How January 6 spawned a new right

How January 6 spawned a new right

Jonathan Chait writes: January 6, 2021, may be the most contentious date in American history. To Democrats and the surviving remnant of anti-Trump Republicans, the event was a spasm of right-wing political violence aimed at terminating the republican experiment. To most Republicans, it was something ranging from a noble uprising to a prank gone somewhat awry to, at worst, a minor lapse in judgment. We do not yet have a common language to describe this event: Its critics call it…

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For the past two years, Americans have accepted more harm to children in exchange for less harm to adults

For the past two years, Americans have accepted more harm to children in exchange for less harm to adults

David Leonhardt writes: Children fell far behind in school during the first year of the pandemic and have not caught up. Among third through eighth graders, math and reading levels were all lower than normal this fall, according to NWEA, a research group. The shortfalls were largest for Black and Hispanic students, as well as students in schools with high poverty rates. “We haven’t seen this kind of academic achievement crisis in living memory,” Michael Petrilli of the Thomas B….

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What happened in Colorado was much scarier than a wildfire

What happened in Colorado was much scarier than a wildfire

David Wallace-Wells writes: On Thursday afternoon, in the space of a few hours just a day before the new year, 100-plus-mph winds carried the most destructive fire in Colorado history through the suburban sprawl of greater Denver, destroying much of the towns of Louisville and Superior and forcing tens of thousands to flee, including many who had entered shopping malls from sunny skies just a few minutes before. As many as 1,000 homes were destroyed. Two people currently remain missing;…

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How could the Big Bang arise from nothing?

How could the Big Bang arise from nothing?

The evolution of the cosmos after the Big Bang. NASA By Alastair Wilson, University of Birmingham READER QUESTION: My understanding is that nothing comes from nothing. For something to exist, there must be material or a component available, and for them to be available, there must be something else available. Now my question: Where did the material come from that created the Big Bang, and what happened in the first instance to create that material? Peter, 80, Australia. “The last…

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For the silent majority, it’s time to come out of hiding

For the silent majority, it’s time to come out of hiding

How can the silent majority find its voice? The phrase, silent majority, often conjures up an image of moderation and sanity — a population hemmed in from either side by the strident voices of extremists. The problem with this characterization is that it reinforces the self-imposed impotence of those who survey the political landscape while believing that as individuals, they have no capacity to be instruments of change. But the silent majority hasn’t been silenced. It is silent by choice….

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The defense of democracy must become central for American journalists

The defense of democracy must become central for American journalists

Margaret Sullivan writes: [P]ro-democracy coverage is not being “centered” by the media writ large. It’s occasional, not regular; it doesn’t appear to be part of an overall editorial plan that fully recognizes just how much trouble we’re in. That must change. It’s not merely that there needs to be more of this work. It also needs to be different. For example, it should include a new emphasis on those who are fighting to preserve voting rights and defend democratic norms….

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Jamie Raskin, democracy’s defender

Jamie Raskin, democracy’s defender

Michael Tomasky writes: Most every night, just after he slips into bed, Jamie Raskin picks up a volume of the collected works of Shakespeare, thumbs through it, and reads a few pages before sleep takes him. He is not, he admits, a big reader of fiction; doesn’t have the time. But he loves his Shakespeare, he told me one October night as we sat in his kitchen. Two days later, I asked him for a quote from the Bard that…

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A free, prosperous, democratic Ukraine is a threat to Putin’s regime

A free, prosperous, democratic Ukraine is a threat to Putin’s regime

Anne Applebaum writes: Children twirled around a skating rink just outside the president’s office in central Kyiv last week, while tourists took pictures of themselves in front of onion-domed, snow-dusted churches. The stores were full of people shopping for the New Year’s holiday and Orthodox Christmas, just as they always are at this time of year. The airports were crowded. In other words, nothing unusual was happening in the Ukrainian capital—nothing except for the contingency plans being made for a…

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U.S. catches Kremlin insider who may have secrets of 2016 hack

U.S. catches Kremlin insider who may have secrets of 2016 hack

Bloomberg reports: In the days before Christmas, U.S. officials in Boston unveiled insider trading charges against a Russian tech tycoon they had been pursuing for months. They accused Vladislav Klyushin, who’d been extradited from Switzerland on Dec. 18, of illegally making tens of millions of dollars trading on hacked corporate-earnings information. Yet as authorities laid out their securities fraud case, a striking portrait of the detainee emerged: Klyushin was not only an accused insider trader, but a Kremlin insider. He…

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How the EU let Hungary become an illiberal model

How the EU let Hungary become an illiberal model

The New York Times reports: After long indulging him, leaders in the European Union now widely consider Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary an existential threat to a bloc that holds itself up as a model of human rights and the rule of law. Mr. Orban has spent the past decade steadily building his “illiberal state,” as he proudly calls Hungary, with the help of lavish E.U. funding. Even as his project widened fissures in the bloc, which Hungary joined…

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Your attention didn’t whither away. It was stolen

Your attention didn’t whither away. It was stolen

Johann Hari writes: I went to Portland, Oregon, to interview Prof Joel Nigg, who is one of the leading experts in the world on children’s attention problems, and he told me we need to ask if we are now developing “an attentional pathogenic culture” – an environment in which sustained and deep focus is harder for all of us. When I asked him what he would do if he was in charge of our culture and he actually wanted to…

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One year after January 6 insurrection, Trumpism isn’t gone. ‘It’s ‘almost a religion’

One year after January 6 insurrection, Trumpism isn’t gone. ‘It’s ‘almost a religion’

Politico reports: Donald Trump has already telegraphed the remarks he plans to give at Mar-a-Lago on Thursday, the anniversary of the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. If he follows the script laid out in his announcement of the news conference, he will commit a whitewashing of the day, repeating the lie that the 2020 election was rigged and defending his part in fomenting the insurrection — all while a solemn prayer service is held at the Capitol, in a…

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American democracy is cracked, and could collapse

American democracy is cracked, and could collapse

Thomas Homer-Dixon writes: By 2025, American democracy could collapse, causing extreme domestic political instability, including widespread civil violence. By 2030, if not sooner, the country could be governed by a right-wing dictatorship. We mustn’t dismiss these possibilities just because they seem ludicrous or too horrible to imagine. In 2014, the suggestion that Donald Trump would become president would also have struck nearly everyone as absurd. But today we live in a world where the absurd regularly becomes real and the…

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Majority of Americans think January 6 attack threatened democracy

Majority of Americans think January 6 attack threatened democracy

ABC News reports: Nearly a year after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, a strong majority of Americans condemn it and believe former President Donald Trump is at least partially to blame. But partisan splits have hardened over time, with Republicans still largely backing Trump’s version of events, a new ABC/Ipsos poll finds. An overwhelming majority (72%) of Americans believe the people involved in the attack on the Capitol were “threatening democracy,” while 1 in 4 Americans believes…

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