Trying to remember March 2020 feels like sticking your head into a parallel universe. This time last year, Americans were just going into lockdown—presumably for two weeks—to protect themselves from a mysterious but deadly virus. We disinfected mail but didn’t wear masks. Few of us knew that COVID-19 symptoms could last for months, that you might lose your sense of smell, or that your toes might break out in purple lesions.
Arrested Development, the cult-beloved sitcom that debuted on Fox in 2003, was a joke-dense, fastidiously written, pun-packed satire of a poisonously entitled family. But wordplay alone was not what made Lucille Bluth, the matriarch of the clan, one of the funniest TV characters of all time. The actor Jessica Walter, who died on Wednesday at the age of 80, gets credit for that.
White House coronavirus response coordinator Jeff Zients said Friday the company was due to send the government 11 million more doses next week.
White House coronavirus response coordinator Jeff Zients said Friday the company was due to send the government 11 million more doses next week.
What is the border crisis? Is it the recent surge of migrants, or is it the treatment of those migrants in detention facilities? The answer to that question—or whether you consider the situation at the border to be a crisis at all—most likely determines what you think the Biden administration should do about it.For conservatives, the answer is clear: Democrats invited the increase in migrants with their permissive, open-borders immigration policies.
The World Health Organization has concluded that theory is “extremely unlikely.
The World Health Organization has concluded that theory is “extremely unlikely.
It’s been more than a year of big grocery-store hauls in preparation for cooking, and more cooking, and … more cooking. During the pandemic, whether you were lovingly tending to your sourdough starter or simply boiling some water for another box of mac and cheese, many of us became intimately familiar with our kitchens.
Evanston, Illinois, has become the first city in the United States to make reparations available to its Black residents for past discrimination and the lingering effects of slavery. The Chicago suburb’s City Council voted 8 to 1 to distribute $400,000 to eligible Black households, with qualifying residents receiving $25,000 for home repairs or down payments on property.
As workers in Bessemer, Alabama, continue to vote on whether to establish the first unionized Amazon warehouse in the United States, we speak with actor and activist Danny Glover, who recently joined organizers on the ground to push for a yes vote. “This election is a statement,” says Glover, one of the most high-profile supporters of the closely watched union drive. Nearly 6,000 workers, most of them Black, have until March 29 to return their ballots.
Georgia’s Republican Governor Brian Kemp has signed a sweeping elections bill that civil rights groups are blasting as the worst voter suppression legislation since the Jim Crow era. The bill grants broad power to state officials to take control of election management from local and county election boards.
Kipling Williams has studied the effects of the silent treatment for more than 36 years, meeting hundreds of victims and perpetrators in the process:A grown woman whose father refused to speak with her for six months at a time as punishment throughout her life. “Her father died during one of those dreaded periods,” Williams told me. “When she visited him at the hospital shortly before his death, he turned away from her and wouldn’t break his silence even to say goodbye.
“First class” is about to become a misnomer.
Few problems are simultaneously so distressing and so addressable.
It’s trying to offer something Amazon and Spotify can’t.
As the president once put it: Come on!
The company came under fire this week after U.S. government scientists accused it of releasing misleading data.
I’m ready to bone. Respectfully.
Structural inequities in the U.S. labor market that have affected Black and Hispanic workers’ ability to advance out of low-paying jobs, as well as discrimination in hiring practices, are also likely having an effect.
Central bank officials now expect the unemployment rate to drop to 4.5 percent by the end of 2021.
Janet Yellen said the greater risk was not strengthening the economy as it recovers from the impact of the pandemic.
He is best known for his work on a Stockton pilot project that provided $500 a month to a small group of low-income residents.
Cherry blossoms in London, lava flowing in Iceland, Nowruz celebrations in Iraq, spring training in Florida, a COVID-19 memorial in Prague, a “rally against hate” in New York, record flooding in Australia, a stuck ship in the Suez Canal, and much more.
In today’s not-quite news, a much-awaited White House press conference once again proved an exercise in media narcissism over substance. In the day’s actual news, however, there was quite a bit going on.
The recent shootings in Atlanta highlighted a surge of anti-Asian violence in the United States throughout the pandemic. Disease stigma and racism have together shaped pandemic response and policy for centuries.And so to better understand this history, on the podcast Social Distance, co-hosts James Hamblin and Maeve Higgins speak with Alexandre White, a sociologist and medical historian at Johns Hopkins University.
Most of us don’t think Bill Gates has uploaded Windows Vista into the COVID-19 vaccine, and we won’t give credence to inanities burped out by semi-ambulatory heaps of knob cheese who listen to demon sperm doctors instead of world-renowned infectious disease experts. Why? Because we’re astute consumers of media.
But Republicans, by and large, are not.
State Rep. Park Cannon, a Black woman, was arrested and accused of obstruction after protesting a bill that makes it harder for Georgians to vote.
Spring is here!
But everything’s still busted!
If you need a breather from seasonal hard partying, here’s some statehouse action to fill your downtime (and possibly give you a reason to drink more).
On Wednesday, the U.S. Senate voted 52-48 to confirm Dr. Rachel Levine, an openly transgender pediatrician, as assistant secretary for health in the Department of Health and Human Services. Levine, who previously served as Pennslyvania’s secretary of health, is the first openly transgender federal official confirmed by the Senate, as reported by NPR. In other words, Levine quite literally made history.
