North Carolina Blackbeard • 2 hours ago • 100%

> The highest peak at Great Smoky Mountains National Park is officially reverting to its Cherokee name more than 150 years after a surveyor named it for a Confederate general. > The U.S. Board of Geographic Names voted on Wednesday in favor of a request from the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians to officially change the name Clingmans Dome to Kuwohi, according to a news release from the park. The Cherokee name for the mountain translates to “mulberry place.”

North Carolina Blackbeard • 7 hours ago • 100%

> A dredging company launched with $15 million in state money must cease its work in the Oregon and Hatteras inlets after digging deeper and wider than permits allowed hundreds of times, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Wednesday. EJE Dredging Service is led by an influential North Carolina Republican who is under scrutiny by a federal grand jury. > EJE Dredging was formed by Judson Whitehurst, a Greenville business owner, three months after state lawmakers provided the $15 million to Dare County for dredging. The following year, company documents showed Jordan Hennessy, a former legislative aide who helped convince lawmakers to provide funding for the dredging, working on behalf of EJE Dredging. He’s been the CEO for at least two years. > Hennessy has been named in two subpoenas linked to a federal criminal investigation for his work on another project funded by state lawmakers in 2020. Subpoenas issued over the past three months show a grand jury seeks information about Hennessy and one of his businesses as it investigates a domestic violence prevention program funded with $3.5 million also appropriated by state lawmakers. > Dare County is a hub for commercial and recreational boating, and has struggled for decades to keep navigational channels open. The Corps operates dredges, but its resources are stretched thin. The federal government, meanwhile, in 2003 decided against a plan to build jetties in the Oregon Inlet that would limit the shifting sands, according to the National Park Service. The $15 million from state lawmakers in 2018 appeared to provide a solution. Then-state Sen. Bill Cook, a Beaufort County Republican, persuaded lawmakers to include the money in the budget that year. Hennessy and Marion Warren, a former director of the state Administrative Office of the Courts, co-wrote the legislation that provided the money. The federal subpoenas also seek information about Warren. Hennessy could not be immediately reached on Wednesday.

Political Discussion and Commentary Blackbeard • 3 weeks ago • 100%

After a bit of discussion with @laverabe, we've agreed to update the sidebar with a more specific rule set. We have about 2 decades of moderation experience between us, and we're more or less on the same page about how to kick-start the community and get things rolling. To put it simply, we are significantly less interested in enforcing our rules on *opinions* or *content* than we are on *behavior* and your treatment of others. Barring truly horrific opinions (which probably violate Lemmy's ToS in the first place), we're open to any and all perspectives, no matter how tasteless, crass, or toxic other people may believe them to be. There is no shortage of people on the left who think people on the right should be censored, just as there's no shortage of people on the right who think people on the left should be censored. We will not censor opinions because they're liberal, conservative, libertarian, egalitarian, utilitarian, humanitarian, Rastafarian, muggle, sith, Borg, etc. We *will* remove content that's abusive. So just don't be an asshole and everything will be peachy. This forum is not meant to be focused on any particular topic or region, but we reserve the right to remove content on the rare occasion that it doesn't suit the purpose of the community. Given that nearly *everything* is political nowadays, that might be an entirely moot point, but just in case we ask that you not post lasagna recipes, driving directions, product reviews, or other unrelated stuff. **Content Rules:** 1. Self posts only. 2. Opinion pieces and editorials are allowed on a case by case basis. 3. No spam or self promotion. 4. Do not post grievances about other communities or their moderators. **Commentary Rules** 1. ~~Obey the golden rule: treat others as you would like to be treated.~~ **Don't be a jerk or prevent honest discussion.** 2. Stay on topic. 3. Don’t criticize the person, criticize the argument. 4. Provide credible sources whenever possible. 5. Report bad behavior, please don’t retaliate. Reciprocal bad behavior will reflect poorly on both parties. 6. Seek rule enforcement clarification via private message, not in comment threads. 7. Abide by Lemmy's [terms of service](https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/#content-policy-rules-for-users) (attacks on other users, privacy, discrimination, etc). Please upvote/downvote based on quality of contribution to the discussion, **not** based on whether or not you agree with the post or comment. Since our rules are new, we'll probably issue a lot of warnings in the early stages. We're not expecting to issue any bans unless something is *truly* out of bounds and unproductive. We're also just humans who have actual jobs, so we just don't have time to babysit folks who can't be cooperative. Please provide your thoughts on anything you think should be more or less specific, as well as added or removed. We can't promise that we'll see eye to eye, but we'll make every effort to help you understand where we're coming from and how we see the community developing. Edit: Updated rule 1 to be more specific, in case someone decided to be rude because they get their rocks off by fighting.

News Blackbeard • 4 weeks ago • 97%

> The Federal Reserve is ready to cut interest rates, confident that inflation is easing to normal levels and wary of any more slowing in the job market. > “The time has come for policy to adjust,” Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell said Friday, in his most anticipated speech of the year. “The direction of travel is clear.” > Powell did not specify a timeline, or forecast how much Fed leaders were preparing to lower rates. But his remarks came as close as possible to teeing up a cut at the Fed’s next policy meeting in mid-September. Rates currently sit between 5.25 and 5.5 percent, where they have remained since July 2023. The open question now is whether officials will opt for a more aggressive cut next month — a half-point instead of a more typical quarter-point.

politics Blackbeard • 4 weeks ago • 93%

> On the final, and most anticipated, night of the four-day Chicago convention, Harris, 59, promised to chart a "New Way Forward" as she and Trump, 78, enter the final 11 weeks of the razor-close campaign. > After days of protests from Palestinian supporters who were disappointed at not getting a speaking spot at the convention, Harris delivered a pledge to secure Israel, bring the hostages home from Gaza and end the war in the Palestinian enclave. > "Now is the time to get a hostage deal and a ceasefire deal done," she said to cheers. "And let me be clear, I will always stand up for Israel's right to defend itself and I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself." > "What has happened in Gaza over the past 10 months is devastating. So many innocent lives lost, desperate hungry people fleeing for safety over and over again. The scale of suffering is heartbreaking," she said.

politics Blackbeard • 4 weeks ago • 85%

> They said tens of thousands of protesters would be here. They claimed they would “shut down the DNC for Gaza.” Like the Chicago riots during the 1968 Democratic convention, their demonstrations would snarl the city, shake the party and doom the candidacy of “Genocide Joe.” > Then came Kamala Harris — and the protest fizzled. > Organizers anticipated there would be 30,000 to 40,000 protesters on hand for Monday’s kickoff. But only a few thousand showed up; police estimated 3,500

politics Blackbeard • 1 month ago • 93%

> In December 2022, early into what he now describes as his political journey, Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut gave a speech warning his fellow Democrats that they were ignoring a crisis staring them in the face. > The subject of the speech was what Mr. Murphy called the imminent “fall of American neoliberalism.” This may sound like strange talk from a middle-of-the-road Democratic senator, who up until that point had never seemed to believe that the system that orders our world was on the verge of falling. He campaigned for Hillary Clinton against Bernie Sanders during the 2016 primaries, and his most visible political stance up until then was his work on gun control after the Sandy Hook shooting. > Thoughtful but prone to speaking in talking points, he still comes off more like a polished Connecticut dad than a champion of the disaffected. But Mr. Murphy was then in the full flush of discovering a new way of understanding the state of the nation, and it had set him on a journey that even he has struggled sometimes to describe: to understand how the version of liberalism we’d adopted — defined by its emphasis on free markets, globalization and consumer choice — had begun to feel to many like a dead end and to come up with a new vision for the Democratic Party. ... > Mr. Murphy is a team player and has publicly been fully supportive of Ms. Harris, but he also wants Democrats to squarely acknowledge the crisis he believes the country is facing and to offer a vision to unmake the “massive concentration of corporate power” that he thinks is the source of these feelings of helplessness and hopelessness. Only by offering a “firm break” with the past, he believes, can Democrats compete with Republicans like JD Vance, who, with outlines like Project 2025, have a plan to remake American statecraft in their image and who are campaigning on a decisive break with the status quo. > Academics, think tanks and magazines are buzzing with conversations about how to undo the damage wrought by half a century of misguided economic policies. On the right, that debate has already spilled out into the public view. But on the center-left, at least, very few politicians seem to be aware of this conversation — or at least willing to talk about it in front of voters.

News Blackbeard • 1 month ago • 98%

www.nytimes.com

> Since 2008, Congress, with bipartisan support, has spent billions on rental aid for unhoused veterans and cut their numbers by more than half, as overall homelessness has grown. Celebrated by experts and managed by the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the achievement has gained oddly little public notice in a country in need of broader solutions. > Progress in the veterans program has slowed as rising rents displace more tenants and make it harder to help them regain housing. But while homelessness among veterans rose last year, the increase was smaller than other groups faced. Admirers say the program’s superior performance, even in a punishing rental market, offers a blueprint for helping others and an answer to the pessimism in the debate over reducing homelessness. --- > As concerns about returning service members grew during wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Congress in 2008 revived a pilot program, called HUD-VASH, that pairs vouchers from the housing department with case management from the veterans department. Voucher holders pay 30 percent of their income for rent, while the federal government covers the rest up to a local ceiling. > After expanding the program every year, Congress has created about 110,000 vouchers, meaning veterans have much shorter waits for rental aid than other homeless groups. The vouchers cost more than $900 million a year. > “The fundamental reason why homelessness among veterans has fallen so much is that Congress has provided resources,” Mr. Kuhn said. > Notably, the rental aid comes with no conditions: Services like drug treatment or mental health care are offered but not required. That approach, called Housing First, once enjoyed bipartisan support but has recently drawn conservative critics who say it promotes self-destructive behavior.

North Carolina Blackbeard • 2 months ago • 60%

> The state Board of Elections voted to authorize the alternative We the People party, allowing presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to appear on North Carolina ballots in November. > The Board rejected with a 3-2 vote along party lines the Justice for All party, Cornel West’s alternative party. Democrats rejected the Justice for All attempt to become a recognized party in part over questions about signatures on its petitions. > Tuesday’s votes came after weeks of deliberations, a request from Democrats on the board for an investigation into the petition efforts, and pressure from state and congressional Republicans to have both parties approved.

North Carolina Blackbeard • 2 months ago • 100%

> Republican-appointed leaders of the Environmental Management Commission have twice declined to advance proposed rules that would restrict industry’s release of some “forever” chemical pollution into drinking water supplies across North Carolina. > To further complicate things, the groundwater committee also asked DEQ to remove five of the eight chemicals from the list of what it wants to regulate. > An increasingly frustrated DEQ Secretary Elizabeth Biser, appointed by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, said the commission is stalling full committee evaluation of the new rules, a departure from previous practices. “I hate to say that it wasn’t a huge surprise that they once again found reasons to move the goalposts and to not take action. It’s very frustrating,” Biser said.

politics Blackbeard • 3 months ago • 35%

www.nytimes.com

> After last week’s debate disaster, some Democrats are trying to circle the wagons to protect President Biden, noting that Barack Obama lost his first debate as an incumbent president, too. > But this one doesn’t pass the smell test. Mr. Obama wasn’t 81 years old at the time of his debate debacle. And he came into the debate as a strong favorite in the election, whereas Mr. Biden was behind (with just a 35 percent chance of winning). > A 35 percent chance is not nothing. But Mr. Biden needed to shake up the race, not just preserve the status quo. Instead, he’s dug himself a deeper hole. > Looking at polls beyond the straight horse-race numbers between Mr. Biden and Donald Trump — ones that include Democratic Senate candidate races in close swing-state races — suggests something even more troubling about Mr. Biden’s chances, but also offers a glimpse of hope for Democrats.

politics Blackbeard • 3 months ago • 94%

> President Biden’s policy agenda is incredibly popular, much more popular than his opponent’s. But Biden the man? Not so much. > The question now is whom to blame for the approval gap between the president and his agenda: voters, the media or Biden himself. > Democrats have long argued that their policies are more popular than those of Republicans. In a recent blind test conducted by YouGov, that was unmistakably true. The polling organization asked Americans what they thought about major policies proposed by Biden and Donald Trump without specifying who proposed them. The idea was to see how the public perceived ideas when stripped of tribal associations. > Biden’s agenda was the winner, hands down. > Of the 28 Biden proposals YouGov asked about, 27 were supported by more people than opposed them. Impressively, 24 received support from more than 50 percent of respondents.

Lemmy.world Support Blackbeard • 3 months ago • 100%

lemmy.world

Mod has been inactive for a year, and I’d like to take it over and help it generate more traffic.

science Blackbeard • 3 months ago • 94%

www.washingtonpost.com

> The frequency and magnitude of extreme wildfires around the globe has doubled in the last two decades due to climate change, according to a study released Monday. > The analysis, published in the journal “Nature Ecology & Evolution,” focused on massive blazes that release vast amounts of energy from the volume of organic matter burned. Researchers pointed to the historic Australia fires of 2019 and 2020 as an example of blazes that were “unprecedented in their scale and intensity.” The six most extreme fire years have occurred since 2017, the study found.

science Blackbeard • 3 months ago • 100%

www.nytimes.com

> The latest insight comes from a study on butterflies in the Midwest, published on Thursday in the journal PLOS ONE. Its results don’t discount the serious effects of climate change and habitat loss on butterflies and other insects, but they indicate that agricultural insecticides exerted the biggest impact on the size and diversity of butterfly populations in the Midwest during the study period, 1998 to 2014.

Lemmy.world Support Blackbeard • 3 months ago • 100%

lemmy.world

I deleted it when it didn't gain enough traction, and I'd like to revive it.

News Blackbeard • 3 months ago • 100%

www.washingtonpost.com

> A major expansion underway inside Iran’s most heavily protected nuclear facility could soon triple the site’s production of enriched uranium and give Tehran new options for quickly assembling a nuclear arsenal if it chooses to, according to confidential documents and analysis by weapons experts. > Inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed new construction activity inside the Fordow enrichment plant, just days after Tehran formally notified the nuclear watchdog of plans for a substantial upgrade at the underground facility built inside a mountain in north-central Iran. > Iran also disclosed plans for expanding production at its main enrichment plant near the city of Natanz. Both moves are certain to escalate tensions with Western governments and spur fears that Tehran is moving briskly toward becoming a threshold nuclear power, capable of making nuclear bombs rapidly if its leaders decide to do so.

politics Blackbeard • 3 months ago • 95%

www.nytimes.com

> Israel is up against a regional superpower, Iran, that has managed to put Israel into a vise grip, using its allies and proxies: Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Shiite militias in Iraq. Right now, Israel has no military or diplomatic answer. Worse, it faces the prospect of a war on three fronts — Gaza, Lebanon and the West Bank — but with a dangerous new twist: Hezbollah in Lebanon, unlike Hamas, is armed with precision missiles that could destroy vast swaths of Israel’s infrastructure, from its airports to its seaports to its university campuses to its military bases to its power plants. > But Israel is led by a prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has to stay in power to avoid potentially being sent to prison on corruption charges. To do so, he sold his soul to form a government with far-right Jewish extremists who insist that Israel must fight in Gaza until it has killed every last Hamasnik — “total victory” — and who reject any partnership with the Palestinian Authority (which has accepted the Oslo peace accords) in governing a post-Hamas Gaza, because they want Israeli control over all the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, including Gaza. > And now, Netanyahu’s emergency war cabinet has fallen apart over his lack of a plan for ending the war and safely withdrawing from Gaza, and the extremists in his government coalition are eyeing their next moves for power. > They have done so much damage already, and yet not President Biden, the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, nor many in Congress have come to terms with just how radical this government is. > Indeed, House Speaker Mike Johnson and his fellow G.O.P. mischief makers decided to reward Netanyahu with the high honor of speaking to a joint meeting of Congress on July 24. Pushed into a corner, the top Democrats in the Senate and the House signed on to the invitation, but the unstated goal of this Republican exercise is to divide Democrats and provoke shouted insults from their most progressive representatives that would alienate American Jewish voters and donors and turn them toward Donald Trump.

North Carolina Blackbeard • 3 months ago • 100%

> Mark Robinson, the firebrand Republican nominee for governor in North Carolina, has for years made comments downplaying and making light of sexual assault and domestic violence. > A review of Robinson’s social media posts over the past decade shows that he frequently questioned the credibility of women who aired allegations of sexual assault against prominent men, including Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, actor Bill Cosby and now-U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. In one post, Robinson, North Carolina’s lieutenant governor, characterized Weinstein and others as “sacrificial lambs” being “slaughtered.” > Robinson has drawn scrutiny for his incendiary remarks on other issues, including about LGBTQ+ people, religion and other political figures. But his comments on domestic violence and sexual assault stand out for their tone and frequency, as well as Robinson’s repeated questioning of accusers. > While Robinson is, in some ways, emblematic of the Republican Party’s turn under Donald Trump toward rewarding inflammatory, sexist language, his dismissals of women threaten to test Robinson’s appeal with voters troubled by that history, in particular female voters.

North Carolina Blackbeard • 3 months ago • 100%

www.propublica.org

> Last fall, out of public view, the North Carolina Supreme Court squashed disciplinary action against two Republican judges who had admitted that they had violated the state’s judicial code of conduct, according to three sources with direct knowledge of the decisions. > One of the judges had ordered, without legal justification, that a witness be jailed. The other had escalated a courtroom argument with a defendant, which led to a police officer shooting the defendant to death. The Judicial Standards Commission, the arm of the state Supreme Court that investigates judicial misconduct by judges, had recommended that the court publicly reprimand both women. The majority-Republican court gave no public explanation for rejecting the recommendations — indeed, state law mandates that such decisions remain confidential. > Asher Hildebrand, a professor of public policy at Duke University, explained that in the 2010s, North Carolina had policies designed to keep the judiciary above the political fray, such as nonpartisan judicial elections. However, the gradual dismantling of these policies by the Republican-controlled legislature has driven the court’s polarization, according to Hildebrand.

North Carolina Blackbeard • 3 months ago • 100%

> Preventing local governments from reducing plastic waste is just one recent example of the many ways Republican lawmakers have used the state budget, theoretically a fiscal document, to weaken existing environmental regulations or prevent more. > Since taking power in 2011, GOP leaders have introduced dozens of environmental provisions in state budgets, rather than standalone bills. That includes 2023 provisions preventing North Carolina from joining a cap-and-trade program that could have limited greenhouse gasses released by the state’s power plants and stymieing Gov. Roy Cooper’s efforts to shift trucks across the state from diesel fuel to electric power. > Since 2017, state environmental officials have been grinding their way toward regulating these per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. While scientists know of thousands, DEQ identified eight present here that it intended to regulate in ground- and surface water. > But in April, the N.C. Chamber, the state’s powerful business interest group, urged the N.C. Environmental Management Commission to slow down and conduct more research before approving rules for the substances. Much of Chamber President Gary Salamido’s argument to delay setting new limits focused on new drinking water rules the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency finalized this year for six of the eight PFAS the state is considering limiting. > He also pointed to the renewed Hardison Amendment, writing that regulators need to consider whether they are going further than the EPA’s rules.

News Blackbeard • 3 months ago • 99%

> A federal judge blocked most of a law championed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) that strictly limited transgender health care for adults and banned it completely for children. > In his decision, U.S. District Judge Robert L. Hinkle rejected a common mantra of the DeSantis administration, saying that “gender identity is real,” and that the state cannot deny transgender individuals treatment. > “Florida has adopted a statute and rules that ban gender-affirming care for minors even when medically appropriate,” Hinkle wrote. “The ban is unconstitutional.”

News Blackbeard • 4 months ago • 92%

www.nytimes.com

> More efficient manufacturing, falling battery costs and intense competition are lowering sticker prices for battery-powered models to within striking distance of gasoline cars.

News Blackbeard • 4 months ago • 97%

www.nytimes.com

> For much of the last four years, automakers and their dealers had so few cars to sell — and demand was so strong — that they could command high prices. Those days are over, and hefty discounts are starting a comeback. > During the coronavirus pandemic, auto production was slowed first by factory closings and then by a global shortage of computer chips and other parts that lasted for years. > With few vehicles in showrooms, automakers and dealers were able to scrap most sales incentives, leaving consumers to pay full price. Some dealers added thousands of dollars to the manufacturer’s suggested retail price, and people started buying and flipping in-demand cars for a profit. > But with chip supplies back to healthy levels, auto production has rebounded and dealer inventories are growing. At the same time, higher interest rates have dampened demand for vehicles. As a result, many automakers are scrambling to keep sales rolling.

North Carolina Blackbeard • 4 months ago • 94%

> Another home has crumbled into the sea in Rodanthe, N.C., the scenic Outer Banks community where rising seas and relentless erosion have claimed a growing number of houses and forced some property owners to take drastic measures to retreat from the oceanfront. > “Another one bit the dust,” David Hallac, superintendent of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, said in an interview. And it probably won’t be the last, as many homes in the area are perilously close to the surf. “This situation will continue.”

politics Blackbeard • 4 months ago • 95%

> Netanyahu reportedly met this month with three foreign policy envoys working with former president and current presidential candidate Donald Trump — who could yet win the election despite being convicted Thursday on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in his New York state hush money case. > Netanyahu, who benefited immensely from Trump’s first term, is arguably hoping for a similar dividend in the event of a second. In the interim, he has openly rejected the Biden administration’s hopes for the Palestinian Authority to take the lead in the postwar administration of Gaza, and he and his allies have shown no interest in even engaging in the White House on reviving pathways for a Palestinian state. And contrary to the Biden administration’s wishes, Netanyahu may soon act on a Republican invitation to address a joint session of Congress. ___ > It’s not just Netanyahu who is waiting for Trump. The evidence is more clear that Russian President Vladimir Putin is holding out for a Trump victory, which would probably help the Kremlin consolidate its illegal conquests of Ukrainian territory. My colleagues reported last month that Trump and his inner circle have outlined the terms of a potential settlement between Moscow and Kyiv that they would attempt to usher in if in power. “Trump’s proposal consists of pushing Ukraine to cede Crimea and the Donbas border region to Russia, according to people who discussed it with Trump or his advisers and spoke on the condition of anonymity because those conversations were confidential,” they reported. > Such a move would fracture the transatlantic coalition built up in support of Ukraine’s resistance to Russian invasion. It would cement the Republican turn away from Europe’s security at a time when Western resolve around Ukraine is flagging. And it would be yet another sign of Trump’s conspicuous affection the strongman in the Kremlin.

North Carolina Blackbeard • 4 months ago • 100%

portcitydaily.com

> The Environmental Management Commission is a 15-member body appointed by the governor, General Assembly leaders, and the agricultural commissioner. It is charged with reviewing and enacting rules for the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality. > DEQ requested the EMC begin the rulemaking process to adopt PFAS surface water and groundwater standards at its May 10 meeting. Commissioners declined the request, citing the need for more time to study the financial implications of the proposal, namely costs associated with requiring companies to install filtration technology. > A Port City Daily review of EMC financial disclosures found at least three commissioners own stock in companies that have either directly lobbied against PFAS and 1,4-dioxane regulation or pay lobbying dues to organizations that lobby on their behalf, such as the Chamber of Commerce and the American Chemistry Council. Both organizations sent letters to the EPA opposing recent regulatory actions on PFAS and 1,4-dioxane.

politics Blackbeard • 4 months ago • 79%

> Essentially, today’s 213-member Democratic caucus breaks down into a few categories, the largest of which are traditionally liberal lawmakers who come from cities or inner suburbs and are comfortable with incremental victories in helping the working class. There are dozens of moderates who are more friendly toward business but believe in socially liberal values. > And there are dozens of far-left liberals, hailing from the progressive caucus or the small-knit “Squad,” who have clashed with leaders for not pushing for a more purely liberal agenda. This group has been on the rise over the past half decade, both at the ballot box and inside the caucus. > But now, at this stage of the primary calendar, this wing is facing tough political headwinds.

politics Blackbeard • 4 months ago • 98%

www.nytimes.com

> If you are keeping score at home, you have surely noticed that the two most important defense officials in Benjamin Netanyahu’s war cabinet — Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and the former military chief of staff Benny Gantz — warned last week that Netanyahu is leading Israel into a disastrous abyss by refusing to present any plan for non-Hamas Palestinians to govern Gaza and appears to be contemplating a long-term Israeli military occupation of Gaza instead. Gantz said he would leave the government if there was no plan by June 8. === > “Netanyahu’s acquiescence to the extreme right, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, has generally been seen as motivated out of his need to keep his coalition together and himself out of jail,” Friedman told me. “Now it seems that he has willingly sold his soul to the extreme right. One explanation is that the extreme religious right projects a Messianic image onto him that corresponds with his own sense of having been called to save Israel and the Jewish people. He has a plan for the day after and it’s very clear to anyone who listens: ‘Total victory’ — and eventually the return of Jewish settlement there. Israel is on the way to reoccupying Gaza.” > If that happens, Israel will become an international pariah and Jewish institutions everywhere will be torn between Jews who will feel the need to defend Israel — right or wrong — and those who, with their kids, will find it indefensible.

North Carolina Blackbeard • 4 months ago • 100%

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/15610251 > Weeds have punctured through the vacant parking lot of Martin General Hospital’s emergency room. A makeshift blue tarp covering the hospital’s sign is worn down from flapping in the wind. The hospital doors are locked, many in this county of 22,000 fear permanently. > > Some residents worry the hospital’s [sudden closure](https://apnews.com/article/north-carolina-hospital-closing-fe42b6bfab72a4e0c8df29a485ac6038) last August could cost them their life. > > “I know we all have to die, but it seems like since the hospital closed, there’s a lot more people dying,” Linda Gibson, a lifelong resident of Williamston, North Carolina, said on a recent afternoon while preparing snacks for children in a nearby elementary school kitchen. > > More than [100 hospitals have downsized services or closed altogether](https://www.shepscenter.unc.edu/programs-projects/rural-health/rural-hospital-closures/) over the past decade in rural communities like Williamston, where people openly wonder if they’d survive the 25-minute ambulance ride to the nearest hospital if they were in a serious car crash.

North Carolina Blackbeard • 4 months ago • 92%

www.outerbanksvoice.com

The North Carolina Rules Review Commission (RRC) voted unanimously at it April 8 meeting to disallow the temporary rules the Coastal Review Commission (CRC) put into place in February—a move that puts the status of Jockey’s Ridge environmental protections in limbo. Included in the rules the RRC ordered dropped was the Area of Environmental Concern (AEC) language for Jockey’s Ridge State Park, a designation that protects the park from development in areas immediately adjacent to its boundaries and includes a prohibition on removing sand from the area.

politics Blackbeard • 4 months ago • 87%

We care about freedom from hunger, unemployment and poverty — and, as FDR emphasized, freedom from fear. People with just enough to get by don’t have freedom — they do what they must to survive. And we need to focus on giving more people the freedom to live up to their potential, to flourish and to be creative. An agenda that would increase the number of children growing up in poverty or parents worrying about how they are going to pay for health care — necessary for the most basic freedom, the freedom to live — is not a freedom agenda. Champions of the neoliberal order, moreover, too often fail to recognize that one person’s freedom is another’s unfreedom — or, as Isaiah Berlin put it, freedom for the wolves has often meant death to the sheep. Freedom to carry a gun may mean death to those who are gunned down in the mass killings that have become an almost daily occurrence in the United States. Freedom not to be vaccinated or wear masks may mean others lose the freedom to live. There are trade-offs, and trade-offs are the bread and butter of economics. The climate crisis shows that we have not gone far enough in regulating pollution; giving more freedom to corporations to pollute reduces the freedom of the rest of us to live a healthy life — and in the case of those with asthma, even the freedom to live. Freeing bankers from what they claimed to be excessively burdensome regulations put the rest of us at risk of a downturn potentially as bad as the Great Depression of the 1930s when the banking system imploded in 2008.

North Carolina Blackbeard • 4 months ago • 92%

www.wral.com

The NC Chamber is pushing to delay the progress of proposed limits of forever chemical pollution in ground and surface water. The North Carolina Environmental Management Commission declined to start the rulemaking process for PFAS pollution standards Wednesday, after Republican-appointed EMC members Tim Baumgartner and Joseph Reardon stalled a vote. Baumgartner and Reardon said DEQ had not provided adequate information for a vote, including a fiscal analysis. "The lack of respect by DEQ for this commission is evident by lack of communication and disregard for providing documents to the EMC for review in a timely manner," Baumgartner said. Elizabeth Biser, the secretary of the NC Department of Environmental Quality, said in a letter that she is "deeply disappointed" that the Groundwater and Waste Management Committee is "refusing to hear" the proposed standards.

Lemmy.world Support Blackbeard • 5 months ago • 100%

lemmy.world

Mod has been inactive for months, and I'd like to take it over and help it generate more traffic. They have dozens of other communities they gobbled up during the API protests which have also been abandoned, just fyi. Also forgot to add, I messaged them a few weeks ago about joining the team to revive the community, and haven't received a response.

NCAA Basketball Blackbeard • 5 months ago • 100%

www.cnn.com

Connecticut became the first Division I men’s college basketball team to win back-to-back championships since Florida 17 years ago, as the Huskies downed Purdue 75-60 in the NCAA title game Monday. “You can’t even wrap your mind around it because you just know how hard this tournament is,” UConn head coach Dan Hurley said after the game in Glendale, Arizona. “What a special group of people, a special coaching staff and incredible group of players. The best group of players you could possibly do it with and UConn. UConn’s a special place this time of year and they give us all the resources we need to do it like this in March and April.” The Huskies (37-3) have now won six national championships, joint-third in the all-time men’s NCAA Division I basketball list. All six have come since 1999, more than any other men’s team in that span and second only during that time to the school’s women’s team (10).

NCAA Basketball Blackbeard • 5 months ago • 100%

That this started, or restarted, with a then-75-year-old Jim Calhoun nearly kicking Dan Hurley’s ass is so perfectly Connecticut that the scene should replace the state flag. It was early spring of 2018. Hurley was the recently named UConn head coach and Calhoun was the retired patriarch of the program, one whose endorsement helped secure Hurley’s hiring. Hurley’s first practice with his inherited team was an abomination. He’d left a job he loved at Rhode Island because UConn is a premier brand in college basketball, a place that, at the time, had won four national titles in the prior two decades. But what Hurley saw didn’t look like anything he was expecting. It was so bad Hurley called his agent to ask about backing out of the deal and seeing if Rhode Island might take him back. The agent explained to Hurley that the buyout in his contract made such a move impossible, so Hurley had to accept that he might’ve made a mistake. The situation was so dire that Hurley eventually walked into Calhoun’s on-campus office, where he worked while assisting the school as a quasi-statesman. As Hurley remembers it, the conversation began with him telling Calhoun something like: “This is bullsh–. Nothing is in place. This is UConn. Where’s the infrastructure? What’s been going on here?” Calhoun looked at the cocky 45-year-old. Then, never one to suffer timidity, he introduced Hurley to the real UConn Basketball.

NCAA Basketball Blackbeard • 6 months ago • 100%

Though they were physically separated from Oats and his full-time assistant coaches, the graduate assistants, dressed in matching black polo team shirts, kept up a loud chatter — read: they never shut up — throughout Alabama’s 89-87 victory. With curious media members seated courtside peeking back to see what all the fuss was about, Alabama’s graduate assistants hyped up their team, worked the referees, reinforced Oats’s points of emphasis and repeatedly stole North Carolina’s play-calls throughout the nail-biter. Oats sang the group’s praises Friday, noting they helped his full-time assistants prepare scouting reports and video breakdowns of upcoming opponents.

NCAA Basketball Blackbeard • 6 months ago • 100%

Soon, Samford trailed Kansas 90-89 with 14 seconds left. Then came the play. Kansas, wearying, inbounded against Samford’s habitual press. Point guard Dajuan Harris Jr. took the ball, spotted teammate Nicolas Timberlake behind the defense and went all Mahomes, all makeshift left-handed. The 6-foot-4 Timberlake fielded the long pass, dribbled once, stepped twice and leaped up to score. From behind, the 6-foot-5 Staton-McCray flew in. He crossed behind Timberlake and lunged upward. Timberlake crashed to the floor, which in real time screamed foul. Staton-McCray immediately protested the call, and the crowd joined in with him.

NCAA Basketball Blackbeard • 6 months ago • 100%

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Sitting at the dais in his hometown's arena, Kentucky men's basketball coach John Calipari was something close to shell-shocked after his No. 3-seeded Wildcats' improbable 80-76 loss to No. 14-seed Oakland. Now 1-4 in his past five NCAA tournament games, matching the program's worst five-game span in the tournament, Calipari considered what Thursday night's loss could mean for his approach to constructing the team's roster. "I've done this with young teams my whole career, and it's going to be hard for me to change that, because we've helped so many young people and their families that I don't see myself just saying, 'OK, we're not going to recruit freshmen,'" Calipari said.