Weekend Reads 12/12/20

What If Trump Is Trying To Break the GOP?

Angry and afraid people fighting—over him—is the very top of his hierarchy of needs. It’s his version of self-actualization. And while he may be forced to give up the office of the presidency, he will not give up being at the center of this storm.

How climate change could undo 50 years of public health gains

But this year’s report, the authors said, is “the most worrying outlook” they’ve ever published. The Lancet not only took a host of new climate-health risks into account, it also found that “a concerning number of indicators are showing an early, but sustained, reversal of previously positive trends identified in past reports.”

Congress vows to further investigate Fort Hood violence, sexual harassment

Guillen went missing in April. Her sister said she had revealed that she was victim of sexual harassment but never reported it out of fear of retaliation. Guillen's body was discovered in late June, likely bludgeoned to death, but her suspected attacker took his own life while police attempted to arrest him.

We Need to Talk About Bad Religion

The answer isn’t intolerance of religion. The answer is intolerance of bad religion, a belief system that drives political efforts to sabotage the republic itself. America, as President-Elect Joe Biden said last week, “is a covenant.” It is a community, a union, collective effort to recognize a non-negotiable, which is the moral assertion, not the fact, that all people are equal—that human beings are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” A good religion is compatible with republican virtue. A bad religion isn’t.