The Israeli-Palestinian issue goes back nearly a century when Britain, during World War I, pledged to establish a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine under the Balfour Declaration. British troops took control of the territory from the Ottoman Empire at the end of October 1917. Large-scale Jewish migration to Palestine began, accelerated by Jewish…
Read More Israeli-Palestinian ConflictThe sovereign citizen movement is a loose grouping of primarily American litigants, activists, tax protesters, financial scheme promoters, and conspiracy theorists, who claim to be answerable only to their particular interpretations of the common law and to not be subject to any government statutes or proceedings unless they consent to them. The sovereign citizen movement is one of the main contemporary…
Read More Do You Know What the Sovereign Citizen Movement Is?“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer – a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.“ Frederick Douglass Every year on this day I make an assessment, from my own perspective, of how much…
Read More 4th of July thoughtsExpert conversations to catch up on from The Brookings Brief Inflation hits a 40-year high. New Consumer Price Index data show that inflation rose to a whopping 8.6% in May. On Twitter Spaces, David Wessel, Justin Wolfers, Jason Furman, and Wendy Edelberg discuss the latest numbers and what might come next. Prefer to read? This summary outlines five key points from the speakers. …
Read More Bits and PiecesBY SUSAN FREDERICK-GRAY JUNE 6, 2022 [Are you a UU? Let me know…] The Public Religion Research Institute recently highlighted an important statistic: nearly all Unitarian Universalists (97 percent) support nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQIA+ people. It’s a similar story for reproductive rights—according to the Pew Research Center, 90 percent of Unitarian Universalists (UUs) support keeping abortion legal in all or…
Read More TRANSPHOBIC AND ANTI-ABORTION POLICIES ARE A DIRECT THREAT TO MY RELIGIOUS FREEDOMBY ANNIKA BROCKSCHMIDT MAY 16, 2022 This trailer for Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s new documentary The End of Men has drawn a lot of mockery online—especially when it became clear that the device covering the genitals isn’t a glowing Covid test, but that the naked man standing on a pile of stones is in fact bathing his testicles in UV light—a…
Read More LAUGH AT TUCKER CARLSON’S TANNING TESTICLES DOC ALL YOU WANT, BUT THE BULGING MUSCLES AND POTENT SPERM IMAGERY IS A FASCIST DREAMWhile they have varying backgrounds and experiences, a majority of Black Americans (76%) say being Black is extremely or very important to how they think about themselves. A significant share says that when something happens to Black people in their local communities, across the nation or around the globe, it affects what happens in their own lives.…
Read More Race is central to identity for Black Americans and affects how they connect with each otherBlair Levin Monday, April 18, 2022 Conventional wisdom holds that last year’s bipartisan passage of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) reflects the tradition of both parties wanting to deliver better roads and bridges—with nothing new to tell us about making progress elsewhere in our polarized, partisan environment. If anything, infrastructure is the exception that (barely)…
Read More Broadband bipartisanship: How did it happen and will it continue?Health Care — GOP preps for Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade BY PETER SULLIVAN, NATHANIEL WEIXEL AND JOSEPH CHOI – 04/12/22 Republicans are plotting out their messaging strategy in case the Supreme Court overturns the landmark Roe v. Wade decision authorizing abortion rights. The GOP strategy is to lead with science-based arguments and portray those in favor of abortion rights as extremists. The…
Read More GOP Preps for Supreme Court Ruling on Roe v. WadeAlex Henderson April 04, 2022 But according to researchers David E. Brockman and Joshua L. Kalla, Fox News viewers developed better critical thinking skills when exposed to CNN. Brockman and Kalla, journalist Sravasti Dasgupta reports in The Independent, conducted an experiment in September 2020 and published the results in late March. According to Dasgupta, the experiment, “found…
Read More Fox News viewers experienced ‘changes in attitudes’ after watching CNN for 30 days: studyThe Economist Brookings The Guardian Center for American Progress Wall Street Journal Council on Foreign Relations The New Yorker Cato New Republic Bloomberg (video) Foreign policy think tanks by political orientation
Read More Perspectives on UkraineDavid A. Love | Mar 4, 2022 There is a saying that when you’re Black, you must work twice as hard to get half the credit. This is most certainly true, and the predictable yet outrageous white conservative attacks on Joe Biden’s Supreme Court pick, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, is a case in point. Judge Brown Jackson is more…
Read More Dear Tucker Carlson: Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is more qualified than some of the white men who served on the Supreme CourtCOVID-19 since 2/29/2020 USA CASES 79,305,507 USA DEATHS 959,590 USA fully vaccinated 216,204,455 or 65% In the spring of 2020, the areas recording the greatest numbers of COVID-19 deaths were much more likely to vote Democratic than Republican. But by fall 2020, the pattern had reversed: Counties that voted for former President Donald Trump over President Joe…
The changing political geography of COVID-19 over the last two years " class="entry-more-link">Read More The changing political geography of COVID-19 over the last two years“I need ammunition, not a ride” — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy refusing the US’s offer to get him out of Kyiv. This is the largest attack in Europe since World War II. But by invading a sovereign country in a move reminiscent of the 1939 invasion of Czechoslovakia, Putin has united most of the world against him. And…
Read More Putin’s attack on Ukraine echoes Hitler’s takeover of CzechoslovakiaThe value of traditional education can vary widely across the country. While a college degree has long been viewed as a critical step toward the American dream, growing costs have led many students to reconsider the return-on-investment of higher education. Meanwhile, local economies and individual circumstances can push others toward learning a trade or entering…
Read More Least educated counties state by state