‘Hegseth is dangerous but not for the reasons you think’
Ben Rhodes at The New York Times
Pete Hegseth is “unqualified to run a nuclear-armed organization with a budget approaching a trillion dollars,” but “that’s the point,” says Ben Rhodes. Donald Trump “doesn’t want someone to effectively manage the Pentagon; he wants to disrupt it.” Hegseth’s “hostility to constraints on American behavior overlaps with Mr. Trump’s recent foreign policy pronouncements.” It “would be wrong to discount the possibility of a transformation of our military, just as it’s wrong to understate the depth of resentment.”
‘Cutting airplane contrails is an easy climate win’
Mike Berners-Lee at the Financial Times
Reducing contrails is the “closest thing we have to a silver bullet to dramatically reduce the climate impact of aviation,” says Mike Berners-Lee, and there’s a “cost-effective way to tackle them.” We “would need to reroute less than 2% of flights to halve their impact — that’s a huge reduction for very little effort.” With “flights over North America, Europe and the north Atlantic accounting for more than half of global contrail impact, the U.S. seriously needs to catch up.”
‘The short shelf life of corporate DEI’
Ilan Kapoor at Al Jazeera
The “ostensible reason for this business change of heart on DEI is that” it’s “now ‘outdated,'” but “there is a notable business logic behind it,” says Ilan Kapoor. The “timing of the announcement by a series of major corporations is revealing of their calculation that DEI is no longer beneficial to their brands.” The “often tokenistic inclusion of minorities under the guise of ‘equity’ provides the illusion of creating greater equality. But it doesn’t and hasn’t.”
‘Justice Juan Merchan got it just right with Donald Trump’s sentencing’
Chicago Tribune editorial board
“Donald Trump, felon, will remain exactly that,” says the Chicago Tribune editorial board. Justice Juan Merchan “reminded both citizen Trump and President-elect Trump that the laws of the land apply to him as they do every other American.” They “don’t always apply equally, as the pragmatic Merchan clearly recognized when he declined to punish Trump for his crimes. But they do apply,” and “all the more welcome, then, was the bracing reminder for him.”