Новости за 16.05.2022

Look: I know the score. I’ve been in this hot-take game long enough to identify with the relentless quest to snatch up a zeitgeisty news peg in order to try to wedge it neatly into the broader cultural narratives du jour—the better to feed the discourse monster and butter your bread for another day. So it’s no real surprise to watch this happening in the ultra–high profile Hollywood defamation trial currently playing out in a Fairfax County, Virginia, courtroom, where movie star Johnny Depp is suing ex-wife Amber Heard for $50 million. Читать дальше...

Is self-immolation protest or pathology? This is the question weighing on everyone who knew Wynn Bruce, the Colorado man who set himself on fire outside the U.S. Supreme Court on Earth Day, or who has heard his story in the weeks since.

Brynn Tannehill is a writer, LGBTQ activist, and author of 2021’s American Fascism: How the GOP Is Subverting Democracy. A veteran of the U.S. Navy who flew helicopters and patrol aircraft, Tannehill has been a commentator on American politics and culture since leaving the reserves in 2010.

With abortion set to become illegal quickly this summer in as many as 26 states should the Supreme Court finalize the leaked decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the risk of criminalized abortion has been made tangible for many people who would never consider themselves willing to break the law. Post-Roe, the fight for abortion rights will focus on different legal venues, shifting away from the federal courts and back to where most people encounter the law: as it is enforced by police and prosecutors, at the county level. Читать дальше...

Would this Buffalo shooting have happened if Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson didn’t exist? Maybe. But the gunman, Payton Gendron, is still alive and in police custody—a somewhat unusual set of circumstances. I’m very interested in learning where and how he got his racist and fascist ideas, and where he first heard about “replacement theory,” a recurring topic on Carlson’s Fox News show. Buffalo authorities owe it to America to ask him detailed questions along these lines and videotape it and show... Читать дальше...

If you lived in Washington DC during the Trump years and felt any attachment to the place, you may have experienced, as I did, a double-take every time you walked along Pennsylvania Avenue past the Old Post Office and saw emblazoned in front the words “TRUMP International Hotel.” The District isn’t exactly Bedford Falls, but to see that Romanesque pile, completed in 1899—in D.C., only the Washington Monument and the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception are taller—to see that gorgeous edifice tarted... Читать дальше...

In March 2016, when asked for the specifics of his proposal to outlaw abortion, at an MSNBC town hall, then-candidate Donald Trump dodged: “This presidential election is going to be very important,” he said, “because when you say what’s the law, nobody knows what the law’s going to be; it depends on who gets elected. Because somebody’s going to appoint conservative judges and somebody’s going to appoint liberal judges depending on who wins.” Moments later, a clearly out-of-his-depth Trump stumbled too far... Читать дальше...

On December 21, 2000, shortly before leaving office, President Bill Clinton signed the New Markets Tax Credit Program into law, as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2001. He called it “the most significant effort ever to help hard-pressed communities lift themselves up through private investment and entrepreneurship.” Legacy-defining stuff, in other words. Or, as a new book argues, “a fitting capstone to Clinton’s relentless overselling of what small market–based antipoverty programs... Читать дальше...