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.
If, as Carl von Clausewitz once observed, the mark of a historic moment is that no one knows what the fuck is going on, then what we have here is a historic moment. (Pretty sure it was von Clausewitz who said that.) What we have here is President Donald Trump, the day after his people sacked the Capitol, trying to strike a tone. Which tone? He doesn’t know. And it’s making him very uncomfortable.
Once upon a time, not a blade of grass could be found on this planet we call home. There were no verdant meadows, no golden prairies, no sunbaked savannas, and certainly no lawns. Only in the past 80 million years—long after the appearance of mosses, trees, and flowers—did the first shoots of grass emerge. We know this in part because a dinosaur ate some, and its fossilized poop forever memorialized the plant’s arrival.
In February 2021, Facebook abruptly wiped all of the news from its platform in Australia. The country’s lawmakers were trying to force the company to share its profits with media outlets, and this was the dramatic response. The gambit worked: After a nearly week-long blackout, which extended to pages from Australian nonprofits and government services, the new regulations were scaled back.
With the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the battleground for abortion access now shifts to the states, even as the U.S. faces the worst rates of maternal mortality among all rich nations, with Black maternal mortality three to four times higher than the national average. Now a new documentary examines the crisis of Black maternal mortality through the families of two young Black women who died after giving birth.
The January 6 hearings have provided jaw-dropping revelations about former President Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results and his role in unleashing a deadly mob on the Capitol, but the House committee has not yet recommended criminal charges against Trump. Congressmember Ro Khanna says whether to charge the former president is ultimately the Justice Department’s call, but he stresses the need for accountability.
Four corporations control 90% of the baby formula market in the United States, and as a national baby formula shortage drags on, it has impacted working-class families of color the most. We get an update from Democratic Congressmember Ro Khanna of California, who just wrote an open letter urging leaders of federal agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration to take bolder action to address the shortage.
Nearly 17,000 monkeypox infections have now been reported across 75 countries, and the World Health Organization declared the spread of monkeypox a global emergency. Meanwhile, the U.S. has stopped short of declaring a public health emergency even with nearly 3,000 cases reported in 44 states. New York alone has reported 900 cases of monkeypox, with rollout of the vaccine inhibited by short supply.
Public health experts fear the workarounds they’ve found could degrade the quality of care over time.
There are over 16,800 cases reported globally, with nearly 2,900 in the U.S.
“We’re looking at … what are the ways the response could be enhanced, if any, by declaring a public health emergency,” said White House Covid response coordinator Ashish Jha.
Experts say the president’s case is likely to stay mild.
Biden, who is twice boosted and has already started Paxlovid, is experiencing mild symptoms, according to the White House.
The reorganization will put the office’s director on a par with those of larger agencies like the CDC and FDA
A most predictable rocket attack hit Odesa today—announced shortly before it happened by an air-raid alert on my phone, but also a full day before, when Russia and Ukraine struck a tentative deal to let Ukraine ship grain from Odesa and two other ports. This morning, rockets landed at the port itself, which was soon in flames. Russia could not let a point of accord pass without spicing it up with discord. Let no agreement blossom into celebration.
From above, an open-cut coal mine looks like some geological aberration, a sort of man-made desert, a recent volcanic eruption, or a kind of terra forming. When the Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht first gazed at a series of such mines while driving through his home region in southeast Australia, he stopped and got out of his car, overcome “at the desolation of this once beautiful place,” he wrote in his book, Earth Emotions.
Slower wage growth could help bring down prices and ultimately mean less sting for the average worker.
Lower-income and Black and Hispanic Americans have been hit especially hard.
Biden officials have repeatedly touted the jobs numbers as evidence of the economy’s underlying strength, but slowing the labor market is essential to helping tame consumer prices.
Fears have mounted that the central bank might trigger a recession sometime in the next year with its aggressive rate action.
The January 6 committee aired never-before-seen outtakes of President Trump’s speech on January 7, one day after the insurrection. He is seen initially reading a script that read “this election is now over. Congress has certified the results.” But Trump insisted on changing the script. “I don’t want to say the election is over,” Trump says in the video. “I just want to say Congress has certified the results, without saying the election is over.
During their eighth and final hearing until the fall, the January 6 House select committee aired new testimony from an anonymous national security official detailing how Mike Pence’s Secret Service agents feared for their lives during the breach of the Capitol. “There were calls to say goodbye to family members,” said the anonymous official. Despite knowledge of the growing mob, Trump decided to publish a tweet at 2:24 p.m.
The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol held a primetime hearing on Thursday night focused on former President Donald Trump’s refusal to take action as his supporters attacked the Capitol on January 6. Lawmakers dissected the three-hour period on January 6 after Trump urged his supporters to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell.
Following the resignation of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Finance Minister Rishi Sunak and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss have advanced to a runoff to succeed Johnson as Conservative leader, which would also make them prime minister. Both candidates would be “utterly devastating” for the U.K., says Guardian columnist George Monbiot. “What these people have to do to become prime minister is really to appeal to the worst instincts of humanity.
Trump was “great at ripping away guardrails … now he wants to destroy all the guardrails, even if it means the cost of a functioning government,” the conservative lawyer said.
In the news this weekend: Far-right extremist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene jumps farther right, yet again, while fellow stain on the Republican and unindicted sex trafficker Rep. Matt Gaetz vamps for a fascist convention. But Republican extremism is having very real effects, especially in under-attack school systems. Dallas Republicans again respond to a mass murder in their state with new rules not on guns, but on schoolchildren.
Speakers inside praised “Christian nationalism” (Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene) and bashed ugly women who shouldn’t worry about being impregnated (Matt Gaetz).
A Mississippi police chief was fired on Wednesday when his former subordinate, a Black man, recorded him in a racist and homophobic rant bragging about the toxic and violent police culture the chief upheld.
Even if you’re not a sportsball fan, you’ve probably heard of Bo Jackson. An elite two-sport star for the NFL’s Los Angeles Raiders and MLB’s Kansas City Royals, Chicago White Sox, and California Angels, he may have captured your heart during his memorable series of “Bo Knows …” Nike ads.
One year, when I was in college, it snowed. At lot. And no, that’s not because it was during the Ice Age.
In any case, this was Kentucky, where snowplows were considered exotic beasts and 30” of white stuff was enough to literally call out the National Guard, declare a statewide emergency, and put the campus on a lockdown.