To understand the perils of the present, it is necessary to understand the perils of the past, a distant past that few Americans remember well. In the early days of the Cold War, NATO allies faced a daunting strategic challenge. The Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies possessed an overwhelming advantage in conventional weaponry. They had more men, more tanks, and more planes—and they were massed in proximity to NATO’s borders.
One evening, I sat on the brown-leather couch of a younger man who admired me for my writing, and maybe other things, if the salty text messages were true. He came from a different generation, but I was pleased to discover that he shared many of my unconventional opinions and favorite authors, that taste and perspective weren’t necessarily a matter of the year you were born. Joan Didion, Carl Sagan, Christopher Hitchens, though I had more reservations about that last one.
A Republican group asked for “the most ridiculous part” of the video and folks had thoughts.
After Russian troops began invading Ukraine, Hollywood mobilized in protest. Major studios paused the release of films in Russian theaters. Netflix suspended operations in the country, halting future productions and acquisitions. This week, Discovery, WarnerMedia, and Amazon ceased their services in Russia. The U.S. film and TV business has, effectively and collectively, pulled the plug on Moscow.
Progressive PAC Really American recalls a controversial GOP visit to the Kremlin in its #PartyOfTreason spot.
The House on Wednesday stripped the funding from the $1.5 trillion spending package after several Democrats objected to funding the aid with money slated to go to their states.
A portion of the domestic and international funds to continue battling the pandemic will no longer come out of unspent state funding.
They are seeking a global pandemic action plan to match the national plan the administration rolled out last week.
The limited funding raises the likelihood that the White House will be left shorthanded should a new, dangerous variant emerge.
The increase reported by the Labor Department reflected the 12 months ending in February and didn’t include most of the oil and gas price increases that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb.
The Fed is already expected to begin a campaign of interest rate increases next month in a bid to remove its support for economic growth amid a blistering job market and rapidly rising prices.
“America’s job machine is going stronger than ever,” Biden said at the White House.
The burst of jobs came despite a wave of Omicron inflections that sickened millions of workers, kept many consumers at home and left businesses from restaurants to manufacturers short-staffed.
Congress needs to create a new safety net for such lenders — not let regulators squeeze them out of business.
Russian forces reportedly killed at least three people when they bombed a children’s hospital in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol on Wednesday, shelling a humanitarian corridor and breaking a ceasefire deal that was was meant to allow residents to flee. The actions constitute a violation of international humanitarian law and, therefore, a potential war crime, says David Miliband of the International Rescue Committee.
Critics spotted some fatal flaws with Arizona Republican Wendy Rogers’ request to the former president.
He even said this time around he’d “absolutely” get involved to help a candidate defeat Trump in the primary.
It is Friday and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues. Revelations about the nature of Trump’s DHS reveal complicity in the insurrection. The GOP landscape is filled with the hypocrisy we have come to understand as endemic to the conservative lifestyle. And, after a year and a couple of months, President Joe Biden seems to be leaning more and more toward making some of the executive decisions he promised to make when he was running for office.
It’s hard to read through Twitter or the Daily Kos comments and not see people shocked by Russia’s brutality in Ukraine, demanding that we “do more.” This is a common sentiment, from very smart people:
This makes me very sad. Like I am not doing enough. I have girls this age. We (the world) must do more to help Ukraine. I understand all the political and escalation lines. I don’t care. We can and must do more. pic.twitter.
In a wild podcast, he also said the U.S. military should have taken “leather and plastic hangers” out of Afghanistan.
Okay, so you may have read that headline and thought, “What? Tucker Carlson is finally souring on Putin’s war?” Oh, no. Don’t worry. It’s not like we’ve entered Bizarro World or anything. No, we’re simply at the stage in Vladimir Putin’s career when Russian state TV is obliquely questioning its supreme leader’s infallible judgment. Normal stuff. No biggie.
Former Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan refuses to turn over public records in the controversial audit of the 2020 Maricopa County vote.
Few foreign world leaders—let alone any murderous dictators—have received more solicitous treatment from the Republican Party during the last five years than Vladimir Putin. Imagine if Democrats so warmly and fulsomely embraced someone who now threatens to rain destruction down on our country (Osama Bin Laden comes to mind). Or if they had gleefully sent delegations to kowtow to that person’s criminal syndicate, thugs, and cronies (on the 4th of July, no less).
Former Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, who ran in the 2020 presidential race as a Democrat, is apparently putting a bow on her total transmutation to a hardcore conservative—complete with a donation from an alleged Russian spy. Okay, that’s not totally fair; the donation to Gabbard happened when she was still a Dem. But …
Elena Branson, aka Elena Chernykh, 61, is a dual Russian-U.S. citizen.
A Texas judge ruled Friday to bar the state from investigating gender-affirming care for transgender youth as abuse.
This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Every Friday, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.Earlier this week I asked readers if Joe Biden made the right call when he banned energy imports from Russia, acknowledging that doing so would cause gas prices to rise even higher than they were before.
There are immediate implications for government trials on Covid-19 therapies, tests and vaccines that run out of funds as soon as this month, according to an internal email obtained by POLITICO.
Kyiv is burning. I am struggling to explain this to my young children; they know that I wrote a book about the 2013–14 Ukrainian revolution on the Maidan, Kyiv’s central square. They were too small then to understand that their parents’ friends and colleagues were being shot at by snipers. They do know, though, that I dedicated the book to them, “in hope of a better world to come.
The union of the filmmaker Kogonada and the actor Colin Farrell might not have seemed obvious at first glance. Kogonada’s debut film, the excellent 2017 indie Columbus, is told with quiet remove—the camera is often placed quite a distance away from the lead actors (John Cho and Haley Lu Richardson).
The world was slow to recognize long COVID as one of the most serious consequences of the coronavirus. Six months into the pathogen’s tear across the globe, SARS-CoV-2 was still considered an acute airway infection that would spark a weeks-long illness at most; anyone who experienced symptoms for longer could be expected to be dismissed by droves of doctors.