OUR PICKSViolence Against Antiabortion Groups | China Is Trolling Rare-Earth Miners | Bigger Floods Endanger Millions, and more

Violence Against Antiabortion Groups Is Rising. Here’s What We Know.  (Julie M. Norman, Washington Post)
With the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, protests, marches and demonstrations for abortion rights have erupted across the country. While most have been nonviolent, since the decision first leaked, attacks have increased on pregnancy crisis centers, churches, and other antiabortion organizations, with dozens targeted by graffiti, property damage, arson and explosives. These actions mirror many of the same tactics used by antiabortion activists to target abortion rights organizations and abortion clinics over the past several decades. Since 1977, 11 abortion providers have been killed, 26 have survived murder attempts, and their clinics and homes have endured more than 40 bombings and nearly 200 arson attacks. In 2021, incidents of assault on providers increased more than 120 percent. With issues as morally fraught as abortion, are violent actions ever justified? In the eyes of mainstream Americans, when do actions cross the line from legitimate activism to political violence, or even terrorism? My new research finds that our political leanings complicate our answers to these seemingly objective questions. Using a U.S.-based survey experiment, I found that respondents’ political ideology (either liberal or conservative) influenced both how they perceived the morality of violence and whether they saw an act as terrorism — even when the severity of violence and the type of action were identical.”

Bigger Floods Endanger Millions Living in Extreme Poverty  (Chelsea Harvey, Scientific American)
The vast majority people exposed to both threats live in India and sub-Saharan Africa.

Subverting Climate Science in the Classroom  (Katie Worth, Scientific American)
Over the past two years school board meetings around the country have erupted into shout fests over face masks, reading lists and whether to ban education about structural racism in classrooms. In Texas, a quieter political agenda played out during the lightly attended process to set science education standards—guidelines for what students should learn in each subject and grade level. For the first time, the state board considered requiring that students learn something about human-caused climate change. That requirement came under tense dispute between industry representatives interested in encouraging positive goodwill about fossil fuels and education advocates who think students should learn the science underlying the climate crisis unfolding around them.