Author: Lance Garrison
Should the Biden Justice Department subject Mr. Biden’s opponent in the presidential race to a lengthy and damning trial just before the election?Some will argue yes, on the ground that the allegations against Mr. Trump go to the heart of American democracy and should be resolved in due course regardless of the political implications.Others will argue no, on the ground that it is an irreversible catastrophe for American democracy, as well as the Justice Department, for one presidential administration to use criminal law to attack the president’s opponent in a campaign. That’s especially true since the president’s central campaign theme…
Late last month, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky announced that he would leave his position as Republican leader after the November elections. He’ll depart as the longest-serving party leader in the Senate’s history. He is also the longest-serving senator in Kentucky history.There’s no question that McConnell is one of the most consequential politicians of his generation. This isn’t a compliment. McConnell is not consequential for what he accomplished as a legislator or legislative leader — he’s no Robert F. Wagner or Everett Dirksen. He’s consequential for what he’s done to degrade and diminish American democracy.McConnell, as the journalist Alec MacGillis…
It’s a riddle that economists have struggled to decipher. The U.S. economy seems robust on paper, yet Americans are dissatisfied with it. But hardly anyone seems to have paid much attention to the whirlwind experience we just lived through: We built a real social safety net in the United States and then abruptly ripped it apart.Take unemployment insurance. The CARES Act, passed in March 2020, included the largest increase in benefits and eligibility in American history. It offered people “a sense of relief,” said Francisco Díez, senior policy strategist for economic justice with the Center for Popular Democracy, which organized…
Produced by ‘The Ezra Klein Show’President Biden gave a raucous State of the Union speech last Thursday, offering his pitch for why he should be president for a second term. It’s the clearest picture we have yet of Biden’s campaign message for 2024. But while he listed off all kinds of proposals, it’s not as easy to parse what a second Biden term might actually look like. So I sat down with my editor Aaron Retica, who had a lot of questions for me about the speech itself and what Biden would be likely to accomplish if he got another…
What qualities make an effective president? What qualities make an effective president? “Consistency.” Nate, 39, Ariz., ind. “Being ableto listen.” Jeff, 54, N.C., Rep. “Collaborative.” Bekki, 39, Wis., ind. If we’ve seen an enduring trend from the Republican presidential primaries this winter, it’s that a sizable fraction of G.O.P. voters don’t want Donald Trump as their nominee again. Why is that? And what do these people — who made up 20 to 30 percent of primary voters in some states — think of the Republican Party and the issues facing the country? For our latest Times Opinion focus group, we…
Every time I write, as I did last week, that I don’t think anti-Zionism is necessarily antisemitic, I get emails from Jewish readers that are angry, disappointed or sometimes simply baffled. “Israel is the political entity through which the Jewish people exercises its natural right of self-determination and control over its own fate,” said one typical recent message. “How is singling out the Jewish people to deprive it of those rights not antisemitic?”To answer this question fully would take more than a single column, but I want to make a brief attempt, because lately, in reaction to the grotesque suffering…
On Thursday, Katie Britt, the junior senator from Alabama, delivered the Republican response to the State of the Union address. Her overwrought performance has been widely mocked; that’s OK for late-night TV, but I’m not going to join in that chorus.What I want to do instead is focus on the centerpiece of Britt’s remarks, a deeply misleading story about sex trafficking that she used to attack President Biden. Her use of the story — which turns out to have involved events in Mexico way back when George W. Bush was president — wasn’t technically a lie, since she didn’t explicitly…
In his State of the Union address last Thursday, President Biden said, “Where is it written that we can’t be the manufacturing capital of the world? We are. We will.”The next morning came the deflating news that U.S. manufacturing employment fell by 4,000 jobs in February. That doesn’t mean Biden was wrong. It does signal that he has taken on a difficult challenge.Accentuating the positive, Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers is calling attention to the fact that the manufacturing sector has done way better than it usually does after a recession. Manufacturing employment has increased 1.4 percent in the four…
March 11, 2024 – At-home medical diagnostic testing has exploded in recent years. NASDAQ reports that the market for at-home testing has reached a staggering $45.6 billion and will continue to grow at a rate of over 10% per year up to 2031. COVID-19 testing may have gotten the ball rolling, but new home tests for a variety of conditions are becoming widely available. Do-it-yourself genetic tests for everything from thyroid disease, to sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), to heart disease, and more are cutting-edge options, as are inflammation-detecting tests that may spot early signs of conditions like Alzheimer’s. Convenience is a major advantage when it comes to at-home…
To the Editor:Re “How to Teach Students About a Politicized Supreme Court,” by Jesse Wegman (Opinion, March 3):Mr. Wegman asserts that teaching constitutional law has relied on the belief that the Supreme Court is a “legitimate institution of governance” and its justices, “whatever their political backgrounds, care about getting the law right.”Perhaps it is because I am a political scientist teaching constitutional law and politics to undergraduates rather than a legal scholar teaching it to aspiring lawyers, but this premise suffers from a rosy reading of the past.From the very outset of the American republic, the Supreme Court has engaged…