Two recent Supreme Court decisions have sounded, to many observers, like a death knell for the separation of church and state. The six conservative justices have torn a hole in the wall of separation, or taken a “sledgehammer to the bedrock” of the principle that the state must remain neutral and impartial toward religion. These fears may be well justified. But if church-state separation is worth protecting, it is not because of what it is, but rather what it allows us to create: an equitable democracy where we all share in public goods and institutions. In Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the court decided that the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment protected Joseph Kennedy, a coach employed by the school district in Bremerton, Washington, while he prayed on the field following football games. The dissenting opinion saw a violation of the Establishment Clause, focusing on how the coach invited others to pray with him on the 50-yard line—with students and the public watching. In Carson v. Makin, the court ruled that tax dollars were allowed to fund vouchers for sectarian schools in Maine, because the state’s requirement that funds be given only to “nonsectarian” schools discriminated against religious schools by violating the free exercise of potential students and taxpaying parents. Many observers have considered what Carson and Kennedy mean for religious freedom, the separation of church and state, and the continued rise of Christian nationalism. After the Carson decision, The New York Times charted the rise of a “pro-religion court,” declaring that the court is the most “pro-religion it’s been since at least the 1950s.” A Hindu student who feels the coercion that Justice Sonia Sotomayor mentions in her Kennedy dissent—the pressure to pray with their evangelical coach—would likely disagree. To take another example, some Jews have argued that a lack of access to abortion violates their religious freedom.

Around midnight on June 28, Calvin Hu was driving with his girlfriend near San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park when he pulled up at an intersection behind two white and orange autonomous Chevrolet Bolts operated by Cruise, a subsidiary of General Motors. Another was stopped to his right in the adjacent lane. The light turned green but the cars, which operate in the city without drivers, didn’t move. When Hu prepared to reverse and go around the frozen vehicles, he says, he noticed that several more Cruise vehicles had stopped in the lanes behind him. Hu, another driver, and a paratransit bus were trapped in a robotaxi sandwich. After a few minutes of bemused waiting, Hu says, he resorted to driving over the curbs of the street’s median to escape. When he returned on foot a few minutes later to see whether the situation had resolved, the Cruise vehicles hadn’t budged. A person who appeared to work for the company had parked in the intersection, Hu says, as if to indicate the street was closed, and was trying to direct traffic away from the immobile self-driving cars. Hu estimates that the robot car blockade, which has not previously been reported, lasted at least 15 minutes. The Cruise vehicles that trapped Hu weren’t the only autonomous cars holding up traffic in San Francisco that night. Internal messages seen by WIRED show that nearly 60 vehicles were disabled across the city over a 90-minute period after they lost touch with a Cruise server. As many as 20 cars, some of them halted in crosswalks, created a jam in the city’s downtown in an incident first reported by the San Francisco Examiner and detailed in photos posted to Reddit. In a written statement the California Department of Motor Vehicles, which oversees the state's autonomous vehicle operations, said it was aware of the incident and would meet with Cruise to “gather additional information.”

The dapper duck was enjoying his usual ale when the dog decided enough was enough.

There are at least 366 presidentially appointed positions requiring Senate confirmation that are still awaiting a nominee or have nominees already going through the long, arduous, confirmation process. However, a process that has long been notorious for how time-consuming and antiquated it is, is intentionally being made even more difficult by nefarious Republican bad actors that are weaponizing Senate rules against supremely qualified nominees specifically to hinder the health of the federal government and to devastate President Biden’s agenda. Republican Senators Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, Pat Toomey, and others have all been leaders of this de facto blockade at some point or another, dragging out the confirmation battles of U.S. Attorneys and Ambassadors as well as Federal Board of Governors nominees and potential Small Business Administration execs. Their manipulation of Senate rules, such as through committee boycotts and an almost blanket rejection of unanimous consent agreements, has eaten through valuable Senate floor time for no reason other than to incapacitate the federal government for their own political points. To put in perspective just how time consuming and painful bad actors such as these have the potential to make the confirmation process, let’s do some math.

Republican state senators outvoted impassioned Democratic opposition late Thursday to advance a proposal to add language to the Pennsylvania Constitution stating explicitly that the document does not guarantee any rights relating to abortion or public funding of abortions. The chamber’s Rules Committee teed up the package of proposed amendments that would also require voters to show ID at polling places and have gubernatorial candidates choose their own running mates. A vote of the full Senate could occur Friday. The Democratic floor leader, Sen. Jay Costa of Allegheny County, said he saw the abortion bill as “designed to prevent abortions in this commonwealth” while the sponsor, Republican Sen. Judy Ward of Blair, said it would simply give the Legislature power to determine abortion law.

It has not been well received, with aquarium workers having to get creative to encourage the animals to eat -- for instance, the otters and penguins appear more willing to eat the mackerel when mixed with their favorite aji.

There really is nothing like Below Deck on TV, which is to say a franchise that, anecdotally, seems to be watched and enjoyed by every single person I know ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Interact with new people ( I didn't know this show existed )

He spouts falsehoods “like he’s breathing,” this adviser said—so much so that his own campaign stopped believing him long ago. “He’s lied so much that we don’t know what’s true,” the person said, adding that aides have “zero” trust in the candidate. Three people interviewed for this article independently called him a “pathological liar.”

Japan's former prime minister Shinzo Abe has been taken to hospital bleeding after collapsing while delivering a speech in the city of Nara in western Japan, public broadcaster NHK reported on Friday.

If you sell nickel futures at a price of $25,000 per ton, and then the price of nickel futures goes up to $100,000 per ton, then in some simple arithmetic sense you have lost $75,000 per ton. If you sold 100 tons of nickel futures, then you have lost more than $7 million. But if you sold 150,000 tons of futures, the math changes a bit; it becomes non-linear and relativistic. If you sold 150,000 tons of nickel futures at $25,000 per ton, and then the price goes up to $100,000, your banks will call you up and say “uh you have lost $11 billion, can you pay that please,” and you will say “I would prefer not to,” and an insane series of events will happen:

The U.S. Supreme Court will consider a fringe legal theory that would give state lawmakers even more leeway to gerrymander, suppress voters, and possibly overturn presidential election results. Four conservative justices agree with the theory, and the appeal out of North Carolina will reveal if the court's majority does. A proposed constitutional amendment could provide a fix.

“Them’s the breaks,” a rueful but unrepentant Johnson said in a speech outside his No. 10 Downing St. home and office that capped days of drama and was met with boos. "As we’ve seen at Westminster," he said, referring to the central London area where Parliament is located, "the herd instinct is powerful and when the herd moves, it moves."

The competitive chugger downed a full gallon of lemonade shockingly quickly last weekend.

The Salton Sea in the Southern California desert has long been held up as our climate future — our waterways overrun by heat and pollution. But for the locals, it represents something much more personal

Watch out orphan children — SSA may soon be coming for your inheritance. Late last month, Marco Rubio released what he described as a “pro-family framework following the Dobbs decision.” The actual content of the framework is recycled policies Rubio put out many years ago, but they perhaps deserve a second look, especially in light of Rubio’s new framing of them as pro-life benefits. Lastly, buried in the bill text is another curious detail that so far nobody has noticed. In order for Rubio’s proposal to truly be budget-neutral, he needs the Social Security Administration (SSA) to be able to recover all of the parental leave benefits it pays out. For people who live long enough to claim Social Security, this is easy enough: the SSA recovers the leave benefits by docking their Social Security checks. But what about people who die before they retire? How do you get the money back from them? In Rubio’s bill, when someone dies before reaching old age, all of the parental benefits they received during their life are deemed overpayments and the SSA makes their estate pay them back. So when mom or dad tragically dies a few years after having their third kid, the surviving spouse will have to send a big fat check to the SSA.

As millions jostled on each side of the river, the police and their friends enjoyed prime viewing areas.

Electric vehicles have zero tailpipe emissions, but they are still responsible for greenhouse gas emissions

A prospective lawyer in Edmonton who is Sikh says the requirement to swear an oath to the Queen to practise law adds to experiences of racism and exclusion felt throughout his life and alienates him from his peers

The Federal Reserve, determined to choke off rapid inflation before it becomes a permanent feature of the American economy, is steering toward another three-quarter-point interest rate increase later this month even as the economy shows early signs of slowing and recession fears mount. Economic data suggest that the United States could be headed for a rough road: Consumer confidence has plummeted, the economy could post two straight quarters of negative growth, new factory orders have sagged and oil and gas commodity prices have dipped sharply lower this week as investors fear an impending downturn. But that weakening is unlikely to dissuade central bankers. Some degree of economic slowdown would be welcome news for the Fed — which is actively trying to cool the economy — and a commitment to restoring price stability could keep officials on an aggressive policy path.

“I have five grandchildren,” the congresswoman began in her Tuesday speech. “I would do anything—anything—to protect my five grandchildren. Including, as a last resort, shooting them, if I had to, to protect the lives of my grandchildren.”