Новости за 21.01.2022

A century has passed since Buster Keaton entered the plum decade of his career. Then in his twenties, he had outgrown his family vaudeville act, whose violent acrobatics had relied on a size contrast between father and son, and learned the art and science of making movies from Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, in his studio on 48th Street in Manhattan.

Here’s What Happened

The biggest news of the week about the House Select Committee on the January 6th Attack on the Capitol came not from the committee but from the Supreme Court. In an 8–1 ruling, the court rejected Donald Trump’s bid to block the National Archives from releasing a set of documents the committee wants as part of its investigation. This is important for a few reasons. The sole dissenting opinion was from Justice Clarence Thomas. Every other member of the court—even the ones Trump appointed... Читать дальше...

If anyone should have known how congressional Republicans would respond to a Democrat in the White House, it was Joe Biden. For eight years as Barack Obama’s vice president, Biden watched as the GOP—led by current Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell—did everything in its power to block, stymie, and undermine the Obama administration. “We’re not here to cut deals and get crumbs and stay in the minority for another 40 years,” incoming House Minority Whip Eric Cantor told his fellow Republican congressmen a month before Obama took office. Читать дальше...

In March 2020, The New York Times published a photo essay titled “The Great Empty.” It was an unsettling testimony of public landscapes leached of humanity: Times Square lit up for no one, decluttered highways in Colombia, a commuterless Munich subway, an empty Beijing diner.

Shortly before Christmas, Senate Democrats, who had spent the previous few months trying and failing to pass the Build Back Better Act through reconciliation, decided to pull a switcheroo: Instead of passing Biden’s social spending bill, they would turn their attention to an urgently needed voting rights bill. Fast forward a month, and Senate Democrats have now failed to pass voting rights legislation and a rules change that would have allowed them to approve the measure by a simple majority vote. Читать дальше...