Новости за 24.01.2022

The Supreme Court will hear a major legal challenge to affirmative action in higher education, the justices announced on Monday, foreshadowing the near-certain doom of those policies. The move adds yet another major social and political issue to the court’s docket as it already weighs sweeping decisions on abortion and gun rights. Moreover, it underscores how eager the court’s six-justice conservative majority is to rewrite American constitutional law in its own image, now that it is unencumbered by moderates and liberals. Читать дальше...

September 2022 will mark two decades since Ashley Pizzuti took out the loans she says have “imprisoned” her and her husband. The couple met at the now-shuttered Brooks Institute, an arts college in Southern California, and graduated with a combined half-million dollars in debt around 2006. Defaulting would mean ruining their parents’ credit, since they had co-signed the loans. Pizzuti says that now, in middle age, when the couple applies for a mortgage, they’re “laughed out of the office.” Despite having built a successful business on paper... Читать дальше...

The Supreme Court’s decision to block the Occupational Safety and Health Administration from issuing a Covid testing mandate for many U.S. businesses continues to offer a lot to ponder. Even looking beyond the merits of the ruling, it is not as strong an opinion as one might expect for the highest court in the land—perhaps this is to be expected, given that the case was argued, and the opinions drafted, with more haste than usual. Multiple legal scholars have noted, for example, that it spends... Читать дальше...

In a sane world, Jane Mayer’s excellent piece on Ginni Thomas in The New Yorker would set off a series of events that would lead to her husband Clarence Thomas’s impeachment and removal from the Supreme Court. Ginni is involved with numerous far-right organizations and schemes that take very public positions on court decisions across a range of social and political issues, such as last week’s 8–1 holding that Donald Trump could not block the release of documents related to the January 6, 2021, insurrection. Читать дальше...

During his press conference last week, Joe Biden seemed confident about at least one part of his proposed Build Back Better bill: “I think it’s clear that we would be able to get support for the $500 billion plus for energy and the environment.” Democrats are divided on whether passing just that piece of it is possible, or a good idea.

We’re fast approaching the point where a subscription to The Atlantic is a risk factor for suicide. “January 6 Was Practice,” announces the cover of the current issue, flagging a story by Barton Gellman headlined, “Trump’s Next Coup Has Already Begun.” The cover is yellow lettering against a pitch-black background, a design scheme that would appear at first glance to announce the assassination of an American president.

In El Salvador, Ingrid Vilorio was a beautician with her own studio. But when her autistic son turned five, she and her husband chose to give up the autonomy of owning a business for a life in the United States. Not knowing how to drive and equipped with only a few words of English, she applied for a job at the first place she saw that was hiring—a McDonald’s down the street from her new home in suburban Alameda County, California.