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 Monday, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.Last week, I asked readers to describe a moral dilemma.Susanna situates us in the medical profession:
Imagine you are a doctor. A patient comes in with an unidentified genetic disease.
The alleged teenage mass shooter in Buffalo, New York, wrote and posted a 180-page manifesto. I read the whole thing, and the only part that surprised me was the banality of his stated intention to eat “corn beef hash” for breakfast, followed by lunch at McDonald’s, before killing as many Black people as possible.
Attorneys and advocates are exploring options beyond lawsuits, including using strategies once relied on by their foes.
The Atlantic, a literary destination since its founding 165 years ago as a magazine of “Literature, Art, and Politics,” is today unveiling a dramatically expanded Books section devoted to essays, criticism, reporting, original fiction, poetry, and book recommendations, and announcing a first-of-its-kind book imprint called Atlantic Editions in partnership with the independent publisher Zando.
Last fall, having heard that Joan Didion’s health was in decline, The Atlantic’s staff writer Caitlin Flanagan got in her car and started driving across California. “I wanted to feel close to the girl who came from Nowhere, California (have you ever been to Sacramento?), and blasted herself into the center of everything.
Tens of thousands took to the streets across the U.S. Saturday to protest threats to abortion rights as part of a coordinated day of action, under the banner “Bans Off Our Bodies.” We speak with Renee Bracey Sherman, founder and executive director of pro-abortion group We Testify, about the racist history behind anti-abortion movements and the failure of Democrats to protect reproductive rights over the years.
We speak to prominent antiracist scholar Ibram X. Kendi about the epidemic of young white males who commit white supremacist domestic terrorism. This comes as an 18-year-old white shooter sought out a majority-Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York, and killed 10 people on Saturday. Kendi says this phenomenon will only get worse if antiracist education is not introduced to white children and children of color alike at their most vulnerable stages of development.
The mass shooter who killed 10 people in Buffalo, New York, on Saturday posted a racist manifesto online before targeting a majority-Black neighborhood. His writings took heavily from conservative conspiracy theories that white people were in danger of being replaced by people of color. This so-called Great Replacement conspiracy theory has been promoted by major far-right media figures including Tucker Carlson of Fox News.
In one of this year’s deadliest mass shootings, a white supremacist opened fire Saturday on a supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York, killing 10 and wounding three others. Eleven of the victims are Black. The 18-year-old suspect posted racist ideology online before live-streaming his attack.
The bulk of the funding pledges are set to come from international officials.
More than 1 million Americans have died from drug overdoses since 2001.
Groups that operate clinics and run abortion access funds warn that they’ll need more money, more providers and more space to help care for the influx of people who will cross state lines to seek abortions.
On a month-to-month basis, prices rose 0.3% from March to April, a still-elevated rate but the smallest increase in eight months.
Rates this year could reach their highest levels since before the 2008 Wall Street crash if surging prices continue.
The government said gross domestic product shrank at a 1.4 percent annualized rate in the first quarter.
The steady spending suggested the economy could keep expanding this year even though the Federal Reserve plans to raise rates aggressively to fight the inflation surge.
The war in Ukraine will “severely” set back the global recovery from Covid-19, according to the IMF.
Finland’s president and prime minister say they plan to end decades of neutrality and join NATO. Sweden is also expected to seek NATO membership. The Kremlin says Russia sees the expansion of NATO on its borders as a threat. “People on both sides will suffer,” says Reiner Braun, executive director of the International Peace Bureau, who warns Russia will escalate in response and move more nuclear weapons near the 830-mile-long Finland-Russia border.
Three journalists were killed within a three-day span this week in Mexico, bringing the toll to 11 so far this year and making Mexico the deadliest country in the world for journalists, behind Ukraine. Most of the murders have gone unsolved. This week journalists across Mexico took to the streets protesting the murder of their colleagues and called for accountability.
Calls are growing for President Biden to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier, the 77-year-old imprisoned Native American activist who has spent 46 years behind bars for a crime he says he did not commit. Amnesty International considers Peltier a political prisoner, and numerous legal observers say his 1977 conviction for alleged involvement in killing two FBI agents in a shootout on the Pine Ridge Reservation was riddled with irregularities and prosecutorial misconduct.
The Interior Department has documented the deaths of more than 500 Indigenous children at Indian boarding schools run or supported by the federal government in the United States which operated from 1819 to 1969. The actual death toll is believed to be far higher, and the report located 53 burial sites at former schools. The report was ordered by the first Indigenous cabinet member, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, whose grandparents were forced to attend boarding school at the age of 8.
In this case, “BBC” doesn’t mean what this guy thinks it does.
Whether by battlefield success or strategic Ukrainian retreat, Russia is seeing some success in the Lyman-Severodonetsk axis.
Updates: To the North of Lyman, 🇷🇺 have captured Shandryholove, Derylove, and Stavky. Reports that 🇷🇺 may have also taken control of Drobysheve. pic.twitter.
“Who would have ever suspected a creature like Donald Trump would become president” and appoint 3 “anti-freedom judges to court?” she asked.
Once again, the conspiracy theories promoted by Fox News and Republican elected officials have resulted in an act of racist domestic terrorism.
“Uh, well, no,” the White House chief medical adviser said.
The brutal act of domestic terrorism that unfolded Saturday in Buffalo, New York, at a Tops grocery store, at the hands of a hate-filled white nationalist who drove 200 miles from his home in Conklin because he had specifically targeted a predominantly Black community, was not an “isolated incident” committed by a “lone wolf.” Rather the opposite.
New York Rep. Elise Stefanik was catapulted to a top House Republican leadership position after Republicans purged Rep. Liz Cheney from the role as punishment for speaking out against Donald Trump’s violent attempted coup.
For all the sturm und drang of today’s fighting, changes on the ground were scant. Ukraine officially picked up a small town here, Russia did the same over there. While much of the front line was on fire (Ukraine claimed 14 separate attacks), the situation on the ground remained essentially unchanged. @War_Mapper’s updates on Twitter are always great, if you want to see today’s changes.
The former president also failed to offer any condolences or express sadness about the racist mass shootings in Buffalo, New York.