Skip to main content

Home/ History Readings/ Group items tagged migrants

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Javier E

How to Take 'Political Correctness' Away From Donald Trump - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • A Martian following election coverage via GoGo in-flight WIFI would never know that Trump’s pledge to revenge-kill family members of terrorists—a war crime—violated more important Earth-taboos than his calling a campaign rival “a pussy.” Watching CBS or NBC or ABC, the Martian would likewise conclude that Trump calling Ted Cruz “a pussy” was worse than calling Mexican migrants rapists. Only the former comment was censored. The broadcast rules that produced those results remain in place.
  • Trump has been running against “political correctness.” This has sometimes meant attacking taboos that prevent real discussions, foster social exclusion, and signal snobbery. One key to taking Trump down is pointing out that he is also violating norms that are essential to American democracy. And that is a different offense
  • His supporters are as inclined as the press to treat every utterance as an undifferentiated instance of political correctness—as if the appropriate degree of political correctness is all that’s at stake this election cycle.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • a pol who seeks to gain power by demonizing ethnic-minority groups and threatening their core rights is engaged in a special category of leadership failure.
  • My hope is that people rediscover why we had those norms, and rediscover the spirit of them, not just the dead letter. And if Trump serves as a midwife to that process, then thank you Donald Trump. I guess I have to hope that, because the alternative is Idiocracy on an accelerated time line.
  • One gets the sense from our current political class that, for example, torture and unconstrained drone strike assassination isn’t actually morally wrong as long as you adopt a furrowed brow and a constipated facial expression, sigh loudly, and say in your most patronizing voice, “This hurts me than it hurts you. I’m sorry I have to do this.” It’s adopting the “serious” tone that matters, not the actual content of your actions.
  • Trump can exist because our norms have become hollowed shells of what they purport to be. Our norms have been gamed. It feels very much like we’ve gotten to a point where people in many of our institutions, in positions of authority, follow the letter of the law about civic decency, but have almost entirely abandoned the spirit of the law. Trump just takes the last little leap and ditches the letter of the law too.
  • Our norms of civic decency were evolved for a reason. Watching Trump violate those norms is a really good reminder of why we evolved those norms in the first place. On the other hand, those norms have been profoundly subverted and corrupted for a while now, and used as often as mere cover for all manner of awfulness.
  • They don't think much would change one way or the other if Donald Trump were elected. The political system has failed them so badly that they think it can't be repaired and little's at stake. The election therefore reduces to an opportunity to express disgust. And that's where Trump's defects come in: They are what make him such an effective messenger.
  • The more he offends the superior people, the more his supporters like it. Trump wages war on political correctness. Political correctness requires more than ordinary courtesy: It's a ritual, like knowing which fork to use, by which superior people recognize each other
  • Some “politically correct” codes of conduct, like “Muslim Americans should be treated as equal citizens whose rights are not at all abrogated because some of their co-religionists are terrorists,” help to prevent the U.S. from perpetrating horrific injustices against innocents and serve to uphold the guarantees of our founding documents. Other “politically correct” codes are little more than arbitrary etiquette that people educated at selective colleges use to feel superior to others,
  • In between the core norms that are vital to democracy and the most frivolous demand for political correctness there is a lot of contested territory. Trump’s rise represents large swathes of that territory being seized by people who reject elite pieties.
  • citizens who oppose Trumpism are going to have to take a careful look at everything that falls under the rubric of political correctness; study the real harm done by its excesses; identify the many parts that are worth defending; and persuade more Americans to adopt those norms voluntarily, for substantive reasons, not under duress of social shaming or other coercion.
  • Trumpism cannot prevail in a contest of logic and rationally differentiated controversies; but in a contest of emotion, tribal loyalty, and stigmatizing out-groups, I’m no longer sure that it can be beat.
krystalxu

Background Essay - Women's Roles in China: Changes Over Time - Resources at Primary Sou... - 0 views

  • Throughout the imperial period and into the beginning of the twentieth century, the relationship among family members was prescribed by Confucian teachings.
  • Marriages, births, and deaths were all accompanied by rituals designed to reinforce these unequal but mutually supportive roles.
  • While such severe actions were rare, they did occur and left a lasting legacy of discrimination against females.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • The Marriage Law of 1950 outlawed many harsh practices directed against women, including arranged marriages, concubinage, dowries, and child brides. 
  • he effects of advanced technology, such as ultrasound detection, coupled with the traditional preference for male offspring left China with a significant gender gap and thousands of bachelors
  • Many migrants are young women whose families cannot provide for them in their home villages. 
  • Whether it was Confucian values, revolutionary Maoist ideals, or the search for economic and educational advancement, women have endured numerous changes as they bent with the prevailing political winds.
ethanshilling

Democrats Confront a Surge at the Border - The New York Times - 0 views

  • The Democratic-led House on Thursday passed bills that would offer a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants, including so-called Dreamers, and eventually grant legal status to almost a million farmworkers and their families.
  • Democratic lawmakers hoped to draw a clear line between themselves and Republicans on some of the more popular and uncontroversial elements of Biden’s broader immigration plan.
  • A flood of asylum seekers and other migrants has arrived since the start of the Biden administration, drawn in part by the new president’s more accommodating tone compared with his predecessor’s.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Republicans have seized upon the surge, labeling it the “Biden border crisis” in a new series of political ads and splashing coverage across conservative media.
  • Mr. Biden and his homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, are balancing their desire to reject Trump’s uncompromising approach — particularly with regard to unaccompanied minors, who have arrived at the border this month at a rate of roughly 400 people a day
  • A month ago, immigration didn’t register as a top concern for most Americans. A Pew Research Center poll in early February found that just 38 percent of the country thought that “reducing illegal immigration” should be a major priority among the United States’ foreign policy goals.
  • But in a CNN poll released last week, immigration was the only issue, from a list of seven, on which Americans gave Mr. Biden meaningfully negative reviews.
  • Testifying before the House Homeland Security Committee this week, Mr. Mayorkas acknowledged that the situation at the border “is undoubtedly difficult,” and sought to manage expectations.
anonymous

India Sees Spike In Confirmed Coronavirus Cases - And Variants : Coronavirus Updates : NPR - 0 views

  • India is seeing a substantial number of coronavirus variants. But it is unclear whether these are contributing to a new surge in cases there. On Wednesday, India reported 47,262 new cases, the highest jump since November. Coronavirus-related fatalities are also increasing with 275 deaths reported on Wednesday, the most India has seen this year.
  • Several virus variants have appeared in thousands of samples collected across Indian states. Some of the samples have contained viruses with two concerning mutations, one first identified in the U.K. and another in South Africa.Yet the ministry said that even though they've identified the "double mutant" variant, this and other variants "have not been detected in numbers sufficient to either establish or direct relationship or explain the rapid increase in cases in some states."
  • The western Indian state of Maharashtra, home to the commercial capital Mumbai, is leading the surge and is responsible for more than 60% of new infections. On Wednesday, Mumbai reported more than 5,000 new cases, the most it has seen since the pandemic began. The capital New Delhi is also experiencing an uptick in cases, and authorities there and in Mumbai have begun testing people randomly at airports, railway stations and crowded markets. In Mumbai, entry into shopping malls is prohibited unless visitors show a negative COVID-19 report.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Both cities have also banned celebrations of the upcoming Hindu festival of Holi, where people gather in large groups and smear colored powder on each other. Authorities have also expressed concern about another Hindu gathering, the Kumbh Mela, held in the northern Indian town of Haridwar. It is expected to attract tens of millions of pilgrims from across the country and the government is urging local officials to ramp up testing.
  • Meanwhile, India has relaxed eligibility rules for coronavirus vaccinations. Starting in April, anyone who is 45 years of age or older will be allowed to get a coronavirus shot. India began its massive immunization campaign in mid-January starting with healthcare and frontline workers, followed by elderly people and people above 45 years of age with certain health conditions. Calls to open up the vaccination program to all adults have been growing, especially as cases rise.
  • India's second wave comes one year after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a strict lockdown with barely four hours' notice that left poor migrant workers stranded and pushed the economy into a recession. Infections began climbing when the lockdown was lifted in June and reached a peak of nearly 100,000 cases a day last September. India has the third-highest coronavirus caseload in the world, after the United States and Brazil.
clairemann

Arizona's Ducey calls Harris the 'worst possible choice' to fix border | Fox News - 0 views

  • Gov. Doug Ducey, the Arizona Republican, didn’t mince words Wednesday shortly after he learned that President Biden was tapping Vice President Harris to oversee the effort to resolve the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border.
  • Ducey, who was in Tucson, told reporters that Harris is "the worst possible choice" for the job. He also said that Harris’ selection is evidence that Biden has trivialized the situation. He said Harris just "flat out" doesn't care.
  • It notified Congress on Wednesday that it will open a new 3,000-person facility in San Antonio and a 1,400-person site at the San Diego convention center. HHS is also opening a second site in Carrizo Springs and received approval from the Defense Department Wednesday to begin housing teenagers at military bases in San Antonio and El Paso, Texas.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • "It’s not her full-responsibility job, but she is leading the effort because I think the best thing to do is to put someone who, when he or she speaks, they don’t have to wonder about, is that where the president is," Biden said, according to The Washington Post. "When she speaks, she speaks for me."
anonymous

Key takeaways from President Biden's first news conference - BBC News - 0 views

shared by anonymous on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Biden's performance was more akin to a cautious walk across a not-quite-frozen lake. Every step was careful and calculated, lest an unexpected crack led to a dark, icy fate.
  • At one point, in an answer about the filibuster - an arcane Senate rule that has thwarted many a president's ambitious agenda - Biden appeared to lose his train of thought, ending his sentence with the wave of a hand.It wasn't exactly a bravura performance, but conservatives have set the bar so low for Biden's coherence, that as in the presidential debates, Biden was able to surpass most expectations.
  • He led with a newsworthy promise that, by his 100th day in office, healthcare workers will have distributed 200 million vaccination jabs (that's very good news, although the US still lags behind some other countries when comparing the number of jabs done relative to the size of the population).
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Reporters didn't spend any time asking about the pandemic or the economy after that, which was another big clue that the Biden administration has - at least in their minds - done a good job addressing the biggest challenge of his presidency so far.
  • One topic Biden was repeatedly pressed on by reporters was the deteriorating situation at the US-Mexico border, as a growing number of undocumented migrants - including unaccompanied children - are being detained by US border patrols.
  • he blamed Trump for cutting aid to Central American countries that could have address the root causes of humanitarian crisis. He said the surge in entries was cyclical in nature and not a result of immigrants believing he was a "nice guy" who would let them in. He also promised that if the processing of children at the border wasn't improved, he'd start firing people.
  • When one journalist offered a laundry list of topics that Biden might tackle next, and asked how he would work with Republicans to accomplish them, Biden at first deferred. Immigration, gun control, voting rights, climate change - those were all "long-term problems," he said.
  • Of all the potential items on Biden's agenda, infrastructure could be the most likely to get some Republican support, which - after a partisan pandemic aid bill - might be why it has moved up the president's list.
  • There was scant talk on foreign policy for much of the afternoon, but the subject did occasionally come up. Biden said it was unlikely that the US would be out of Afghanistan by the 1 May deadline, but that in a year he "can't picture" troops being there in 2022.
  • On China, the president tried to talk down the growing war of words between the two nations. "I'm not looking for a confrontation," he said - but, in nearly the same breath, added that he criticised the country's polices and pledged that China from was not going to become the most powerful country in the world "on my watch".
  • Biden, who was coy about his 2024 plans before last year's election, was asked if he intended to run for re-election. He said it was his "intention" to do so - and to keep Kamala Harris as his running mate (the fate of vice-presidents is another popular topic in Washington).
katherineharron

Fact check: Biden's first news conference as president - CNNPolitics - 0 views

  • Defending his approach to migration at the southern border, Biden claimed that "we're sending back the vast majority of the families that are coming." Facts First: This was not true in February, the last month for which we have full data.
  • Biden said, "The overwhelming majority of people coming to the border and crossing are being sent back." That is a fair claim about what happened in February, when nearly 72% of the 100,441 total people encountered at the border -- in other words, not just family-unit members -- were expelled under Title 42.
  • Biden claimed that there were five times as many motions to break the filibuster in 2020 than there were between 1917 and 1971. "Between 1917 and 1971, the filibuster existed, there were a total of 58 motions to break a filibuster. That whole time. Last year alone there were five times that many," Biden said. Facts First: While experts on the filibuster say it is hard even for them to pinpoint the number per year, Biden's figures are misleading. In 2020, the number of motions filed to end a Senate debate -- a proxy measure for the use of the filibuster -- was about double, not five times, the number from 1917 to 1971.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Vaccinations in the US and the rest of the world While discussing his goal to reach 200 million Covid-19 vaccinations in the first 100 days of his administration, Biden repeated his claim that "no other country in the world has even come close, not even close to what we are doing" on the vaccine front. Facts First: It's true that no country has vaccinated more total people than the US, though it's worth noting that there are some smaller countries that have vaccinated a larger share of their total populations.
  • Using either figure, Biden exaggerated the relative number of cloture motions filed in the past year, though he was accurate on his general point that the number of filibusters has increased significantly over time.
  • there were 58 cloture motions filed from 1917 through 1970 and 13 filed in 1971
  • Biden challenged Republican criticism of the $1.9 trillion cost of his pandemic relief law, which he noted would put money in the pockets of "ordinary people."
  • Biden said had "83% going to the top 1%." Biden and other Democrats have repeatedly invoked the "83%" figure.Facts First: This statistic needs context. While it's correct to generally say the wealthiest Americans were the biggest beneficiaries of Trump's 2017 tax cuts, the "83%" figure is a projection about what might happen under certain circumstances in 2027, not about what has happened already.
  • For 2018, conversely, the Tax Policy Center estimated that the top 1% got 20.5% of the benefits, while the 95%-99% group got another 22.1%. For 2025, the estimate was 25.3% going to the top 1%, while the 95%-99% would get another 21.6%.
  • Biden claimed that since the American Rescue Plan passed, a "majority of forecasters have significantly increased their projections. Now projecting it will exceed 6%, a 6% growth in GDP." Facts First: It's true that many economists upgraded their 2021 gross domestic product forecasts north of 6% either just before or after the legislation passed, but it's hard to say whether a majority did without a survey of all economists.
  • For example, a CNN poll conducted March 3-8 found 26% of Republicans supportive and 73% of Republicans opposed. Poll results have appeared to vary with the wording of pollsters' questions. A Morning Consult/Politico poll conducted February 19-22 found 60% support for the bill among Republican registered voters -- after poll respondents were told about the plan's $1.9 trillion cost and some key provisions, including the $1,400 direct payments. A Morning Consult/Politico poll conducted March 6-8 found 59% Republican support.
  • "28% increase in children on the border under my administration" versus a 31% increase in the same period of 2019 under Trump. Facts First: Biden was wrong about the increase in children at the border during his own administration. He appeared to be mixing up two different statistics, one about children and one about migrants generally.
katherineharron

Baseball's Opening Day reflects a politicized nation caught between Covid-19 and hope -... - 0 views

  • If baseball is a metaphor for American life, Opening Day brought a tantalizing springtime hint of better days ahead, despite reflecting a nation divided by the polarized politics of a pandemic and Georgia's battle over Republican voter suppression.
  • ongoing contact tracing postponed a game in Washington were a reminder of the still potent peril of Covid-19 as the country faces another infection surge.
  • But the fact that there were fans in the seats at all to watch teams play ball underscored how much of the country is tentatively itching for a return to some semblance of normality after a grim winter of sickness and death and as millions of vaccines go into American arms at an increasing pace.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • The annual return of the boys of summer carries a sense of renewal and possibility. A similar feeling is being conjured by stunning and welcome news of the success of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.
  • The results emerged as vaccine distribution quickly ramps up across the country, with more than 150 million doses of vaccine administered in the US and eligibility for inoculations fast expanding to almost all age groups in many states. The Pfizer news also offered President Joe Biden a powerful weapon in his drive to convince a sizable minority of skeptical Americans to get vaccinated to enable the country to reach the herd immunity that is necessary to eradicate the virus.
  • It's going to take widespread vaccination to drive the virus down sufficiently to allow a return to packed baseball stadiums later in the summer
  • "That's a decision they made. I think it's a mistake," Biden said. "They should listen to Dr. (Anthony) Fauci, the scientists and the experts. But I think it's not responsible," Biden said in an interview with ESPN in lieu of throwing out the opening pitch before the Washington Nationals season opener.
  • At least three players have tested positive for Covid-19 and another is considered a "likely" positive, Nationals manager Dave Martinez and general manager Mike Rizzo confirmed during a video conference Thursday.
  • "I think today's professional athletes are acting incredibly responsibly. I would strongly support them doing that," Biden told ESPN. "People look to them. They're leaders."
  • Trump also openly feuded with sportsmen and women who spoke out in support of the Black Lives Matter movement in the racial reckoning that followed the death of George Floyd last year. At the same time as baseball was opening its season Thursday, the trial of the police officer charged with murdering Floyd entered its fourth day of testimony in Minneapolis.
  • Georgia GOP Gov. Brian Kemp, meanwhile, lashed out at the campaign to shift the venue, accusing Biden of trying to distract attention from a flood of child migrants at the southern border, which Republicans say is the result of his more humane immigration policies."You know, he's focused on trying to get Major League Baseball to pull the game out of Georgia, which is ridiculous," Kemp told Fox News.
  • The Georgia voting law may also be in the background at the Masters next week, the first men's golf major of the year at the Augusta National Golf Club. Racial issues were already to the fore of this year's tournament since Lee Elder, the first Black player to tee off at the Masters, in 1975, will be making his debut as honorary starter alongside Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player.
  • Most stadiums were much less than half full, with 20% to 30% capacity.
  • The President also weighed into another controversy that encroached on the festivities of the first baseball games of the season — a new voting law passed by Republicans in Georgia that discriminates against Black voters and is based on ex-President Donald Trump's lies that the last election was marred by fraud.
  • At Yankee Stadium in New York, which has been doubling as a Covid-19 vaccine site, fans had to show they were fully vaccinated or post a negative Covid test before passing through the turnstiles.
  • Not all of the Opening Day challenges were caused by a pandemic and politics, however. In one sign of early season normality, the Boston Red Sox were rained out and will have to wait another day to welcome fans back to Fenway Park for the first time in 18 months.
delgadool

Biden Grants Protections for Venezuelans to Remain in U.S. - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Biden Gives Venezuelans Reprieve to Remain in U.S. Trump Had RejectedHundreds of thousands of Venezuelans can temporarily continue to live and work in the United States as the administration considers its next steps in the effort to force out Venezuela’s president.
  • WASHINGTON — As many as 320,000 Venezuelans living in the United States were given an 18-month reprieve on Monday from the threat of being deported, as the Biden administration sought to highlight how dangerous that country has become under President Nicolás Maduro.
  • Two senior Biden administration officials said the new protections would be offered to those who can prove they are living in the United States as of Monday. The cutoff date aimed to discourage smugglers from enticing other Venezuelans to make the arduous journey to the United States at a time the Biden administration is already struggling with how to accommodate thousands of Central American migrants headed to the southern border.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • For years, the world watched in horror as man-made humanitarian and political crises turned Venezuela into a failed state,” the senators said in a joint statement. “Despite these disastrous and dangerous conditions, Venezuelans were still forcibly deported ba
  • “It gives us protection,” he said, “but also reminds us that we’re here because there’s a dictatorship in our country.”
  • The immigrants also will be allowed to work legally in the United States as part of the temporary protective status the administration issued as it considers the next steps in a yearslong American pressure campaign to force Mr. Maduro from power.
  • Venezuela is mired in one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises under Mr. Maduro, who, through a mix of corruption and neglect, oversaw the decay of the country’s oil infrastructure that had propped up its economy. The United Nations has estimated that up to 94 percent of Venezuela’s population lives in poverty, with millions of people bereft of regular access to water, food and medicine.
  • The United States has been at the fore of an international campaign to force Mr. Maduro from power since disputed elections in 2018. It is one of the few foreign policy priorities that has been advanced by both the Biden and Trump administrations, each of which recognizes Juan Guaidó, the opposition leader and former head of Venezuela’s National Assembly, as the country’s legitimate leader.
  • Roberto Marrero, a Venezuelan opposition leader who moved to Florida after spending a year and a half in jail in Venezuela, called Monday’s decision a “bittersweet victory.”
martinelligi

Former President George W. Bush calls on Congress to tone down 'harsh rhetoric' about i... - 0 views

  • Former President George W. Bush on Sunday called on Congress to tone down the "harsh rhetoric" on immigration, adding that he hopes that doing so will "set a tone that is more respectful" of immigrants and lead to more reform.
  • The plea from the former President comes amid a heated debate over immigration reform in Congress as the Biden administration grapples with the influx of migrants at the US-Mexico Border. It also follows his message in an op-ed published by the Washington Post on Friday, where he called for bipartisan action on several immigration measures.
  • He acknowledged Sunday one of the biggest disappointments of his presidency is that he did not pass any meaningful reform on the issue. Bush also said he is currently lobbying the Republican Party to act on creating a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, if they can pass a background check and pay back taxes but did not seem hopeful that his party will agree.
hannahcarter11

Biden Responds to Sen. Tim Scott: 'I Don't Think The American People Are Racist' : NPR - 0 views

  • President Biden says America is not a racist country, but that Black Americans have been left behind and "we have to deal with it."
  • Scott, the Senate's only Black Republican, said that "America is not a racist country" and warned that "it's wrong to try to use our painful past to dishonestly shut down debates in the present."
  • "I don't think the American people are racist," he said, "but I think after 400 years, African Americans have been left in a position where they are so far behind the eight ball in terms of education and health, in terms of opportunity."
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • "I don't think America is racist, but I think the overhang from all of the Jim Crow and before that, slavery, have had a cost and we have to deal with it."
  • Biden was also asked in the interview about the situation at the Southern border. He said that the number of children seeking to cross into the country "is way down now, we've now gotten control" and that there's "a significant change in the circumstance for children coming to and at the border."
  • According to Customs and Border Protection, nearly 19,000 children and teenagers arrived at the Southern border in March — the most ever in a single month.
  • Biden defended his administration's efforts to reunite children separated from their families by the Trump administration.
  • Biden also discussed the state of the pandemic. Asked whether all K-12 schools should be open this fall for in-person instruction five days a week, the president said, "Based on science and the CDC, they should probably all be open."
katherineharron

What it's been like fact-checking Joe Biden through 100 days - CNN Politics - 0 views

  • Things have been quieter around here in presidential-fact-check land. Not because President Joe Biden is accurate all the time. He certainly isn’t. But through his first 100 days in the Oval Office, Biden has given us intermittent false claims rather than the staggering avalanche of daily wrongness we faced from his predecessor.
  • Biden has made 29 total false claims in his first 100 days, about one every three-and-a-half days on average. That’s not cause for celebration. But I counted 214 false claims from Trump over his own first 100 days in office, more than two per day on average – and that was a very slow Trump period compared to what came later.
  • Biden said about 28% fewer public words than Trump through April 29 of their respective terms.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • When Biden does make public remarks, he is much more likely to be reading from a prepared text than the famously freewheeling Trump was. Biden’s prepared texts have been quite factual.
  • Trump used the social media service to deliver off-the-cuff and oft-inaccurate boasts and attacks. Biden prefers to post conventionally presidential messages, a large number of which do not contain checkable claims of any kind.
  • Biden claimed that the majority of undocumented immigrants in the US are not Hispanic (experts put the actual figure at two-thirds or more Hispanic), that China has more retired people than working people (it has hundreds of millions more working people than retired people), that community health centers would be sent one million Covid-19 vaccine doses a week (the plan was to send one million in the “initial phase” of the program, not every week), and that the $7.25 per hour federal minimum wage would be $20 per hour today if it had been linked to inflation upon its creation (Biden was not even close – the White House said Biden got mixed up with another statistic).
  • Biden claimed the US was sending back “the vast majority of families” who arrived at the southern border. While the US was indeed expelling the majority of all migrants encountered at the border, it was sending back less than half of the families in particular.
  • In late March and early April, Biden weighed in on the hot-button issue of the new Georgia elections law. And he either deceived or didn’t have his facts straight – wrongly suggesting that the law requires polling places to close at 5 p.m. (You can read a detailed fact check here.) While the new law does reduce voter access in other ways, Biden gave the law’s supporters ammunition to argue that the law’s opponents were being dishonest.
  • Biden’s push for additional gun control measures, he exaggerated about gun manufacturers’ immunity from lawsuits
  • Biden has sometimes been inaccurate in his attempt to favorably compare himself to Trump.
  • And Biden has repeatedly claimed that Trump signed a tax law that gave 83% of the benefits to the top 1%. In reality, that 83% figure is a think tank’s estimate for what would happen in 2027 if the law’s corporate tax cuts remained in place but its individual tax cuts expired as scheduled after 2025. Between 2018 and 2025, conversely, the think tank estimated that the top 1% would get between 20.5% and 25.3% of the benefits.
  • Boasting of how well he knows Chinese President Xi Jinping, Biden claimed three times in office that he has traveled 17,000 miles or more than 17,000 miles “with” Xi. As the Washington Post first noted, that number is nowhere close to accurate. Biden could have accurately made the same point by saying he has spent a lot of time with Xi.
  • In an impassioned flourish at the CNN town hall in February, Biden claimed the US spends almost $9 billion on a tax break “for people who own racehorses.” Experts have no idea where Biden got that figure for this tax break, and the White House declined to explain.
  • In my first fact check of Biden’s presidency, in January, I noted Biden was wrong when he told reporters that when he initially announced his goal of 100 million vaccinations in his first 100 days, “you all said it’s not possible.” Biden switched to softer, accurate language in subsequent comments on the subject – saying in March, for example, that his goal was initially “considered ambitious” and that “some even suggested it was somewhat audacious.”
  • We aren’t throwing a party for the Biden team here; it would have been better if the administration hadn’t gotten it wrong in the first place. But after four years dealing with a Trump White House that appeared not to care about fact-checking at all, the Biden White House’s response was a welcome development.
ethanshilling

Devastation from Storms Fuels Migration in Honduras - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Children pry at the dirt with sticks, trying to dig out parts of homes that have sunk below ground. Their parents, unable to feed them, scavenge the rubble for remnants of roofs to sell for scrap metal.
  • People have long left Honduras for the United States, fleeing gang violence, economic misery and the indifference of a government run by a president accused of ties to drug traffickers.
  • Then last fall, two hurricanes hit impoverished areas of Honduras in rapid succession, striking more than four million people across the nation — nearly half the population — and leveling entire neighborhoods.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • “People aren’t migrating; they’re fleeing,” said César Ramos, of the Mennonite Social Action Commission, a group providing aid to people affected by the storms. “These people have lost everything, even their hope.”
  • But last month, apprehensions at the southwest border of the United States hit a 15-year high, part of a sharp uptick since Mr. Biden took office.
  • The majority of families and unaccompanied children are coming from Honduras and Guatemala, the two countries hit hardest by the hurricanes — a sign that the president’s more welcoming policies on immigration have drawn people at a time when they are especially desperate to leave.
  • Still, Mr. Biden has sent a clear message to anyone considering crossing the border in the meantime: “Don’t come over,” Mr. Biden said in a recent interview.
  • Mexico has begged the Biden administration to send more disaster relief aid to Central America. Mr. Biden has contended that under former President Trump, “instead of going down and helping in a major way” after the disasters, “we did nothing.”
  • “We need to be aggressively addressing the levels of despair that the folks hit by these storms are facing,” said Dan Restrepo, a former top adviser to President Obama. “We need to go big now and we need to be loud about it, because that starts actually factoring into the calculus that people face today, which is, ‘Can I survive here or not?’”
katherineharron

The 15 most notable lies of Donald Trump's presidency - CNNPolitics - 0 views

  • I fact checked every word uttered by this President from his inauguration day in January 2017 until September 2020 -- when the daily number of lies got so unmanageably high that I had to start taking a pass on some of his remarks to preserve my health.
  • Trump got even worse after November 3. Since then, he has spent the final months of what has been a wildly dishonest presidency on a relentless and dangerous lying spree about the election he lost.
  • The most telling lie: It didn't rain on his inaugurationclose dialogSign up for CNN What Matters NewsletterEvery day we summarize What Matters and deliver it straight to your inbox.Sign me upNo thanksBy subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.By subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.Sign up for CNN What Matters NewsletterEvery day we summarize What Matters and deliver it straight to your inbox.Please enter aboveSign me upNo thanksBy subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.By subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.Sign up for CNN What Matters NewsletterEvery day we summarize What Matters and deliver it straight to your inbox.bx-group bx-group-default bx-group-1245864-3DW
  • ...36 more annotations...
  • It rained during Trump's inaugural address. Then, at a celebratory ball later that day, Trump told the crowd that the rain "just never came" until he finished talking and went inside, at which point "it poured."
  • The President would say things that we could see with our own eyes were not true. And he would often do this brazen lying for no apparent strategic reason.
  • The most dangerous lie: The coronavirus was under control
  • This was more like a family of lies than a single lie. But each one -- the lie that the virus was equivalent to the flu; the lie that the situation was "totally under control"; the lie that the virus was "disappearing" -- suggested to Americans that they didn't have to change much about their usual behavior.
  • more than 386,000 Americans have died from the virus.
  • The most alarming lie saga: Sharpiegate
  • Trump tweeted in 2019 that Alabama was one of the states at greater risk from Hurricane Dorian than had been initially forecast. The federal weather office in Birmingham then tweeted that, actually, Alabama would be unaffected by the storm
  • Trump, however, is so congenitally unwilling to admit error that he embarked on an increasingly farcical campaign to prove that his incorrect Alabama tweet was actually correct, eventually showcasing a hurricane map that was crudely altered with a Sharpie.
  • The most ridiculous subject of a lie: The Boy Scouts
  • When I emailed the Boy Scouts of America in 2017 about Trump's claim that "the head of the Boy Scouts" had called him to say that his bizarrely political address to the Scouts' National Jamboree was "the greatest speech that was ever made to them," I didn't expect a reply. One of the hardest things about fact checking Trump was that a lot of people he lied about did not think it was in their interest to be quoted publicly contradicting a vengeful president.
  • A senior Scouts source -- a phrase I never expected to have to type as a political reporter in Washington, DC -- confirmed to me that no call ever happened.
  • The ugliest smear lie: Rep. Ilhan Omar supports al Qaeda
  • The most boring serial lie: The trade deficit with China used to be $500 billion
  • It was a problem for the country that the President was not only a conspiracy theorist himself but immersed in conspiracy culture, regularly stumbling upon ludicrous claims and then sharing them as fact.
  • So he said well over 100 times that, before his presidency, the US for years had a $500 billion annual trade deficit with China -- though the actual pre-Trump deficit never even reached $400 billion.
  • The most entertaining lie shtick: The burly crying men who had never cried before
  • according to the President, they kept walking up to him crying tears of gratitude -- even though they had almost always not previously cried for years.
  • The most traditional big lie: Trump didn't know about the payment to Stormy Daniels
  • he also lied when he needed to. When he told reporters on Air Force One in 2018 that he did not know about a $130,000 payment to porn performer Stormy Daniels and that he did not know where his then-attorney Michael Cohen got the money for the payment, it was both audacious -- Trump knew, because he had personally reimbursed Cohen -- and kind of conventional: the President was lying to try to get himself out of a tawdry scandal.
  • The biggest lie by omission: Trump ended family separation
  • ere's what he told NBC's Chuck Todd in 2019 about his widely controversial policy of separating migrant parents from their children at the border: "You know, under President Obama you had separation. I was the one that ended it." Yes, Trump signed a 2018 order to end the family separation policy.
  • The most shameless campaign lie: Biden will destroy protections for pre-existing conditions
  • When Trump claimed in September that Biden would destroy protections for people with pre-existing health conditions -- though the Obama-Biden administration created the protections, though the protections were overwhelmingly popular, though Biden was running on preserving them,
  • Trump himself had tried repeatedly to weaken them
  • The lie he fled: He got Veterans Choice
  • Trump could have told a perfectly good factual story about the Veterans Choice health care program Obama signed into law in 2014: it wasn't good enough, so he replaced it with a more expansive program he signed into law in 2018.
  • That's not the story he did tell -- whether out of policy ignorance, a desire to erase Obama's legacy, or simply because he is a liar. Instead, he claimed over and over -- more than 160 times before I lost count -- that he is the one who got the Veterans Choice program passed after other presidents tried and failed for years.
  • The Crazy Uncle lie award: Windmill noise causes cancer
  • At a White House event in 2019, Trump grossly distorted a 2013 quote from Rep. Ilhan Omar to try to get his supporters to believe that the Minnesota Democrat had expressed support for the terrorist group al Qaeda.
  • his 2019 declaration that "they say" the noise from windmills "causes cancer."
  • The most hucksterish lie: That plan was coming in two weeks
  • Trump's big health care plan was eternally coming in "two weeks."
  • My personal favorite lie: Trump was once named Michigan's Man of the Year
  • Trump has never lived in Michigan. Why would he have been named Michigan's Man of the Year years before his presidency?He wouldn't have been. He wasn't.
  • The most depressing lie: Trump won the election
  • Trump's long White House campaign against verifiable reality has culminated with his lie that he is the true winner of the 2020 presidential election he clearly, certifiably and fairly lost.
woodlu

The great slowdown - America's demography is looking European | United States | The Eco... - 0 views

  • Lots of immigration and relatively high fertility rates increased its population faster—and kept it more youthful—than its rich-country peers.
  • Over many generations they proved much readier than Europeans
  • dynamism helped to produce a flexible labour force and lively economy.
  • ...25 more annotations...
  • California’s population has stalled and may, for the first time, be declining
  • New York endured more shrinkage than any state: it lost 126,000, or 0.65%, of its people.
  • Some states, mostly in the South, are growing fast, but not enough to lift the national rate.
  • In the year to July it grew by 0.35% (or 1.2m) to 329m.
  • Institution calculates expansion in the decade to July 2020 at just 6.6%. If his sums are right, that is the lowest decadal gain since 1790
  • Evidence has also piled up to show Americans becoming much less mobile
  • Just 9.3% of the population moved,
  • high cost of housing that makes it difficult for younger Americans to move.
  • absence of new, fast-growing cities and more similarity between various labour markets—mean that “this nation of pioneers has parked its wagons”.
  • technology, such as air-conditioning, previously did much to open up territory for settlement. More recent technology, notably the internet, may instead have made it less necessary to move to find work.
  • just-concluding decade will see the smallest expansion of the foreign-born population in any decade since the 1970s.
  • Less immigration, for example, has several effects.
  • Lower immigration hits domestic mobility, because recent immigrants are among the readiest to move for work.
  • The average American woman is now expected to have 1.7 children in her lifetime, the lowest level in decades
  • Mr Mangum sees a long-term reversion to the mean as America becomes less of an exception among rich countries
  • The policies of Donald Trump sharply cut inflows of migrants.
  • suggest deaths from covid-19, which may exceed 500,000 by April, will cut average life expectancy by more than one year.
  • The pandemic and the economic slump are also causing a baby bust.
  • estimate there will be 300,000 fewer births than otherwise expected in 2021
  • Eventual reopening of borders should see immigration tick up again. Even so, slower population growth will “continue in the coming years”
  • America “is looking more and more like Europe, with lower fertility, more measured levels of migration”.
  • Several Midwestern and north-eastern states, for example, will lose political clout as congressional and electoral-college seats go in reapportionment in 2021
  • matters for state finances if there are fewer taxpayers to pay for public services.
  • The US Census set out scenarios for the forecast population in 2060.
  • Were the country to return to being an exceptional place, open to high levels of immigration, its population could reach 447m. As a more normal rich country, less welcoming to immigrants, it could shrink to 320m. ■RecommendedGraphic detailAmerica’s demography is looking EuropeanInternationalThe scandal-hit market for passports and long-term visas is boomingThe AmericasJobs are coming back in Canada, thanks to subsidies
Javier E

Chinese youth - Young Chinese are both patriotic and socially progressive | Special rep... - 0 views

  • More than half of Chinese in their 20s express a desire to start their own business. Others will climb up the ranks of the ruling Communist Party
  • How they understand their country’s past and what they ask of its future are essential to understand how they might one day lead China.
  • Youth often stands for trendsetting and rebellion. In China, the young must navigate an authoritarian state and a bruisingly competitive education system. This is when big life decisions are made and adult identities formed.
  • ...19 more annotations...
  • Without siblings, they shoulder alone the full weight of their parents’ (and grandparents’) expectations: to excel at school, secure a stable job, marry and have children, all before the age of 30.
  • Newlyweds hit a ten-year low in 2019. Women in Shanghai marry on average at 29, later than Americans and a jump of six years in a decade
  • The jiulinghou are China’s best-educated cohort yet. Last year the country churned out a record 9m graduates.
  • A pay cheque is no longer enough; young people want a sense of purpose. As labour-intensive manufacturing winds down, young migrants from the countryside are taking up gigs that give them more freedom in the booming informal sector.
  • In China this cohort has a generational identity: the jiulinghou, or “post-90s”, a shorthand term for those born between 1990 and 1999. They number 188m—more than the combined populations of Australia, Britain and Germany.
  • The jiulinghou are seen as apolitical, except in their naive and brash patriotism; concerned with getting ahead, but only to buy the latest iPhone. Many see them as materialistic and entitled, a generation of “little emperors” doted on by their parents.
  • When they feel insulted by foreign entities, be they K-pop bands or America’s National Basketball Association, millions clamour online for consumer boycotts that cow even mighty multinationals. Patriotic sentiment has long been strong. But increasingly youths do not question the regime’s claim that loving country and party are one and the same.
  • Despite pervasive censorship, they use China’s online networks to promote such causes as feminism, environmentalism and nationalism.
  • Students take obligatory courses on Marxism, nationalism and the doctrines of Mao; last year “Xi Jinping Thought” was added. This affects how they see the world. A survey in 2019 by China Youth Daily, a state organ, found that three in four of those born after 1995 think China is “not perfect, but always improving”.
  • “We are the jiulinghou,” the message read. “We are certainly not brain-dead!...In fact, we are passionate, we are rising and we are ready to take on responsibility.”
  • young people speak out for social causes. Many join volunteer groups or donate to charity. No generation has been more vocal in its support of LGBT and women’s rights. Students have backed factory workers trying to unionise, and staged silent street protests about climate change.
  • Young people do not intend to challenge the legitimacy of the ruling Communist Party. Their social liberalism has grown even as support for the party rises
  • The jiulinghou are comfortable with a rising, assertive China. The party knows how to play on this. It has hammered home that China stopped the spread of covid-19 within its borders as the West bungled its response. Spin doctors have not had to exert themselves on the calamitous failings of Donald Trump’s presidency. More overseas Chinese students are returning home, disillusioned with the West. Young pride feeds off a new worldly confidence.
  • China divides its generations by decades. The qilinghou (post-70s) are defined by childhoods after Mao’s death in 1976. The balinghou (post-80s) grew up as China reformed and opened to the world under Deng Xiaoping. It is often now argued that generations change every five years, or even every three—the talk is already of the linglinghou, most of whom are still in school. To speak of millennials, whose definition in the West is those born between 1981 and 1996, is to shoehorn four Chinese generations into one.
  • The gap is easy to grasp if you ask parents to recall their 20s. They mention jobs allocated by the party through their danwei, a government-controlled work unit.
  • The lives of jiulinghou share two features. One is that they began after the pro-democracy protests of 1989. The state relentlessly scrubs from the internet any reference to the bloody suppression of the Tiananmen protests.
  • The second feature is that those born since 1991 spent their late teens with Mr Xi in power. They might be called Generation Xi
  • This does not always describe the jiulinghou.
  • Yet not every young Chinese holds rosy views of the party. In Hong Kong, young protesters fighting for Western freedoms have made clear their fury at their erosion by the Beijing government. Tibetan and Uyghur youths seethe in silence as brutal state-led campaigns erase their cultures and languages
Javier E

Opinion | What Should Drive Biden's Foreign Policy? - The New York Times - 0 views

  • In May 1950, Hubert Humphrey, the firebrand liberal from Minnesota, took to the floor of the Senate to call for passage of a fair employment practices commission to root out systematic racial discrimination in hiring. “So long as men and women and children of color are discriminated against in the United States,” Senator Humphrey insisted, “the colored people of the world have the right to suspect our professed friendship for them.”
  • Figures like Humphrey, who came to be known as “Cold War liberals,” argued that the struggle against Soviet totalitarianism could be won only if the United States proved that democracies could deliver social justice more effectively than communism could
  • No fully established democracy has surrendered its norms more rapidly than the United States, which over the last decade has fallen from 22nd to 33rd in Freedom House’s annual Freedom in the World index
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • “The triumph of democracy and liberalism over fascism and autocracy created the free world,” Mr. Biden wrote earlier this year in an essay in Foreign Affairs laying out his worldview. “But this contest does not just define our past. It will define our future, as well.”
  • Now our situation is reversed. At a moment when the coronavirus pandemic has ravaged the economy and killed 400,000 people and counting, foreign policy feels like an afterthought; yet our failures at home contribute to democratic erosion abroad.
  • The Marshall Plan as well as later food aid programs constituted acts of global leadership. But so, too, was civil rights, which liberals regarded as the ultimate demonstration project for the moral capacities of democracy.
  • “If we wish to inspire the peoples of the world whose freedom is in jeopardy,” President Harry Truman said in his historic 1948 message to Congress proposing laws banning employment discrimination and lynching as well as segregation in interstate transport, “we must correct the remaining imperfections in our practice of democracy.”
  • “Lead” need not be a euphemism for “dominate.” Though we think of the Cold War as a series of military and diplomatic crises, liberals like Humphrey always understood it as a battle of ideas — a struggle over “the fundamental issue of man’s right to freedom,
  • To take only the most obvious and shameful example, the haplessness of President Trump’s response to the pandemic — and, if somewhat less egregiously, that of other Western nations — stands in glaring contrast to China’s success in both reducing deaths and restoring economic growth
  • Trump’s canting about “the China virus” and his bluster over China’s (genuinely unfair) trading practices only accentuate America’s weak position at a time when China is aggressively promoting its model of autocratic capitalism through trade, investment and cultural diplomacy.
  • A politics of democratic renewal would once again bind together domestic and foreign affairs. Mr. Biden has in fact argued that such a policy must begin with a reassertion of moral principle at home by banning torture and ending the gross mistreatment of migrants at our borders.
  • Joe Biden has every reason to emulate Harry Truman, another political lifer disdained by the party’s activist wing and admired for common sense and decency rather than vision.
  • The coronavirus response will pose the first test: The Biden Administration must demonstrate that democratic citizens, under wise leadership, can voluntarily choose to take difficult public health decisions that autocratic states impose on their people
  • There is every reason to fear that Mr. Biden’s agenda will be stalemated by Senate Republicans who calculate that their political success depends upon making a Biden presidency fail — as they did with President Barack Obama. If they do so, the consequences, as Humphrey warned, will not be limited to domestic affairs. The gap in prestige between a China growing in wealth and confidence under the iron control of President Xi Jinping and a fragmented, dispirited America will only grow larger.
  • “To avoid destruction the United States need only measure up to its own best traditions and prove itself worthy of preservation as a great nation. Surely, there was never a fairer test of national quality than this.”
kaylynfreeman

Biden's Executive Orders: President to Sign 3 Rolling Back Trump's Immigration Agenda -... - 0 views

  • WASHINGTON — President Biden plans to sign three executive orders on Tuesday aimed at further rolling back his predecessor’s assault on immigration and at reuniting migrant children who were separated from their families at the Mexican border, according to administration officials.
  • In one order, the president will direct the secretary of homeland security to lead a task force to try to unite several hundred families that remain separated under former President Donald J. Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy, which sought to discourage migration across the country’s southern border.
  • With two other orders, Mr. Biden will authorize a review of Mr. Trump’s immigration policies that limited asylum, stopped funding to foreign countries, made it more difficult to get green cards or be naturalized, and slowed down legal immigration into the United States.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The three orders help satisfy promises that Mr. Biden made on the campaign trail to reverse Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda. But they also underscore the difficulty that the new president faces in unraveling scores of individual policies and regulations.
katherineharron

Anita Hill says voters need to press 2020 Democrats on gender violence - CNNPolitics - 0 views

  • Social policy and law professor Anita Hill said Tuesday that voters should press Democratic presidential candidates on how they will tackle the issue of gender violence, arguing that little attention has been placed on the topic during this election cycle.
  • "We have been listening to presidential debates and I have been trying to keep track, but I haven't heard one question about gender violence posed to the candidates. That needs to be addressed," Hill said, speaking at Fortune's Most Powerful Women Summit in Washington. "I think this is something that we need to be raising awareness about. If you go to a town hall and you're in a primary state, I hope you'll raise your hand and ask the candidates what they're going to do about gender violence."
  • Kavanaugh was narrowly confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate last fall after Christine Blasey Ford, a California professor, testified before a Senate panel that he had sexually assaulted her while he was drunk at a party during their high school years -- an allegation Kavanaugh has vehemently denied.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Hill also weighed in Tuesday on the Trump administration's controversial "zero tolerance" immigration policy that led to the separation of migrant families at the US' southern border, saying that "it needs to be put in historical context for its real meaning in this country," adding that "family separation was a mainstay of slavery."
  • "You have two different uses for family separation: One was to dehumanize people, so that they could be treated like chattel during slavery. ... Secondly, take people away from their cultural roots. ... And then finally we have its use today in policy against immigrants, against asylum seekers to, I believe, shape the political identify of this country," she said.
anniina03

Trump Administration Confirms 1,556 More Family Separations | Time - 0 views

  • The Trump Administration revealed Thursday that an additional 1,556 children have been separated from their parents than previously reported, bringing the total number of family separations since July 2017 up to nearly 5,500. The new instances of family separation came to light after a judge ordered the Administration to deliver an accounting of every case.
  • The ACLU’s class-action lawsuit has now expanded to include the 1,556 families along with the original 2,800 who were separated during former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ Zero-Tolerance Policy.
  • The newly-disclosed cases deal with the period of July 1, 2017 through June 26, 2018, according to the ACLU — meaning many families were separated months before Sessions’ Zero-Tolerance Policy began on April 6, 2018. “There was a lot of public outcry over children who were separated during the Zero-Tolerance Policy, but this group of kids never really got that kind of public attention,” says Christie Turner, Deputy Director for Special Programs at Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), which is assisting in locating the families and providing them with legal services.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Now lawyers are taking on the challenge of locating the families using contact info provided by the government, though in many cases the affected parents may have already been deported (with or without their children). Lawyers say the contact information is old, making communication difficult.
  • An additional 1,090 families have been separated since the administration declared an end to family separations in June 2018.
  • a child is taken away because of a minor offense by the parent, including past traffic violations. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) maintains that it can separate a parent and child if the parent is referred for criminal prosecution.
« First ‹ Previous 241 - 260 of 296 Next › Last »
Showing 20 items per page