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 about films that changed their lives, or that they judge to be underrated (among other questions).
Ukrainian officials are accusing Russia of committing war crimes for killing civilians. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and EU leaders condemned images of dead civilians in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, where corpses were found littering the streets after Russian troops withdrew from the area, some with their hands bound behind their backs.
We speak with the two best friends who led a drive to organize workers at Amazon’s warehouse in Staten Island, New York, and made history Friday after a majority voted to form the first Amazon union in the U.S. We speak with Christian Smalls, interim president of the new union and former Amazon supervisor, about how he led the effort after Amazon fired him at the height of the pandemic for demanding better worker protections.
Health officials from Alabama to Washington state say that congressional gridlock over providing billions in new money has undermined efforts to transition to a steady, long-term approach to Covid-19.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which invoked the controversial order in March 2020 to limit the spread of Covid-19, said the policy is no longer needed to protect public health.
Health organizations again seek to prioritize at-risk populations for Covid shots.
Despite concerns about the bill’s policy and strategy from both sides of the aisle, nearly all House Democrats as well as a dozen Republicans voted for it Thursday.
Ashish Jha takes over the Covid task force at a point of transition in the pandemic fight.
The company met its study goals, but experts are split over whether the data will be sufficient for the Food and Drug Administration.
At first, he wanted a cut of the advance for a book planned by photographer Shealah Craighead featuring her own work.
Every student should now use “they” and “them” pronouns to avoid obvious gender identifiers like “he” and “she,” indicates a letter reportedly circulating in the state.
White House officials deny any sense of panic over the economy or their midterm chances.
The administration’s difficulties in getting bank cop nominees through a Democratic-controlled Senate underscore the fault lines within the party over how to approach financial regulation.
The Federal Reserve is raising interest rates — but Congress has a chance to bring real relief.
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.
Imprisoned WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is “crumbling” physically and psychologically, says journalist Chris Hedges, who last week attended Assange’s wedding to his longtime partner Stella Moris at London’s Belmarsh prison. Assange has been behind bars for nearly three years awaiting a possible extradition to the United States on espionage charges for publishing documents revealing war crimes committed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
YouTube has deleted the entire archive of “On Contact,” an Emmy-nominated television show by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges which was hosted on the Russian government-funded news channel RT America. We speak with Hedges, who connects the YouTube censorship of his show to a growing crackdown on dissenting voices in American media.
President Biden signed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act into law on Tuesday, culminating efforts to make lynching a federal crime that started over a century ago. We’re joined by Emmett Till’s cousin and best friend, Reverend Wheeler Parker Jr., who was 16 years old when he witnessed Till’s abduction from his great-uncle’s home in Money, Mississippi, prior to his brutal killing.
With COVID-19 coverage ending for the uninsured, we look at how uninsured people and communities of color will bear the impact of the end to free COVID-19 testing, treatment and vaccines, and how the pandemic has led to a renewed push for Medicare for All. We are joined by Dr. Oni Blackstock, primary care and HIV physician and founder and executive director of Health Justice, and Dr.
Addressing a room of sparkly bodices and artfully oversized jackets at the Grammy Awards, the president of Ukraine had a simple reminder to give. “Our musicians wear body armor instead of tuxedos,” Volodymyr Zelensky said in a surprise, pre-taped message that aired during last night’s ceremony.
He claimed Palin lifted Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign “out of the dumps” — to then lose.
As Russian troops retreat from their positions around Kyiv—a retreat forced by increasingly successful Ukrainian counterattacks that put a significant chunk of Russia’s committed forces in danger of encirclement–the world is in shock tonight as images of Russian war crimes continue to flow in from towns now liberated from Russian control.
This week on The Downballot, we open up our mailbag! Listeners sent us questions on a wide range of topics, including Wisconsin’s Senate race, legislative elections in Georgia, how Democrats should address inflation, whether handwriting postcards to voters is an effective tactic, and much more. David Nir and David Beard answered those questions.
Welcome back to the weekly Nuts & Bolts Guide to small campaigns! The old saying is that Republican voters fall in line and Democratic voters fall in love. There is a lot of truth to that statement. Along with that statement, we need to include something else. Voters in general like to hear some positives about your candidate’s accomplishments and reasons why they deserve to be elected.
Occasionally, you can run against the scandal of your opponent.
For a former president to appeal to the Russian leader for political help amid the “atrocities” in Ukraine is “completely unacceptable,” the GOP governor said.
The promise of economic recovery has rung in America’s ears since the false promises of an end to the pandemic in 2021. Lawmakers, business owners, and speculators assured us that hallmarks of our consumer life, like casual spending on nonessentials, were returning, and that this would mean the society that houses the world’s largest economy could finally assume a new normal.
Last August, an incarcerated friend of mine asked me to help him get into contact with his counselor, whom he hadn’t been able to reach. From that point on, I became an advocate and messenger. My friend had the support of his community; his loved ones sent money to deposit into his commissary account and to make sure they could talk to him via the kiosk system.
Six days after the Oscars Slap came to dominate America’s cultural conversation, Saturday Night Live joined the fray with not just one joke but a torrent of them. Perhaps this was inevitable: The now-infamous pop-culture moment—an attack on a comedian, no less—is clearly within SNL’s wheelhouse, and the show latched on to the moment with zeal. But it was too much, too late.
It’s striking how many stories and pictures from the war in Ukraine involve animals. One of the first Ukrainian civilian victims was a woman killed by Russian shelling as she tried to bring shelter dogs to safety near Kyiv. During the evacuation of the city, railway platforms and trains were crowded with pets of all kinds. A woman carried her infirm German shepherd a dozen miles on foot to cross the Polish border.