Attention to the Unseen

Ronald Brownstein writes: From multiple directions, the crisis over the filibuster is peaking for Democrats. In just the past week, the casualty count of Democratic priorities doomed by the filibuster has mounted; both police and immigration reform now appear to be blocked in the Senate, and legislation codifying abortion rights faces equally dim prospects. Simultaneously, the party has tied itself in knots attempting to squeeze its economic agenda into a single, sprawling “reconciliation” bill, because that process offers the only…

Read More Read More

Peter Nicholas writes: Defeating the pandemic may matter more politically than passing any bill. Last week, I observed a focus group made up of five white women, three of whom voted for Biden in 2020, the other two for Trump. How much do you follow news about the pandemic? the moderator asked. “It’s literally the first thing that everybody talks about,” said an independent voter from the Atlanta suburbs who backed Trump in 2016 and then switched to Biden in…

Read More Read More

The New York Times reports: Jade Duran once spent her weekends knocking on doors to campaign for Senator Kyrsten Sinema, the stubbornly centrist Democrat whose vote could seal the fate of a vast Democratic effort to remake America’s social safety net. But no more. When Ms. Sinema famously gave a thumbs down to a $15 minimum wage and refused to eliminate the filibuster to pass new voting rights laws this year, Ms. Duran, a Democrat and biomedical engineer from Phoenix,…

Read More Read More

David Frum writes: Are constitutionally committed Americans doing all they can to prevent a pro-Trump plot to pervert the 2024 election? Maybe not. But along with that question, here’s another: Are constitutionally committed Americans doing all they can to prevent Donald Trump from winning the 2024 election fair and square? The Biden administration’s numbers are slumping in the fall of 2021, opening the way for Republican gains in 2022 and the return of the twice-impeached ex-president as a presidential nominee….

Read More Read More

The Wall Street Journal reports: The CIA evacuated an intelligence officer serving in Serbia in recent weeks who suffered serious injuries consistent with the neurological attacks known as Havana Syndrome, according to current and former U.S. officials. The incident in the Balkans, which hasn’t been previously reported, is the latest in what the officials describe as a steady expansion of attacks on American spies and diplomats posted overseas by unknown assailants using what government officials and scientists suspect is some…

Read More Read More

Alex Blasdel writes: On a recent afternoon, Steven Pinker, the cognitive psychologist and bestselling author of upbeat books about human progress, was sitting in his summer home on Cape Cod, thinking about Bill Gates. Pinker was gearing up to record a radio series on critical thinking for the BBC, and he wanted the world’s fourth richest man to join him for an episode on the climate emergency. “People tend to approach challenges in one of two ways – as problem-solving…

Read More Read More

Ben Mathis-Lilley writes: Many Americans say they support immigration so long as it’s done legally, by waiting for one’s turn in line, but are alarmed by the idea of people walking into the country through the southwestern desert and going wherever they want. In theory, if you were able to dissuade or disincentivize potential immigrants from massing at the southern border or trying to cross it without authorization, you could gain enough public trust on the issue to expand the…

Read More Read More