To Vaccinate or Not? Vermont, w highest concentration of vaccinated people, and Alabama, state w lowest. In last 7 days Alabama recorded 901 COVID cases; Vt recorded 8. Alabama has 65 hospital admissions daily. Vermont? Zero. Alabama 41 deaths last week. Vermont? Zero.
When working on 2022 article about transgender athletes & elite sports, I called GLAAD. Their officials tried to tell me who I should NOT interview and that I should not "platform" tennis great and gay pioneer Martina Navratilova because her views ran counter to their line.
Last May and June, demonstrators in NYC were repeatedly penned, pepper sprayed and arrested for blocking streets late at night without much traffic. But you block major bridges and highways midday and no arrests, no towing of cars, nada?
Inside a Battle Over Race, Class and Power at Smith College. Tension between a student’s deeply felt sense of personal truth and facts that are at odds with it. My story:
"For reporter Donald McNeil to end his long career as a result of a single word, risks sending a chilling message. That the paper apparently altered its course ... as a result of public pressure is a further worrying signal. Pen America weighs in:
“There is no light at the end of the tunnel. This was not supposed to be my life” College Lineman Became a Doctor, Thousands of hits later, Dementia has Made Him Retire. He’s Only 42. My column:
Star climate physicist Dorian Abbot is denied a speech at MIT. Now an attempt to have him speak at UC Berkeley is blocked, causing another top climate physicist to resign
I am resigning as Director of the Berkeley Atmospheric Sciences Center (BASC)
@BerkeleyAtmo
. To reduce the odds of being mischaracterized, I want to explain my decision here.
"Seaver was the immortal, the forever young, so composed and so fiercely competitive and so analytical about his efforts." Tom Terrific, the Essential Met. My column:
So another NBA team, the LA LAKERS, announces that it tested all of its millionaires for the virus. This is a continuing outrage as each of those tests is one taken away from an EMT, a Doctor, a Nurse, a seriously ill woman or man. Sports reporters need to wake up to this
Journalism is meant to ask difficult and discomforting questions, and to question institutions, including the medical establishment. I am very proud to work at a place that publishes the work of
@emilybazelon
, Katie Baker, Azeen Ghoryashi,
@mega2e
and
@DouthatNYT
News at ESPN: LeBron James and the Los Angeles Dodgers have teamed up to turn Dodger Stadium into a polling place for the November general election.
Story:
America has fought and won World Wars. The USA is the most powerful economic power in the world. And we cannot produce testing kits and ventilators with a two month head start? Unconscionable
Performative? One need not sanction Israel/Hamas War tactics to note absurdity of his claim: Syria: 150k civilians killed; Yemen: 150k killed; Afghanistan: 30k killed ; Ethiopia 150k; Congo: Many tens of thousands killed. defeat of ISIS at Mosul: At least 10k civilians killed
“We are witnessing a killing of civilians that is unparalleled and unprecedented in any conflict since I have been Secretary General”- UN chief
@antonioguterres
Says the $251k Deputy Mayor for Communications who never returned a phone call and did not reach out in two months of reporting, Oh, & whose press office declined to provide a single Administration official to interview . Otherwise, I hear ya
.
@NYCMayor
often likes to say NYC has 8.3 million New Yorkers, but 35 million opinions.
Wondering where all those opinions were in this piece,
@powellAtlantic
? 🤷♂️
But glad you were able to muster the strength to include one entire complimentary quote in a 6,300-word piece.
From the National Political Committee: DSA condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and demands immediate diplomacy and de-escalation to resolve this crisis. 1/3
I now know 7 people in NYC who have all symptoms of Coronavirus. Precisely one of them has been tested and found positive. That is to define flying blind
"Implicit was that it was being used for non-medical" purposes, Doctor says of lower ward of al-Shifa hospital. Warned he could be shot if he went there
British doctor who worked at al-Shifa hospital says that a lower ward leading to a basement was off limits to medical staff. Clear implication was that it was under the control of Hamas, which struck fear in the hearts of everyone else.
NEW: Cops who ignore the NY mask mandate will now face unspecified “disciplinary action,” according to a new NYPD memo.
The stern warning follows pressure from the public, lawmakers — and months of city officials downplaying the issue.
@juliakmarsh
& me
U.S. Grant was declared a slaveholder last night and his statue toppled in Ohio. There was truth there; he owned a slave for two years. But history and human understanding suffered. Grants views evolved over the course of a bloody war to end slavery. By 1863 he
#thread
In which prominent intellectuals at Columbia U retreat to conditional tense to assert “right” to slaughter civilians not least children, infants and the like. “One could regard the events of October 7th …as an occupied people exercising a right to resist”
What Would Hamas Do If It Could Do Whatever It Wanted? Kill Jews. “It is … a dereliction of responsibility on the part of progressives not to try to understand the goals and beliefs of Islamist totalitarian movements.”
@JeffreyGoldberg
:
Red Splish-Splash.
@jimgeraghty
with autopsy: "I don’t want to hear another Republican claim he stands for silent majority. As I warned in Sept, if your silent majority doesn’t show up to vote ... it doesn’t have much say in how this country is governed":
This is not just ethically obtuse it is inaccurate. Hispanic- and Asian-Americans have longer lifespans than white Americans. And females of all races outlive males of all races.
NYC seeing daunting explosion in Covid Infection. BUT -- deaths for vaccinated very low for months now and not trending up. Hospitalizations also remaining very low for vaxxed;
A young friend, a nurse, writes from Long Beach, CA: Running out of High Flow Oxygen and Ventilators, ICU filled. Every woman on Labor floor has Covid-19. Thank you to all who insisted 'their' travel, 'their' refusal to wear masks, 'their' holiday dinner was about Personal Rights
So important for middle class New Yorkers -- particularly those who are drawing income -- to continue paying those who clean our houses, walk dogs and care for our kids even as they are quarantined. That's our side of the social compact
Dinkins rebuilt neighborhoods, gave poor children after school centers and expanded police force. 11 years Ago Rudy Giuliani launched a patented scabrous attacks on the former mayor, and I looked at his mayoralty and found better than many realized:
“I’m mystified when I hear so many of our 20-something news assistants prefer to work from home. At that age I never could have latched onto so many breaking stories if I hadn’t raised my hand and said, “I’ll go.” Maureen Dowd w Requiem for the Newsroom
Mitchell Katz, head of NYC’s public hospitals, opposed shutting down city in March, telling De Blasio: “The good thing is greater than 99 percent will recover without harm.” Now
@NYCMayor
has put him in charge of Virus Response
What Happens When a Poor State Guts Its Public University . My story on a Flagship State University and working class student aspirations and faculty careers tossed aside - The Atlantic
Want to Address Global Warming? Reconsider shuttering Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, which provides 8 % of California's carbon free electricity. Two Former Obama Energy Secretaries make the case:
NYC, was a city of 7 million and had 2,262 homicides in 1990. NYC now has 8.4 million pop. and 319 last year. Even this year, with a disturbing rise in shootings and homicides, is not remotely close to 1990.
DeBlasio has undone thirty years of progress toward making NYC one of the safest cities on earth. These lives being snuffed out on his watch are blood on his hands.
“Academia’s campaign to disregard or neglect the classics is a sign of spiritual decay, moral decline and a deep intellectual narrowness” Cornel West on Howard University’s removal of classics as a spiritual catastrophe - The Washington Post
So 24 years without once voting for mayor means Andrew Yang passed on Giuliani/Messinger, three Michael Bloomberg elections and two de Blasio. But this oh so ambitious tik tok dude wants to be mayor because .. of course he does
Portland Mayor Disbands Gun Violence Police unit and Shootings and Homicides Spiral. “Without a doubt, I think it is a possibility that my nephew could still be alive if unit was not dissolved,” says Uncle.
@ap
:
"I thought scientists would not get on board with the denial-of-free-speech movement,” said evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne. “I was absolutely wrong, 100 percent so.” M.I.T.’s Decision to cancel speech by top Physicist ripples outward. My story:
I read the now-censored Guernica essay by Israeli writer and translator
@joannachen1
and it's beautiful and humane and achingly sad. If THIS qualifies as cause for staff resignations and censoring our culture is deeply damaged:
I subscribe to a # of substacks and enjoy em. With just a single exception, however, all would be improved by cutting words by one-third, often by half. Is the Substack an Inadvertent Homage to the Missing Editor?
Haley’s comments are more concerned about American domestic politics and attacking NYT. However, the mayor of Gaza is not a Hamas appointee nor a Hamas member
Oh, the Stories Hubie Brown Can Tell. “This is going all over the world, 33 million people listening in China and, what, you want to make an ass out of yourself and not be prepared?” he said. “Stop it already.” My column:
Summer in Neuva York. Someone figured it was a great idea to ride their motorcycle down to the platform of the 42nd Street subway. Says cop: “Man, I am just trying to figure how to get it out of here”
Smart, unpretentious and blessed with a great sense of humor: A Journalist's Holy Trinity. Journalist Alan Finder, 72, of Ridgewood, dies of coronavirus disease via
@northjersey
Jerrold Nadler (age 74) is about to faceoff with Carolyn Maloney (age 76). Both have been in congress 30 years. Wild thought but wonder if there's any New Yorker born after 1948 who harbors congressional ambitions?
I rode this past weekend through a Harlem neighborhood rebuilt from rubble by David Dinkins. Libraries kept open, SROs created for homeless. A mayor with flaws but at New York’s Nadir, He Gave the City the ‘Freedom to Imagine’ . My essay:
Brooklyn’s streets are swamped with cars, Horns, the middle finger salute and truly reckless driving cars . All these over caffeinated folks need to get back on subways and buses and oh yes, Congestion Pricing now, please
Reporter: “It’s an action that you say they have taken, but you have shown no evidence to confirm that. [...] This is like - crisis actors? Really? This is like Alex Jones territory you’re getting into now.”
Must-watch exchange between
@APDiploWriter
Matt Lee and
@StateDeptSpox
.
Personal news: My book on the great Navajo Nation and some remarkable young men -- "Canyon Dreams" (now in paperback -- is the basis for a Netflix movie w LeBron James as executive producer and Sydney Freeland as director:
@powellAtlantic
In 2020, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center lead a cluster hire—noting its commitment "to ensuring that all candidates hired share our commitment to diversity, antiracism, and inclusion."
The guidelines for writing a DEI statement notes that that might including…
"How many people cheering on Hamas as noble freedom fighters could seriously imagine pumping fists while watching men on their way to murder Jewish teenagers? The abstract, Latinate air of the word decolonization ... a fig leaf"
@JohnHMcWhorter
: .
Not sure how a team — the Sixers — is supposed to win a playoff series when its point guard is afraid to handle the ball past half-court and drives never
My childhood best friend was the son of refugees from the Holocaust. My wife’s grandparents fled impoverished southern Italy. My Flatbush and East Flatbush are reborn thanks to West Indians. Brave Afghans fleeing medievalists want to replenish our city? Welcome
I am a New Yorker born and bred, and I have ridden subways forever. I refer to the Q train as my reading room. The vast majority of riders pay fares and are law abiding. To pretend crime and disorder are vanishingly rare and not problems is a terrible condescension.
"A teachable moment" is such a lovely phrase. Students jumped and beat up a black uniformed security guard and rampaged through the halls as a Jewish teacher hid behind locked doors. De-escalation training perhaps falls a tad short?
These organizations will play a crucial role in contributing to the broader mission of de-escalation and creating teachable moments from this challenging situation.
For the first time, Trump’s lawyers say he dictated his son’s response to NYT over Russian lawyer meeting. They call the statement “short but accurate.”
“His face was in your windshield, Jason. Think about that,” a detective told South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg . He faces criminal charges, impeachment over fatal car incident - The Washington Post
University of Chicago Chancellor Robert Zimmer resigns from advisory board to fledgling University of Austin, saying ‘the new university made a number of statements about higher education in general, largely quite critical, that diverged very significantly from my own views.’
Walked to vote at 5:40 a.m. and found a line already around the block in Flatbush, nurses, orderlies, bus drivers and retirees waiting under a near full moon. Something deeply moving about democracy ...
Today the WSJ says its cutting its city report. This is NOT a lament about today's NYC reporters, whose talent, passion and intelligence is every bit the match of past generations. They've done a service even as journalism's financial roof has fallen in. But what's lost
#thread
Mom, 54, dies on floor. “We never thought it was COVID,” the daughter said said. “We didn’t even realize she had it.” As coronavirus surges, Houston confronts its hidden toll: People dying at home. Excellent
@Mike_Hixenbaugh
@charlesornstein
: via
@nbcnews
Worth recalling there was a ceasefire in place, agreed to in May 2023. And work permits too. It was all smashed when Hamas slaughtered at least 1,200 Israelis
This, again, did not absolve Grant of the racism and atavism that haunt too many still. It left him that familiar figure, a flawed hero, and man of his time, admirable and flinch-worthy, and worth reckoning with. I'd pull that statue up again ...
There is quite honestly no one I respect more in this journalism world than
@jimdwyernyt
. He is the best of us, rigorous and tough and moral and with a heart overflowing for this world and our city. Heart broken at his passing
“What is glaringly absent from these tribunals? There is no recognition of even the remotest possibility that the person may be wrongfully accused, The Left Continues to Destroy Itself and Others With Evidence-Free Destruction
@ggreenwald
A reminder of the Problems for Student Rights & Due Process created by Obama Era Title IX rules. Triple Jeopardy in College Sexual Assault Case Ends an N.F.L. Career
This Working Man Was Ready to Retire. But the Virus Took Him. A Tale of A Block and Those Fighting to Hold It together in Hazleton, Pa. a working class city in the Poconos. I spent 5 days there and this is their story:.
Andrew Yang never bothered voting in mayoral election, left Manhattan to wait out pandemic peak in Hudson Valley. And signature idea of national campaign — a universal basic income — isn’t relevant.
@harrysiegel
peers into Donut Hole that is Yang
Sundance Liked Her Documentary, ‘Jihad Rehab,’ Until Muslim Critics Didn’t. My story on the Identity and Authorship wars roiling the Documentary World
@powellnyt
:
Black teenage boy hears far too many slurs and reacts. White teenage girl says something offensive but means no ill. And virtually all adults in positions of power here behave badly and/or cowardly.
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) poses a very helpful hypothetical showing tremendous brainpower:
“Can you imagine if [Putin] went into France? Would they do anything to put up a fight? Probably not.”
Jim Bouton RIP. Ball Four read revelatory to me as a teenager, almost like Hunter S Thompson on politics.
@TylerKepner
did a nice story on him a couple years back about his struggle with dementia