Новости за 09.11.2020

President Trump does not believe in the legitimacy of the electoral process unless he wins—and sometimes, not even then. In 2016, he complained after the Iowa caucuses that “either a new election should take place or [Texas Senator Ted] Cruz results nullified” because of alleged fraud on Cruz’s part. After Hillary Clinton received roughly three million more votes than him, Trump even falsely claimed that he won the popular vote “if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” making... Читать дальше...

The Trump era is not yet over, and the Biden administration has not yet begun. There are still another two months for horrible things to continue to happen and then another four years for, hopefully, slightly less horrible things to happen after that.

Did Joe Biden’s much-publicized suggestion that he wanted to “transition” off fossil fuels during a presidential debate cost him the election? Evidently not. Biden is projected to flip Pennsylvania with a healthy margin, and he carried fossil fuel–producing states New Mexico and Colorado. Democrats did underperform further down the ballot, though, losing House seats where they were expected to gain them and floundering in their bid to take control of the Senate, which will remain Republican-dominated... Читать дальше...

Enough about Donald Trump: The opportunity to plan beyond him is among the most important privileges the Democratic Party and the country won last week. Unless Democrats sweep the Georgia runoffs in January, President-elect Joe Biden will take office with a divided Congress and beset by existential crises on all sides. Having won a general election dominated almost entirely by matters of character and general competence, Biden is substantively short of where he ought to be on the issues that defined... Читать дальше...

As the 2020 election finally unwinds, Democrats seeking a majority in the Senate have turned their eyes south, to the two pending runoff votes in Georgia, which could produce an even 50–50 split in the upper chamber. In that scenario, Vice President–elect Kamala Harris would wield the tie-breaking vote for the Democrats—and put a slew of ambitious legislative projects back in play for the Biden White House.

In late August, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division announced that it had issued requests to New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Michigan concerning their handling of the coronavirus in nursing homes. The unspoken threat, it seemed, was that the department could file lawsuits against these states—all run by Democratic governors—related to nursing home deaths. The requests were transparently political, considering both the dubious use of the statute—a provision that provides civil... Читать дальше...

Everybody loves to watch “smug marrieds”—to borrow Bridget Jones’s phrase—fall apart, and if they’re rich, then all the better. That lust for schadenfreude is what sells tabloid stories about celebrity breakups, but it’s also been at the heart of some of the best-scripted screen psychodramas of the past decade. In hit book adaptations like Gone Girl and Big Little Lies and crime series like Broadchurch and The Fall, a parade of contented spouses have been shattered by the revelation that their... Читать дальше...