Jo Freeman writes: Reclaiming the court is not a task for one demonstration, or even a lot of them. There is a process by which federal judges are chosen, based more on convention than law. The right-wing learned long ago how to game the system. It looks for those with conservative views it can groom for appointment to the federal bench and raises them through the system. The Federalist Society in particular identifies and lobbies for conservative judges and justices. Kavanaugh is just one of five current Justices who rose with its support. Until the Left understands the long game, it will do more ranting than winning.

State and federal lawmakers and 2020 presidential candidates have put forward a range of plans aimed at reducing college costs to curb student debt and encourage more Americans to pursue degrees. Most programs and proposals focus on eliminating tuition at community colleges and state universities. But some also aim to cover educational costs such as mandatory student fees, which schools charge to help pay for student events, health services and other campus offerings. These initiatives often are referred to as "free college" — even when they only cover tuition — and as "tuition-free" programs. A number of cities, counties and states have introduced “college promise” programs, which also pay students’ tuition and, sometimes, other expenses at two- and four-year institutions.

In the 1980s and 1990s, when I read women’s history on my own, I realized that there were important and prominent women in every decade, but they disappeared when the history books were written. Women were like sand castles; men were like rocks. The waters of time washed over both and wiped out the women. The Clintons — mother and daughter — are helping to remedy that. By telling the stories of 103 Gutsy women, they want to raise the sand from the beaches and fuse the particles into solid quartz.

After the outbreak of World War II in 1939, National Geographic provided President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill with special wall-mounted map cabinets hidden by enlarged photographs. Inside the cabinets were maps on rollers organized by hemisphere, region, and theater of operation. Cartographers from National Geographic routinely updated these maps, bringing the new maps to the White House and personally installing them in the President’s cabinet, which hung in his private Oval Study. By simply turning in his chair and opening the cabinet, FDR could quickly check battle locations around the world.

South Portland’s two assistant principals regularly patrol student bathrooms to check for vaping. Bennett has a bag full of confiscated Juuls as well as other brands of e-cigarettes and the pods or “juice” to refill them. An Alabama high school reportedly took the doors off student bathroom stalls to prevent kids from hiding while vaping. And a New Jersey school has installed electronic vaping detectors in student bathrooms that set off an alarm in administrative offices when vaping is detected, according to news reports. Meanwhile, a bill that would ban sweet-tasting nicotine products is gaining momentum in Massachusetts, and lawmakers in Arkansas, New Jersey and Utah are discussing similar restrictions.

Media attention to climate change has been increasing over the past several years, but not all articles on the subject are entirely accurate, and it can sometimes be difficult for non-expert readers to separate the wheat from the misleading chaff. To help with this quandary, Climate Feedback reviews high-profile climate change articles from a wide variety of publications, then annotates and verifies or rebuts their claims; STEM teachers looking for a hands-on unit to pique their students' interest in engineering may want to check out this activity available through TeachEngineering; Instructors of US history, civics, or social studies may be interested in this set of three lesson plans from EDSITEment, the National Endowment for the Humanities' online collection of free teaching resources ... and more.

Rose Madeline Mula writes: I wore frilly, voluminous petticoats that propped up impossibly full dresses. Yes, these may have been ridiculous — but I think far preferable to today’s skirts and dresses that are stretched so tightly across tummies and tushies that they produce a series of unsightly horizontal wrinkles that have somehow become an accepted fashion statement instead of an abomination to be banished by a steam iron. And it’s amazing how women manage to sit while their torsos are bound in those impossibly tight, short frocks. (“Frocks.” Now that’s a word that really dates me.)

Governmentwide coordination, planning, and research in climate change response needs to be improved, as does access to information and technical assistance for decision makers. These areas are part of GAO’s High Risk List designation for climate change. Policymakers have raised questions about climate engineering, or geoengineering — large-scale deliberate interventions in the earth’s climate system to diminish climate change or its impacts — and its role in a broader strategy of mitigating and adapting to climate change.   Key Issues > Climate Change Response Climate Change Response The federal government’s potential respons…

“Congress needs the full and unredacted whistleblower complaint. We need to speak with the whistleblower. We need records of the communications. We need to speak with those knowledgeable about efforts by the President, the Attorney General, and the President’s personal attorney to secure political help from Ukraine, the decision to freeze security assistance, and the attempt to cover it up. We also need the records that our Committees requested from the State Department and the White House — by tomorrow’s deadline — or we will subpoena them. These requirements are especially urgent now that the Department of Justice apparently has chosen to stand down, whitewash this investigation, and block Congress from obtaining this information.  

"My own favorite activity to mark summer's end is one that I discovered during my years as a classroom teacher: finding the caterpillars of Monarch butterflies, bringing them indoors to observe their metamorphoses, and seeing them off on their annual trip south to Mexico for the winter. Anyone who can identify milkweed growing nearby will be able to find Monarch caterpillars in late August or early September. All you need is a jar of water, a pair of scissors, and a bit of patience. This is a great activity to share with your favorite child, but it's also a rewarding experience if the only person involved in it is yourself."

This Week: On Tuesday, the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Diversity and Inclusion will hold a hearing, “Examining the Racial and Gender Wealth Gap in America;” On Wednesday a hearing, “Breaking the Silence: Addressing Military Sexual Trauma in the Military and Veteran Communities;” A bill to prohibit the approval of new abortion drugs, to prohibit investigational use exemptions for abortion drugs, and to impose additional regulatory requirements with respect to previously approved abortion drugs.

Financial Advisor Lex Zaharoff writes: "Given the reality that there will be a recession in our future, there is a natural tendency to want to adjust our investment strategy in advance of a market drop. Ideally we would like to sell stocks and buy longer maturity bonds of higher quality borrowers just before a recession starts. And before others recognize the recovery, we’d like to reverse those trades – buying back into stock markets and reducing our interest rate sensitivity in our bonds. Unfortunately, it is impossible to know the timing of market fluctuations with greater certainty than the rest of the market."

When travel plans go awry, airline passengers may take out their frustrations on customer service agents. We surveyed 104 customer service agents. About half said passengers had verbally threatened them and 10% said passengers had physically assaulted them in the past year. One prosecutor told GAO the transitory nature of airports makes it difficult to get witnesses to testify at trial; when prosecuted, passengers generally face misdemeanor charges. While stakeholders GAO interviewed generally did not identify gaps in resources, some said incidents could be further mitigated if, for example, airports made law enforcement’s presence more visible or airlines provided conflict de-escalation training to customer service agents.

Notable Republicans also are supporting the shift to a state-based model. The previous governor in Nevada, Republican Brian Sandoval, initiated the effort in his state. And the Republican House majority leader in Pennsylvania, Bryan Cutler, has been a strong supporter of the move there. The final Pennsylvania bill passed both chambers this year without a negative vote. Cutler said creating a state marketplace is consistent with traditional GOP values. HHS has not signaled any opposition to state-based exchanges, and Cutler pointed out that President Donald Trump, in an executive order issued the day he took office, trumpeted his administration’s intent to “afford the States more flexibility and control to create a more free and open healthcare market.” That executive order, however, pertained to his goal of repealing the ACA, which has so far eluded him.

A bill to improve obstetric care in rural areas; a bill to establish a National Commission on Fibrotic Diseases; A bill to ensure the safe use of cosmetics, and for other purposes; A bill to amend the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 relating to determinations with respect to efforts of foreign countries to reduce demand for commercial sex acts under the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; A bill to require federal law enforcement agencies to report on cases of missing or murdered Indians, and for other purposes; A resolution expressing the sense of the House of Representatives regarding the relationships between firearm violence, misogyny, and violence against women and reaffirming the importance of preventing individuals with a history of violence against women from accessing a firearm.

In Sweden the push toward simple, economical living attracted young artisans eager to revolutionize the home furnishings industry. In the early 1930s one such émigré was architect and designer Josef Frank, who left Austria as the persecution of Jews mounted. Typical of industrial designers of that era, Frank worked in several sectors of the furnishings industry, designing furniture and textiles for multiple companies. His influential work included brightly colored, naturalistic patterns based on botanical prints by 18th-century Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus. Moved by the beauty and detail of these prints, Frank used them to decoupage the outside of cabinets and as inspiration for his own textile patterns.

The authors analyzed data from the Los Angeles County Health Survey with a focus on two specific health behaviors — eating at fast-food restaurants more than once a week and eating five or more servings of fruit and vegetables daily. For the purposes of the survey, an apple is used as a reference point for a serving of fruit, and a handful of broccoli or a cup of cut carrots are used as references for a serving of vegetables. The researchers analyzed 4,244 responses from both immigrants and native-born Americans regarding fast-food consumption. They analyzed 9,166 responses to the fruit-and-vegetable-intake question.  

There’s a kind of desperation that surfaces in the skincare aisle, when you’re looking for that for that one product which will perfect tired, dreary, misanthropic skin. However, if you don’t have these skincare basics in place, you’ll be disappointed — no matter how much money or magic you spend in the beauty aisle. You may even find that with these five steps, pricey products will be unnecessary. Nothing I’m about to say here is fancy or new. Sometimes in our pursuit of perfection, we forget to start with the basics.

The latest analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation, in collaboration with the Cook Political Report, finds that while a large share of voters are already firm about how they plan to vote in the 2020 presidential election (63%), there is a still a substantial share (30%) who say they have not made their minds up. With three in ten votes still up for grabs, this data note examines the demographics of swing voters: those who either report that they are undecided about their vote in 2020 or are leaning towards a candidate but haven’t made up their minds yet. It also explores the policy issues that could swing these voters to vote for either President Trump or the Democratic nominee.

Fed Governor Michelle W. Bowman asks: "For many years, inflation has run modestly below our 2 percent objective. Given that, it would be helpful to hear from you whether you think the Federal Open Market Committee should consider strategies that aim to have inflation exceed our target for a time, to make up for the earlier period of time when it fell short. Or would that threaten the decades of success the Fed has had keeping the public's expectations for inflation low and stable?" ...

“Nielsen’s illustrations are mesmerizing when seen in print, but this exhibition provides an exceptionally rare opportunity to see his original works of art, which are breathtaking with their powerful imagery and extraordinary detail,” said Meghan Melvin who organized the exhibition. Among the highlights of the exhibition are 10 illustrations from a compilation of Norse tales poetically titled East of the Sun and West of the Moon, Old Tales from the North (published 1914), which are considered the bedrock of Nielsen’s legacy.

The US Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General is alerting the public about a fraud scheme involving genetic testing. Genetic testing fraud occurs when Medicare is billed for a test or screening that was not medically necessary and/or was not ordered by a Medicare beneficiary's treating physician. Scammers are offering Medicare beneficiaries "free" screenings or cheek swabs for genetic testing to obtain their Medicare information for identity theft or fraudulent billing purposes. Fraudsters are targeting beneficiaries through telemarketing calls, booths at public events, health fairs, and door-to-door visits. 

Amid a surge in measles cases nationwide this year, legislators and community leaders are debating ways to boost the number of kids who are up to date on their school-mandated shots. Many have focused on restricting or eliminating vaccination exemptions based on religion or personal opinions, which are common and have been offered by school districts across the United States for decades. But three recent academic studies suggest this might not be the most effective way to improve childhood vaccination rates. Scholars studied student vaccination rates in California and discovered that when parents cannot get an exemption based on their personal beliefs, some seek other ways for their children to stay in school while skipping one or more vaccinations.