Pine martens, a species of mammal related to weasels and badgers, were once common throughout Britain. But sadly, due to habitat loss in recent centuries, their numbers were greatly reduced — bordering on the brink of extinction.
Thanks to conservation efforts, pine martens have begun to make a comeback, but sightings of these shy animals remain rare.
“Unfortunately, pine martens are notoriously difficult to spot,” Charlie Mellor of the Woodland Trust wrote. “They are so elusive that they are often studied via footprints, droppings and bits of lost fur rather than by direct sightings.”
February can be a tough time for wildlife as natural supplies of food can be severely depleted now. This pine marten visits nearly every night for a peanut treat and sometimes a raw egg. The Birdsy cam is great for recording their visits. Set-up: Hillockhead, Black Isle, Scotland pic.twitter.com/aJT1NYDn50
Recently, however, footage has emerged hinting at a lesser-discussed aspect of pine marten behavior — that they know how to have a good time.
Les Humphrey lives in Scotland, near the northern tip of Great Britain. There, he has a motion-sensing camera pointed out toward his garden to monitor for pine martens passing through.
The other day, Humphrey shared an amusing clip of one such visit with the group Mammal Society, capturing two pine martens having an absolute blast with child playthings in his yard — jumping and swinging like a pair of rambunctious kids.
“This has become a nightly ritual,” Humphrey wrote.
Pine martens caught on camera playing on children's swingset in Ardnamurchan, Scotland. The owner of the video, Les Humphreys, tells us this is a nightly occurence in his garden.
Demented Don waves at migrants attempting to cross the border, gives them a fist pump of solidarity and then says "They like Trump."pic.twitter.com/xTFo8VTnyr
I get why Biden keeps saying that he wants this “tough” border bill to pass but it’s a mixed bag for me. It’s an awful bill and I’m glad it didn’t for both policy and political reasons. (I don’t think Biden’s coalition would have been too thrilled once they saw the details.) But in any case , it didn’t and now we have the American people seeing that Trump is playing politics with his own issue and it’s a very bad look for him.
Here is a compilation of Republicans pointing out that the border is not solved because Donald Trump killed the border deal pic.twitter.com/pJFYowlVMc
Trump tells Americans to blame him for sabotaging a deal on the border so that he can campaign on the issue: Please blame me pic.twitter.com/1rR3E8w9UJ
His incoherence and lies aren’t exactly selling points either:
Trump, confused: We have people who don’t speak languages. We have nobody that even speaks those languages. Nobody speaks them pic.twitter.com/5OfQU9xIAb
“Conjured out of thin air.” CNN cuts out of Trump’s speech after he tells “several lies”. They have their fact-checker, Daniel Dale, standing by, who immediately goes to work. CNN has finally wised up. Every single network must do this when Trump is speaking. (Video: CNN) pic.twitter.com/9GAOnygmMe
Trump insists he’s not cognitively impaired because he took a “very tough” test that included pictures of a lion, a giraffe, a whale, and a shark and could identify which one was a lion pic.twitter.com/xvwHjWjAca
(1) This is not what “everybody on both sides” thinks
(2) It doesn’t just go back to the states; it also goes back to Congress which can overrule the states and impose nationwide abortion bans or rights https://t.co/FSPI5PjId5
Trump on Immunity: If you going to make a big decision as president and you're afraid that as soon as you get out will be indicted because you are trying to do something good for the country, even if it is severe, it might be a great thing for the country… pic.twitter.com/2TOA2vBvDo
According to a recent Pew poll, 57% of Americans said that a large number of migrants seeking to enter the country leads to more crime. Republicans (85%) overwhelmingly say the migrant surge leads to increased crime in the U.S. A far smaller share of Democrats (31%) say the same. The poll found that 63% of Democrats say it does not have much of an impact.
But despite the former president’s campaign rhetoric, expert analysis and available data from major-city police departments show that despite several horrifying high-profile incidents, there is no evidence of a migrant-driven crime wave in the United States.
That won’t change the way Trump talks about immigrants in his bid to return to the White House, as he argues that President Joe Biden’s immigration policies are making Americans less safe. Trump says voters should hold Biden personally responsible for every crime committed by an undocumented immigrant.
An NBC News review of available 2024 crime data from the cities targeted by Texas’ “Operation Lone Star,” which buses or flies migrants from the border to major cities in the interior — shows overall crime levels dropping in those cities that have received the most migrants.
“This is a public perception problem. It’s always based upon these kinds of flashpoint events where an immigrant commits a crime,” explains Graham Ousey, a professor at the College of William & Mary and the co-author of “Immigration and Crime: Taking Stock.” “There’s no evidence for there being any relationship between somebody’s immigrant status and their involvement in crime.”
Following up on the post below about Hispanic Christian Nationalists, here Philip Bump takes a deep dive into the PRRI poll on Christian Nationalism’s relationship to Trump.
Last year, PRRI asked a wide swath of Americans to evaluate several statements oriented around the idea of instituting Christian nationalism. Some were explicit: “The U.S. government should declare America a Christian nation,” for example. Others were more esoteric: “Being Christian is an important part of being truly American.”
From the responses, PRRI categorized respondents into one of four groups. Two were supportive of Christian nationalism, including the most supportive of the statements (adherents) and those who were generally supportive (sympathizers). The other two groups were hostile to the ideas, from those who mostly disagreed (skeptics) to those who rejected all the ideas (rejecters).
Using this scale, PRRI estimated the percentage of each state’s population that was supportive of Christian nationalism — that is, that were adherents or supporters. Nationally, about 3 in 10 Americans fell into this category, with 1 in 10 as “adherents.” But at the state level, support would at times near 50 percent. In Mississippi, half the population was estimated to be supportive of the precepts of Christian nationalism.
This can be compared to support for Trump in 2020. And when we do so, we see a clear correlation: a cloud of state labels moving up and to the right.
[…]
If we compare the 2020 results to just the percentage of Christian nationalism among the White population in each state, the correlation gets tighter.
This isn’t surprising, certainly. Support for Christian nationalism is higher among less-educated Americans, older Americans and White evangelical Christians, PRRI found. Those are all groups that are central to Trump’s base of support. This data also doesn’t tell us how causation might work: Are Christian nationalists drawn to Trump or are Trump supporters drawn to Christian nationalism?
Of course, Trump stokes the idea that he is a champion — the champion — of America’s Christian population. He makes explicit appeals to the role of Christianity that Christian nationalists support. His presumed goal is that support for Trumpism and Christian nationalism grow stronger together.
I guess I will never get over the fact that these people worship that lying, rapist, swindler but here we are.
Are there any Christian leaders out there who have the respect and authority to challenge this man’s hold on some of these people? No?
I’d imagine like most of you, I have been very puzzled by the number of Latino voters who are supporters of Donald Trump considering his obvious racist hostility toward them. He is actually proposing to round them up and deport them in massive numbers which would seem like it should be a deal breaker.
Hispanic Protestants are among the biggest supporters of Christian nationalism despite the belief system’s anti-immigrant and anti-diversity stances, according to a new survey.
Aroundtwo-thirds of Americans surveyed said they reject or are skeptical about Christian nationalism, but its prominence in the GOP is helping shape its educational, health care and immigration policies.
-About 66% of white evangelicals hold such views — the biggest share of any group surveyed.
-Among Latino Catholics, 72% said they rejected or were skeptical of Christian nationalism.
Republicans (55%) are more than twice as likely as independents (25%) and three times more likely than Democrats (16%) to say they hold Christian nationalist views, the survey found. Christian nationalists are among the strongest supporters of Donald Trump, various polls show.
Christian nationalism is a set of beliefs centered around white American Christianity’s dominance in most aspects of life in the United States…
“The idea that Christians should actually exercise dominion over all areas of American society has been quite popular among both white and Latino evangelicals,” Robert P. Jones, president and founder of PRRI, tells Axios. Jones said Latino evangelicals also are more likely to identify as racially white.
Many Latino evangelicals don’t know they’re being indoctrinated with Christian nationalism, Elizabeth Rios, founder of the South Florida Passion Center,a faith-basedjustice-oriented training center, tells Axios.
“I think this is happening because most of our Latinos have been discipled in these white megachurches where a lot of nationalism is taking place.”
Religious indoctrination is a powerful drug. And like most drugs, it can be toxic.
— The Intellectualist (@highbrow_nobrow) March 1, 2024
Alexei Navalny was buried to the soundtrack from his favorite movie, Terminator 2 – the scene where @Schwarzenegger sinks into the vat of molten metal and gives a thumbs up pic.twitter.com/XAk5TUwsXk
I don’t care a much about the notion of “American dominance” or “prestige” but I do care a lot about the prospect of the planet being blown up and destroying the institutions and alliances that make it possible to reverse catastrophic climate change. All of that is becoming closer to reality as Donald Trump continues to dictate American foreign policy from his gaudy social club in Palm Beach.
One of the best things about the Trump administration is how copiously it leaked to the press, so in real time and later through the many books and articles that were written about that tumultuous term, we have a very detailed understanding of the man’s worldview went he went in and what it is today. We know that even after four years in the most important job in the world, he didn’t learn a thing about world affairs.
According to “A Very Stable Genius” by Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, by July of 2017 it had become clear to Trump’s national security and economic team that he desperately needed some tutoring in order to understand the importance of America’s key alliances. So they prepared a briefing with visual aids so that he didn’t get bored and assembled the top military brass as well as his relevant cabinet members to instruct him about US military and diplomatic alliances. He didn’t want to hear it, demanding to know why the US hadn’t won the war in Afghanistan, calling it a “loser war”, and kept interrupting the briefing to complain about the Iran nuclear deal and NATO. He yelled, “you’re all losers. You don’t know how to win anymore. I wouldn’t go to war with you people. You’re a bunch of dopes and babies.” After he stormed out of the meeting then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson famously turned to the room and declared. “he’s a f—ing moron.” Tillerson was not wrong.
This was the same meeting at which Trump asked why South Korea isn’t more appreciative of America’s military alliance and indicated that he wanted to restore the US nuclear arsenal to 1960s levels. (He later denied that he said that, only that he wanted to completely modernize it, a task that had already been started under the Obama administration.) Throughout his term, Trump never understood why the country that he led benefited from the alliances that America had made in the nuclear age, apparently failing to grasp that if you have the most nuclear bombs on the planet, you have a special responsibility to keep a lid on the possibility of WWIII.
Despite his insistence that he hated nuclear proliferation (because he knew all about it because his uncle was a nuclear scientist at MIT) Trump was fatalistic about the prospect telling CNN back in 2016 that he thought that Japan and South Korea might as well develop nuclear weapons for themselves:
It’s going to happen anyway. It’s going to happen anyway. It’s only a question of time. They’re going to start having them or we have to get rid of them entirely. But you have so many countries already, China, Pakistan, you have so many countries, Russia, you have so many countries right now that have them. Now, wouldn’t you rather in a certain sense have Japan have nuclear weapons when North Korea has nuclear weapons?
This fatalism stems from the ongoing, puerile obsession that America is being cheated and that the rest of the world should just fend for itself or pay big bucks to the US for protection. This is why he continues to threaten to withdraw from NATO and says that he’d encourage Russia to “do whatever the hell they want.” He clearly still fails to grasp the existential threat of nuclear proliferation and simply cannot understand that US security guarantees benefit America largely because they prevent the spread of nuclear weapons — and mitigate the risk of a planet destroying nuclear war. He just doesn’t get it, even now, after being president for four years.
It’s scaring the hell out of the world, especially our allies. In the Atlantic this week, Anne Applebaum offers the view from abroad and it’s sobering. America’s European allies are taking his threats very seriously, not because they are new but because they are seeing that he controls the Republican party even out of office and the Republican party has now adopted his worldview. The unwillingness to allow Ukraine military aid in this dire moment, tells them that America is no longer a reliable ally, even if the Democrats are in charge. She writes:
For outsiders, this reality is mind-boggling, difficult to comprehend and impossible to understand. In the week that the border compromise failed, I happened to meet a senior European Union official visiting Washington. He asked me if congressional Republicans realized that a Russian victory in Ukraine would discredit the United States, weaken American alliances in Europe and Asia, embolden China, encourage Iran, and increase the likelihood of invasions of South Korea or Taiwan. Don’t they realize? Yes, I told him, they realize….
Since then, I’ve had a version of that conversation with many other Europeans, in Munich and elsewhere, and indeed many Americans. Intellectually, they understand that the Republican minority is blocking this money on behalf of Trump. They watched first McCarthy, then Johnson, fly to Mar-a-Lago to take instructions. They know that Senator Lindsey Graham, a prominent figure at the Munich Security Conference for decades, backed out abruptly this year after talking with Trump. They see that Donald Trump Jr. routinely attacks legislators who vote for aid to Ukraine, suggesting that they be primaried. The ex-president’s son has also said the U.S. should “cut off the money” to Ukrainians, because “it’s the only way to get them to the table.” In other words, it’s the only way to make Ukraine lose.
The Europeans are taking all this very seriously and one has to assume that America’s allies elsewhere are as well. This may very well lead to full scale re-armament — and they are in active discussions to build their own nuclear arsenals. This is a catastrophic consequence of Donald Trump’s narcissism and ignorance.
What’s most profound about this is that it’s not the result of a serious shift in ideology by the Republican Party. The change from the days of Reagan and John McCain and even George W. Bush on foreign policy and national security has been abrupt and done without any thought or care at all for implications. It’s happened because the party has turned into a cult that worships one man and that man has such staggering character flaws and intellectual defects that it could take the whole world down the road to perdition.
It’s clear from clips from Trump rally “The Daily Show” and “The Good Liars” that MAGAstan is a peculiar country with a history wildly divergent from our own and worthy of the Marvel Cinematic Multiverse. Those clips are selectively chosen for maximum comedic effect, of course. But what those clips drive home is that what many Americans think they know about recent events is not just bizarre but harmful to their futures. and their children’s.
With the Supreme Court this week aiding and abetting Donald “91 Counts” Trump’s effort to ensure that justice delayed is justice denied, Greg Sargent believes those of us committed to truth, justice and the American way must double down on ensuring that even MAGAstan residents know that it is their rights Trump means to trample.
Consider Liz Cheney’s response to the court’s decision to hear Trump’s presidential immunity appeal:
Delaying the January 6 trial suppresses critical evidence that Americans deserve to hear. Donald Trump attempted to overturn an election and seize power. Our justice system must be able to bring him to trial before the next election. SCOTUS should decide this case promptly.
It is our right as citizens to know whether the man (some of us) will be voting for this fall is a felon indicted by and convicted by juries of his peers, everyday Americans like the residents of MAGAstan. It’s not “it would be nice if,” but a right.
Democrats (and the rest of us in the reality-based community) need to echo Cheney’s message until even MAGAstan can hear it, Sargent writes (The New Republic):
First, Democrats should stress that voters need to know before the election whether Trump committed crimes—and this is due to them as a matter of right. Second, Trump is seeking these delays to end all prosecutions of himself if he regains the White House—to corruptly place himself above the law by pardoning himself or having his handpicked lickspittle attorney general do it. Democrats must say clearly that if the court helps delay the trial until after the election, it will be enabling him to do that.
As many have noted, the Supreme Court didn’t have to agree to review an appeals court ruling against Trump, who is demanding immunity from prosecution for conspiring to obstruct the official electoral count and defraud the United States, among other charges. The high court could have simply let the lower court ruling stand, given that Republican-appointed and Democratic-appointed judges unanimously ruled that Trump’s efforts to overturn the election don’t constitute official acts—and thus don’t get immunity—a clear-cut legal case.
It’s not even a close call, Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a constitutional law professor, tells Sargent. But you don’t need to be one to know that or to see what Trump is up to. He means to get himself back into the Oval Office by any means necessary — including rigging the post-election a second time if he loses — and to stay there until he dies. He has help in Congress, in the right-wing think tanks, and now in the Supreme Court.
We need to not let this message fall into the Trump normalization memory hole.
Note that Cheney stated unequivocally that voters deserve to know whether Trump committed crimes while trying to overthrow democracy—and deserve a full accounting of those actions—precisely because the sheer gravity of what he did threatens the democratic system itself. As Will Stancil points out, Democrats sometimes hesitate to talk this way, out of fear of being perceived as trying to politicize legal processes.
But in this case, Democrats have an obligation to level with voters about what’s really happening here.
At this point, the notion that Trump would use presidential power to end prosecutions of himself is so widely accepted that news accounts note it in passing. “He could use the powers of his office to seek to dismiss the election interference indictment altogether,” The New York Timesobserves, as detachedly as it might report on Trump’s plans to alter the decor in the Oval Office.
So ask yourself this: What percentage of voters is aware that Trump actually will have the power to cancel ongoing prosecutions of himself, if he’s elected president again?
Joe Biden winning by a landside would be great. Winning close elections is not about that or increasing Democratic turnout so much as shaving the opponents margins where he’s strongest.
Steal your vote? All voters need to know that Trump and his SCOTUS allies mean to steal something precious from them by denying them what they have a right to know. Trump wants to be a king, a dictator, a monarch in a country founded on rejecting the very idea.
But how many voters grasp that if the trial is delayed, the election itself will decide whether that process runs to completion? How many understand that the Supreme Court’s handling of this matter will determine whether Trump has the opportunity—should he win the election—to place himself beyond legal accountability in a way no other criminal defendant can?
Democrats need to seize this moment to make those stakes clear.
And for God’s sake, for once not be shy about saying what they stand for, and loud enough for them to hear it even on Fox News.
Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto after Trump's border speech: "When you hear it from Donald about the 2020 election and how he got millions of more votes — in fact, he did get millions of more votes [than 2016] — he still lost that election. That is not in doubt anymore." pic.twitter.com/AnbNq4rsTD
Is it just fear because of the Dominian lawsuit? Has Rupert sent down the word? I just don’t know. But there is a shift at Fox News:
Fox’s Steve Doocy:
“A lot of Republican lawmakers say they have seen zero evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors. After dozens of interviews and over 100k documents released to the Committees, the Republicans have yet to produce any direct evidence of misconduct by Joe Biden." pic.twitter.com/IE2XRGSlqp
Cavuto is unimpressed w/statement Comer just made: "If there is stuff they connected to dad… if he had found anything that was, he certainly would've leapt at the chance to say it"
Reporter Aishah Hasnie replies, "you would think he would've led the entire commentary" with it pic.twitter.com/z0OL94VJAn
Doocy and Cavuto are among the few who are doing this. Hannity and In graham and the rest are still fervently licking Trump’s boots, including letting him and his allies flog the Big lie. But the network has obviously made a decision to allow these other views on the network which is new. And they cover Haley pretty thoroughly too.
I don’t know that this will penetrate the cult but it’s worth noting.
Thanks to the shenanigans of Mitch McConnell, Donald Trump appointed three justices to the Supreme Court. Yesterday, the MAGA justices thanked Trump by giving him a massive, possibly campaign-altering gift. On Wednesday afternoon, the Supreme Court agreed to take on Trump’s claim that former presidents are immune from criminal prosecution for acts that occurred while they were in office. The icing on the cake is that the Supreme Court scheduled the hearing on an “expedited basis” for April 22nd, further delaying Trump’s trial. Thanks to a corrupt Supreme Court, the most important of Trump’s four (yes, four!) criminal trials may not be finished before Americans cast their ballots in November.
There is no reason for the court to wait six weeks before holding the hearings. On a matter this urgent, they could have moved much faster. Every day of delay helps Trump avoid accountability. If Trump wins in November, he could preemptively pardon himself or have his Department of Justice drop the charges. In addition to being a travesty for the rule of law, there are also significant political implications.
This may be the most blatant Supreme Court intervention in a campaign since Bush v. Gore — with the same result. Disregarding that three of the nine justices were appointed by Trump; Clarence Thomas also has a massive conflict of interest because his wife was involved in the insurrection for which Trump seeks immunity.
Polls have shown that a conviction could cost Trump the election. In the FebruaryNBC News poll, Trump led Biden 47-42, but when voters were asked how they would vote if Trump were found guilty and convicted of a felony, Biden led 45-43. Exit polls in the GOP primaries indicate that 30 to 40% of Republican primary voters wouldn’t view Trump as fit for the presidency.
Democrats in my text chains and on social media are equal parts enraged and despondent over the news. I share the rage but not the despondency (yet). Here are some quick thoughts on what it means.
Pfeiffer says that the trial still might happen before the election but I think we all know that’s probably a long shot. Had they had any desire for that to happen they could have taken the case back in December when both Trump and Smith asked them to. Instead they waited for the appeals court, which also took its time, and then sat on that for a couple of weeks before agreeing to take it, scheduling arguments sex weeks later. As Luttig said yesterday, it’s clear there are dissents from the appeals court decision and that means they will almost certainly drag it out to the end of the term at the end of June.
Pfeiffer mentions the New York case which is looking more and more like the only one that’s going to have Trump facing a jury before the election.
Trump is still on the hook for his crimes and election interference. The Supreme Court stay means that the trial in Manhattan over Trump’s use of campaign funds to pay hush money to cover up an affair will begin before too long. That case will almost certainly finish well before the election. Voters might actually determine whether they are willing to send a convicted felon to the White House. Because it is not a federal case, newly elected Trump cannot pardon himself or commute his own sentence.
There are two downsides to the Manhattan case. One, polls show that of all of Trump’s crimes, violating campaign finance laws to cover up an affair is not as concerning to voters as illegally hoarding classified documents or fomenting an insurrection. Two, these sorts of crimes rarely end in jail time for first-time offenders. So, our dreams of watching Trump frogmarched into prison may have to wait for another day.
Not only that, there’s actually a good chance that Trump will be found not guilty in that case in which case he will emerge once more as Teflon Don, spurring some of the bandwagon types to rally around him because he’s so untouchable. That was always the risk of any trials before the election but in the other cases the issues are so important, it might have been offset by the outrage that he got away with it. If gets off on this case it won’t have that effect.
The polls say that a good number of people wouldn’t vote for a convicted felon so people have been counting on that to turn the tide. I never thought that was anything we should count on. people have a way of rationalizing anything to support their decisions.
Pfeiffer writes:
Some worried Democrats comforted themselves by believing that Trump’s chances to return to the White House would end with a conviction. No trial before the election means no conviction.
Trump may avoid facing a jury before he faces the voters because of blatantly partisan shenanigans. This will further besmirch Chief Justice John Roberts’ already abysmal legacy. It’s an attempt at election inference from the highest court in the land.
Would it be easier to beat Trump if he were convicted of a crime before the election? Absolutely!
Does Joe Biden need Donald Trump to be convicted to win? Absolutely not!
This is a close race. Biden has a very good argument for reelection. He — and every Democrat — should make some chicken salad out of this chicken shit. Let’s fire up our base by calling out the Supreme Court, which has its lowest approval rating in history, for trying to rig the election. And then let’s make an argument against Trump that will ring true to the voters we need:
Donald Trump is running for President for one reason and one reason only — to avoid accountability for crimes he committed. He’s not thinking about you or your family. He only cares about himself. If elected, his first act will be to pardon himself because he believes that rich and powerful people don’t have to play by the same rules as the rest of us.
Sounds good to me. I would add that he’s also running for president to exact revenge because he’s the greatest sore loser in world history but that’s just me…
