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How Democrats Can Shut Down the Government With Voters on Their Side

September 13, 2025

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In March, Democrats led by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer shrank from confrontation under the threat of a government shutdown. Now, voters’ growing disenchantment with President Trump and the unpopularity of the megabill he pushed through give Democrats a chance to fight and win as another funding deadline looms.

By demanding action on popular policies, Democrats could execute a delicate maneuver where they avoid blame for a shutdown while benefiting from the negotiations to end it.

There are risks to denying Republicans the 60 Senate votes necessary to approve the big appropriations bill, but the risks of avoiding that clash are greater. Backing off to avoid a shutdown would depress the Democratic base and signal capitulation to an increasingly authoritarian regime.

One instructive precedent comes from the 1995-96 shutdowns, which are now mostly remembered as the time when President Bill Clinton began his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

A year earlier, hard-charging right-wing Republicans took control of both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years. Their wide margins gave them far more running room than the G.O.P. has now. A battered Mr. Clinton later pleaded with reporters that he was still “relevant,” which sounds a lot like today’s congressional Democrats.

Yet when the shutdown ended in early 1996, Mr. Clinton had won big. How? Mr. Clinton, who had struggled to communicate a message, boiled down his dozens of wordy policy positions to what his aides called “M.M.E.E.” — Medicare, Medicaid, education, and the environment. Intense focus on those four popular Democratic positions powered Mr. Clinton’s shutdown comeback and his re-election that fall.

The Clinton analogy is imperfect; Mr. Clinton had the megaphone of the presidency, while Democrats today control no branch of government. The politics of a shutdown favor them nonetheless.

Democrats have a big edge on what’s seen as the No. 1 problem in America: affordability. According to a new CBS News poll, a paltry 36 percent of Americans approve of the way Mr. Trump is handling inflation, a blaring sign of the president’s vulnerability on the main issue that brought him back to the White House.

In a world of short attention spans, Democrats should go to the ramparts on just three instead of four issues, with a tightly focused popular solution for each.

Today’s version of M.M.E.E. should be H.T.T. — health, tariffs and troops in the streets. The first two are directly related to affordability, with health-care premiums and drug costs surging and tariffs causing steep price increases, not to mention resentment from parents who don’t want the president telling them, as he did in April, that it’s OK if they can now afford only two dolls for Christmas.

On health, Democrats should demand an extension of the popular tax credits that make Obamacare more affordable for millions of Americans, which are scheduled to expire next year. They should insist on restoring funding for popular National Institutes of Health grants, particularly for cancer research. And in the glare of a shutdown, it would be tough for Republicans to resist a Democratic push to reverse at least some of the unpopular Medicaid cuts. Finally, Democrats should insist on a provision guaranteeing the availability of vaccines, a position supported by 78 percent of adults in a recent NBC News poll, including overwhelming majorities of independents and Republicans.

On tariffs, Democrats should demand that almost all tariffs be approved by Congress, a view that might soon also have the backing of the Supreme Court. This would peel off some Republican senators who like neither tariffs nor Mr. Trump trampling on the legislative branch’s longstanding authority over trade.

Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

Click the link below for the complete article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/12/opinion/clinton-era-democrats-trump.html

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Autism Has No Single Cause. Here’s How We Know

September 12, 2025

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Soon after psychiatrist Leo Kanner first identified autism in the 1940s, he and his colleagues proposed a simple explanation for its cause: mothers’ “lack of genuine warmth” toward their children. Being raised by “refrigerator mothers,” the researchers explained, was what caused autistic people’s difficulties with social communication and sensory processing and their repetitive behaviors and interests.

But in the 1970s, studies of twins revealed that autism is highly heritable, not something that develops after birth. Thus began the search for the genes responsible. “We had rather simple views about what it might be” that caused autism, says Helen Tager-Flusberg, a professor emerita at Boston University. The idea in the 1990s, she recalls, was that “we’re talking about six to 10 genes.” Instead, researchers found hundreds.

No simple theory of autism has ever panned out, and the scientific community has moved on from the search for a simple answer. Researchers now know that autism develops from a staggeringly complex interplay between genes and factors that can influence development in utero. But attempts to pin the condition on one root cause abound, most famously in the disproven idea that vaccines cause autism. And earlier this year, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., announced that he will reveal the “interventions” that are “almost certainly causing autism” in September.

While scientists rarely proclaim absolutes, autism researchers say that they are as sure as they can be that there’s no one cause of the condition. “It’s never going to be true,” says Tager-Flusberg; decades of data reveal that a complex (and highly variable) origin is the only logical conclusion.

The Genetic Picture

In the past 50 years, researchers have identified hundreds of genes linked to autism spectrum disorder. But which genes are involved varies greatly from person to person and can be much harder to pin down. About 10 to 15 percent of cases (some estimates are as high as 39 percent) involve genetic mutations that are new to a child—not inherited from their parents—explains Shafali Jeste, an autism researcher and pediatrician, who leads the neurology division at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. In another approximately 50 percent of cases, autism is linked to the combination of many common variants of genes that were inherited from parents. In the remaining cases, the causes are murky

But even for new genetic mutations that are known to cause autism, the story is far from simple. The same mutations can be present in nonautistic people, too. “If you have this mutation, it doesn’t guarantee that you will have autism per se, but it increases the risk substantially,” says Jed Elison, who studies brain development and autism at the University of Minnesota. There are still other factors involved that researchers haven’t fully characterized—some that are likely genetic and some that are likely not.

Untangling genetic factors from nongenetic ones (which scientists call “environmental factors”) can be tricky. For example, studies have consistently shown that parental age at conception can play a role, with older parents being more likely to have autistic children. But that could be because of the effect of age on genes: people accumulate mutations with age and can pass these on to their kids. Other factors that have been linked to autism include people being born prematurely or through cesarean section, as well as pregnant people having obesity, using certain medications (such as the antiseizure drug valproate and the pain reliever acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol), and being exposed to air pollution. The strength of the evidence for these links varies, though, and the increases in risk tend to be small. The evidence is also only correlational, meaning it can’t establish what caused what.

Click the link below for the complete article:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/autism-has-no-single-cause-research-shows/

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Can a Parent Not Like Their Kids the Same, But Still Love Them Equally?

September 12, 2025

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With a provocative title and over 175 comments at the time of writing, a thread in the r/Parenting subreddit is getting a lot of attention because a parent has admitted to loving their kids equally—but not liking them all the same.

In the post titled, “The dirty secret my parents never told me,” the Redditor says they believed growing up in a “somewhat large family” that their parents loved all the kids equally. “Now that I’ve been a parent, I think that actually was true,” they add.

Then, the poster goes on to drop the bombshell confession: “But what I didn’t understand, until I had my own kids, is that I wouldn’t like them all equally.”

Loving Your Children vs. Liking Them

The Redditor says one of their kids is a lot like them in all the good ways, while the other reminds them of themselves “in all the cringe-worthy ways.” For instance, this child is “emotionally needy” and “high maintenance.” A third child “is always lying and getting into trouble, and fighting with the rest of their siblings.”

Again, the poster stresses that all the kids are loved equally. “But do I like being around them all equally? Hell no.” They then go on to share that although this realization used to cause a lot of guilt, having the same feelings about your children is “just not the way it works out.”

Finally, the Redditor says that being your kids’ friend is not the primary job of a parent. “It’s to love them and get them ready to function on their own in the world. And I don’t need to like being around them in order to do that,” the poster says.

The Post Was a Conversation Starter For Sure!

Not surprisingly, the hot-button post has divided commenters.

Many can relate hard to what the poster said, with one sharing, “I have four kids. I love and enjoy them all for different reasons. They also all uniquely irritate me in their own ways.”

Many comments were in a similar vein to this one: “I love all my kids the same, and quite honestly, they all take turns stressing me out or melting my heart completely. I literally couldn’t tell you which ones I like better on a consistent basis because it’s always changing!”

Dozens of commenters agreed that which of their kids they like the most varies by the day, hour, or even minute, and often it’s age and stage-related. For instance, teenagers and toddlers understandably make liking your kids all the time a challenge for so many parents who responded to this thread.

But many Reddit users reacted differently to the share, with one cautioning the original poster, “I hope you do a good job not letting it show though.” Meanwhile, another noted that kids can sense how their parents feel about them versus their siblings.

“It’s not nice growing up in a house where you know you’re liked a lot less than your siblings,” someone else acknowledged, while another poster agreed, “My entire life, I felt this from my mom. I’ve always said that she loves me because she’s my mom and has to, but doesn’t actually like me. We can always tell.”

Yet another Reddit user had an even more pointed message for the poster, writing, “You have a favorite, and just by how you describe your other child, it’s probably pretty obvious to everyone around you, including that child… which is probably why they’re acting out.”

To be fair, the post was commended by several Redditors, like one who said, “This is really insightful. It makes so much sense that love and liking can be different emotions. It’s tough to balance those feelings as a parent. I admire your honesty in sharing this struggle.”

And someone else defended the poster against critics by saying, in part, “I know you’re a great parent. S****y parents aren’t making posts on Reddit, guessing themselves on how they’re doing as parents.”

My Two Cents (From a Mom of Many)

As a mom of five, I’ll jump in and say that in my view, it’s not so much that I don’t like my kids equally, but that I may not like what they are doing, or the stage they are in.

It’s like I tell my 3-year-old after he throws a truck at my head out of frustration and I make him go to time out: “I will always love you, but I do not like what you’re doing.”

As far as loving all of my kids equally, I’d say, well, yes, I do, but maybe I’d state it in another way, as I love them all the same, but differently. They are different people! Meanwhile, I can relate to the original poster in that learning how to parent each of your kids according to their individual personalities and stages in life can be a huge challenge—and leads to conflicts with each for varying reasons.

Ultimately, parenting is the toughest job there is, and I have to agree with the commenter who essentially said that as long as you are constantly evaluating your own performance as a mom or dad, you’re probably pretty engaged and doing the best you can.

Photo: Parents / Zing Images via Getty Images

Click the link below for the complete article:

https://www.parents.com/parent-loves-kids-equally-but-doesnt-like-them-the-same-8753872

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‘Republican for Trump’: Alleged Kirk shooter’s grandmother confirms entire family is MAGA

September 12, 2025

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The grandmother of 22-year-old Tyler Robinson — who has been arrested for allegedly murdering far-right activist Charlie Kirk — is now saying her entire family is strongly in the Republican camp.

According to a Friday report in the Daily Beast, Robinson’s grandmother, Debbie Robinson, told the Daily Mail that the alleged shooter was raised around a family of people who fully supported President Donald Trump. The 69-year-old said that her son, Matt — who is the suspect’s father — is a “Republican for Trump.”

“Most of my family members are Republican,” she said. “I don’t know any single one who’s a Democrat.”

Robinson insisted she was completely caught off-guard by the news of her grandson’s arrest, saying that the 22-year-old “has never, ever gotten in trouble in his life. And she added that despite her family’s political leanings, she never personally had political conversations with her grandson, who was registered as non-party affiliated in previous elections.

“I’m just so confused,” Debbie said of her grandson’s arrest. “[Tyler] is the shyest person,” she said. “He has never, ever spoke politics to me at all.”

The alleged assassin’s mother, Amber, is also a registered Republican, according to public records. Both Amber and Matt Robinson live in the Republican stronghold of Washington, Utah, and are employed full-time as a licensed social worker and a home furnishings entrepreneur, respectively. One 2021 Facebook post shows Amber Robinson praising one of Tyler’s brothers as a “gun-toting, cowboy-loving, brilliant kid” with a photo of him holding a scoped rifle.

According to a Friday report in the Wall Street Journal, Tyler Robinson graduated high school with a nearly perfect grade point average, scored a 34 out a possible 36 on his A.C.T. test, and earned a $32,000 scholarship to Utah State University. However, he dropped out of school after one semester and appeared to be deeply steeped in far-right online meme culture. Ammunition recovered by police were covered in obscure references to video games and niche memes

Mugshot of 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, who is alleged to have shot and killed MAGA activist Charlie Kirk (Image: Utah Governor’s Office) © provided by AlterNet

Click the link below for the complete article:

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/republican-for-trump-alleged-kirk-shooter-s-grandmother-confirms-entire-family-is-maga/ar-AA1MrOtb?ocid=widgetonlockscreen&cvid=68c50d7243424e7ba5434ecc1f8f07ef&ei=97

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She’s a liberal. Charlie Kirk was her friend. After the shooting, she’s honoring him.

September 12, 2025

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They first met in middle school – when they were wide-eyed and 10, 11, or 12: before Americans could so easily separate themselves based on what they believed.

“Even then, he was political,” Christina Lorey wrote in a social media post after his death. “A Republican – but not an extremist. He was funny, friendly, and always the first to debate anything and everything.”

Lorey, a left-leaning journalist with a Substack following, who now lives in Wisconsin, and conservative influencer Charlie Kirk grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. On Sept. 10, a shooter is believed to have fired a single gunshot that killed Kirk, 31, on the campus of Utah Valley University.

Now, Lorey is paying tribute to her childhood friend, years after their paths diverged. She declined to speak further out of respect for his family.

In her post, Lorey wrote that Kirk “talked a lot.” She did, too. They “became friends,” she said. They weren’t “best friends,” but “the kind of people who’d work well together on a school project and have fun doing it.”

Then, at the end of 6th grade, both Lorey and Kirk were voted “Most Likely to Become President.”

“He was much more excited about that than I: it always seemed like he might actually run for president someday,” Lorey wrote. “In high school, we were on different tracks, but had one memorable class together senior year: AP Government. It was an election year, too; Charlie’s Super Bowl.” Former President Barack Obama and former Arizona Sen. John McCain were on the ballot.

“I got to know Charlie very well during that year,” Lorey said. “One of my favorite memories was the schoolwide campaign he launched to get the cafeteria to lower the price of its chocolate chip cookies. I don’t remember what they’d hiked the price to or if his campaign was even successful, but he was extraordinarily passionate about it.”

She continued: ‘That trait stayed with him until the end – When Charlie believed in something, he REALLY believed in it.” Then, just before they both graduated from Wheeling, senior superlatives were released. They were both voted “Most Likely to Become President” – again.

Graduation came and went. The Wheeling Wildcats from the class of 2012 walked their own paths. Lorey said Kirk started Turning Point USA that summer. The organization advocates for conservative politics on high school and college campuses. His high school friend Lorey went to college. Kirk dropped out.

“We didn’t talk much besides the occasional check-in, and even though I didn’t at all agree with or admire what his organization turned into, I was amazed that the middle school boy that always wanted to debate built THAT,” Lorey said on social media. “It was impressive.”

But she built something impressive, too: Lorey now boasts 125,000 Facebook followers while sharing good news across Wisconsin.

Click the link below for the complete article:

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/us/she-s-a-liberal-charlie-kirk-was-her-friend-after-the-shooting-she-s-honoring-him/ar-AA1Mm6dE?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=7f36ed16d45e4001a567be67ebd23186&ei=43

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This Rock May Hold Proof of Life on Mars

September 11, 2025

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The most enthralling rock yet found on Mars—a speckled hunk of mudstone that just may contain evidence of ancient alien life—is still worth getting excited about.

Teased last year in a preliminary announcement from NASA, that’s the official conclusion of a peer-reviewed paper, published today in Nature, that reports a deeper analysis of the curious outcrop. Were it found on Earth instead of Mars, the rock’s speckles would likely be interpreted as evidence for a microbial feeding frenzy that occurred long ago. But getting certainty about what this rock truly contains likely requires hauling it off the Red Planet and delivering it back to Earth—an ambitious multiphase mission that NASA calls Mars Sample Return.

The rock in question is packed with organic carbon—another promising prerequisite for life—and lies within a lithic formation called Bright Angel, which is exposed along a channel called Neretva Vallis. Eons ago, that now dry channel was a river valley, formed by water rushing into and feeding a lake-and-delta system in what’s now known as Jezero Crater. Those apparently warm, wet origins led to NASA targeting Jezero as the landing spot for the space agency’s Perseverance rover, which has been exploring the site for any past or present signs of life since it touched down in 2021.

“This result gives us reason to consider the possibility that Mars was host to microbial life,” says the new study’s co-author Joel Hurowitz, a geoscientist at Stony Brook University. Although this is nowhere close to direct, clinching evidence of Martian life, Hurowitz and his team hope that the findings help scientists “make progress in our quest to understand whether there’s life on other planets in the solar system and beyond.”

After NASA’s initial teaser, scientists who were eager for more information paid close attention to a presentation by Hurowitz in mid-March of this year at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in the Woodlands, Tex. During his talk, Hurowitz recounted how he and his colleagues on the Perseverance team had found a carbon-rich rock with small patches ranging from black to dark blue to dark green, which they called “poppy seeds,” as well as larger patches with dark-toned rims and lighter-toned centers, which they referred to as “leopard spots.” They called the rock itself “Cheyava Falls.”

Using multiple instruments on Perseverance, an early analysis showed that the poppy seeds and rims of the leopard spots were enriched with iron and phosphorus, while the centers of the leopard spots had abundant iron and sulfur. That distribution of elements hints at both types of patches forming from organic carbon reacting with iron and sulfate minerals—a process that, on Earth, is typically kick-started by certain types of microbes to fuel their metabolism. But it can also occur abiotically via chemical reactions that happen at high temperatures.

In their Nature study, Hurowitz and his co-authors elaborate on the likely mineralogical composition of Cheyava Falls and its speckles, as well as on the conditions in which it probably formed. Perseverance’s measurements suggested the speckles contained the minerals vivianite, an iron phosphate, and greigite, an iron sulfide, and that both formed in close association with organic carbon. On Earth, vivianite frequently forms in lakes and coastal sediments where microbes use iron in their metabolism. Greigite tends to form when microbes break down sulfate. When found together on Earth, these minerals and organic molecules are usually considered a sort of biosignature, a physical sign of past or present life—at least if they can be shown to have formed at low temperatures rather than via hotter, less life-friendly conditions.

The most enthralling rock yet found on Mars—a speckled hunk of mudstone that just may contain evidence of ancient alien life—is still worth getting excited about.

Teased last year in a preliminary announcement from NASA, that’s the official conclusion of a peer-reviewed paper, published today in Nature, that reports a deeper analysis of the curious outcrop. Were it found on Earth instead of Mars, the rock’s speckles would likely be interpreted as evidence for a microbial feeding frenzy that occurred long ago. But getting certainty about what this rock truly contains likely requires hauling it off the Red Planet and delivering it back to Earth—an ambitious multiphase mission that NASA calls Mars Sample Return.

The rock in question is packed with organic carbon—another promising prerequisite for life—and lies within a lithic formation called Bright Angel, which is exposed along a channel called Neretva Vallis. Eons ago, that now dry channel was a river valley, formed by water rushing into and feeding a lake-and-delta system in what’s now known as Jezero Crater. Those apparently warm, wet origins led to NASA targeting Jezero as the landing spot for the space agency’s Perseverance rover, which has been exploring the site for any past or present signs of life since it touched down in 2021.

“This result gives us reason to consider the possibility that Mars was host to microbial life,” says the new study’s co-author Joel Hurowitz, a geoscientist at Stony Brook University. Although this is nowhere close to direct, clinching evidence of Martian life, Hurowitz and his team hope that the findings help scientists “make progress in our quest to understand whether there’s life on other planets in the solar system and beyond.”

After NASA’s initial teaser, scientists who were eager for more information paid close attention to a presentation by Hurowitz in mid-March of this year at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in the Woodlands, Tex. During his talk, Hurowitz recounted how he and his colleagues on the Perseverance team had found a carbon-rich rock with small patches ranging from black to dark blue to dark green, which they called “poppy seeds,” as well as larger patches with dark-toned rims and lighter-toned centers, which they referred to as “leopard spots.” They called the rock itself “Cheyava Falls.”

Using multiple instruments on Perseverance, an early analysis showed that the poppy seeds and rims of the leopard spots were enriched with iron and phosphorus, while the centers of the leopard spots had abundant iron and sulfur. That distribution of elements hints at both types of patches forming from organic carbon reacting with iron and sulfate minerals—a process that, on Earth, is typically kick-started by certain types of microbes to fuel their metabolism. But it can also occur abiotically via chemical reactions that happen at high temperatures.

In their Nature study, Hurowitz and his co-authors elaborate on the likely mineralogical composition of Cheyava Falls and its speckles, as well as on the conditions in which it probably formed. Perseverance’s measurements suggested the speckles contained the minerals vivianite, an iron phosphate, and greigite, an iron sulfide, and that both formed in close association with organic carbon. On Earth, vivianite frequently forms in lakes and coastal sediments where microbes use iron in their metabolism. Greigite tends to form when microbes break down sulfate. When found together on Earth, these minerals and organic molecules are usually considered a sort of biosignature, a physical sign of past or present life—at least if they can be shown to have formed at low temperatures rather than via hotter, less life-friendly conditions.

The Nature study correspondingly details further analyses that suggest a low-temperature origin for the speckles—that is, they seem to have arisen in relatively clement conditions near the surface, where life could possibly thrive, rather than the inhospitably hot depths of the Martian subsurface. “We believe that these features happened early in the life of the sediment, shortly after it was deposited and likely before it had been ‘lithified’ to form hard rock,” Hurowitz says.

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover took this selfie, made up of 62 individual images, on July 23, 2024. A rock nicknamed “Cheyava Falls,” which bears tantalizing features suggesting it may contain ancient microbial fossils, is to the left of the rover near the center of the image. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Click the link below for the complete article:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-there-life-on-mars-this-rock-may-hold-the-answer/

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Keir Starmer sacks Peter Mandelson over Jeffrey Epstein ties

September 11, 2025

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Keir Starmer has sacked Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the US over his association with Jeffrey Epstein.

The Foreign Office minister Stephen Doughty told MPs that Lord Mandelson had not disclosed the extent and depth of his friendship with Epstein, a convicted child sex offender, when he was appointed as the ambassador.

He said No 10 had not known about emails from Mandelson to Epstein suggesting his 2008 conviction for soliciting a child for prostitution was wrongful and should be challenged.

A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “In light of the additional information in emails written by Peter Mandelson, the prime minister has asked the foreign secretary to withdraw him as ambassador.

“The emails show that the depth and extent of Peter Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein is materially different from that known at the time of his appointment. In particular, Peter Mandelson’s suggestion that Jeffrey Epstein’s first conviction was wrongful and should be challenged is new information.

“In light of that, and mindful of the victims of Epstein’s crimes, he has been withdrawn as ambassador with immediate effect.”

Before Mandelson’s departure was announced, Wes Streeting, the health secretary, told an event that he was “completely disgusted” by messages Mandelson sent to Epstein and that his future was “a decision for the prime minister”.

Government sources said Starmer took the decision during a meeting with Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretary, on Thursday morning, after reviewing the new material on Mandelson’s defence of Epstein the previous night. It is understood Mandelson himself had not, until the leak, had access to the emails written in 2008 because they came from a long-deleted account.

Mandelson’s departure comes at a difficult time for No 10 as it prepares a state visit for the US president, Donald Trump, who is facing his own questions about his friendship with Epstein. It is understood that James Roscoe, the deputy head of mission in Washington, will be interim ambassador and supervise the state visit.

Both David Miliband, a former Labour foreign secretary, and Cathy Ashton, a former EU commissioner, were previously on the shortlist for the US ambassador job. Karen Pierce, who held the job before Mandelson, is among those who could be asked to return.

Peter Mandelson has been sacked as UK ambassador to the US. Peter Mandelson’s departure will be a huge blow for No 10 as it prepares for the US president’s state visit. Photograph: Carl Court/AP

Click the link below for the complete article:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/sep/11/keir-starmer-sacks-peter-mandelson-over-jeffrey-epstein-revelations

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Maps, Video and Photos: Where and When Charlie Kirk Was Fatally Shot

September 11, 2025

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Charlie Kirk, a 31-year-old conservative activist and media personality, was killed on Wednesday by a single gunshot to the neck while speaking at an event at Utah Valley University.

The event, in Orem, Utah, was held at an outdoor stage, where around 3,000 people had gathered to hear Mr. Kirk speak. Gov. Spencer Cox of Utah, a Republican, described the shooting as a “political assassination.” As of Thursday, the gunman was still at large.

Here is a visual timeline of how the shooting unfolded.

Wednesday, 11:52 a.m.

The gunman was seen arriving near the university campus about half an hour before the shooting occurred, officials said at a news conference on Thursday morning. Officials said they were able to later use surveillance footage to track the gunman’s movements onto the campus and then through a stairwell to the roof of the building from where the shot was fired.

Noon

Mr. Kirk’s event was free to attend and scheduled to start at noon local time. The event was the first of a 15-stop itinerary on what was called the “American Comeback” tour, which had planned appearances at U.S. college campuses.

As the event began, Mr. Kirk was addressing the crowd and answering questions while sitting under a tent, emblazoned with the tour’s name, in the outdoor courtyard of the school’s main campus.

Around 12:20 p.m.

About 20 minutes after he began speaking, Mr. Kirk was shot. Videos recorded before and after the shooting show a person on the roof of the Losee Center, about 430 feet away.

Seconds before the shooting, Mr. Kirk was asked a question about mass shootings in America.

Aerial image by Google Earth by Ashley Wu, Lazaro Gamio, Daniel Wood, and Anjali Singhvi

Click the link below for the complete article and video:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/10/us/charlie-kirk-shooting-timeline-map.html

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New Black Hole Measurements Show More Ways Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein Were Right

September 10, 2025

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An eon ago, when only microbes dwelled on Earth, a pair of black holes some 1.3 billion light-years beyond the solar system spiraled toward each other until they crashed. The two became one big black hole that rang out in far-reaching undulations of spacetime called gravitational waves.

These ripples finally reached Earth in January 2025, where they registered in the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) experiment as the most precise direct measurements of gravitational waves ever made. These measurements confirmed a 54-year-old theorem from the late physicist Stephen Hawking about how black holes grow when their mass increases. The waves also confirmed a bizarre property of black holes known as the “no-hair” theorem. Scientists announced the findings in a paper published today in Physical Review Letters.

The black holes involved in the smash-up contained about 33 and 32 times the mass of the sun, respectively. As they fell toward each other and coalesced, the resulting gravitational waves spread out into the universe in all directions; the fraction that trickled into LIGO’s detectors was a signal that researchers named GW250114. Studying the particular features of this signal allowed them to determine the black holes’ initial sizes, as well as the fact that the resulting larger black hole contained about 62 times the mass of the sun. The waves also revealed that the original black holes had a combined surface area of about 240,000 square kilometers (roughly the size of Oregon), whereas the final black hole had an area of some 400,000 square kilometers (roughly the size of California).

These measurements confirm a prediction Hawking made in 1971 about black hole event horizons—the boundaries beyond which nothing, not even light, can escape from their gravitational grasp.

Researchers previously tried to test these predictions with gravitational waves, but the comparatively weaker signals left a lot of uncertainty in the conclusions. The new tests offer a much greater level of confidence, says theoretical physicist Feryal Özel of the Georgia Institute of Technology, who was not involved in the research. “If we found any evidence of violation of either the area theorem or of the Kerr solution, then one or both of the assumptions would have to be changed,” she says. “In other words, either general relativity would need to be modified, or the objects are not black holes.”

This latest announcement from LIGO comes almost exactly 10 years after the project saw its first gravitational waves. The precision of the recent measurements was only possible now, after scientists have tweaked and tuned LIGO to be roughly four times as sensitive as it was when it started. It can now identify distortions in spacetime smaller than one ten-thousandth the width of a proton.

An illustration imagines GW250114, a powerful collision between two black holes observed in gravitational waves by the LIGO experiment, from the perspective of one of the black holes as it spirals toward its cosmic partner. Aurore Simonnet (SSU/EdEon)/LVK/URI

Click the link below for the complete article:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/best-yet-measurement-of-merging-black-holes-confirms-einstein-hawking-and/

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Chagas disease, or deadly “kissing bug” disease, has spread in the U.S. Here’s what to know.

September 10, 2025

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Chagas disease, a potentially deadly condition caused by an infected triatomine insect or “kissing bug,” may be becoming endemic in the United States, according to a new report published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In the report, which was originally published last month for the September issue of the CDC journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, the authors said the disease is already endemic to 21 countries in the Americas, and growing evidence of the parasite is challenging the non-endemic label in the U.S.

“Autochthonous (or, locally acquired) human cases have been reported in 8 states, most notably in Texas. Labeling the United States as non-Chagas disease-endemic perpetuates low awareness and underreporting,” the report noted, adding the insect has been reported in 32 states.

Other states with human cases include California, Arizona, Tennessee, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, and Arkansas.

The report notes that data is “inadequate” to prove that the insects are increasing in geographic distribution or abundance. But it also says that the bugs are “increasingly recognized” because of frequent encounters with humans and due to more research attention.

“Invasion into homes, human bites, subsequent allergic reactions or exposure to T. cruzi parasites, and increasing frequency of canine diagnoses have led to growing public awareness,” it says.

What causes Chagas disease?

The condition is caused by Trypanosoma cruzi parasites found in triatomine or “kissing bugs,” which can pass the disease to other animals and humans.

According to UCLA Health, the insect’s nickname comes from the bug often biting people on the face.

According to the CDC, about 8 million people globally and 280,000 in the United States have the disease, often without knowing it.

“People might scratch or rub bug feces into a bite wound, their eyes, or mouth without realizing it, which allows the parasite to enter their body,” the CDC says. The agency explains that bugs pass the parasite in their droppings after biting a person or animal. “If these droppings get into someone’s body through a cut in the skin, or near the eyes or mouth, it can lead to infection.”

The disease does not spread from person to person like a cold, nor does it spread through casual contact with those infected.

Without treatment, the condition can be life-threatening, the CDC says.

Symptoms of Chagas disease in adults

In the acute phase, which happens shortly after infection, a type of eyelid swelling known as Romaña’s sign may appear.

“This happens when the Trypanosoma cruzi parasite gets into the eyelid, usually by accidentally rubbing the bug feces into your eye or into a bug bite near your eye,” the CDC says.

Other acute signs may include:

Fever

Feeling tired

Body aches

Headache

Rash

Loss of appetite

Diarrhea

Vomiting

Others may experience symptoms for years or a lifetime, which is known as the chronic phase of infection, and can include heart and digestive issues.

“(The disease) can destroy the nerves that feed the various parts of your body — so your heart, your esophagus, your colon,” infectious disease physician Tom Moore told CBS News Philadelphia in 2019 as cases made their way north.

In both stages, some people might not feel sick while others can have serious health problems, the CDC adds.

How to avoid “kissing bugs”

There are no vaccines or drugs that can prevent Chagas disease at this time, according to the CDC, so it’s important to protect yourself.

Prevention methods include staying in well-built places if traveling, using insecticides and bug spray, wearing clothes that cover your skin, and not eating raw fruits and vegetables, as the infection can also be acquired orally or through the mouth via contaminated food.

Experts also previously told CBS News Philadelphia that homeowners can seal windows and keep trash, piles of wood, and rocks away from their homes to reduce risk.

Click the link below for the complete article:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chagas-disease-deadly-kissing-bug-spread-us/?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us

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New Black Hole Measurements Show More Ways Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein Were Right

Chagas disease, or deadly “kissing bug” disease, has spread in the U.S. Here’s what to know.

What causes Chagas disease?

Symptoms of Chagas disease in adults

How to avoid “kissing bugs”

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