Charles M Blow writes: I am simply disgusted by what’s happening in America. My political differences with this president and his accomplices in Congress — and now on the Supreme Court — are only part of the reason. Indeed, those differences may not be the lesser reason, and that, for me, says a lot. For me, the reason is that the country, or large segments of it, seems to be acquiescing to a particular form of evil, one that is…
The Washington Post reports: U.S. asylum officers slammed President Trump’s policy of forcing migrants to remain in Mexico while they await immigration hearings in the United States, urging a federal appeals court Wednesday to block the administration from continuing the program. The officers, who are directed to implement the policy, said it is threatening migrants’ lives and is “fundamentally contrary to the moral fabric of our Nation.” The labor union representing asylum officers filed a friend-of-the-court brief that sided with…
Michael Kruse writes: In the middle of the volatile fall of 2008, with foreclosures skyrocketing and companies failing and unemployment spiking and the stock market sinking, 80 rattled first-semester Harvard Law School students stood outside a classroom and watched the Dow plummet yet again. Then they stepped inside and took their seats for their contracts course with professor Elizabeth Warren. “And professor Warren’s like, ‘We’re actually not going to talk about contracts,’” former student Danielle D’Onfro told me. “‘We’re going…
Clara Long and and Nicole Austin-Hillery write: A 14-year old told us she was taking care of a 4-year old who had been placed in her cell with no relatives. “I take her to the bathroom, give her my extra food if she is hungry, and tell people to leave her alone if they are bothering her,” she said. She was just one of the children we talked with last week as part of a team of lawyers and doctors…
Andy Beckett writes: For almost half a century, something vital has been missing from leftwing politics in western countries. Since the 70s, the left has changed how many people think about prejudice, personal identity and freedom. It has exposed capitalism’s cruelties. It has sometimes won elections, and sometimes governed effectively afterwards. But it has not been able to change fundamentally how wealth and work function in society – or even provide a compelling vision of how that might be done….
The Guardian reports: The world is increasingly at risk of “climate apartheid”, where the rich pay to escape heat and hunger caused by the escalating climate crisis while the rest of the world suffers, a report from a UN human rights expert has said. Philip Alston, UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, said the impacts of global heating are likely to undermine not only basic rights to life, water, food, and housing for hundreds of millions of…
Slate reports: Oregon’s state legislature appeared to be on track last week to pass a sweeping climate change bill aimed at curbing emissions in the state. At least until Republicans in the state Senate decided to go to extremes to prevent a vote, making a move that resulted in the governor calling in Oregon State Police. And the drama didn’t end there: Democrats cancelled a session Saturday over safety threats from a far-right militia group. The bill would make Oregon…
Lyman Stone writes: The Baby Boomers ruined America. That sounds like a hyperbolic claim, but it’s one way to state what I found as I tried to solve a riddle. American society is going through a strange set of shifts: Even as cultural values are in rapid flux, political institutions seem frozen in time. The average U.S. state constitution is more than 100 years old. We are in the third-longest period without a constitutional amendment in American history: The longest…
By Tim Vernimmen The image above, “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte,” was painted in 1884 by French artist Georges Seurat. The black lines crisscrossing it are not the work of a toddler wreaking havoc with a permanent marker, but that of neuroscientist Robert Wurtz of the National Eye Institute in the US. Ten years ago, he asked a colleague to look at the painting while wearing a contact lens–like contraption that recorded the colleague’s eye…
Andrew Rawnsley writes: The Tories have a history as a party of falling for scoundrels who present as “lovable rogues”. This has always been an integral element of Boris Johnson’s popularity with the Tory grassroots. But do they really want to hand Number 10 to someone quite this roguish? And is he actually all that lovable? The spotlight has been swivelled on to his torrid personal life by the episode in the early hours of Friday morning at his girlfriend’s…
Charles M Blow writes: I have often wondered why good people of good conscience don’t respond to things like slavery or the Holocaust or human rights abuse. Maybe they simply became numb to the horrific way we now rarely think about or discuss the men still being held at Guantánamo Bay without charge or trial, and who may as well die there. Maybe people grow weary of wrestling with their anger and helplessness, and shunt the thought to the back…
The Associated Press reports: As the U.S. piles sanction after sanction on Iran, it’s the average person who feels it the most. From a subway performer’s battered leather hat devoid of tips, to a bride-to-be’s empty purse, the lack of cash from the economic pressure facing Iran’s 80 million people can be seen everywhere. Many blame President Donald Trump and his maximalist policy on Iran, which has seen him pull out of Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers and…
The Associated Press reports: When the Trump administration cut hundreds of millions of dollars of aid for Palestinians last year, the Parents Circle, a coexistence group of bereaved Israeli and Palestinian families, lost 30 percent of its budget overnight. So members were shocked Sunday to learn that the White House is now using the group’s photos in promotional materials for a US peace plan that has been skewered by veterans of past Mideast peace efforts. “I think it’s one of…
CNN reports: In Washington, the political world was on edge as it waited for the long-anticipated release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the Russia investigation. In Boston, Elizabeth Warren’s policy team was also waiting — but for a different kind of document. It came on a Monday in mid-April, as Warren was kicking off a three-state tour around her new offshore drilling and public lands proposal. “I love data!” she wrote in a memo that was viewed by…
The Daily Beast reports: A few weeks ago, a prominent black leader posed what seemed like a simple question to South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg during a private meeting: Who in the African-American community back home supports you? “He didn’t name anybody,” the leader said in an interview with The Daily Beast. “If he’s got young black supporters, they do have names.” That leader, who requested anonymity to speak openly about a private meeting, was not only referring to young…