Howard County, with its 41-point shift, saw the biggest swing.

"Republicans stand behind their candidate," Hubka said. "Like, the Democrats have to fall in love. We have to be, like, 'Oh, Barack Obama.' You know, I don't feel like people are, like, 'Oh, Joe Biden,' you know — and that's a problem."

I met Ernst recently, along with some 20 other Democrats, at the local chamber of commerce, which also houses the Iowa Wrestling Hall of Fame. (Random fact: Tiny Howard County is home to multiple Olympic wrestlers.)

Ernst, like some other folks at the Democratic committee meeting, is looking for a moderate candidate. And he's worried about some ideas on the left of his party. The 66-year-old is skeptical of "Medicare for All."

"Amy Klobuchar is kind of right in the middle," Godwin said. "I like what she has to say."

"I will do my best to try to get this county back," said Hubka, the party chair. "I don't have high hopes. ... I don't know in November that it'll flip completely. I hope that I can get at least 10 of the points back or, you know, 15."

Democrats can turn to history for some hope. The last time the county went for a Republican prior to Trump was in 1984 for Ronald Reagan. Four years later, it turned blue again

A federal appeals court has dismissed a lawsuit brought by nearly two dozen young people aimed at forcing the federal government to take bolder action on climate change, saying the courts were not the appropriate place to address the issue.

three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Friday the young plaintiffs had "made a compelling case that action is needed,

The lawsuit, Juliana v. United States, was filed in 2015 on behalf of a group of children and teenagers who said the U.S. government continued to use and promote the use of fossil fuels, knowing that such consumption would destabilize the climate, putting future generations at risk.

it was unclear if the court could compel the federal government to phase out fossil fuel emissions and draw down excess greenhouse gas emissions as the plaintiffs requested.

"Reluctantly, we conclude that such relief is beyond our constitutional power,"

The decision reversed an earlier ruling by a district court judge that would have allowed the case to move forward.

Both the Trump and Obama administrations opposed the lawsuit. All three of the judges involved in Friday's ruling were appointed under Obama.

In these proceedings, the government accepts as fact that the United States has reached a tipping point crying out for a concerted response

yet presses ahead toward calamity," she wrote. "It is as if an asteroid were barreling toward Earth and the government decided to shut down our only defenses."

Kids' Climate Case 'Reluctantly' Dismissed By Appeals Court

Democratic lawmakers have accused Trump of abusing his office by withholding hundreds of millions in assistance in order to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rivals.

The Office of Management and Budget blocked the Defense Department from spending money designated by Congress on July 25,

a 1974 law that governs budget procedure within the government "does not permit OMB to withhold funds for policy reasons,"

Documents and testimony released during and after House impeachment hearings revealed some administration officials had raised concerns that the Ukraine hold might have violated the law known as the Impoundment Control Act.

If the White House wants to delay or deny funds, it must first alert Congress.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland, asked the GAO to assess Trump's decisions to freeze the Ukraine aid.

Van Hollen said he thought the report vindicated Congress' decision to impeach Trump.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., opposes the introduction of fresh witnesses or evidence into a Senate trial, arguing the Senate's role is to assess the House's fact-finding, not to do new investigations on its own.

After release of the GAO report, the OMB said it disagrees with the findings.

"OMB uses its apportionment authority to ensure taxpayer dollars are properly spent consistent with the president's priorities and with the law," said OMB spokeswoman Rachel Semmel.

in early January that Defense Department emails showed repeated warnings from the department to OMB that the delays put its ability to distribute the aid at risk.

Back in 2016, as she campaigned for Hillary Clinton, Laura Hubka could feel her county converting.

"People were chasing me out the door, slamming the door in my face, calling Hillary names," Hubka recalled.

In 2012, Howard County voted for then-President Barack Obama by 21 percentage points. In 2016, it voted for candidate Donald Trump by 20 points.

Of Iowa's 99 counties, 31 swung from voting for the Democrat Obama in 2008 and 2012 to the Republican Trump in 2016,

oward County, with its 41-point shift, saw the biggest swin

National reporters have descended on the county, trying to understand the massive shift

Whatever the reason, local Democrats want to make sure they can win back some voters.

they're torn on how to do that.

Hubka is not supporting the former vice president. Instead, she's backing Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind. So is Dale Ernst.

"I think he's just kind of a calm voice in the middle of the chaos, which is what we're in the middle of now,

"I just don't think it's reasonable," he said. "I just really don't. I think for people younger than 65, they see this more free than, really, the cost of it."

The 66-year-old is skeptical of "Medicare for All."

"Amy Klobuchar is kind of right in the middle," Godwin said. "I like what she has to say."

"I will do my best to try to get this county back," said Hubka, the party chair. "I don't have high hopes. ... I don't know in November that it'll flip completely. I hope that I can get at least 10 of the points back or, you know, 15."

"Coming to a place like here, where the swing was 20 [for Obama] to 20 [for Trump], I think it steers the ship," he said. "It gives a good idea of where we should go."

The last time the county went for a Republican prior to Trump was in 1984 for Ronald Reagan. Four years later, it turned blue again.

As protesters clapped and chanted "disclose, divest and reinvest,

Harvard senior Caleb Schwartz, one of the protest organizers who was arrested on Saturday, told NPR the mood on the field was joyful, despite the possibility of arrest.

"That moment, when we saw people running onto the field was just really incredible," he said

"We know that we don't have a lot of time to act to curb the effects of climate change, and the longer it takes for our universities to acknowledge their role in the climate crisis and accept responsibility,

Schwartz says the Harvard-Yale rivalry game has been played since 1875, and organizers knew alumni from all over the world would be tuning in.

"We will win this fight, and we will get the university to divest,"

Harvard and Yale are not the first universities to face criticism over fossil fuel investments.

The first campus divestment movements started at Swarthmore College in 2011.

"Yale stands firmly for the right to free expression.

Today, students from Harvard and Yale expressed their views and delayed the start of the second half of the football game

Saturday's protest during a marque rivalry football game attracted widespread attention, including tweets of support from several Democratic presidential candidates including Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders.

The protest garnered so much interest, that Schwartz changed his bus ticket back to Cambridge on Saturday so he could stay and field the deluge of media inquiries.

In a statement, the student groups behind the protest, Fossil Free Yale, the Yale Endowment Justice Coalition and Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard, wrote:

News organizations and journalists' advocates are challenging restrictive new ground rules for reporters assigned to cover the Senate impeachment trial.

Correspondents who submit to an official credentialing process are granted broad access throughout the Capitol complex and usually encounter few restrictions in talking with members of Congress or others.

now Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Michael Stenger has imposed new requirements for the impeachment trial,

Reporters are being confined to small cordoned-off sections in areas where unrestricted access was typically standard.

They are being prevented from walking with senators to continue conversations — even when the senator involved is willingly participating.

Taken together, the new rules effectively prevent members of the press from reaching many senators.

Elsewhere, as in the White House or the State Department, for example, reporters' movements are controlled more closely, and access to principals can be severely limited.

Stenger and the Capitol Police may fear that the additional attention drawn to the Senate impeachment trial may increase risks to members of Congress.

Nearly 60 news organizations including NPR signed a letter organized by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press on Thursday urging Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to relax the new restrictions on reporters.

Patricia Gallagher Newberry, president of the Society of Professional Journalists, faulted the new Senate restrictions because they deny reporters the ability to fully cover a once-in-a-generation spectacle.

"These restrictions set a horrible precedent and reinforce the lie that the news media is dangerous and the 'enemy of the people

News organizations that assign correspondents to the Capitol — including NPR — are continuing to negotiate ground rules with Stenger (the sergeant-at-arms) and the Capitol Police.

Reporters Challenge New Restrictions In Trying To Cover Senate Impeachment Trial

Arzt brushed aside concerns that early state primary campaigns might suffer with the candidates bottled up on Capitol Hill.

“They’ll have surrogates in the early states, they will make appearances when they are freed up on a weekend.”

Getting the limelight may not be easy for the trio because, unlike more garden-variety hearings where grandstanding is the norm, senators will be forbidden from speaking during the trial.

Other experts disagree.

“Iowa and New Hampshire loves to kick the tires and candidates,” Siegfried added

Sanders told reporters he wasn’t thrilled about heading off the trail.

“I’d rather be in Iowa today. There’s a caucus there in two-and-a-half weeks.

A Warren volunteer said, “I wish she didn’t have to leave the campaign trail but our country and our constitution comes first.”

Keith Thomas Kinnunen, a 43-year-old “transient” with a criminal record, fatally shot two people inside the packed house of worship, but was quickly shot dead in turn by Wilson

Wilson, 71, was hailed as a hero after neutralizing a shotgun-wielding man who opened fire last month in the middle of services at the West Freeway Church of Christ outside Forth Worth.

“His ads are Fake, just like him!”

While many praised Wilson — a former FBI agent turned volunteer security guard — for his likely life-saving actions, Bloomberg earlier this month said that heroism should be left to the professionals.

“You just do not want the average citizen carrying a gun in a crowded place,”

Bloomberg, a well-known gun-control advocate and founder of the Everytown for Gun Safety nonprofit.

Bloomberg, the 77-year-old former three-term New York mayor, announced in November that he is self-financing a White House run.

House Democrats were considering other ways to limit Trump’s military authority.

he House may also consider a resolution from Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) to repeal a 2002 war authorization passed ahead of the US invasion of Iraq.

In just a few hours, the plane’s instruments identified six sites with unusually high methane emissions

Methane is loosely regulated, difficult to detect and rising sharply

Operators of the sites identified by The Times are among the very companies that have lobbied the Trump administration,

either directly or through trade organizations, to weaken regulations on methane,

Next year, the administration could move forward with a plan that would effectively eliminate requirements

By the E.P.A.’s own calculations, the rollback would increase methane emissions by 370,000 tons through 2025, enough to power more than a million homes for a year.

“This site’s definitely leaking,”

The reporters drove to the sites armed with infrared video gear that revealed methane billowing from tanks, seeping from pipes and wafting from bright flares that are designed to burn off the gas,

The regulatory rollback sought by the energy industry is the latest chapter in the administration’s historic effort to weaken environmental and climate regulations while waging a broad-based attack on climate science.

The findings address the mystery behind rising levels of methane in the atmosphere. Methane levels have soared since 2007 for reasons that still aren’t fully understood.

Methane also contributes to ground-level ozone, which, if inhaled, can cause asthma and other health problems.

In the course of about four hours of flying, we found at least six sites with high methane-emissions readings, ranging from about 300 pounds to almost 1,100 pounds an hour, including at DCP Pegasus, which is part owned by the energy giant Phillips 66.

At the DCP Pegasus plant, south of Midland, the camera transformed a tranquil scene into a furnace. Hot columns of gas shot into the air. Fumes engulfed structures.

A worker went to check on the tank, climbing some stairs and walking into the plume.

The companies found an administration willing to listen.

Before his appointment to the post of assistant administrator at the E.P.A.

Shortly after his tweet, she had updated her Twitter profile to read: “A teenager working on her anger management problem. Currently chilling and watching a good old fashioned movie with a friend.”

At her U.N. appearance, Thunberg chastised leaders for praising young activists such as herself while failing to deliver on drastic actions needed to avert the worst effects of climate change

following an appearance at a United Nations climate summit where she offered an impassioned — and somewhat fatalistic — plea to global leaders.

Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax,” also took note of Thunberg in September,

“she became the biggest voice on the biggest issue facing the planet this year, coming from essentially nowhere to lead a worldwide movement.”

Trump, who was among the five finalists for the distinction this year, has had a long obsession with the magazine’s selections, dating back before he became president.

The first woman to conduct a spacewalk was Russian cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya in 1984, followed closely by NASA astronaut Kathy Sullivan.

"The job that you do is incredible," President Donald Trump told them. "I'm thrilled to be speaking with two brave American astronauts making history

This is the first time for a woman outside of the space station

Koch and Meir spoke about women working in human spaceflight during a recent news conference.

"I think it's important because of the historical nature of what we're doing and that in the past, women haven't always been at the table,"

"There are a lot of people that derive motivation from inspiring stories from people that look like them and I think it's an important aspect of the story to tell,

Fellow NASA astronaut Drew Morgan, also currently on the station, tweeted in support of Koch and Meir during the walk. "So proud of my astrosisters @Astro_Christina and @Astro_Jessica! We've been training together since our selection in 2013, and now they're out on a history-making spacewalk! #AllWomanSpacewalk"

Koch and Meir replaced a faulty battery charge/discharge unit that failed to activate after a spacewalk on October 11, according to the agency.

The space station is powered by solar arrays and four sets of batteries

Luckily, the faulty unit hasn't changed anything for the astronauts or experiments on board.

Although floating in space looks easy, astronauts say that spacewalks are one of the most physically challenging things they can do, according to NASA.

For the intended spacewalk in March, Koch was going to be paired with astronaut Anne McClain

"However, individuals' sizing needs may change when they are on orbit, in response to the changes living in microgravity can bring about in a body," Dean said.

She and Koch have trained together for the past six years because they're members of the same astronaut class. Meir is set to spend more than six months on board the station.

The upcoming spacewalks will help replace solar array batteries and upgrade them to lithium-ion batteries, as well as refurbish the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a scientific instrument "that explores the fundamental nature of the universe," according to NASA.

Not if his lawyers have anything to say about it.

if he is impeached by the House, and convicted by the Senate of "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors."

Throughout Trump's presidency, investigations into Russia's efforts to influence the 2016 election and other matters relating to his business dealings have made impeachment a possibility.

This summer's revelations that Trump asked Ukraine's president to investigate past and future political opponents made it probable, if not inevitable. 

"We believe the acts revealed publicly over the past several weeks are fundamentally incompatible with the president’s oath of office, his duties as commander in chief, and his constitutional obligation to 'take care that the laws be faithfully executed,'

"He’s taking care of himself, not taking care of the country."

Alexander Hamiton wrote extensively on impeachment in the Federalist Papers, but the Constitution gives it only six brief mentions. The references leave plenty of leeway.

Trump also asked indirectly for a probe of emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee in 2016.

In the same conversation, the president noted that "the United States has been very, very good to Ukraine. I wouldn’t say that it’s reciprocal, necessarily."

The president was referring at the time to financing his long-sought wall along the border with Mexico

That would be Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 of the Constitution, which bars federal officeholders from accepting gifts from foreign governments.

An eight-page letter from the White House counsel earlier this month basically declared war on House Democrats' impeachment inquiry. The president, Pat Cipollone said, won't cooperate.

But others defend the president's resistance.

What Trump did on July 25 was ask Ukraine's new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate the Democrats' leading presidential candidate at the time, Joe Biden, and his son Hunter.

"The Constitution gets violated all the time," Barnett says. "That doesn’t make the violation of the Constitution a high crime or misdemeanor."

Carbon capture and storage, which Morgan Stanley says is the only viable option for reducing emissions from coal-fired plants, is another key area and would need almost $2.5 trillion of investment.

to reduce net carbon emissions to zero and meet the Paris Agreement’s goal, the world would have to eliminate 53.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide each year,

Beyond the social and environmental consequences from failing to act on climate change, going beyond a temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius could result in a loss of $10 trillion to $20 trillion of global GDP by 2100, Morgan Stanley predicts.

Within the electric vehicles space, Tesla is the “only pure play”—though they should be followed by VW and Toyota in the long run, while other companies like Panasonic and Albemarle are among the leading players in lithium technology and supply.

For hydrogen, companies to watch include Air Liquide, Siemens and Alstom.

including biology, botany, chemistry, ethics, history, logic, metaphysics, rhetoric, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, physics, poetics, political theory, psychology, and zoology.

some of his work remained unsurpassed until the 19th century.

But he is, of course, most outstanding as a philosopher.

Within the Academy, however, relations seem to have remained cordial. Aristotle always acknowledged a great debt to Plato; he took a large part of his philosophical agenda from Plato, and his teaching is more often a modification than a repudiation of Plato’s doctrines.

Aristotle was born on the Chalcidic peninsula of Macedonia, in northern Greece.

Many of Plato’s later dialogues date from these decades, and they may reflect Aristotle’s contributions to philosophical debate at the Academy.

It is possible that two of Aristotle’s surviving works on logic and disputation, the Topics and the Sophistical Refutations, belong to this early period.

During Aristotle’s residence at the Academy, King Philip II of Macedonia (reigned 359–336 bce) waged war on a number of Greek city-states.

His writings in ethics and political theory as well as in metaphysics and the philosophy of science continue to be studied,

When Plato died about 348, his nephew Speusippus became head of the Academy, and Aristotle left Athens.

While in Assus and during the subsequent few years when he lived in the city of Mytilene on the island of Lesbos, Aristotle carried out extensive scientific research, particularly in zoology and marine biology.

The scope of Aristotle’s scientific research is astonishing.

The myriad items of information about the anatomy, diet, habitat, modes of copulation, and reproductive systems of mammals, reptiles, fish, and insects are a melange of minute investigation and vestiges of superstition.

In 343 or 342 Aristotle was summoned by Philip II to the Macedonian capital at Pella to act as tutor to Philip’s 13-year-old son, the future Alexander the Great.

By 326 Alexander had made himself master of an empire that stretched from the Danube to the Indus and included Libya and Egypt.

Most of Aristotle’s surviving works, with the exception of the zoological treatises, probably belong to this second Athenian sojourn.

Aristotle’s works, though not as polished as Plato’s, are systematic in a way that Plato’s never were.

Aristotle divided the sciences into three kinds: productive, practical, and theoretical.

When Alexander died in 323, democratic Athens became uncomfortable for Macedonians, even those who were anti-imperialist.

Aristotle’s writings fall into two groups: those that were published by him but are now almost entirely lost, and those that were not intended for publication but were collected and preserved by others.

Time cannot be composed of indivisible moments, because between any two moments there is always a period of time.

Motion (kinesis) was for Aristotle a broad term, encompassing changes in several different categories.

For Aristotle, extension, motion, and time are three fundamental continua in an intimate and ordered relation to each other.

Change, for Aristotle, can take place in many different categories.

in the early 1340s, the disease had struck China, India, Persia, Syria and Egypt.

They know that the bacillus travels from person to person pneumonically, or through the air, as well as through the bite of infected fleas and rats.

The Black Death was terrifyingly, indiscriminately contagious

Today, scientists understand that the Black Death, now known as the plague, is spread by a bacillus called Yersina pestis.

However, Europeans were scarcely equipped for the horrible reality of the Black Death.

Not long after it struck Messina, the Black Death spread to the port of Marseilles in France and the port of Tunis in North Africa

Then it reached Rome and Florence, two cities at the center of an elaborate web of trade routes.

Today, this grim sequence of events is terrifying but comprehensible

No one knew exactly how the Black Death was transmitted from one patient to another, and no one knew how to prevent or treat it

Meanwhile, in a panic, healthy people did all they could to avoid the sick

Because they did not understand the biology of the disease, many people believed that the Black Death was a kind of divine punishment – retribution for sins against God such as greed, blasphemy, heresy, fornication and worldliness.

The theological genius of the East was different from that of the West.

Political jealousies and interests intensified the disputes, and, at last, after many premonitory symptoms, the final break came in 1054,

Pope Leo IX struck at Michael Cerularius and his followers with an excommunication and the patriarch retaliated with a similar excommunication.

the Greeks were bitterly antagonized by such events as the Latin capture of Constantinople in 1204.

Western pleas for reunion (on Western terms), such as those at the Council of Lyon (1274) and the Council of Ferrara-Florence (1439), were rejected by the Byzantines.

Dialogue and improved relations continued into the early 21st century.

The schism has never healed,