Updated 11:56 a.m. on January 3, 2020.Denver Riggleman had a rough December. For one thing, he’s about to lose his job: Over the summer, members of the Virginia GOP voted to kick the freshman Republican out of Congress, largely because he publicly officiated a same-sex wedding. Riggleman’s cousin died of COVID-19 the week before Christmas, and his grandmother had to be hospitalized with the virus.
In the United States, you are free to speak, but you are not free of responsibility for what you say. If your speech is defamatory, you can be sued. If you are a publisher, you can be sued for the speech you pass along. But online services such as Facebook and Twitter can pass along almost anything, with almost no legal accountability, thanks to a law known as Section 230.
A demonstration in Berea, Kentucky. (Meg Wilson)As a novelist, I often travel the country to talk about my books. During those events, almost invariably someone will ask me why my home state of Kentucky is so conservative. Many of these people ask why we’ve kept Mitch McConnell in office for almost 36 years. They take their anger at him out on me.
Cities splintered in the pandemic, but only some Americans got to enjoy a hyperlocal utopia.
If he’s willing to do a coup, he’s probably willing to do this.
Boosted unemployment insurance? Check. A continued eviction moratorium? Check. Checks? Check. But there’s still much more that we need.
The 20 millionth case comes less than two months after the country tallied its 10 millionth.
For two decades, victims of U.S. nuclear bomb tests fought to obtain the Medicaid eligibility that was promised them. In the waning days of 2020, they won.
The assessment comes as the Trump administration appears poised to miss its year-end target to vaccinate 20 million Americans.
Police said they were notified of the alleged tampering Wednesday night.
Political interference and tensions with scientists preceded — and set the stage for — the disaster of 2020.
QAnon—the conspiracy theory that elite Democrats, government officials, and celebrities are part of a cannibalistic, child-sex-trafficking cult, and Donald Trump is the hero destined to stop them—has allegedly inspired kidnappings, car chases, and a murder. It has also made 28-year-old Patrick Cage a lot of money.In 2018, Cage, a Californian who works in international environmental policy, discovered a gambling platform called PredictIt.
A shining city on a hill. Ronald Reagan loved the phrase. He used it over and over again, perhaps most notably in his 1989 presidential farewell address.
I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it.
Editor’s Note: The Atlantic is making vital coverage of the coronavirus available to all readers. Find the collection here. On weekends, some of the people in labs, health departments, hospitals, and medical examiner’s offices who do the work of translating individual illnesses and deaths into data points get to go home.
Parenting advice on biracial parenting, changing name spellings, and cutting off family.
A government shutdown was averted after the president approved the Covid relief package and annual spending bill.
The president has thrown the fate of the bill into jeopardy.
Congress curbed the central bank’s emergency lending despite the economy’s continuing struggles.
Biden added that the appointees have “broad viewpoints on how to build a stronger and more inclusive middle class.
Officials said they expect the U.S. economy to shrink by 2.4 percent this year, a brighter forecast than they offered just three months ago.
We continue our conversation with medical anthropologist Dr. Paul Farmer, whose new book, “Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds,” tells the story of his efforts to fight Ebola in 2014 and how the history of slavery, colonialism and violence in West Africa exacerbated the outbreak. “Care for Ebola is not rocket science,” says Dr. Farmer, who notes that doctors know how to treat sick patients.
As the United States sets records for COVID-19 deaths and hospitalizations, we speak with one of the world’s leading experts on infectious diseases, Dr. Paul Farmer, who says the devastating death toll in the U.S. reflects decades of underinvestment in public health and centuries of social inequality. “All the social pathologies of our nation come to the fore during epidemics,” says Dr.
While the United States, Britain and other wealthy countries race to vaccinate their populations against the coronavirus, a new report finds that as much as 90% of the population in dozens of poorer countries could be forced to wait until at least 2022 because wealthy countries are hoarding so much of the vaccine supply. A growing movement is calling for the development of a people’s vaccine and the suspension of intellectual property rights to expand access. We speak with Dr.
As President-elect Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris prepare to take power, we continue to look at the growing debate over the direction of the Democratic Party. House Majority Whip James Clyburn recently criticized calls to “defund the police” and argued the phrase hurt Democratic congressional candidates.
Scholars Cornel West and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor respond to the global uprising against racism and police violence following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. “We’re seeing the convergence of a class rebellion with racism and racial terrorism at the center of it,” said Princeton professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. “And in many ways, we are in uncharted territory in the United States.
