Новости за 29.04.2022

The right has spent most of the last day fulminating against the Department of Homeland Security’s newly announced Disinformation Board—an entity that the Biden administration hopes will counter misinformation being spread by human traffickers, as well as the Russian government. For Republican politicians and right-wing television hosts, however, it was clearly yet another act of authoritarianism by the Biden administration.

The Food and Drug Administration’s proposed ban on menthol cigarettes is a laudable move by the Biden administration that builds on one of the greatest public-health achievements in United States history: the reduction of cigarette consumption through a combined regulatory assault by federal, state, and local governments. And at a historic moment when we’re being reminded that Black Lives Matter, a menthol ban would save tens of thousands of Black lives annually.

Here’s What Happened This Week

Finally, the news we’ve been waiting for since…March? February?: January 6th Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson unveiled new details of the upcoming public hearings the panel plans to hold. In a scrum with reporters on Thursday, the Mississippi Democrat said the committee planned to hold eight hearings in June. The hearings will be spread out across the month. 

“We’ll tell the story about what happened. We will use a combination of witnesses, exhibits... Читать дальше...

Everyone remembers when Marco Rubio said Donald Trump had “small hands.” It was late February 2016, a desperate time in the year’s Republican presidential primary. Trump was on a roll, having won nearly everywhere—after narrowly losing to Ted Cruz in Iowa, he rampaged through New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada, and several other early primary states. And so Rubio got in the mud and tried to give voters what it seemed like they wanted: “And you know what they say about guys with small hands,” he told a stunned crowd in Virginia... Читать дальше...

Ohio Republicans will finish duking it out in their bruising and heavily covered primary for Senate next Tuesday. But what about the Democratic side? Whoever emerges from the GOP primary will almost certainly face Congressman Tim Ryan in the general election. Ryan’s bet is that the best way for a Democrat to win in the increasingly conservative Ohio is to focus on economic populism.

Donald Trump’s presidency didn’t have much to recommend it, but if there was one thing I grudgingly liked, it was the fact that he consistently opted out of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner: the annual gala in which politicians and reporters drop any pretense of being adversaries and spend the night kissing each other’s asses in front of an audience of bemused B-list celebrities. When Trump first snubbed the affair, the absence of a real, live president at the dinner slightly deflated its balloon of self-regard. Читать дальше...