Новости за 28.10.2020

Donald Trump, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, is mulling an executive order to make federal agencies perform an economic analysis of fracking—on the theory, presumably, that there’s no voter-seducing soundbite better than one involving the words “capital allocation.” It’s an odd last-minute play for fuel-producing swing states like Pennsylvania and Texas. As Pennsylvania faces 2,000 new coronavirus cases per day, you have to wonder how many undecided voters will swoon in anticipation... Читать дальше...

The Lincoln Project is betting that anti-Trumpism can outlast Donald Trump’s presidency. On Tuesday, Axios reported that the group of ad-making former Republicans “is weighing offers from different television studios, podcast networks, and book publishers.” Everything, it seems, is on the table: The group is currently producing a documentary about the election while studios want the Lincoln Project’s help in develop “a House of Cards-like fiction series,” definitive proof that the Golden Age of Television is behind us. Читать дальше...

For the people trying to get out the vote in jails across the United States, there are no doors to knock, no sidewalks to canvass from. The people they are trying to reach may not even know they have the right to vote. For people in jails who are registered to vote, the vast majority of them won’t have access to a polling place. In reality, they have to rely on the people who jail them to ensure they get to vote. The nearly half a million people, on average, awaiting trial in jail on any given Election Day retain the right to cast a ballot. Читать дальше...

At this point, you have to wonder which heavily polluting industries didn’t know about climate change half a century ago. This week, E&E News published a months-long investigation showing that Ford and General Motors—the country’s two largest automakers—knew about the risks their business posed to climate change all the way back in the 1960s, and did nothing to stop it. Worse still, they funded lobbying to make sure governments didn’t act, either.

The coronavirus is once again on the rise in the United States, but panic over the recent record surge in infections and hospitalizations is another thing entirely. Pandemic fatigue, The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week, has set in worldwide, and after seven months of avoiding social contact and public places, people are unsurprisingly letting down their guard. According to the Journal, while 84 percent of Americans said they were avoiding small gatherings back in April, that number has since dwindled to a mere 45 percent. Читать дальше...

If the polls are any guide, then change could soon be afoot in Washington, D.C., in the form of an incoming Biden administration tasked with the challenge of rebooting an administrative state that’s been decimated under the Trump administration. It’s likely to be a uniquely daunting and time-consuming endeavor. But some concerns, when it comes to staffing up an executive branch and building a presidential inner circle, are perennial. One such worry involves the revolving door between industry influence-peddlers and the halls of power. Читать дальше...

There is a long and noble tradition in this country of journalists going undercover to expose the far right. More than a century ago, Walter White—a Black man so light-skinned he could easily pass for white—made a name for himself by infiltrating southern lynch mobs, gathering evidence against them, and then broadcasting their evil deeds to a broad reading public. In the 1940s, Stetson Kennedy impersonated a racist encyclopedia salesman to penetrate the ranks of the Ku Klux Klan and then humiliated... Читать дальше...

Here we finally are—on the cusp of what, after many false alarms, really might be the beginning of the end of Donald Trump’s presidency. But given ample reasons to remain uneasy about what will happen next week, we might turn instead to recalling a few sure things about the way the Trump campaign, now mostly over, has gone. Trump’s unpopularity made reelection an uphill climb even before the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic, which is worsening with the encroachment of colder weather and the winter months. Читать дальше...

The 13 men charged in a plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer called themselves the Wolverine Watchmen, a possible reference to the white supremacist vigilante militia in the HBO series Watchmen. The suspects began planning their kidnapping this summer, with live-fire exercises and explosives, according to the charges. Not long before, gangs of armed men, many of them carrying AR-15s, and defiantly not wearing face masks, protested inside the state capitol in Lansing against strict health measures imposed by Whitmer. Читать дальше...

It’s a cliché at this point, but imagine being told 10 years ago that the final weeks of the 2020 election campaign would feature President Donald Trump telling enthusiastic supporters at campaign rallies that the deadly airborne virus they were at risk of contracting at that very moment—one for which there was no vaccine and limited treatment options—was not a big deal at all. Wrap your head around your best friend dropping this prediction on you: “Hey buddy, bit of a weird one: In 2020 the president is Donald Trump... Читать дальше...