Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
It’s been only a couple of days since President Trump tweeted a racist screed telling four congresswomen of color, three of whom were born in the U.S., to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” Since then, Trump has doubled down on his attacks, and many…
Elizabeth Warren relied on a multimillion-dollar Democratic donor to cover the cost of an expensive voter database — a move that risks putting her campaign at odds with the spirit, if not the letter, of the pledge she made to abstain from “big money” fundraising. In February, two months into her presidential campaign, Warren set…
In February 2016, Republican state Sens. Dan Soucek, left, and Brent Jackson review historical maps in an extra session of the North Carolina General Assembly. (Corey Lowenstein / Associated Press) The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the partisan gerrymandering that has allowed Republicans to control power in several closely divided states. A majority ruled that…
Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. at a campaign rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in April.CreditCreditEric Thayer for The New York Times Joseph R. Biden Jr. was addressing an elite audience, describing how as a young senator he had learned to work with Jesse Helms, the right-wing North Carolinian known for his fierce opposition…
When you see a dead body in full color, you grieve it all the more. Peter Jackson’s World War I documentary They Shall Not Grow Old is currently available to stream after making a successful run in theaters earlier this year, and it’s worth seeing even though you will likely be horrified by what you…
Editor’s Note: This piece was originally published on July 19, 2018. On Wednesday, two representatives of the United States government held press briefings, both of them touching on one of the most astonishing news stories of the Trump presidency—a series of events that had begun two days earlier, when Donald Trump traveled to Helsinki to…
The need to regulate online privacy is a truth so universally acknowledged that even Facebook and Google have joined the chorus of voices crying for change. Writing in the New York Times last month, Google CEO Sundar Pichai argued that it is “vital for companies to give people clear, individual choices around how their data…
A harrowing scenario analysis of how human civilization might collapse in coming decades due to climate change has been endorsed by a former Australian defense chief and senior royal navy commander. The analysis, published by the Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration, a think-tank in Melbourne, Australia, describes climate change as “a near- to mid-term…
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rebuffed calls for impeachment, reportedly telling fellow Democrats, “This is not about politics. It’s about what’s best for the American people.” | J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo Congress Pelosi clashes with fellow Dems in closed-door debate on impeachment House Democratic leaders sparred internally on Monday over whether to begin an impeachment inquiry…
In this spring’s Christian niche-sensation movie “Unplanned,” which was released at the end of March, the actress Ashley Bratcher plays Abby Johnson, the former Planned Parenthood clinic director from Texas who became an anti-abortion activist. (The movie is based on Johnson’s memoir of the same name.) “Unplanned” had a budget of six million dollars and…