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Category: Politics

Test flight for sunlight-blocking geoengineering research is canceled

Test flight for sunlight-blocking geoengineering research is canceled

The New York Times reports: A test flight for researching ways to cool Earth by blocking sunlight will not take place as planned in Sweden this June, following objections from environmentalists, scientists and Indigenous groups there. The Swedish Space Corporation said this week it had canceled plans for the flight, in which it would have launched a high-altitude balloon, on behalf of researchers, from its facility in the Arctic. It would have been the first flight of a long-planned experiment…

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Amazon counterpunch results in ‘own goal’

Amazon counterpunch results in ‘own goal’

The Guardian reports: Say what you will about the relative merits of the continued existence of Amazon, the humble online bookstore that might end up being the last company in the world at this rate, you might expect all of that accumulated wealth to afford them access to the best and brightest communications professionals in the world. The behavior of the Amazon News corporate account and of executive Dave Clark on Twitter over the past week, lashing out at prominent…

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How Trump led supporters to feel scammed into making unintentional donations

How Trump led supporters to feel scammed into making unintentional donations

The New York Times reports: Stacy Blatt was in hospice care last September listening to Rush Limbaugh’s dire warnings about how badly Donald J. Trump’s campaign needed money when he went online and chipped in everything he could: $500. It was a big sum for a 63-year-old battling cancer and living in Kansas City on less than $1,000 per month. But that single contribution — federal records show it was his first ever — quickly multiplied. Another $500 was withdrawn…

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One Republican’s lonely fight against a flood of disinformation

One Republican’s lonely fight against a flood of disinformation

The New York Times reports: Denver Riggleman stood virtually alone. It was Oct. 2, on the floor of the House of Representatives, and he rose as one of only two Republicans in the chamber to speak in favor of a resolution denouncing QAnon. Mr. Riggleman, a freshman congressman from Virginia, had his own personal experiences with fringe ideas, both as a target of them and as a curious observer of the power they hold over true believers. He saw a…

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Georgia’s election law, and why turnout isn’t easy to turn off

Georgia’s election law, and why turnout isn’t easy to turn off

Nate Cohn writes: There’s nothing unusual about exaggeration in politics. But when it comes to the debate over voting rights, something more than exaggeration is going on. There’s a real — and bipartisan — misunderstanding about whether making it easier or harder to vote, especially by mail, has a significant effect on turnout or electoral outcomes. The evidence suggests it does not. The fight over the new Georgia election law is only the latest example. That law, passed last week,…

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Rediet Abebe tackles inequality through algorithms

Rediet Abebe tackles inequality through algorithms

Rachel Crowell writes: When Rediet Abebe arrived at Harvard University as an undergraduate in 2009, she planned to study mathematics. But her experiences with the Cambridge public schools soon changed her plans. Abebe, 29, is from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital and largest city. When residents there didn’t have the resources they needed, she attributed it to community-level scarcity. But she found that argument unconvincing when she learned about educational inequality in Cambridge’s public schools, which she observed struggling in an…

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U.K. vaccination approach puts U.S. to shame

U.K. vaccination approach puts U.S. to shame

Marty Makary writes: The U.S. will soon achieve herd immunity against the novel coronavirus, but the U.K. will get there sooner. That’s because medical leaders across the pond put the priority on first-dose vaccination, delaying booster shots so that more people could get the initial shot. Fifty-nine percent of British adults are now vaccinated with one dose, vs. only 38% in the U.S. Far more Americans are fully vaccinated—21% have received either a booster or the single-dose Johnson & Johnson…

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Joe Biden just might be the Democrats’ Ronald Reagan

Joe Biden just might be the Democrats’ Ronald Reagan

Matt Lewis writes: Maybe it’s time we conservatives start taking Joe Biden seriously. After steamrolling Republicans and passing a $1.9 trillion COVID-relief package on a party-line basis, Biden is now pushing for $2.3 trillion in infrastructure spending along with a proposed corporate tax hike to pay for it. If we ignore that much of this so-called infrastructure spending is for things like “human infrastructure,” not roads and bridges, we are still talking about a HUGE amount of money—and it’s only…

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Kill the Senate filibuster and save U.S. democracy before it’s too late

Kill the Senate filibuster and save U.S. democracy before it’s too late

Noah Bookbinder writes: I worked as a counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee for eight years. I heard senators that I admired repeat the apocryphal story of George Washington supposedly explaining to Thomas Jefferson that the Senate was “the saucer that cools the tea,” preventing the House from rushing through ill-advised legislation. While the filibuster was not part of the framers’ plan — and indeed some of the framers warned against a supermajority requirement for legislation — it seemed consistent…

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Major companies like FedEx and Nike paid no federal taxes

Major companies like FedEx and Nike paid no federal taxes

The New York Times reports: Just as the Biden administration is pushing to raise taxes on corporations, a new study finds that at least 55 of America’s largest paid no taxes last year on billions of dollars in profits. The sweeping tax bill passed in 2017 by a Republican Congress and signed into law by President Donald J. Trump reduced the corporate tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent. But dozens of Fortune 500 companies were able to further…

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Inside the ‘Lord of the Flies’ factionalism now plaguing Trumpland

Inside the ‘Lord of the Flies’ factionalism now plaguing Trumpland

Politico reports: Just one month after Donald Trump left the White House, a top donor to his campaign received a call on his personal cellphone from a Republican candidate seeking financial support. The call was unsolicited, according to four people familiar with the situation, and it rubbed the donor, whose friends had received similarly unexpected fundraising pleas, the wrong way. Shortly thereafter, the firm Jones Day, which served as counsel to Trump’s campaign committee, sent out a letter to former…

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Georgia’s new voting laws are all the evidence we need for federal voting rights protections

Georgia’s new voting laws are all the evidence we need for federal voting rights protections

Jessica Levinson writes: In 2013, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg predicted, with prescient clarity, what is happening right now in Georgia. Ginsburg knew then, when the Supreme Court threw out half of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act, that it would be open season for voter suppression in states previously covered under the act. And here we are facing that reality with a sweeping and unquestionably restrictive new voting law passing on a party-line vote in Georgia late last…

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Most Republicans don’t want to make it easy for every citizen to vote

Most Republicans don’t want to make it easy for every citizen to vote

Pew Research Center reports: As partisan conflicts over voting access take center stage in Congress and in scores of states around the country, the share of Americans who say “everything possible” should be done to make voting easy has declined since 2018 – with the decrease coming entirely among Republicans. Currently, a majority of U.S. adults (59%) say that everything possible should be done to make it easy for every citizen to vote. A smaller share (39%) says that citizens…

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Republicans have been waiting for a Matt Gaetz scandal to break

Republicans have been waiting for a Matt Gaetz scandal to break

The Daily Beast reports: After Rep. Matt Gaetz accused a Florida lawyer of a $25 million extortion scheme to make sex trafficking allegations disappear, Republicans on and off Capitol Hill on Wednesday largely kept their mouths shut. Gaetz—the Trump-loving, Fox News-grinning, 38-year-old Florida Republican—has a less-than-sterling reputation among his congressional colleagues. More than a half-dozen lawmakers have spoken to these reporters about his love of alcohol and illegal drugs, as well as his proclivity for younger women. It’s well-known among…

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The pandemic’s wrongest man: Alex Berenson

The pandemic’s wrongest man: Alex Berenson

Derek Thompson writes: The pandemic has made fools of many forecasters. Just about all of the predictions whiffed. Anthony Fauci was wrong about masks. California was wrong about the outdoors. New York was wrong about the subways. I was wrong about the necessary cost of pandemic relief. And the Trump White House was wrong about almost everything else. In this crowded field of wrongness, one voice stands out. The voice of Alex Berenson: the former New York Times reporter, Yale-educated…

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There are no borders in the climate crisis

There are no borders in the climate crisis

Bill McKibben writes: The “crisis” at the border is dominating the news, and, as my colleague Jonathan Blitzer has written, the immediate focus is on the political battle to prevent Joe Biden from passing meaningful immigration reform. But this might also be a moment for thinking about what globalism means in a world where borders ultimately can’t offer protection against the most serious threats. To give an example: owing in part to climate change, there was a record hurricane season…

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