There was a time, not long ago, when I would have argued that much of what ails our politics could be made better by forcing candidates into a lot more debates.
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. Every Friday, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.Question of the WeekThe Oscars were this week, so let’s talk about cinema.
Public opinion on issues like same-sex marriage have moved in a progressive direction, and there’s no reason to think that’s going to change.
The measures will outlaw abortion after 15 weeks if the U.S. Supreme Court allows it, prohibit gender confirmation surgery for minors and ban transgender girls from playing on girls and women’s sports teams.
Rep. Madison Cawthorn got a talking-to from Republican leaders for comments about certain unnamed officials that they dubbed “exaggerated.
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” the ancient proverb goes. Less known is the Trump corollary: Even when my friend’s enemy is also an alleged war criminal and my country’s geopolitical enemy. It’s harder and harder to be shocked by Donald Trump, but asking Russia’s leader to interfere in American politics to help him, in the midst of a brutal and illegal war condemned by most of the world, might just do it.
Ashish Jha takes over the Covid task force at a point of transition in the pandemic fight.
Yevhenii Monastyrskyi was an undergraduate at the University of Luhansk, in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, when war broke out in 2014. One day, on his way home from a coffee shop with friends, he says, they were approached by Russian soldiers in an SUV. Without much explanation, Monastyrskyi told me, he and his friends were detained in the basement of a local government building.
In the United States, the philosophy behind many of the most important progressive climate proposals of the past few years—such as the Green New Deal and Joe Biden’s climate plan—was premised on three ideas. Each was rooted in a diagnosis of the 2010s economy—and each, unfortunately, is looking more and more out of date.First, each plan almost universally assumed that the American economy remained bruised from the Great Recession.
Western countries have opened their doors to millions of Ukrainians fleeing the war in their homeland, presenting a model of how refugees should be welcomed. But their experience stands in stark contrast to how African refugees are treated when attempting to reach Europe to escape war, hunger and despair.
As the U.S. says it will welcome up to 100,000 Ukrainian refugees fleeing the Russian invasion, immigration officials say they’re preparing for a surge of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border as it ends the Trump-era pandemic restriction Title 42 in response to humanitarian outcry. We speak with Guerline Jozef of the Haitian Bridge Alliance about how Haitian refugees are treated, and with award-winning journalist Maria Hinojosa about the Haitians she met in a migrant caravan.
The United Nations says more than 4 million refugees have now fled Ukraine as Russia’s invasion nears its sixth week. Russia announced plans Tuesday to “fundamentally” cut back military operations near Kyiv and the city of Chernihiv, but Ukrainian officials say Russian forces continue to carry out strikes in or near both cities.
where M is the mass of my brother’s body
falling after he pulled the trigger.
And here we are, bound to Earth’s pull
downward. His knees hit the floor first.
I rose quickly from my bed, knowing
the distance was too great, like those dreams
where you run and run
but the space just keeps expanding.
This fall is a short vertical distance,
with little resistance now, the time
for resistance is over.
The company met its study goals, but experts are split over whether the data will be sufficient for the Food and Drug Administration.
With a more than $4 billion request stalled in Congress, USAID officials are now forced to plan for the possibility that their funding will run dry in the next few months.
China has continued to pursue a “zero-Covid” strategy.
White House officials deny any sense of panic over the economy or their midterm chances.
The administration’s difficulties in getting bank cop nominees through a Democratic-controlled Senate underscore the fault lines within the party over how to approach financial regulation.
The Federal Reserve is raising interest rates — but Congress has a chance to bring real relief.
The increase reported by the Labor Department reflected the 12 months ending in February and didn’t include most of the oil and gas price increases that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb.
The Fed is already expected to begin a campaign of interest rate increases next month in a bid to remove its support for economic growth amid a blistering job market and rapidly rising prices.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have just finished a weeklong visit to former British colonies in the Caribbean. Their trip comes after Barbados cut ties to the monarchy and became a republic last year. During the so-called charm offensive to the British Commonwealth countries, the royals were met with protests calling for reparations for slavery.
Today’s most significant news is the announcement from Russia that they intend to pull back from some areas near Kyiv, allegedly as a magnanimous gesture. We can say with near certainty that Putin’s generals aren’t doing it out of goodwill.
With Russians conceding their humiliating loss at the Battle for Kyiv, there is a massive artillery barrage to cover for … something. A retreat? A reconfiguration? We don’t know. Lots of fog of war right now, and we can’t trust anything Russia claims. Look at NASA FIRMS satellite imagery of the region:
NASA FIRMS satellite image 3/29/2022
Remember, not every red dot here is combat-related fire.
As abortion ban proposals make their way nationwide, some GOP states are taking the opportunity to propose other horrific laws. A bill, HB 233, has been proposed in the Tennessee state legislature that would establish a common-law marriage between “one man” and “one woman,” WKRN reported.
Bill sponsors claim the proposed bill would add a new marriage option for residents.
Here at Daily Kos, we’re making an ongoing effort to cover the Republican assault on trans rights. Conservatives are doing their best to try various routes to isolate and discriminate against trans folks, whether it comes down to denying them safe, gender-affirming health care, getting accurate gender markers on government IDs, or playing on sports teams. Republicans spend a lot of time talking about LGBTQ+ people in general, but nothing about mental health.
It’s been 246 years since the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment and the abolishment of slavery in 1865. And in the time since, 157 years to be exact, the issue of unpaid reparations remains unsolved. Many would say that without acknowledgment of the brutal history of slavery in the U.S., not only will the system of racism never change, the nation itself will remain unjust and unhealed.
“We’ll see,” the president said Tuesday. “I don’t read anything into it until I see what their actions are.
Six years after calling on Putin for aid against Hillary Clinton, Trump is now asking for the murderous dictator’s help finding dirt on Joe Biden.
Lawmakers have tried to pass nearly 200 anti-lynching bills since 1918. The new law makes using the “weapon of racial terror” a federal hate crime.