All posts tagged: map

Supreme Court Blocks Missouri Republicans’ New Congressional Map

Supreme Court Blocks Missouri Republicans’ New Congressional Map

Published by Jenni Sidey

The U.S. Supreme Court blocked Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins on Thursday from using the state’s Republican-drawn 2025 congressional map, an order that puts Missouri back under the districts adopted in 2022. The order ran one page, disclosed no vote, gave no reasoning, and drew no noted dissents. In this photo taken with a smartphone, people opposed to a congressional redistricting plan rally outside the Missouri Capitol in Jefferson City, Mo., Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2026. (AP Photo/David A. Lieb) Missouri Republicans drew the new map – known as HB 1 – during a 2025 special session called by Gov. Mike Kehoe, part of a wider redistricting push President Trump encouraged. It was intended to give Republicans seven of the state’s eight House seats, reworking the Kansas City-based 5th District held by Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, one of Missouri’s two Democratic members. Opponents submitted more than 300,000 signatures late last year to put the map to a statewide vote. Hoskins rejected the petition on Aug. 4 – the day of Missouri’s primary – arguing the state …

Our world map is wrong. MAGA likes it that way

Our world map is wrong. MAGA likes it that way

Published by Sam Flores

A version of this essay first appeared in Crash Course, Salon’s free morning newsletter. Sign up for early access to articles like this, plus more of Salon’s bold journalism on how policies, movements and culture wars affect real people. As soon as I heard that the United Nations would be voting on a new map of the world, one that better reflected Africa’s true size, I knew the U.S. would vote against it. Lo and behold, that’s exactly what happened. I wish I could say I’m clairvoyant, or that I have genius insight into U.S. foreign policy, but this was entirely predictable. As you may remember from high school, most maps of the world use the Mercator projection, which features considerable distortions, especially in the Northern Hemisphere. Maybe you’ve wondered why Greenland and Africa look roughly the same size on such maps, when Africa is actually 14 times larger, or why Antarctica looks infinitely large, when that isn’t true in real life. Discussion of those and other discrepancies have been around for a long time. They even …

This road map could help us decide whether to deploy solar geoengineering

This road map could help us decide whether to deploy solar geoengineering

Published by skeptic

In addition, not everyone agrees that experiments at those scales will get us to the point where we’re capable of making an “informed decision.”  Wil Burns, a research professor and legal scholar at American University and a signatory to the International Non-Use Agreement, fears that scientists won’t be able to understand the extent of the potential downsides, including impacts on the protective ozone layer and changes to regional precipitation patterns, until we’re carrying out full-fledged solar geoengineering. “The research would give you some answers,” he says. “I just don’t think it gives you answers that are that relevant. To get to those relevant answers, you have to deploy at scale—and I just don’t think that’s ever tenable.” That’s because, in his view, using the technology would violate principles of intergenerational equity: If the world continues emitting greenhouse gases, increased levels of solar geoengineering would merely mask the continued warming of the planet. Burns says that means future generations—people who had no say in its use—couldn’t turn it off without triggering a sudden surge of warming, …

Missouri’s GOP-friendly congressional map returns to Supreme Court

Missouri’s GOP-friendly congressional map returns to Supreme Court

Published by Sam Flores

Missouri’s redistricting battle reached the Supreme Court for a second time after an appeals panel on Wednesday refused to halt an order instructing Missouri Republicans to move ahead with their favored congressional map.  A Democratic-aligned organizer, who is attempting to defeat the Republicans’ map by putting it to voters through a referendum, is now urging… Source link

Fight Over Republican-Drawn Congressional Map in Missouri Returns to US Supreme Court

Fight Over Republican-Drawn Congressional Map in Missouri Returns to US Supreme Court

Published by Sam Flores

Sept 9 (Reuters) – Challengers to a redrawn congressional map ⁠in ⁠Missouri aimed at favoring Republicans asked the ⁠U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday to suspend a federal judge’s order that allowed only ​those reconfigured boundaries to be used in November’s midterm elections.  The map’s challengers, including a group opposed to the Republican-drawn map called ‌People Not Politicians, made the request in ‌an emergency filing, moving swiftly after St. Louis, Missouri-based Chief U.S. District Judge Stephen Clark issued his decision on ⁠Tuesday.  The request brings ⁠the fight over Missouri’s U.S. House of Representatives districts back to the Supreme ​Court just one day after it declined to intervene in a bid by Missouri officials to reinstate the redrawn map, which the state’s top court had blocked until it is put to a referendum. Clark’s order appeared to conflict with the Missouri Supreme Court’s unanimous ​September 3 ruling blocking the map, leaving the state’s congressional districts in limbo and injecting further confusion into ⁠the high-stakes ⁠electoral fight. Missouri Republicans adopted the ⁠new map, which ​dismantled the Kansas City-based …

This Is the Biggest 2D Map of the Universe. Here’s How to Use It

This Is the Biggest 2D Map of the Universe. Here’s How to Use It

Published by skeptic

Scientists have pointed telescopes at the sky and mapped the cosmos for centuries. That relentless pursuit is producing maps that are bigger and more detailed than ever. But there’s one map that stands out above the rest, and now it’s the largest 2D map of the night sky ever created. The best part? Anyone can play with it.  The map, called Data Release 11 or DR11, comes courtesy of the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys team at NSF NOIRLab, headquartered in Tucson, Arizona, with contributions from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California and other agencies and organizations. Covering 75% of the sky across 5.6 trillion pixels, DR11 is the team’s most comprehensive map to date, built upon prior versions of the same map . It expands on DR9 by 50% and brings back northern sky coverage missing from DR10. Based on 263,407 ground-based exposures by 160 scientists, the map catalogs 4 billion objects — including stars, galaxies, black holes and asteroids — in visible and near-infrared light. Already cited in over 1,800 research papers, NOIRLab …

Scientists spent a decade building the sharpest map of space ever made, and it’s free to browse

Scientists spent a decade building the sharpest map of space ever made, and it’s free to browse

Published by skeptic

The team behind the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) has released a monumental new astronomical resource — the largest 2D map of our universe ever created. Spanning a massive 5.6 trillion pixels, this map covers about 75 percent of the sky, covering about three-quarters of the entire night sky. Best of all, you can go in and navigate the vast cosmos, all from the comfort of your own desktop! Related You can download hundreds of free NASA books to your Kindle, Kobo, or iPad right now Browse NASA’s open e-book collection for mission reports, engineering blueprints, and stunning Hubble imagery. How to discover the largest and most detailed 2D map of the Universe ever released Perfect if you want to feel as small as a grain of sand The band of the Milky Way stretches across the sky above U.S. National Science Foundation Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO), a Program of NSF NOIRLab. The largest telescope in this image is the NSF Nicholas U. Mayall 4-meter Telescope, which houses the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). City …

Astronomers Have Completed the Largest Map of Space. Yes, You Can Play With It.

Astronomers Have Completed the Largest Map of Space. Yes, You Can Play With It.

Published by skeptic

The driving force behind our universe’s accelerated expansion remains one of the greatest mysteries in astronomy. While this force, which scientists refer to as dark energy, pervades our universe, we know almost nothing about it. Located on a remote mountain in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) has spent the past five years mapping the cosmos with the goal of unraveling this mystery. The result is the largest three-dimensional map of the universe ever created. And now—with the release of the latest version of the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys, a free online tool for exploring the vast imaging data—you too can poke around the universe. The new map boasts an overwhelming amount of information: 5.6 trillion pixels containing approximately 4 billion celestial objects including stars, galaxies, black holes, and asteroids. It covers approximately 75 percent of the entire sky, recording both visible light and near-infrared wavelengths. Those missing pieces include the deeper parts of space blocked by the stars, space dust, and other matter in our own galaxy, which is a major …

Trump posts map of New Mexico with ‘Mexico’ crossed out for ‘America’ | US | News

Trump posts map of New Mexico with ‘Mexico’ crossed out for ‘America’ | US | News

Published by Sam Flores

The President posted the image on Truth Social today (Sunday, 6 September) without any words or captions. Last week, Mr Trump shared a similar post in which he renamed Lake Ontario “Lake America” amid the trade war with Canada. He only published a portion of the map showing New York, Toronto, and Lake Ontario, with the lake’s name crossed out. On the map, there was also the Team Trump logo and the Stars and Stripes flag next to the words ‘Lake America’, which appeared above the body of water’s actual name. In a separate post published before the one in which he gave the lake a new name, the US President said: “The United States is giving serious consideration to changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America in that we don’t expect to do much business with Ontario any longer.” Ontario Premier Doug Ford dismissed the Lake Ontario threat as “a lot of rhetoric”. Mr Trump’s post came after a trade dispute in which his administration enacted 50% tariffs on $20 billion of …