Current Events
December, 2019
Despite Warnings, Trump Moves to Expand Migrant Family Detention
The New York Times
December 9, 2019Tiny prison uniforms were replaced with T-shirts. Healthcare and schooling improved. Experts say there is still no safe way to incarcerate families.
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What Does This Country Demand of Black Women in Politics?
The New York Times
December 8, 2019After Kamala Harris’s departure from the presidential race, the people who saw their own paths reflected in hers are thinking about what comes next.
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West Point Strips Racist Motto From Its Football Team Flag
The New York Times
December 8, 2019The military academy used a flag with a skull and crossbones and “G.F.B.D.”, which stands for “God Forgives, Brothers Don’t.” The slogan has been associated with white supremacists.
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Democrats Ready Impeachment Report as Republicans Argue Trump Did Nothing Wrong
The New York Times
December 2, 2019In a report intended to counter Democrats’ impeachment case against President Trump, Republicans argued his efforts to get Ukraine to investigate his rivals had nothing to do with politics.
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Beacon High School Is Half White. That’s Why Students Walked Out
The New York Times
December 2, 2019More than 300 students at the selective public high school, one of New York City’s most prestigious, protested its admissions policies.
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Opinion: Abolish Immigration Prisons
The New York Times
December 2, 2019We should shut down these institutions, end the suffering they cause and redirect the money. Imprisoning migrants this way is lucrative for prison corporations and politicians, and it’s common. But the United States hasn’t always embraced the idea.
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Watch 4 Decades of Inequality Drive American Cities Apart
The New York Times
December 2, 2019The biggest metropolitan areas are now the most unequal. Economic inequality has been rising everywhere in the United States. But it has been rising much more in the booming places that promise hefty incomes to engineers, lawyers and innovators. And those places today are also the largest metros in the country
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November, 2019
Obama Moves Off Political Sidelines, Earlier Than He Expected
The New York Times
November 20, 2019Barack Obama had a plan of sorts for the 2020 presidential primaries, according to several allies and advisers: Stay out of the way, offer advice when asked, promote voting rights, finish a new memoir — then jump back into politics after Democrats picked their nominee. Things haven’t worked out like that.
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How Democratic Candidates win the African American Vote
The New Yorker
November 20, 2019“I think it’s a good thing that the black vote is not concentrated around one particular candidate,” Fredrick Harris, a professor of political science at Columbia University who has written extensively about African-American politics, said of the 2020 race.
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The Electoral College’s Racist Origins
The Atlantic
November 17, 2019More than two centuries after it was designed to empower southern white voters, the system continues to do just that.
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What you need to know about the Trump impeachment hearings
ABC News
November 13, 2019As public hearings start this week in the House impeachment inquiry, here’s everything you need to know about allegations against President Donald Trump, his defense, and why the phrase “quid pro quo” is dominating the debate.
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Opinion: Loss, trauma, and injustice: On being Black and dying from a broken heart
Vox
November 12, 2019Marquis Jefferson is the latest to die of a broken heart. The father of Atatiana Jefferson is one of too many lost to grief, trauma, and injustice.
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How Voters Turned Virginia From Deep Red to Solid Blue
New York Times
November 9, 2019A new kind of suburbanization is sweeping through politics, from Richmond to Atlanta, Houston, Denver and elsewhere, and Democrats are starting to breach Republicans’ firewalls in elections.
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October, 2019
Democrats Move Toward Bringing Impeachment Inquiry Public
New York Times
October 28, 2019House Democrats, who have resisted a floor vote on the impeachment inquiry for weeks, are planning to hold one Thursday to lay out rules for the investigation.
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How Climate Change Could Shift California’s Santa Ana Winds, Fueling Fires
New York Times
October 28, 2019For centuries, humans have experienced the fierce, hot and dry winds that are fanning California’s recent spate of wildfires. Known as Santa Anas in the southern part of the state and Diablos in the north, they arrive regularly in the fall.
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Betsy DeVos Is Held in Contempt Over Judge’s Order on Loan Collection
New York Times
October 24, 2019A federal judge said the education secretary had violated an order to stop collecting on loans owed by students from a now-defunct for-profit chain of colleges.
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How to Succeed When You’re Marginalized or Discriminated Against at Work
New York Times
October 6, 2019“Hacking” your work only works if you’re a person who would be congratulated for your ingenuity. If you’re not, here’s what to try instead.
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Despite Vow to End ‘Endless Wars,’ Here’s Where About 200,000 Troops Remain
New York Times
October 21, 2019Under President Trump, there are now more troops in the Middle East than when he took office, and he has continued the mission for tens of thousands of others far from the wars of 9/11.
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Affordable housing among striking Chicago teachers’ demands
Associated Press News
October 21, 2019Striking Chicago teachers who are seeking smaller class sizes and higher pay also are demanding that the nation’s third-largest city do more to lower housing costs and put more resources into helping homeless students.
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Democrats Slow Impeachment Timeline to Sharpen Their Public Case
New York Times
October 21, 2019House Democrats, once eyeing an impeachment vote by Thanksgiving, now conceded they may have to go slower as they plan public hearings to drive home their case.
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Expanding Impeachment Inquiry, House Subpoenas Budget Office and Pentagon
New York Times
October 7, 2019Democrats are looking for information that could reveal whether President Trump’s decision to withhold security aid from Ukraine was tied to his bid to pressure its government to investigate rivals.
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Impeachment probe reaches into White House with new subpoena
Associated Press News
October 4, 2019For the first time, the impeachment inquiry reached directly into the White House on Friday as Democrats subpoenaed officials about contacts with Ukraine and President Donald Trump signaled his administration would not cooperate.
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Gun control risks losing momentum as impeachment fever rises
Associated Press News
October 2, 2019After mass shootings in Ohio and Texas this summer, gun control burst back on the scene as a major political issue for Democrats. Now it risks taking a back seat as impeachment fever overtakes Washington.
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September, 2019
McConnell says Congress in ‘holding pattern’ on gun control
Associated Press News
September 18, 2019Six weeks after a pair of mass shootings killed more than 30 people, Congress remains “in a holding pattern” on gun control as lawmakers await proposals from the White House, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said.
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The 1619 Project
New York Times Magazine
August, 2019The 1619 Project, inaugurated with a special issue of The New York Times Magazine, challenges us to reframe U.S. history by marking the year when the first enslaved Africans arrived on Virginia soil as our nation's foundational date.
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Opinion: My husband was a man of civility. Americans can still learn from him.
The Washington Post
August 22, 2019... Sometimes all government can manage is very modest progress on the toughest problems, muddling through rather than enacting sweeping change. But muddling through is better than nothing, which is what partisan gridlock produces.
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Group of Top CEOs Says Maximizing Shareholder Profits No Longer Can be the Primary Goal of Corporations
The Washington Post
Aug. 19, 2019By Jena McGregorA group representing the nation’s most powerful chief executives on Monday abandoned the idea that companies must maximize profits for shareholders above all else, a long-held belief that advocates said boosted the returns of capitalism but detractors blamed for rising inequality and other social ills.
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Who’s to Blame When Algorithms Discriminate?
The New York Times
Aug. 20, 2019By Emily BadgerA proposed rule from HUD would make it harder to hold people accountable for subtler forms of discrimination.... The new rule would make it harder to hold banks accountable if their underwriting algorithms repeatedly deny mortgages to seemingly qualified black families, or if city zoning laws that make no mention of race still have the effect of racially segregating neighborhoods.
The New Nativists: Why an Heiress Spent Her Fortune Trying to Keep Immigrants Out
New York Times
Aug. 14, 2019By Nicholas Kulish and Mike McIntireNewly unearthed documents reveal how an environmental-minded socialite became an ardent nativist whose money helped sow the seeds of contemporary anti-immigration agenda.
