JD Vance (R-Ohio) had posted that “reports now show” that Springfield residents were having their “pets abducted and eaten” by “Haitian illegal immigrants.”
⭐️These aren’t harmless memes. ⭐️

“It was so painful,” Dorsainvil explained. “I had to leave my job because I was so perturbed that I coul not concentrate.”
He took the week off from working as a bilingual specialist who processes applications for government assistance to support his community and focus on his mental health.

City officials quickly made clear there is no evidence to support the lies Vance and many other top Republicans, including Donald Trump, are spreading.
Vance didn’t care.
As he wrote on Tuesday, “Keep the cat memes flowing.”
(Vance’s Senate office did not respond to a request for comment that asked for any evidence that would support his recent claims.)

motherjones.com/politics/2024/…

The sun, going through an active bout of Solar Cycle 25, spit out
💥another intense flare over the weekend,
bringing parts of the U.S. yet another chance at seeing the northern lights.

On Saturday, NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center reported an "X4.5 solar flare" had been detected.

The agency shared video of the flare, showing the moment the sun appears to spit out some solar material.

X-class flares are the strongest measured by space weather experts,
with the largest ever recorded being an X45 flare detected in 2003.

On Dec. 21, 2023, the SWPC recorded an X5 flare, which was the strongest since an X8.2 flare in 2017.

Following Saturday’s flare
— which was described as “generally not common, although not necessarily unusual”
— the SWPC said
⚠️strong, G3-level geomagnetic storms are likely Sunday into Monday.

The agency warned some users of ♦️high-frequency communication bands (like emergency managers) may notice “strong degradation or signal loss.”

The agency also acknowledged ♦️there may be impacts to power systems, spacecraft, and navigation and GPS systems
— all areas that experts say are prepared for such events.

❇️ The storming may also make the northern lights shine.

The northern lights are sparked by the plasma and magnetic material hurled out by the sun hitting our magnetic field, sending particles flowing to the poles.

When those particles interact with oxygen and nitrogen in our atmosphere, they can cause excess energy that appears as bursts of light to us.

The colors that we see are the result of the gases involved and where the action is happening.

A G3 storm lands in the center of the five-point scale the SWPC uses to measure geomagnetic storms sparked by solar flares.

Storms of this strength have been known to bring the northern lights as far south as Illinois and Oregon, and according to the SWPC’s forecasting, that may just be the case with this storm.

thehill.com/homenews/nexstar_m…