Новости за 22.09.2020

On Friday night, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death shocked an already reeling country. What came next, however, was sadly unsurprising. Mere hours after Ginsburg’s passing, McConnell had already affirmed that he would hold a vote for Trump’s nominee to fill the vacancy, contravening the ersatz standard he set out in 2016. Or, as Senator Chris Murphy put it, “Nobody’s word means anything in this place anymore. All that matters is raw power.” It’s a bit of a belated realization:... Читать дальше...

The single most important thing to understand about the coronavirus pandemic so far is that it has not affected everyone the same. (Though if you are the president, you could start with acknowledging that it affects more people than “virtually nobody.”) We are not “all in this together.” In fact, for a lot of pretty well-off people, things are mostly fine. In keeping with how we do everything else, America is botching this aspect of responding to the pandemic. We are failing the poor, most notably... Читать дальше...

The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one of the most influential Supreme Court justices of all time, is first and foremost a cause for national mourning. But it is also a political opportunity. The Republicans, of course, see it that way—but the Democrats should, too.

When President Trump announced an emergency use authorization for convalescent plasma as a “historic” and game-changing treatment for the coronavirus last month, experts were baffled. Although plasma donations from recovered patients have been used to speed recoveries for over a century and may help patients in early stages of Covid-19, there’s not enough research yet on how well this approach works and which antibodies best battle this virus. Now, however, there are preliminary results on a different... Читать дальше...

Stop the presses! Mitch McConnell has a nonsensical explanation for why his insistence that the Senate confirm a replacement for the late Justice Ruth Ginsburg six weeks before Election Day does not contradict his refusal, in 2016, to confirm a replacement for the late Justice Antonin Scalia eight months before Election Day.

On a brisk morning in late August 1942, Wendell Willkie—a corporate lawyer, failed presidential candidate, and media darling—got onto an airplane for a trip around the world. Soon, he’d be holding court with kings, premiers, the shah, as well as soldiers and civilians across Africa and Asia. As the Axis powers seized a terrifying amount of territory, Willkie had been dispatched by the president of the United States on an audacious, if vague, mission to introduce the U.S. to the world.

Once, in the mid-1980s, I was invited by a black undergraduate student group at Yale to lead a fireside discussion in one of the residential colleges. I was bemused to learn that the group had planned a half-hour break in the program so they could repair together to watch that week’s episode of The Cosby Show. As I sat in the common area and waited for their return, it occurred to me that they were at least in part modeling the behavior of upper-class black adults—much as some True Blue white... Читать дальше...

Last October, the Supreme Court heard three cases that argued that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars discrimination on the basis of sex, includes discrimination against people on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity—even if it didn’t use those words explicitly—because these kinds of discrimination are inextricable from sex-based discrimination. That argument succeeded, but it was far from a given, not with a court to which Justice Brett Kavanaugh had just been appointed... Читать дальше...

Jesse Helms did not keep secrets. This is about the kindest thing that could be said about the still steaming legacy left by the longtime Senator from North Carolina, but it is and has always been true.

“There’s very few people that can out-Elon in this world and I’m one of them,” said Nikola Motor founder Trevor Milton earlier this summer. Milton’s 35 percent stake in the hydrogen-electric vehicle company—like Musk’s EV company, named for Nikola Tesla—made him extraordinarily rich when the company went public in June, its value shooting up to $27 billion. The success has been reflected in Milton’s boisterous social media presence, where, between tirades addressed to his “haters,” he’s boasted about having bought his father a private plane.