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. Soon after, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.Question of the WeekWhat worries you most about the direction of the country? And/or what makes you most optimistic about its future?Email your thoughts to conor@theatlantic.com.
You couldn’t miss the sound—a piercing, atonal whine—even if your phone had been set to vibrate. Usually this repetitive blare manifests as an Amber Alert, but this morning it accompanied a push notification about an alleged criminal on the loose in New York City. Curiously, the message that flashed across scores of smartphone screens didn’t use the phrase person of interest or suspect. Instead, the jarring alert felt more like something out of a Philip K.
Gilbert Gottfried, who died yesterday at 67 of complications from muscular dystrophy, was probably best known as the voice of Iago the parrot in Disney’s Aladdin, as the Aflac-commercial duck, or for any number of projects that put his brazen, just-shy-of-whiny voice front and center. As a comedian, he was often characterized as “offensive,” given that a lot of his most high-profile (and, at times, infamous) work involved insulting celebrities on TV.
Updated at 3:45 p.m. on April 13, 2022.The world’s biggest tech companies are getting serious about carbon removal, the still-nascent technology wherein humanity can pull heat-trapping carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Yesterday, an alliance of prominent Silicon Valley companies—including Google, Meta, Shopify, and the payment company Stripe—announced that it is purchasing $925 million in carbon removal over the next eight years.
We speak with Starbucks Workers United organizer and barista Jaz Brisack on the growing Starbucks union drive that has swept across 30 U.S. states since she helped successfully organize the first U.S. unionized location in Buffalo, New York, last December. Starbucks Workers United has now successfully unionized over a dozen Starbucks shops, and about 200 stores have filed for union elections, covering 5,000 workers in 30 states.
The U.S. Labor Department said Tuesday inflation in the United States rose to 8.5% in March — the highest in four decades. Meanwhile, Oxfam is warning over 260 million people around the world could be pushed into extreme poverty by the end of year due to the pandemic and rising energy and food costs.
After a gunman opened fire on a subway train during morning rush hour Tuesday, with 10 people shot and another 13 injured, we speak with New York City public advocate and gubernatorial candidate Jumaane Williams, who says “the answer to the gun violence problem cannot be solely sending police,” adding that New York must respond with a comprehensive plan to beef up social services and programs.
The move to tighten restrictions could be a sign that leaders across the country will reimpose mask mandates if cases continue to rise.
The FDA’s rodent problem worsened during the pandemic, forcing the agency to assign some employees returning to the campus after two years to temporary desks and ask others to continue to telework.
“The protocols to protect the president are pretty strong,” he said.
The GOP is openly discussing tying Biden administration’s scrapping of Title 42, a Trump-era pandemic border policy, to a range of other voter concerns.
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.
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.
Today has seen little evident movement in Ukraine—literally—as spring rains fall on much of the region, kicking off “mud season” in the flat farmlands of eastern Ukraine. Behind those frontlines, both Russian attackers and Ukrainian defense forces are continuing to frantically rush whatever equipment they can to the Donbas in preparation for what may be the decisive campaign of the war.
Multiple people were shot this morning at the 36th Street stop in Sunset Park.
Preliminary reports indicated that five people were shot, a law enforcement official said. The police were seeking a man with a gas mask and an orange construction vest, the official said.
Initial reports say several undetonated devices were found inside the subway station.
We seem to be having Russian History Month. There has been the head of the Russian orthodox church reaching back 900 years to claim that neither Ukraine nor the Ukrainian church is “real.” Vladimir Putin has insisted that Ukraine is not a country because it “illegally left” the USSR. And on Tuesday, Russian diplomats insisted that Japan pay them back for gold supposedly stolen in 1920.
Pastor John Raymond, a one-time Survivor contestant and former Republican candidate for the Louisiana House, was arrested last week and charged with three counts of cruelty to juveniles after taping children’s mouths shut for talking too much in class, The Washington Post reported. The incident took place on March 17, but Raymond was not arrested until Thursday after police investigated the issue and he turned himself in.
Jason Sullivan reportedly encouraged extremists to “descend on the Capitol” on the day Congress convened to certify the election.
Back in 2016, when Donald Trump was campaigning to be governor of Vladimir Putin’s new vassal state, the Democratic People’s Republic of Ivankaland (fka the United States), he made a truly shocking statement suggesting that America’s “Second Amendment people” could stop a future President Hillary Clinton from picking Supreme Court justices.
Carrick Flynn, a political newcomer running against a diverse set of candidates, already has the support of a cryptocurrency billionaire.
The president had previously condemned Russia for committing war crimes in its brutal invasion of Ukraine.
The Justice Department’s decision is part of an effort to protect confidential information that may compromise an ongoing investigation, a source told the Associated Press.
The Tennessee Republican appeared confused about the location of her home state while alluding to former President Donald Trump’s now-defunct project.
Ever since the NFT boom began last year, non-fungible tokens—the blockchain-linked digital files that can contain, well, anything—have escaped easy definition. After an artist working under the name Beeple sold a piece of NFT artwork for $69 million at auction last March, pieces as varied as concert tickets and pictures of ape heads started trading for sums that would fetch houses.
Haruki Murakami’s fifth book, Norwegian Wood, was a sensation in Japan when it was first released in 1987. Despite its success, it wasn’t widely available in English until 2000. The gap between its publication and its popular translation is surprising in hindsight, but few people outside the author’s home country had heard of him until the later English releases of some of his other works.
Sign up for Molly’s newsletter, Wait, What?, here.“We probably didn’t get COVID in there,” I said to my two doctor friends, grimacing as we put on our masks to board the elevator after a party for parents of kids attending my daughter’s school, where we’d been maskless. Most people I know are vaccinated, and many of them had Omicron in December when seemingly everyone in New York City got Omicron.
Photographs by Jelka von LangenOne peculiarity of European aristocrats is that their names pile up, like snowdrifts. It’s lunchtime in Tirana, the capital of Albania, and I am about to meet Leka Anwar Zog Reza Baudouin Msiziwe Zogu, crown prince of the Albanians.The Albanian royal residence is easy to miss, tucked away on a quiet side street behind the national art museum.
The relatively brief but bloody war in Ukraine is entering its fourth phase.