And while it is literally correct to say that “the Legislature” allocated the House seats, the decisions were made by Republican legislators in Austin acting on directions from Republican members of the House in Washington. The Republican Party exercises absolute control in Texas — holding supermajorities in both houses of the Legislature and every statewide […]

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If the U.S. Supreme Court agrees that the Texas primary election schedule doesn’t allow time for the Justice Department or a federal district court to preclear the state’s reapportionment plan, a roadmap around the Voting Rights Act will be written into case law. Other states will follow suit. The Texas redistricting fight argued on the […]

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  More than 65 years after World War II, U.S. military bases still dot Germany (194 of them) and Japan (108). Almost 60 years after the guns fell silent there, U.S. armed forces are still stationed on the Korean peninsula (at 82 sites). Just a few years ago, there were 505 American bases scattered all […]

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Representatives of 194 nations who met in South Africa in December reached a last-minute agreement to sign a treaty to reduce greenhouse emissions. It was an imperfect conclusion at best: an agreement to have a binding agreement in place by 2020, a date many climate scientists consider too late to turn around the climate trends […]

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The aim, of course, was to make researchers working on projects like “computer models to analyze the on-field contributions of soccer players” look profligate and foolish. Though mutual skepticism between lay citizens and academic scientists is nothing new, harnessing this ambivalence to further the aims of the Republican party was ingenious. Despite the fact that […]

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