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. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
The Supreme Court will decide before next summer the most important case for American democracy in the almost two and a half centuries since America’s founding.In Moore v. Harper, the Court will finally resolve whether there is a doctrine of constitutional interpretation known as the “independent state legislature.
We speak to world-renowned political dissident Noam Chomsky and political writer Vijay Prashad about the Russian war in Ukraine, now in its eighth month. When it comes to continuing the war rather than negotiating a peace settlement, “the United States and Britain are pretty isolated on this,” says Chomsky.
Brazil’s presidential contest will be settled by a runoff vote on October 30 after leftist former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva fell short of a majority in Sunday’s election, winning 48% of votes compared to incumbent far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who received 43%. Bolsonaro outperformed expectations set by recent polls, which had suggested an outright win for Lula.
It’s a rare moment for a Fed chair to toss aside all political considerations and ignore frantic investors.
Medical groups say the new laws are delaying patient access to a range of treatments.
Abortion-rights advocates are expected to appeal the decision.
Owen County Judge Kelsey Hanlon issued a preliminary injunction against the ban, putting the new law on hold as abortion clinic operators argue in a lawsuit that it violates the state constitution.
by Ray Levy Uyeda
This article was originally published at Prism
Fall is a tough season for Da’Ton Harris, a wildland firefighter who spends multiple weeks at a time attempting to tamp down fires without hoses. Harris and his crew of 20 other firefighters with the Urban Association of Forestry and Fire Professionals, where he’s a superintendent, are responsible for cutting down a forest to its soil so that, theoretically, there’s less fuel to burn.
More than two years into the pandemic (still not over, President Biden!), there have been nearly 100 million cases of COVID-19 in the United States. In the early part of the pandemic, some workers benefited from a first-ever federal paid sick leave law, and a growing number of states require paid sick leave for many workers. But many workers have had to face COVID-19 with no paid sick time, and as usual, the burden falls most heavily on the workers who already have the least.
The Fed’s interest rate hikes have fueled market turmoil by boosting the value of the dollar and feeding higher borrowing costs.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell has pledged to do whatever it takes to curb inflation.
Despite the signs of moderating price increases, inflation remains far higher than many Americans have ever experienced and is keeping pressure on the Federal Reserve.
The plan touted by the U.S. Treasury secretary aims to diminish the Kremlin’s revenue while preserving the global oil supply.
“Jerome Powell’s rhetoric is dangerous, and a Fed-manufactured recession is not inevitable — it’s a policy choice,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren said.
We speak with the award-winning filmmaker Reid Davenport about his directorial debut, “I Didn’t See You There,” in which he reflects on the portrayal of disability in media and popular culture. “Documentary film has traditionally subjugated disabled people, so I wanted to completely turn that on its head” by filming from his perspective without being seen, says Davenport.
The lobby of DCTV’s new documentary film center in New York will be dedicated to the filmmaker Brent Renaud, who worked out of the historic firehouse alongside Democracy Now! for many years. Renaud was the first journalist to be killed in the Ukraine war after he was shot dead on March 13, 2022, while filming refugees near the capital Kyiv for a documentary series.
The New York City firehouse studio that housed Democracy Now! from 2001 to 2009 has reopened as a movie theater devoted to documentary films. The opening of Firehouse: DCTV’s Cinema for Documentary Film comes as Downtown Community Television celebrates 50 years of media activism and training.
Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro faces former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Sunday’s presidential election. Lula is a former union leader who held office from 2003 through 2010. He’s running on a leftist platform to uplift Brazil’s poor, preserve the Amazon rainforest and protect Brazil’s Indigenous communities, and is supported by a broad, grassroots alliance, explains Brazilian human rights advocate Maria Luísa Mendonça.
Conservatives had a “collective breakdown” over a Black woman playing a flute.
President Joe Biden says the U.S. government will be with Puerto Rico for the long haul as it cleans up and rebuilds after Hurricane Fiona.
Ukraine applied for fast-track membership into the military alliance just days earlier after Russia annexed four of its regions in violation of international law.
GOP Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott refused to vote for the spending bill that includes disaster relief to help Florida recover from Hurricane Ian.
By dint of its longevity and evolving ensemble cast, Saturday Night Live doesn’t stay the same for very long. The series featured a record 21 cast members last year, before major players including Kate McKinnon, Pete Davidson, Aidy Bryant, and Kyle Mooney left in May, followed later by Alex Moffat, Melissa Villaseñor, Chris Redd, and the relative newcomer Aristotle Athari.
The Environmental Protection Agency and the Justice Department announced on Friday that the Atlantic Richfield Company (AR) agreed to finish cleaning up the site of a former copper smelting site that the BP subsidiary had assumed control over all the way back in 1977. The Anaconda Co. Smelter was in operation for nearly a century. It closed in 1980; three years later it was deemed a superfund site by the EPA.
During the peak of the pandemic, John Katzman and I had a standing phone date at 7:30 on Friday mornings. Katzman usually walked along the beach near his house in the Hamptons while we spoke. I’d sit in my office, try to visualize the beauty of Long Island’s southeastern shore, and listen.Katzman is astonishingly knowledgeable about the American educational system. He founded Princeton Review, the test-prep behemoth, in the early 1980s, and has founded several other start-ups since.
The flute is an instrument that dates back to ancient times. The United States Library of Congress has quite a collection of almost 1,700 of them, western and non-western, and until last week, I doubt very much that it was of interest to the general public. That changed when singer, rapper, and classically trained flutist Melissa Viviane Jefferson, who goes by Lizzo and happens to be a Black woman, was invited by our current Librarian of Congress, Dr.
The push to heed warning from public health experts faces buzzsaw of end-of-year budgeting.
The court’s conservative supermajority returns on Oct. 3 with affirmative action and voting rights squarely in its sights.
He does not return: not to the evening’s performance,
where his understudy gains a standing ovation, & not
to the theater, where the treasonous stage is made
for turning one place into many, one person to another.