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Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic has turned America into a pariah

Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic has turned America into a pariah

Anne Applebaum writes: [E]veryone can look at everyone else’s country, read its media and social media, see how its institutions are coping with the crisis. We can’t leave our houses, but we can meet in cyberspace, where we can keep talking. While we are there, we can see how other countries are dealing with the pandemic. Some are doing well, especially those that have decent bureaucrats, respect for science, and high levels of trust: South Korea and Taiwan, Germany and…

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‘White power’ video was a glimpse into Trump-era political discourse in ‘America’s friendliest’ retirement community

‘White power’ video was a glimpse into Trump-era political discourse in ‘America’s friendliest’ retirement community

The Washington Post reports: Sharon Sandler was already irritated as she walked toward the growing line of golf carts preparing to parade around one of her retirement community’s town squares for President Trump’s birthday. Sandler, who is in her 60s, had spent the early afternoon of June 14 at an anti-racism vigil that sought to honor the memory of people killed by police, but whoever controlled the Villages’ sound system wouldn’t lower the volume, she said, so a solemn moment…

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No one wants to go back to lockdown. Is there a middle ground for containing Covid-19?

No one wants to go back to lockdown. Is there a middle ground for containing Covid-19?

STAT reports: First came the freezes. Governors last month started to “press pause” on the next phases of their reopenings as Covid-19 cases picked back up. Now, in certain hot spots, they are starting to roll back some of the allowances they’d granted: no more elective medical procedures in some Texas counties. Bars, only reopened for a short time, are shuttered again in parts of California. And on Monday, Arizona’s governor ordered a new wave of gym, bar, and movie…

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Rapid Arctic meltdown in Siberia alarms scientists

Rapid Arctic meltdown in Siberia alarms scientists

The Washington Post reports: Alexander Deyev can still taste the smoke from last year’s wildfires that blanketed the towns near his home in southeastern Siberia, and he is dreading their return. “It just felt like you couldn’t breathe at all,” said Deyev, 32, who lives in Irkutsk, a Siberian region along Lake Baikal, just north of the Mongolian border. But already this year, fires in the spring arrived earlier and with more ferocity, government officials have said. In the territory…

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How real revolutions happen

How real revolutions happen

Rebecca L. Spang writes: Three months ago, a global pandemic and a sudden economic crisis looked grave enough to suggest that something—if not a revolution, then at least the stirrings of a revolutionary era—was under way. Since then, the revolt against the pre-coronavirus status quo has only gained force. Crowds chanting “Black lives matter” and “Enough is enough” have marched all across the country. Statues have been toppled, buildings have been renamed, and pollsters report that public opinion has shifted…

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The Boogaloo tipping point

The Boogaloo tipping point

Dale Beran writes: On May 29, two federal security officers guarding a courthouse in Oakland, California, were ambushed by machine-gun fire as elsewhere in the city demonstrators marched peacefully to protest the killing of George Floyd. One of the guards, David Patrick Underwood, died as a result of the attack, and the other was wounded. For days, conservative news broadcasters pinned the blame on “antifa,” the loosely affiliated group of anti-fascist anarchists known to attack property and far-right demonstrators at…

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Coronavirus infections are peaking again. Here’s how it’s different this time

Coronavirus infections are peaking again. Here’s how it’s different this time

The New York Times reports: The first wave of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States never really ended, and cases are surging again. But this time, a different and much bigger swath of the country is feeling the effects. The first peak came at the beginning of April: About 30,000 cases were reported per day, but the biggest hotspots were concentrated in just a few regions. With the right steps, public health experts said, there was still a chance…

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Young Americans are partying hard and spreading Covid-19 quickly

Young Americans are partying hard and spreading Covid-19 quickly

Bloomberg reports: Covid-19 is increasingly a disease of the young, with the message to stay home for the sake of older loved ones wearing off as the pandemic wears on. The dropping age of the infected is becoming one of the most pressing problems for local officials, who continued Wednesday to set curfews and close places where the young gather. U.S. health experts say that they are more likely to be active and asymptomatic, providing a vast redoubt for the…

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Trump is in power because as a nation we have lost our way

Trump is in power because as a nation we have lost our way

David Rothkopf writes: “Being president,” former First Lady Michelle Obama has said, “doesn’t change who you are, it reveals who you are.” In this moment, we may also need to acknowledge that presidents also reveal much about who we are. American presidents do not exist outside the systems or times that produced them. Great presidents—like Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and, arguably, Lyndon B. Johnson—have emerged when the nation has risen to meet challenging circumstances. And, granted, most presidents…

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Trump’s Mount Rushmore fireworks show is a Fourth of July attack on Indigenous people

Trump’s Mount Rushmore fireworks show is a Fourth of July attack on Indigenous people

Nick Tilsen writes: On Friday, President Donald Trump will continue his tour of racism and colonialism, moving from Tulsa, Oklahoma, to the sacred Black Hills. Make no mistake, this visit is an attack on Indigenous people. I visit the Black Hills alongside many other Lakotas every year as part of a tradition we have maintained for thousands of years. Stretching from what is now known as South Dakota into Wyoming, they are a sacred place that I take my family…

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Black Lives Matter may be the largest movement in American history

Black Lives Matter may be the largest movement in American history

The New York Times reports: The recent Black Lives Matter protests peaked on June 6, when half a million people turned out in nearly 550 places across the United States. That was a single day in more than a month of protests that still continue to today. Four recent polls — including one released this week by Civis Analytics, data science firm that works with businesses and Democratic campaigns — suggest that about 15 million to 26 million people in…

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To the rest of the world, we’re now America the racist and pitiful

To the rest of the world, we’re now America the racist and pitiful

Robin Wright writes: The real saga of the Statue of Liberty—the symbolic face of America around the world, and the backdrop of New York’s dazzling Fourth of July fireworks show—is an obscure piece of U.S. history. It had nothing to do with immigration. The telltale clue is the chain under Lady Liberty’s feet: she is stomping on it. “In the early sketches, she was also holding chains in her hand,” Edward Berenson, a professor of history at New York University,…

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How an ancient Indian emperor replaced the sound of war with the sound of ethics

How an ancient Indian emperor replaced the sound of war with the sound of ethics

Sonam Kachru writes: In the Khyber valley of Northern Pakistan, three large boulders sit atop a hill commanding a beautiful prospect of the city of Mansehra. A low brick wall surrounds these boulders; a simple roof, mounted on four brick pillars, protects the rock faces from wind and rain. This structure preserves for posterity the words inscribed there: ‘Doing good is hard – Even beginning to do good is hard.’ The words are those of Ashoka Maurya, an Indian emperor…

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With new Covid-19 cases hitting a high, Trump revisits his fantasy: The virus will just go away

With new Covid-19 cases hitting a high, Trump revisits his fantasy: The virus will just go away

Philip Bump writes: Over the past five months, President Trump’s approach to the coronavirus pandemic has swerved around a bit, with the president at times embracing strict controls meant to contain the virus and, at others, the urgent need to scale back those controls to boost the economy. But there’s been no more consistent message from Trump than his most defiantly optimistic one: At some point, the virus will simply disappear. Speaking to Fox Business’s Blake Burman on Wednesday, the…

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