Новости за 01.04.2022

Tolstoy’s entire novella might well be reprinted here for, in a sense, it is the best possible comment on the Japanese film under discussion. The picture is Ikiru (in English To Live), and the themes of the two works are the same: the realization of the approach of death; the bewilderment and anger at the course of one’s past life; the shame of fear; the knowledge that the world has already discarded you, that you merely make others uncomfortable; the inescapable holiness of your last days because... Читать дальше...

President Joe Biden is having a tough time getting some of his nominees confirmed. On Tuesday, three Democrats voted alongside all Republicans to sink the nomination of David Weil to lead the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division.

To hear a growing number of Republican lawmakers tell it, Wall Street has been infiltrated by radical environmentalists who have set their sights on America’s energy sector. They point to figures like Mark Carney, the sustainable investment guru and former Bank of England head, who convened the world’s largest banks and asset managers into the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net-Zero, or GFANZ. Carney and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, these Republicans argue, are using tremendous financial resources to wage an ideological crusade against coal... Читать дальше...

Mike Pence may be the only person in America who thinks he might someday be president. For Trump diehards, he’s a traitor and a coward—someone who flinched at the precise moment he should have stolen the 2020 election. For Trump skeptics—however few there may be left in the Republican Party—and Democrats, he’s tarnished for his loyalty to the president. For everyone else, he’s a charisma-free, ultrareligious guy with the hair of a Lego figurine who is best remembered for the time a fly spent several seconds on his head. Читать дальше...

Here’s what happened this week

It’s been another hectic week for developments related to the investigation into the January 6 attack on the Capitol. A federal judge in California on Monday said that it was “more likely than not” that former President Donald Trump broke the law in attempting to obstruct the counting of electoral votes. The judge also ordered former Trump attorney John Eastman to release 101 emails from around January 6, 2021, to the House select committee probing the assault. Читать дальше...

It was 2015, and the city of Missoula, Montana, was fighting to take control of its water supply. Missoula’s privately owned waterworks had recently been sold to Mountain Water, a company owned by the private equity behemoth Carlyle Group. The mayor, John Engen, approved the sale after being wined and dined in Washington and led to believe that Missoula’s water was but a drop in Carlyle’s bucket, and the firm would voluntarily sell the system to the city. But after Missoula made its bid for the waterworks for about $50 million... Читать дальше...

As Trump’s Big Lie festers among the Republican Party and political norms continue to erode, we at The New Republic are pretty concerned about the future of small “d” democracy, both in the U.S. and abroad. So we’ve started a series we’ve termed Democracy Watch, wherein we will regularly survey experts, writers, and generally interesting thinkers on a specific question about the state of democracy and what keeps them up at night.