July 9 was the anniversary of the ratification of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, “the linchpin of the current constitutional system” that allowed for birthright citizenship, granting citizenship to formerly enslaved people and promising equal protection of the laws. More than 150 years after these promises were made to African Americans, the country has yet to deliver on them.
One of the week’s big must-reads was How Trump is helping tycoons exploit the pandemic, by The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer. Specifically, Ronald Cameron, the owner of the massive poultry processing company Mountaire. Cameron is a major Trump donor, and he’s on a White House advisory board about the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
I don’t last too long in “closed” Facebook groups on community/local issues because usually the admins prohibit political discussion in these forums, on the sensible assumption that these would otherwise degenerate into vitriolic bloodbaths, permanently hampering or killing all discussion.
Unidentified federal agents in military-style gear are jumping out of unmarked vans to detain protesters, according to videos and personal accounts.
Updated at 5:38 p.m. ET on July 18, 2020.John Lewis believed in the American project and wanted to perfect it.On August 28, 1963, Lewis stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial before hundreds of thousands of people, but his mind was on those who could not be there.
The Alabama that John Lewis was born into in 1940 was a one-party authoritarian state. Forty years before Lewis was born, the white elite of Alabama, panicked by a populist revolt of white and Black workers, shut Black men out of politics in a campaign of terror, fraud, murder, and, finally, disenfranchisement.“We had to do it. Unfortunately, I say it was a necessity. We could not help ourselves,” Alabama Governor William C. Oates confessed.
Fighting off a massive shark wasn’t the hardest part.
The civil-rights icon and longtime U.S. representative John Lewis died yesterday at the age of 80. Lewis began his life as the son of an Alabama sharecropper, and became active in the civil-rights movement while he was a student in Nashville, Tennessee. Lewis became nationally known after the March 7, 1965, “Bloody Sunday” march to Montgomery, Alabama, when he and dozens of other marchers were brutally beaten after crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge, in Selma, Alabama.
It’s easy to get the impression that the majority of Americans are spending their days at home, isolated with their nuclear family. The idea of the family as the main source of care and refuge has dominated both media coverage and public-health messaging since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.
Only during a global pandemic would the biggest film in the U.S. be not a superhero blockbuster or a Fast and the Furious sequel, but a low-budget horror movie about a teenage boy in the suburbs doing battle with a witch living next door. Thanks to the coronavirus disrupting the usual summer release schedule, The Wretched now belongs to a tiny group of films that have topped the U.S. box office for five weekends in a row, including Titanic and Avatar.
Everyone thought they had a little more time to extend aid to Americans, but they apparently circled the wrong date.
When we put out a call for stories about life with student loans, we received nearly 700 emails in response.
“It’s pretty much a disaster.
“It’s really unlikely that we will be able to give our children the gifts our parents gave us: a debt-free undergrad.
Alarm over the missing data, which was restored Thursday, became the latest source of tension between the CDC and administration officials.
Hospital chains saw the summer as a potential respite when they could resume elective procedures. But that effort is colliding with a surge in new coronavirus cases nationwide.
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services chief Seema Verma has disputed the report, calling its findings “disingenuous.
The change in federal policy comes as surging coronavirus cases have strained the nation’s testing capacity
HHS watchdog finds Seema Verma mishandled millions of dollars in federal contracts that ultimately benefited friends, former Trump officials.
“I’m frustrated, scared, and sad.
With only a few weeks until August recess, Democrats and Republicans remain far apart on key issues.
We’re economists, and our analysis suggests Congress is seriously underfunding efforts to combat Covid-19.
An extension would give taxpayers until Oct. 15 to file their returns, though they would still have to pay what they owe by July 15.
The acting chair of the CEA will leave Trump without another senior economist as discussions start about a new economic aid package.
“We have a long road ahead of us to get those people back to work,” Jerome Powell said earlier this week.
As health experts warn the coronavirus is on the rise in 41 states, many governors are reimposing restrictions after attempts at opening up the economy, but President Trump wants schools open. We speak with public health historian John Barry, who warns “The Pandemic Could Get Much, Much Worse” if we don’t take bolder action now.
The United States lost one of its great living heroes Friday night with the death of Rep. John Lewis. Lewis, 80, had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in December 2019.
Lewis was first elected to the House in 1986, but he first came to national prominence in the 1960s as a civil rights activist. He was a Freedom Rider in 1961, a speaker at the March on Washington in 1963, beaten and arrested repeatedly without ever giving up the fight.
The Georgia Democrat who helped organize the March on Washington and was called the “conscience of Congress,” has died.
