Browsed by
Category: Politics

China’s extreme weather warnings avoid talk of climate change

China’s extreme weather warnings avoid talk of climate change

Bloomberg reports: As unprecedented heatwaves sweep across large parts of the Northern Hemisphere, China is telling its people to brace for another summer of dangerous floods and droughts. China’s National Climate Center this month predicted “generally poor weather conditions” for the rest of the summer and warned that the country will face more extreme weather events than usual. In some areas, precipitation is estimated to be 20% to 50% higher than normal. Some major rivers, including the Yellow River that…

Read More Read More

The left needs free speech

The left needs free speech

Katha Pollitt writes: When W.W. Norton decided to cease distributing Blake Bailey’s biography of Philip Roth after several women accused Bailey of rape and other outrages, I called up my local bookstore and reserved a copy. When Amazon stopped selling When Harry Became Sally, which argues from a conservative point of view that it is not possible to change your sex, I went to Alibris.com and bought a used one. I would have bought the Dr. Seuss books withdrawn from…

Read More Read More

EPA approved toxic chemicals for fracking a decade ago, new files show

EPA approved toxic chemicals for fracking a decade ago, new files show

The New York Times reports: For much of the past decade, oil companies engaged in drilling and fracking have been allowed to pump into the ground chemicals that, over time, can break down into toxic substances known as PFAS — a class of long-lasting compounds known to pose a threat to people and wildlife — according to internal documents from the Environmental Protection Agency. The E.P.A. in 2011 approved the use of these chemicals, used to ease the flow of…

Read More Read More

‘Everyone has a tipping point’: Hunger fuels Cuba’s protests

‘Everyone has a tipping point’: Hunger fuels Cuba’s protests

The New York Times reports: Hospitals and pharmacies have run out of medicines as basic as penicillin and aspirin. Blackouts have become maddeningly frequent and agonizingly long. Cubans lucky enough to have foreign currency wait in line for hours for staples like beans and rice. A searing economic decline, leading to hardships Cubans have rarely seen since the collapse of the Soviet Union devastated their country in the 1990s, has stirred the island’s largest protest movement in decades, eliciting a…

Read More Read More

Lawyers retreat from pro-Trump election suit

Lawyers retreat from pro-Trump election suit

Politico reports: The legal reckoning for attorneys who pushed former President Donald Trump’s spurious claims of election fraud advanced on Monday, with a federal court in Detroit holding a hearing on whether to impose sanctions over a suit filed last year seeking to decertify Joe Biden’s victory in Michigan and declare Trump the winner. Two of the most prominent attorneys in the pro-Trump camp — Dallas-based Sidney Powell and Atlanta-based L. Lin Wood — are among the lawyers who brought…

Read More Read More

Experts keep promising the walls are closing in on Trump. Haven’t we learned anything?

Experts keep promising the walls are closing in on Trump. Haven’t we learned anything?

Ankush Khardori writes: You could be forgiven if you experienced a vague sense of bewilderment after the Trump Organization and Allen Weisselberg were charged, depending on what you were reading and watching in the days that preceded it. Just that week, some prominent legal commentators had suggested that Trump himself might be charged (despite days of reporting indicating otherwise), that the charges would extend beyond the tax-fraud scheme that is reportedly at issue (and ultimately alleged), or that the Trump…

Read More Read More

Biden’s ideology is largely invisible

Biden’s ideology is largely invisible

Adam Gopnik writes: The Brooklyn-reared boxing trainer Charley Goldman, who crafted Rocky Marciano, the undefeated heavyweight champ of the nineteen-fifties, once made a wise statement: “Never play a guy at his own game; nobody makes up a game in order to get beat at it.” He meant that there was no point getting into a slugging match with a slugger or a bob-and-weave match with a bob-and-weaver. Instead, do what you do well. Damon Runyon, another New York character of…

Read More Read More

Trump praises mob who assaulted U.S. Capitol: ‘These were great people’

Trump praises mob who assaulted U.S. Capitol: ‘These were great people’

Politico reports: Former President Donald Trump on Sunday widely praised those who attended the Jan. 6 rally that preceded the insurrection at the Capitol, repeatedly using the word “love” to describe the tone of the event. Echoing his rhetoric about the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., Trump said, “These were peaceful people, these were great people.” Speaking on “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo” on the Fox News Channel, he also said the rally participants were patriots, that…

Read More Read More

Biden launches assault on monopolies

Biden launches assault on monopolies

Politico reports: The White House announced a sweeping executive order Friday to promote competition throughout the U.S. economy, in the most ambitious effort in generations to reduce the stranglehold of monopolies and concentrated markets in major industries. The order — whose details POLITICO first reported last week — also includes elements designed to lower the price of prescription drugs, protect consumers’ privacy and increase scrutiny of abusive business tactics in the tech industry. The effort marks a major push by…

Read More Read More

How the white press wrote off Black America

How the white press wrote off Black America

Brent Staples writes: Newspapers that championed white supremacy throughout the pre-civil rights South paved the way for lynching by declaring African Americans nonpersons. They embraced the language once used at slave auctions by denying Black citizens the courtesy titles Mr. and Mrs. and referring to them in news stories as “the negro,” “the negress” or “the nigger.” They depicted Black men as congenital rapists, setting the stage for them to be hanged, shot or burned alive in public squares all…

Read More Read More

Top Biden ally, Rep. Jim Clyburn, pleads with him to scrap filibuster for election reform

Top Biden ally, Rep. Jim Clyburn, pleads with him to scrap filibuster for election reform

Politico reports: After months of setbacks and gridlock on voting rights, one of President Joe Biden’s top allies in Congress is calling for him to support amending the Senate filibuster. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) told POLITICO Biden “should endorse” the idea of creating a carveout to the legislative filibuster in the Senate for legislation that applies to the Constitution. In effect, the reform would make it possible for Democrats to pass their sweeping elections reform bill and another…

Read More Read More

FDA calls for federal investigation into its controversial Alzheimer’s drug approval

FDA calls for federal investigation into its controversial Alzheimer’s drug approval

STAT reports: The head of the Food and Drug Administration has called for a wide-ranging federal investigation into the approval of Biogen’s treatment for Alzheimer’s disease just one month after a decision that sparked the ire of lawmakers, doctors, and public health advocates. In a letter posted Friday, acting Commissioner Janet Woodcock asked the independent Office of Inspector General to investigate how agency staff interacted with Biogen in the run-up to the June 7 approval of Aduhelm. The agency cited…

Read More Read More

The biggest threat to democracy is the GOP stealing the next election

The biggest threat to democracy is the GOP stealing the next election

Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt write: The greatest threat to American democracy today is not a repeat of January 6, but the possibility of a stolen presidential election. Contemporary democracies that die meet their end at the ballot box, through measures that are nominally constitutional. The looming danger is not that the mob will return; it’s that mainstream Republicans will “legally” overturn an election. In 2018, when we wrote How Democracies Die, we knew that Donald Trump was an authoritarian…

Read More Read More

There is no debate over critical race theory

There is no debate over critical race theory

Ibram X. Kendi writes: The United States is not in the midst of a “culture war” over race and racism. The animating force of our current conflict is not our differing values, beliefs, moral codes, or practices. The American people aren’t divided. The American people are being divided. Republican operatives have buried the actual definition of critical race theory: “a way of looking at law’s role platforming, facilitating, producing, and even insulating racial inequality in our country,” as the law…

Read More Read More

The Christian right is in decline, and it’s taking America with it

The Christian right is in decline, and it’s taking America with it

Michelle Goldberg writes: The presidency of George W. Bush may have been the high point of the modern Christian right’s influence in America. White evangelicals were the largest religious faction in the country. “They had a president who claimed to be one of their own, he had a testimony, talked in evangelical terms,” said Robert P. Jones, chief executive of the Public Religion Research Institute and author of the 2016 book “The End of White Christian America.” Back then, much…

Read More Read More

Climate change is about greed. It’s time for big oil to pay us back

Climate change is about greed. It’s time for big oil to pay us back

Jeffrey Sachs writes: Four interconnected pieces of climate change-related news from the past two weeks reveal America’s predicament. And they also show the way forward, which ultimately must include oil companies’ paying restitution for damage that they have done to the climate and humanity for decades. The first of the four pieces of climate news is the deadly heat wave hitting the western US and Canada, killing hundreds to date. According to the United Nations, there has been a “staggering…

Read More Read More