Новости за 09.07.2020

It should be plain to all by now that America has not only lost control of the coronavirus pandemic, it has also given up on the possibility of regaining the upper hand. On Wednesday, over 59,000 new cases were reported, setting a new national record for the fifth time in nine days. Predictably, much of the new growth has been coming from the South, where conservative lawmakers, like the president, have pushed for the reopening of nonessential businesses and a return to normal behavior. Texas... Читать дальше...

The Supreme Court spent 117 pages on Thursday to underscore what can be summed up in a single sentence: President Donald Trump is not above the law. In two major cases, the justices rejected Trump’s claims of absolute immunity from subpoenas issued by congressional investigators on Capitol Hill and local prosecutors in Manhattan to obtain his personal financial records from third parties. Taken together, the decisions are a landmark ruling on the bounds of presidential power.

Thursday morning, the World Meteorological Organization released a report projecting that there is a one in five chance of global temperatures rising by 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) in the next five years, a line beyond which millions of livelihoods will become unviable and homes uninhabitable. In the midst of a summer that has already seen Siberia on fire, the prediction felt more than plausible.

The United States Constitution established unequivocally in 1789 that treaties are the “supreme law of the land.” On Thursday, the Supreme Court stood by the nation’s original promise.

In the past few years, various writers have posed what should be an unthinkable question: If President Donald Trump is defeated in this November’s election, what happens if he refuses to leave office? The United States has a 220-year tradition of peacefully transferring power from one president to another, through wars and recessions. Could someone like Trump, with all his authoritarian impulses, bring an end to the American experiment this fall?

In April, New York magazine’s Molly Young wrote that the ravages of the pandemic had fostered a taste for a milder kind of book. “Now is the time for books that go down like rice pudding,” she said. “Now is the time for sweet, easily digested, soul-swaddling tomes.”

It’s never a great time to publish a book in which all or nearly all the characters are white, but now would seem to be a particularly bad time to do so. If you were to do such a thing, the book in question would in all likelihood be a work of autofiction, which has functioned as something of an escape hatch for certain writers to avoid engaging with tricky questions about cultural appropriation and authenticity. If writers stick narrowly to what they know, and if a pinhole aperture is considered... Читать дальше...

The last straw for many Black employees at the Kansas City Veterans Affairs hospital was its Juneteenth celebration. To commemorate the date in 1865 when word of emancipation reached slaves in Texas, a manager at the facility last month sent several Black subordinates an email informing them that they would be exhibits in a Juneteenth “living museum.” One worker was assigned to be Harriet Tubman; others were told to dress up as Sojourner Truth and Martin Luther King. One was slated to play George Floyd... Читать дальше...

On August 10, 2016, Tony Timpa, a 32-year-old white businessman, called the police, claiming he needed help. As Timpa told the dispatcher, he had recently stopped taking his medication for schizophrenia and depression, had consumed drugs, and was afraid for his safety. Officers arrived on the scene outside a Dallas porn shop, where a private security guard had already handcuffed Timpa. While Timpa never threatened officers on the scene or resisted arrest, he acted erratically. It wasn’t long before an officer pinned him under his knee. Читать дальше...

For the past few years, various writers have posed what should be an unthinkable question: If President Donald Trump is defeated in this November’s election, what happens if he refuses to leave office? The United States has a 220-year tradition of peacefully transferring power, from one president to another, through wars and recessions. Could someone like Trump, with all his authoritarian impulses, bring an end to the American experiment this fall?