To be honest, I still can’t believe this happened. Earlier today, Twitter accepted Elon Musk’s offer of $44 billion to buy the company and take it private. In one of the largest and weirdest tech acquisitions in recent memory, Musk fought off initial opposition and a poison-pill threat to buy the social-media service.News of the deal has polarized Twitter users and employees.
A fun thing about content moderation—the practice of social-media platforms deciding what we can and cannot say in some of the world’s most important online spaces—is that almost everyone thinks that it’s broken, albeit in different ways. Almost everyone also thinks that if you just put them in charge, they would fix things. When you’re the world’s richest man, you can actually give it a shot.
The role of the first lady has long been ill-defined. Until recently, she was the most prominent and therefore scrutinized woman in the White House, yet her position comes with murky expectations. Modern first ladies tend to manage a staff and champion carefully chosen causes, but their duties aren’t formally circumscribed. How many duties are too many? How many are not enough?Showtime’s The First Lady purports to answer those questions.
In theory, coming up with a fair division of housework should be simple: Take all the tasks and divide them in two.In practice, it’s more complicated. Some people find certain tasks more bearable than their partners do. Some chores are ones that no one wants to do. And, on average, women end up bearing a disproportionate share of their household’s chore burden.
Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law is part of a nationwide push by Republicans to score political points by attacking gay and transgender students.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has signed into law a gerrymandered voting map that virtually guarantees Republicans four more seats in Congress while likely cutting the number of Black Democrats elected. The measure passed along party lines Thursday but was delayed when Black Florida lawmakers staged an impromptu sit-in protest.
French President Emmanuel Macron won a second five-year term on Sunday, triumphing over far-right challenger Marine Le Pen and becoming the first French president since 2002 to be reelected. Macron beat LePen by a 17-point margin, though over a quarter of voters abstained from voting and Macron’s victory was much narrower than in 2017 — pointing to growing support in recent years for Le Pen’s openly anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim platform.
The Centers for Medicaid and Medicaid Services “concluded that it is not the best use of the federal government’s limited resources.
The city’s restored mandate had gone into effect Monday.
Coverage for three state-required vaccines for public and private schools fell by about 1 percent to approximately 94 percent, with most states reporting a drop.
The Biden administration says it wants to help the millions of Americans suffering from long Covid. Critics say its approach is inconsistent with that goal.
The agency said that it would continue to “monitor public health conditions” to determine whether the mask mandate remains necessary.
What’s better than a Marvel Cinematic Universe? A Marvel Cinematic Multiverse. Once limited to theoretical physics and comic-book plot conveniences, the notion of a multiverse has been an essential tool for Hollywood. Whether it’s a role that’s been cast and recast, a franchise character that gets a spin-off when the larger story ends, or simply a reboot telling a new story without upending its origins, the answer to any big movie problem is often: multiverse.
The war in Ukraine will “severely” set back the global recovery from Covid-19, according to the IMF.
The Fed’s campaign to raise interest rates — designed to reduce spending and curb inflation — will slow growth, which will have consequences for American workers.
Prices have been driven up by bottlenecked supply chains, robust consumer demand and disruptions to global food and energy markets worsened by Russia’s war against Ukraine.
The Biden administration recently extended a Covid-related pause on repayments.
White House officials deny any sense of panic over the economy or their midterm chances.
We continue our Earth Day special by looking at how Indigenous peoples are protecting the Earth. We follow the journey of Ivey Camille Manybeads Tso, an award-winning queer Navajo filmmaker whose new film “Powerlands” shows how corporations like Peabody, the world’s largest private coal company, have devastated her homeland. She also connects with Indigenous communities in Colombia, the Philippines, Mexico and Standing Rock facing the same struggle.
On Earth Day, we look at how the war in Ukraine gives the United States a new chance to break free of emissions-heavy steel production. Russia and Ukraine supplied over 60% of the pig iron the U.S. imported last year to make steel, some of it produced at the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works plant in Mariupol where thousands of civilians and soldiers are now blockaded.
We get an update on the Donbas region of Ukraine, where Russian forces are now focused. Russia has backed a separatist movement in the Donbas since 2014 and used protecting the Russian-speaking population there as a justification for its invasion in February. We speak with Brian Milakovsky, who lived in the Donbas town of Severodonetsk before he evacuated to Croatia in January and is now fundraising for people trying to flee Russian attacks.
Russians are weathering the fallout of President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine with no sign of a negotiated peace deal soon. Economic sanctions have driven up food prices, and there has been repression of political dissent within the country. We speak with author Tony Wood, a member of the New Left Review editorial board, who says the crushing Western sanctions are unlikely to end Putin’s rule and are only hardening attitudes.
“The ‘people’s convoy’ making friends and getting breakfast served in Oakland,” quipped one area resident.
Today was day 60 of this war. Two full months. Feels like a lifetime out here, in safety. Imagine what it must be like in Ukraine. (Even my own experience in El Salvador’s civil war was nowhere near the intensity of this all-out conventional war.)
Russian forces have no hope of taking Azovstal metal factory in Mariupol, literally designed to withstand a nuclear attack.
“The fuse … went with him. He started insulting me, called me a fool 7 times,” said Morgan, who stood by his claim that Trump walked out of their interview.
Former Rep. Brad Ashford, whose 2014 win gave Democrats their only victory in a Nebraska House race since the 1994 GOP wave, died Tuesday at the age of 72 two months after he announced that he had brain cancer. Ashford previously served as a Democrat, Republican, and independent during his two stints in the state’s unicameral legislature, though he was never fully at home in either party during his long career in local and national politics.
This week in the Nuts & Bolts Guide to the Democratic party, we should take some time to discuss why the Democratic party should not count on young people bailing out the party when election time comes.
There are several significant problems with this analysis, but some of the conclusions are also incorrect. Many conclusions revolve around voter registration efforts, turnout efforts, and making sure we motivate young people to get out there and work in campaigns.
In taking on Disney, Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is testing the limits of his combative leadership style while sending an unmistakable message to his rivals.
The key player in a North Carolina absentee ballot fraud probe that led to a do-over congressional election has died.
Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis will begin selection of a special grand jury on May 2 to hear testimony about whether former President Donald Trump tried to illegally overturn the election results in Georgia in 2020, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) reported.
Willis told the newspaper that the special grand jury won’t hear testimony from witnesses until June 1.