Новости за 22.12.2020

In 2020, the media got bigger. The New York Times continued its hegemonic expansion, announcing that it had topped five million subscribers in March, six million in June, and seven million in November. It has used its clout to hire whomever it wants, and digital publications, once seen as an existential threat, are now a hunting ground. A wave of consolidation swept through those digital publications, culminating in BuzzFeed’s acquisition of HuffPost last month. Unprecedented election interest swelled the coffers of cable networks... Читать дальше...

In September, New Jersey officials announced a plan to borrow $4.5 billion to cover what The New York Times referred to as a “gaping financial hole” in the state’s budget. It was an understandable move given the Covid-19 pandemic’s deleterious effect on employment and local tax revenue, and Democratic Governor Phil Murphy’s advisers said they wished to avoid the “slashing of government services” that working families rely on. To that end, the budget also included a millionaire’s tax.

News of specific, potentially more contagious coronavirus variants in the United Kingdom and South Africa have swept global headlines in recent days. The two unrelated variants, health officials say, have spread in the past few weeks, supplanting other variations of the virus and leading officials to believe they are more transmissible. International focus has quickly shifted to containment: Dozens of countries have now issued travel bans for the U.K. The variant has not yet been detected in the United States... Читать дальше...

While campaigning this spring in the Democratic primary for Missouri’s first congressional district, then–insurgent candidate Cori Bush found herself struggling to breathe: a hallmark symptom caused by the novel coronavirus that had originated mere months before in Wuhan, China. While now Representative-elect Bush’s case would soon prove severe enough to require hospitalization, she was initially terrified to call an ambulance—acquiescing only when her friend Dr. Victoria Dooley insisted on calling... Читать дальше...

The New York Times on Monday published a mea culpa by career lawyer Erica Newland, who joined the Justice Department under Obama and then served under Trump. Working in the Office of Legal Counsel, she wrote, her job was “to tailor the president’s executive actions to make them lawful—in narrowing them, I could also make them less destructive.” Her portfolio “included matters targeting noncitizens, dismantling the Civil Service and camouflaging the president’s corruption.” She left in late 2018... Читать дальше...

When Flavio first heard about a temporary farm work program in the United States, it sounded like a great deal. Everything from his salary to his housing would be guaranteed in advance by his employer, who would also sponsor his visa. He forked over more than $1,000 to a recruiter in Mexico and was approved in April for an H-2A agricultural visa through a farm labor contractor. These contractors, a small but fast-growing part of the legal migrant worker system, hire laborers directly and then pair them with farmers. Читать дальше...

Nine months. That’s how long it took Congress to pass a second round of legislative relief in response to a global pandemic recession. In the interim, the economy imploded, the death toll reached and then surpassed 300,000, millions were pushed into poverty, and millions more lost their jobs. None of which stopped Mitch McConnell from sounding downright triumphant on Sunday as he announced the deal. “At long last, we have the bipartisan breakthrough the country has needed,” he said from the Senate floor. Читать дальше...

When some colleagues and I recently met to discuss the past year in culture, we easily agreed on one thing only: Corporate consolidation, and not just the pandemic, took a heavy toll on the arts this year. Everybody seems to be streaming the same handful of TV shows—The Crown, Mrs America, Normal People, The Undoing—while only a few young novelists, like the justly praised Raven Leilani and Brandon Taylor, made it to “breakout” level. By the end of the year, we could barely remember any of the small-gem films of 2020 (Miss Juneteenth... Читать дальше...

For most of America’s 10 million middle schoolers, English class means enjoying—or, perhaps, enduring—the timeless narratives of the Western canon: Fahrenheit 451, Black Boy, The Giver, Parable of the Sower, 1984. Teachers order these books every year, and school librarians stock up for fall classes. It’s a cash cow for book publishers and distributors—and they intend to keep it that way.

It’s a certainty that we’ll be entering both the new year and a new Democratic administration with the American economy on its knees. We’ll return to something resembling normalcy with time, but communities across the country and the lives of millions have already been irrevocably altered. The lesson of the last financial crisis—that precarity endures for working Americans long after the markets and headline figures rebound—will have to be learned again. And the central truth of our economic system will have to be confronted afresh... Читать дальше...