Title 42 Explained | Recent California Deluge | Still Time to Fix Climate, and more

Slavery-Era Georgia Law Is Key Defense Argument in Trial Over Ahmaud Arbery’s Killing  (Rich Mckay and Jonathan Allen, Reuters)
A pivotal defense argument of the three white men on trial in Georgia for killing Ahmaud Arbery, a Black jogger, is that they were trying to make a citizen’s arrest under a Civil War-era law that was later repealed amid an uproar over the shooting.

Brazil Senate Wants Bolsonaro Charged with Crimes Against Humanity for COVID Response  (NPR)
A Senate panel recommends a number of other charges against the Brazilian president, including inciting an epidemic. But the chances that Jair Bolsonaro will be indicted look slim.

There’s Still Time to Fix Climate—About 11 Years  (Mark Fischetti, Scientific American)
On October 31 world leaders will descend on Glasgow, Scotland, for the United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP26, in a last-ditch effort to defuse the climate emergency by limiting global warming to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius. Reaching that level would still bring violent storms, deep flooding, gripping droughts and problematic sea-level rise, but it would avert even more severe consequences. Global temperature has risen by nearly 1.1 degrees C since the industrial revolution.

Climate Change Magnified Recent California Deluge  (Anne C. Mulkern, E&E News / Scientific American)
The atmospheric river that soaked parts of the state is an example of increasing weather volatility

Longer, More Frequent Outages Afflict the U.S. Power Grid as States Fail to Prepare for Climate Change  (Douglas MacMillan and Will Englund, Washington Post)
State officials are reluctant to ask ratepayers to foot the bill for investments experts say are needed to fortify the grid against increasingly severe weather.

Title 42 Explained: The Obscure Public Health Policy at the Center of a U.S. Border Fight  (Andrea Castillo and Karen Garcia, Los Angeles Times)
Title 42 is a public health policy that’s being used to determine whether immigrants can cross the border. Here’s how it works.

‘These Deaths Are Preventable’: How the U.S. Fails to Take Away Guns from Domestic Abusers  (Jennifer Gollan, Reveal / Guardian)
Every 16 hours, a woman is fatally shot by a current or former intimate partner. Many of the offenders were legally prohibited from having guns

Ahead of Jan. 6, Willard Hotel in Downtown D.C. Was a Trump Team “Command Center” for Effort to Deny Biden the Presidency  (Jacqueline Alemany, Emma Brown, Tom Hamburger, and Jon Swaine, Washington Post)
New details about the operation underscore the extent to which Trump and a handful of true believers were working until the last possible moment to subvert the will of the voters, seeking to pressure Vice President Pence to delay or even block certification of the election.

The Expert in American Life  (Andrew J. Taylor, National Affairs)
The Covid-19 pandemic showed us the need for trusted expertise, but also the danger of abusing expert authority. Self-government requires that the authority of experts be more carefully cabined and clearly defined than it is today. If the growing challenge of anti-expert sentiment is to be met, America’s leaders must restore experts to their appropriate place within our system of government.