'Georgia race challenges Democrats' abortion-politics assumptions'
Henry Olsen at National Review
Georgia's recent state Supreme Court elections suggest abortion rights "may not be the silver bullet" Democrats think it will be in November, says Henry Olsen. Former Democratic congressman John Barrow challenged Justice Andrew Pinson, who was appointed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, and "argued that the state constitution guaranteed a right to abortion." But Pinson won and it "wasn't even close." With voters focused on inflation, the economy and immigration, abortion rights won't "swing red voters over to Team Blue."
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'How we've lost our moorings as a society'
Thomas L. Friedman in The New York Times
Donald Trump's hush money trial might not be the most important case against him, says Thomas L. Friedman, but it is "revealing of a trend ailing America today: how much we've lost our moorings as a society." Our society has lost qualities like responsibility, civility and the capacity to "feel shame" — "things that used to filter toxic behaviors, buffer political extremism and nurture healthy communities and trusted institutions for young people to grow up in and which hold our society together."
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'Phoenix is facing a Hurricane Katrina of heat. It's not alone.'
Mark Gongloff at Bloomberg
It's only a matter of time before extreme heat coupled with a power failure that knocks out air-conditioning kills as many people as Hurricane Katrina, says Mark Gongloff. And a "Heat Katrina may already be happening, just in slow motion." Officials in Arizona's Maricopa County, home to Phoenix, reported 645 heat-related deaths last year, up from 61 in 2014. Climate change is causing increasingly brutal heat waves that will "become much deadlier" if governments can't "shield" vulnerable people.
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'The industry that ate America'
Franklin Foer in The Atlantic
"Lobbying, like Hollywood and Silicon Valley, is a quintessentially American industry," says Franklin Foer. Since taking root in the 1970s, it had grown to employ more than 117,000 workers in metropolitan Washington, D.C., by 2016. "In theory, lobbying is a constitutionally protected form of redressing grievances." Businesses have "every right" to tell government officials how policies affect them. "In practice, lobbying has become a pernicious force" that outspends other groups "in service of its own ends."
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