The world’s climate has become more unpredictable, leading experts to coin the term “global weirding.” The rising temperatures are creating extreme weather that looks different all across the globe. Some cities have seen contradictory weather phenomena back to back, making recovery difficult. Climate change is only expected to get worse, which is likely to bring more weird weather our way.

What is global weirding?

Global weirding, also called climate weirding, is an alternative term to global warming, which refers to how warming temperatures can cause all kinds of “weird” phenomena that can at times be contradictory. “The rise in average global temperature is going to lead to all sorts of crazy things — from hotter heat spells and droughts in some places, to colder cold spells and more violent storms, more intense flooding, forest fires and species loss in other places,” said Thomas Friedman, who popularized the term in a 2007 opinion piece at The New York Times.

As a part of global weirding, many cities are experiencing climate whiplash, or extreme opposite weather conditions in the same city. Cities across the globe have experienced “droughts that dry up water sources followed closely by floods that overwhelm infrastructure, destroying sanitation systems and contaminating drinking water,” said a new report by WaterAid. Others are experiencing climate reversals. “Places accustomed to heavy rainfall are now facing droughts, while historically arid regions now grapple with unexpected floods.”

The result of global weirding and climate whiplash is that extreme weather phenomena are becoming more powerful. “Wherever we look around the world, we see that these weather events are getting supersized by climate change, and they’re putting us all at risk,” climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe said to Space.com. For example, Los Angeles experienced “two very wet winters” that “produced lots of grass and shrubs,” said Sky News. It was then “followed by a long, hot summer that dried out that vegetation, providing abundant, tinder-dry fuel ripe for a wildfire.” In turn, the city saw the worst wildfires in its history.

What are the consequences?

The general effects of climate change globally, like temperature changes or sea level rise, have mostly been predictable. The same cannot be said for local conditions. “You can’t just assume that every place can have a similar response to atmospheric warming,” Michael Singer, a professor at Cardiff University and one of the authors of the WaterAid study, said to Reuters. “It doesn’t care who you are, whether you’re wealthy or poor or you have great infrastructure or not.” This is made all the more difficult because the “lack of historical climate records in some areas may also make it difficult to assess patterns, as these sometimes only span a few decades, and are too sparse to capture local conditions,” said SBS News.

Climate whiplash in cities puts many lives at stake. “Many cities already face water supply, sewage and flood protection problems as their populations rapidly swell,” said The Guardian. “Global heating supercharges this, with the often ageing infrastructure in rich nations designed for a climate that no longer exists, and more climate extremes making the establishment of much-needed infrastructure even harder in low income nations.” It is more important than ever to focus on adaptation efforts, especially for vulnerable communities.

FBI Director Kash Patel is mostly known as a fiery, combative figure in the MAGA universe. His calling card is unflagging loyalty to President Trump, but prior to the rise of the 47th president, he had a routine legal career that took him from a job as a Miami public defender to a prosecutor in the Department of Justice.

His turn towards conspiracy theorizing and far-right politics appears to coincide with his time as the lead counsel on the House Intelligence Committee after President Trump’s first election in 2017. Since then, he has made millions as a pro-Trump commentator, consultant and author, mostly when he no longer had a position in government during the Biden administration.

From public defender to MAGA stalwart

Patel grew up on Long Island and attended the University of Richmond for his BA in criminal justice and history before obtaining his law degree from Pace University in 2005. His first job out of law school was as a local public defender in Miami, Florida. Colleagues in Miami remember him as “good at face-to-face interactions and building rapport with judges, but uninterested in the paperwork and legal arguments that came with the job,” said CNN. He later became a federal public defender in the Southern District of Florida, where he “developed a deep animosity toward the Justice Department prosecutors he found himself up against,” said The New York Times. “Pay for public defenders” in 2010 was “a median of $47,500 for entry-level public defenders and increasing to about $76,000 for those with 11 to 15 years of experience,” said the National Association For Law Placement.

In 2014, Patel joined the Department of Justice as an attorney whose job was “helping prosecute terror suspects at home and abroad,” said Vanity Fair. At the Department of Justice, Patel carved out “a satisfactory, if unremarkable, legal career,” before becoming “a useful Republican Hill staffer on the House Intelligence Committee, where he dug into the origins of the FBI’s Russia investigation of the Trump campaign,” said CNN. Patel’s income as a lawyer with the Department of Justice likely did not make him rich. The cost of living in the Washington, D.C., area, after all, is “42% higher than the national average,” said Redfin.

In 2017, Patel took a job as the lead counsel for the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee, where he “emerged as a leading critic of the investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III into the Trump campaign’s alleged links to Russia,” said The Washington Post. From there, he moved to the National Security Council, where he was the senior director for counter-terrorism. In 2020, he became the senior advisor to Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell before becoming chief of staff for Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller in November 2020.

Cashing in on his proximity to Donald Trump

In the past, officials from the party ousted from the White House have parked themselves in think tanks, which often “serve as governments-in-waiting for the party out of power, providing professional perches for former officials” as they prepare for their party’s next election victory, said National Affairs. Patel, while he accepted a position as a Senior Fellow at the Center For American Security at the America First Policy Institute in October 2024, fashioned a multi-faceted post-government career for himself during the Biden administration, which was largely outside of the think tank world and seems to be the source of his small fortune.

His list of income sources, according to the financial disclosure form he filed when he was nominated to lead the FBI, is extensive and complicated. He founded a company, Trishul LLC, which is a “national security, defense and intelligence consulting business,” whose clients included the “Embassy of Qatar and the Trump-founded leadership PAC, Save America,” as well as Trump Media & Technology group, said Investopedia. His financial disclosure states that his income from Trishul was $2.1 million in 2024.

Beginning in 2022, he wrote a trilogy of Trump-themed children’s books, including “The Plot Against the King 3: The Return of the King.” Those books were “written for an audience of one: King Donald Trump,” said The Guardian. They earned him as much as $50,000 each in 2024 according to his financial disclosure, as well as up to $1 million in royalties from his book “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth and the Battle for Our Democracy.” He also earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in 2024 alone as a contributor to right-wing media outlets like The Epoch Times and Real America’s Voice News.

Patel also “served as a board member of Trump Media and Technology Group,” where he was paid “$120,000 annually from the company as a consultant,” in addition to earning “$544,000 for his work for Trump’s campaign,” said Forbes. He holds stock in a company called Elite Depot, which “owns the controversial Chinese fast-fashion retailer Shein” that are “worth between $1 million and $5 million.” He also reported countless other smaller sources of income, including “doing more than $5,000 worth of consulting work for CSGM, a branch of the Czech-owned foreign arms conglomerate The Czechoslovak Group.” Patel’s net worth also includes his investment portfolio, including “up to $250,000 in chip-designer NVIDIA, up to $250,000 in Bitcoin mining company Core Scientific and up to $115,000 in a Bitcoin ETF,” said ABC News.

Patel’s net worth is “more than $5.9 million,” said Business Insider, in an analysis based on his financial disclosure. Other analyses have come to different conclusions. Patel “parlayed proximity to Trump and a zeal for self-promotion into consulting contracts, corporate board seats and a role as a sought-after MAGA commentator” that ultimately “helped swell his net worth to as much as $15 million,” said the Associated Press.

Real life can be a whole lot stranger than fiction, as proven by this month’s television releases. March TV includes a fictional series about the real-life drama of showbiz; an adaptation of a true crime story about an adopted little girl accused of being a grown woman; and a docuseries detailing the inane exploits of blonde brothers Jake and Logan Paul.

‘Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney’

Hot on the heels of his brief Netflix talk show “Everybody’s in L.A.,” cool-guy John Mulaney is back on the streaming service for a steadier gig. This new late night live show promises to feature a “mix of celebrities, comedians, experts and academics,” said the Los Angeles Times, and the first episode’s guests include actor Michael Keaton, singer-songwriter Joan Baez and comedian Fred Armisen. The host welcomes the potential chaos of late night’s on-the-spot nature: “It’s a fun feeling to know that, hopefully, a lot of people are watching and it’s live globally with no delay, and you could really damage your career,” Mulaney said to “CBS Sunday Morning.” Some people perform best under pressure. (March 12, Netflix)

‘Adolescence’

Each episode of this four-part series consists of a single, uninterrupted camera shot, a technique that “contributes real-time immediacy to the story being told, as well as a certain astonishment at the methods, choreography and endurance of the cast,” said the Wall Street Journal. “It must have been exhausting.” The limited series’ subject matter is similarly no walk in the park: It is about a seemingly normal 13-year-old British boy arrested for the murder of a girl at his school. The show is, “at the center of its broken heart, an examination of tormented youth,” the Journal said. “The word ‘devastating’ gets tossed around like confetti these days, but ‘Adolescence’ qualifies as such.” (March 13, Netflix)

‘Good American Family’

The latest harrowing true story adapted for television is that of Natalia Grace, a disabled Ukrainian orphan with dwarfism who was adopted by a U.S. couple when she was a child — or was she? The American couple, the Barnetts, accused the real-life Natalia of being an adult masquerading as a child, even claiming Natalia was trying to kill them.

The Hulu dramatization of the case, “Good American Family,” stars Ellen Pompeo as the family’s matriarch. Already a biological mother of three, Kristine Barnett grows increasingly suspicious of her new daughter. The show also marks Pompeo’s first major role since “Grey’s Anatomy” debuted in 2005. (March 19, Hulu)

‘The Studio’

Making movies is a dirty business, a delicate balance between art and commerce — with commerce often winning. This reality is explored to a bitter extreme in the Hollywood satire “The Studio.” Seth Rogen stars as Matt Remick, an idealistic film studio executive “whose earnest love of cinema is no match for the intense egos and personalities he deals with day to day,” said TV Guide. “Matt has to balance his genuine desire to make great movies with the demands of a boss (Bryan Cranston) and a marketing guru (Kathryn Hahn) who would rather do licensing deals with Kool-Aid than bankroll masterpieces by Martin Scorsese,” said The New York Times. (March 26, Apple TV+)

‘Paul American’

The continued fame of the Paul brothers despite an arguable lack of talent is as mysterious as the Kardashians’ staying power. But a new reality series attempts to bottle the appeal of their particularly American ethos. Logan Paul first made mainstream headlines in 2018 when he thoughtlessly filmed a dead body in Japan’s “suicide forest” and posted it to his YouTube channel. Jake Paul was part of that channel too and now has a lucrative professional boxing career; Logan hosts popular podcast “Impaulsive” and recently became a father. The influencer brothers even attended Donald Trump’s January inauguration. Clearly, they are here to (maybe) stay. “This is America. The currency isn’t being liked. The currency is attention,” Logan says in the series’ trailer. (March 27, Max)

Nearly eight weeks into President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, he has enacted sweeping changes that have drastically changed the makeup of our federal government. While many Democrats are describing Trump’s actions as those of a straight authoritarian or dictator, other experts believe the U.S. could be on the brink of a different type of government: competitive authoritarianism.

Competitive authoritarianism, also called a hybrid regime, is defined by Vox as a government that “still holds elections, but under profoundly unfair conditions that systematically favor one side,” with elections “stacked in the incumbent party’s favor so heavily that the people don’t have real agency over who rules them.” Some in the U.S. fear this is where Trump’s administration is heading with its consolidation of government.

What did the commentators say?

A “full-scale dictatorship in which elections are meaningless and regime opponents are locked up, exiled, or killed remains highly unlikely in America,” said Harvard University government professor Steven Levitsky at The Atlantic. But this “doesn’t mean the country won’t experience authoritarianism in some form,” as Trump “has already moved strongly in this direction.” What is happening is a “coordinated effort to dig in, cement power, and weaken rivals.”

Competitive authoritarianism would “transform political life in the United States,” said Levitsky and University of Toronto political science professor Lucan A. Way at Foreign Affairs. The U.S. is “heading toward competitive authoritarian rule, not single-party dictatorship.” These governments “routinely use economic policy and regulatory decisions to reward politically friendly individuals, firms, and organizations.” Businesses often have a “strong incentive to align themselves with incumbents,” and the same pattern can be seen in the media.

The “risk of democratic backsliding has never been more pronounced,” said Jim Powers at East Texas News. When it comes to checks and balances, Trump has “already demonstrated his intent to replace independent institutions with loyalists who prioritize personal allegiance over constitutional duty.” It is Congress’ job to check presidential power, but if the “Republican Party maintains control, Trump’s power will go largely unchecked,” and there is already a “normalization of efforts to overturn results that do not favor the party in power.”

This also relates to the “broader context in which Trumpism has seemingly thrived,” said Ishaan Tharoor at The Washington Post. Trump’s “efforts to restrict voting rights, cow or shut out mainstream media and purge state institutions of nonpartisan bureaucrats are all precursors to a turn toward a regime of electoral autocracy.”

What next?

“We’re pretty screwed,” Levitsky bluntly said to Intelligencer. Congress “basically shutting itself down in the wake of the executive branch usurping its power is also really stunning.” Levitsky also noted the influence of Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has already fired large swaths of federal employees as part of a cost-cutting effort.

There will still be pushback against the Trump administration, experts say, and America’s wealth plays a large part in this. One “major reason that rich democracies are more stable is that capitalist development disperses human, financial, and organizational resources away from the state, generating countervailing power in society,” said Levitsky and Way.

The U.S. remained a “flawed democracy” in 2024, according to The Economist’s Democracy Index, and this trend is likely to continue. This is also part of an overall pattern of anti-democratic governments worldwide. Only 45% of the world’s population currently lives in a democracy.

‘I worked alongside Mahmoud Khalil. His detention is a terrifying abuse of power.’

Darializa Avila Chevalier at USA Today

“We should all be deeply alarmed by” Mahmoud Khalil’s detention, says Darializa Avila Chevalier. If the “administration succeeds in its efforts to deport him, it will have done so at the cost of the First Amendment rights and liberties of every person on American soil.” Any “effort that denies the judiciary its checks and balances must be understood as an authoritarian power grab.” By “targeting Mahmoud, Trump is now taking this abuse of power to a whole new level.”

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‘Stop hiding houses from would-be homeowners’

Kamini Lane at Newsweek

There are “companies that are actively hiding new homes for sale from buyers like you, for the sole reason that you’re not working with one of their real estate agents,” says Kamini Lane. There “could not be a worse time to restrict access to new homes.” The “challenges aspiring buyers face today are complex.” It’s “paramount that policymakers and the real estate industry itself put these consumers first,” and “we should be fighting to make homeownership more accessible.”

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‘The Afghan refugee problem is an unfixable mess — and may bring the next terrorist attack’

Phillip Linderman at The American Conservative

Washington has a “continuing obligation to those Afghans who worked with us,” a “noble recognition of a debt, and Americans can, and should, debate when that obligation has been honorably discharged,” says Phillip Linderman. But the “ability of Congress to snap its fingers and throw money at an issue does not mean that a U.S. government solution can be successfully implemented.” There is “no effort to corroborate what Afghan applicants claim about the threats they face at home.”

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‘America is under siege by a surprising force: losers’

Luke Winkie at Slate

When “you let the disarray of the Trump Order wash over you,” there’s “only one conclusion: This is deeply, radically, uniquely uncool. Perhaps even the most uncool period of American history there’s ever been,” says Luke Winkie. Never before have the “forces of cringe wielded such power, never has their shlock been so validated, and never have more people been laughing at their bad jokes,” which “cuts through the mustardy technicalities of our oncoming constitutional crisis.”

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