“7 stories to know” is a new Monday series showcasing stories that may have been ignored in the crush of news over the past few weeks, and stories that have continued to evolve over the weekend. Expect to read coverage about health, science, and climate that frequently take second chair to what’s happening at the top of the page, plus information from local sources that the national media may have overlooked.
1. Trump’s hush money trial begins
Last week, Donald Trump struck out in his efforts to delay his trial for funneling hush money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. With his legal team going 0-4, as of Friday, in last-minute attempts to shift the location of the trial, disqualify the judge, or give Trump a pass to skip the courtroom for the campaign trail, it now seems that jury selection in the case will begin in the Manhattan courtroom of Judge Juan Merchan on Monday morning.
While pundits have argued that the hush money case is the least important of the four criminal trials Trump faces, a Reuters/Ipsos poll shows that voters don’t see it that way: 64% of registered voters described the charges as serious, including nearly 40% of Republicans. Only 34% of voters said they didn’t believe the charges were serious.
As The Washington Post reported last week, the case is about more than just whether or not Trump paid off Daniels. It’s already clear that he did. What’s technically at stake in the New York trial is 34 charges of falsifying business records to cover up those payments.
However, based on a letter to counsel Merchan wrote last week about jury selection, this trial could cover some of the same issues of election interference that are at the center of a federal trial currently held up by Trump’s claims of immunity and a Georgia trial that has been delayed by attacks on the prosecutors.
As the Post notes, Merchan isn’t rewriting the charges against Trump, but in his letter, the judge makes it clear that looking at how these crimes may have affected a razor-thin electoral victory is within the scope of this trial. This could expand the range of issues and testimony and mean that some of the issues in those other trials get a preview in Merchan’s courtroom.
Whatever happens at trial, this is the first time in history that a former president of the United States has gone to trial on criminal charges. That alone makes this a historic event. A sad, disgraceful, ugly historic event.
It may not be the trial everyone wanted to see first, but it’s the trial we’re getting. And, depending on the response of the U.S. Supreme Court on the question of federal immunity and other delays in the schedule, it could be the only criminal trial Trump faces before the 2024 election.
New York state prohibits recording of court proceedings, so the trial will not be televised.
2. Multiple studies seek a cure for long COVID
Few viral diseases have just one short-term effect on a person who becomes infected. Viruses reproduce by hijacking the machinery of cells and using it to reproduce their own RNA or DNA. This process is far from perfect. About 8% of the average person’s DNA is thought to come from fragments of viruses that left their stamp on humans and human ancestors over millions of years.
That messiness is just one of the reasons that viral diseases often come with what’s known as sequela, pathological conditions that may not show up until years after the initial infection. Well-known examples include how the varicella-zoster virus behind chickenpox can also trigger shingles decades later. Or how the Epstein-Barr virus causes both mononucleosis and a seemingly endless list of other conditions, including several forms of cancer.
It’s already clear that in addition to the immediate flu-like symptoms of COVID-19, the SARS-CoV-2 virus causes several sequelae soon after initial infection, many of these conditions have been grouped under the term “long COVID.”
Just like Epstein-Barr and varicella-zoster, scientists suspect that one of the ways that SARS-CoV-2 drives these long-term conditions is by simply not going away. Now, as Science reports, a series of clinical trials are being conducted to root out viral “reservoirs” that may exist in various areas of the body.
At the moment, these clinical trials are both few and small. However, they could be critical to understanding how the virus behind COVID-19 causes some people to endure months or years of lingering effects, and how to better clear the virus from our systems. Such studies could be important in preventing whatever might be the SARS-CoV-2 equivalent of shingles or cancer.
And so doctors labor alongside an advancing science, braiding discoveries into trials as they come. The trials, in turn, hunt not only for treatments, but also for signatures of Long Covid in the blood or elsewhere, which could guide future studies. The pressure is immense. [Shelley] Hayden, [a patient participating in a study], knows fellow sufferers who say they’ve considered suicide but are holding off while waiting for results of the trial she’s part of. But for the first time, she’s hopeful that answers are on the horizon.
3. Checking your neighborhood’s nature score
Many people are familiar with one or more measures of “walkability score” that are used to determine how easy it is to get from one’s home to stores, entertainment, and other vital needs without climbing into a car. For those who live in urban food deserts, suburban neighborhoods where sidewalks are a neglected afterthought, or rural spots where all services are miles away, the scores can be disappointing.
But that walkability score doesn’t include everything, and some of the places that score poorly on that index might get a touch of revenge from the results at The Washington Post’s “nature score.”
“There’s a really, really strong case for proximity to nature influencing health in a really big way,” said Jared Hanley, the co-founder and CEO of NatureQuant, an Oregon start-up whose mission is to discover what kind of nature best supports human health, map where it is and persuade people to spend more time in it.
Using satellite imagery and data on dozens of factors — including air and noise pollution, park space, open water and tree canopy — NatureQuant has distilled the elements of health-supporting nature into a single variable called NatureScore.
Before you move into that next apartment, maybe it’s worth getting both a walk score and a nature score. The walkability score at my house is zero, but I got a 97 on the NatureScore.
4. One city has done public transport well. Why can’t they spread the wealth?
For the better part of a century, the only answer to any question of transportation in America has been to throw another highway at it. The last trolley clang-clang-clanged through St. Louis in 1966, light rail projects are regularly canceled or delayed, and the city of New Orleans has been singing those “disappearing railroad blues” since 1971.
As Abdallah Fayyad at Vox points out, even if they get built, many proposed transportation solutions fall victim to a “vicious cycle” in which budgets are slashed, services are reduced, and ridership falls, resulting in budgets being slashed. And the process repeats until the whole system collapses.
But one American city has a system that’s not just successful, it’s a highlight of any visit. Tucker Carlson may have been wowed by the Moscow subway, but maybe he—and Republican politicians—should be looking to replicate a solution that’s much closer to home where Washington D.C.’s Metro system has made good use of pandemic funds.
WMATA’s strategy has been successful so far: In February, ridership across the system was at 83 percent of pre-pandemic levels, and DC has now seen a faster transit recovery than any other major metro area with a comparable public transportation network.
If only Joe Biden wasn’t the only politician who bothered to climb on a train, maybe the Senate would be more interested in funding public transit and less interested in getting VIP treatment at airports.
5. Maine Republican says mass shooting was God’s retribution
Republicans have blamed gun violence on trans people, single parents, and a “need to return to God.” With that in mind, what happened in Maine last week seems like nothing more than the next logical step in the evolution of the Republican position on mass shootings.
As the Bangor Daily News reports, Republican state Rep. Michael Lemelin took to the floor during debate on a bill to protect abortion rights.
On the House floor, Lemelin said this year’s bill came from “Lucifer himself.” He went on to call abortion “murder” and said “transgender is a slap in God’s face.” He then noted that last year’s abortion law took effect on Oct. 25, the same day as the shooting that killed 18 people and injured another 13 at a Lewiston bowling alley and bar.
“God heard you, and the horrible events on Oct. 25 happened,” Lemelin said.
The lawmaker was ruled out of order, but not before another Republican rose to say she agreed with everything he said. Mass shooters as instruments of God’s vengeance seems just … perfect. Think of all the thoughts and prayers they’ll save with this one.
6. Coming soon to a road near you: a climate makeover
Florida, meth gator capital of America, spent this last week getting rid of climate change. As in, lawmakers voted to remove the term “climate change” from existing laws. They also outlawed offshore wind energy, probably because they heard Donald Trump talk about how it murders whales.
The bill, sponsored by state Rep. Bobby Payne, a Republican from Palatka in north-central Florida, would strike eight references to climate change in current state laws, leaving just seven untouched, according to the Tampa Bay Times. Some of the bill’s proposed language tweaks are minor, but others repeal whole sections of laws.
For example, it would eliminate a green government grant program that helps cities and school districts cut their carbon emissions. A 2008 policy stating that Florida is at the front lines of climate change and can reduce those impacts by cutting emissions would be replaced with a new goal: providing “an adequate, reliable, and cost-effective supply of energy for the state in a manner that promotes the health and welfare of the public and economic growth.”
But even residents in the Don’t Say Climate Change state should prepare themselves, because the federal government is moving in with $830 million in grants to address infrastructure threatened by climate change. And according to The Verge, that includes eight projects totaling $119 million for Florida, which is heavily threatened by, that’s right, climate change.
The biggest chunk of money — $621 million — is earmarked for other types of “resilience improvement.” That includes 36 projects aimed at making roadways, bridges, and other transportation infrastructure more impervious to flooding, rising temperatures, and other consequences of climate change.
7. The biggest crisis you never heard of may be solved
Unless you’re a fan of astronomy, you might never have heard about what’s literally the biggest crisis in the universe because it’s about the size, age, and structure of the universe.
To put it very simply, several years ago, scientists developed two different methods for measuring the scale of the universe and determining how rapidly the universe has expanded at different times in the past. One involves looking at our model of the whole universe, including the fine structure of the background radiation left over from the Big Bang. The other involves using stars known as “standard candles” to measure the distance and velocity of nearby galaxies.In early measures, the numbers were in fairly good agreement, but as measures have improved, rather than coming together around a single number, they’ve moved further and further apart. This has generated what’s known as
Desperate astrophysicists have been hoping that results from surveys by the James Webb Space Telescope might finally throw them a lifeline, and now it seems that this might have happened. But mostly this is just an excuse to introduce you to British astrophysicist and science communicator Dr. Becky Smethurst.