Новости за 31.12.2020

Missouri Senator Josh Hawley announced on Wednesday that he would take the courageous step of trying to overthrow an American election. When Congress formally counts the Electoral College votes on January 6, Hawley said he would try to challenge at least one state’s results, which requires at least one member of the House and Senate each. There aren’t enough votes in either chamber to toss out a state result, so the maneuver will only delay President-elect Joe Biden’s final victory by a few more hours. Читать дальше...

In 2021, every state will use the results of the 2020 census to redraw the maps of American political power. Some states give independent commissions or nonpartisan officials the power to redraw their state legislative maps and congressional districts. But in the majority of states, that duty falls to partisan state legislatures. Hyper-partisanship will exert a stronger pull than usual across the country as it rewrites its political boundaries this time around: In all but 12 states, the legislature... Читать дальше...

At the close of 2020, it’s hard to think of another year in living memory that has forced such a radical rethinking of our politics and social life. The Covid-19 pandemic will be remembered as a dire time in American life, but its disruption may yet open us up to new ideas and social possibilities, especially when it comes to the power of the government to spend. Modern Monetary Theory posits that a governing body like the United States federal government, which borrows and spends in the same currency it issues... Читать дальше...

Tzeporah Berman has some words of warning for climate advocates elated that Donald Trump will no longer be president: Don’t do what Canadian activists did five years ago.

In an address on Monday afternoon, Joe Biden offered a bleak preview of winter. “We need to be honest,” the president-elect said. “The next few weeks and months are going to be very tough ... maybe the toughest during this entire pandemic. I know it’s hard to hear, but it’s the truth.” He then invoked Franklin Roosevelt, pledging to talk to the American people “straight from the shoulder” like the thirty-second president did.

The story of the pandemic is also a story about debt. One recent survey, conducted in October, found that more than a quarter of respondents had accumulated over $10,000 in new debts during the crisis. One in three had taken out a new credit card. An analysis from Philadelphia found a 70 percent increase from last year in people paying rent on credit and that, by December, rent-burdened households will owe roughly $7.2 billion in back rent, an average individual burden of $5,400.