust needed for takeoff, explained Ross Aimer, a retired United Airlines captain and CEO of Aero Consulting Experts.

“There is a science behind all this,” Aimer said. “You can’t deny the science of flight and what it takes for an airplane to operate.”

The Guardian - The human-driven climate crisis made the conditions that led to blazes roaring across Canada, which have caused toxic smoke to spew throughout the country and into the US, twice as likely to occur, a new analysis has found.

Heightened global temperatures, caused by the burning of fossil fuels, amplified the risk of fire-prone weather in Ontario and the Northwest Territories, scientists found. These provinces have been racked by fires this summer, causing towns to be evacuated and unhealthy smoke to unfurl across multiple cities in North America.

There are currently nearly 700 fires ablaze across Canada, with a huge 3.8m hectares of the country, mainly in its sprawling boreal forests.

2026-08-06T12:09:26.261-04:00

8 Takeaways From Tuesday’s Primaries

Trump's battleships

2026-08-06T12:01:16.026-04:00

The Hill - President Trump’s new class of battleships, which are envisioned to anchor the U.S. Navy’s “Golden Fleet,” are expected to cost around $275 billion to build, according to a government report released Wednesday. The first of 15 ships, the USS Defiant, is projected to cost around $23.4 billion to construct, with each subsequent vessel costing about $18 billion, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis said. The first battleship could take eight years or longer to construct.

The new class of battleships, which Trump unveiled in December, was initially set to be powered by gas turbine engines, which are on cruisers and destroyers. Later, the president said the vessels would be propelled with nuclear reactors. “They’ll be the fastest, the biggest and by far, 100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built,” Trump said in December, adding that the vessels would weigh more than 30,000 tons.

….The president aimed for the new ships to be built by 2028, a timeline that industry experts said would be unlikely. “It will take years to design, cost $9 billion each to build and contravene the Navy’s new concept of operations, which envisions distributed firepower,” Mark Cancian, the senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies’s Defense and Security Department, wrote in late December. “A future administration will cancel the program before the first ship hits the water.”

Trump fired his Navy secretary, John Phelan, in April in part over not making enough progress in constructing the battleships.

Data centers

2026-08-06T10:21:29.217-04:00

NY Times - You don’t have to be a technophobe to hate data centers these days. And you don’t have to have much skin in the game, either. Even if there’s no blocky, gas-guzzling, million-square-foot behemoth coming soon to a neighborhood near you … you probably still loathe these bad boys. More than half of Americans say they’d support a national ban.

Savvy politicians are converting the pitchforks into votes. In Michigan, where OpenAI is building a very big, very unpopular data center, a progressive organizer campaigning on a moratorium walloped two better-funded candidates in a House Democratic primary on Tuesday. That same day in Kansas, Democrats nominated a candidate for governor who has made opposing these facilities a core part of her platform.

It makes political sense for them. Energy prices are high, driven by Trump’s war in Iran, and data centers make that worse. And the president has pushed A.I. companies to build out infrastructure faster than ever, arguing that to do otherwise would be to hand the race for A.I. dominance to China.

Plenty of A.I. wonks agree with him. It takes years, in some cases, to connect data centers to the grid — too slow to meet the technology’s monstrous power demands. But Trump can read the room, and Americans are upset about data centers jacking up their electricity bills. (Nearly four in five say they’re worried about that, recent polling found.

Europe's climate change

2026-08-06T10:14:32.916-04:00

NPR - Europe's heat wave has drawn back the waters of Serbia's river, revealing Nazi-era German warships that were sunk in 1944 during their retreat.

NewsHill - Human-driven warming has shifted Spain’s climate so decisively that the kind of hot, dry fire-weather behind its recent record wildfires has moved from near-exceptional to relatively routine, with scientists estimating it is now around 20 times more likely than it would have been without climate change.

A World Weather Attribution analysis finds that the extreme fire-weather conditions behind central Spain’s 2026 “record-sized inferno” are now at least 20 times more likely because of human-caused climate change.

In today’s climate, similarly intense wildfire conditions are expected roughly once every six years in central Spain, rather than being exceptionally rare events.

Broader research shows extreme fire-weather days in Southern Europe have more than doubled in recent decades, and Spain’s 2025 fires burned roughly four times the average area of the previous 30 years.

Americans aren’t embracing socialism

2026-08-06T10:01:53.832-04:00

Hartmann Report - Americans aren't embracing socialism—they're rejecting 45 years of Reaganomics, billionaire rule, and an economy rigged against the middle class. Abdul El-Sayed’s victory in Michigan, declared yesterday morning, seems to have broken the brains of Republicans and the chattering class.

Donald Trump’s pathetic bleats notwithstanding, people voting for progressive Democrats and “democratic socialists” aren’t voting for communism or even socialism; they’re trying to get America to the same sort of economy and form of government that works for everybody — a system somewhat like the one a majority of us had before Reaganism

Anthony Fauci

2026-08-06T09:40:52.453-04:00

NBC News - The Republican-led Senate Homeland Security Committee voted along party lines to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress after he declined to answer lawmakers’ questions during a fiery hearing last week. Fauci, who has been a target of the right since he served as a top health official during the Covid pandemic, repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment right during the hearing, explaining in his opening remarks that he believed Republicans would try to use his testimony to prosecute him.

Utah's fertility rate plummets

2026-08-06T09:14:18.583-04:00

NY Times - Utah has long been famous for its large families. From the Osmond singers to “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” the picture has been one of young people marrying and having a lot of babies.

But Utah is now experiencing the biggest fertility rate drop in its modern history. After a peak in 2007, Utah’s rate has plummeted by more than 37 percent, the largest decline of any state in the country. Utah, which was No. 1 in the nation for fertility rates for years, is now ranked sixth.

Utah is a leading example of a demographic transformation that is sweeping the United States and other rich countries, as young women increasingly delay childbearing. As the trend deepens, the worry is that more women would forgo having children altogether, a choice that could have serious consequences for the country, economically and politically. For the first time, about half of all 30-year-old women are childless.

Elections

2026-08-06T08:55:39.915-04:00

The Guardian - Michigan Democrats didn’t choose El-Sayed because he’s “unabashedly liberal”. Or because he’s a democratic socialist (in fact, he’s not). Abdul El-Sayed’s win proves change is possible for Democrats. His next fight may determine their future

They chose him because he’s a fighter – at a time when America needs fighters willing to stand up to the worst tyrant who has ever occupied the Oval Office.

Corporate Democrats – such as Haley Stevens, along with Rahm Emanuel, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries – aren’t up to the task because they won’t bite the corporate hands that feed them campaign money. They won’t criticize the billionaire class. They refuse to talk about how big money has corrupted America.

Yet it’s big corporations and the billionaire class that are supporting Trump’s authoritarianism.

They’ve sucked up to Trump for corporate welfare, giant tax cuts, tariff exemptions, antitrust acquiescence and war contracts.

They’ve given Trump hundreds of millions for his inauguration, his ballroom, his 250th birthday, his Super Pac. Jamie Dimon and his cronies on Wall Street; Elon Musk and his billionaire bros; Brad Carp and his corporate lawyers; Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and the Ellisons – all have sold their integrity for huge profits.

Most Americans view rising living costs as biggest barrier to a better life

2026-08-06T08:44:48.528-04:00

The Guardian - Americans may seem increasingly divided on beliefs and values, but in a new survey of more than 30,000 adults from across the country spanning generations and economic classes, a majority of Americans agree there’s a significant barrier to achieving a better life: the rising cost of living.

When asked to describe what a better life in three to five years would look like, 60% of Americans said they wanted greater financial security, according to a survey that was conducted by the McKinsey Institute for Economic Mobility and the WK Kellogg Foundation in mid-April.

In interviews that accompanied the survey, respondents often defined financial security as being able to afford basic necessities without worry.

“A better life for me and my family would look like being able to buy a home, and being able to afford all the basic necessities, rent, utilities, car, food, healthcare – as well as being able to have enough left over to save for the future for retirement and vacations,” said a 35-year-old respondent from Dearborn Heights, Michigan.

Though it may appear to be a simple goal, many Americans believe it’s out of reach. Forty per cent of respondents described themselves as either “getting by but financially vulnerable” or “struggling to meet basic needs”. Groceries and food costs in particular are causing financial distress, with 90% of respondents listing it as their top cost-of-living concern, followed by housing, transportation and healthcare.

Climate

2026-08-05T13:29:12.395-04:00

Inside Climate News - Climate-fueled wildfires could scorch many of the sites that shape America’s cultural identity. A study published in May found wildfire risk threatens the majority of sites designated by the federal government as historically significant, from centuries-old homes to cherished churches and cemeteries. A separate forward-looking study published last week found worsening climate change could substantially ramp up average potential fire frequency in four of California’s national parks by the end of the century, under a worst-case emissions scenario.

The researchers say this data could help park and site managers better protect these places from flames. However, as experts sound the fire alarms for iconic American sites, the Trump administration is on a mission to remove mentions of climate change from many of these places.

Newsweek - Lake Mead has fallen to within inches of its lowest-ever recorded level, highlighting ongoing concerns about drought, extreme heat and long-term strain on the Colorado River, one of the Southwest's most important water sources. As of August 5, the reservoir stood at 1,040.74 feet above sea level, just 0.16 feet (1.9 inches) above its record low of 1,040.58 feet, which was set in July 2022. The lake's elevation has dropped dramatically over the past two decades, leaving the distinctive white "bathtub ring" visible around much of the shoreline.

US only has 43-day emergency buffer of crude oil left

2026-08-05T13:26:16.263-04:00

The Mirror- The U.S. only has about 43 days of an emergency buffer of crude oil left — a 45-year low as President Donald Trump continues to wage war against Iran, throwing global markets into chaos

U.S. crude oil supplies have fallen to their lowest level in 45 years as President Donald Trump continues to wage war against Iran — with only 43 days of global supply left.

There now exists a thinner cushion against any potential disruptions should the fighting in the Middle East escalate further. According to Bank of America Global Research Data, compiled by Bloomberg, the U.S. has just 43 days of crude oil supply, including that of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, compared with a long-term average of about 65 days. The data shows the measure falling to its lowest level since the 1980s.

Word

2026-08-05T10:49:08.943-04:00

Via Tori Atheist

Donald Trump

2026-08-05T10:19:02.970-04:00

James Tate - On April 25, 1980, the Trump Organization executed an eviction against Mary Filan, a 74-year-old widow who was partially paralyzed from a recent stroke. The eviction occurred at her rent-controlled apartment in Flushing, Queens, where she had lived for over 30 years. The Trump Organization claimed she owed four months of back rent. However, Filan maintained that her rent was fully paid, stating that her last bill was a minor balance of $10.20, which she had already cleared. City marshals and moving crews removed her belongings—including her furniture and jewelry—leaving her sitting on a laundry hamper in the apartment. Due to the trauma and her medical condition, neighbors and city social services arranged for her immediate admission to a local hospital.

NY Times - President Trump’s proposed 250-foot-tall triumphal arch would change the skyline of Washington to such an extent that it would intrude on views at dozens of historic sites around the capital, according to an assessment by National Park Service staff.

It would disrupt the symbolic relationship between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery, obstruct sightlines from the Kennedy Gravesite and Robert E. Lee’s home, and alter what official documents call “one of the most magnificent” views in Washington at the National Cathedral four miles away, the Park Service said.

The assessment of the arch’s impact on surrounding historic properties is a key step the administration must complete before the project can receive final approval by the National Capital Planning Commission, which could come as soon as its next meeting on Sept. 3

Obama vs. Trump on the job golf time

2026-08-05T10:13:14.680-04:00

Newsweek - Trump's golf habits have long been compared with those of Obama, whom he repeatedly criticized for spending time on the course while in office.

According to Is Trump Golfing Today?, Obama played 333 rounds of golf during his two terms, or about 11.4 percent of his 2,922 days as president. The tracker estimates Trump has played golf more frequently, visiting his courses on 20.05 percent of his first-term days and 26.4 percent of his second-term days so far.

The difference in cost is largely tied to where the two presidents played. Most of Obama's rounds took place at Joint Base Andrews, near Washington, D.C., allowing him to travel by motorcade. Trump's golf outings have more often involved trips to his private clubs in Florida and New Jersey, requiring longer travel and additional security arrangements.

How states treat children

2026-08-05T09:34:26.505-04:00

WalletHub -To highlight where children face the greatest hardships, WalletHub compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia across 25 key indicators of child neediness. The analysis examines factors ranging from the share of children living in households below the poverty line to child food insecurity and the share of children who have experienced maltreatment.

States with the Most Underprivileged Kids

1. Mississippi		11. South Dakota
2. West Virginia		12. South Carolina
3. Louisiana		13. Tennessee

4. New Mexico		14. Nevada
5. Oklahoma		15. Georgia
6. Arkansas		16. Ohio
7. Alabama		17. Montana
8. Alaska		18. North Carolina
9. Kentucky		19. Indiana
10. District of Columbia		20. Arizona

Key Stats

Arkansas and Oklahoma have the highest child food-insecurity rate, which is 1.8 times higher than in Massachusetts, the state with the lowest.
Mississippi has the most infant deaths (per 1,000 live births), which is 3.3 times more than in New Hampshire, the state with the fewest.
West Virginia has the highest share of children in foster care, which is 13.3 times higher than in New Jersey, the state with the lowest.
Texas has the highest share of uninsured children aged 0 to 18, which is 7.5 times higher than in Massachusetts, the state with the lowest.
Maine has the highest share of maltreated children, which is 12.5 times higher than in New Jersey, the state with the lowest.

To view the full report and your state’s rank

Health

2026-08-05T09:17:01.481-04:00

NPR - Central Appalachian veteran underground coal miners are experiencing an incurable and fatal lung disease at the highest rates recorded in nearly 50 years, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Miners who have worked underground for at least 25 years in Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia suffer the worst rates of coal workers' pneumoconiosis, also known as black lung disease. The disease's prevalence hit a low point in 1999, after Congress imposed strict limits on exposure to the coal mine dust that causes black lung. But the decline in cases has been reversed, and experts blame toxic silica dust that is now more common in mines.

Elections

2026-08-05T09:07:37.140-04:00

Missouri voters overwhelmingly rejected a GOP-led initiative to phase out the state’s income tax, 80 to 20 percent.

Meanwhile. . .

2026-08-05T08:32:08.521-04:00

The Guardian - A four-ton piece of a discarded SpaceX rocket that has been floating in space since last year is believed to have unintentionally crashed into the moon at high speed, in a collision that poses no danger to Earth but was expected to blast out a new lunar crater. The object, the size of a building, is part of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that had launched a lunar lander from the US company Firefly Aerospace toward the moon in January 2025…. The impact was predicted to kick up a miles-long plume of lunar dust that, while illuminated by sunlight, would be difficult ?to spot with the naked eye from Earth.

Tariffs

2026-08-05T08:27:57.606-04:00

The Guardian - The Trump administration has refunded about $100bn from the tariffs it collected before the US supreme court ruled them illegal, according to reports. The $100bn figure, which represents 60% of the total $165bn collected from Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs, was reported by customs officials to the US court of international trade (CIT) on Tuesday, according to the Financial Times

Federal appeals court blocks censorship on race and gender issues

2026-08-04T10:52:20.846-04:00

ACLU - The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed an order in July that blocked Florida from enforcing the Stop W.O.K.E. Act in the state’s universities. Florida is one of 24 states that has passed laws restricting instruction on race and gender in higher education since 2020. Taken together, these laws represent a nationwide backlash to progress in racial justice, but this case marks the first time an appellate court has ruled that this type of classroom censorship law is unconstitutional in higher education.

The order came in a lawsuit we filed on behalf of professors who were forced to censor their instruction on specific topics related to race and gender that are central to their academic scholarship and coursework. The Stop W.O.K.E. Act limited training and instruction on eight so-called “divisive concepts” parroted from an executive order issued by then-President Donald Trump and rescinded by then-President Joe Biden. After we sued, a federal district court described the law as “positively dystopian” and blocked enforcement of the higher education provisions of the law. Last month, the Eleventh Circuit agreed, holding that the Stop W.O.K.E. Act violated the First Amendment.

Word

2026-08-04T10:43:25.131-04:00

Polls

2026-08-04T10:01:30.092-04:00

Newsweek - The RealClear Polling Generic Congressional vote gives Democrats a 6-point edge. Kalshi and Polymarket give the party an 86-84 percent chance of taking the House, but Republicans still hold a 56-54 percent chance of keeping the Senate. Of course, in today’s era of politics, anything can happen, and both parties have reasons to feel confident.

Amazon

2026-08-04T09:40:51.048-04:00

Shortlysts - Amazon announced it will distribute roughly $600 million in tariff refunds after court decisions invalidated a number of import tariffs that had previously increased the company’s costs. The refunds stem from duties Amazon paid on imported goods before the tariffs were struck down, allowing the company to recover money it had already remitted to the federal government.

Rather than issuing refunds to every customer, Amazon said it identified purchases where tariff costs had been directly passed on and will automatically reimburse those shoppers. The company said those cases represent only a small share of affected orders because it absorbed most of the tariff costs instead of raising prices across its marketplace. Amazon also said the remaining funds will be used to help keep prices lower on future purchases instead of being distributed as cash refunds.

The announcement comes as businesses continue adjusting to changing U.S. trade policy and ongoing legal challenges surrounding tariffs, with companies weighing whether to absorb higher import costs or pass them on to consumers through higher prices.

Todd Blanche

2026-08-04T09:23:04.765-04:00

NY Times - After much confusion and acrimony, Todd Blanche now appears set to become the nation’s top law enforcement official. Two Republican senators who had been blocking Blanche’s confirmation for attorney general gave him their blessing yesterday, after Blanche promised — in writing — to scale back a lucrative deal the Justice Department had cut with Trump.

The president’s effort to muscle Blanche, his former lawyer, through the Senate got messy this past week. There were public demands, counterdemands and counter-counterdemands. It’s easy to get so mired in the political minutiae that you forget a couple of things.

First: Blanche already runs the Justice Department, and he’s allowed to keep running it indefinitely in an acting capacity, confirmation notwithstanding. So for Trump, this fight has always been more about rewarding Blanche — and exerting control over Congress — than about imbuing Blanche with any new authority.

Second, and more important: Trump is still getting most of what he wants.

The Justice Department deal that knocked Blanche’s nomination off course had two main components. It established a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund, which Trump wanted to use to pay allies of his who claimed they had been unfairly prosecuted by previous administrations. And it granted Trump, his family and their businesses sweeping immunity from I.R.S. tax audits.

In documents Blanche released on Sunday night, he said he would rescind the order establishing the fund and narrow the tax immunity to include only Trump, two of his sons and the Trump Organization.

Meanwhile....

2026-08-04T09:02:10.729-04:00

Maine Morning Star - The Trump administration’s demand for states to provide Social Security numbers, immigration status, and other private information on low-income residents who receive cash benefits is improper and unconstitutional, a group of mostly Democratic-led states alleges in a new lawsuit

2026-08-04T08:55:48.677-04:00

The books that blew 12 scientists’ minds

Elections

2026-08-04T08:46:18.115-04:00

NPR - Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Virginia, and Washington hold their primary elections today. The spotlight will be on Michigan, where winning an open Senate seat is crucial for Democrats as they vie to regain control of the chamber. Michigan voters will choose between two Democratic candidates who are competing to face Republican former Congressman Mike Rogers in the November midterm elections. Here’s what you should know about the five states holding primaries today.

Congress

2026-08-04T08:33:05.101-04:00

Down Ballot - The House Ethics Committee announced on Monday that there was “substantial reason to believe” that Republican Rep. Chuck Edwards, who faces a difficult bid for reelection, “violated House Rules related to sexual harassment and hostile workplaces” and recommended that the full House censure him.

CNN first reported that Edwards was under investigation for alleged sexual harassment at the end of April. Further details soon emerged, including a report from Axios that the congressman had sent a handwritten letter to a young woman on his staff saying she had “written a complex chapter in my heart that I will never stop reading.”

Health

2026-08-04T08:29:08.835-04:00

Time - Two people in Michigan have died from cyclosporiasis, state health officials announced on Aug. 3. They are the first reported deaths from a record Cyclospora outbreak that has sickened thousands of people across the U.S.

The two people who died had “significant underlying health conditions that may have been impacted by cyclosporiasis and dehydration,” according to an update on the Michigan health department’s website. The health department said it wouldn’t provide additional information on the two cases.

The U.S. is experiencing the largest Cyclospora outbreak in its recorded history, with more than 18,000 cases confirmed or suspected across 45 states since May 1, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).