The Nation March 20/27, 2023

WISCONSIN SUPREME COURT JUSTICE REBECCA DALLET, WHOSE 2018 ELECTION TO what may be the most contentious state court bench in the country was a breakthrough win for the state’s progressives, minced no words in explaining why she showed up to celebrate the February 21 primary election victory of another liberal, Judge Janet Protasiewicz. Speaking to a cheering crowd of abortion rights, labor rights, and voting rights activists, Dallet declared, “I’m here because, instead of dissents, I want to be writing majorities.” That will happen if Protasiewicz beats former state Supreme Court justice Dan Kelly, a controversial conservative who worked as “special counsel” for the Republican Party during the 2020 fight over certifying the presidential election results, and who is supported by the state’s most ardent foes of abortion rights in…

ALL OVER TWITTER AND SOCIAL MEDIA, PEOPLE posted about Marjorie Taylor Greene’s State of the Union outfit, which looked like a Cruella de Vil costume. There were articles about it in news outlets from The Washington Post to The Guardian. People wondered if it was real fur, what she meant by it, and whether she was just, as usual, promoting white…ness? Apparently it was a comment on President Biden and the Chinese balloon, but her obvious goal was to get media attention, and it worked. Is there always a political statement in what a politician or political figure wears? Why did they wear that? What are they trying to say? Why can we not stop talking about it? Is it wrong for us to talk about what someone wears? Why…

THE GEORGE SANTOS SAGA IS A MULTILEVEL MASTERPIECE of lies, singular in its excesses but for the recent entry of Florida Representative Anna Paulina Luna into the GOP Hall of Identity Hoaxer Fame. The two spun themselves into a Fox News fever dream to own the libs: Gay! Latino! Hispanic! A woman! With an added twist: Jewish! It’s fascinating what this strategy reveals about perceptions of Jewish identity and its value within the party of white supremacy (compared with its near-total lack of value on the left). On a practical level, claiming to be Jewish makes sense when you’re trying to appeal to Jewish voters and an affiliated donor base. Like any marginalized group, Jews tend to lean on a kind of survivalist, tribal kinship, the same way the LGBTQ…

DO A QUICK SCAN OF THE MAJOR NEWS SITES RIGHT NOW, and you’ll see headlines like “Starbucks Illegally Refused Union Contract Talks at 21 Cafes, NLRB Says” and “Trader Joe’s Accused of Bad Faith Bargaining by Union,” along with “Amazon Could Stymie Unions for Years by Going to the Courts.” Fifteen months after the first successful National Labor Relations Board election at a Starbucks, in Buffalo, N.Y.—a shot of adrenaline for the lethargic US labor movement—and almost a year after the shocker in Staten Island, where workers defeated Amazon’s union-busting and voted yes on a union at the company’s JFK8 warehouse, neither of these efforts has produced a first collective bargaining agreement. Amazon even refuses to accept that the JFK8 workers voted for a union. On its website, Starbucks Workers…

FRESH OFF A SURPRISINGLY SUCCESSFUL AND CONFRONTATIONAL State of the Union address that doubled as a preview of his reelection campaign, President Joe Biden launched a national tour to tout some signature projects in his landmark infrastructure bill. He presided over ribbon-cutting ceremonies for multimillion-dollar initiatives to restore bridges and highways and to phase in fleets of electric buses. All the while, he chided Republican political leaders for blocking progress on these key arenas of national economic renewal. The only trouble was, Biden’s galvanizing message didn’t seem to leave much of an impression on its intended audience. Correspondents for The Washington Post following him on the Wisconsin leg of his tour reported that many voters there weren’t even aware that the president was in their midst; the events were closed…

38 Number of train cars that derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, 11 of which contained hazardous materials 4.7k Number of people who live in East Palestine 9 Number of toxic chemicals found near the crash site, most notably vinyl chloride, which is used in PVC plastic manufacturing 21m Number of tons of PVC produced globally each year 100k Minimum number of gallons of chemicals that the derailment spilled into the air and water 20 Number of days after the disaster it took for Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to visit the town $0 Amount of relief funds from FEMA that East Palestine has received to date…