The New York Times reports: After all the scurrying, searching, sifting, speculating, hand-counting and bamboo-hunting had ended, Republicans’ post-mortem review of election results in Arizona’s largest county wound up only adding to President Biden’s margin of victory there. But for those who have tried to undermine confidence in American elections and restrict voting, the actual… Read More »
Tim Murphy writes: There was big news this week on what is known ominously and euphemistically as “the democracy beat,” and like all such news, it was bad. On Tuesday, CNN published a two-page memo written by a lawyer for then-President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign during the run-up to the January 6 certification of the… Read More »
Daniel Engber and Adam Federman write: As the pandemic drags on into a bleak and indeterminate future, so does the question of its origins. The consensus view from 2020, that SARS-CoV-2 emerged naturally, through a jump from bats to humans (maybe with another animal between), persists unchanged. But suspicions that the outbreak started from a… Read More »
Jeff Greenfield writes: If anyone tells you they know how the battle among congressional Democrats will be resolved, wish them a good day and walk away very quickly. They managed to pass an infrastructure bill in the Senate — with Republican support! — and are now in total disagreement on whether to vote on it… Read More »
John Hudak writes: The War on Drugs, not the war in Afghanistan, is America’s longest war. It has used trillions of American taxpayer dollars, militarized American law enforcement agencies (federal, state, and local), claimed an untold number of lives, railroaded people’s futures (especially among Black, Latino, and Native populations), and concentrated the effort in the… Read More »
Chinese engineers pose after welding the first seamless rails for the China-Laos railway in Vientiane, Laos, June 18, 2020. Kaikeo Saiyasane/Xinhua via Getty Images By Blake Alexander Simmons, Boston University; Kevin P. Gallagher, Boston University, and Rebecca Ray, Boston University China is shaping the future of economic development through its Belt and Road Initiative, an… Read More »
Ars Technica reports: Footprints left behind in layers of clay and silt at New Mexico’s White Sands National Park may be between 23,000 and 21,000 years old. That’s based on radiocarbon dating of the remains of grass seeds buried in the layers of sediment above and below the tracks. If the dates are correct, the… Read More »
Adam Serwer writes: Last year, John Eastman, whom CNN describes as an attorney working with Donald Trump’s legal team, wrote a preposterous memo outlining how then–Vice President Mike Pence could overturn the 2020 election by fiat or, failing that, throw the election to the House of Representatives, where Republicans could install Trump in office despite… Read More »
Jonathan Chait writes: Last spring, Fox News host Tucker Carlson used one of his inflammatory monologues to accuse the Biden administration of “trying to replace the current electorate” with “more obedient voters from the Third World.” Carlson has spent years edging up to the border of explicit white-supremacist rhetoric, but here he crossed over by… Read More »
Reuters reports: The U.S. special envoy for Haiti, Ambassador Daniel Foote, has resigned, a senior State Department official said on Thursday, amid mass deportations of Haitians who fled recent political turmoil and natural disasters at home. The U.S. government has continued to fly hundreds of people, including families, back to Haiti, with conditions deteriorating in… Read More »
Craig Spencer writes: For many fully vaccinated Americans, the Delta surge spoiled what should’ve been a glorious summer. Those who had cast their masks aside months ago were asked to dust them off. Many are still taking no chances. Some have even returned to all the same precautions they took before getting their shots, including… Read More »
CBS News reports: The wealthiest 400 families in the United States are paying an average income tax rate of just 8.2%, according to a new analysis from the Biden administration. President Joe Biden and Democrats are pushing to raise taxes on the richest Americans as they look for ways to pay for their ambitious agenda,… Read More »
The Associated Press reports: One of the founders of the Taliban and the chief enforcer of its harsh interpretation of Islamic law when they last ruled Afghanistan said the hard-line movement will once again carry out executions and amputations of hands, though perhaps not in public. In an interview with The Associated Press, Mullah Nooruddin… Read More »
Stephen M Fleming writes: In 1978, David Premack and Guy Woodruff published a paper that would go on to become famous in the world of academic psychology. Its title posed a simple question: does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind? In coining the term ‘theory of mind’, Premack and Woodruff were referring to the… Read More »