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In 2020, as for so many people, things shifted for Jessica Reed Kraus. A southern-California based lifestyle blogger who got her start writing about motherhood, Kraus felt dubious about COVID safety measures and vaccines, and disaffected from mainstream liberal politics. With her photogenic world upended, she wanted to talk about natural immunity and her objection to “vax cards,” she later wrote, and how they would “eliminate portions of society from general aspects of life.” When she did, she wrote that she was branded “an anti-vax Qanon nutjob which made me overly defensive.” Kraus has a million Instagram followers, and her Substack is top-ranked in the platform’s culture category. The pandemic ushered in a new focus, a transition from posts about decorating her gorgeous Southern California home—once featured on Martha Stewart’s Instagram—and her Etsy business helping others make similarly tasteful purchases; the most popular items were canvas teepees for children.

Last Saturday, tens of thousands of Christians gathered under the blazing October sun on the National Mall in Washington, DC, for an all-day prayer rally that organizers called the “Esther Call on the Mall.” While the crowd raised their hands in testimony, waved flags, and sang along with mega-church standards, the speakers paced the stage urgently, speaking, sometimes screaming, about a spiritual war for the soul of the United States.

When the US Department of Health and Human Services finalized a rule in May asserting that gender dysphoria can be considered a disability under federal anti-discrimination laws, it codified what the overwhelming majority of courts have found for nearly a decade. The new rule put states on notice: Discrimination against transgender people in employment, education, health care, child care, housing, and elsewhere may violate federal disability protections, and the Biden administration was prepared to fight it. Now, in a lawsuit led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, 17 states are asking a federal court to strike down the rule in its entirety, including numerous provisions that have nothing to do with trans people.

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. It begins each day at nightfall. As the light disappears, billions of zooplankton, crustaceans and other marine organisms rise to the ocean surface to feed on microscopic algae, returning to the depths at sunrise.

“The smaller the mind the greater the conceit.” — Aesop

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