Rational Republicans are losing the G.O.P. civil war.
........ Breaking away from the G.O.P. and starting a new center-right party may prove in time to be the last resort if Trump-backed candidates continue to win Republican primaries. ...... Unfortunately, history is littered with examples of failed attempts at breaking the two-party system, and in most states today the laws do not lend themselves easily to the creation and success of third parties. ........ So for now, the best hope for the rational remnants of the G.O.P. is for us to form an alliance with Democrats to defend American institutions, defeat far-right candidates, and elect honorable representatives next year — including a strong contingent of moderate Democrats. ........ Mr. Trump lost re-election in large part because Republicans nationwide defected, with 7 percent who voted for Mr. Trump in 2016 flipping to support Joe Biden ......... we agree on something more foundational — democracy. We cannot tolerate the continued hijacking of a major U.S. political party by those who seek to tear down our Republic’s guardrails or who are willing to put one man’s interests ahead of the country. We cannot tolerate the leaders of the G.O.P. — in 2022 or in the presidential election in 2024 — refusing to accept the results of elections or undermining the certification of those results should they lose. ........ concerned conservatives must join forces with Democrats on the most essential near-term imperative: blocking Republican leaders from regaining control of the U.S. House of Representatives ...... we will endorse and support bipartisan-oriented moderate Democrats in difficult races ...... And we will defend a small nucleus of courageous Republicans, such as Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Peter Meijer and others who are unafraid to speak the truth. ....... and will release a slate of nearly two dozen Democratic, independent and Republican candidates we will support in 2022. ........
To defeat the extremist insurgency in our political system and pressure the Republican Party to reform, voters and candidates must be willing to form nontraditional alliances.
........ when push comes to shove, patriotic conservatives should put country over party. .......... additional independent-minded leaders are considering entering the fray in places like Texas, Arizona and North Carolina, targeting seats that Trumpist Republicans think are secure. ......... this experiment in “coalition campaigning” — uniting concerned conservatives and patriotic progressives — could remake American politics and serve as an antidote to hyper-partisanship and federal gridlock.
The United States is heading into its greatest political and constitutional crisis since the Civil War, with a reasonable chance over the next three to four years of incidents of mass violence, a breakdown of federal authority, and the division of the country into warring red and blue enclaves.
.......... about these things there should be no doubt: ...... First, Donald Trump will be the Republican candidate for president in 2024. ....... the amateurish “stop the steal” efforts of 2020 have given way to an organized nationwide campaign to ensure that Trump and his supporters will have the control over state and local election officials that they lacked in 2020. Those recalcitrant Republican state officials who effectively saved the country from calamity by refusing to falsely declare fraud or to “find” more votes for Trump are being systematically removed or hounded from office. .........
The stage is thus being set for chaos.
........ Imagine weeks of competing mass protests across multiple states as lawmakers from both parties claim victory and charge the other with unconstitutional efforts to take power. Partisans on both sides are likely to be better armed and more willing to inflict harm than they were in 2020. Would governors call out the National Guard? Would President Biden nationalize the Guard and place it under his control, invoke the Insurrection Act, and send troops into Pennsylvania or Texas or Wisconsin to quell violent protests? Deploying federal power in the states would be decried as tyranny. ............ Today’s arguments over the filibuster will seem quaint in three years if the American political system enters a crisis for which the Constitution offers no remedy. .........
As has so often been the case in other countries where fascist leaders arise, their would-be opponents are paralyzed in confusion and amazement at this charismatic authoritarian.
............... The Founders did not foresee the Trump phenomenon, in part because they did not foresee national parties. ......... party loyalty has superseded branch loyalty, and never more so than in the Trump era. .............
Critics and supporters alike have consistently failed to recognize what a unique figure Trump is in American history.
......... the passions that animate the Trump movement are as old as the republic and have found a home in both parties at one time or another. ............ Suspicion of and hostility toward the federal government; racial hatred and fear; a concern that modern, secular society undermines religion and traditional morality; economic anxiety in an age of rapid technological change; class tensions, with subtle condescension on one side and resentment on the other; distrust of the broader world, especially Europe, and its insidious influence in subverting American freedom — such views and attitudes have been part of the fabric of U.S. politics since the anti-Federalists, the Whiskey Rebellion and Thomas Jefferson................ What makes the Trump movement historically unique is not its passions and paranoias. It is the fact that
for millions of Americans, Trump himself is the response to their fears and resentments.
This is a stronger bond between leader and followers than anything seen before in U.S. political movements. ........... Trump is different, which is one reason the political system has struggled to understand, much less contain, him. The American liberal worldview tends to search for material and economic explanations for everything, and no doubt a good number of Trump supporters have grounds to complain about their lot in life. But their bond with Trump has little to do with economics or other material concerns. They believe the U.S. government and society have been captured by socialists, minority groups and sexual deviants. They see the Republican Party establishment as corrupt and weak — “losers,” to use Trump’s word, unable to challenge the reigning liberal hegemony. They view Trump as strong and defiant, willing to take on the establishment, Democrats, RINOs, liberal media, antifa, the Squad, Big Tech and the “Mitch McConnell Republicans.” ............
His charismatic leadership has given millions of Americans a feeling of purpose and empowerment, a new sense of identity.
While Trump’s critics see him as too narcissistic to be any kind of leader, his supporters admire his unapologetic, militant selfishness. Unlike establishment Republicans, Trump speaks without embarrassment on behalf of an aggrieved segment of Americans, not exclusively White, who feel they have been taking it on the chin for too long. And that is all he needs to do. ................ There was a time when political analysts wondered what would happen when Trump failed to “deliver” for his constituents. But
the most important thing Trump delivers is himself
. His egomania is part of his appeal. In his professed victimization by the media and the “elites,” his followers see their own victimization. ................
millions of Trump supporters have even been willing to risk death as part of their show of solidarity
: When Trump’s enemies cited his mishandling of the pandemic to discredit him, their answer was to reject the pandemic. ........... While the defeat of a sitting president normally leads to a struggle to claim the party’s mantle, so far no Republican has been able to challenge Trump’s grip on Republican voters ......... “We weren’t there to steal things. We weren’t there to do damage. We were just there to overthrow the government.” .......... Most Trump supporters are good parents, good neighbors and solid members of their communities. Their bigotry, for the most part, is typical white American bigotry, perhaps with an added measure of resentment and a less filtered mode of expression since Trump arrived on the scene. .......... Although zealous in defense of their own rights and freedoms, they are less concerned about the rights and freedoms of those who are not like them. ............. Europeans who joined fascist movements in the 1920s and 1930s were also from the middle classes. No doubt many of them were good parents and neighbors, too. ......... Trump has returned to the explosive rhetoric of that day, insisting that he won in a “landslide,” that
the “radical left Democrat communist party” stole the presidency in the “most corrupt, dishonest, and unfair election in the history of our country”
and that they have to give it back. ........
Already, there have been threats to bomb polling sites, kidnap officials and attack state capitols.
............. Nor can one assume that the Three Percenters and Oath Keepers would again play a subordinate role when the next riot unfolds. Veterans who assaulted the Capitol told police officers that they had fought for their country before and were fighting for it again. ............... Just as “generations of patriots” gave “their sweat, their blood and even their very lives” to build America, Trump tells them, so today “we have no choice. We have to fight” to restore “our American birthright.” ........... Trump’s grip on his supporters left no room for an alternative power center in the party. One by one, the “adults” resigned or were run off. .............. elected officials feared taking on the Trump movement and that Republican job seekers either kept silent about their views or
made show-trial-like apologies for past criticism
............ German conservatives accommodated Adolf Hitler in large part because they opposed the socialists more than they opposed the Nazis, who, after all, shared many of their basic prejudices. .......... since Trump took over their party, many conservatives have revealed a hostility to core American beliefs. ......... The Republican Party today is a zombie party. ....... the party’s main if not sole purpose today is as the willing enabler of Trump’s efforts to game the electoral system to ensure his return to power. ......... Reps. Kevin McCarthy and Elise Stefanik, in their roles as party leaders, run interference for the Trump movement in the sphere of legitimate politics, while Republicans in lesser positions cheer on the Jan. 6 perpetrators, turning them into martyrs and heroes, and encouraging illegal acts in the future. ............ Republicans focus on China and critical race theory and avoid any mention of Trump, even as the party works to fix the next election in his favor. The left hand professes to know nothing of what the right hand is doing. .......... even these anti-Trump Republicans are enabling the insurrection. Revolutionary movements usually operate outside a society’s power structures. But the Trump movement also enjoys unprecedented influence within those structures. ......... The world will look very different in 14 months if, as seems likely, the Republican zombie party wins control of the House. At that point, with the political winds clearly blowing in his favor, Trump is all but certain to announce his candidacy, and social media constraints on his speech are likely to be lifted, since Facebook and Twitter would have a hard time justifying censoring his campaign. With his megaphone back, Trump would once again dominate news coverage, as outlets prove unable to resist covering him around the clock if only for financial reasons. ............... And he will have the Trump movement, including many who are armed and ready to be activated, again. Who is going to stop him then? ......... they have refused to work with Democrats to pass legislation limiting state legislatures’ ability to overturn the results of future elections, to ensure that the federal government continues to have some say when states try to limit voting rights, to provide federal protection to state and local election workers who face threats, and in general to make clear to the nation that a bipartisan majority in the Senate opposes the subversion of the popular will .............. A Trump victory is likely to mean at least the temporary suspension of American democracy as we have known it. ......... In a little more than a year, it may become impossible to pass legislation to protect the electoral process in 2024. Now it is impossible only because anti-Trump Republicans, and even some Democrats, refuse to tinker with the filibuster. .........
Democrats need to give anti-Trump Republicans a chance to do the right thing.
Wonking Out: Biden Should Ignore the Debt Limit and Mint a $1 Trillion Coin U.S. government securities are the bedrock of the global financial system, used for collateral in many transactions. Threatening federal cash flows could therefore provoke a worldwide meltdown. ........... The Republican Party has become both radical and ruthless; let’s not forget that most G.O.P. legislators refused to certify President Biden’s election. .......... this radicalized party cheerfully authorizes trillions in borrowing whenever it holds the White House, it weaponizes the debt limit whenever a Democrat is president. .......... Democrats control both houses of Congress, but Republicans are using the filibuster to block an increase in the debt ceiling with only weeks to go before we hit a wall and default on payments — and
they aren’t even making specific demands. They simply don’t want to share any responsibility for governing
. .............. Republicans have learned a terrible truth: Voters don’t know or care about process; they only react to how things are going.
Perilous, Roadless Jungle Becomes a Path of Desperate Hope The recent surge at the Mexican border is likely to grow as more migrants, mostly Haitian, risk everything negotiating the notorious Darién Gap on their way to the United States. ........ “We very well could be on the precipice of
a historic displacement of people in the Americas toward the United States
,” said Dan Restrepo, the former national security adviser for Latin America under President Barack Obama. “When one of the most impenetrable stretches of jungle in the world is no longer stopping people, it underscores that political borders, however enforced, won’t either.” ........ The Darién, which forms part of the Isthmus of Panama, is a narrow swath of land dividing the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. Parts are so inaccessible that when engineers built the Pan-American Highway in the 1930s, linking Alaska to Argentina, only one section was left unfinished. That piece —
66 roadless miles of turbulent rivers, rugged mountains and venomous snakes — became known as the Darién Gap.
Today, the journey through the gap is made more perilous by a criminal group and human traffickers who control the region, often extorting and sometimes sexually assaulting migrants. ............... The number of migrants who have made the journey so far this year is more than triple the previous annual record set in 2016. ........ has transformed Necoclí. Sewers overflow in the street. Water has stopped flowing from some taps. Markets now sell kits made for crossing the Darién; they include boots, knives and baby slings. ....... Returning to Haiti was not an option, she said. The country is in tatters after a presidential assassination and an earthquake, its economy faltering and its streets haunted by gangs. The only choice, Ms. Alix said, was the road north. ....... Government officials are largely absent from the Darién. The area is controlled by a criminal group known as the Clan del Golfo, whose members view migrants much as they view drugs: goods they can tax and control.
Facebook Struggles to Quell Uproar Over Instagram’s Effect on Teens The social network has been all hands on deck as it grapples with revelations that it knew the harmful effects its Instagram photo-sharing app was having on teenagers. ............. teenage girls saying that Instagram made them feel worse about themselves ......... Inside Facebook, top executives have been engulfed by the crisis ........... Next to one slide in the research that said “teens who struggle with mental health say Instagram makes it worse,” the company added that the headline was imprecise. Instead, it wrote, “The headline should be clarified to be: ‘Teens who have lower life satisfaction more likely to say Instagram makes their mental health or the way they feel about themselves worse than teens who are satisfied with their lives.’”
Seth Meyers Muses on Trump’s Weekend Iowa Rally The host said that seeing the former president speak was like “watching an open-mic night at the senior center.” ........... “He treated supporters to an hour and 43 minutes of bitching about the election he lost and how he didn’t lose it, and how he didn’t concede because it was stolen from him, and all that stupid nonsense that runs on a loop in his brain.” — JIMMY KIMMEL ............. “He was never here, and yet, we named a whole city in Ohio after him.” — JIMMY KIMMEL
Philanthropy Is a Scam The superrich often claim their philanthropy is meant to “change the world.” But it’s really meant to keep it exactly the way it is. ......... If they can invent technologies that uproot the ways we work and live, the logic goes, they can figure out world hunger. ....... figures like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk have more recently managed to fly under the radar and give away comparatively minuscule sums ............. The ambitious “philanthropreneur” takes aim at the clunky, inconvenient elements of civic life and international governance and, in doing so, opens up new avenues for his business. ........... In the philanthropist’s view, the world is good — a world of growing wealth, a widening middle class, and lesser inequality — but suffers enduring problems which can, with enough money and the right approach, be solved at great scale. The governments and NGOs usually tasked with addressing these problems are beset by tradition, red tape, and bureaucratic sprawl. Their own brand of social justice, by contrast, follows only the imperative for ruthless innovation. While states often struggle to pursue long-term goals while responding to immediate crises, a billionaire’s foundation — far less regulated and with nearly infinite money — can easily do both. ..................... When it comes to the objectives of the giving, many state that it is not only a social obligation but potentially healthy for business (hence why profits never really suffer even when the billionaires give away large portions of their shares). That giving, therefore, has the explicit dual aim of maximizing social benefit and return on investment. .............. given that
philanthropic programs for change tend to center around lower-controversy issues like hunger, disease, and education access — while fair pay, labor rights, and affordable housing, which would meaningfully reduce poverty and are thus incompatible with the exploitative business models of large tech companies, sit more firmly within the remit of government
— philanthropists generally stand to gain a lot more than they lose. ................... Even when taking a category as large and broad as “the poor” as the desired recipient of their aid, it is clear that the philanthropic system depends upon them remaining splintered and isolated as subjects. It represents, at best, a capitalism generously willing to help alleviate the problems it causes. ............... In his foreword to Philanthrocapitalism, Bill Clinton states that, at the time of writing, members of his Clinton Global Initiative had made “more than 1,400 commitments valued at $46 billion that have already improved the lives of more than 200 million people in 150 countries.” ............ And while they duly acknowledge the potential dangers of the superrich circumventing democracy and buying seats at decision-making tables, they remain optimistic — in both the superior judgement of entrepreneurs and in the market’s ability to develop the best solutions to the world’s problems. ...................
a new window dressing for the creation of extreme wealth and the expansion of corporate influence over politics and private life
............ This self-fulfilling cycle —
capitalism creates wealth, and thereby inequality, and thereby the conditions for the rich to spend surplus money on helping the poor without ever alleviating poverty
— dates back (Bishop points out) to the Renaissance, when both capitalism and philanthropy were born. ................ In 2019, an agreement signed between the World Economic Forum and the United Nations cemented the privileged position afforded to corporations and entrepreneurs on the global stage. .............. either a promise of greater accountability for foundations or a reinvention of the concept of taxation
Is It Time for a New Economics Curriculum? “The Economy,” a new textbook, is designed for the post-neoliberal age. ......... “I don’t care who writes a nation’s laws—or crafts its advanced treaties—if I can write its economics textbooks,” he wrote, in 1990. “The first lick is the privileged one, impinging on the beginner’s tabula rasa at its most impressionable state.” ......... initiative—called core, for Curriculum Open-Access Resources in Economics, and anchored by a free online introductory textbook titled
—will “teach economics as if the last thirty years had happened.” ...........
Queen Elizabeth II visited the London School of Economics in 2008, and asked the school’s professors why no one had seen the crisis coming.
.......... the limits of the Homo economicus view of people as farsighted and self-interested actors .......... Bowles and Carlin, in contrast, present market failure as far more pervasive, and not as a rare deviation from a generally efficient and desirable status quo. ........ lead students to “reasonably conclude that the economy is about interactions in competitive markets (a positive statement) that function pretty well (a normative one) and in which governments ought not to meddle.” core provides reasons and evidence to challenge all three positions. .......... Bowles told me about an informal rule among publishers that no more than fifteen per cent of the material in a new textbook should deviate from the dominant ones. He estimates that the figure for core is closer to seventy per cent. ......... After a summer of floods and fires, readers will not be shocked to learn that the economy depends on a functional ecology: “The economy is part of society, which is part of the biosphere,” the core textbook reads. ......... core still relies on G.D.P., but it acknowledges some of the limits and criticisms that pertain to long-dominant models in economics. ......... core also presents a view of psychology in which people are motivated by more than self-interest. .........
None of the textbook’s contributors were paid, and all donated their rights over the material to core, which is a registered charity.
........
One teacher from Arkansas State University calculated that using core will save his students a combined hundred thousand dollars annually.
............ “Teaching a version of economics where there is no such thing as economic power, where we’re in the best of all possible worlds . . . I could see how it would not necessarily be a very interesting field for people from more marginalized groups.” ........ He worried that so much emphasis on the ethical and political dimensions of economics might make the subject feel like a different discipline altogether. “The question is, do you want the students to feel like they’re coming out of, you know, to be blunt, a sociology class or an economics class?” Gruber said. ...........
“Economics is a right-wing science,” he told me. “We teach students that the market is always right. And that’s just wrong.”
.............. In his book, “Economics: The User’s Guide,” from 2014, Chang delineates nine major schools of economic thought: Austrian, behaviorialist, classical, developmentalist, institutionalist, Keynesian, Marxist, neoclassical, and Schumpeterian. Adding feminist economics, evolutionary economics, and ecological economics brings the number to twelve. ............. He sees core as fundamentally neoclassical, and thus something of an intellectual monoculture. “All these different schools have been developed with different questions, different methodologies, different assumptions. So they are differently good at answering different kinds of questions,” he told me. “I’m not saying that neoclassical economics is particularly bad, but, in neoclassical economics, you don’t really question the underlying distribution of income, wealth, and power. People promoting that perspective have, frankly, more exposure, more research funding, more political support.” ........... “If one wishes to restructure society in order to achieve other values than maximizing output of material goods and services, Samuelson’s book is no help at all,” one professor wrote, in the early nineteen-seventies. .......... she doesn’t think core goes far enough in reimagining the discipline. .......... many assumptions in present-day economics—about gender, the moral status of future generations, or the natural world—may, one day, appear hopelessly flawed. ..........
the astounding increases in inequality that have occurred in the United States since 1980
........... "The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist."
Home prices are increasing at the fastest rate that we’ve ever witnessed since we first began collecting data just over five decades ago.
........... mortgage rates may be suppressed by the Fed’s balance sheet for years to come. ........
The housing bubble of the 2000s can offer helpful insight in assessing the current bubble.
......... Current home prices are nearing the 2000s housing-bubble level relative to income. ....... these rare heights have not corrected without recession in over 35 years. ....... As of this July, home prices were 13 percent above average long-term affordability. Should prices continue rising for another year, they will be around the ’05 level — 23 percent above average. Declines in home prices from this level would wipe out equity for the new generation of homebuyers. Home prices took a decade to recover from the 2000s bubble. .......... the beginning of a buyer’s strike with over two-thirds of consumers believing this to be a bad time to buy a house. ....... this statistic is at its worst level in about 40 years. Then, during the brutal early-1980s recession, homebuyers were concerned with double-digit mortgage rates. Now they are concerned with double-digit price increases. .......... Based upon past metrics, the January sales peak has the earmark of a cyclical peak, with prices likely to fall within about a year. ........ It did not take large mortgage-rate changes to tip the 2008 crisis. ......... Another financial crisis seems unlikely, although a crude measure of the surplus of bank assets over liabilities is at its lowest ratio to bank assets since 2009. ......... “if something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” History informs us that current home pricing cannot go on forever.
India made unreasonable demands, China says after border talks fail Chinese military calls on India to prove its sincerity after latest commander-level talks falter ........ The two sides have traded accusations about recent incidents on their shared frontier ......... India rejected the accusation, saying its suggestions to improve the situation were not accepted by China.
As US returns to the UN Human Rights Council, it confronts an increasingly forceful China A great deal has changed in the 3 years since the US withdrew from the council: ‘China is now the biggest player in town’, notes one diplomatic analyst ....... Checking Beijing’s efforts to reshape the UN will take more than just coming back, as China continues to leverage its growing influence .......... at a time when Beijing is working overtime to blunt criticism over its crackdown in Xinjiang and revamp the UN in line with its world view.
The United States surpassed 700,000 deaths from the coronavirus on Friday, a milestone that few experts had anticipated months ago when vaccines became widely available to the American public........ The United States has had one of the highest recent death rates of any country with an ample supply of vaccines. ....... the coronavirus pandemic has become the deadliest in American history, overtaking the toll from the influenza pandemic of 1918 and 1919, which killed about 675,000 people. ........ The deaths that have followed the wide availability of vaccines, he added, are “absolutely needless.” ........... Brandee Stripling, a bartender in Cottondale, Ala., told her boss that she felt as if she had been run over by a freight train........ had not been vaccinated against the coronavirus, and now she had tested positive. ......... her children clutched one another in grief .........
2,900 people who were vaccinated among the 100,000 who died of Covid since mid-June.
......... after Delta became the dominant variant, unvaccinated people were more than 10 times as likely to die of the virus as the vaccinated were .......... By late September, more than 2,000 people on average were dying from the virus each day, a level the country has not reached since February. .......... About 40 percent of the most recent 100,000 people to die of the virus were under 65, a share higher than at any other point in the pandemic ........ A 16-year-old girl in another family lost her mother, aunt and cousin to the virus, all in quick succession. ..........
It’s so much worse now than it was when the pandemic first happened. The Delta variant is tremendously worse.
......... only 65 percent of the eligible U.S. population is fully vaccinated. The nation’s vaccination campaign has been slowed by people who say they are hesitant or unwilling to get shots, amid a polarized landscape that has included misinformation from conservative and anti-vaccine commentators casting doubt on the safety of vaccines. ......... More than 3,800 people in their 40s died of Covid-19 in August, compared with 2,800 in January. ......... The Delta variant is much more contagious than previous variants. ........ “The families are going through a lot of initial pain and shock and when we’re getting 20-, 30-, 40-year-old people who are passing away from it ...........
a frequent refrain: family members who vow to be vaccinated after losing a relative to the disease.
............ The wave of Delta deaths has been particularly high in rural areas of the South, where vaccination rates trail those of nearby metropolitan areas. Even though the raw number of Covid-19 deaths is higher in metropolitan areas because their populations are larger, the share of people dying of the virus in rural areas has been much greater. ........... The woman who died of Covid-19 was a 64-year-old church member, talented baker and frequent volunteer during group dinners on Thanksgiving.
Her adult children had advised her not to receive a shot.
......... the woman’s children were full of regret, despairing over their actions and searching for a rationale.
Is the Coronavirus Getting Better at Airborne Transmission? The Alpha variant traveled more efficiently in small droplets, two new studies found. The Delta variant may have continued this evolution. ........ People infected with the Alpha variant exhaled 43 times more virus into aerosols than those infected with older variants .......... Newer variants of the coronavirus like Alpha and Delta are highly contagious, infecting far more people than the original virus. Two new studies offer a possible explanation:
The virus is evolving to spread more efficiently through air.
............. Most researchers now agree that the coronavirus is mostly transmitted through large droplets that quickly sink to the floor and through much smaller ones, called aerosols, that can float over longer distances indoors and settle directly into the lungs, where the virus is most harmful. ............. the virus is changing in ways that make it more formidable. ........ the results may also explain
why the Delta variant is so contagious — and why it displaced all other versions of the virus
. ............ It may be that lower doses of the variants are required for infection, or that the variants replicate faster, or that more of the variant virus is exhaled into aerosols — or all three. ..............
The Alpha variant proved to be twice as transmissible as the original virus, and the Delta variant has mutations that turbocharged its contagiousness even more. As the virus continues to change, newer variants may turn out to be even more transmissible
............ People infected with the Alpha variant had copious amounts of virus in their nose and throat ........... The results were posted on bioRxiv, a website that features papers before they have been published in a scientific journal. ........
the new findings underscore the importance of masks for vaccinated people, especially in crowded spaces
......... With billions of people worldwide vaccinated, and billions still unvaccinated, the virus may still change in unexpected ways
Progressives Flex Muscles on Biden Agenda, Adopting New Tactics Their persistence forced Speaker Nancy Pelosi to delay a planned vote on the $1 trillion infrastructure bill. In the end, President Biden sided with their position. ........ Progressive Democrats in Congress ....... The nearly 100-member caucus refused to support a $1 trillion infrastructure bill that is a major piece of President Biden’s agenda, seeking leverage for a bigger fight. ......... signaled that the progressives enjoyed newfound influence ....... while the progressives scored a tactical victory, negotiations continued to whittle down the size of the social policy and climate bill, which was already much smaller than the initial $6 trillion to $10 trillion that many of them had envisioned. ........ Despite its growing ranks, the progressive caucus has struggled for years to enact its agenda of
providing more robust health care services, taxing the wealthy, reining in military spending and addressing climate change
. Activists have grown frustrated as they helped elect members to Congress, who then fell in line, voting for whatever Democratic leaders put on the floor. ............ progressives won the battle of ideas before the battle of tactics ........
The social spending and climate change platform put forth by Mr. Biden stems in large part from the proposals of Senator Bernie Sanders
......... But bare-knuckled tactics were important too ............ many progressive activists were still upset about how Democrats allowed Republicans to weaken the Affordable Care Act with a slew of amendments when the party had control of both chambers of Congress. But he is now cheering the stance taken by the Progressive Caucus. ........ progressives were only responding to the political maneuvers of centrist Democrats ....... The liberals’ tactics were reminiscent of those employed by the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, whose members routinely threatened to withhold their bloc of votes unless Republican leaders met their demands. .......... another group of activists paddled kayaks to confront Mr. Manchin in the waters next to his large houseboat docked at a Washington marina.
This Is Why We Need to Spend $4 Trillion what did I sense in my recent travels across five states? The same thing I sense in my social media feed and on the various media most-viewed lists. Indifference. ....... Have we given up on the idea that policy can change history? Have we lost faith in our ability to reverse, or even be alarmed by, national decline? More and more I hear people accepting the idea that America is not as energetic and youthful as it used to be. ....... a core faith that this would forever be the greatest nation on the planet,
the New Jerusalem
, the last best hope of earth. ............ There was a time when the phrase “the common man” was a source of pride and a high compliment. ........ From Reagan through Romney, the Republicans valorized entrepreneurs, C.E.O.s and Wall Street. The Democratic Party became dominated by people in the creative class, who attended competitive colleges, moved to affluent metro areas, married each other and ladled advantages onto their kids so they could leap even farther ahead. ....... There was a bipartisan embrace of a culture of individualism, which opens up a lot of space for people with resources and social support but means loneliness and abandonment for people without.
Four years of college became the definition of the good life, which left roughly two-thirds of the country out.
........... the poisonous combination of elite insularity and vicious populist resentment. ............ a group of people so enraged by a lack of respect that they are willing to risk death by Covid if they get to stick a middle finger in the air against those who they think look down on them. They are willing to torch our institutions because they are so resentful against the people who run them. ........... In real, tangible ways, they would redistribute dignity back downward. ......... They would ease the indignity millions of parents face having to raise their children in poverty. ............. among those getting the most money per capita from the infrastructure bill. A lot of them are places where Trumpian resentment is burning hot: Alaska, Wyoming, Montana, North and South Dakota. ............ Statecraft is soulcraft. ...... In many large Western nations, there are
vast tectonic forces concentrating wealth in the affluent metro areas and leaving vast swaths of the countryside behind
