Новости за 16.03.2020

The rapidly escalating coronavirus pandemic, and the urgent need for the populace to practice “social distancing” in order to prevent the overburdening of our health care infrastructure, has quickly expanded public awareness about a glaring societal need: paid sick leave. On a routine basis, millions of low-wage workers—particularly in the service industry—must go to work even when they are feeling sick. If they do not, they risk compromising their ability to support their families, because their... Читать дальше...

At times during CNN’s Democratic debate on Sunday night, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders seemed like feuding former vaudeville stars arguing over which of them muffed his lines in Buffalo 43 years ago. It was Neil Simon’s The Sunshine Boys brought to a debate stage.

As the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 sweeps across the world, scientists are racing to find vaccines that could stop the virus in its tracks. On Monday, Moderna Therapeutics, a Massachusetts-based company, began the first human clinical trials of its vaccine in Seattle, Washington—skipping the typical phase of trials wherein a new vaccine or medication is tested on animals first. A successful vaccine could be a lifesaver for many. But bioethicists are also concerned about the compressed timeline—and... Читать дальше...

In 1997, only seven months into the job as a senator, Susan Collins of Maine got what many of her colleagues wait years for: a glowing profile in the Sunday New York Times Magazine. It described “a prim, earnest woman with a schoolmarm’s reserve” who had embraced moderation as her guiding philosophy. Collins, from the moment she arrived in Washington, was seen as a swing vote: A lobbyist wanted her to protect Nike’s factories in Asia, a Roman Catholic bishop called to lobby her on abortion, and... Читать дальше...

Daniel Defoe, that indefatigable hack, published Journal of the Plague Year in 1722. Writing about the bubonic plague sweeping through London in 1665, when Defoe himself was no more than five years old, he characteristically, and cannily, presented his fiction as nonfiction, an eyewitness account filled with “the shrieks of Women and Children,” blazing comets, and ghosts walking upon gravestones.  

The morning after Donald Trump’s election, I boarded the subway outside my home in Brooklyn, bound for a series of drunken commiserations with shell-shocked friends. The diverse faces on the R train were all united in fear and disbelief. I kept reviewing the same surreal facts in my head: Hillary Clinton conceding, Barack Obama congratulating Trump in the White House, and the certainty that the Republicans would soon hold every lever of power, all of which would be in the service of an openly racist and xenophobic demagogue. Читать дальше...

If there is one political lesson Republicans have taken to heart since 2016, it is that there is no crossing Donald Trump. Perhaps no GOP official better represents Trump’s death grip on the party than South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, who started off as Trump’s bitter enemy—calling him a “kook” and “unfit for office”—before becoming his most ardent loyalist in the Senate, declaring at the outset of Trump’s impeachment trial, “I’m not trying to pretend to be a fair juror here.” The payoff ostensibly comes this November... Читать дальше...

Last year, the Brooklyn Museum hosted Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving, an exhibition that displayed the artist’s clothing and cosmetics and some other ephemera alongside a handful of her paintings. It was installed in a tight maze of rooms that reminded me of the marketplace you have to wander through to get out of IKEA, and though photographs were forbidden it was much-Instagrammed.

Tonight’s presidential debate may have been functionally the end of the Democratic primary campaign—not just because the forthcoming primaries favor Joe Biden, but because the coronavirus pandemic has made much of the usual practice of a campaign impossible. There can be no rallies, no pressing the flesh at diners—restaurant dining rooms will close in New York City before the next votes are cast, for example. It was likely Bernie Sanders’s last chance to do something to upend the race, and though he landed a few significant blows on Biden... Читать дальше...