7 stories to know: Trump’s cruelty, Russia’s fake news, and python meat

“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 takes 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 willingness to mock disabilities is his most disgusting trait

The list of Donald Trump’s personal detestables is long, but at the very top of that list may be how he believes mocking people’s disabilities is a perfectly acceptable form of humor. It was a feature of his 2016 campaign, such as when he cruelly mocked a New York Times reporter’s physical disability, and it continues through Daily Kos’ Jessica Sutherland’s weekend report on how Trump has made mocking President Joe Biden’s stutter part of his regular schtick at campaign rallies. That follows earlier instances in which Trump also claimed that Biden was senile and mocked him by pretending to totter around the stage. 

Voters in 2016 found Trump’s willingness to mock the disabled his most objectionable trait. It even made the 2017 Golden Globes broadcast, when no less than actor Meryl Streep blasted Trump for a “performance” that was intended to make the audience “laugh and show their teeth.”

Trump’s mocking of disabilities “kind of broke my heart,” Streep said.

But what do Trump’s fans think when they’re laughing along with their man as he openly mocks physical and mental disabilities? This past week, The Atlantic reporter John Hendrickson visited a Trump rally to ask. What he found was a long cascade of the same things Trump fans display when confronted by anything their candidate does, whether it’s instigating insurrection or lifting rhetoric from Adolf Hitler—a toxic combination of denial and justification.

Naturally, Hendrickson found plenty of Trump supporters who prove only how right Hillary Clinton was in 2016. 

“Trump is a good man,” Miller said. “He’s not perfect. Biden is not handicapped. He’s just an ass, and he does not care about this country.” She went on, “If Trump made fun of Biden, well, like I said, he’s not perfect, but it wasn’t about a disability. It was about how he has made this country dysfunctional, not disabled.”

A bit later, she told me that “Biden doesn’t stutter; he’s mentally incapable of running this country.”

The same person who made those comments expressed her sympathy for why Hendrickson, who has a stutter, might be concerned. Then went right back to blaming the media for mentioning the issue while defending Trump.

2. First pig-to-human kidney transplant offers hope for the future

The scientific journal Nature reported Friday on the first transplant of a pig kidney into a living person. The patient is a 62-year-old suffering end-stage renal failure, and he’s said to be recovering well following surgery on March 16.

The kidney was taken from a miniature pig carrying a record 69 genomic edits, which were aimed at preventing rejection of the donated organ and reducing the risk that a virus lurking in the organ could infect the recipient.

Kidney’s are the most transplanted organ, but even with thousands of successful operations each year, over 3,000 Americans die each year while waiting for a kidney transplant, according to Nature. (This situation is not helped by U.S. standards, which mean that donor kidneys that would be transplanted successfully in other nations are routinely discarded in America, leaving some patients unaware that transplant teams turned down multiple opportunities).

The pigs are the product of biotech firm eGenesis. It’s hoped that this kind of “xenotransplantation” can open the door to an era of abundant, readily available replacement organs without requiring donations from other humans. The current system of organ collection and allocation is often marked by inefficiency and controversy. 

Between 2022 and 2023, a pair of men suffering terminal heart disease accepted transplants of hearts from gene-edited pigs produced by a different company. However, both men died within two months of receiving these cross-species transplants.

3. Can a local politician jail their political opponent?

Donald Trump may frequently accuse President Joe Biden of misusing the legal system, but in Texas, a mayor appears to have done exactly that, using the local police to launch an investigation into a city council member and eventually charging her with a crime so rare, no one was able to find another instance. As CNN reported this past Wednesday, Sylvia Gonzalez was in only her second meeting as a newly elected member of the Castle Hills, Texas, city council when a police officer tapped her on the shoulder and she was soon arrested for “stealing a government document” at that meeting.

As Reason reporter Billy Binion makes clear, the circumstances behind Gonzalez’s arrest had little to do with anything going on in that meeting and a lot to do with an effort by the people in power at Castle Hills to punish an outsider who ran a campaign calling for their removal.

According to CNN, members of the Supreme Court seemed to struggle to find grounds that would allow Gonzalez to sue Mayor J.R. Trevino. That’s because the mayor is possibly protected by the same “qualified immunity” that is often cited as protecting police officers who engage in violence.

In some ways, this case is a miniature version of Trump’s claim to “absolute immunity,” which the Supreme Court is also hearing. But the ruling in the Gonzalez case could have even broader consequences when it comes to how public officials may be held accountable for their actions.

4. New drugs and techniques decrease risk of stroke from afib

The form of irregular heartbeat known as atrial fibrillation, or “afib,” can greatly increase the risk of stroke or heart attack due to blood clots. To fight this, patients are often prescribed blood thinners, such as warfarin. Unfortunately, those drugs come with a list of side effects that can make long-term use questionable. While some studies suggest that these drugs should be prescribed more often, with the benefits outweighing the risks, the bleeding risk from long-term use has made many physicians reluctant to prescribe these drugs and many patients reluctant to use them, even in situations where they may be warranted.

Now, as The Wall Street Journal reported this past Thursday, a new class of blood thinners is emerging that offers the benefits without the bleeding.

The challenge is this: The body generates two types of clots—good ones that plug holes in blood vessels to stop bleeding caused by external injuries, and bad ones that grow inside arteries and veins. These can block blood flow to critical organs, potentially leading to injury or death.

For decades, drugs developed to prevent the bad clots have targeted proteins involved in forming both types of clots. As a result, preventing clots often comes at the price of a higher risk of bleeding, causing many patients to refuse to take, or stop taking, the medicine.

All of these drugs are still in trial, but the results look promising.

5. While journalism is hurting, fake news is growing—thanks to Russia

Most of the media focus on Russian interference in the 2016 election centered on how dictato Vladimir Putin’s government had regular contact with the Trump campaign. But there were other ways in which Russia provided Trump with an edge, including influential Russian “bots” on social media and hundreds of fake-news outlets, many of which masqueraded as local media sites.

Now it’s happening again. As The New York Times reported on March 7, new outlets like “D.C. Weekly, the New York News Daily, the Chicago Chronicle and a newer sister publication, the Miami Chronicle” are popping up on the internet in 2024. But they’re not the product of local news teams or even a national syndicate. 

In fact, they are not local news organizations at all. They are Russian creations, researchers and government officials say, meant to mimic actual news organizations to push Kremlin propaganda by interspersing it among an at-times odd mix of stories about crime, politics and culture.

These purported news sources are often picked up by Russia’s network of social media trolls, giving their posts the illusion of having some factual basis. And a casual reader can easily mistake these sites, or merely posts derived from these sites, as having some support by a real news organization.

6. A new solution to a ravenous python invasion: Eat them

For years, Florida has suffered from an invasion by Burmese pythons. These snakes, which first appeared in the state after escapes from pet breeders and from individual snakes released by owners overwhelmed after their pet grew to enormous size, have disrupted ecosystems all over the state. That includes consuming over 99% of the raccoon population in some areas. The snakes can get large enough to eat the state’s small deer and even adult alligators. 

But an article in Forbes on Friday suggests that there may be a solution for all those rogue snakes beyond just trapping contests and snake rodeos. 

An international team of researchers conducted a 12-month study at two commercial python farms in Southeast Asia and found that the snakes are remarkably efficient at converting food into weight gain compared to more traditional livestock such as chickens, pigs and cattle. Further, farmed pythons grow rapidly, even when they are inconsistently fed.

Pythons are very efficient at converting food into meat, can consume other pest and invasive species, and gain weight even when fed irregularly. They also offer significant advantages over traditional livestock when it comes to area required and the difficulty of care.

The article doesn’t say anything about the taste.

7. Mark Rober’s latest is a wheelchair like no other

If you’re unfamiliar with YouTuber Mark Rober, you’ve been missing out. While some of Rober’s videos are simply exuberant celebrations of amateur science experiments taken to a ridiculous degree, others are simply astounding examples of how technology can be genuinely helpful.

The best videos combine Rober’s love of engineering, Wonka-esque whimsy, and a genuine love for the people he meets. For example …