Новости за 30.07.2020

There are many people in this country who are trapped in bad jobs, ranging from dangerous to exhausting to simply boring, by their financial realities. In the United States, being anything less than pretty darn rich is a potentially perilous situation; if you get into an accident and end up on the wrong end of a huge medical bill, for example, even a decent amount of money saved up for a rainy day can evaporate overnight. If you lose your job, unemployment insurance might not cover the bills. If you have a baby, oh no, why did you do that? Читать дальше...

Let’s be clear: President Donald Trump cannot lawfully delay the 2020 general election. He lacks the authority to make a unilateral change to the election date, which is set by Congress for the first Tuesday in November. He also has no inherent power to command the armies of state and local officials who actually conduct the nation’s elections. Presidents wield a broad array of constitutional and statutory powers over American life. This is not among them.

The new Republican coronavirus relief bill is abominable. From the earliest days of the pandemic, experts have insisted on closing America’s workplaces and offering workers and businesses financial support until the virus has been brought under control. But Republicans have been preoccupied with the idea that measures like the expansion of unemployment benefits in the CARES Act, set to expire this week, disincentivize work—never mind the fact that many workers across the country can’t go back... Читать дальше...

Asked this past spring whether the November 3 presidential election might need to be rescheduled due to the coronavirus, senior White House adviser Jared Kushner replied, “I’m not sure I can commit one way or the other.” The response didn’t inspire confidence: Given President Donald Trump’s rhetoric and attitude, there has already been considerable hand-wringing about whether he would accept the results of the election if he loses and how the pandemic might exacerbate chaos and uncertainty this November. Читать дальше...

No one loses a war like the United States. Yet we start them all the time. In fact, if you pause to listen to our language—from “battleground” states in election years to “culture wars” every other decade—it’s hard to believe our nation is not at constant, unending war with everyone and everything, including itself.

B, the narrator of Charlie Kaufman’s novel Antkind, is B. Rosenberger Rosenberg, a bald, middle-aged film critic with bottle-top glasses and a flowing Whitmanesque beard, who goes only by his lone initial so as “not to wield my maleness as a weapon.” B is the worst sort of performative white male culture critic, knowing what to say publicly and trashing those who do not, all while tortuously trying to hide his own archly regressive personality. He lets most Black people he meets know immediately that he has had a Black girlfriend... Читать дальше...

Painful images are still coming out of Portland—law enforcement wielding exterminator-like sprayers of tear gas, firing “less-lethal” munitions that have left protesters hospitalized with life-threatening injuries—more than two months into continuous protests against anti-Black racism and policing. In recent weeks, federal agents have joined local police to patrol parts of Portland, dispatched by executive order and apparently managed by Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, or DHS. Читать дальше...