Innehållsförteckning för March 30, 2020 från The Nation

A Deeply Rooted Story This is just a short note to say thank you for Zoë Carpenter’s article “The Standing of Trees” [March 2/9], about Richard Powers and his book The Overstory. As an amateur botanist, I was particularly delighted. The article made my day (and week). Plus, I was thrilled to learn the good news that Powers is working on another book. ELIZABETH PULLMANAUSTIN, TEX. The Iowa Debacle Democratic Party leaders and organizers should all read the late Jeffrey Cox’s editorial “Iowa Was Just the Start” in the March 2/9 issue of The Nation. Then they should think about it—and read it again. The debacle of the Iowa caucuses was much more than an embarrassment. It was a snapshot of how dysfunctional the leadership of the current Democratic Party…

Borders don’t just cut across international boundaries; they also increasingly stretch into the interior of nations—into our homes, communities, courts, and everyday interactions. About a year ago, we began a project designed to tell some of the stories of people affected by these borders, in their own words. We’ve heard from people from all over the world who have fled or left their homes and are looking to find or keep their place in America. › Find more stories online at: TheNation.com/MigrantVoices NANCY/CHINA A Better Life? “The move to the US changed my dad a lot. He used to be an architect. And it’s been really hard for him here. He now works in a window factory six days a week, long hours. He started drinking. My mom had to…

On March 5, the state of Alabama executed Nathaniel Woods for the 2004 shooting deaths of three Birmingham police officers and the attempted murder of another. The prosecutors acknowledge that Woods didn’t pull the trigger, and the man who did, Kerry Spencer, insists that Woods was “100 percent innocent” of involvement in the murders. Kimberly Chisholm Simmons, the sister of one of the slain officers, also didn’t believe in Woods’s guilt and issued a statement begging Alabama Governor Kay Ivey to stay his execution. Alabama killed Woods even though two of the 12 jurors in his case voted against recommending the death penalty. In nearly every other state, that would have saved him. (Alabama and Florida are the only two states that don’t require a unanimous jury recommendation for the…

The age gap between federal judges and their clerks is a little bit like the gap between Leonardo DiCaprio and his girlfriends: No matter how old the former gets, the ages of the latter stay the same. Clerking for a federal judge is one of the most prestigious jobs in law. Clerks usually serve only one year. They work closely with their judges—long hours and lots of late nights—conducting legal research, summarizing briefs, and helping them to form and write their opinions. Clerks who do well and get strong recommendations from their judges are able to clerk for a higher court, including the Supreme Court, and are on the fast track to law professor positions, high-paying jobs in private practice, or becoming a federal judge themselves. Because of those opportunities,…

FIFTY YEARS AGO, WHEN THE NIXON ADMINISTRATION AND CONGRESS were working to strengthen the Clean Air Act, they looked to California to see how it could be done. In tackling the Los Angeles area’s awful smog, state officials had already established emissions standards for vehicles, mandating the use of cutting-edge technology like crankcases that recirculate exhaust into the emissions system rather than simply spew it into the air. Later, they introduced catalytic converters and lights that warn drivers when their engines are malfunctioning and thus overpolluting. By 1967, when then-Governor Ronald Reagan signed the act creating the California Air Resources Board (CARB), the Golden State had an infrastructure for environmental regulation second to none. Two years later, California wanted national environmental regulations locked into law as well. But it knew…

Bitter Mother Blue, dead, rush of mothers,conceal your island, little star. Trains, hands, note on a thread,Poland’s dish of salt. They said, The orphanlandsof Americapromise you a father— The ship’s sorrows, broken daughter,the ocean’s dark, dug out. Silent Father Rain, stars, sewage in the spill,hush the river. In your black boat, broken snake,you hid. You sailed for the meritlands of America,dumped your name in the blackwater— In the village they pushed the Rabbito the wall—someoneblessed the hunter. Angry Daughter One says No and the othersays nothing at all— Chicago, I will live in your museumswhere Europe is a picture on the wall. Obedient Child I concealed my island,my little star. In my black boat I hid.I hid in pictures on the wall. I said, I am here in America,your hero,…

ACROSS 1 Invest a bit of money in trade for wetland (5) 4 Prize in the direction of Harding? (4,5) 9 Conditions color political reporter (1,1,5) 10 Turtle missing quiet landscape (7) 11 clue in is It messed sure this up (4,5) 12 Jobs ultimately provide checks in a recession (5) 13 DeLillo pursues commercial extra (3-2) 14 “Be there now!” is the inversion of a small cliché? (8) 17 It cuts vegetable with speed (8) 19 Apple turnover for a guy with a famous razor? (5) 22 Review quote about Allah’s last set of moral principles (5) 24 Corrupt individual protects leader of Thessaloníki with $1,000 (2,3,4) 26 On reflection, bail on nachos, eating dessert (7) 27 Rejoiced in time amid retro, sumptuous surroundings… (7) 28 …near breakup of…

If Bernie Sanders had simply demonstrated that it is possible to wage a competitive campaign for the presidency without relying on wealthy donors, corporate funders, or secretive PAC money, he would have earned his place in history. If all Sanders had to show for his two campaigns for the presidency was the greatest leftward shift in the political discourse since Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s second term—putting not just Medicare for All but also the Green New Deal, free public higher education, fair taxation, cancellation of student debt, housing as a human right, universal free child care, and an unwavering critique of the billionaire class firmly onto the political agenda—we would owe him our gratitude. If his contribution to the debate on foreign policy never went beyond refusing to endorse trade deals…

Pundits, myself included, made the mistake of declaring former vice president Joe Biden politically dead and Senator Bernie Sanders the 2020 Democratic front-runner after only three presidential nominating contests in February. Just a week later, many repeated the mistake in reverse, writing off Sanders after Biden surged back with a landslide win in South Carolina, then took 10 of the 14 states on Super Tuesday three days later. Fact-check: Biden was never dead—and Sanders wasn’t, either, after Super Tuesday. But combined with his losses the next week in Mississippi, Missouri, and especially Michigan, the bad Super Tuesday news uncovered the main lesson that, if not heeded, could ultimately doom his campaign: Black voters matter, and despite running a better, more diverse campaign than he did in 2016, Sanders is overwhelmingly…

With 16,241 “false or misleading claims” during the first three years of his presidency, according to a Washington Post tally, Donald Trump has managed to cover pretty much every known form of lie. His most common category of falsehood, however, is almost certainly “bullshit.” As defined by the Princeton philosophy professor emeritus Harry Frankfurt, these are statements made when the speaker “does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.” Trump’s tendency toward “bullshit” can be entertaining, such as when he pretends to have expertise in toilet flushing and windmills. But the habit is a great deal more problematic when the topic is, say, an ongoing pandemic that has the potential to kill millions of…

With the fear of outsiders intensifying as the coronavirus continues to spread worldwide, including in the United States, it is likely that President Trump’s brutal anti-immigrant policies will only pick up steam. In early March, SWAT teams and snatch squads were dispatched in sanctuary cities to surveil immigrants in their homes and workplaces, locking siege practices into place against those who refuse to open their doors. This move was announced on the heels of the decision to deploy elite Border Patrol Tactical Units—trained to operate against drug cartels in the most violent border areas—in urban neighborhoods to ratchet up the pressure on undocumented families. On March 3 in New York City, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer was photographed through a peephole going door-to-door with an assault rifle in a…

After getting walloped on Super Tuesday, Michael Bloomberg ended his presidential campaign on March 4. But according to more than a dozen members of his campaign staff, the former New York mayor’s presidential dreams actually died two weeks earlier, when Senator Elizabeth Warren eviscerated his record during the February 19 debate in Las Vegas. Not a single Bloomberg staffer I spoke to was surprised by the campaign’s implosion. Speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of professional reprisal and because of the campaign’s restrictive nondisclosure agreements, employees cited that bruising debate as well as a general lack of enthusiasm among the staff as the main factors that doomed his presidential run. “We could hardly get any volunteers…. Ever since the first debate, all of us faced a ton of…

743% Increase in the number of women in US prisons from 1980 to 2016 30% US share of women who are incarcerated worldwide 4% US share of women worldwide 63% Percentage of women in state prisons who were incarcerated for nonviolent offenses 90% Percentage of women in US prisons who experienced traumatic events before their incarceration, according to the Bureau of Prisons 180K Number of women banned from 1996 to 2011 from public support programs like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families because of a felony conviction…

Despite weeks of protest, including France’s longest strike in 50 years, President Emmanuel Macron’s En Marche party pushed through widely hated changes to the French pension system on March 3. The opposition parties, led by the leftist La France Insoumise, filed more than 40,000 amendments to try to stop the measure. En Marche turned to a rarely used rule to enact it through a decree that avoided a parliamentary vote. Opposition leaders across the political spectrum criticized the overhaul of a generous, if complex, pension system, which guaranteed benefits through 42 plans for public and private sector employees. Under the new system, everyone’s pension will be calculated on the basis of points. Critics say it will lead to greater poverty among the elderly as well as a later retirement age.…

LAST FALL, NETFLIX PREMIERED A THREE-PART DOCUMENtary that promises viewers a rare look at the inner life of one of history’s most controversial businessmen. Over three hours, Inside Bill’s Brain shows us a rare emotional side to Bill Gates as he processes the loss of his mother and the death of his estranged best friend and Microsoft cofounder, Paul Allen. Mostly, though, the film reinforces the image many of us already had of the ambitious technologist, insatiable brainiac, and heroic philanthropist. Inside Bill’s Brain falls into a common trap: attempting to understand the world’s second-richest human by interviewing people in his sphere of financial influence. In the first episode, director Davis Guggenheim underlines Gates’s expansive intellect by interviewing Bernie Noe, described as a friend of Gates. “That’s a gift, to…

My 8-yr-old daughter is teaching mehow to live with myselfafter 34yrs in this body I can finally split myself in two & marvel that now I passthe Bechdel test.What I’ve let men scavenge— my collarbones, femurs, the fleshy padsof my inner thighs, bitemarksbutterflying from the clotted cream that cornmeal death has madeof my skin—has givenway to blood poisoning. I haven’t done much but get dumpedby one & tell the other to stop rapingme when I’m dreamcumming & he finally after 13yrs together & a yearof divorceunderstands a sleeping body moaning is not consent. & while he’s had to learntruths he should’ve learned as a boyI too chart a map to my unlearning. I rewatch the filmstrips of my girlhoodwith my girl & she covers her face at kissy scenes& very…