I assisted Carter’s work encouraging democracy – and saw how his experience, persistence and engineer’s mindset helped build a freer Latin America over decades

Jennifer Lynn McCoy

Professor of Political Science, Georgia State University 

 

 When former President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn Carter founded the nonprofit Carter Center in 1982, one of their goals was to help Latin American countries – many of which were emerging from decades of military dictatorship – transition to democracies.

Already a hero to many in the region for promoting human rights and giving up U.S. control of the Panama Canal during his presidency, Carter pioneered the center’s international election monitoring and conflict mediation with the work he did in Latin America.

I was on staff of The Carter Center from 1987 to 2015, first as a senior adviser and then as director of its Americas Program. In those roles, I worked closely with him, often accompanying the former president on trips to Latin America, where he tried to strengthen democracies and achieve peace.

I saw a man with great determination and self-discipline, driven by his faith and confidence that he could make a difference. He was always willing to take risks to tackle seemingly intractable problems.

 

The Jimmy Carter I remember was results-oriented rather than process-driven. He brought an engineer’s mind to every problem and was ready with possible solutions. He could be stubborn. But he was always willing to make principled decisions, even if they cost him politically.

For example, when – as president in 1977 – he signed the Panama Canal Treaties to turn over control of the canal to Panama by 1999, he was heavily criticized by many members of Congress. But with the treaties, Carter ended an arrangement that, from 1903, had allowed the U.S. to control the canal and was viewed as colonialism by many Latin Americans.

Since taking over the canal, Panama has expanded its capacity.

Democracy first

Carter always believed that negotiation was more fruitful than force. As president, he leaned into this philosophy with the Israeli-Egyptian peace accords and did the same thing to help Haiti reestablish democracy as leader of The Carter Center.

 n 1994, the U.S. was set to invade Haiti on a United Nations-approved mission to reinstall the country’s first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Carter had monitored voting there in 1990, when Haitians elected Aristide. The Haitian leader was ousted in a military coup soon after, though.

When Carter informed President Bill Clinton that Haitian military general Raoul Cedras had asked for Carter’s help in mediating the crisis and avoiding a U.S. invasion, Clinton allowed for a last-ditch diplomatic effort to seek a solution.

Carter led a team, including former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell, to Haiti on a very short timeline to negotiate a peaceful end to the situation. With the U.S. forces already en route, the men managed to persuade the generals to accept amnesty and exile to avoid a potentially deadly U.S. invasion.

The Carter art of mediation

In my view, Carter’s genius as a mediator is his belief that there is some innate goodness in every person, no matter the harm they may perpetrate. He strove to develop a connection with even the most detestable dictators because he knew their decisions could change the future of a society. Once he had a relationship with those leaders, he presented them with the hard choices they needed to make. And he always kept his compass. He focused on the well-being of the people in the countries he was helping, not his personal successes or failures.

His approach opened him to criticism that he cozied up to dictators. But, to me, he just exercised realism and persistence. 

 

The Sandinista revolutionary government of Nicaragua, led by Daniel Ortega, came to power during the Carter presidency, when a broad coalition overthrew the dictator Anastasio Somoza.

The Reagan administration responded to Ortega’s Sandinista government by imposing an economic embargo and supporting a counterinsurgency from rebel forces known as the Contras. President Ortega needed help to end that conflict and believed that he could gain international legitimacy and pressure the U.S. to change its policy if he held internationally monitored elections. So, Ortega invited The Carter Center, the U.N. and the Organization of American States to mount an unprecedented election-monitoring mission that ended up terminating the Sandinista revolution.

 

I was The Carter Center’s field representative in Managua at the time. The former president had developed his relationship with Ortega over the course of five trips to Nicaragua during the election campaign in 1989 to 1990, mediating disputes along the way. But election night was the most important moment. The initial vote count reports mysteriously stopped, and around midnight Carter went to see Ortega, along with the U.N. and OAS representatives. Carter told him that our data indicated the Sandinista-backed candidate had lost and that Ortega should acknowledge the loss and take credit for the democratic elections and everything the Sandinista revolution had accomplished.

Ortega acceded and the next day we accompanied him as he visited President-elect Violeta Chamorro’s house to congratulate her on her victory.

He was persistent

But Carter didn’t stop there, knowing the transition would be rocky. He gathered the two sides together in my little house in Managua and, sitting on rocking chairs on the patio, he negotiated a three-point agreement to frame the transition’s most difficult points – confiscated property and land reform, the integrity of the security forces and demobilization of the Contras.

Another time Carter’s persistence paid off was in Venezuela. That country’s democracy became unmoored with plummeting oil prices and hyperinflation in the 1990s, and The Carter Center was invited to monitor the 1998 elections, which populist outsider Hugo Chávez won.

 

After a failed military coup attempted to oust him in 2002, a shaken Chávez asked Carter to mediate between him and his political opposition. We partnered with the U.N. and OAS to form a tripartite mediating group – the OAS secretary general, trusted by the opposition; Carter, trusted by Chávez; and the U.N. as a neutral party providing background support.

Although the opposition was initially skeptical of Carter, given that he was invited by Chávez, it came to value Carter’s entree with Chávez and held high expectations he could hold Chávez to any commitments.

When an eventual agreement led to a recall referendum petition process, Carter forcefully pushed a stalling Chávez and his team to acknowledge that the opposition had gathered sufficient signatures to hold the referendum to decide whether to end Chávez’s term early.

But when the vote finally happened in August 2004, Chávez had managed to turn the tide in his favor in the opinion polls by spending on social programs. He won the vote decisively. The opposition alleged the vote count was fraudulent, while the OAS and The Carter Center audits of the count did not detect fraud. I received many messages from irate Venezuelans blaming Carter and me for ignoring fraud and allowing Chávez to continue in power in Venezuela.

I learned then what a thick skin a public figure must have to withstand the fury of severely disappointed people.

 

I have always admired Carter for the countless controversial decisions he made over the years. And I believe he will be remembered for his vision of a free and peaceful world and his willingness to tackle seemingly insurmountable problems with high risk of failure.

His interventions at key moments helped save lives – and encouraged Latin American democracy, at least for a time. And his center’s ongoing, lower-profile programs that promote citizens’ rights to information, election integrity, mental and public health and media freedom have made life better for people in many countries in the hemisphere.

 

People produce endocannabinoids – similar to compounds found in marijuana – that are critical to many bodily functions

 Prakash Nagarkatti &Mitzi Nagarkatti 

 

Over the past two decades, a great deal of attention has been given to marijuana – also known as pot or weed. As of early 2023, marijuana has been legalized for recreational use in 21 states and Washington, D.C., and the use of marijuana for medical purposes has grown significantly during the last 20 or so years.

But few people know that the human body naturally produces chemicals that are very similar to delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the psychoactive compound in marijuana, which comes from the Cannabis sativa plant. These substances are called endocannabinoids, and they’re found across all vertebrate species.

Evolutionarily, the appearance of endocannabinoids in vertebrate animals predates that of Cannabis sativa by about 575 million years.

It is as if the human body has its own version of a marijuana seedling inside, constantly producing small amounts of endocannabinoids.

 

The similarity of endocannabinoids to THC, and their importance in maintaining human health, have raised significant interest among scientists to further study their role in health and disease, and potentially use them as therapeutic targets to treat human diseases.

THC was first identified in 1964, and is just one of more than 100 compounds found in marijuana that are called cannabinoids.

Endocannabinoids were not discovered until 1992. Since then, research has revealed that they are critical for many important physiological functions that regulate human health. An imbalance in the production of endocannabinoids, or in the body’s responsiveness to them, can lead to major clinical disorders, including obesity as well as neurodegenerative, cardiovascular and inflammatory diseases.

We are immunologists who have been studying the effects of marijuana cannabinoids and vertebrate endocannabinoids on inflammation and cancer for more than two decades. Research in our laboratory has shown that endocannabinoids regulate inflammation and other immune functions.

What is the endocannabinoid system?

A variety of tissues in the body, including brain, muscle, fatty tissue and immune cells, produce small quantities of endocannabinoids. There are two main types of endocannabinoids: anandamide, or AEA, and 2-arachidonoyl glycerol, known as 2-AG. Both of them can activate the body’s cannabinoid receptors, which receive and process chemical signals in cells.

One of these receptors, called CB1, is found predominantly in the brain. The other, called CB2, is found mainly in immune cells. It is primarily through the activation of these two receptors that endocannabinoids control many bodily functions.

The receptors can be compared to a “lock” and the endocannabinoids a “key” that can open the lock and gain entry into the cells. All these endocannabinoid receptors and molecules together are referred to as the endocannabinoid system.

The cannabis plant contains another compound called cannabidiol, or CBD, which has become popular for its medicinal properties. Unlike THC, CBD doesn’t have psychoactive properties because it does not activate CB1 receptors in the brain. Nor does it activate the CB2 receptors, meaning that its action on immune cells is independent of CB2 receptors. 

 

Role of endocannabinoids in the body

The euphoric “high” feeling that people experience when using marijuana comes from THC activating the CB1 receptors in the brain.

But when endocannabinoids activate CB1 receptors, by comparison, they do not cause a marijuana high. One reason is that the body produces them in smaller quantities than the typical amount of THC in marijuana. The other is that certain enzymes break them down rapidly after they carry out their cellular functions.

However, there is growing evidence that certain activities may release mood-elevating endocannabinoids. Some research suggests that the relaxed, euphoric feeling you get after exercise, called a “runner’s high,” results from the release of endocannabinoids rather than from endorphins, as previously thought.

The endocannabinoids regulate several bodily functions such as sleep, mood, appetite, learning, memory, body temperature, pain, immune functions and fertility. They control some of these functions by regulating nerve cell signaling in the brain. Normally, nerve cells communicate with one another at junctions called synapses. The endocannabinoid system in the brain regulates this communication at synapses, which explains its ability to affect a wide array of bodily functions.

The elixir of endocannabinoids

Research in our laboratory has shown that certain cells of the immune system produce endocannabinoids that can regulate inflammation and other immune functions through the activation of CB2 receptors.

In addition, we have shown that endocannabinoids are highly effective in lessening the debilitating effects of autoimmune diseases. These are diseases in which the immune system goes haywire and starts destroying the body’s organs and tissues. Examples include multiple sclerosis, lupus, hepatitis and arthritis.

Recent research suggests that migraine, fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, post-traumatic stress disorder and bipolar disease are all linked to low levels of endocannabinoids.

In a 2022 study, researchers found that a defect in a gene that helps produce endocannabinoids causes early onset of Parkinson’s disease. Another 2022 study linked the same gene defect to other neurological disorders, including developmental delay, poor muscle control and vision problems.

Other research has shown that people with a defective form of CB1 receptors experience increased pain sensitivity such as migraine headaches and suffer from sleep and memory disorders and anxiety. 

 

The likeness between marijuana and endocannabinoids

We believe that the medicinal properties of THC may be linked to the molecule’s ability to compensate for a deficiency or defect in the production or functions of the endocannabinoids.

For example, scientists have found that people who experience certain types of chronic pain may have decreased production of endocannabinoids. People who consume marijuana for medicinal purposes report significant relief from pain. Because the THC in marijuana is the cannabinoid that reduces pain, it may be helping to compensate for the decreased production or functions of endocannabinoids in such patients.

Deciphering the role of endocannabinoids is still an emerging area of health research. Certainly much more research is needed to decipher their role in regulating different functions in the body.

In our view, it will also be important to continue to unravel the relationship between defects in the endocannabinoid system and the development of various diseases and clinical disorders. We think that the answers could hold great promise for the development of new therapies using the body’s own cannabinoids.

 

DeSantis wants to roll back press freedoms — with an eye toward overturning Supreme Court ruling by Matt Dixon

 Florida Republicans are seeking to weaken laws protecting journalists. 

 

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ broken relationship with the mainstream media could get even worse.

At the governor’s urging, Florida’s Republican-dominated Legislature is pushing to weaken state laws that have long protected journalists against defamation suits and frivolous lawsuits. The proposal is part DeSantis’ ongoing feud with media outlets like The New York Times, Miami Herald, CNN and The Washington Post — media companies he claims are biased against Republicans — as he prepares for a likely 2024 presidential bid.

 

Beyond making it easier to sue journalists, the proposal is also being positioned to spark a larger legal battle with the goal of eventually overturning New York Times v. Sullivan, the landmark 1964 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that limits public officials’ ability to sue publishers for defamation, according to state Rep. Alex Andrade, the Florida Republican sponsoring the bill.

“There is a strong argument to be made that the Supreme Court overreached,” Andrade said in an interview. “This is not the government shutting down free speech. This is a private cause of action.”

Andrade said he is working with DeSantis’ office on the bill: “I would say I am accepting their input.”

 

DeSantis has a combative relationship with many media outlets, refusing to conduct interviews with platforms except Fox News and building a communications team that openly brags that its role is to be antagonistic to members of the press. His former press secretary, Christina Pushaw, frequently argued with journalists on Twitter and was once suspended by the social media giant for abusive behavior.

Yet the proposed bill goes further than simply decrying media bias. Free-press advocates call the measure unconstitutional and suggest it could have far-reaching consequences beyond major media outlets.

“I have never seen anything remotely like this legislation,” said Seth Stern, director of advocacy for the Freedom of the Press Foundation. “I can’t say I have seen every bill ever introduced, but I’d be quite surprised if any state Legislature had seriously considered such a brazen and blatantly unconstitutional attack on speech and press freedoms.”

He added: “This bill is particularly remarkable since its provisions have the vocal support of a governor and likely presidential candidate.”

DeSantis’ office said he “will make a decision on the merits of the bill in final form if and when it passes and is delivered to the governor’s office.”

Earlier this month, DeSantis held a roundtable with a collection of right-wing personalities and attorneys who he said were media libel law experts. The main takeaway from the roundtable, which foreshadowed forthcoming legislation, was that DeSantis believes some journalists make things up.

“The idea that they would create narratives that are contrary to discovering facts, I don’t know that was the standard,” DeSantis said during the roundtable. “Now it seems you pursue the narrative, you’re trying to advance the narrative and trying to get the clicks, and the fact-checking and contrary facts have just fallen by the wayside.”

Andrade’s proposal incorporates many of the elements DeSantis called for during the roundtable, including:

— allowing plaintiffs who sue media outlets for defamation to collect attorneys fees;

— adding a provision to state law specifying that comments made by anonymous sources are presumed false for the purposes of defamation lawsuits;

— lowering the legal threshold for a “public figure” to successfully sue for defamation;

— repealing the “journalist’s privilege” section of state law, which protects journalists from being compelled to do things like reveal the identity of sources in court, for defamation lawsuits.

Stern said 49 states and several appellate circuits recognize a reporter’s privilege against court-compelled disclosure of source material and stressed that it’s essential for people to be able to speak to reporters without risking their jobs or freedoms.

“Journalists do not work for the government and it’s none of the government’s business how journalists gather news,” he added.

Andrade, however, said the privilege language in his bill would not allow a judge to force a journalist to reveal an anonymous source, but removes existing protections if they decide not to.

“The law protects journalists from being ‘compelled’ by judges to disclose anonymous sources, but if a journalist has been sued for defamation, and wants to avoid liability, this section makes clear that they cannot claim a special privilege to avoid disclosing the source of the defamatory information and also avoid liability,” Andrade said.

Critics of the bill took issue with the section about attorneys fees, saying it could add a financial incentive to file defamation lawsuits and erode the laws preventing retaliatory lawsuits filed to silence criticism. Florida, like other states, has anti-SLAPP (strategic lawsuits against public participation) laws designed to help stop frivolous lawsuits.

“One of my largest concerns with the bill is the rolling back of the anti-SLAPP protection for defamation defendants,” said Adam Schulman, a senior attorney with the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute, which advocates for free markets, free speech and limited governments. ”That’s just moving in the wrong direction.”

He said beyond large media companies, some of which have legal teams, the changes could affect the “ordinary guy” who leaves an “unfavorable Yelp review.”

“At one time, it was not considered ‘conservative’ to advocate for turning on the spigot to all sorts of troll-like civil litigation that will line the pockets of bottom-feeding plaintiffs’ lawyers,” Schulman said.

Stern said the new bill would leave those protections “toothless.” Under most anti-SLAPP laws, individuals can recover attorneys’ fees if they can show they were sued in retaliation for criticizing the government.

“The new bill would change that so that plaintiffs whose lawsuits survive anti-SLAPP motions can recover their attorney’s fees,” he said. “That means the anti-SLAPP law would lose all of its value as a deterrent against powerful people filing abusive lawsuits to silence their critics.”

Andrade, however, said there needs to be a mechanism to collect attorneys fees to give the new laws strength and make it easier for those alleging defamation to bring lawsuits.

“It’s a policy designed to empower individuals who were on an unfavorable side financially to still be able to bring a cause of action,” he said. “In any circumstance like this the risk of plaintiff’s lawyers taking advantage of the system is a consideration, but it is only one of many considerations.”

Elected officials routinely criticize the media as biased, but Donald Trump ramped up those attacks during the 2016 election cycle and beyond. The former president regularly labeled news stories he didn’t like as “fake news” and would chide individual reporters at The Washington Post, The New York Times and elsewhere. Trump is widely seen as DeSantis’ top rival for the GOP nomination in 2024.

Andrade said he has personal reasons for wanting to sponsor the bill, including a March 2022 story in the Pensacola News Journal about the state’s contentious and long-running push to overhaul its permanent alimony system. The story quotes a woman who receives permanent alimony as part of a divorce saying that Andrade, who sponsored or co-sponsored versions of an alimony bill, “pitched a fit” when he discussed the proposal with her.

“I told the media outlet that the claim being made was false,” he said. “The lady claimed I cursed her out. I provided witness statements and offered phone records, and the media outlet did not consider any of it. They did not even call me for a quote.”

 

Florida's Great Displacement The state's climate exodus has already begun by Jake Bittle

As many residents will be proud to tell you, the thousand-odd islands that make up the Florida Keys are one of a kind: there is no other place in the world that boasts the same combination of geological, ecological, and sociological characteristics. The islands have a special, addictive quality about it, an air of freedom that leads people to turn their backs on mainland life.

 The Keys are also the first flock of canaries in the coal mine of climate change. Over the past few years, the residents of these islands have been forced to confront a phenomenon that will affect millions of Americans before the end of the century. Their present calamity offers a glimpse of our national future.

 Nature is changing. Today's hurricanes tend to be stronger, wetter, and less predictable than those of the last century. They hold more moisture, speed up more quickly, and stay together longer. It's difficult to tell for certain what role climate change plays in any individual storm, but in the case of Hurricane Irma — which slammed the Keys in September 2017 — there is little doubt that the warmth of the Caribbean Sea made the storm more powerful, allowing the vortex to regain strength overnight as it barreled toward the islands. As global warming continues to ratchet up the temperature of our oceans, we can expect more storms like Irma. The danger to the Keys doesn't end with hurricane season, either: a slow but definite rise in average sea levels over the past decade has contributed to an increase in tidal flooding, leaving some roads and neighborhoods inundated with salt water for months at a time.

 In the five years since Irma, the bill has come due. The hurricane made undeniable what previous floods had only suggested: that climate change will someday make life in the archipelago impossible to sustain. The storm was the first episode in a long and turbulent process of collapse, one that will expand over time to include market contraction, government disinvestment, and eventually a wholesale retreat toward the mainland. Irma may not have destroyed the Keys in one stroke, but the storm ran down the clock on life on the islands, pushing conches (the Keys' unique name for residents) into a future that once seemed remote. The impulse to stay, which once bespoke a conch's devotion to his or her adopted home, now looks a little more like denial. The decision to leave, on the other hand, which once signified surrender, now looks more like acceptance of the inevitable.

 

Florida's Great Displacement

The term "climate migration" is an attempt to explain why people leave one place in favor of another; it assigns motivation to movements that may be voluntary or involuntary, temporary or permanent. Yet even if the primary cause for migration is clear, there are still countless other factors that influence when, where, and how someone moves in response to a disaster. It's this messiness that is reflected in the word "displacement": the migratory shifts caused by climate change are as chaotic as the weather events that cause them.

 For some families the decision to depart the Keys was easy. The storm was a traumatic event, more than enough to convince many people that life on the islands was too dangerous to accept. They came back home, fixed up their houses, and got out. That was the case for Connie and Glenn Faast, who left the island city of Marathon for the mountains of North Carolina after spending almost 50 years in the Keys. "It was pretty much immediate," Connie told me. "It's just too hard to start over when you get older. We couldn't risk it."

 The Faasts had lived the kind of life you can only live in the Keys: Connie worked on commercial fishing boats and in a local aquarium, while Glenn owned a boat maintenance company and raced Jet Skis in his spare time. They had stuck it out in the Keys through several major storms, including 2005's Hurricane Wilma, which brought five feet of water to their little island and totaled three of their cars; Connie still shudders when she remembers the image of her husband wading through the water around their house with snakes climbing all over him, clinging to him for shelter from the flood. The Faasts had second thoughts after that storm, but the Keys were paradise, and besides, they didn't know where else they would go.

 When Irma came 12 years later, though, the choice was much easier. During the evacuation, it took the Faasts a week to find a decaying hotel in Orlando where they could wait out the storm. As the hurricane passed over the center of the state, it knocked out their power, leaving them and their pets to spend the night in 100-degree heat without air conditioning. "That was it for us," she said. They had to get out — not just out of the Keys, but out of Florida altogether.

 When they returned to Marathon, they discovered that their home was the only one in the neighborhood with an intact roof. They put the house on the market as soon as they could, but it took a year for the place to sell, in part because property values had risen so steeply that most people in the area couldn't afford to buy.

 

The storm had scared many people off, but it had also destroyed a quarter of the Keys's housing stock, which drove up prices for the homes that survived. In the meantime, the Faasts saw their friends start to leave as well: one moved to Sarasota, another to Orlando, and a third friend, who had been the first-ever mayor of Marathon, talked about moving to central Florida.

"We thought it would be devastating when we left," Connie said, "because we love the Keys. But when we pulled out of there, we were so, so relieved."

 

No more housing

Hundreds of people like the Faasts left the Keys of their own volition in the years after Irma, deciding one way or another that the risks of staying there outweighed the benefits. But perhaps the more turbulent phenomenon after the storm was the involuntary displacement caused by the shortage of affordable housing on the islands. The storm destroyed not only the massive mobile home parks on islands like Big Pine, but also hundreds of so-called downstairs enclosures, small apartment-style units that sat beneath elevated homes. 

It also wiped out dozens if not hundreds of liveaboard boats and older apartment complexes in island cities like Marathon. These trailer parks and apartment complexes had been havens for resort waiters, boat buffers, and bartenders, allowing them to get a foothold in an archipelago that had long ago become unaffordable for anyone who wasn't rich. Now all that housing was gone, and FEMA's 50% rule  — which prohibits improvements to structures that cost more than 50% of its market value — prohibited most trailers and downstairs enclosures from being rebuilt.

Many of those who had been lucky enough to own small homes or campers hadn't been able to afford insurance, which meant they missed out on the payouts that went to wealthy homeowners and part-time vacationers. To make matters worse, the government of the Keys couldn't build enough new homes to fill the gap created by the storm: the state had long ago imposed a de facto cap on the number of building permits Monroe county — which encompasses the islands — could issue, an attempt to make sure the population did not grow too large to evacuate the islands in a single day. Thus it was impossible for most residents either to rebuild their old homes or to buy new ones. 

Some of those who lost their homes were able to crash with friends and family, and others got by living in tents or trailers, but others resorted to a forest homeless encampment. The lack of housing made the storm survivors feel as though they were stuck in a permanent limbo: life on the islands became a game of musical chairs, in which only the highest bidders could end up with a seat.

Delaying the inevitable

Debra Maconaughey, the rector at St. Columba Episcopal Church in Marathon, spent the years after Irma trying to forestall this involuntary displacement. When the storm hit, Maconaughey and much of her congregation were in Ireland, retracing the steps of the original St. Columba, and by the time they returned to the Keys it was clear that housing would be the defining challenge of the next few years. "Everybody's house was destroyed. That's what people would need the most."

We were speaking in the church's open-air pavilion, where Maconaughey had been delivering outdoor sermons even before the coronavirus pandemic. Irma had weakened the timbers that supported the roof of the central chapel, forcing the church to move worship outside.

 In the first week Maconaughey was back, she helped transform St. Columba's campus into a massive shelter for boaters who had lost their homes in the storm, cramming two dozen air mattresses into a loft that had previously been used for an after-school program. The next week, Maconaughey and her congregation installed approximately two dozen trailers around Marathon, giving the boaters a long-term place to stay.

 Maconaughey knew there was no chance the county government would restore all the housing that had been lost in the storm, but after a year went by, she found herself shocked at how little had been rebuilt. A nonprofit land trust had erected only a handful of new cottages and a $50 million state program called Rebuild Florida had repaired only two homes, a pittance compared to the thousands of dwellings that had been swept away. 

So Maconaughey called up the nonprofits who were funding St. Columba's relief efforts and made an unconventional proposal: the church, she proposed, would buy some derelict housing and fix it up. She had her eyes set on a leaky, mold-filled apartment complex in Marathon that had been condemned for sewage issues a few years earlier. The apartment complex finally opened in the summer of 2020, providing cut-rate housing to 16 families who had been staying on couches or in trailers since the day the storm hit.

Never coming back

But for every person who found permanent shelter, there were more who could not afford to wait for the islands to recover. This wasn't only because people didn't want to return, but also because there were no homes to which they could return. Maconaughey told me with distaste that in several places along Marathon's beachfront, developers have built single large mansions on lots that once contained three or four small homes each. 

The lack of affordable housing in turn created a labor shortage: fire and police departments couldn't find enough officers to fill their shifts, boat maintenance companies struggled to locate buffers and repairmen, and many hotels went shorthanded through the on-season rush. When employers exhausted their hiring options on the islands, Maconaughey said, they started to hire workers from the mainland towns of Homestead and Florida City, who take a two-hour bus ride in either direction to work for minimum wage.

"I think people are really struggling, and it's just below the surface," she said. "We're a tourist area, so it's in our best interests to make it look nice from the highway, but there's hidden pain." 

Maconaughey told me about the church sexton, Mike, who was driven out of the Keys by Irma. Mike showed up after the recession in a homeless shelter in Marathon. He was blind, and when he first arrived at the shelter he couldn't take a shower or put on clothes without assistance. After a year in the shelter, Mike started attending services at St. Columba, and soon displayed a great talent for weaving wooden canes and chairs, a craft he often practiced on the church pavilion after sermons. He also taught the kids in the after-school program how to play chess.

Mike was on the Keys as the storm approached, not with the congregation in Ireland. He first sought refuge in the massive Miami hurricane shelter, but by the time he got there, that shelter was full. As shelters in Florida all reached capacity, emergency officials herded evacuees from the Keys up toward Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia, offering them bus transportation as far as they were willing to go. Mike was unsure when he would be able to return to the Keys, so he asked for a ticket to Minnesota, where he grew up. He was never able to get back.

"We kind of lost him," Maconaughey said. "He got on a bus to evacuate and now he's gone. He was a huge part of our community … You have to ask yourself, do you ever recover from something like this?"

The ancient diseases that plagued the dinosaurs By Jocelyn Timperley

Scientists have discovered the tell-tale signs of a range of dinosaur diseases – and found that they're remarkably similar to those affecting animals alive today.

 

O

On a wet, stormy day some 77 million years ago in what is now south-eastern Alberta, Canada, a certain horned dinosaurwas having a very bad time.

The adult Centrosaurus apertus, a medium-sized plant-eating cousin of the larger Triceratops that lived alongside Tyrannosaurus, had an advanced malignant bone cancer in its shin. The cancer may have spread elsewhere in its body and it's thought that it was almost certainly terminal.

But this Centrosaurus probably didn't die from the bone cancer – because before this could happen, it and the thousands of other Centrosaurus in its herd were struck down in a catastrophic flood, thought to be caused by a tropical storm.

Millions of years later, the bonebed preserved after this mass death event helped provide important evidence that these dinosaurs moved in enormous herds. But the diagnosis of this particular dinosaur's osteosarcoma – a rare, malignant bone cancer more commonly found in children and diagnosed in some 25,000 people per year worldwide – only came in 2020. It was the first time a malignant cancer had ever been diagnosed in a dinosaur, and it required a multidisciplinary team of scientists to confirm the case.

For decades, palaeontologists and palaeopathologists – scientists who study ancient diseases and injuries using fossils – have suggested findings of cancer in dinosaurs, although the tumours were usually thought to be benign. But the 2020 osteosarcoma study is part of a fast-growing field of research aimed at diagnosing dinosaur diseases, using similar expertise and equipment we would use to diagnose ailments in humans and animals today. The only difference is they have only fossils to go on.

"The field initiated as a speculation…but it actually is a scientific endeavour now, and we can scientifically test hypotheses, and develop criteria," says Bruce Rothschild, a research associate in vertebrate palaeontology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pennsylvania. "It turns out the diseases that afflicted dinosaurs have essentially the same appearance as those that affect humans or other critters."

The results of these investigations are revealing previously unknown details of how dinosaurs lived and died. Some argue they could also give medical experts new insights about the diseases still affecting us in the present day.

 A rare find

The hunt to decisively diagnose a dinosaur with bone cancer started when David Evans, a palaeontologist at the University of Toronto and a curator at the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada, met Mark Crowther, a human haematologist and chair of the faculty of medicine at McMaster University, Canada. They realised they could use their combined expertise to try to find an osteosarcoma.

Still, finding a potential case was no easy task. Pathologies on fossil specimens are often noted, but they aren't really curated – organised according to this characteristic – says Evans. Instead, bones with the hallmarks of disease are usually spread all over collections.

After sifting through hundreds of bones at Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, Canada, together with several other scientists including Snezana Popovich, a bone pathologist at McMaster University, they recognised the potential signs of bone cancer on the Centrosaurus apertus's shin bone. "I'll definitely remember Snezana picking this bone up and being like, 'I think this is bone cancer'," says Evans.

The bone had a lump on the end of it that was labelled as a fracture callus, but even at first glance it had several tell-tale signs of bone cancer: it was visibly malformed and had large, unnatural foramina (open holes) around the lump.

The team, by now consisting of eight medical experts, including modern cancer specialists, and four palaeontologists, used every means they had to confirm a diagnosis in their 77-million-year-old patient. They compared the bone to both a normal Centrosaurus shin bone and a human calf bonewith a confirmed case of osteosarcoma. But they also used X-rays, high quality computed tomography (CT) scans along with 3D reconstruction tools and histology (thin sectioning of the bone) to create biopsies so they could study it at the cellular level.

"That allowed us to make a positive diagnosis of cancer that is on par with what the doctors on my team suggested [they would make] in a human patient," says Evans. "We actually got right down to serial sectioning the bone… We were able to actually trace the cancerous tumour winding its way through the bone from the knee to the ankle."

 

Penélope Cruzado-Caballero, a palaeontologist at the Universidad de La Laguna in Tenerife, Spain, says the study shows the importance of approaching pathologies in this multidisciplinary way, including the relatively new analysis of histology.

A wide search

 

It's becoming increasingly common in palaeopathology to use modern techniques to make a medical diagnosis in this way, rather than simply visually comparing dinosaur ailments to other examples of diseases in a "card-matching game", says Cary Woodruff, curator of vertebrate palaeontology at the Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science in Miami, Florida. "Just because they look similar doesn't mean [they are]."

Cruzado-Caballero recently documented another possible case of osteosarcoma. This time it was on the toe of a 70-million-year-old duck-billed herbivore, Bonapartesaurus rionegrensis, found in Patagonia, Argentina. Her team used imaging data and microscopic analysis, as well as descriptions of the visible shapes to diagnose a tumour.

"Our studies help us to understand when diseases arise throughout the history of life on Earth," she says.

Osteosarcoma has been traced even further back than the Late Cretaceous period. Palaeontologist Yara Haridy and Rothschild diagnosed it in 240-million-year-old stem-turtle from the Triassic period using micro-CT scans, although they did not use as many different techniques as Evans' team.

 

Scientists are also looking at dinosaur diseases in the context of other archosaurs, a group of reptilian animals that includes today's crocodiles and birds. The approach helps palaeontologists understand how dinosaurs fit into the whole tree of life, says Jennifer Anné, lead palaeontologist at The Children's Museum of Indianapolis.

In her work, Anné often collaborates with veterinary scientists to consider what kind of conditions are found in living birds and crocodilians to compare them with dinosaurs. "[It's] almost being like a 'palaeozoologist", she says. "Like saying, 'Alright, this is an animal, how do I study it as an animal?'".

This was the approach which led Anné and two colleagues in 2016 to the first ever diagnosis in a dinosaur of septic arthritis – a condition that can occur when microbes get into a joint, often after an injury.

The hadrosaur from New Jersey had an "eaten away" elbow that "looked like a head of cauliflower", says Anné, so they compared high resolution X-ray microtomography scans of the specimen to known conditions in living avians and reptiles. They ruled out several diseases, including gout and tuberculosis, before settling on the septic arthritis diagnosis due to the bone erosion, reactive bone growth and the fusion of the elements seen on the bones.

These new analyses can end up overturning previous diagnosis. In another example, research led by Ewan Wolff, a vet and palaeontologist at the University of Wisconsin, concluded that sets of smooth-edged lesions seen relatively frequently on the jaws of T. Rex were likely not bite wounds from other tyrannosaurids, as had previously been suggested, but an avian parasitic infection called trichomonosis, which causes similar effects in modern birds.

 Sometimes, though, even the vets are stumped by these investigations. In a paper published last year, Anné and her colleagues outlined some unusual lesions they had found on another hadrosaur. But the veterinary scientists she talked to said they had never seen anything like it. "I sent this to the Royal Veterinary College in London and a picture of this is apparently hanging up in their coffee room, as people try to figure out what it is, because no one's seen it on an extant animal either."

 

A new approach

The difference with diagnosing living animals today, of course, is that for dinosaurs there is very little to go on bar fossilised bone and other hard tissues like teeth, and sometimes skin, feathers or hair. "Anything where only one part of the diagnosis is bone, that's really hard," says Anné. "Because we have such limited information that we can use, those limited clues, we are the MacGyvers: we throw everything we can possibly do to try to tease out this information."

Bone is usually one of the least studied parts of biology, she adds. "Whereas in palaeontology all we have is bones. So we know all about bones."

Diagnosing any sort of malady in the fossil record is incredibly hard, agrees Woodruff. "We can't rely really on any of the sweep of medical testing that we would do today… The way we go about identifying [diseases] has to be radically different."

Woodruff, who specialises in sauropods – huge long-necked plant-eating dinosaurs like Brachiosaurus – also collaborated with veterinarians and medical doctors in his recent work to diagnose a dinosaur respiratory infection for the first time.

He had noticed something odd about a 150-million-year-old diplodocid sauropod specimen named Dolly – an irregular, lumpy growth on its vertebrae which had fossilised like a broccoli floret. "I knew enough to know what I was looking at was not normal, but I didn't know enough to be able to identify what I even might be looking at," he says.

He posted a picture to social media asking if anyone had seen something similar or knew what could it be, and quickly received a slew of responses, including from his future co-authors. "The general expert answer was, my gosh, we've never seen this before, but this is exactly what we would predict a respiratory infection in a sauropod to look like," he says.

The team he assembled began investigating all the diseases which could have caused this growth. "It's as important to weed out what it's not sometimes certainly in the first passes than to help you zero in on what it is," says Woodruff.

They realised there were protrusions in the exact areas of the bone which would have been attached to Dolly's air sacs – air-filled structures which still occur in today's birds, and which often become infected to cause the respiratory disorder airsacculitis. "They were similar enough that we were able to suggest that the diagnosis for Dolly was airsacculitis," says Woodruff. "The fossil 'broccoli' coming out [...] was a secondary bone infection."

It's impossible to say what could have caused this infection, as for obvious reasons the team couldn't do any blood work on Dolly. However, the most common cause in living dinosaurs – birds – today is breathing in fungal spores. "Odds are, this could have been what occurred in our dinosaur 150 million years ago," says Woodruff. "We know that fungus has a ridiculously long evolutionary history, it would have been a major component of these environments as well."

Other scientists may have found signs of respiratory infections from even longer ago. A 2018 paper co-authored by Rothschild presented evidence of a tuberculosis-like respiratory infection in 245-million-year-old marine reptile.

Of course, palaeontologists have been studying diseases in dinosaur bones for decades, and some dinosaur ailments have far better records than others. Broken bones that have healed, for example, are "exceptionally common", says Evans.

 

Consider, though, that there is only skeletal material for around 32 adult T. rex out of an estimated 2.5 billion that ever lived, and the chances of understanding the prevalence of diseases becomes vanishingly small. "We really don't have a good handle on the epidemiology," says Rothschild. "All we can say is how far back, and we can trace a lot of these diseases back to the Permian, before the dinosaurs, but that's as much as we can take it at the moment."

There are also many ailments and diseases that leave no sign at all on what remains of dinosaurs, making it hard to know what killed them in most cases. "Probably a good chunk of our dinosaurs died from diseases or things like that, that we have no osteological evidence for, so no indicator on the bones," says Woodruff.

Still, as science advances, we may get better at recognising clues that point to certain diseases. "There may be a whole bunch of bones that have diseases that are barely visible on the surface that no one would even think to look at," says Evans.

The more these diagnoses are made, the more information palaeontologists can get about the way these dinosaurs lived.

For example, the Centrosaurus apertus's advanced osteosarcoma would likely have affected its movement, making it a prime target for a Tyrannosaurus, the top predator at the time, says Evans. Instead, though, it appears to have died with its herd in a natural disaster, which indicates it was maybe being cared for and protected by the rest of its herd, says Evans. "It's a really interesting and unique insight into the life of dinosaurs that we didn't have before."

An unexpected benefit

But the discoveries could also contribute to our modern understanding of diseases. Rothschild, a practising medical rheumatologist, has used his analysis of hadrosaur fossils to help distinguish between osteochondritis and osteochondrosis, two different but similar-looking bone conditions.

 

Evans was even invited to participate in a symposium for the Osteosarcoma Institute, which focuses on finding a cure for the disease. "[There were] a bunch of top specialists in bone cancer from around the world [there], and then there was me with dinosaurs," says Evans. His paper had diagnosed a giant tumour in the exact same place that you would expect to find the disease in a human. "It gives us some perspective to think about how ancient these diseases are."

A cast of the original Centrosaurus apertus shin bone with osteosarcoma was also part of the Cancer Revolution exhibition last year at the Science Museum in London. "We wanted to showcase that cancer isn't a uniquely human or modern disease," says Katie Dabin, lead curator for the exhibition. "Dinosaurs seemed to be a brilliant example that cancer has been with multi-celled organisms for a long time."

Evans hopes his paper will get medical doctors, researchers and experts interested in collaborating with palaeontologists and vice versa, prompting other findings about rare diseases that can be found in the fossil record. "Who knows where those discoveries might lead?" he says. His team is already working with another set of researchers who think they might have found evidence of osteosarcoma in a meat-eating dinosaur.

But there is also something about diagnosing these diseases in dinosaurs which simply helps us relate to them better, says Woodruff.

"You can hold that 150-million-year-old bone of Dolly [the diplodocus] in your hands, and, seeing those signs of infection caused by some sort of respiratory disorder, know that 150 million years ago, Dolly felt as crummy when it was sick as we all do when we're sick with these similar things. And I think that's fascinating."

 

 

Illinois governor slams 'demagogues' who attack schools, libraries By Shia Kapos

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker invoked Abraham Lincoln and Elie Wiesel in his annual state of the state address, attacking “demagogues who are pushing censorship.”

He didn’t mention Ron DeSantis, but it was clear that Pritzker’s ire was aimed at Florida’s Republican governor and his allies. 

 The attack is the latest in an ongoing feud between the two ambitious governors over DeSantis blocking an advanced placement course on African American studies from his state’s school curriculum. DeSantis also has signed the “Stop W.O.K.E Act,” which prohibits the teaching of critical race theory in Florida schools.

“It’s an ideological battle by the right wing, hiding behind a claim that they would protect our children — but whose real intention is to marginalize people and ideas they don’t like,” Pritzker told a joint session of the Illinois General Assembly gathered in the state Capitol for the first live address since before the pandemic. “This has been done in the past, and it doesn’t stop with just snuffing out ideas.”

Pritzker described “a virulent strain of nationalism plaguing our nation,” and he criticized “demagogues” attacking school board members and library trustees.

He also invoked historical parallels to the current climate.

“This is the Land of Lincoln. We have a responsibility to that legacy,” he said.

Then Pritzker quoted Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor and Nobel Laureate: “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”

The governor made his comments after laying out a budget agenda focused on education funding.

 “It’s all meaningless,” he said, “if we become a nation that bans books from school libraries about racism suffered by Roberto Clemente and Hank Aaron, and tells kids they can’t talk about being gay. It signals to Black and brown people and Asian Americans and Jews and Muslims that our authentic stories can’t be told.”

 That passage of his speech drew a standing ovation from Democrats seated on his right in the chamber and silence from Republicans at his left.

Pritzker then invoked his two college-age children.

“I don’t want them to be lied to,” he said. “I want them to learn our true history, warts and all.”

 Running feud

The speech follows Pritzker writing the College Board, which oversees Advanced Placement exams, to urge the group not to appease DeSantis by changing the African American studies course.

Earlier this week, DeSantis doubled down on the issue, threatening to withdraw state support for AP programs.

DeSantis’ threats and Pritzker’s comments in his Springfield address add fire to a feud between the two governors ahead of the 2024 presidential election. Both have been mentioned as potential candidates for their respective parties.

DeSantis is all but expected to jump into the GOP primary and face former President Donald Trump. Pritzker has repeatedly said he will be supporting President Joe Biden for president.

 

Power play: How the US benefits if China greens the Global South bye Jeffrey Ball February 2023

As the relationship between the United States and China deteriorates, the battle between the two powers for supremacy in low-carbon industries is leading the slide. From batteries to solar panels to rare-earth metals used in wind turbines, technologies that over the past decade have cratered in cost and surged in scale – thanks to innovation supported by both Washington and Beijing – are targets in yet another trans-Pacific trade fight.

 But investing in innovative green machines at home is only one way to affect the climate, and setting protectionist industrial policy is only one way to boost geopolitical power. At least as important to the planet is the money the United States and China spend on financing infrastructure in emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs) — infrastructure that will lock in high or low carbon-emission pathways for decades. Never has it been more crucial that the two countries, even as they vie for supremacy in low-carbon innovation, support each other’s efforts to decarbonize their respective infrastructure finance flows.

 

China bankrolls more infrastructure in EMDEs than any other country. But much of that infrastructure has been dirty. According to a Boston University database, Chinese companies and so-called policy banks – large government-affiliated institutions – have financed 648 power plants in 92 countries.^[1] Of those plants’ collective power-generation capacity, more than 50% burn fossil fuel, and 34% burn the dirtiest sort of fossil fuel: coal. But China, facing criticism and sensing shifting economics, has pledged to change that. In November 2021, Chinese President Xi Jinping declared that his country “will step up support for other developing countries in developing green and low-carbon energy, and will not build new coal-fired power projects abroad.”^[2] Today, more than a year later, China must make good on that pledge through deep, structural changes to its political economy; otherwise, changes in its outbound investment will not take hold.

China’s task is daunting, threatening some of the biggest companies in China and thus in the world. It is even more intimidating because it looms at a time of perilous animosity between Washington and Beijing, evidenced by military brinkmanship over Taiwan, tit-for-tat trade barriers on products ranging from computer chips to solar panels, and superpower shadowboxing over Russia’s war in Ukraine. Yet China’s decarbonization of its foreign infrastructure finance is existentially important — for the planet, the Chinese economy, and U.S. citizens and firms. Contrary to the zero-sum view toward China that constitutes conventional wisdom in Washington, the winning strategy for the United States is not merely to try to eclipse China as an international financier of green infrastructure. The United States is trying to do that, notably through the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, a plan the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden and its G-7 allies announced last June to boost infrastructure investment in EMDEs, in large part to fight climate change. That effort was conceived broadly as a geopolitical counter to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China’s decade-old infrastructure- and market-building campaign across the Global South, and to the BRI’s newer sibling, China’s Global Development Initiative (GDI).^[3] To be sure, a greening of U.S. and G-7 infrastructure investment abroad is needed and welcome. But it is insufficient. The smart strategy for the United States, even as it decarbonizes its own outbound infrastructure finance, is to encourage maximal greening of China’s massive infrastructure investment abroad — and to leverage that Chinese spending to create new opportunities for export-focused U.S. firms in a decarbonizing world.

When politicians have no shame, the old rules don't apply by Tamara Keith

There was a time when shame was a powerful force in American politics. That time is not now.

Congressman George Santos is the embodiment of how times have changed. At the State of the Union address, the freshman Republican from New York famous for fabricating major elements of his life story made sure he had a coveted on-camera position near the center aisle.

That's where he ran into Sen. Mitt Romney, a decidedly old-school Republican from Utah. Romney gave him an earful, and afterward told reporters "he shouldn't be there and if he had any shame at all, he wouldn't be there."

 

Santos, who faces multiple investigations for his questionable ethics, was defiant. He has resisted calls to resign from local Republicans like New York state Sen. Jack Martins, who expressed frustration at a recent press conference.

"It is probably impossible for us to get someone who has no shame to do what is right," Martins said.

This is not the way things used to run, said Patrick Leahy, who recently retired after 48 years as a Democratic senator from Vermont.

"The fact that he is still here is a product of this time," Leahy said. "When I came here, Republican or Democrat, his own party would tell him you have to go."

 

It was conservative Republican senators who told former President Richard Nixon that if he didn't resign, he would be removed by a Senate conviction, Leahy noted. Nixon resigned before he could be impeached.

But the United States is now in an era of post-shame politics. For a politician willing to put up with embarrassment, condemnation, a raft of jokes from late night comedians and a swarm of reporters chasing them day after day, surviving scandals is easier than it used to be.

 

It didn't work for Anthony Weiner

Former Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner — now a local radio show host in New York — has been following the Santos drama with interest.

"We seem to be in a national version of that schoolyard game, 'Top this' — that if you do want to get into the shame hall of fame, you have to do a lot more than you had to do even 10 years ago," Weiner said.

A little more than 10 years ago, Weiner tweeted out an up-close image of himself in boxer briefs. He lied about how it happened, and it only got worse from there. He ultimately resign.Weiner later served time in prison for texting obscene material to a 15-year-old.

 I still today have people who stop me on the street and say, 'you know what, you probably could have survived that scandal if you just put your head down,'" said Weiner.

Weiner doesn't agree. For one thing, Democratic leadership made it clear he had to go. And he said being in Congress isn't just about showing up. It's about relationships and getting things done for your constituents.

"It's really hard to do that when quite literally no one wants to be seen with you," said Weiner.

 

Short of arrest, there's little way to rein in a shameless politician

Santos has lied about, among other things, being Jewish, his mom dying on 9/11 and having employees killed in the Pulse nightclub shooting. But Republicans — who have only a narrow majority in the House — have shown no real desire to force him out.

 Political scientist Lara Brown said short of arrest, there is little to rein in a politician who just doesn't care what people think.

"Everything else is just about some level of personal pride and shame," said Brown, who wrote her dissertation about congressional scandals. "And if you are completely shameless, then you can get away with quite a bit in our world."

 Trump was a master of showing no shame

Former President Donald Trump proved again and again that the rules of political gravity only apply if you care about the rules. Just a month before he was elected in 2016, old television footage came out of him casually describing groping women.

"When you're a star, they let you do it," Trump was heard saying. "You can do anything."

 

Some Republicans called for him to step aside. Some laid low, refusing to defend him. Trump somehow turned it to his advantage saying the media and establishment were out to get him.

Then came Greg Gianforte, a Republican candidate for Congress in Montana. He body-slammed a reporter on the eve of a 2017 special election, and won anyway. He later pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault. Before long, Trump had turned it into a punchline, imitating the motions of a body slam on stage at a rally in Montana.

Gianforte just kept on winning and now he's the state's governor.

 

Democrats and Republicans face different kinds of pressure

In 2019, then-Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, faced a scandal about decades-earlier dressing up in blackface. A who's who of Democrats demanded that he resign, but Northam persisted and eventually the controversy fade

 

Northam is an exception of a Democrat who gutted it out, said Tim Miller, who worked on Jeb Bush's presidential campaign. Miller said the political shamelessness is asymmetrical because Democrats and Republicans face different degrees of public pressure.

Democratic politicians pay attention to bad headlines in the mainstream media because "Democratic voters care and the media environment that Democrats are in lends itself much more to accountability," said Miller, a former Republican.

For Republican politicians, said Miller, it can be easier to hang on. "Donald Trump and the conservative media echo chamber has made powering through a lot easier than it used to be," he said.

 

There are corrosive effects of post-shame politics

Shamelessness can give a politician staying power, but it is also corrosive. Lara Brown, the political scientist, said it reinforces the notion that all politicians are liars.

"Most people when they think about politics, they think about our institutions, they think about Washington in general, they believe that all politicians are corrupt," Brown said. "It's all rigged. It's all a lie."

Not only does that degrade trust in institutions, Brown said it leads people to believe that if it is rigged anyway, they might as well rig it in their own favor.

 

 

 

Does the President Have Control Over Inflation? By Sheelah Kolhatkar February 11, 2023

  Republicans have blamed Joe Biden for increasing inflation, and Biden has claimed credit for reducing it. But maybe neither is entirely deserved.

 n Tuesday night, President Biden used his State of the Union address, in Congress, to touch on a range of pressing issues, including infrastructure, insulin prices, Roe v. Wade, Chinese surveillance, and the war in Ukraine. But he chose, early on, to address one topic that Americans feel especially strongly about. “Here at home, inflation is coming down,” Biden said, to waves of applause. “Gas prices are coming down. Food prices are coming down.” He added, “Inflation has fallen every month for the last six months.” Inflation is consistently found by polling to be one of the most despised forces in American society—and this is true almost regardless of whether inflation is actually a problem at a given time. In 2013, during a period of relatively low inflation (less than two per cent), a Pew survey found that eighty-two per cent of Americans felt that inflation was a “moderately big” or “very big” problem. Last year, when inflation was dramatically rising (in December, it was 6.5 per cent), ninety-three per cent of people surveyed said that the problem was, likewise, “moderately big” or “very big.” “People always hate inflation,” Betsey Stevenson, a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan, told me. She noted that it was important to keep the numbers in perspective. “Even when inflation was at historic lows, survey data showed that eighty-three per cent of Americans thought inflation was a problem.”

These unending negative associations have made inflation an irresistible political weapon. Recently, blaming Biden for causing inflation has been a favorite strategy of the political right. “Biden’s Inflation Quickly Making Americans Poorer,” a headline on the Heritage Foundation’s Web site last fall read. In January, the newly appointed Republican House Ways and Means Committee chair Jason Smith, of Missouri, released a statement titled, “Congress Must Confront Joe Biden’s Inflation Mess.” In reality, though, inflation and its causes are more nuanced than their use in politics would suggest, and whether inflation is increasing or on the decline, it’s unclear how much influence a particular Administration has over it. Biden likely doesn’t deserve the blame for inflation’s rise; he also can’t credibly claim to be responsible when it goes back down.

When it comes to directly influencing which way the inflation rate goes, Stevenson said, “The President has very few levers. And, in this particular case, the Administration has not been an important driver of inflation.” She added that some economists would likely point out things that the Biden Administration could have done differently that might have muted the inflationary pressure the economy has seen in the past couple of years. “But those things are small.” Generally, inflation occurs when more people want to buy stuff than there is stuff to buy. Nearly every advanced economy has been experiencing higher inflation than it did prior to the pandemic, irrespective of the political leanings of the party in power. The United Kingdom, for instance, is struggling with higher price increases than in the U.S. while under the leadership of a conservative government; in Australia, prices of many goods have risen, and a conservative government was recently voted out in favor of a more liberal one. More generally, the largest twenty economies in the world experienced consumer price increases of nine per cent between November, 2021, and November, 2022. In other words, the U.S. is far from alone.

Criticisms of Biden’s performance center on the idea that the Administration did too much to provide aid to families during the pandemic, including through the American Rescue Plan, a 1.9-trillion-dollar spending bill that was enacted by the Democrats in March, 2021. (This followed the CARES Act and other rescue bills passed in 2020.) The bill authorized significant new government spending, including by sending checks to families who qualified. At the time, critics argued that this would leave people with too much money to spend, while productivity struggled to recover after the pandemic shutdowns. Economists such as Stevenson believe that there may be some truth to this argument, but that it still represents only a small amount of inflationary pressure, and that the benefits outweighed the costs by a significant measure. “I still believe, when we write the history of government spending coming into and out of the pandemic, that we will write a story of success,” she said. The spending helped the labor market bounce back after one of the deepest losses since the Great Depression. “The value of that, of not creating a generation of disconnected workers, is quite high. And that’s what the government spending was aimed at doing.”

 

Wendy Edelberg, the director of the Hamilton Project and a senior fellow in economics at the Brookings Institution, agreed. “It’s true, the American Rescue Plan was very large and untargeted and included checks to households that probably weren’t in terrible financial shape,” she said. “Directionally, I’m very confident the American Rescue Plan boosted inflation.” At the same time, she went on, “I’m also confident it lowered unemployment and took a lot of kids out of poverty, and did a lot of good.”

The more obvious culprit behind the sharp rise in prices is the remarkable confluence of global events during the past two or so years. The first was the pandemic, which led to partial shutdowns of entire countries, shuttered factories and businesses, and an interrupted flow of goods around the world, which created a cascade of shortages, including of crucial components such as chips. Then, in February, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, which created uncertainty in oil and gas markets, leading to spikes in prices, as well as disruptions to food supplies, especially stocks of wheat. These events occurred against a backdrop of record heat waves, floods, and other weather events caused by climate change, which exacerbated food shortages in many parts of the world.

The Federal Reserve has taken aggressive steps to cool the economy and bring inflation down through interest-rate increases, which make it more expensive to borrow money and, in theory, lead to layoffs and reductions in wages—all of which reduce demand and prices. William Spriggs, an economics professor at Howard University and a former assistant secretary for policy at the Labor Department, said that he becomes frustrated when he hears officials from the Federal Reserve pledging to continue raising rates until even more people are out of jobs. “Now, do you believe too many people are working, or do you believe avian flu, Vladimir Putin, global warming, the pandemic, and the fact that we had half the world out and not producing and we ran out of chips are to blame?” Spriggs said.

Everything in the economy is connected in a vast and complicated global web, Spriggs said, and the Federal Reserve could be doing a much better job of explaining that to the American people. When there are chip shortages, for example, auto manufacturers can’t finish their half-built cars, and the cars end up sitting in factories, waiting for chips, which can take months. People who need to buy cars might then try to buy used ones, which causes used-car prices to go up, and then those waiting lists grow long, too. Similarly, when Russia and Ukraine, two of the world’s largest producers of wheat, can’t produce as much as they once did, producers in other parts of the world that previously grew barley or corn might switch to growing wheat, even if the climate for it isn’t ideal. Then, Spriggs said, you add the massive heat waves that have plagued Europe, Africa, parts of China, and other regions, which further disrupt farm yields. Suddenly, there is less wheat but also less barley and corn.

“Who’s using those other grains—the barley, the corn? Well, it turns out chickens eat them,” Spriggs went on. “So if you happen to be someone who produces eggs, the stuff that you feed your chickens goes up. And, because of the war, the price of your gas goes up. And everyone’s screaming and hollering that the price of eggs went up.” He added, “There’s this chain reaction, which we as economists teach in intro to economics.” Without effective, clear communication from the Federal Reserve about the tangle of causes behind price increases and goods shortages, it leaves the “Biden gave people too much money” argument room to grow. “Part of the whole issue comes down to expectations,” Spriggs said. “So when I go to the grocery store and see the price of eggs has gone through the roof, I’m not shocked, and I understand why.” ♦

Republicans say they won't cut Social Security. So why does it keep coming up? Domenico Montanaro

There's a saying that Social Security is the third rail of American politics.

That still holds true.

Just look at the fallout from President Biden's State of the Union address, in which he accused some Republicans — "not a majority" — of wanting to cut Social Security and Medicare.

It enraged Republicans, but Biden achieved what he wanted in his moments of sparring with them, two things:

1. get members of the right to heckle and shout, making him appear above the fray and reasonable to create a clear contrast and 
2. make it look like he got Republicans on the record in a high-profile setting to agree not to cut the entitlements. 

 The nation's debt ceiling needs to be raised by June or the county will default on its debt. Republicans, since the rise of the Tea Party, have pushed for spending cuts to offset those increases. That is a looming fight, as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has shown little ability to corral some of the more vocal, right-wing members of his conference.

And with only a four-seat majority, getting a deal on the debt ceiling will be made all the more difficult. McCarthy said cuts to the programs are "off the table." But Republicans also largely refuse to look at cuts to defense spending. And balancing the budget – and tackling a ballooning federal debt – can't be done by cutting discretionary spending alone

 

A plan put forward by Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, who headed the committee in charge of electing Republicans to the Senate, called for sunsetting all federal programs every five years.

Here's some of what the Rescue America plan says:

• "Eliminate federal programs that can be done locally. Any government function that can be handled locally should be."

• "All federal legislation sunsets in 5 years. If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again."

Again, that's "all federal programs."

That language gave Biden an opening for the attack.

The plan has been derided by Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell, who seemed more than happy to throw Scott under the bus.

"That's not a Republican plan. That was the Rick Scott plan," McConnell said on a talk radio show in Kentucky this week, adding of Scott, "It's just a bad idea. I think it will be a challenge for him to deal with this in his own re-election in Florida, a state with more elderly people than any other state in America."

Scott has said cutting the entitlement programs wasn't his intent in the plan, called the charge "false" and a "lie

"In 1975, he has a bill, a sunset bill," Scott said on CNN of Biden when he was a freshman senator. "It says, it requires every program to be looked at freshly every four years, not just cost but worthiness."

[Republicans] all raised their hand. So guess what? We accomplished something. Unless they break their word. There are going to be no cuts in Medicare, Social Security.

President Joe Biden on PBS NewsHour

In Biden's long history in Washington, he's said a lot of things — sometimes contradictory to his current position as president.

"The president ran on protecting Medicare and Social Security from cuts, and he reiterated that in the State of the Union," White House Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre said this week. "He's been very clear these past couple of years. ... A bill from the 1970s is not part of the president's agenda."

But there are reasons why the narrative that Republicans want to cut Social Security and Medicare sticks. Look at recent history — President George W. Bush tried to privatize Social Security, former House Speaker Paul Ryan's budget proposed sweeping changes to Medicare, and even though former President Trump largely tabled serious talk of entitlement cuts, his budget did call for cuts to some aspects of Social Security and Medicaid.

"When I pointed out that some Republicans are talking about eliminating Medicare, they said, 'No, no, no,' " Biden said in an interview on PBS NewsHour the day after the State of the Union address. "I said, 'Oh, OK. That means all of you are for supporting Medicare? Everybody raise your hand.' They all raised their hand. So guess what? We accomplished something. Unless they break their word. There are going to be no cuts in Medicare, Social Security."

How Republicans handle themselves in the next year could determine the depth of what kind of foil Biden has in this group during his expected run for president — as the fight for which party is most in touch with the American people plays out

Hidden within North America is a long-forgotten continent once ruled by a bizarre cast of dinosaurs – but only a handful of fossils have ever been found.By Zaria Gorvett

It was a typically warm, humid day in the Late Cretaceous. A strange, pallid mass was floating in the cobalt-blue waters of a shallow sea, above what is now New Jersey. It was a dead dinosaur, the bloated carcass of a monstrous, 6.4m (21ft)-long distant relative of Tyrannosaurus rex.

With an athletic frame and jaws full of flesh-ripping teeth, Dryptosaurus aquilunguis looked remarkably like its cousin, but with a bloodcurdling twist: on the ends of its stubby little arms were great, grasping "hands", complete with an array of unwieldy eight-inch (20cm) talons. Its fingers were meat hooks, its teeth like piercing bananas. This ancient beast could wrap its hands around you while it bit your head off.

The peculiar dinosaur had staggered its final steps some weeks earlier, though this was just the beginning of its adventures. First its body slipped into the local river – possibly after a flood – where it bobbed around, miraculously avoiding the attention of marauding crocodiles. Eventually, it was flushed out into an ancient inland sea. As the fallen giant decomposed, it sank to the bottom. There its body parts would remain, safely interred in their silty crypt for the coming 67 million years.

 

That was, until this peaceful sleep was interrupted by workers at the West Jersey Marl Company one summer's day in 1866. They had been digging up a seam of green, muddy rock to sell as fertiliser when they uncovered a jumble of suspiciously large bones.

The fossils caught the attention of a young zoologist, Edward Drinker Cope – a "dandyish character" with a luxurious moustache who would go on to discover many of the most iconic dinosaurs in North America. He promptly identified the New Jersey remains, writing that they belonged to a "totally new gigantic carnivorous Dinosaurian!" Other than this, it wasn't immediately clear just how special the find really was. 

Today the remains of the Dryptosaurus are tucked away in a small drawer at the Academy of Natural Sciences, Pennsylvania – a neat arrangement of crumbling vertebrae, jaw fragments, occasional limb bones and teeth. But it turns out these sparse artifacts aren't just all that's left of this single individual, nor are they simply the last physical evidence of its species. In fact, they're among the few surviving remnants of an entire continent – a forgotten land of strange dinosaurs most people have never heard of. How has this happened? And what was it like?

 

A mystery history

Hidden beneath North America is a secret past. For 27 million years in the Late Cretaceous, it was cleaved into two pieces. In the west was the ancient continent of Laramidia. In the east, the long-vanished continent of Appalachia. Between them was a shallow, predator-infested sea, the Western Interior Seaway. At times, it was decidedly tropical – almost like a warm bath, but swimming with crocodiles, sharks, and the gaping mouths of 18m- (59ft)-long mosasaurs.  

As far as dinosaurs were concerned, the two halves might as well have existed on different planets – they were totally isolated from each other. Though they were contemporaries, Dryptosaurus would never have sparred with a T. rex, ripped the flesh from a triceratops, or fled from the flattening feet of a brontosaurus.

To this day, the last relics of Laramidia can be found in rock layers that stretch from the otherworldly, cacti-filled landscapes of the Mexican desert to the frigid oilfields of western Alaska. In the east, the last hints of Appalachia lie under a region extending from the cypress swamps of Mississippi to the arctic tundra around Hudson Bay in Manitoba, Canada.

And yet, the prehistoric inhabitants of only one of these landmasses have dominated in the popular imagination.

Over the last century and a half, Laramidia has yielded the vast majority of the dinosaurs we are familiar with – at least 32 near-complete skeletons of T. rexes, herds of Triceratops, bones from around 80 stegosaurs, and an Alamosaurus that weighed as much as a small commercial aircraft. In fact, America's natural history museums are almost exclusively populated with dinosaurs from this western continent.

Like Laramidia, Appalachia was also thronging with feathery, scaly and armoured giants. But they're virtually absent from public displays – and you won't find them represented in documentaries, Hollywood films, or children's toyboxes.

In contrast to its western counterpart, Appalachia left few traces behind. In the 169 years or so that people have been looking, it has provided little more than a few crumbling partial dinosaur specimens and a handful of bones and teeth. In fact, the continent's prehistoric wildlife has almost entirely vanished from the fossil record.

Until recently, these enigmatic eastern beasts – and the land they inhabited – were so obscure, they were rarely even discussed by palaeontologists.

 

Now, thanks to a few new discoveries and fresh interest in the sparse remains uncovered in the past, a picture of a lost world is emerging – a subtly garbled rendering of the usual vision of prehistoric North America. This was a place where compact, pony-sized relatives of triceratops roamed the landscape alongside giant, cow-like hadrosaurs, scythe-handed tyrannosaurs, towering dino-ostriches and heavyset, reptilian "armadillos".

In short, the familiar cast of dinosaurs that we all grow up with is only half the story.

A strong start

In the small town of Haddonfield, New Jersey, at the end of a quiet suburban street, is the grave of a long-dead resident. Houses give way to a patch of muddy forest, where there is a stone-mounted memorial plaque. A few hundred feet below, in a deep, vine-covered ravine, is a small depression in the clay. This is where the body was found.

In 1830, a farmer had been digging for mineral-rich marl in this small pit, when he uncovered an assortment of giant bones resembling vertebrae. It was the find of a lifetime – but he wouldn't know it until he was an old man.

In fact, though collectors such as Mary Anning had already begun to discover the bones of ancient marine reptiles, such as plesiosaurs, dinosaurs didn't even have a name yet, and would only acquire one over a decade later. At the time, their remains were often associated with mythological beasts or explained away as particularly large specimens of ordinary animals. Sioux Native Americans believed them to belong to monsters destroyed by thunder spirits, while European scientists had historically mistaken them for the bones of elephants or large reptiles. To confound matters even further, no one had ever found a dinosaur in the United States before.

Naturally, the farmer didn't think much of the fossils, except as minor curiosities. He took them home, and stashed them away. There they remained for 28 years, occasionally brought out to impress guests. Some were even casually given away.

 

That was, until a fateful evening in 1858 when an amateur geologist stopped by for dinner. The first US dinosaur had been found in Missouri four years earlier, so he knew exactly what he was looking at. Eventually he led a team to excavate the original site and retrieve the rest of the animal. It was a duck-billed dinosaur, a hadrosaur, and it just so happened to have been an inhabitant of the lost continent of Appalachia.

A neglected land

Though Appalachian dinosaurs are obscure today, it hasn't always been this way.

In the mid-19th Century, the Haddonfield hadrosaur was the most complete the world had seen yet – with some 55 out of an estimated 80 bones. And right from the beginning, it was famous. It was the first ever dinosaur to be put on public display, and quickly became a household name – immortalised in paintings and discussed rapturously in newspapers. Over a century and a half later, it has prominent status as New Jersey's official state dinosaur and remains the most intact ever found from Appalachia.

The hadrosaur was so good, it triggered a rush to explore the region for others, and two palaeontologists in particular began frantically unearthing as many as they could – mostly so they could claim the credit. In fact, the treasure was the direct trigger for the infamous Bone Wars – a bitter and often tragically petty feud between Cope and one of his friends that nearly bankrupted them both. (Read more about how the rivalry laid the foundations for our knowledge of American dinosaurs.)

In the decades that followed the discovery, a surprisingly large number of dinosaur fossils were found in the region – Cope unearthed the big-handed Dryptosaur in New Jersey less than a decade later. Initially he called it Laelaps, but after an unfortunate blunder involving an eponymous mite, it was later renamed.  

This golden age of eastern dinosaurs did not last long. By the late 1870s, interest was mounting in a promising new cluster of fossils emerging from Wyoming and Colorado. This was the beginning of America's love affair with the Morrison formation – a seam of sedimentary rock from the Late Jurassic that stretches from Montana to New Mexico. And it is this hallowed ground that has yielded the vast majority of the US' fossil riches, including mega-stars such as Brachiosaurus, Stegosaurus, Triceratops, Diplodocus and T. rex.

 

A crumbling legacy

The sandy, clay-rich "greensands" of New Jersey, so-named because of their characteristic olive tinge, include rocks that formed during the Late Cretaceous, when a sizeable strip down the middle of North America had been swallowed up by the Western Interior Seaway.

A new name for an old continent

In the late 1900s, scientists began discovering fossils from oceanic creatures, such as ammonites and sea turtles, in Kansas – the middle of North America. They soon realised that this part of the continent must once have held an ocean, the Western Interior Seaway. Oddly, the two landmasses it created were only named for the first time in 1996 – Appalachia was styled after the Appalachian mountains, while Laramidia was named after the Laramide orogeny, an era of dramatic mountain-building in western North America.   

As a result, most of the fossils within are from marine animals that drifted down into sediment on the seafloor when they died. But muddled up with the remains of ancient sharks, exotic sea snails, and unusual plesiosaurs with formidable 1.75m (5.7ft) heads, are a large number of conifer trees and even occasional dinosaurs – the best-preserved remains from Appalachia.

Like the New Jersey Dryptosaurusand Hadrosaurus, these fossils are thought to belong to animals that died inland, near the coast, and were somehow transported out to sea by rivers or the tides. Many Appalachian dinosaurs carry tantalising echoes of this final journey in their bones, in the form of bite marks from sharks and crocodiles, and boreholes by foraging molluscs. 

In contrast, most fossils found in western north America formed in terrestrial rivers and coastal plains – places where dinosaurs were actively living before they were transformed into fossils. This is the first problem with fossil-hunting in Appalachia.

Even in optimal conditions, dinosaur fossils occur at a fairly low density. Their remains have run the gauntlet of scavengers, the forces of decomposition, and becoming entombed in the right sort of sediment before they formed fossils. For the Appalachian fauna, being washed out to sea is just another rare event to add to that list. There just aren't as many dead dinosaurs in the ocean as there are on land, and the fossils are correspondingly hard to find.

 

This is compounded by the landscape in the east, which is a major challenge for palaeontologists.

"So generally speaking, I just don't dig until I hit something," says Nick Longrich, a palaeontologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Bath. "Let's be generous and say there's a dinosaur fossil every 100m (328ft), how much rock are you going to have to move to find that one skeleton?"

Instead, it's standard practice to start with an "outcrop" – a place where rock layers are visible already, such as cliffs, hills and riverbanks – and simply take a stroll. "You're walking, walking, walking and you find a few scraps of bone coming out, so you dig back into the hill," says Longrich. 

In the eastern United States, where the land is flatter, there just aren't as many outcrops – and consequently, opportunities for stumbling upon fossils – as there are among the strange carved hills found in the western Badlands.  

Then there's the issue of vegetation. The overgrown grave of the Haddonfield hadrosaur is typical of the drawbacks of Appalachian digs – with a warm, humid summer climate and around triple the rainfall of the western bone beds, the region is extremely popular with foliage.

"Plants are kind of the enemy of palaeontologists," says Longrich, who laments that they grow all over their precious fossils. Not only do their roots break up the rocks beneath them, often destroying any dinosaurs lurking near the surface in the process, but they smother outcrops where digging might otherwise be fruitful.

 And so historically, that's one of the main reasons we know a lot less about it [the eastern continent], it's just very vegetated," says Longrich. To dig among the remains of Appalachia requires battling through a throng of muddy roots. He explains that it's one of the same reasons you hardly ever hear of dinosaurs being discovered in tropical locations like the Amazon basin, where the first ever fossils were found as recently as 2004 – they are there, but they're almost impossible to access. 

Why did Appalachia disappear?

It's not known exactly when the Western Interior Seaway began to recede, but it's thought the process may have begun around 70 million years ago. It was mostly down to tectonic processes, as an oceanic plate on its western margin was gradually swallowed up underneath the United States and an era of continental uplift began. The ancient Mowry Sea in the north and the Gulf of Mexico in the south gradually crept towards each other – until one day, they finally joined up.

And it gets worse. Even once Appalachian fossils have made it out of the ground, they're often riddled with disease – not one that affected the living animal, but a malady of stone. "Pyrite disease" occurs when the glistening metallic mineral pyrite, otherwise known as "fool's gold", reacts with humid air to create a cocktail of rust, sulphur dioxide and sulphuric acid.

It can turn fossils that have lain safely underground for millions of years to dust in a matter of decades and is particularly problematic in eastern North America, where it's wet.

In contrast, palaeontologists working on the sun-baked Badlands of Montana or Wyoming spend their time chiselling away satisfying flakes of dry rock. Often, they don't even have to do that.

"You just walk around and you find them," says Longrich, who points out that common or imperfect specimens are frequently just left lying around, half-submerged in stone. "In Alberta they have so many dinosaur skeletons they literally can't collect them… it's like 'oh it's a duckbill [a hadrosaur], let's leave it here'," he says

 

An enigmatic crowd

As a result, the fauna of Appalachia remains deeply mysterious.

By 1997, there were fewer than 10 known species of eastern dinosaurs, including bones from several hadrosaur individuals, Cope's Dryptosaurus, and a few assorted individual bones and teeth – the pantheon of known inhabitants had barely changed since the 1860s.

However, over the last few decades, scraps of information have slowly been emerging.

 

Take the group that encompasses all the flesh-eating dinosaurs, the theropods. "Right now there are only three specimens that represent individuals for which we have multiple bones," says Chase Doran Brownstein, an undergraduate student at a research associate at the Stamford Museum and Nature Center. These include Cope's Dryptosaurus, as well as two other tyrannosaurs – one found identified in 2005, and the other described by Brownstein himself in 2021.

"So you can see it's like two discoveries in the last two decades, after over a hundred years of silence – nothing happening," says Brownstein.

The vast majority of recent discoveries haven't come from new digs – they were found by rummaging around in museum drawers, where some bones have been mislabelled or overlooked. "Some of these fossils have been collected decades or a century ago," says Longrich.

For now, the fossil record still conjures a scene dominated by giant 35ft-long (10.6m) hadrosaurs, and ferocious relatives of T. rex. But it turns out Dryptosaurus didn't have a full monopoly on terror, and had to share its home with Appalachiosaurus, a similar bipedal predator of unknown size.

"It's kind of a lost world that's off doing its own thing, evolving its own fauna," says Longrich.

These would have shared their tropical, rainforest home with ornithomimosaurs – feathered dinosaurs resembling ostriches that may have been mostly vegetarian. In 2022, Lindsay Zanno, a palaeontologist at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, and colleagues discovered that the ones in Appalachia were exceptionally big-boned – one 13-14 year old individual (represented by a single bone) was over three times heavier than a modern ostrich.

There was also a healthy population of unusually large tank-like dinosaurs – nodosaurs – though these were rare in Laramidia.

On the other hand, no one has ever found evidence of any giant sauropods – the group of long-necked vegetarian dinosaurs that includes Diplodocus and Brontosaurus – and scientists have only found a single tooth from a possible horned dinosaur like Triceratops.

 

Many of the dinosaur residents weren't totally original, but quirky takes on long-established groups.

In 2016, Longrich was rummaging in a drawer at Yale University's Peabody Museum when he came across something intriguing: a little piece of jawbone. It was labelled as belonging to a hadrosaur, but he immediately thought this must be a mistake – he had seen a bone like that before. It turned out to belong to a leptoceratopsian, a compact distant relative of Triceratops.

Now there's growing interest in Appalachia as an evolutionary experiment. After the Western Interior Seaway cleaved North America in two, the eastern half was utterly isolated for 27 million years. But its western counterpart had a neighbour – it was connected to Asia via an ancient land bridge.

"And what that does is creates a corridor where – I don't know if it's intermittent, or permanent – but dinosaurs can go back and forth between Asia and North America. And there's a kind of ping pong where dinosaurs evolve in Asia, move to north America, move back and vice versa," says Longrich.

But while Laramidia was engaged in a lengthy exchange programme with Asia, Appalachia was on its own, so it's thought that it may not have developed such a diverse array of dinosaurs. "We could be wrong, maybe we're just not finding these things," says Longrich.

As interest builds in the eastern continent, Longrich is optimistic that we will soon uncover more hidden fossils from this long-forgotten land. But for now, one thing is clear: America's lost continent isn't giving up its secrets just yet.