Новости за 18.06.2020

As Covid-19 hit New York, staff at a number of Planned Parenthood health centers found themselves facing two crises at once: keeping health services going and keeping their jobs. As some health centers closed temporarily and shifted to telehealth services, staff also saw their hours cut or positions furloughed. To hear workers describe it, this was not entirely unforeseen. For more than a year, they had pressed management to improve conditions for staff, particularly for Black workers, and for the patients they care for. Читать дальше...

The Trump administration’s incompetence has once again undone one of its signature policy initiatives. The Supreme Court handed Trump a major defeat on Thursday in his campaign to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, more commonly known as DACA. In a 5–4 decision, the justices ruled that the administration had broken federal law when it concocted its rationale to scrap the program, which provides temporary legal status to more than 700,000 young undocumented immigrants.

On Saturday, April 4, Wisconsin Republican state lawmakers gaveled in a special legislative session. Seconds later, they gaveled the session to a close. With the Covid-19 pandemic rapidly spreading, Democratic Governor Tony Evers had called the special session to postpone the scheduled April 7 spring election and switch to all-mail balloting. State Republicans wanted to go ahead, risk be damned. A state Supreme Court seat was up for grabs. If they could keep turnout low, they figured, they would have a better chance at holding the seat. Читать дальше...

Long ago, in the distant mists of the Before Time, the House of Representatives impeached President Donald Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of justice. Both charges came in response to Trump’s role in the Ukraine scandal, where he and his underlings withheld military aid in a bumbling effort to extort the Ukrainian president into smearing Democratic front-runner Joe Biden. The Republican-led Senate eventually acquitted Trump on both counts, with only one GOP senator voting to convict his party’s leader. Читать дальше...

This work is supported by a grant from the Solitary Confinement Reporting Project, managed by Solitary Watch with funding from the Vital Projects Fund. Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the use of solitary confinement has jumped by 500 percent in America’s prisons.

Since the beginning of June, mass protests in over 750 towns and cities have decried the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis by police officer Derek Chauvin—and they have remade the possibilities for confronting police brutality in the United States. By mobilizing behind the slogan “Defund the Police,” the protests have compelled Americans to see beyond police reform to a radical reconceiving of public safety. This has already yielded commitments from municipal politicians—including most Minneapolis... Читать дальше...

With the end of the Cold War, and the victory of democratic market-capitalism over Marxist-Leninist socialism, Republicans were set free to concentrate their fire on dismantling the remaining legacies of Progressivism in America. I refer to Republicans, rather than conservatives, because there is nary a Republican political figure in the country today who sincerely adheres to classic conservative values. And when I talk about Progressivism, I’m referring to the movement that went by that designation... Читать дальше...