The world’s most powerful space telescope was ready to uncover the wonders of the universe, but first it needed some help from a little blue truck. The truck had to haul the James Webb Space Telescope, perched atop a more than 165-foot-tall rocket, to the launchpad at a spaceport in South America in late December. Next to the rocket, the vehicle looked almost decorative.
The activists who had gathered at the National Mall for the March for Life knew they were winning. With every cheer, every prayer, and every round of applause, the attendees assembled in the shadow of the Washington Monument reminded themselves that this year’s rally and march could be the last one to happen in a country where abortion was at least nominally legal in every state. They waved signs: WE ARE THE POST-ROE GENERATION.
A British judge has ruled that political dissident and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange can appeal his extradition to the United States. The ruling dealt a major blow to the Biden administration’s efforts to put Assange on trial for espionage charges. Assange has spent over 1,000 days locked up in the Belmarsh high-security prison in London, where he recently suffered a mini-stroke.
As conservative justices on the Supreme Court threaten to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortions nationwide, we speak to the filmmakers and a subject of “The Janes” about life before Roe, when a collective of women in Chicago built an underground service for women seeking an abortion. Heather Booth, who founded the Jane Collective as a college student, speaks about adopting lessons from the civil rights movement and antiwar sentiments of the time.
We go to Nuku’alofa, capital of Tonga, to speak with Tongan journalist Marian Kupu on the humanitarian relief efforts underway after an undersea volcano erupted on January 14, blanketing the South Pacific island nation with ash and triggering a tsunami. Kupu was able to flee the worst effects of the initial eruption by driving to higher ground but now reports lingering aftereffects such as water tanks polluted by ash.
World-renowned Buddhist monk, poet, teacher and antiwar activist Thich Nhat Hanh has died in his native Vietnam at the age of 95. He was exiled from Vietnam for decades beginning in the 1960s after he spoke out publicly against the war. In 1966, he traveled to the United States and met with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., helping to persuade King to speak out against the U.S. War on Vietnam.
Unfortunately, Omicron is far from done with us. More than 700,000 Americans are testing positive for COVID-19 every day, COVID hospitalizations in the United States are at a record high, and the variant is so contagious that an encounter with it can be postponed for only so long. The single best thing people can do to protect themselves is, yes, get vaccinated. And that includes booster shots.
If the pandemic is to turn endemic — a situation top Biden health officials say they could more easily control — the U.S. needs to overhaul the nation’s public health workforce, she said.
Without more precise data, “you don’t know what’s happening and you don’t have the ability to say how at risk is the health care workforce,” said Celine Gounder.
Congress needs to create a new safety net for such lenders — not let regulators squeeze them out of business.
Inside the White House, there is still optimism: “President Biden was elected to a four-year term, not a one-year term.
The government reported Wednesday that the consumer price index, the most widely watched gauge of inflation, hit a four-decade high in December compared to the previous year.
The jump is the latest evidence that rising costs for food, rent and other necessities are heightening the financial pressures on America’s households.
The potential clash over the Fed’s plans to tighten monetary policy could be a harbinger of conflicts to come with Democrats and even some Republicans.
As the Biden administration marks its first year in office this week, we look at the president’s ongoing defense of Trump-era anti-immigration policies. Department of Justice lawyers were in court Wednesday to defend the Trump-era order known as Title 42, which has been used to expel hundreds of thousands of migrants at the border without screening them for asylum.
The World Food Program has warned Afghanistan faces a “tsunami of hunger” as the economy continues to collapse, due in part to U.S. sanctions and the freezing of Afghan assets following the Taliban takeover of Kabul. Meanwhile, President Biden once again defended his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan on Wednesday without acknowledging the humanitarian crisis that followed his exit.
As many of the world’s wealthiest people wrap up virtual talks today at the World Economic Forum based in Davos, Switzerland, Oxfam reports the incomes of 99% of the world’s population dropped during the pandemic while the world’s 10 richest men saw their wealth double. Meanwhile, vaccine profits have minted at least nine new billionaires at Moderna, BioNTech and China’s CanSino, amassing a combined new wealth of over $19 billion.
As President Biden marks one year in office, we speak with former four-time presidential candidate Ralph Nader and The Nation’s Katrina vanden Heuvel, who say Biden has failed so far to sell his agenda to the American people and bring about the transformative policy he campaigned on — from quelling the pandemic to passing his landmark Build Back Better legislation. The two also critique the U.S.
We were in the White Room in 10 Downing Street, and Boris Johnson was joking around with the photographer who was taking his portrait. “You’re like the kind-of taxidermist in The Godfather,” Johnson said, laughing. “Do you remember? The funeral—the undertaker?” He then launched into his Don Corleone impression. “‘Buona sera, buona sera, see what a massacre they’ve made of my son.
The former president seemed to need some adulation at Mar-a-Lago.
In the news today: A newly disclosed draft executive order provided a roadmap of how the Trump White House contemplated using military force to nullify Trump’s election loss, including the seizure of voting machines, and retain power. The Biden administration is vowing to recommit to federal abortion rights as the hard-right Supreme Court signals its intent to erase the same.
News flash for the anti-maskers among us: Refusing to mask up on a crowded flight to London doesn’t make you Rosa Parks. It makes you an unbelievable asshole. This is not a hill worth dying on—though, come to think of it, you may very well die. Just not on a hill.
Not content to risk and/or ruin her own life, a woman who refused to wear a mask on a flight from Miami to London Wednesday night prompted the pilot to actually turn the plane around and head back home.
Hana Horka was a well-regarded Czech folk singer. She was a member of one of the oldest Czech folk groups still active, Asonance. She died at the age of 57 from COVID-19.
According to her son Jan Rek (23), Horka had become influenced by the anti-vaxxer movement. Rek says that, because of her refusal to get vaccinated, she decided the best pathway to get a pass to travel and play at venues requiring proof of vaccination or recent infection was to catch the virus herself.
Ivanka Trump, meanwhile, is “making the same calculation: What will help her in the long run?” said her cousin.
Welcome back to the weekly Nuts & Bolts Guide to small campaigns. A few years ago, one of the more controversial statements I made—whether in this series or on social media—was that there is nothing necessarily wrong with a primary campaign against a fellow party member. I said, and still believe, that there are times when primarying a fellow Democratic incumbent can be healthy for the campaign and for voter registration and energy.
The State Department ordered families of all U.S. personnel at the embassy in Kyiv to leave the country, and allowing non-essential staff to do the same.
Former New York Times journalist Donald G. McNeil Jr. wrote an article on Medium that stated what everyone with an ounce of intelligence already knows, but wouldn’t dare put in print: Not only is Donald Trump losing hundreds of voters each day to COVID-19, their deaths are already surpassing the margins the GOP can possibly hope to attain in the swing states.
The Vermont senator expressed frustration about the two Democrats joining Republicans in blocking major legislation.
Before the former Saturday Night Live cast member Will Forte made his hosting debut on the show yesterday, one of the more memorable moments from his eight-year tenure circulated online. In a 2005 sketch, Forte played a timid, overwhelmed spelling-bee contestant. When asked to spell the word business, he produced a deadpan, 75-letter sequence of consonants. As would so often occur during his time on SNL, Forte bulldozed past absurdity to find fresh hilarity.
The House panel investigating the Capitol riot requested cooperation from Ivanka Trump, the former president’s ex-adviser and adult daughter.