Innehållsförteckning för May 20, 2019 från The Nation

Wanted: A Peace Candidate I’m glad to see John Nichols bringing up our costly wars with a Democratic presidential candidate [“Beto on the Costs of War,” April 29]. Imagine if we cut our annual military budget by $200 billion, closed our hundreds of foreign military bases, and used that money to make a down payment on rebuilding our country’s failing infrastructure. I hope Nichols is able to get all of the candidates on record. EDGAR GEHLERT HYDE PARK, N.Y. They’ve Had Their Turn I agree with Kai Wright’s column “Apologies Owed” [April 22], but I’d go further. Way further. Our last 45 presidents have been men. Women and girls—half the country!—have never seen anyone in the White House who’s like us in this most basic way. Male candidates: Close your…

Most Americans are women, as are an even larger majority of American voters. But somehow we’re still a “special interest.” At otherwise outstanding CNN town halls in late April, only the female 2020 presidential candidates were asked about so-called women’s issues—even though the dozen-plus male candidates are vying for a voting population that, especially in the Democratic Party, is mostly women and disproportionately women of color. What is going on? Women, of course, are divided by race, age, class and much more. Our power is fractured; the powers that be often work to keep it that way. Often, even promising feminist initiatives address those fractures belatedly, if at all—and then wonder why their membership rosters remain so…white. That’s how the new women’s political action group Supermajority promises to be different—and…

Last November, a public referendum restored the right to vote to as many as 1.5 million Floridians with criminal records. It was a historic victory for voting rights: Before the passage of Amendment 4, nearly 20 percent of Florida’s black adults had been disenfranchised. The state’s Republican lawmakers, however, are working to roll back that win. On April 24, the Florida House of Representatives passed a bill along party lines that would require felons who have finished their sentences to pay all court fees and fines and make restitution payments before they’re allowed to vote. According to The Miami Herald, Florida doesn’t even track such payments, and creating a system to do so could cost millions of dollars. NBC News reported that the state has 115 types of fees, fines,…

Since Roe v. Wade granted American women the legal right to abortion in 1973, the anti-choice movement has been divided over how to roll it back. Incrementalists favor eroding Roe’s protections by making abortions ever more difficult to provide and obtain; a more brazen faction supports a direct attack on the decision itself. Overturning Roe would require at least five justices, so the incrementalists have prevailed, passing hundreds of restrictions on the state and federal levels, including mandatory ultrasounds, biased counseling, restrictions on insurance coverage for the procedure, and for minors, laws requiring parental consent. Since 2010, when Republicans gained control of 11 statehouses, the number of restrictions has spiked, and this year, anti-choice legislators have quickened the pace; 250 restrictions have been introduced in 41 states in 2019 alone.…

With the release of the redacted report from special counsel Robert Mueller, the House Judiciary Committee is wrestling with questions about how to address evidence that President Donald Trump has engaged in dramatic abuses of power—abuses that could call for his impeachment. Some of the issues are similar to those that led the committee to approve articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon in 1974. Others are unique to Trump. To get a sense of how the committee might address what we already know about Trump’s actions, and what upcoming hearings may reveal, I spoke with committee member Jamie Raskin. Before his 2016 election as a Democratic representative from Maryland, Raskin was a professor at American University’s Washington College of Law and one of the nation’s most distinguished commentators on constitutional…

America is more worried than the average nation, according to a Gallup survey released in April. The polling firm’s annual Global Emotions Report attempts to chart people’s emotional lives to help gauge a society’s wellbeing. And the results were, well, worrying. Despite a year of relative stability and economic growth, 45 percent of Americans surveyed said they worried “a lot” on a given day, and 55 percent reported feeling chronic stress. That’s 6 and 20 percentage points higher than the global average, respectively. The growing discontent can’t be fully attributed to a generational divide: Gen Z kids and millennials are about as worried and stressed as Gen X; baby boomers are a bit more relaxed. Gallup’s report has come out every year since 2006, and this is the most dispiriting…

6 Number of weeks after which an abortion is now illegal in five states—part of a recent wave of so-called heartbeat bills 4–7 Number of weeks it takes most women to realize they’re pregnant 50% Percentage of women in Wyoming who live more than 160 miles from the nearest abortion clinic 1 Number of abortion clinics that Missouri and Mississippi each have 29 Number of states that restrict insurance companies from covering abortion services 0 Number of states that provide “total access” to comprehensive reproductive health care, according to NARAL’s metrics…

Dear Liza, My husband and I moved into a new rental home on the outskirts of Philadelphia about eight months ago. Everything is great, except for one issue on our street. Every weekday morning before 6, one of my neighbors gets picked up by a driver who honks to announce their arrival: BEEP-BEEP-BEEEEEP! I am trying not to “Becky” the situation by overreacting, as white people so often do. (I am white, and almost all of my neighbors are black.) I’ve tried ignoring it. We even sleep with a sound machine now, which helps drown out the quieter honks. But I am still woken up two to three times a week. Is there an appropriate way to talk to my neighbor about this? —Sleepless in the Suburbs Dear Sleepless, You’re…

I almost didn’t attend the reunion celebrating the 50th anniversary of the student strike at Harvard University in 1969. I was put off by the organizers’ listserv, with its endless political exhortations and relating of strike minutiae. How is it that so many people remember so much about events that took place half a century ago? Is there such a thing as memory envy? In the end, I went because it was probably my last chance to see many people with whom I shared a formative political event: getting arrested for participating in the takeover of University Hall to protest Harvard’s role in promoting the war in Vietnam. Spoiler: We didn’t stop the war. The Vietnamese themselves did that—though the anti-war movement may have weakened President Richard Nixon’s resolve. We…

ACROSS 1 and 4A The French woman is skeptical about the French attorney’s pairs, four of which are displayed in this diagram (though one member of each pair is not clued) (5,8) 4 See 1A 9 Unimpressive individual conceals disparity in amplifier (9) 10 Not clued (5) 11 Invalid removing contents of nutshell (4) 12 Compelling return of electronic credit card by American agent (10) 13 Not clued (6) 15 Hang around with worker, swapping sources of trouble and litigation (6) 16 Help is not great when incomplete (3) 18 Look inside slit for shoe (6) 20 Assumption in here: mistreated cow (6) 23 Putting off announcement about piano functioning (10) 24 Old South American hiding in mountain cabin (4) 26 Halt the start of elections, in case… (5) 27 …one survey…