Postal vote verdict, Trump’s $5,000 promise, and a 324-million-year-old fossil
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Postal vote verdict, Trump’s $5,000 promise, and a 324-million-year-old fossil
The US midterms are still a month-and-a-half away, but the political temperature is already hot. Last week US President Donald Trump promised to give every American adult $5,000 if the Republicans win, and on Monday the Supreme Court ruled he couldn’t restrict the use of postal ballots (more popular with Democrats than Republicans). Unsurprisingly, Swiss newspapers are appalled by Trump’s “desperate” behaviour.
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The US Supreme Court has blocked President Donald Trump’s attempt to alter the postal voting system to his advantage. “A good day for democracy and a bad day for Trump,” according to an article in the Tages-Anzeiger, which warned, however, that Trump has already caused considerable damage.
“It is, of course, the only correct decision,” declared the op-ed on Tuesday, the day after the court declined to allow a US Postal Service rule restricting the use of mail-in ballots in the November midterms.
Nevertheless, the paper said there’s little cause for celebration. “There aren’t even 50 days left until the mid-term elections. And if Trump’s intention all along was to exacerbate the chaos ahead of the elections and sow further doubts about the legitimacy of the electoral process, then he has probably succeeded anyway,” it wrote.
The Tages-Anzeiger noted that around a third of US voters usually vote by post – and this group includes significantly more Democratic supporters.
“Such interference in the electoral process is reprehensible for the simple reason that, according to the Constitution, it’s not the current occupant of the White House but the states that are responsible for elections,” the Zurich paper explained. “The Supreme Court justices should therefore have put a stop to Trump’s attack on the electoral system much earlier and in a much more fundamental way. After all, under no circumstances can a country that calls itself a democracy change the rules of an election while that election is already underway.”
As for what happens next, the Tages-Anzeiger was pretty sure that Trump wouldn’t suddenly abandon his campaign against the American electoral system. “This president accepts an election result only if it declares him and his cronies the winners. Trump will likely threaten election officials and opponents and have as many constituencies as possible redrawn in his party’s favour.”
Yet the newspaper saw a “message of hope” in the whole episode. “This is not how a man behaves who is confident of his support,” it concluded. “This is how someone behaves who senses that people are deserting him in droves.”
US President Donald Trump has promised to give every American adult $5,000 (CHF4,000) if the Republicans win the mid-term elections in November. “Sheer desperation,” said one Swiss newspaper. “A bad omen for the Republicans,” said another.
“For once, Donald Trump is the most honest politician in the world” was the eye-catching headline of an NZZ am Sonntag editorial. “What appears to be a scandal is simply a transparent form of vote-buying, a practice that is becoming commonplace in democracies around the globe,” it wrote.
“Voters, battered by soaring oil prices, are turning their backs on him, with Trump deemed ahead of the mid-term elections to be more unpopular than almost any previous president,” it said. “Nevertheless, thanks to this crisis, he may yet go down in history – albeit unwittingly – as the world’s most honest politician. Out of sheer desperation, he wants to pay every American $5,000 if his Republicans win the mid-terms and prevent communism.”
Swiss public broadcaster RTS got out its calculator. “Given that there are some 270 million adults in the United States, this measure would cost around $1.35 trillion,” it said on Thursday, the day after Trump’s announcement at a party convention.
“The scale and audacity of this vote-buying may be historically unprecedented,” the NZZ am Sonntag continued. “But he’s laying bare a phenomenon that’s becoming routine in democracies around the globe. Buying voters is the new way of persuading them. Policies are considered acceptable only if they immediately leave individuals with more cash in their pockets – a demand that, given the modest growth rates in industrialised countries, overwhelms any state’s capacity to deliver.”
Lausanne newspaper 24heures reminded its readers that there was a long way to go before the money ended up in Americans’ pockets. “First, because the legal feasibility of the proposal is far from guaranteed. Second, because, as the saying goes, promises are only binding on those who listen to them, and this isn’t the first time Trump has made such offers to entice future voters which fail to materialise.”
Schweiz Heute was equally sceptical. “For those who believe Trump’s $5,000 promise, the bad news is that they are unlikely ever to see that money. And even if they do, they’ll be paying for it themselves. The fact that the US president believes he needs to resort to this measure at all is a bad omen for the Republicans in the run-up to the mid-term elections.”
For decades, researchers have been puzzling over how insects first made the transition from water to land. An exceptionally well-preserved, 324-million-year-old fossil from Texas provides the answers, reports Swiss public broadcaster SRF.
The oldest undisputed fossil of hexapods (six-legged animals) is around 405 million years old. But over the following 80 million years or so, hardly any reliable fossils were known to exist, resulting in the so-called hexapod gap, SRF explained on Friday. Direct evidence from this period was lacking as to how early insects gradually adapted from life in water to life on land, and how their body structure changed in the process.
“It is precisely this knowledge gap that has now been narrowed somewhat,” SRF said. “An international research team examined an exceptionally well-preserved fossil from a limestone nodule. It was discovered as far back as 1985 in west Texas. It’s around 324 million years old – and thus marks the end of the hexapod gap.”
The fossilised animal is a hybrid of a crustacean and an insect. The researchers named it Chosha praecursor, which means “insect precursor”. The fossil depicts an adult, wingless female: just over three centimetres long, with a terminal filament – a thin, thread-like appendage at the lower end of the dorsal filament – and two tail filaments measuring just under five centimetres. It displays typical insect features such as an ovipositor and six legs.
“At the same time, it possesses something that no living insect has today: a crustacean-like abdomen,” SRF said. “Nine of the 11 abdominal segments bear paddle-like appendages, as are common in crustaceans. These may once have been used for swimming or even as gills.”
Its paddle-like abdominal appendages haven’t disappeared completely but are only half-reduced – an intermediate stage. “Because the appendages were no longer needed on land, they degenerated, SRF said. “The transition from water to land was therefore not an abrupt evolutionary leap, as had long been assumed. Rather, it was a long, amphibious transitional phase – early insects thus lived for millions of years in and around damp riparian zones and shallow waters.”
SRF concluded that Chosha praecursor not only provides a missing piece of the jigsaw in the insect family tree but also offers further insights into how the multi-legged swimmers of prehistoric times became the six-legged land dwellers that now inhabit every corner of the Earth.
The next edition of ‘Swiss views of US news’ will be published on Wednesday, September 23. See you then!
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