We’re Still Here!
Dear Reader,
Happy Hump Day!
Before we get to this week’s top stories on the world’s most pressing health and environmental disparities, I’d like to invite you to join our friends at The Uproot Project for an evening in San Francisco, featuring our Editor-at-Large Kang-Chun Cheng:
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Alex Ip
Publisher and Editor
🍑 A SOUTHERN FLAIR
GEORGIA — Meet the PSC Candidates Fighting to Lower Georgia Electric Bills (Chauncey Alcorn, Capital B Atlanta)
“Black voters in particular are concerned about where these data centers are going … and ultimately whether or not the data centers are going to make their bills go up,” Brionté McCorkle, executive director of Georgia Conservation Voters, a group that specializes in mobilizing Black voters on environmental justice issues, told Capital B Atlanta on Wednesday.
‘Super’ El Niño (mostly) quashed hurricane season in Florida. What about winter? (Alex Harris, The Miami Herald)
“We live in a completely different climate system due to fossil-fuel-driven climate change. This is a signal of what we’re going to see more of in the future,” said [Marc Alessi, a climate scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists].
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Epiphany on a Plane (Allen Paul and Mack Paul for The Assembly)
🟠 TRACKING TRUMP
The Unseen Toll: Depression, Anxiety Plague Black Women a Year After Being Fired by DOGE (Lottie Joiner, MindSite News)
“At its lowest point in April 2025, employment was almost 50% reduced for Black women, with little effect for other groups,” [University of Maryland labor economist Brandon] Enriquez noted, although there was a partial rebound in subsequent months.
Scammers Are Stealing Millions From Food Stamp Recipients. Congress Could Fix It — but Won’t. (Eli Hager, ProPublica)
The main thing Congress has done about SNAP theft is to abandon a previous effort to help victims. The federal government had, since late 2022, been replacing people’s stolen funds, just as banks are required to do if your debit card is hacked. As a result, 753,929 households were compensated.
In December 2024, a bipartisan spending agreement that included a provision to extend these reimbursements through 2028 was on the brink of becoming law. But Elon Musk, who had been named a leader of the new Department of Government Efficiency, attacked the legislation more than 100 times on X, pushing to “defund everything.” (Musk did not reply to a request for comment.) Trump then sank the deal. Victims of SNAP theft can no longer get any of their benefits replaced. And with the government off the hook for losses, there is now less incentive to put money into the solution.
Measles is surging in the US. These graphics show how bad it has gotten (Jonathan Poet, Phil Holm, and Peter Hamlin, Associated Press)
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🗺️ WHAT ELSE WE'RE READING
Americans trust science more than peers around the world, survey shows (soft paywall) (Nicholas Florko, STAT)
According to STAT’s analysis there was, on average, a 5 percentage point gap between the percentage of religious and non-religious people in high-income nations who said science benefits most people in their country. In the United States that gap was 24 percentage points.
Exposure to Gun Violence Can Accelerate Biological Age, Study Finds (Fairriona Magee, The Trace)
“It’s very easy for folks to say, ‘Well, this doesn’t directly affect me and doesn’t directly affect a lot of people,’ when in fact, we know from studies like this — and many that preceded this — that those early life exposures, where living in close proximity to where an incident of gun violence happens, can have real long-term implications for young people as they age,” said Julia Fleckman, an author of the study and an associate public health professor at Washington University in St. Louis.
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Heat stress growing with targets, strain on workers (Sineat Yon and Danielle Keeton-Olsen, Mekong Independent)
Dangerous temperature and humidity conditions are now a reality in Cambodia. The annual number of days at 35 C or higher in Phnom Penh increased from 35 days in the late 2000s to 112 days in the years between 2020 and 2024, according to a July report, Mitigating Heat Stress in the Garment, Footwear and Travel Goods Sector, published by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ).
Liberals Can't Address the Climate Crisis Because It Means Confronting Capitalism (Genevieve Guenther, Current Affairs)
We already have the technological and behavioral solutions we need to live affluent, modern lives without coal, oil, and gas. The core problem is that the phaseout of fossil fuels would catalyze a serious financial and lifestyle shock to the richest among us. But as a trade-off it would also raise people’s real incomes, making the vast majority of us better off.
Women ‘more likely to be told autoimmune conditions are psychological’ (Andrew Gregory, The Guardian)
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