Skip to main content Skip to navigation
CAS in the Media Arts and Sciences Media Headlines

After Speaking Out On Impeachment, Herrera Beutler Heads Toward Clash With Her Party

Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler thrust herself into the national spotlight on Friday when the Washington Republican came out with a stunning account of Donald Trump’s actions on the day of the Capitol insurrection. In a statement put out on the eve of the vote in Trump’s Senate impeachment trial, Herrera Beutler said that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy told her that in a conversation with the then-president on Jan. 6, Trump appeared to side with the mob, telling him the rioters were “more upset about the election than you are.”

“I could see a primary in 2022 where Republicans put forward a very clear Trump candidate. Her weakness will be on the right,” said Mark Stephan, an associate professor of political science at Washington State University. “But I think there will be Democrats who will vote for her because they felt she acted courageously in this case.”

Stephan of Washington State University said Herrera Beutler is likely making up for any lost conservative voters by picking up more centrists. He said he expected that the ramifications of her stance on impeachment will likely take shape in the year ahead.

Find out more

NPR

‘Work is the single most important way of proving your worth’ in the U.S., professor says — and it’s making Americans miserable

Jennifer Sherman.
Sherman

In the early 2000s, Jennifer Sherman, a professor of sociology at Washington State University, went to study a poverty-stricken mountain town in Northern California for her thesis. The town had been stripped of its main source of jobs by an environmental ruling that shut down its logging industry, and she planned to look at that ruling’s effects on marriage and family.

Instead, what she found upon meeting folks on the ground was that “every interview, people just talked about their own work ethic, somebody else lacking work ethic, or the value of hard work,” she tells Grow. Even in the absence of jobs, work remained key in measuring human value. With whatever external proof they could find, “people really, really did make the big show of letting me know that, ‘I’m a worker,’” she says.

That attitude toward employment — that belief that work and being a worker is at the core of someone’s identity — is prevalent throughout the U.S.

Find out more

Grow
CNBC

Breastfeeding mothers produce COVID‑19 antibodies

Breastfeeding women who have COVID-19 transfer milk-borne antibodies to their babies without passing along the SARS-CoV-2 virus, according to a new study.

Beatrice Caffé.
Caffé
Courtney Meehan.
Meehan

“The results indicate that it is safe for moms to continue to breastfeed during a COVID-19 infection with proper precautions,” said Courtney Meehan, a WSU anthropology professor and co-author on the study. published Feb. 9 in the journal mBio.

Meehan and WSU graduate student Beatrice Caffé were part of the multi-institutional research team led by University of Idaho nutrition researcher on the project.

Find out more

WSU Insider
KXLY
News Medical
Medical Xpress
romper

OUTDOORS: Study — Trapped Elwha River steelhead maintained genetic diversity during isolation

A recent study, with its roots going back to 2004, has showed promising news that Elwha River steelhead trapped for a century miles from the Strait of Juan de Fuca by the Elwha River dams have managed to maintain their natural genetic diversity during that time and are able to return to their old natural cycle of returning to the sea.

Alexandra Fraik.
Fraik

“The genetic diversity harbored behind the dams suggests that diversity was important for their natural resilience, or their ability to adapt to changes such as dam building or removal,” said Alexandra Fraik, a doctoral student at Washington State University. Fraik did the work as a National Science Foundation graduate research internship program fellow with NOAA.

“Additionally, we see recolonization of steelhead that appear to descend from populations that were both below and behind the Elwha River dams rapidly following dam removal,” Fraik said.

Find out more

Peninsula Daily News
NOAA Fisheries News

Dr. Universe: Do flying squirrels really fly?

Flying squirrels may not really fly, but they do have flaps of skin on their bodies that act like parachutes and help them glide through the air.

Todd Wilson with a pretty, tri-color shepherd or collie puppy.
Todd Wilson and his puppy

My friend Todd Wilson told me all about it. He’s a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Forest Service in Oregon and graduate of Washington State University who researches Pacific Northwest ecosystems and the animals that call them home— including flying squirrels.

When flying squirrels are trying to avoid predators, like weasels, sometimes they will run to the top of a tree. The weasel might think the flying squirrel has nowhere else to run. That’s when the flying squirrel makes its move.

“The flying squirrel can just take off and glide,” Wilson said. “When they launch themselves from a tree, they can actually go quite a ways out, but they’re not actually flying.”

Of all the thousands of mammal species on our planets, bats are the only mammals that can truly fly.

Find out more

Ask Dr. Universe