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.Last week, I asked readers to discuss how they’re thinking about the upcoming midterm elections in the United States.
Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott, the Republican governors of Florida and Texas, respectively, have exploited thousands of migrants by busing and flying them to New York City; Washington, D.C.; and Martha’s Vineyard, off Massachusetts. The idea is simple: Make the Democrats deal with the border crisis and prove they’re all hypocrites, human rights be damned.As a matter of optics, it’s not yet clear who has emerged ahead.
The Georgia GOP Senate nominee is set to face Sen. Raphael Warnock on stage next month in a race that could determine control of the Senate.
In the world of Gwendoline Riley’s novels, a parent’s love is not to be trusted. What should come innately here seems skewed and conditional. A reader gets the clear sense that nothing—not even this supposedly pure emotion—comes without a cost.Such tension is at the core of her novels, as difficulties in her narrators’ present lives are set against familial discord and fraught relations between parents and children. Riley has earned a devoted readership in the U.K.
As Monday’s state funeral for Queen Elizabeth II marks the end of a national period of mourning in Britain, we speak with the U.K.’s first professor of Black studies, Kehinde Andrews, about the generational difference in perceptions of the queen within his Jamaican family, which he lays out in his recent essay, “I Don’t Mourn the Queen.
Climate Week kicks off this week in New York City as more than 150 world leaders gather for the U.N. General Assembly and as Hurricane Fiona rips through Puerto Rico, Typhoon Nanmadol slams southern Japan, and Typhoon Merbok floods parts of western Alaska. We speak to climate scientist Michael Mann about how climate change has changed the pattern of tropical storms, and what needs to happen to address the crisis.
More than 1.5 million people are in the dark after Hurricane Fiona knocked the power out across all of Puerto Rico Sunday, triggering floods and landslides. We go to San Juan for an update from Democracy Now! correspondent Juan Carlos Dávila, who describes how privatization of the island’s electrical grid coupled with a legacy of U.S. colonialism “has really caused the crisis.
The ban has exemptions for medical emergencies and for rape and incest victims until eight weeks of pregnancy for adults and 14 weeks for children.
Demetre Daskalakis has become caricatured as a tattooed oddity among buttoned-up bureaucrats. The truth is far different. “I wish I were that interesting,” he says.
Syphilis rates saw the biggest annual increase in more than 70 years.
Four leading health organizations played a major part in envisioning and founding critical programs to develop, secure and distribute Covid tests, vaccines and treatments.
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.
The housing market has cooled so much as the Fed withdraws its support for the economy that some analysts say it may be in a slump.
In a closely watched speech, the Fed chair foreshadowed further interest rate increases and warned that rates might need to stay high for some time to kill price spikes.
In an extended interview, acclaimed physician and author Dr. Gabor Maté discusses his new book, just out, called “The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture.” “The very values of a society are traumatizing for a lot of people,” says Maté, who argues in his book that “psychological trauma, woundedness, underlies much of what we call disease.
Nearly 1,500 people have died and tens of millions have been displaced in Pakistan, where catastrophic flooding has left a third of the country underwater, washing away homes, farmlands, bridges, hospitals and schools. “People have lost everything,” says Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a Pakistani artist and the grandson of Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto.
Ukraine has accused Russia of bombing a dam in the southern city of Kryvyi Rih — where Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was born — forcing evacuation in parts of the city due to flooding. The bombing is the latest Russian attack on civilain infrastructure since Ukrainian forces recaptured over 3,000 square miles of territory from Russia during a counteroffensive this past week.
Railroad workers have reached a new tentative union contract with rail companies, averting a potential strike set to start on Friday that could have shut down rail service across the United States.
Celtic players clapped for the queen. Fans clapped back.
President issues vow as tensions with China rise.
President Joe Biden said it was “much too early” to decide whether he was going to run for re-election.
Attorneys for Venezuelan asylum seekers shipped to Martha’s Vineyard by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis are calling for a criminal probe into the “shameful political stunt.
President Joe Biden says the top-secret found documents at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate was “irresponsible.
After former President Donald Trump regurgitated the racist “great replacement” theory, and otherwise trashed America in an odd endorsement of Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance, portions of a crowd of more than 6,000 attendees raised their single fingers in the air. It was an alarming move for social media users who described the gesture as remarkably similar to the Nazi salute.
With Ukraine moving forward on multiple fronts, I scoured recent Ukraine General Staff reports to see if Russia was still managing any offensive actions. Turns out that yes, but just a few. On Thursday, Friday and Saturday, the same town names popped up:
During the current day, units of the Defense Forces repelled enemy attacks in the areas of the settlements of Bakhmut, Zaitseve, Pervomaiske, Mykolayivka Druga and Novomykhailivka.
With every new revelation out of the Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago scandal, his theft of highly classified documents becomes even more blatant. And the idea that anyone—from a judge to Republicans in Congress—is still engaged in the pretense that what Trump did was no big deal, becomes ever more ridiculous.
On Friday evening, The Washington Post reported a new aspect to the Doc-a-Lago affair.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ inhumane and depraved stunt keeps getting worse as more facts emerge. On Wednesday, DeSantis loaded 48 migrants—who are asylum-seekers mostly from Venezuela—onto planes in in San Antonio, Texas. They then flew them to Florida, then eventually on to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, where there are no refugee services.
The American right’s entire agenda now is driven by a singular narrative: Liberals are evil. Not merely bad, but beyond-the-pale foul and unholy, demonically possessed and intent on destroying the nation.