This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely, intriguing conversations and solicits reader responses to one question of the moment. Every Friday, he publishes some of your most thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.Earlier this week, I quoted criticism of Canada’s use of emergency powers to end the trucker protests.
For more than a year, WTO members have discussed a possible agreement on a Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights waiver.
The announcement comes after weeks of deliberation about what metrics officials should use in deciding when and how to ease public health restrictions.
Zora Neale Hurston once observed that America’s most prominent historical narratives prioritize “all these words from the seller, but not one word from the sold.” Much of American life is built on the knowledge and labor of Black people, especially those who were once enslaved.
Marta Wosinska, the FTC’s Bureau of Economics director, resigned on Feb. 16, a day before the FTC planned to vote on a study into pharmacy benefit managers.
No fossil fuel is more important to understanding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine than natural gas. Russia sells gas to Europe via pipelines; Europe relies on it to heat its buildings, power its industry, and generate electricity.
Orders for the drugs from an international nonprofit spiked 1,180 percent in the first week after the Texas law took effect in September.
At this moment, about a million miles from Earth, the world’s most powerful space telescope is making tiny adjustments to its mirrors, aligning the shiny tiles just so. Soon, the starlight will come into focus for the James Webb Space Telescope, and the observatory will begin to make sense of it. Thousands of astronomers are simply buzzing, eager to see the marvels that Webb might pick out of the darkness.
Many people’s experience of work over the past two years, amid a global pandemic, has been one of invasion: Their job has infiltrated the personal sphere, colonizing space that used to be distinct. Apple TV+’s new series Severance jarringly reverses this impression. The show’s setup imagines a complete split between work and life, a “severance” between one’s professional and private selves.
Russian military activity near Ukraine’s nuclear sites have raised alarm, as triggering any of the volatile reactors around the country could cause nuclear catastrophe for the entire European continent. Russian troops have seized the site of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster and have reportedly taken staff hostage, raising fear that any disturbance could rerelease deadly radiation that has been sealed off for years.
The Nation’s Katrina vanden Heuvel, who has reported on Russia for decades, says many observers were “shocked” that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an invasion of Ukraine, calling it an “indefensible” decision. President Biden ordered strong sanctions on Russia in response, but he has also heeded critics’ warnings not to send troops to Ukraine in order to avoid a world war.
As officials in Moscow threaten to replace the democratically elected Ukrainian government and Russian forces appear set to overpower Ukrainian defenses, is this the end of an independent Ukraine? We speak with Ukrainian peace activist Nina Potarska, who fled the country after Russian troops entered Ukraine on Thursday, even as her 11-year-old daughter with COVID-19 had to stay behind.
As the Russian army advances on Kyiv and threatens to topple the Ukrainian government, Ukrainian officials have banned men ages 18 to 60 from leaving the country to potentially be drafted into defense forces and have directed residents to use Molotov cocktails against the approaching Russian troops. We get an update from Ukrainian journalist Nataliya Gumenyuk in Kyiv, who says Ukrainians are showing great resilience against a much greater force invading their country.
The technology had been touted by supporters as a way to facilitate safer reopening after pandemic-related shutdowns.
Legislators say they’re taking what they see as a politically and legally safer approach, even if it means the vast majority of abortions in their states could still take place.
The request marks a shift in the challenges Africa faces — from not having enough doses to not being able to quickly get those doses into arms.
Nearly two dozen hospital officials and association leaders told POLITICO they’ve lost just a fraction of their staff to the federal immunization requirement.
“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.
Inside the White House, there is still optimism: “President Biden was elected to a four-year term, not a one-year term.
The Debt Collective is planning an action on April 4 at the Department of Education to urge the Biden administration to fulfill a campaign promise to cancel student debt before federal student loan payments restart in May. Debt cancellation would give relief to some 45 million borrowers who owe nearly $1.8 trillion in student debt. Education should be treated as a human right and not as a commodity, says Astra Taylor, co-director of the Debt Collective.
The shift comes weeks after state and local officials began forging ahead with their own plans to drop mask measures and vaccination requirements.
“It sends a terrible message to our youth,” Democratic Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith told colleagues.
Speakers didn’t say much about the Russian attack, which was unfolding during the GOP conference.
Over the past three months, flyers with antisemitic propaganda have been strewn in front of houses across 19 states, from Berkeley, California, to Colleyville, Texas.
“I can’t imagine why someone would look at what’s happening there and see it anything other than a criminal act,” the former Trump chief of staff told CNN.
Russia has launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, sending troops over the border and shelling cities across the country. Already, dozens of Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in the assault, and millions more people in the region are now in mortal danger. Countries around the world are likely to feel some effects as well, via physical disruptions of agricultural and energy supplies, and digital disruptions caused by Russian cyberattacks.
Tulsi Gabbard is speaking at the Reagan Dinner and Trump, who once told Putin he was “a big fan” and has praised his invasion of Ukraine, is to speak Saturday.
Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine confronts President Joe Biden with complex challenges at a time when he is already beleaguered—but it also presents him with an opportunity for a reset on the core foreign-policy promise he made to voters during his 2020 campaign.As a candidate, Biden offered voters not so much a change in specific international policies as an alternative approach to interacting with other nations.