The White House confirms that Trump reassigned a senior National Security Council adviser after he disagreed with the president’s Latin American policy, and South Sudan becomes the first country in six years to announce a famine.
—The government of South Sudan said some 100,000 of its people are facing starvation, and on Monday it became the first country to declare a famine in six years.
—The White House confirmed that Trump reassigned a senior National Security Council aide after he disagreed with the president’s policies for Latin America.
—We’re tracking the news stories of the day below. All updates are in Eastern Standard Time (GMT -5).
Trump Picks Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster as National Security Adviser
Kevin Lamarque / Reuters
President Donald Trump named Army Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster as his new national security adviser on Monday. McMaster is a well-respected Army officer who is also known for his scholarly work. His 1997 book, Dereliction of Duty, examined former-President Lyndon B. Johnson and the Joint Chief of Staff’s missteps and indecisiveness during the Vietnam War. He was also a critic of the Iraq War, in which he served. He led the 2005 counterinsurgency in the north of Iraq to secure Tal Afar, and was instrumental to the strategy used by General David Patraeus and that was credited with turning around the war. Foreign Policy magazine called McMaster “the brain behind Patraeus.”
Last week, Trump’s first pick for the job, Michael Flynn, stepped down from the position after reports showed he had misled the vice president about the nature of a conversation he had with the Russian ambassador. Trump then offered the position to retired retired Navy Vice Admiral Robert Harward, who turned the position down, reportedly because of the chaos inside the White House. McMaster is widely respected with the military. Some of his work may serve him particularly well; he recently led a high-level panel on how the Army should respond to Russia’s new posture, Politico reports. And in Derelection of Duty, he criticized Johnson for being “profoundly insecure and distrustful of anyone but his closest civilian advisers,” a description critics have applied to the current president, as well.
The Russian ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Ivanovich Churkin, died in New York City on Monday a day before his 65th birthday. Russia’s deputy U.N. ambassador told the Associated Press that Churkin was ill and taken to the hospital, although the cause of the illness is not known at this time. Churkin has been envoy to the UN for more than a decade. He has been a fierce defender of Russia’s foreign policies, including the intensive bombing Syrian rebels in Aleppo last year.
Trump Dismisses a Senior NSC Advisor for Criticising Administration Policy
Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP
The White House confirmed on Monday that President Donald Trump reassigned a senior National Security Council (NSC) adviser after he criticized the administration’s Latin American policy. The advisor, Craig Deare, was removed and sent back to his former role, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said Monday. Deare had been assigned to the NSC by the administration, and while at a private meeting hosted by the Woodrow Wilson Center, a Washington think tank, he harshly criticized the president and top aides like Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, and complained of the dysfunction in the White House, POLITICOreported. Deare also allegedly recounted an embarrassing call Trump had with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. Deare was appointed to the NSC by the Trump administration, and his release is just the latest example of the chaos being reported within the Trump White House. Last week, Trump dismissed his national security adviser, Michael Flynn, after it was revealed he misled the vice president about the nature of his conversation with the Russian ambassador.
South Sudan Becomes the First Country in Six Years to Declare Famine
Siegfried Modola / Reuters
More than 100,000 people in South Sudan face starvation, and on Monday it became the first country in six years to declare a famine. An ethnic conflict, which started three years ago, has driven people from their homes in some northern parts of the country, and combined with a failing economy, and drought, it has led to severe food instability. The famine so far has been contained to the northern areas of the country, but it’s expected to grow much worse this summer, and could possibly impact 5.5 million people, or about half the country’s population. A famine is only declared when a certain criteria is met. It requires at least 20 percent of homes facing extreme food shortages, and malnutrition rates of more than 30 percent. There is no binding obligation from UN member countries, but declaring famine often rallies relief groups to help deliver aid and brings international attention. South Sudan is one of Africa’s most unstable countries. It broke off from Sudan in 2011, and after a couple years of peace, the country has erupted in violence, with thousands of rebel factions fighting one another, often putting civilians in the middle.
As their goosebumps have long suggested, women perform better on tests of cognitive function at toastier room temperatures.
If “I told you so” had a sensation, it would be the sweet cocoon of an 80-degree workspace. For years, women have been saying that the AC is on too damn high. We’ve dragged not one but two sweaters to the office in the summer: one for our slowly numbing legs, and one for our shivering shoulders. Scientific studies have already shown that offices are set for men’s frostier preferred temperatures.
Now a new paper confirms what many of us have long suspected. Women don’t just prefer warmer office temperatures. They perform better in them, too.
For the study, published today in the journal PLOS One, the researchers Tom Chang and Agne Kajackaite had 543 college students in Berlin take different types of tests in a room set to various temperatures between 61 and 91 degrees Fahrenheit. First, the participants had to answer logic problems, like the one about a bat costing $1 more than a ball. Then, the students were asked to add up two-digit numbers without a calculator. Finally, they had to form German words out of the letter scramble ADEHINRSTU.
Out with the kitchen table, and in with the couch.
According to a recent survey of more than 1,000 American adults, the table is becoming a less and less popular surface to eat on. Nearly three-quarters of those surveyed said they grew up typically eating dinner at a kitchen table, but a little less than half said they do so now when eating at home.
Where are they dining instead? The couch and the bedroom are both far more popular now than in the respondents’ youth. Thirty percent of the survey takers cited the couch as their primary at-home eating location, and 17 percent took meals in the bedroom. To put it another way, the number of respondents who most often eat at a kitchen table nowadays is roughly the same as the number who eat either on the couch or in their bedroom.
If mothers and fathers speak openly about child-care obligations, their colleagues will adapt.
I’m an economist. I love data and evidence. I love them so much that I write books about data-based parenting. When questions arise about how to support parents at work (for example, from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter), my first impulse is to endorse paid parental leave. Mountains of data and evidence show that paid leave is good for children’s health, and for mothers in particular. I am more than comfortable making a data-based case for this policy.
But experience, rather than pure data, leads me to believe that what happens after paid leave is nearly as crucial—that is to say, what happens when Mom and Dad return to the office. We need to normalize the experience of parenting while working.
Applying to schools has become an endless chore—one that teaches students nothing about what really matters in higher education.
The crazed pursuit of college admissions helps no one thrive. And while the Varsity Blues admissions scandal shines a light on families that break the rules, it’s time to consider the unhappiness of families that play by them. While competition for seats may be inevitable, students scramble to do ever more to get into college—and give away more of their childhood to do so. This competition might seem a problem only for middle class and wealthy families. But students of modest means suffer most when applying to college becomes an endless list of tasks requiring time and other resources.
As the CEO of the College Board, I see this arms race up close. We administer the SAT, a test that helps admissions officers assess the reading, writing, and math skills of students across the country and around the world. We also administer the Advanced Placement program, which helps students earn credit for college-level work they do while in high school. We know these tools to be useful, but we also see how they can contribute to the arms race. The College Board can and will do more to limit the excesses—more on that below—but there is more at stake than which tests kids take or don’t take.
John Walker Lindh was the first American to face charges related to the War on Terror. Dozens have followed.
John Walker Lindh, the “American Taliban,” is leaving prison. When the young Californian began serving his sentence for the crime of supporting the group—nearly two decades ago—he was 21, and America was fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan as part of the post-9/11 War on Terror. Now, the United States is holding negotiations with the group to try to get troops out of the country, and has even considered paying Taliban emissaries’ expenses to get to peace talks.
Lindh’s incarceration has spanned nearly the entirety of America’s post-9/11 wars. Early on, many Americans saw him as the face of terror, even though he was never convicted of plotting attacks against them. He had joined the Taliban in the summer of 2001, months before the U.S. was at war with the group, to help it fight in its own civil war. He had stayed with the group after 9/11, and had been present at a prisoner uprising that killed the 32-year-old CIA officer Johnny Micheal Spann, the first American to die in the new war. By then, George W. Bush had declared that the U.S. would make no distinction between al-Qaeda, bin Laden’s international terrorist network that had perpetrated the 9/11 attacks, and the Taliban, the Islamist fundamentalist government in Afghanistan that had sheltered al-Qaeda while it plotted. Americans were shocked to see one of their own on the other side.
The former White House counsel helped stock the federal courts with conservative judges. Now multiple lawsuits involving Trump are headed there.
Loyalty is something President Donald Trump demands, but doesn’t necessarily return. Just ask ex–White House Counsel Don McGahn.
In recent weeks, the president has turned on his former lawyer for making some of the most explosive claims about Trump’s conduct in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report. “Never a big fan!” Trump tweeted earlier in May, suggesting he had been tempted to fire McGahn. Just this week, he barred McGahn from testifying to the House Judiciary Committee about what he saw and heard inside the White House.
But McGahn’s service may have been more valuable to Trump than he realizes—it could even wind up prolonging his presidency.
Because Trump never saw McGahn as a confidant—because he didn’t look to him much for legal advice—McGahn had more time and space to pursue a pet project: stocking the courts with conservative judges, former White House aides told me. And with multiple lawsuits threatening Trump’s interests wending their way through the courts, federal judges hold enormous sway over the president’s fate.
Disney’s live-action remake of the 1992 animated classic is a special-effects-laden extravaganza that comes off as clumsy and half-hearted.
Disney’s 1992 classic Aladdin is one of the greatest cinematic arguments for the storytelling potential of animation, which is perfectly expressed through the character of Genie. As voiced by Robin Williams and renderedin two dimensions, he’s a slapstick genius who can conjure anything, appear in any shape or size, and gleefully defy the laws of physics. For years, animation was the only way such a fantastic character could exist on-screen, but in 2019, visual effects have advanced enough that audiences can see a gigantic blue version of Will Smith try to give the same performance. Technological progress has clearly gone too far.
Guy Ritchie’s live-action remake of Aladdin, the latest in a long line of Disney revivals of its own greatest works, existsin the same nostalgic sphere as recent hits such asBeauty and the Beast and The Jungle Book. It’s a garish,special-effects-laden extravaganza that still manages to feel tossed-off and half-hearted. The film isentirely devoted to the property it’s adapting, but its mimicry underlines just how pale an imitation it is. The only participant really trying to energize the project is Smith, who—poor man—has to spend much of his screen time transformed into a rubbery CGI monstrosity who’s impossible to take seriously.
Some American women see giving up their babies as more emotionally painful than terminating their pregnancies.
Along the highways of states where support for abortion is at its lowest, it’s not uncommon to see road signs that say choose adoption and similar messages. The signs capture a preferred anti-abortion retort to outcries over abortion restrictions, like the kind Georgia and Alabama just passed: Women with unwanted pregnancies should find adoptive families.
Adoption is a choice that certain women who don’t wish to keep their babies enter into happily. Some women find abortion to be anathema and rule it out among their options for an unwanted pregnancy. And for women considering abortion who ultimately settle on adoption, the process often benefits everyone involved.
Of course, adoption is not a reasonable option for all pregnant women. Some girls and women would imperil their health if they carried a baby to term. Many pro-abortion-rights people believe it is immoral to compel a woman to carry a pregnancy she does not want, especially if that pregnancy is a result of rape or incest. And some studies show that abortion is medically safer than childbirth.
I own three pairs of noise-canceling headphones. Two go over my ears, enveloping them in cozy tombs of silence. One pair consists of earbuds, one of which I jam into my ear to block out the world while I use my other ear for phone interviews. Besides the noise-canceling kind, I have headphones for basically every activity I do. In fact, I recently came to the disturbing realization that there’s rarely a moment of my day when my ears are not filled with or covered by something.
Like many other Americans, I now wear AirPods all day at my desk to combat the awful tyranny of the open office. Since they don’t cancel noise, they provide me with writing music while allowing me to listen up for my bosses. I don’t like exercise classes and their preselected, generic playlists, so instead I work out with headphones and listen to my own special running mix, the contents of which can be disclosed only upon my death. (Let’s just say the dream of the ’90s is alive on my Spotify.) I like to listen to podcasts while I cook, so the earbuds come in handy while I chop and sauté. And I can hook up headphones to a Roku when I want to watch a depressing foreign TV show and my boyfriend wants to do literally anything else.
Certain stars have a history distinct from all the others around them.
We are made of star stuff, as Carl Sagan told us. The first stars ignited billions of years ago, out of the cold, primordial gas in the dark universe. The stars blazed until they exploded in bursts powerful enough to forge heavy chemical elements. The process repeated itself, over and over, all across space. The new elements found their way into other stars, and then planets, and, eventually, life.
It’s a remarkable cosmic tale, with a recent twist. Some of the stardust has managed to become sentient, work out its own history, and use that knowledge to better understand the stars.
Astronomers know stars so well, in fact, that they can tell when one doesn’t belong—when it’s migrated to our galaxy from a completely different one.
