Also on today’s menu:
More Texas Book Bans
Northern Lights In New Hampshire?
Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart said he is likely to order the release of the affidavit behind the search of former president Donald Trump’s home, despite warnings from the Justice Department that its disclosure could “irreparably harm” an ongoing criminal investigation.
The affidavit establishes probable cause for the search, names witnesses to a potential crime, and lays out a likely path toward criminal prosecution. Reinhart ordered the Justice Department to prepare redactions to the affidavit that led to the Aug. 8 search by noon next Thursday, saying he had not been convinced of the necessity to keep the entire document under seal.
The government will have another chance to argue its case on Tuesday, August 25.
More Texas Book Bans
As students at the Keller Independent School District outside Fort Worth, Texas, went back to school Wednesday, much of the attention went to an email that was sent out the day before, instructing school staff to pull all copies of a list of more than 40 books from classrooms and school libraries.
Among the banned books was the graphic novel adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary, all versions of the Bible, and numerous books with LGBTQ+ themes or characters. The school board did not say why the Bible and the Anne Frank book were removed, but the list said the reason was that parents had objected to them.
Laney Hawes, a parent of four children in the district, said she understands and agrees with parents who do not want their children to read material that is inappropriate for their age, but she does not think removing the books is the right solution. “They really, really want to attack our curriculum and make sure that no social emotional learning ever enters our curriculum,” Hawes said.
Northern Lights In New Hampshire?
Bill Murtagh, the program coordinator at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center, said brilliant displays of the aurora borealis, or northern lights, may be seen from New England across the Great Lakes into northwest Oregon and Washington state next Wednesday through Friday if the clouds permit.
Auroras are created when the sun sends a burst of energy and particles toward Earth through solar flares, coronal mass ejections, or solar wind streams. Activity is expected to peak Thursday into Friday as a strong geomagnetic storm, rated G3, reaches Earth.
The displays occur when some of the solar particles collide with Earth’s magnetosphere and travel down the magnetic field lines into the upper atmosphere, where they can excite nitrogen and oxygen molecules and release photons of light.
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