Innehållsförteckning för March 16/23, 2020 från The Nation

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…

The logic behind work requirements for public benefit programs is simple on its face. In an economy with a 3.6 percent unemployment rate and in which there is, technically, a job opening for every unemployed person, anyone who is physically capable of getting and keeping a job could reasonably be expected to do so. Perhaps they simply need a nudge—the threat of losing their health care, cash assistance, or food stamps—to help them do it. But that’s a facade. And President Trump just blew it right off with his latest budget. He admitted the truth: The real intent of work requirements is to cut people off from benefits in order to dramatically shrink social programs. He has been zealously pursuing work requirements since he came into office. In 2018 his…

It could have been a pangolin. Or a bat. One now-debunked theory that made the rounds suggested it was a snake. The race is on to finger the animal source of the coronavirus that is on the verge of setting off a pandemic. The virus’s animal origin is a critical mystery to solve. But speculation about which wild creature originally harbored the virus obscures a more fundamental factor in our growing vulnerability to pandemics: the accelerating pace of habitat loss. Since 1940, hundreds of microbial pathogens have emerged either for the first time or in territory where they had never been detected before. They include HIV, Ebola, Zika, and a bevy of novel coronaviruses. Sixty percent of them originate in the bodies of animals. Some come from pets and livestock.…

A Message to Democrats Re Tana Ganeva’s “The Trump Voter Conundrum” [February 17]: I am so weary of the notion that Donald Trump’s voters must be wooed. The white nationalists and those who seek to elect a president who will appoint justices to overturn Roe v. Wade (when in reality those justices are far more concerned with allowing major corporations to pollute and avoid taxes) are not persuadable! We must deliver a message that speaks to everyone who is worried about health care, education, and jobs—and perhaps to those who have become disenchanted with Trump, like the people in the story. They are listening. But Democrats must not worry about wooing; they just have to deliver the right message. If you want to know how to do that, listen to…

49% Percentage of tech experts who say technology will weaken democracy over the next decade, according to a Pew Research survey 20% Percentage by which the preferences of undecided voters can be swayed by Google search result manipulation 8.7M Number of engagements the top 20 fake news stories received on Facebook in the months before Election Day 2016, compared with 7.3 million for the top 20 hard news stories 126M Number of Facebook users exposed to posts by Russian agents before and after the 2016 elections 70 Number of accounts Twitter removed the day before the Nevada caucuses for being pro–Mike Bloomberg spammers…

Until March 25, 2019, Dr. Willie Parker was a highly respected and much-loved abortion provider in Alabama, the celebrated author of a best-selling book, Life’s Work, in which he defended abortion from a Christian perspective, and a frequent, charismatic speaker and honoree at pro-choice conferences and events. An imposing middle-aged black man who grew up poor in Alabama, he was the movement’s rock star. That all changed overnight, when Candice Russell, a 35-year-old volunteer in Dallas, posted an article on Medium, “To All the Women Whose Names I Don’t Know, About the Pain We Share, the Secrets We Keep, and the Silence That Shouldn’t Have Been Asked For.” Although her account was some-what hard to follow, she basically accused him of rape—having sex with her when she was far too…

BOSTON’S ROXBURY NEIGHBORHOOD IS A HISTORICALLY BLACK PART OF THE CITY, STRADDLING A BLIGHTED PAST and a gentrifying future. It is home to some of Massachusetts’s oldest colonial sites and a large Somali community; it also has one of Boston’s highest crime rates. Police officers frequent its streets, squares, and transit hubs, enforcing a citywide stop-and-frisk program. Roxbury is also the site of a federally funded initiative to stop potential terrorists. The Boston Police Department participated in what the plan’s proponents described as trust-building workshops with Somali youths under an almost $500,000 counterextremism project that ended last fall. Six months after Donald Trump was sworn in as president, the Department of Homeland Security awarded $10 million to 25 law enforcement, public safety, and civil society groups across the country for…

Either an intruder’s in the houseor I’m shopping online.An intruder or stargazer liliesin a vase. A noise my body makes.My body in a different room.Yesterday we played I wasthe prisoner. I ate the toy bread.I tried to remember a song.A song about a train we keepmissing. A noise the windowsmake. Either burnt siennaor terra cotta curtains. EitherI forgot my password orthe name of the street I grew up on.I grew up thinking my clotheswere shrinking. I sangthis train is bound for glory.I stole cigarettes from my fatherwhile he slept. I prayedfor something terrible to happen.What was the name of the hurricanethat shattered our windows?Either it just happened orwe deserved it. Never enough timeto evacuate. Ready to check out?The sun’s still there behindthe clouds. My body stillbound for glory. That grackleflying…

Bernie Sanders’s overwhelming victory in the Nevada caucuses is sending shock waves through the American political system. At press time, though he still faced a test in South Carolina, he was clearly the front-runner to be the Democratic presidential nominee, with the clearest path to victory. The panic of the Democratic political elite was most visible on MSNBC, where many of the news anchors and guests looked as if they were auditioning for a remake of David Cronenberg’s Scanners, the classic 1980s horror flick whose most famous scene involves a spectacularly exploding head. The fast-talking Chris Matthews was particularly distraught, comparing Sanders’s win to the Nazi conquest of France. Before Nevada, Matthews invoked the specter of mass executions of political opponents in Central Park. James Carville echoed this language and…

Dear Liza, We’ve been hearing a lot about excessive air-conditioning, but what about excessive heating? My office is in a large building in the middle of New York City, and since the heat has been turned on, temperatures in our unit have routinely exceeded 78 degrees Fahrenheit. My colleagues and I have trouble focusing when it’s stuffy, muggy, and hot at work, but those in management don’t seem to care; they just tell us to dress in layers. To make matters worse, they have locked the thermostat so we can’t turn on the air or fans, and they reprimand us for opening windows. Do we have any legal or other recourse? How can we reason with not just our bosses but also the people who run the building? —Roasting in…

A federal judge ruled on February 19 that conditions at the detention facilities run by US Customs and Border Protection in Tucson failed to meet the “basic human needs” of the migrants held there. A class action lawsuit filed against the facilities in 2015 revealed that CBP deprived the migrants of clean clothes and nutritious food, forced them to sleep on the floor next to toilets, and did not provide health screenings by medical professionals. Instead of access to showers, agents gave the migrants—who had traveled through the desert for days—nothing but wet wipes. Because of over-crowding, the people detained there, including women holding children, were forced to climb over benches to reach toilets and drinking water, as was seen in a surveillance video shown during the trial. The court…

The boats in the international port prove that from the edgeof The Great Lake, though fresh, though still, no scrapof earth can’t be reached. For his sake, V has stepped ontoa ship. She has peppered that which she would rather salt.V does not want to feel left at the edge of The Lake, rocksand alewives circling her feet. She can see the arc where itgoes to disappear, and so God made the world round.She can see evaporation, the heavens reclaiming the rain,the last breath of every last breath she has known. V has neverfelt left before, but what is a shore but a place to be left, bereft?World without end, thinks V, holding a mirror to the mouth.…