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According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, extreme heat caused more than 3,000 deaths between 2018 and 2020. And no, it’s not just your imagination: The number of extremely hot days is rising.

Which means that air conditioning is no longer a symbol of the good life. It’s now a matter of life and death.

What turned air conditioning into a necessity? Well, in part, air conditioning did. Carrier’s brilliant invention made it possible for Americans to live in places where it’s too hot to live without it.

But in Trump’s White House, certain symptoms remain: a president who governs as if producing and starring in a reality television show, with each day a new episode and each news cycle his own creation, a successive installment to be conquered.

Facing a global pandemic, Trump still seems to lurch from moment to moment, with his methods and messages each day disconnected from — and in some cases contradictory to — the ones just prior.

Trump has focused on his self-image — claiming credit wherever he believes it is owed, attempting to project strength and decisiveness, settling scores with critics, boasting about the ratings of his televised news conferences and striving to win the cable news and social media wars.

The letter damningly confirms many of the traits that the president’s critics have long assumed: It shows Trump to be uninformed, narcissistic and naive. It shows him as obsessed with process and uninterested in substance, craving the applause of a multitude whose identities he does not know.

It is the sort of note one could imagine coming from a clique leader in a movie about high-school angst, such as “Mean Girls” or “Heathers,” not a man who has access to the nuclear button.

Political leaders always have some aim in mind beyond the deal itself. For some, it is keeping or extending power. For others, it is the accomplishment of some task consistent with a set of articulated principles. But for all, any deal must be seen as consistent with those larger aims. Trump’s letter ignores this basic political instinct.

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The right has all the advantages, just as the devil has all the best tunes. Conservatism appeals to our selfishness and fear, our desire and self-interest; they neatly nurture and then harvest the inherent and incubating individualism. I imagine that neurologically the pathway travelled by a fearful or selfish impulse is more expedient and well travelled than the route of the altruistic pang. In simple terms of circuitry I suspect it is easier to connect these selfish inclinations.

This natural, neurological tendency has been overstimulated and acculturated. Materialism and individualism do in moderation make sense.

Is it possible to give voice to experts on both sides — standard journalistic practice — without distorting the public’s perception of the level of disagreement?

critics argue that journalists too often generate “false balance,” creating an impression of disagreement when there is, in fact, a high level of consensus. One solution, adopted by news organizations such as the BBC, is “weight of evidence” reporting, in which the presentation of conflicting views is supplemented by an indication of where the bulk of expert opinion lies.

studies suggest that “weight of evidence” reporting is an imperfect remedy. It turns out that hearing from experts on both sides of an issue distorts our perception of consensus — even when we have all the information we need to correct that misperception.

In a coastal town in Washington, climate change has a high school junior worried about the floods that keep deluging his school. A 17-year-old from Texas says global warming scares him so much he can’t even think about it.

But across the country, teens are channeling their anxieties into activism. “Fear,” says Maryland 16-year-old Madeline Graham, an organizer of a student protest planned for this week, “is a commodity we don’t have time for if we’re going to win the fight.”

Roughly 1 in 4 have participated in a walkout, attended a rally or written to a public official to express their views on global warming — remarkable levels of activism for a group that has not yet reached voting age.

The newfound Republican climate position can be summarized as follows: The climate problem is real, the Green New Deal is bad and the GOP needs a proactive climate solution of its own. Our big question is what form it should take.

There are essentially three ways to reduce emissions — regulations, subsidies and pricing. The first is the worst of all options for a party committed to free markets and limited government. Many Republican legislators are, therefore, gravitating toward the second option: tax credits and research-and-development spending to promote innovation. Those now introducing legislation along these lines deserve praise.

Republicans are correct to focus on clean-energy innovation as a crucial driver of climate progress.

“So actually in the Constitution of the United States, [if you] are found guilty of being a socialist member you either go to prison or are shot,” Garcia told Michels.

Anthony Johnstone, a law professor at the University of Montana, told The Washington Post that “nothing in the Constitution of the United States authorizes the government to punish socialists or anyone else on the basis of their political beliefs.” In fact, the First Amendment prohibits punishing political speech, and the Constitution of Montana “expressly prohibits discrimination on the basis of political beliefs,”

People often misunderstand the Treason Clause in Article III of the Constitution, interpreting it to justify punishment of political opponents, Johnstone said. The framers, he said, “were careful to define treason narrowly so it could not be used for merely political purposes.”

Another key question is what time period the White House’s 100,000-to-240,000 projection covers. Imperial College’s worst-case scenario calculated the toll exacted by the virus over a couple of years. But if the White House’s projection covers only the next few months, like the IHME model does, the true death toll will almost certainly be larger because the United States will probably see additional waves of covid-19 until a vaccine is deployed.

IHME, however, took an entirely different approach. It is a statistical model that takes the trending curve of deaths from China, for example, and “fits” that curve to emerging death data from cities and counties to predict what might come next.

“It’s a valuable tool, providing updated state-by-state projections, but it is inherently optimistic because it assumes that all states respond as swiftly as China,”

“All traitors must die miserable deaths,” a man from Michigan allegedly wrote in an email to Mark Zaid, the lawyer for the whistleblower who got the scandal rolling that ultimately resulted in President Trump’s impeachment. The man added: “We will hunt you down and bleed you out like the pigs you are.”

The author of this email has now been charged by federal prosecutors with making a death threat, Politico’s Natasha Bertrand reports. This came after Trump tweeted about the whistleblower many, many times, after Trump suggested the whistleblower should be executed and after Trump ripped into the whistleblower’s lawyer at a rally.

despite this, Trump and his allies have kept up the attacks on the whistleblower and have engaged in transparent efforts to place him in danger. House Republicans kept insisting that the whistleblower testify, and even as late as Trump’s trial, Senate Republicans were threatening to haul him in.

There are outbreaks. There are epidemics. And there are pandemics, where epidemics become rampant in multiple countries and continents simultaneously. The novel coronavirus that causes the disease named covid-19 is on the verge of that third, globe-shaking stage

Amid an alarming surge in cases with no clear link to China, infectious disease experts believe the flulike illness may soon be impossible to contain

the language coming from the organization’s Geneva headquarters has turned more ominous in recent days as the challenge of containment grows more daunting.

Sanders has denounced the attacks on Warren and her campaign by those claiming to support him, saying he was “aghast” and “disgusted” by them.That apparently did not satisfy Warren, who said that Sanders and all candidates “are responsible for the people who claim to be” supporters “and do really threatening and dangerous things,”

“We need to reckon with this in our political discourse,” said Warren, adding that what’s needed is “an understanding that nobody puts somebody’s family at risk or puts you at risk.”

She said that Democrats cannot “follow that same kind of politics of division that Donald Trump follows.”

in wealthy places on China's periphery — Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea — a rapid response swung into action.One reason was that they had learned from the past.

“We were all burned very badly with SARS, but actually it turned out to be a blessing for us.”

Political will, dedicated resources, sophisticated tracking and a responsible population have kept coronavirus infections and deaths in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore relatively low. South Korea, with more deaths, has led the way in widespread testing.

The president dug in on his use of the term “Chinese virus” to describe the novel coronavirus that was first detected in Wuhan, China, late last year and did not rule out directing economic retaliation toward Beijing.

Trump’s use of the term has become a point of pride among some White House aides and supporters, and the president has used it more as his handling of the public health emergency has been increasingly faulted.

“China unleashed this plague on the world, and China has to be held accountable,” Cotton said in an interview Wednesday evening with Fox News host Sean Hannity. “That’s why I’m introducing legislation that will say we’re no longer going to buy our basic pharmaceuticals from China. There will be a total ban on buying.”

“flatten the curve” — slowing the spread of the contagion so it doesn’t overwhelm a health-care system with finite resources.

Success means a longer — though less catastrophic — fight against the coronavirus. And it is unclear whether Americans — who built this country on ideals of independence and individual rights — would be willing to endure such harsh restrictions on their lives for months, let alone for a year or more.

Only by enacting an entire series of drastic, severe restrictions could America shrink its death toll further, the study found. That strategy would require, at a minimum, the nationwide practice of social distancing, home isolation, and school and university closures. And such restrictions would have to be maintained, at least intermittently, until a working vaccine is developed, which could take 12 to 18 months at best.

With all the foresight of Napoleon invading Russia and all the caution of George Pickett charging the Union lines, Trump barreled ahead Tuesday with his plan to send Americans back to their workplaces — and, consequently, their airplanes, subways and restaurants — within 19 days, even as the rapidly spreading pandemic builds toward a peak.

“We’re opening up this incredible country,” he declared midday in the Rose Garden to Fox News interviewers, hours after the World Health Organization declared a “very large acceleration” of coronavirus infections in the United States, raising the prospect of this country becoming the pandemic’s new epicenter.

“I would love to have the country opened up and just raring to go by Easter,” Trump declared. He went on to say he “wasn’t happy about” his public health experts’ recommendations, but he reluctantly accepted two weeks of restrictions because “we would have been unbelievably criticized for not doing it.”

The Trump administration is pushing to reopen much of the country next month, raising concerns among health experts and economists of a possible covid-19 resurgence if Americans return to their normal lives before the virus is truly stamped out.

Trump regularly looks at unemployment and stock market numbers, complaining that they are hurting his presidency and reelection prospects, the people said.

Trump said at his daily briefing Thursday that the United States was at the “top of the hill” and added, “Hopefully, we’re going to be opening up — you could call it opening — very, very, very, very soon, I hope.”

Our country can avoid long-term economic catastrophe, but only if we accept what would normally seem a preposterous idea: The $2.2 trillion in relief that Congress has approved is not nearly enough.

In the short term, the aid Congress has already authorized must be pushed out with far greater urgency. As of now, it could take up to five months for some Americans to get their one-time relief checks. Independent contractors and the self-employed faced delays in applying for help under the program for small businesses

Yes, a certain amount of confusion might be forgiven for a novel effort. But the Trump administration’s bungling of so many aspects of the pandemic tells us to be deeply wary

John Gray in the New Statesman. Mr Gray argues that Corbynism is “populism for the middle classes, serving the material and psychological needs of the relatively affluent and the well-heeled”. Far from being a repudiation of Tony Blair’s policies, Corbynism represents the completion of the takeover of Labour by middle-class people who put their own interests (such as free university education) above those of the working class.

most young Corbynistas are not so much settled members of the middle class as frustrated would-be members. Ben Judah, a millennial-generation journalist and author of “This is London”, points out that members of his generation are angry that they have done everything they were told, from studying hard at school to going to university to trying to get a respectable job, but are still holding on by their fingertips.

They are magnified by the London effect. Young people flock to the capital, where the best professional jobs are concentrated, but exorbitant property prices force them to migrate to the farthest corners of the city or to share with strangers.