President Donald Trump’s open admission yesterday that he’s sabotaging the Postal Service to improve his election prospects crystallizes a much larger dynamic: He’s waging an unprecedented campaign to weaponize virtually every component of the federal government to partisan advantage.
The coronavirus crisis and the movement for racial justice have magnified the challenges faced by people released from prison, whose criminal record makes it hard to find a job and even housing, especially women. We feature a new AJ+ series by Messiah Rhodes, whose mother was in and out of jail throughout his childhood and was able to break the cycle of incarceration. Rhodes says his work serves as a response to calls to defund police.
In a deal brokered by the United States, Israel and the United Arab Emirates have agreed to fully normalize relations after years of secretly working together on countering Iran and other issues. Under the deal, Israel has also agreed to temporarily halt plans to annex occupied Palestinian territories in the West Bank, which had already been on hold due to international condemnation.
Eli Joshua Ade / HBOLike many young people, the protagonist of the 2016 novel Lovecraft Country devours entertainment that his father finds foolish and reprehensible. Atticus loves reading science fiction, fantasy, and horror—genres that, as his dad points out, are dominated by white authors and full of racist stereotypes. The tension inherent in Atticus’s fondness for such writers drives much of Lovecraft Country, which is set in the 1950s.
To teach someone is to influence them, and nothing interests Kanye West more than influence. (Shutterstock / Getty / Arsh Raziuddin / The Atlantic)Underlying Kanye West’s confusing run for president may be the simple impulse that has driven much of his career: the impulse to teach. His first album, 2004’s The College Dropout, kicked off with a skit in which West was asked to give a school’s commencement speech.
She says she’s concerned I make bad financial decisions, but I think I’ve been playing it smart.
Parenting advice on family followers, unexpected twins, and grandma gifts.
A few years ago, the Department of Justice started looking into business practices in the canned tuna industry. What unfolded shocked an industry.
They need much more than academic and food resources.
A POLITICO survey of health care workers elicited dozens of stories from the front lines across the country.
She’s not the veep pick of the left’s dreams, but she’s not the veep pick of its memes, either.
There was a way for Trump to actually help Americans, not just look like he is. He didn’t bother.
Makan Delrahim briefly looked like a serious trustbuster. He proved to be yet another of the president’s political hacks.
President Donald Trump has pushed for the college football season to be played this year.
Entitlements are a key issue for older voters.
Trump and Republicans are vulnerable on health care issues.
Concern about discrimination is rising as the pandemic swamps more states and tests hospitals and health systems in its path.
“It is clear that the UK is in the largest recession on record,” the Office for National Statistics said in a statement.
Donald Trump’s executive order wouldn’t do much to immediately help the 20 million or so Americans who face losing their homes in the next few months.
Lawmakers have left town and Trump aides don’t expect new stimulus talks anytime soon. That leaves the U.S. economy without much of the government aid that had been propping it up.
The pace of job creation slowed in July, and unemployment remains above 10 percent. New jobless claims remain above 1 million per week.
In her extensively researched new book, “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents,” Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson argues the United States’ racial hierarchy should be thought of as a caste system, similar to that in India. In a wide-ranging interview, she describes how she also looks at the ways Nazi Germany borrowed from U.S. Jim Crow laws. “The Nazis needed no one to teach them how to hate,” Wilkerson says.
Heavy fog in India, the announcement of a Vice Presidential candidate in Delaware, protests and anger in Beirut, coronavirus precautions in a Thai kindergarten, a Latvian folk/pagan metal band in concert, a funicular in Austria, a volcanic eruption in Indonesia, derecho damage in Iowa, guests at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, the return of the Mayflower II, and much more.
“I know where the skeletons are buried,” he writes, “because I was the one who buried them.
When Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez learned Wednesday she would only be given one minute to speak at next week’s virtual Democratic National Convention, she tweeted the poem “I have only just a minute,” written by late civil rights leader Dr. Benjamin E. Mays. That tweet attracted a bit of unexpected attention.
The attention was paid by her second-grade teacher, who goes by @mjacobs324 on Twitter.
Oh hey there!
Extremely grateful to you for taking some time from [INSERT CORONAVIRUS-ALTERED ACTIVITY HERE] to join me for the latest in statehouse action.
Me, I’m taking a little time out from attending my first full-fledged virtual conference.
It’s … weird. But it’s good! The content is amazing, and large swaths of the event translate well to the online platform.
NPR’s Noel King interviewed the Iowa Postal Workers Union President, Kimberly Karol. I urge you to read the entire transcript. (It’s not long.) She has been at the USPS for over 30 years, yet she has never seen anything like this. Louis DeJoy, a Trump flunky, was appointed as postmaster general. He has numerous conflicts of interests and no experience whatsoever—but he was a large Trump donor.
His changes have drawn widespread criticism.
There are a number of organisms that have come up with some genuinely unique adaptations over the 4+ billion years that life has been a going concern on planet Earth, and several of those relate to how organisms fight off diseases. When it comes to immune systems, human beings are actually blessed with a robust and active system with a multitiered approach to fighting off parasites, bacteria, and viruses.
