Innehållsförteckning för February 17, 2020 från The Nation

Failing College Re “The Loser President” by John Nichols [February 3]: Opponents of the Electoral College should take on the common myth that the institution was set up to protect states with small populations from the tyranny of bigger ones. I do not find any such assertion in documents from the nation’s founders. What I do find is a passage by Alexander Hamilton (in The Federalist Papers, No. 68) demonstrating that the Electoral College was instituted precisely to fix the problems we encountered in 2016. The founders anticipated that the public might be persuaded to choose a corrupt candidate and, in particular, that the electoral process could be captured by a foreign power. For the Electoral College to face the exact situation it was designed to address and then blow…

In December an independent investigation determined that Matt Shea committed domestic terrorism and produced a pamphlet that advocated for a Christian theocracy and the “killing of all males who do not agree.” Forty-three days later, he took his seat as an elected representative on the floor of the Washington State Legislature. The actual seat was different from his old one. The GOP leadership moved Shea to the back of the chamber, barred him from the party’s caucus and committees, and removed his name and contact information from the House Republicans’ website. But on January 13, there he was in a suit and red tie, ready to vote. The legislator, who has represented the Spokane area in eastern Washington since 2009, has refused to resign and is even discussing his 2020…

As of this writing, Donald Trump has successfully appointed more than 180 judges to the federal bench. That’s a record number, given the amount of time he has been in office. These judges will wield power for the rest of their natural lives, meaning the damage Trump does during his relatively short time bloviating from the Oval Office will achieve an air of permanence through his judges’ actions over the next generation. Most of the damage Trump judges do will be big and obvious. No serious climate change legislation will survive them; all manner of voter suppression will be allowed by them. The rights of women, members of the LGBTQ community, and other minorities will be curtailed by courts stacked with Trump’s overwhelmingly white, male, Christian jurists. Unless you look,…

Santa Clara County in California may become the first place in the United States to approve a guaranteed basic income for young adults transitioning out of foster care. The proposed program would give $1,000 per month for up to two years to adults ages 18 to 21 who are in extended foster care and those 21 to 24 who age out of the foster care system. Every year, approximately 150 people emancipate out of foster care in the county, according to its social services agency. Young adults who leave the foster care system are at higher risk of homelessness and job insecurity. Nationally, fewer than 50 percent of 23- and 24-year-olds who recently left foster care are employed, and roughly 30 percent have experienced homelessness, according to a University of…

HIS NAME WAS WILLIAM DORSEY SWANN, BUT TO HIS friends he was known as “the Queen.” Both of those names had been forgotten for nearly a century before I rediscovered them while researching at Columbia University. Born in Maryland around 1858, Swann endured slavery, the Civil War, racism, police surveillance, torture behind bars, and many other injustices. But beginning in the 1880s, he not only became the first American activist to lead a queer resistance group; he also became, in the same decade, the first known person to dub himself a “queen of drag”—or, more familiarly, a drag queen. In 1896, after being convicted and sentenced to 10 months in jail on the false charge of “keeping a disorderly house”—a euphemism for running a brothel—Swann demanded (and was denied) a…

It’s too cold for the first nightof a new season. All gone,the neighbors’ cars. Are you alone?Where are they? Perhaps the flight, the one carrying your daughter and wife,is delayed? But didn’t they go by bus?Is everything portentous?Is everything your life? You’re waiting, obviously, foranything to change: maybe a doorwill open, a way through the wall;maybe a folded note, a surprise call will pry your heart’s elastic pocket.Or not. Quick—try to lock it.…

Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or go to TheNation.com/StartMakingSense to listen today. STACEY ABRAMS MARGARET ATWOOD CHARLES M. BLOW SHERROD BROWN NOAM CHOMSKY GAIL COLLINS MIKE DAVIS ELIZABETH DREW BARBARA EHRENREICH DANIEL ELLSBERG FRANCES FITZGERALD ERIC FONER THOMAS FRANK HENRY LOUIS GATES JR. MICHELLE GOLDBERG AMY GOODMAN CHRIS HAYES MARGO JEFFERSON DAVID CAY JOHNSTON NAOMI KLEIN RACHEL KUSHNER VIET THANH NGUYEN NORMAN LEAR GREIL MARCUS JANE MAYER BILL MCKIBBEN WALTER MOSLEY JOHN NICHOLS LAWRENCE O’DONNELL LAURA POITRAS KATHA POLLITT ROBERT REICH JOY REID FRANK RICH ARUNDHATI ROY BERNIE SANDERS ANNA DEAVERE SMITH EDWARD SNOWDEN REBECCA SOLNIT MARGARET TALBOT CALVIN TRILLIN KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL YANIS VAROUFAKIS JOAN WALSH AMY WILENTZ GARY YOUNGE…

70K Children born into statelessness each year 12M Potentially stateless people in the world, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees 218K US residents who are “potentially stateless or potentially at risk of statelessness,” according to a new estimate from the Center for Migration Studies 45% Percentage of potentially stateless people or those potentially at risk of statelessness who have come to the US in the last five years—many from Nepal, Bhutan, Thailand, and Myanmar $17.6K Average annual income of a potentially stateless person in the United States…

A coronavirus is raging in parts of China, and the efforts to stop it from spreading globally are increasingly frenzied—cities on lockdown, public gatherings canceled, health checks at airports. You’ve probably read about the outbreak. But you may not know how poorly prepared the United States is to counter a pandemic, as a result of bipartisan neglect of our public health infrastructure. In 2012 the Obama administration moved billions of dollars from the Prevention and Public Health Fund to make up for cuts to Medicare’s physician payments. In 2018, Congress cut the fund by an additional $1 billion, and the Trump administration then diverted millions more from the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In response, the CDC cut its global epidemic prevention efforts…

JASON ROCHESTER MET CECILIA GONZALEZ IN 2004, ON HER FIRST DAY OF WORK AT A UPS DEPOT IN THE ATLANTA SUBURB OF Roswell. He fell for her right away. “I liked her from Day 1—I thought she was beautiful,” he recalls. He wanted to date, but she wanted to remain friends. Part of the reason was that she had a secret: She was undocumented. She crossed the border from her native Mexico when she was 19 and had lived in the half-shadows for almost a decade. When a friend shared her secret with Rochester, he decided he liked her so much, it didn’t matter. They got married in 2007. Six years later, in 2013, they had a son named Ashton. When Donald Trump railed against immigrant rapists, murderers, and gang…

There aren’t many albums that you can play anywhere and even fewer that manage to sound appropriate whatever time they happen to be played. What’s rarer still: an artist managing to sound right under both of those limiting conditions. The Haitian Canadian producer Louis Kevin Celestin—better known by his stage name, Kaytranada—has managed this feat twice, first on his studio debut, 99.9% (2016), and then on his recently released (and second) full-length, Bubba. Kaytranada’s sound, percussive as it is, feels chameleonic, perhaps because of its virtuosity; he has both an astonishing range and exceptional control, which extends even to his choice of guests. Bubba, which was released last December, is a little like the full flowering of a major talent. It launched without much fanfare, and yet since its release,…

The corporate media have been eagerly predicting an outbreak of hostilities between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren for months. Last summer, when The New York Times argued that the two candidates were “jockeying for the same cohort of left-leaning voters and donors,” both were polling well behind Joe Biden. Biden remains in the lead, but since then, the two progressive champions have so consistently owned the ideas primary that proposals once dismissed as fringe notions—from Medicare for All to a wealth tax to student debt relief—have been forced onto the 2020 agenda. Even Biden, a deficit hawk who spent much of the 1980s and ’90s arguing for “entitlement reform,” now runs away from his own record supporting cuts to Social Security. So when, in mid-January, the truce between the two…

Dear Liza, My mom and her friends shared a cleaner (let’s call her Maria) for about 30 years. When Maria came into their lives, she owed money to Social Security, so she asked to be paid off the books. Now she’s ready to retire and has no savings, pension, or Social Security benefits. I told my mom and her friends that they should give Maria money, enough for her to contribute to the rent and bills for the apartment she shares with her daughters. They’ve agreed to each contribute $25 to $50 a week. I wish it were more, but all of them are widowed, in their mid-80s, and worried about money. Then a second problem arose: My mom’s friends say Maria should be given the option of receiving a…

Climate change is already forcing people to flee their communities. Some relocate within their countries, becoming displaced as they seek drier, higher, cooler, safer ground. The unluckiest climate migrants have no choice but to go abroad, and the worst-off among them have no job or relatives to help them do so legally. That was the predicament Ioane Teitiota faced when the rising Pacific Ocean began to subsume his home on the island nation of Kiribati. So in 2007 he moved to New Zealand with his wife, where they stayed for five years without a visa and had three children, who are not eligible for Kiwi citizenship. You could call what the couple did breaking the law—but with storm surges demolishing housing and ruining crops in Kiribati, you could also call…

ON A MONDAY AFTERNOON LAST SUMMER, RICHARD CABELLO WAS HUNCHED OVER HIS DESK, RIFFLING THROUGH A STACK OF FILES. Each folder was marked with a name, and each of those names belonged to someone whose life he was about to upend—Ryan A., Janelle P., Melissa S. But at the moment, only one file mattered to Cabello, the one labeled “José Torres.” There was nothing remarkable about the folder he’d been looking for. Like the other files in the office, it would never grow much thicker than a pamphlet. A few sheets of paper are all that Cabello needs to do his job, which is summed up by a sign he placed in front of his office that reads, “Tenant eviction done here.” Cabello’s company, Quick Evic, is on Atlantic Avenue…

ACROSS 6 Cure something you’d want to beat with a club (7) 7 Alloy could be auctioned off, only more so? (6) 9 Bush and Fleischer introducing explosive statement about military conflict (3,2,4) 10 Software engineer’s fish, only more so? (5) 11 Officer telephoned, only more so? (6) 13 Engineer barges in to obtain positional knowledge (8) 15 Application of occasionally furrowed features, only more so? (7) 17 A rector abused God (7) 18 Luggage overturned in Euripides (Act I, usually) (8) 19 Exhausts our group, beginning to eat (have dinner) (4,2) 22 Root for a famous Argentinean, only more so? (5) 23 Tech company doesn’t conclude, “I’m unable to get a job seeker” (9) 26 Captain of part of a sailboat, only more so? (6) 27 College figure backed…