Новости за 06.01.2021

Democrats are about to enjoy the most power they’ve had in years. A president has just been elected with a huge popular mandate. The House and Senate are both under Democratic control. The country is in the midst of a crisis as great as any since the Great Depression, and its economic future is far from certain. Public concern about the climate crisis is higher than ever.

The apparent Democratic Senate sweep in Georgia is a fitting coda to the destructive narcissism and strutting authoritarianism of the Donald Trump years. It was Trump’s refusal to accept his rightfully humiliating defeat in November that made the Georgia runoffs a referendum on his presidency. And once again, having Trump effectively on the ballot in Georgia goosed Democratic turnout.

In the bewildering, seemingly interminable period between the conclusion of voting in the 2020 election and the networks’ declaration that Joe Biden had won, one thing seemed clear: The GOP had a bright future. The party held onto its Senate majority—pending two runoff elections in Georgia, where the Republican candidates had outperformed their Democratic opponents—and won a dozen seats held by Democrats in the House. It romped at the local and state level, setting up what Austin Chambers, president... Читать дальше...

When Donald Trump leaves the White House on January 20, 2021, he will be known, among other dishonors, for having executed more federal prisoners in a single year than any other before him. This may also include the only woman on federal death row, Lisa Montgomery, scheduled to die days before Biden, who opposes the federal death penalty, will be sworn in. Her lawyers have submitted a petition for clemency, detailing the multiple failures in Montgomery’s case, along with a long history of abuse and neglect by her family... Читать дальше...

It all started with an Instagram ad. The item for sale was a graphic tee with large, feminine typography that said: I cry at work. The shirt, by the Los Angeles–based company ban.do, cost $38. By the time I revisited the website for this article, it was sold out.

You know who had a weirdly great 2020? “Oysters,” Rachel Dean told me. Oysters grew fatter and faster than expected last year, and diners frequently weren’t around to eat them.

As Donald Trump’s time in the White House comes to an end, some creative folks have already begun to imagine his presidential library. A Florida man has offered Trump his trailer park as the site. And a New York City architect and a few friends recently put together a suite of slick architectural renderings of the exhibits they envisioned in the library: a “Hall of Enablers,” which includes the usual suspects, Fox News, Lindsey Graham (but nothing about the corporations that have helped elevate Trump and quietly donated to his campaigns)... Читать дальше...

Tom Cotton has been one of Donald Trump’s most loyal and consistent supporters. He has defended Trump repeatedly, even when the president in September refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power. The Arkansas senator has pushed for drastic cuts to legal immigration and refers to Covid-19 as the “China virus.” When protests raged across the country in response to George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police officers, Cotton argued that Trump wasn’t going far enough—he should “send in the troops” to American cities. Читать дальше...

When Trump won the 2016 presidential election, an editor I worked with asked me: What did I think as a Muslim American? The question troubled me, because I had never thought of myself as a “Muslim American.” A few months later when Trump became president, a friend from high school, who only gets in touch every few years, wrote asking me whether the “Muslim ban” upset me; again, the question troubled me. Soon, I was having arguments with friends about my refusal to identify as a “brown man.” These... Читать дальше...

The highly contentious and wildly expensive Prop 22 is already doing what it was designed to do, and Californians are seeing the grim reality of an economy saturated with independent contractors. (Or “entrepreneurs,” as Uber might want you to say.)

What are we going to do about what’s happening in Congress today? If we’re honest with ourselves, most of us will do nothing. There are, granted, different varieties of nothing. And one of the privileges of being a political writer is that the varieties of nothing available for you to try are manifold.