PICKS are stories from many sources, selected by our editors or recommended by our readers because they are important, surprising, troubling, enlightening, inspiring, or amusing. They appear on our site and in our daily newsletter. Please send suggested articles, videos, podcasts, etc. to picks@whowhatwhy.org.
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The Spring Equinox Is Here. What Does That Mean? (Maria)
The author writes, “The vernal equinox arrives on Thursday, marking the start of the spring season for the Northern Hemisphere and the fall in the Southern Hemisphere. On the equator, the sun will be directly overhead at noon. Equinoxes are the only time when both the north and south poles are lit by sunshine at the same time. The events have been marked and celebrated around the world for centuries. … But what is happening in the heavens? Here’s what to know about how we split up the year using the Earth’s orbit.”
Amid ‘DEI’ Purge, Pentagon Removes Webpage on Iwo Jima Flag-Raiser (Laura)
The authors write, “Until recently, a page on the Defense Department’s website celebrated Pfc. Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian who was one of the six Marines photographed hoisting a US flag on Iwo Jima in 1945, as an emblem of the ‘contributions and sacrifices Native Americans have made to the United States, not just in the military, but in all walks of life.’ But the page, along with many others about Native American and other minority service members, has now been erased. … Multiple articles about the Navajo code talkers, who were critical to America’s victory at Iwo Jima and the wider Pacific theater of the Second World War, were also removed, along with a profile of a Tonawanda Seneca officer who drafted the terms of the Confederacy’s surrender at Appomattox toward the end of the Civil War.”
House GOP Moves Swiftly To Impeach Judge Targeted by Trump (Reader Jim)
From Axios: “Just hours after President Trump called for the impeachment of a federal judge who ruled against his deportation of hundreds of Venezuelans over the weekend, House Republicans introduced a measure to do just that. GOP lawmakers have unleashed an unprecedented flood of long-shot impeachment articles aimed at federal judges who are standing in the way of the president’s agenda.”
‘Have You Seen This Politician?’ Public Seeks Town Halls With Idaho’s Federal Delegates (Reader Steve)
The author writes, “People in Idaho are searching for the state’s four federal lawmakers, according to missing politician posters circulating on social media and gaining momentum. The last known whereabouts of three-term Republican U.S. Sen. Jim Risch, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, were in Washington, DC, one flyer posted to Facebook purported. ‘Last seen: Nowhere near his constituents — rumored to vanish at the first sight of accountability,’ it read. Similar online handbills were mocked up for each of Idaho’s other three longtime federal delegates: Republicans US Sen. Mike Crapo, and Reps. Mike Simpson and Russ Fulcher.”
In Your Face: The Brutal Aesthetics of MAGA (Bethany)
From Mother Jones: “In the early morning hours of January 28, as dozens of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrived in New York to round up undocumented immigrants, a shimmering Kristi Noem appeared in the Bronx. She wore a bulletproof vest and a baseball cap, but also dramatic makeup and hair coiled to show off a set of pearl earrings. ‘We are getting the dirtbags off these streets,’ the new Homeland Security secretary said. … Noem’s anti-immigrant politics might have been familiar to South Dakotans. But did they recognize their former governor? Noem is one of several figures — a few men, but mostly women — in President Donald Trump’s orbit to undergo striking physical transformations as the boundaries that once delineated celebrity and political power fully disintegrate.”
FROM DECEMBER: The American Oil Industry’s Playbook, Illustrated: How Drillers Offload Costly Cleanup Onto the Public (Sean)
From ProPublica and Capital & Main: “Oil executive Tom Ragsdale walked away from his old wells, making the pollution left behind the state of New Mexico’s problem. His tactics, however, are ubiquitous in the industry.”
The US Island That Speaks Elizabethan English (Dana)
The author writes, “I’d never been called a ‘dingbatter’ until I went to Ocracoke, North Carolina for the first time. I’ve spent a good part of my life in the state, but I’m still learning how to speak the Hoi Toider brogue. The people here just have their own way of speaking: it’s like someone took Elizabethan English, sprinkled in some Irish tones and 1700s Scottish accents, then mixed it all up with pirate slang. But the Hoi Toider dialect is more than a dialect. It’s also a culture, one that’s slowly fading away. With each generation, fewer people play meehonkey, cook the traditional foods, or know what it is to be ‘mommucked.’”
