Social Responsibility

I know you have a lot on your mind, people. But if you’ve got a few minutes to spare, let’s talk about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.Come on. It’s either him or Jim Jordan.Perhaps you’ve heard that Kennedy is now running for president as a third-party candidate. Meaning that he’s hoping to appeal to voters who aren’t satisfied with the two probable major party nominees.These dissatisfied voters would include, I guess, just about everybody. That’s the problem with third-party candidates: Nobody really expects them to win, so voters feel they can express their dissatisfaction without taking any real responsibility.But in our…

A State Department official in the bureau that oversees arms transfers resigned this week in protest of the Biden administration’s decision to continue sending weapons and ammunition to Israel as it lays siege to Gaza in its war with Hamas.In his resignation letter, Josh Paul, who has been the director of congressional and public affairs for the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs for over 11 years, said the Biden administration’s “blind support for one side” was leading to policy decisions that were “shortsighted, destructive, unjust and contradictory to the very values we publicly espouse.”“The response Israel is taking, and…

House Republicans spent Thursday fighting among themselves in closed-door meetings, trading blame and insults and casting about for a way forward as they failed again to coalesce around a speaker candidate.It was a day of uncertainty and whiplash on Capitol Hill, and the House remained paralyzed as war raged overseas and a government shutdown grew near. House members were unable to act on even the most basic of legislation while President Biden prepared to request a $100 billion emergency national security spending package that included aid for Israel and Ukraine and would need congressional approval.By Thursday evening, Representative Jim Jordan…

Follow live coverage of President Biden’s speech on Israel, Ukraine and other crises.President Biden will travel to Israel on Wednesday to show solidarity with America’s closest ally in the Middle East, in a wartime trip to bolster the country’s resolve to eradicate Hamas but also to urge limits on what seems bound to be a casualty-filled ground invasion of the Gaza Strip.It will be a trip fraught with risks, both political and physical.The White House announced the visit on Monday evening after Mr. Biden met with his top intelligence officials and his closest advisers in the Oval Office to debate…

Last week, Exxon Mobil agreed to buy Pioneer Natural Resources for $59.5 billion, in a move widely expected to set off a wave of consolidation throughout the oil sector. Combined, Exxon and Pioneer would be the largest producer of oil and natural gas in the Permian Basin, the field that produces more than 40 percent of America’s oil. If the deal goes through, other companies like Chevron could soon follow suit, buying up smaller companies as they come under pressure from investors to match Exxon’s size.That consolidation would undermine democracy in the United States, mislead investors and weaken market competition.…

The green carpet is gone. Dark wood shelves are no longer in favor.At many Barnes & Noble stores, the green-striped wallpaper and hunter-green walls have been scraped away and painted over in sandy shades of white and pink as the nation’s biggest brick-and-mortar bookseller pursues, in fits and starts, a back-to-basics, books-first strategy.Other stores will have a different look. The design of a new location in Brooklyn reveals the polished concrete floors from its past life as a Barneys New York. A Barnes & Noble recently opened in California with cerulean walls, and an experiment in robin’s egg blue is…

[Update: Videos show fatal encounter.]A man who was wrongfully convicted and spent more than 16 years in prison before being released in 2020 was fatally shot on Monday by a sheriff’s deputy in Georgia during a traffic stop, the authorities said.The Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which is conducting an independent investigation of the shooting in Camden County, identified the man, who was Black, as Leonard Allan Cure, 53.Mr. Cure was the first person exonerated by the Broward State Attorney’s Office Conviction Review Unit. His case was also represented by the Innocence Project of Florida.The bureau said in a news release…

No problem in the American system at this moment is as acute and disruptive as the one posed by the Republican Party.Yes, of course, there are any number of structural problems facing American politics.Our system of elections — first-past-the-post voting, the Electoral College, single-member districts and partisan gerrymandering — feeds into and amplifies our partisan and ideological polarization. Our system of federalism and dual sovereignty between state and national government allows for laboratories of autocracy as much as testing grounds for democracy. Our counter-majoritarian institutions and supermajority rules stymie democratic majorities and turn stability into stasis, putting terrible stress on…