Новости за 24.09.2021

The expanded child tax credit has been enthusiastically embraced by most Democrats as an easily promotable example of a social policy that aids families in tangible ways. On the surface, the policy would appear to be one of the few things Democrats across the ideological spectrum might agree on as they undertake the messy business of crafting a bill amenable to moderates and progressives. Here’s the basic concept: “Giving money to families on a monthly basis can cut child poverty and provide us... Читать дальше...

From its inception, a persistent question hanging over the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol has been how far it would try to go and how successful it would be. The idea of the committee was for it to be bipartisan. Most Republicans hated that. The idea was for the committee to investigate the goings-on of Donald Trump and his allies throughout the day. Trump and his allies hated that. It wasn’t clear whether telecom companies would go along with a demand to hand over records. Читать дальше...

You may have missed it, but last week the U.S. Border Patrol put out the kind of story it would like the media to cover. Agents patrolling the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass, Texas, spotted something brightly colored in the rushes, which turned out to be a 3-month-old baby in a carrier and his two-year-old sister. A note pinned to the carrier, according to the Border Patrol, indicated the children were from Honduras and gave their ages. The sector chief for the agency tweeted and posted to Facebook... Читать дальше...

On NPR the other morning, one of the reporters referred to the Democrats’ “$3.5 trillion spending bill.” I don’t even remember who it was, and I don’t mean to single this person out. Everybody does it. Heck, I’ve done it. But the way the media presents this information to the public is terribly misleading, and it’s dangerous, because the framing favors the conservative argument.

Though you may not know the name Björn Andrésen, you may well recall his face. In Ari Aster’s 2019 film, Midsommar, he played the elderly man with long, gray hair who participates in the Harga community’s terrifying clifftop “Ättestupa” ritual. This scene, which marks the moment that Midsommar turns unbearably gory, is elevated by Andrésen’s elegance; his few lines are mostly hummed, but with his rangy El Greco limbs and the way his hair floats upward when he falls, Andrésen brings to Midsommar a quality one can only call grace. Читать дальше...

How close did America come to constitutional collapse on January 6? Closer than we knew. Earlier this week, CNN obtained a disturbing memo written by one of Trump’s legal advisers during the two-month period between Election Day last year and January 6. Conservative lawyer John Eastman proposed that then–Vice President Mike Pence could try to overturn the election results during the joint session of Congress and give Trump a second term. In practical terms, it describes a plan for carrying out... Читать дальше...

The budget reconciliation bill has reached a “potentially devastating impasse” (The New York Times), and “the fate of the Biden presidency” is “on the line” (Greg Sargent, The Washington Post). These are the times that try men’s souls. Except not mine, particularly. All I see is a power struggle between the Democrats’ left and right flanks that will get resolved, probably quite satisfactorily, fairly soon.

Students returning to Harvard this fall may encounter the Office for Diversity, Inclusion, & Belonging, whose mission is to “catalyze, convene, and build capacity for equity, diversity, inclusion, belonging, and anti-racism initiatives .” They might wonder at the difference between “catalyzing” and “convening”; they might ask how much equity you could catalyze just by cutting tuition.