Social Responsibility

Twenty years ago, the Republican Party started what may have been the most lifesaving government initiative in modern history. It turned the tide of AIDS around the world and has saved 25 million lives so far — equivalent to the entire population of Australia.So it’s a reflection of the madness that has infected the Republican Party that today some conservatives are repudiating perhaps the best thing they ever did and battling the reauthorization of this program.PEPFAR, which stands for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, has a legislative authorization that expires at the end of this month. And Republicans…

When I first heard that The New Yorker had published an exposé on the veracity of the stand-up comedy of Hasan Minhaj, I rolled my eyes.We’re fact-checking jokes now? Come on. Comedy is an art, not an op-ed. And honesty has always struck me as the most overrated virtue in comedy. But Clare Malone’s reporting in the piece is scrupulous and fair, if a little prosecutorial in its focus. It presents more questions than answers and should inspire some rethinking of the muddy relationship between comedy and truth.Digging into his last two specials, Malone reveals Hasan Minhaj as a comic…

The Senate confirmed Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. of the Air Force on Wednesday as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, circumventing Senator Tommy Tuberville’s blockade of Pentagon promotions.The vote was 83 to 11, and was expected to be followed by confirmations of the Marine Corps and Army chiefs, which also have been held up for months by Mr. Tuberville, an Alabama Republican, over the Defense Department’s abortion-access policies.General Brown is set to succeed Army Gen. Mark A. Milley when he steps down as Joint Chiefs chairman at the end of the month.The Democratic majority leader, Senator Chuck Schumer…

This is the shortest column I’ve ever written — because it doesn’t take long to get things in focus:President Biden, you are meeting Wednesday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, for the first time since he returned to office in December. He’s formed the most extreme government in Israel’s history and yet your administration is considering forging a complex partnership with his coalition and Saudi Arabia. There are enormous potential benefits and risks for the United States. I hope you won’t proceed without getting satisfactory answers from Netanyahu on three key questions — so we know just what Israel,…

Labor regulators issued a ruling on Tuesday that makes it more likely for workers to be considered employees rather than contractors under federal law.Overturning a ruling issued when the board was under Republican control, the decision effectively increases the number of workers — like drivers, construction workers or janitors — who have a federally protected right to unionize or take other collective action, such as protesting unsafe working conditions.The ruling ensures that “workers who seek to organize or exercise their rights under the National Labor Relations Act are not improperly excluded from its protections,” said a statement by Lauren McFerran,…

Teachers were used to seeing middle schoolers sleeping outside the building first thing in the morning in cars they drove without licenses after coming directly from the overnight shift. But no one could remember a student getting as badly hurt as Marcos, and they worried about who might be next. Applegate sometimes listened to a police scanner at night and wondered if the emergencies involved her students. Once, firefighters responded to a call in which a Perdue sanitation worker was hoisted 20 feet in the air by a conveyor belt. They had to take him out of the factory with…

Hunter, well, you know, sui generis. Hunter, in fact, was as accurate a reporter as I’ve ever had, but it’s just that his stories went beyond facts, into areas of the truth and spirituality and pharmacology that none of us are really able to judge on our own. My mission always, journalistically speaking, was the truth is the most important thing. As we all know now, if somebody really wants to hoax you, there’s very little you can do about it. Except have the kind of hypervigilance that would mean you could probably publish nothing.So almost a decade later, there…

That new formula will gradually replace the original, as the couple cautiously reopens Ample Hills stores in Manhattan and Queens, and a new production facility and scoop shop in Industry City in Brooklyn. So far, they have no expansion plans beyond New York City. “We said yes one too many times,” Mr. Smith said.Will their attempt at a second act go smoother than the first?Their plan has a recent precedent: Last year, the Crumbs founders, Mia and Jason Bauer, bought back their brand for $300 and reinvented it as a supermarket and direct-to-consumer operation, with no stores. Their cupcakes and cookie jars are…