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robertscotthorton.bsky.social
Contributing editor, Harper's Magazine; Lecturer, Columbia Law School; Attorney
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Why does Spain have the best performing economy in Europe? Its receptivity to immigrants is the main reason. www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/0...

The EU has corroborated UN allegations that Israel is guilty of "indiscriminate attacks... starvation... torture... [and] apartheid" against Palestinians in a leaked review. The "restricted", eight-page EU foreign service document was disseminated for comment before release on Friday.

The lunatic policies towards science, scientists and immigration have all but made it impossible to convene an important scientific conference in the US. American scientists now agree with their foreign colleagues that conferences must be held elsewhere. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Fifty years ago today, cinema-goers were scared out of their seats — as well as the ocean, and even swimming pools — with the US release of the film Jaws. Director Steven Spielberg’s creation entertained and terrified in equal measure, and brought about an enduring change in how we perceive sharks.

Steve Benen offers us a reminder that the Iran proliferation crisis that Trump is now navigating is a crisis entirely of Trump's making... and how he got there is appalling.

As the world nears 1.5°C of global warming, near-term emissions reductions and adequate adaptation become ever more important to ensure a safe and livable planet for present and future generations

Trump's Lysenkoism. By formalizing political control over agency science, Trump introduces a “doubt science” approach to shaping policy. Political apparatchiks will now manufacture uncertainty and confusion, cherry-pick studies that support their bigotries, and discard inconvenient results.

Why does Foreign Affairs publish a piece making the case for the US to join the Israeli military effort in Iran without disclosing the fact that two of the three authors are paid propagandists for the Israeli government? The article is competently written, disclosures are necessary.

What to think about the stream of byzantine and poorly written editorials suddenly coming out of the NYT? For starters, the NYT opinion editor isn't capable of defending them. Something very strange going on here.

Bolton is right about this, and it's not a trivial point.

The DHS announces that it will defy a clear order from a federal district court judge, saying that a (grossly inferior) immigration judge must be decide this. The person issuing this embarrassingly idiotic statement is the same woman who issued a firehose of lies about assaults on elected officials

Swedish television (SVT) has all the details: how the Iranian regime hired an organized crime group based in Stockholm and paid them to attack Israeli institutions across Europe, beginning late in 2023. www.svtplay.se/video/KVk4qJ...

Sergio Gor says he's from Malta, but the Maltese call him "the Russian boy." He's risen to stratospheric levels in the Trump regime, taking charge of vetting and approving candidates for high office. No one knows who he is, but he has a fabulous record for securing money from Russian oligarchs

Judiciary, the GOP type. A Florida state judge was lobbying for a seat on the federal bench. After he sided with the president in a defamation case, Donald Trump gave him one. Ed Artau, now a nominee to be a district court judge in Florida. www.politico.com/news/2025/06...

Why do police violently assault a Hispanic US senator who dared to ask Kristi Noem a question, but use kid glove treatment on a white male MAGA man who assassinated Minnesota lawmakers? It fits a pattern. www.inquirer.com/opinion/comm...

Hans Holbein the Younger, Hermann von Wedigh III (Cologne, 1532) A young man rests his arm on a table. A book lies before him, a piece of paper tucked into its pages. From these simple ingredients, Holbein composed one of his most celebrated—and best preserved—portraits, a young judge and alderman.

Trump seems really agitated that he hasn't been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. But then I'm sure his loyal MAGA world will give it to him. Probably to congratulate him for eviscerating Iran, then invading and occupying Greenland and Canada. That meets all the criteria, doesn't it?

The economic damage of climate change is already much, much worse than DICE predicted, and the economic cost of policy to fix climate change is actually negative. prospect.org/environment/...

Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez, Portrait of Juan Francisco de Pimentel, Count of Benavente (Madrid 1648) Pimentel Ponce de León, Count and Duke of Benavente, is portrayed more than half length with a whole host of attributes that confirm his supreme military rank in the Spanish army.

Self described Republicans just love to traffic in conspiracy theories and to post fake news.

If you self-identify as a Republican, then it's far more likely that you traffic heavily in fake news. A new study finds Republican posts are 2.3 × more likely to be flagged as misleading than Democratic ones – even with crowdsourced ratings from X's Community Notes.

Quick, get to that hotline and report GOR Sergio, because he's for sure a foreigner. Hell, he can't even speak English. nypost.com/2025/06/17/u...

Trump's secret police do not behave like law enforcement officers... but they're obsessed with snatching people off the streets and sending them overseas, and the fact that the people they snatch are US citizens doesn't bother them in the least. www.bet.com/article/6rdn...

Certain questions cannot be asked because the answers are obvious.

This is what's going on. NYT, WaPo, WSJ have essentially decided not to report it.

This whole story is another amazing demonstration of the instincts of Kristi Noem's DHS: when you're caught in something embarrassing, always lie about it and don't worry about the fact that your lies will be revealed by the video.

Onshoring all manufacturing isn’t going to result in an economy overflowing with manufacturing jobs. A new study found that closing the manufacturing trade deficit would increase the share of jobs in manufacturinh production to a mere 4.7%. This is just as most economists forecast

Trump puts his own portrait in the middle of the First Ladies wall. Is he sexually confused?

“In April, I resigned from my position at the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division for a simple reason: The department’s leadership is directing attorneys to use antisemitism as a pretext to undermine free speech.” slate.com/news-and-pol...

Trump is now less popular than Biden was and would now lose 15 of the states he carried in 2024, giving his opponent a landslide win. www.economist.com/interactive/...

The German government sends the Luftwaffe to bring stranded Germans home. Marco Rubio and Donald Trump tell stranded Americans they can go fuck themselves. www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/naho...

Interesting. The judge gave them a week to bring some other charge; DOJ failed to do so, so now he orders immediate release. Way past time.

Agnes Pockels devised the sliding-trough method to measure surface tension in her kitchen and, in 1891, wrote to Lord Rayleigh describing her results. Nature published them, making her one of the first published “citizen scientists," all done without a salaried position or lab affiliation.

This is an extremely important chart. Keep your eyes focused on this point: all of Iran's production was triggered proximately by Trump's decision to repudiate the Obama anti-proliferation accords.

"In principle, Ukraine and Russia are one people," says Putin, and thus "all of Ukraine is ours." This is presented as an explanation for why Putin is not really interested in settlement talks of any sort. He believes with Trump in the White House, he will prevail. theins.ru/news/282326

More to the point, this is a very effect test of whether MAGA really is a cult. Cults are not fragmented by differences of policy or dogma. They fall apart when a new cult leader presents himself to attract the adherents. That has not happened yet.

Team War and Chaos are itching to test their latest toys, like the bunker buster

With Viktor Orbán now seriouslytrailing his opponent in the polls, he seems to persuade Hungarians that Ukraine is a great threat, but that Russia is their great friend. It's a world turned upside down, but the Orbán-faithful will buy whatever he's selling them.

Jack Goldsmith's analysis of the serial Trump illegal maneuvers surrounding TikTok strikes me as completely correct, and indeed, perfectly obvious. I really don't understand why this is not a bigger issue. It would probably be sufficient as things now stand to ground an impeachment count against him

How a decision by Trump to launch a US military campaign against Iran, beyond the logistical support to Israel which is already going on, would likely affect oil prices: here a 3-month climb to $100 bbl oil is being fed into futures pricing

Netanyahu forbids any coverage of missile strikes by news organizations.

Ed Luce: 2003 all over again? Had Rip Van Winkle fallen asleep in 2003 and awoken today, he would notice little change. Fox’s agitation for regime change—and the ease with which its stars say it can be accomplished—is hard to distinguish from its case for invading Iraq. www.ft.com/content/1891...

Did Trump pardon even the child pornography offenses of one of his Jan 6 rioters? By terms of the pardon itself, it seems the answer is "yes." But Pam Bondi is pulling back. Several cases just like this.

Israeli Defense Minister Katz says Israel is specifically targeting Iranian civilians and attempting to provoke panic in Tehran in order to topple the regime of the ayatollahs.

A video showing a flying wing–shaped unmanned aerial vehicle, likely filmed over the skies of the Golan Heights, may be a rare recording of RA-01, whose existence was revealed in a Pentagon document leak last October. The drone was developed by Israel using resources furnished by the US.

Lewis Hyde on butterflies, climate change, and deep time: "Eleven thousand years of survival versus a few decades of decline: it may not be clear how we are to reckon with spans of time so utterly out of proportion with one another.” harpers.org/archive/2025...

Sen Rand Paul (R-KY) accurately states the legal requirement for a military deployment against Iran: “The Constitution is explicit that if you want to drop a 10,000-pound bomb on another country, you have to ask for permission… That’s what the Constitution contemplated…[Trump] will ignore it.”

The shorter Duffy: unless you kowtow before Fearless Leader and do everything he demands of you, we're going to withhold your appropriated funds. And we don't care that doing so is illegal, either.

The Bar issues a statement condemning the wearing of masks by ICE agents and their failure to properly identify themselves when challenged. They're not behaving like law enforcement agents, the Bar notes. www.nycbar.org/press-releas...