Having been to many political conventions over the years and watched many more slumped on the sofa bed in my home bunker, and now having watched two mostly remote events courtesy of Republicans and Democrats, I have finally isolated the element that has historically made these occasions so maddening and unpleasant: people.Specifically, I have in mind the people who go to political conventions.
The months before and after a presidential election are particularly fragile for foreign policy. Each of the five presidents I served understood, as did his team, the weight of this time. Politics and legacy were always front of mind. They were all also conscious of the ways they could help pave an easier path for their successors. They all ultimately put country over party. That won’t be the case with Donald Trump.
On January 11, a Chinese team reported online the RNA genome sequence of a novel coronavirus causing a strange new pneumonia-like disease in Wuhan, China. Within 48 hours, scientists at Moderna, a Massachusetts biotechnology company, had the entire genome synthesized. Remarkably, about 60 days later, the company, in collaboration with the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institutes of Health, began a human Phase 1 clinical trial of an RNA vaccine.
President Donald Trump has spent months trying to convince Americans that universal mail-in voting would be a disaster for democracy. It is “dangerous,” he says, potentially “catastrophic”—an “embarrassment” that would “make our country the laughingstock of the world.” Just this week, in his speech kicking off the Republican National Convention, Trump called voting by mail “the greatest scam in the history of politics.
The problems were less severe than they first appeared. But there are other reasons to keep the heat on Louis DeJoy.
Insiders say Bob Unanue endorsed Trump as part of a plan to keep his job.
Slate Money on the USPS, productivity, and Citigroups’s big blunder.
The president instead spoke more broadly about the nation’s testing initiatives.
Federal officials are seeking coronavirus data from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Michigan.
Taking the reins in late February, the vice president sought to bring order to a chaotic response. He also slowed things down.
Drugmakers pitched a counteroffer to the White House aimed at stalling Trump’s plan to link Medicare’s spending on some expensive drugs to much lower prices.
“When you have $60 billion less going to families,” former U.S. Treasury economist Ernie Tedeschi told POLITICO, “that means that there’s going to be something close to that less in spending.
In the debate over Covid-19 relief, Congress is worried about the wrong problem.
For the April-June period, Japan’s exports dropped at a whopping annual rate of 56 percent.
Asked when she would next be meeting with Republicans, Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters on Thursday: “I don’t know. When they come in with $2 trillion.
“It is clear that the UK is in the largest recession on record,” the Office for National Statistics said in a statement.
Almost as shocking as the news that Chadwick Boseman died yesterday at the age of 43 was the revelation that the actor had spent the past four years battling colon cancer. This timeline means that he was diagnosed in 2016—the year that he debuted as King T’Challa in Marvel’s Captain America: Civil War.
Almost as shocking as the news that Chadwick Boseman died yesterday at the age of 43 was the revelation that the actor had spent the last four years battling colon cancer. This timeline means he was diagnosed in 2016—the year that he debuted as King T’Challa in Marvel’s Captain America: Civil War.
Jim Gaffigan is an award-winning, well-regarded, popular comedian. Part of Gaffigan’s appeal is his family-friendly comedy, that he writes and works on with his wife and frequently centers around food and Gaffigan’s obsessions with food.
In a horrific display of the significance of down-ballot elections, the two states that lead the world (not just the nation) in coronavirus cases are both currently under complete Republican control: Arizona and Florida. In both states, the GOP controls both Houses of the state legislature and occupies the governor’s mansion.
Ask Donald Trump about any issue, and he’ll tell you his TV ratings. Trump is far more concerned about the way something plays in the media than he is about the reality on the ground. Which is why, in the latest compound screw-up over the approval of the use of convalescent plasma over the unanimous advice of a panel of medical experts, the only two people to lose their jobs are a pair of PR experts from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
The New Yorkers, interviewed by a federal housing official, didn’t know they’d be featured at the Republican National Convention, The New York Times reported.
Donald Trump needs white working-class voters. Much of the Republican National Convention (RNC) was aimed at white working-class people who may not have voted in recent elections but are seen as gettable for Trump this November—if he can turn them out. But the white working class isn’t monolithic, either, and there are warning signs for Trump among the younger members of the demographic.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declared proudly: “We are the firewall against Nancy Pelosi’s agenda” in a pre-recorded video for Thursday night’s Republican National Convention (RNC). McConnell didn’t want to appear on Donald Trump’s stage, though he had no problem lying like Trump. Particularly with this line: “They want to tell you when you can go to work. When your kids can go to school.
The president tweeted that he’d received “great ratings,” but the actual numbers for the RNC prove the exact opposite.
“I fell short of my own standard,” concedes Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) after telling everyone else to wear a face mask to protect against COVID-19.
Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox.GETTY / THE ATLANTIC1. Events in Kenosha are “unfolding with the inevitable logic of a nightmare,” George Packer writes.
