Новости за 29.09.2022

In the latest case of abortion rights being rolled back in a post-Roe America, an Arizona judge ruled last week that an 1864 state ban prohibiting nearly all abortions and criminalizing those who provide them needed to be enforced. Codified before Arizona even became a state, the old law requires that any person who provides an abortion, or the means to an abortion, will be “punished” with two to five years in prison. The ruling grants no exceptions for rape or incest, only if the life of the... Читать дальше...

When powerful Hurricane Ian smashed into Florida on Wednesday, it hit a state whose governor, unlike his predecessor, actually acknowledges that climate change is real. Once that would have been a cause for celebration. But over the past two years, Governor Ron DeSantis has illustrated just how big a difference there is between acknowledging climate change and doing anything to address its underlying causes. He’s also become less interested in climate mitigation efforts and more interested in playing politics... Читать дальше...

The night Texas’s six-week abortion ban, Senate Bill 8, went into effect just over a year ago, abortion providers at the Whole Woman’s Health network of abortion clinics saw patients until 11:56 p.m.: four minutes before providing most abortions became a crime in their state; nearly a year before Roe v. Wade would be overturned. Mikayla Dawson was tweeting through it.

President Biden’s declaration last week that the “pandemic is over” kicked off a flurry of debate over whether that’s actually true. As an epidemiologist and former city health director, I have opinions. Pandemics are kind of like hurricanes. A lull could mean we’re at the end of the hurricane—or we could be in the eye of it. Right now, there’s plenty of reason to believe that we are nearing the end of the Covid-19 pandemic, but we just can’t say with certainty.

When I last wrote about President Joe Biden’s student debt relief order, the big question was whether anyone would have the legal standing to challenge it in court. These days, it is almost inevitable that major presidential policy items from both parties will face some sort of legal battle. Conservatives have certainly taken issue with Biden’s use of a 2003 student loan reform law—and its apparently sweeping language—to wipe out, by one estimate, more than $400 billion worth of debt over the next three decades. Читать дальше...

Heather Cox Richardson’s wildly popular Substack newsletter, Letters From an American, achieves what historical studies do at their best: shed light on the politics of the moment by telling parallel stories from the past. As often as the word “unprecedented” comes up in modern political discussions, the comparisons it conjures are usually limited to living memory—which historians know to look beyond. In this episode of How to Save a Country, hosts Michael Tomasky and Felicia Wong talk with Richardson... Читать дальше...

In the summer of 1959, an attractive American-style house was built in Moscow, fully furnished with the amenities that any working American could supposedly afford. But it was not meant for anyone to live in. The previous year, officials from the United States and the Soviet Union had agreed to participate in a cultural exchange program intended to foster mutual understanding and, implicitly, measure one country’s standard of living against the other’s. The ersatz home was the centerpiece of the U.S. exhibit... Читать дальше...

Are Joe Biden’s Democrats changing economic policymaking in this country? They have a good deal to show for their first two years: the $370 billion for climate investments, the far larger infrastructure bill, and the CHIPs and Science Act, to name a few items. There are also the less visible but no less important nonlegislative changes. The shift in monopoly and industrial policies represents not just attempts to try something new but approaches that are philosophically different from the bulk of federal lawmaking over the last 40 years. Читать дальше...

The two plastic picnic tables formed a V around the advocates resting on lawn chairs, bundled against the chill of early fall. They had spent two weeks sitting on the lawn outside the Capitol building, sandwiched between its marble pillars and Senate office buildings on the other side of the street. A coalition of organizations and activists, veterans and recent émigrés, had manned the station day and night, chatting with passing staffers and lawmakers. The Afghan and American flags, standing at the corners of the tables... Читать дальше...