By now, the spaceship should have been on its way to the moon. By now, NASA had hoped, the gumdrop-shaped capsule—designed to carry astronauts someday—would be sending all kinds of data back home, showing engineers how its first journey to space was going.But the capsule is still here, sitting atop a giant rocket that has so far refused to leave Earth.
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. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.Last week I asked readers for their thoughts on Joe Biden’s plan to hire 100,000 additional police officers and his explicit rejection of defunding the police.
Rogue One sets itself apart from other Star Wars films seconds after it starts. There is no opening crawl, no wall of yellow font drifting into a star field. The franchise logo doesn’t appear, and the John Williams fanfare doesn’t kick in. There is merely the title card informing viewers that it’s “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away”—and then bam: The action begins.
The administration is making a policy change it has signaled for months.
One of the most dispiriting aspects of the decision yesterday by Federal District Court Judge Aileen Cannon—which granted former President Donald Trump’s request to appoint a special master to review the evidence seized from Mar-a-Lago by the FBI—is that it undermines the work of all the other judges who have tried to adhere to their oath to “administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and … faithfully and impartia
We remember the author and political activist Barbara Ehrenreich, who has died at the age of 81 after a career exposing inequality and the struggles of regular people in the United States. In a brief interview, Democracy Now! co-host Juan González recalls working with Ehrenreich as part of the Young Lords and says she was instrumental for the movement against the American health-industrial complex.
Voters in Chile have rejected a new constitution that would have replaced the country’s Pinochet-era constitution and expanded rights for Indigenous peoples and abortion seekers, guaranteed universal healthcare and addressed the climate crisis. The new charter was rejected with 62% voting “no,” and President Gabriel Boric has now vowed to continue efforts to rewrite the charter.
The United Kingdom’s Conservative Party has voted for Liz Truss to become its new leader, replacing Boris Johnson and making her Britain’s next prime minister. Truss served as foreign secretary under Johnson and has a record of “extreme neoliberal policies,” says British journalist George Monbiot. These include supporting tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulating the fossil fuel industry and refusing to regulate agricultural pollution.
To prevent the disease from becoming endemic, the U.S. needs a vaccine that stops transmission, but no one knows if Jynneos does that.
The VA submitted an interim final rule that would enable it to provide abortions when the life or health of a veteran or beneficiary is in peril, or in cases of rape or incest.
The amendment — now in limbo — would insert permanent protections into the state’s constitution for abortion and other reproductive health services.
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky endorsed the shots
Hesitant parents and challenging logistics are slowing the effort to get the nation’s youngest protected against Covid-19.
Top U.S. health officials are debating how much of the Jynneos stockpile in Denmark to bottle to combat monkeypox. It could be saved for a potential smallpox outbreak.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton warned that Donald Trump was a fool who could be baited with a tweet. This past Thursday night, in Philadelphia, Joe Biden upped the ante by asking, in effect: What idiot thing might the former president do if baited with a whole speech? On Saturday night, the world got its answer.For the 2022 election cycle, smart Republicans had a clear and simple plan: Don’t let the election be about Trump.
The plan touted by the U.S. Treasury secretary aims to diminish the Kremlin’s revenue while preserving the global oil supply.
“Jerome Powell’s rhetoric is dangerous, and a Fed-manufactured recession is not inevitable — it’s a policy choice,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren said.
The housing market has cooled so much as the Fed withdraws its support for the economy that some analysts say it may be in a slump.
In a closely watched speech, the Fed chair foreshadowed further interest rate increases and warned that rates might need to stay high for some time to kill price spikes.
The Federal Reserve chair needs to convince markets he means business when he addresses the landmark conference of economists on Friday.
The housing crisis is worsening in Los Angeles, where an estimated 60,000 people remain unhoused in Los Angeles County and thousands more are on the cusp of evictions, even as 20,000 hotel rooms remain vacant across the region. This comes as a new ballot measure could require hotels to house homeless people in vacant rooms.
In a primetime address Thursday, President Biden warned Donald Trump and his radical supporters are threatening the foundations of the republic. Biden said, “Too much of what’s happening in our country today is not normal,” and that MAGA Republicans present a “clear and present danger to our democracy,” referring to Trump’s campaign slogan of “Make America Great Again.
Short update today because it’s a holiday and I still haven’t recovered from yesterday’s monster update. If you haven’t seen it, it’s still a current representation of public information on the ground situation in Ukraine. In short, I went out on a (short) limb to declare Russia’s offensive culmination, with a clear shift to defensive ops as their war machine runs out of steam.
No one ever tells you when you’re a kid, hey, your parents are going to get old in front of you one day (if you’re lucky) and it’s going to be really hard to watch. No one primes you or prepares you well in advance for dealing with a parent who has cancer or dementia.
It’s a hard-knock school that you are admitted to without ever applying.
This past week I spent some time traveling and ended up in Florida where my father lives.
I can’t help but keep thinking about how much different my life was a year ago as one of the only named storms of this hurricane season begins to form in the Atlantic right now. Exactly a year to the day ago, I was sweating my ass off making sandwiches with World Central Kitchen before switching to their plating team where I worked some of the hardest days I’ve ever experienced.
“This is, really, at its core, a storage argument that they’re making,” the Florida senator said of top secret files that Trump was storing at Mar-a-Lago.
One of the reasons the Southern Resident killer whale population in the Pacific Northwest is endangered is that its primary dietary staple—Chinook salmon—happens to be prized food for humans, too. And humans are bad at sharing: While Northwest salmon harvests are carefully regulated, divvied up between commercial, tribal, and sport fishermen, the federal authorities in charge of those decisions leave no place at the table for the orcas whose survival depends on the salmon.
“What elected official would ever want to cut Social Security?” Johnson asked after proposing a shaky funding system for a program 69 million Americans are currently relying on.
Let’s be honest, these last few weeks have been difficult to keep up with the news. There seems to be one tragedy after another making headlines. From hate crimes increasing nationwide to climate change impacting countries worldwide, there seems to be little to no happy news.
Despite how awful the news can be, there’s always something happening that can brighten our days.
When Elsa Avila looks at the scar that runs down her torso, she can’t help remember May 24, when a gunman stormed her fourth grade wing at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, killing 19 children and two teachers and leaving her and others wounded.