Новости за 07.10.2022

Who cares if NFL-star-turned-Donald-Trump-darling Herschel Walker, who is currently running for the U.S. Senate in Georgia, paid for a girlfriend to have an abortion? Or even that he lied about it? I’ll tell you who doesn’t care: Republican leaders and, especially, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose only animating belief in life is that he should be Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell until the day he dies.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court’s newest member, Ketanji Brown Jackson, sent legal Twitter ablaze with the sharp comments she offered during oral arguments in Merrill v. Milligan, the latest conservative effort to gut the Voting Rights Act. As Justice Jackson vigorously debunked the right’s shameless revisionist history of the Fourteenth Amendment, the establishment left rejoiced: The newest liberal justice appeared to be a difference-maker—“mak[ing] waves” and “grab[bing] the spotlight.” One prominent... Читать дальше...

On October 3, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman to be confirmed to the Supreme Court, took her seat on the nation’s highest court. It is charged with interpreting our Constitution and guarding our rights against the powerful who might choose monopoly or monarchy or both. She, this daughter of immigrants with an ancestry subjugated to slavery, does so at a time when most of the nation is fearful for the future of our democracy. From money in politics and the power it wields, to our divisions... Читать дальше...

Voters, allegedly, don’t want to hear about climate change. Eighty-two percent of Americans see inflation as “extremely or very important,” a new Monmouth University poll finds. Just 49 percent assigned similar importance to climate change, which ranked tenth on a list of 12 priorities for midterm voters. A survey published by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication in July found that voters ranked climate change twenty-fourth on a list of 29 issues they considered most important in heading to the polls for the midterms. Читать дальше...

The story of Democrat Gretchen Whitmer’s gubernatorial reelection in Michigan is one that might sound more like a Netflix political thriller than a midterm campaign. She was one of those prudent governors who initiated strict lockdowns early in 2020 when Covid-19 hit and stuck to them even as other states eased restrictions. The backlash among her critics in Michigan was severe. They nicknamed her the “Wolverine Queen,” and not as a compliment. Her anti-coronavirus moves spurred a group of conspirators... Читать дальше...

In 2018, when Washington, D.C., was having a high-profile argument over Initiative 77, a ballot measure to end the lower tipped minimum wage in the city, Max Hawla was making a decent income as a bartender and barback. With his tips he pulled in about $40,000 a year, even though the minimum wage he was guaranteed by city law was just $3.33 an hour. To make that income, though, he had to work five bar shifts a week—which are physically demanding and usually run much longer than eight consecutive hours. Читать дальше...

The Swedish Academy, which awards the Nobel Prize in literature, is fond of overthinking things—perhaps unsurprising, given that it is made up predominantly of Nordic academics and other members of the ponderousoisie. This is, after all, an award that is famous for having been won by Sully Prudhomme, Carl Friedrich Georg Spitteler, and Dario Fo—and never having been won by James Joyce, Marcel Proust, or Leo Tolstoy, among others. Recent selections have suggested not only a continued devotion to... Читать дальше...