President Joe Biden is unpopular. Really unpopular. Civiqs has him at 31-57 nationally. And in the states? Oof. He’s even underwater in California. And Massachusetts. Vermont is barely hanging on.
Civiqs Results
In a normal midterm cycle, this would be the end of the president’s party, especially given the razor-thin Democratic majorities in both chambers (including that 50-50 Senate).
From Friday’s news: Republicans continue taking hostages—first veterans, now marriage equality—in their ongoing temper tantrum over the Manchin deal. And because hypocrisy is their way, after screwing over the veterans, a group of Republican senators held a “Support the Troops” photo-op. There are now texts from Jan. 6 missing from the Department of Homeland Security.
After a flurry of activity the last few days, things have settled down, if by “settled down” we mean “back to HIMARS systematically degrading Russia’s ability to wage its war.” Last night, the Russian-occupied cities of Ilovaisk, Nova Kakhovka, Brylivka, and Kherson all enjoyed dramatic fireworks displays at the expense of a great deal of Russian ammunition.
West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice (R) is expected to sign the ban into law soon. Indiana’s ban is expected to quickly pass through the GOP-controlled legislature.
The next two national elections will probably decide the fate of the American republic. And that means specifically whether our country continues to operate as a democracy dedicated to the preservation and expansion of human rights, or whether it descends into a quasi-fascist autocracy, seeking to limit and curtail those same rights and freedoms under the thumb of white, evangelical-oriented, right-wing minority rule.
That’s when Trump’s son-in-law and adviser realized he was “woefully unprepared” to deal with the volatile White House strategist.
Ukrainian officials say Russia is responsible for an explosion Friday morning in the Olenivka penal colony in the occupied Donetsk province that killed at least 53 Ukrainian prisoners of war. If Russia is proven responsible it would represent one of the worst war crimes committed by Russian forces since the Feb. 24 invasion.
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.The Democrat running to be Pennsylvania’s next senator is famous for his ultracasual aesthetic and irreverent social-media strategy.But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.
Beyoncé herself might admit that her seventh solo album, Renaissance, is a mess. Conventional songwriting rules, polite-taste paradigms, and the best practices for headache avoidance were clearly not priorities here. The songs clatter, wobble, and lurch into one another while Beyoncé wavers between singing and doing silly voices, in multitrack. Listening to her past albums felt like being whisked in a luxury sedan through a landscape of mountains, valleys, and meadows.
For scientists, publication in Nature is a career high-water mark. To make its pages, work must be deemed exceptionally important, with potentially transformative impact on scientific understanding. In 2006, a study of Alzheimer’s disease by the lead author Sylvain Lesné met those criteria: It suggested a new culprit for the illness, a molecule called Aβ*56, which seemingly caused dementia symptoms in rats.
When the monkeypox outbreak was first detected in the United States, it seemed, as far as infectious-disease epidemics go, like one this country should be able to handle. Tests and antivirals for the virus already existed; the government had stockpiled vaccines. Unlike SARS-CoV-2, monkeypox was a known entity, a relative softball on the pathogenic field.
Vacations are often depicted as escapes in which one leaves the stresses of home and travels to a blissful paradise, unburdened by worry. Yet, as the best literature about tourism makes clear, there’s a cost to believing that any destination could be uncomplicated.Sarah Stodola’s The Last Resort, which traces the ocean-side hotel over time, easily exposes the dark side of this fantasy.
The first case of monkeypox behind bars was reported in Chicago this week, and health experts are warning that jails could accelerate the spread as they are dangerously unprepared to combat against a virus that spreads through close physical contact. We speak with Dr. Homer Venters, the former chief medical officer for New York City’s Correctional Health Services, whose new op-ed for The Hill is headlined ”CDC must act to prevent monkeypox explosion in prisons.
As tens of millions of people in the United States live under heat alerts this summer, we look at conditions faced by those in prisons and jails with poor cooling systems and lack of access to running water. “Although heat has been an ongoing issue in Texas, this year it’s exacerbated by a staffing crisis that’s been years in the making,” says Keri Blakinger, the first formerly incarcerated reporter for The Marshall Project.
Before a deal emerged this week on a bill to address the climate emergency, six congressional staffers were arrested Monday on Capitol Hill as they held a nonviolent civil disobedience protest inside the office of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, urging him to reopen negotiations on the bill. We speak with Saul Levin, one of the staffers who was arrested, and discuss the role the action had in pushing the bill forward.
President Biden is hailing a Senate bill negotiated by Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer as “the most significant legislation in history to tackle the climate crisis.” While it faces hurdles before passage, the so-called Inflation Reduction Act would invest $369 billion into renewable energy and other measures to reduce reliance on fossil fuels.
As the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) invests millions in Democratic primaries to defeat progressives who support Palestine, we speak to one of the candidates: Michigan Congressmember Andy Levin, whose primary is on Tuesday. He is a self-described Zionist who supports a two-state solution, but earlier this year a former president of AIPAC described him as “arguably the most corrosive member of Congress to the U.S.-Israel relationship.
The people with knowledge of the matter said the declaration is expected as soon as the end of the week.
The move can offer the agency a better understanding of how far and fast the virus is spreading.
Vice President Kamala Harris plans to turn up pressure against “Republican extremism,” Hulu angered Democrats and state judges made opposite rulings on enforcing bans.
Slower wage growth could help bring down prices and ultimately mean less sting for the average worker.
The measure would give EV buyers a $7,500 tax credit starting next year, through the end of 2032. There’s also a new $4,000 credit for those buying used EVs.
GOP senators are so mad about a surprise Democratic deal on climate change that they may just drop their support for doing anything.
The Senate dance of determining what Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin will vote for took another turn yesterday with an announcement that he’d agreed to support … well, something. The idea of the Senate doing any something at all, however, led Senate Republicans to take out their anger on a previously popular bill that would provide expanded medical care for poisoned war veterans. Yes, that’s how Republicanism works now.
On Tuesday night, Chris Cuomo made one of his first on-air appearances anywhere since being fired from CNN last December over his role in helping his brother, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, fend off accusations of sexual harassment. Cuomo’s appearance came on NewsNation, the fledgling news channel that replaced WGN America.
To this day, it remains utterly gobsmacking that Donald Trump got even one vote for president of the United States, much less tens of millions. He had no relevant experience in politics or, from the looks of it, business. And as humans go, he was a pretty below-average tapeworm.
And yet, somehow, the wheel of cosmically unlikely events slid right past “Zombie Gandhi gnaws your nips off” and landed squarely on “Donald Trump is president.
Ukraine has launched long-range artillery or HIMARS rockets into the Antonivskyi Bridge east of Kherson for a third night in a row, causing additional damage and closing the bridge to any kind of vehicular traffic. At Darivka, east of Kherson, the bridge across the Inhulets River that connects the city to traffic coming across the Kakhovka Bridge is also down, and the pontoon bridge which Russia had constructed there appears to be completely gone.
There is a direct pipeline of former federal immigration officials who have then gone to work for the private prison profiteers that make big bucks from jailing immigrants for the federal government. This includes officials from the previous administration, who, for their intentional anti-immigrant abuses, should be societal pariahs.
One person joked that he was pretty sure the Missouri Senator’s book would “fall well short of expectations.
Sen. Joe Manchin is “adamant” about fixing a tax break for wealthy investors, but fellow moderate Kyrsten Sinema had wanted to keep it untouched.