Новости за 20.01.2021

They called it the “Great Awakening.”

Inauguration Day was supposed to be a climactic moment for believers of QAnon, the conspiracy theory that claims Donald Trump is leading a clandestine campaign against cannibalistic, deep state–dwelling pedophiles. The supposed offenders, including Joe Biden, would be arrested en masse, while Trump went on to a second presidential term.

Instead, Q believers watched Trump slink out of the White House and listened to the usual anodyne oratory on... Читать дальше...

Donald Trump’s presidency died on Wednesday as it lived: in a last-minute torrent of corruption. His final batch of pardons doled out mercy to a motley crew of personal and political allies, rap artists, well-connected ex-businessmen and financiers, and a few deserving recipients. Hours later, he signed an executive order to remove restrictions on his ex-aides serving as lobbyists in Washington. It was a remarkably self-serving end to a remarkably self-serving presidency.

In retrospect, probably the last thing America’s bungled Covid-19 vaccine rollout needed was for the Trump administration to spend its final week in power promising the states extra vaccines that didn’t exist. Last Tuesday, departing Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar announced that the federal government would release its stockpile of Covid-19 doses instead of holding the vaccines in reserve for the second round of shots. Some states, accordingly, started widening their first-tier... Читать дальше...

Today we say goodbye and good riddance to Donald J. Trump, the worst, laziest, and most tangerine-hued of our 45 presidents. He left a path of destruction in his wake that included 400,000 dead Americans, a decimated economy, shattered norms, broken laws, and endless grifting. And if his venality, corruption, and incompetence weren’t enough, he punctuated his tenure in the highest (and before now, most respected) office by inciting an attempt to overthrow the same institutions that empowered him—the... Читать дальше...

In the early 2000s, Peruvians faced a difficult choice. Their outgoing president, Alberto Fujimori, had been democratically elected as a populist only to preside over a regime of corruption, repression, and personal megalomania. Early in his first term, he orchestrated an autogolpe, or self-coup, in which he shut down congress and took over the judiciary with the assistance of the military and Peruvian elites.

The Trump era begins and ends with stories of capitol buildings and Confederate flags. On July 10, 2015, the emblem was taken down once and for all from its former proud perch over the statehouse in Columbia, South Carolina. The news was greeted with overjoyed reports in the mainstream media as a milepost in America’s long struggle to overcome racism—oblivious to the import of Donald Trump, three weeks earlier, opening his presidential campaign with the promise to vanquish the hordes of rapists... Читать дальше...

On Monday, two days before Donald Trump was set to exit the presidency, the White House released the names of 244 individuals who would be honored for their contributions to American society in a National Statue Garden. George Washington and Abraham Lincoln would be there, as would Martin Luther King Jr, whose birth was being honored that very day. So would Elvis Presley, Whitney Houston, Lou Gehrig, George Patton, and Frederick Douglass—who maybe is, as the president said not too long ago, “being recognized more and more.” At one point... Читать дальше...

Some good news can’t wait. On Sunday, the CBC reported that canceling federally issued permits for the Keystone XL pipeline will be part of President-elect Joe Biden’s Day One agenda. In theory, the pipeline could be dead by Wednesday afternoon, when prior presidents have been prepping for inaugural balls. (The balls have been canceled this year.)

In January 1973, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., a 30-year-old county councilman who won an upset election by just over 3,000 votes, was sworn in as one of the youngest senators in the nation’s history. Today, at 78, he will take office as our oldest elected president. The 48 years Biden has spent in national politics are often referred to as years spent in “public service” to this country. But not even our best politicians of long tenure can claim to have served the country as consistently well as they might have in retrospect. Читать дальше...