News bits: A glimpse of extremist Republican governance; Tweaking the Standard Model of the universe; Etc.

We get a glimpse of extremist Republican legislators and governors in Texas governing. It is ugly. A  NYT opinion opines: 

Gov. Greg Abbott, Republican of Texas, is expected to sign a bill in the next few days that would make it immeasurably more difficult for cities in the state to govern themselves. The bill would strip cities of the ability to set standards for local workplaces, to ensure civil rights, and to improve their environments, trampling on the rights of voters who elected local officials to do just that.

The bill, recently approved by the Texas House and Senate, would nullify any city ordinance or regulation that conflicts with existing state policy in those crucial areas, and would give private citizens or businesses the right to sue and seek damages if they believe there is a discrepancy between city and state. That means no city could prohibit discrimination against L.G.B.T.Q. employees, as several Texas cities have done. No city could adopt new rules to limit predatory payday-lending practices. No city could restrict overgrown lots, or unsafe festivals, or inadequate waste storage. Cities would even be banned from enacting local worker protections, including requiring water breaks for laborers in the Texas heat, as Dallas, Austin and other cities have done following multiple deaths and injuries.

Business lobbyists and Republican legislators who have pushed the bill said its purpose was to rid the state of a patchwork of conflicting regulations.  

Already the state won’t let cities ban discrimination against low-income renters, and it prohibits them from cutting their police budgets. Dozens of other bills have been introduced to restrict election reforms by Texas cities and counties, including one that would let an official, most likely a Republican, overturn election results in a single place: largely Democratic Harris County, which includes Houston.

Common extremist Republican priorities are on display here:

1. support for discrimination against LGBTQ employees and LGBTQ people generally

2. support for predatory lending

3. opposition to and preventing dissenting local control and power

4. opposition to and intolerance of democracy and free and fair elections

Power flows to authoritarian Republican politicians and the rapacious business community. That is core GOP anti-democracy ideology.

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Poking a little hole in the Standard Model?: The Standard Model of the universe occasionally gets tweaked when an observation that violates the model pops up. Unexplained things need to be explained.  

A little violation may have popped up. This needs to be verified before we know for sure there is a violation. Using our friend, the giant atom smasher, physicists have created a Na-39 (sodium) atom that has more neutrons in it that the Standard Model can account for. The paper's abstract:

The new isotope $39\mathrm{Na}$, the most neutron-rich sodium nucleus observed so far, was discovered at the RIKEN Nishina Center Radioactive Isotope Beam Factory using the projectile fragmentation of an intense $48\mathrm{Ca}$ [calcium] beam at $345\mathrm{MeV}/\text{nucleon}$ on a beryllium target. Projectile fragments were separated and identified in flight with the large-acceptance two-stage separator BigRIPS. Nine $39\mathrm{Na}$ events [atoms] have been unambiguously observed in this work and clearly establish the particle stability of $39\mathrm{Na}$. Furthermore, the lack of observation of $35,36\mathrm{Ne}$ [neon] isotopes in this experiment significantly improves the overall confidence that $34\mathrm{Ne}$ is the neutron dripline nucleus of neon. These results provide new key information to understand nuclear binding and nuclear structure under extremely neutron-rich conditions. The newly established stability of $39\mathrm{Na}$ has a significant impact on nuclear models and theories predicting the neutron dripline and also provides a key to understanding the nuclear shell property of $39\mathrm{Na}$ at the neutron number $N=28$, which is normally a magic number.

The nuclear dripline refers to the boundary beyond which atomic nuclei can emit a proton or neutron. On other words, if there are too many protons or neutrons, the atom can emit one or more of them to make the atom more stable. Such unstable atoms leak protons or neutrons sort of like a faucet leaks water drops. 

For example, lithium-11, has four more neutrons than its heaviest stable isotope, but it has such weakly bound neutrons that it is called a halo nucleus. The least tightly-bound neutron orbits the nucleus as if it were an electron, but with a much smaller orbital radius than an electron has. An orbiting neutron is just plain nuts, right? This is really interesting stuff.

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From the Why Democracy Falls to Authoritarianism Files: Recent research suggests another factor that leads some people who claim to support democracy to support authoritarianism is fear of the opposition. A nature human behavior article comments:  

Why voters who value democracy participate in democratic backsliding

Around the world, citizens are voting away the democracies they claim to cherish. Here we present evidence that this behavior is driven in part by the belief that their opponents will undermine democracy first. In an observational study (N = 1,973), we find that US partisans are willing to subvert democratic norms to the extent that they believe opposing partisans are willing to do the same. In experimental studies (N = 2,543, N = 1,848), we revealed to partisans that their opponents are more committed to democratic norms than they think. As a result, the partisans became more committed to upholding democratic norms themselves and less willing to vote for candidates who break these norms. These findings suggest that aspiring autocrats may instigate democratic backsliding by accusing their opponents of subverting democracy and that we can foster democratic stability by informing partisans about the other side’s commitment to democracy.

Around the world, antidemocratic leaders are convincing their supporters to vote away their political rights. While 78% of the world’s population reports wanting to live in a representative democracy, democracies continue to erode, with 70% of the population living in autocracies. Citizens in Venezuela, Turkey and Hungary strongly endorsed democracy while casting votes for authoritarian leaders Chávez, Erdoğan and Orbán, respectively. In fact, in Venezuela, citizens who claimed to support democracy the most were no more likely to vote for a democratic candidate.  

The puzzle deepens when one considers that the modal form of autocratization today is democratic backsliding, in which democracies die a slow death, leaving years for a democracy-loving public to hold their representatives accountable. Why, then, is democracy slipping away from so many citizens across various regions, cultures and socio-economic conditions?  

In the US context, Donald Trump spread misinformation about Democrats subverting democracy from the start. Early in his 2016 campaign, his website stated, “Help Me Stop Crooked Hillary from Rigging this Election!”. Throughout the 2016 campaign, he repeated, “This is a rigged election”. These accusations continued through the 2020 election, and Fox News amplified this message, repeatedly proclaiming the existence of “an all-out effort to depress and suppress the pro-Trump vote”.

Once again the power of dark free speech to attack and kill democracy is on display in the research data. Authoritarian Republicans, including most Christian nationalist elites and brass knuckles capitalist elites, openly support laws that are intended to suppress non-Republican votes and/or to subvert inconvenient election results. Republicans have firmly convinced most of its rank and file that Democrats want to impose a corrupt, atheistic, socialist tyranny on America. That sounds a lot like aspiring corrupt Republican autocrats instigating democratic backsliding by accusing their Democratic Party opponents of subverting democracy. 

Lest we forget, despite their deflections and vehement denials most Republican Party elites in congress and/or state governments include these authoritarian policies among their high priority goals:

1. Opposed amending the Electoral Count Act, which tried to prevent another 1/6 coup attempt 

2. Support limiting voting rights and/or subverting elections where a Democrat wins

3. Support limiting abortion rights

4. Supported, justified and normalized the corruption, disrespectful vulgarity, crimes and treason of Trump

5. Oppose efforts to accept or deal with climate change despite overwhelming contrary public opinion

6. Persecution and oppression of the LGBQT community

What corresponding horrors do most Democratic Party elites support?

1. Amending the Electoral Count Act 

2. Defense of voting rights and opposition to subverting elections regardless of who won

3. Abortion rights

4. Punishment of the corruption, disrespectful vulgarity, crimes and treason of Trump

5. Efforts to deal reasonably with climate change in accord with overwhelming public support

6. The LGBQT community