Reading archive 2021-03-31

What’s in Biden’s $2 trillion jobs and infrastructure plan?: The proposal, which includes a major focus on climate change, could lay the groundwork for the president’s economic agenda

New York man charged with hate crime in Asian American attack that bystanders watched without helping

‘Healing’ crystals are having a pandemic moment. But science says they’re just pretty stones.

The ‘brown gold’ that falls from pine trees in North Carolina

Reading archive 2021-03-30

A teacher forgot to exit a Zoom call with a student. That’s when her racist rant started, his family says.

Rep. Matt Gaetz faces Justice Dept. investigation over alleged relationship with teen girl

A Black Lives Matter activist exposed the role two local police officers played in the Capitol insurrection. Their small town rapidly took sides.

Reading archive 2021-03-29

When every new dollar goes to old debt, families wonder whether stimulus will end poverty

GOP candidate from New Jersey accused of pandering after he transforms into cowboy for Texas run

He said he was going to watch cartoons. Instead, he opened his dad’s gun safe.: Every day in America, kids get their hands on lethal weapons, with disastrous consequences

Reading archive 2021-03-26

Not a single reporter at Biden’s first presidential news conference asked about the pandemic

The migrant ‘surge’ at the U.S. southern border is actually a predictable pattern.: Evidence reveals the usual seasonal bump — plus some of the people who waited during the pandemic

Reading archive 2021-03-25

Behind the delightful success of Tag Team’s hit commercial with Geico How a classic tune and the hip-hop capital of the world brought the ad to life

Korean American store owner had nose broken in racist attack, family says: ‘They did it because we are Asian’

Southwest pilot on hot mic goes on expletive-laden rant against the Bay Area

Her ancestors were Georgetown’s slaves. Now, at age 63, she’s enrolled there — as a college freshman

Opinion: Biden’s Trumanesque foreign policy [ed. note: George F. Will]

Reading archive 2021-03-24

National Guard troops ambushed at gunpoint while transporting coronavirus vaccine, police say

Reading archive 2021-03-23

Documentaries are changing public opinion about celebrities — with consequences even the filmmakers didn’t expect

In federal lawsuit, James Huntsman, of prominent Utah family, accuses Mormon Church of fraud

Trump, My Dad and the Rightward Shift of Latino Men: Why are Latino men moving away from Democrats? And how can liberals win them back? For me, it’s a topic that hits close to home.

Reading archive 2021-03-22

AstraZeneca’s U.S. trial shows coronavirus vaccine is 79 percent effective

Preachers and their $5,000 sneakers: Why one man started an Instagram account showing churches’ wealth - "In recent years, West has helped to bring merchandise into churches with his creation of 'Sunday Service,' eventually selling $50 socks that said 'Jesus Walks' and $225 crewneck sweatshirts with 'Holy Spirit' on the front. Many megachurches began follow, developing their own merch with streetwear elements."

Where the U.S. and China go from here

‘It’s not a local issue anymore’: D.C. statehood moves from political fringe to the center of the national Democratic agenda

The rioter next door: How the Dallas suburbs spawned domestic extremists

Bowser, advocates make the case for D.C. statehood at House committee hearing

Reading archive 2021-03-18

F-35 in the crosshairs: Despite criticism, America needs the fighter jet

Reading archive 2021-03-17

Ghislaine Maxwell’s tawdry fall from grace — and her new PR push

China scrubs evidence of Xinjiang clampdown amid ‘genocide’ debate

The Trump-Tucker cold war has begun

Tai confirmed as top U.S. trade negotiator: Hill veteran will be first woman of color to hold the Cabinet-level post

American students say they were wrongfully detained and roughed up by plainclothes police in China

Saving the West’s most iconic cactus from climate change: A warming world means an invasive grass is threatening the famous saguaro

Reading archive 2021-03-16

America’s anti-democratic Senate, by the numbers: If the United States chose its leaders in free and fair elections, Republicans would be firmly out of power.

Republican attorneys general threaten key element of the $1.9 trillion stimulus: The GOP officials are asking the Biden administration to clarify a $350 billion program to help cities, counties and states in financial need

Reading archive 2021-03-15

In Japan, top Biden administration officials attempt to set the tone on China

United States and Iran warily circle each other over reactivating nuclear deal

Newly released documents shed light on 1983 nuclear war scare with Soviets

Reading archive 2021-03-13

The bizarre tale of the world's last lost tourist, who thought Maine was San Francisco

Reading archive 2021-03-12

Stacey Dash went from ’90s movie star to Fox News pundit. Now, she’s apologizing for being ‘prideful and angry’

California man gets 212 years after drowning his sons for insurance money: ‘A greedy and brutal killer’

Lauren Boebert’s tall tale about a man’s death that led her to pack heat

A pipe bomb ‘mutilated’ a man. A love triangle among ‘live action role players’ was allegedly the motive.

Two states tax some drivers by the mile. Many more want to give it a try.: The approach is more complex than taxing gasoline usage and faces opposition from environmentalists who say it favors gas-guzzling SUVs and trucks

They’re worried their mom is becoming a conspiracy theorist. She thinks they’re the ones living in a fantasy world.: A family struggles with truth and trust in a country divided by disinformation.

A case of bad timing: Eligible for the vaccine, or close to it, they got the coronavirus instead

Reading archive 2021-03-11

THE LAST SHOW 27: entertainers on the disbelief and despair that took over when covid-19 shut down their world

With Trump gone, QAnon groups focus fury on attacking coronavirus vaccines: QAnon is flourishing on Telegram chat groups even after purges on Facebook, Twitter and others

The leaked U.S. plan to end the war in Afghanistan

Georgetown Law professor terminated after ‘reprehensible’ comments about Black students

Reading archive 2021-03-10

How Neopets Predicted the Future of the Social Internet: Twenty years before Reddit users waged war against Wall Street, Neopets users led their own stock market revolution. It wasn’t the only way in which the site offered a glimpse of our online experience to come.

Reading archive 2021-03-09

Barred from marrying by the rabbis, Israelis find a pandemic workaround — in Utah

Pastor says women may not be ‘epic trophy wife’ but should be thin for their husbands. He’s now on leave.

Amazon fights aggressively to defeat union drive in Alabama, fearing a coming wave: Amazon’s relentless push to beat back a union drive among warehouse workers mirrors the company’s past efforts to oppose unions in Seattle, New York, Canada and the United Kingdom

Brood X cicadas are about to put on one of the wildest shows in nature. And D.C. is the main stage.: “We are at the epicenter of an event that happens nowhere else on the planet,” an entomologist said. "It blows your mind.”

Biden administration backs nation’s biggest wind farm off Martha’s Vineyard: Once blocked by some waterfront landowners, offshore wind power now enjoys broad support

Relief bill is most significant legislation for Black farmers since Civil Rights Act, experts say: $5 billion would go to farmers of color, who have lost 90 percent of their land over the past century because of systemic discrimination and a cycle of debt

Bible teacher Beth Moore, Trump critic and advocate for sexual abuse victims, splits with Southern Baptist Convention

Reading archive 2021-03-05

State Department aide appointed by Trump stormed the Capitol, beat police with a riot shield, FBI says

Pope Francis lands in Baghdad, beginning the first-ever papal trip to Iraq

China needs a baby boom to avert a demographic crisis. Small steps won’t be enough.

David Brooks of New York Times criticized for undisclosed financial ties to project he praised

Dallas hitmen kidnapped and killed two people, authorities said. A police officer allegedly hired them to do it.

Opinion: There can be no racial equity in D.C. when Black and Brown families are being displaced

The Demise and Potential Revival of the American Chestnut: Before a disastrous blight, the American chestnut was a keystone species in eastern forests. Could genetic engineering help bring it back?

Reading archive 2021-03-04

The Republican grievance perpetual motion machine

Democrats’ Only Chance to Stop the GOP Assault on Voting Rights: If the party doesn’t pass new protections, it could lose the House, Senate, and White House within the next four years.

An officer took a 14-year-old girl to get a rape kit. Then, he groomed her and raped her, lawsuit says.

N.J. man allegedly carved a QAnon hashtag into a centuries-old stone at ‘America’s Stonehenge’

Meghan says royal family can’t expect her silence if palace is ‘perpetuating falsehoods’

In Trump probe, Manhattan district attorney puts pressure on his longtime chief financial officer

N.C. Republicans censured their senior senator for voting against Trump. But they are silent on Rep. Madison Cawthorn.

Chris Cuomo’s ratings soared when he interviewed his brother last spring. Now that’s off-limits.

‘I...really struggled through this one’: A Republican senator chose history over oil and gas: Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voted to confirm Rep. Deb Haaland’s nomination as the first Native American interior secretary.

How covid hastened the decline and fall of the U.S.-China relationship - "Beijing’s efforts from the very start of the crisis to hide information, silence whistleblowers, put out false data and thwart any real outside investigation are too extensive to fully recount. But the highlights are enough to show that the Chinese government’s actions were both reckless and deliberate — and exacerbated the situation in those early weeks of the crisis.

...

"For those who had studied China’s actions during the SARS crisis, these tactics were no surprise — in fact, they were predictable. The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) paranoia, defensiveness and overall lack of concern for things such as truth and transparency are part of its character. But now, for the first time, those deficiencies threatened to kill thousands of Americans.

...

"Trump continued to play down the virus’s severity at home. Pottinger’s and Navarro’s pleas to Trump to take the pandemic more seriously might have had an impact were it not for another voice in Trump’s ear — that of Xi Jinping’s.

...

"In the conversation, the official said, Xi told Trump he opposed the decision to close U.S. borders to flights from China. Trump asked Xi to allow CDC officials into Wuhan, which by that point had been locked down. Xi demurred and asked Trump not to take any more actions that would create further panic, in essence asking him to play down the threat. Xi also told Trump that China had the coronavirus outbreak under control, that the virus was not a threat to the outside world, and that the virus was sensitive to temperature and therefore would likely go away when the weather got warmer.

...

"Privately but explicitly, Chinese diplomats told U.S. officials they would cut off exports of medical supplies to the United States if Washington wasn’t careful in this war of words. Beijing was seeking to snuff out any discussion of the virus, along with any criticism of its domestic response and any allegation that it was hiding or misrepresenting information about the virus. In a move that U.S. officials saw as punitive, Beijing had halted exports of items such as face masks, even when they were made by American companies like 3M, which had factories inside China — prompting Navarro to comment on Fox Business that China had moved to 'nationalize, effectively, 3M, our company.'"

Capitol riot suspect pictured at Pelosi’s desk screams ‘It’s not fair’ in courtroom tantrum

Reading archive 2021-03-03

Monorail is a ‘viable’ transit option for I-270 but wouldn’t reduce traffic, study says

Former White House physician Ronny Jackson, now a congressman, bullied staff, made sexual remarks, inspector general finds

The voting wars come to Capitol Hill: Democrats eye national elections overhaul amid GOP crackdown

How Dr. Seuss Responded to Critics Who Called Out His Racism - "'And that’s what’s encouraging about this recent decision. It suggests that they have, quite likely for financial reasons, come around to the position that racism is bad for their business. What the motives are, I don’t really care, for the most part; the results are good. If capitalism is what causes you to have a change of heart, we can go that route.'"

Reading archive 2021-03-02

‘Reading the story today makes me cringe’: Female stars and the media machine of the early 2000s

Donors gave a House candidate more than $8 million. A single firm took nearly half of it.

Pangolins are elusive, nocturnal and threatened by illegal trading. A nonprofit in Vietnam seeks to save the scaly mammals.

Bicyclist killed after being struck by hospital shuttle bus in Northeast Washington, police say

Lightning Strikes Twice: Another Lost Jacob Lawrence Surfaces: Its owner, a nurse living on the Upper West Side, flagged a worker at the Metropolitan Museum’s information desk. “Listen, nobody calls me back. I have this painting. Who do I need to talk to?”

Major Evangelical Adoption Agency Will Now Serve Gay Parents Nationwide: The decision comes as more cities and states require organizations to accept applications from L.G.B.T.Q. couples or risk losing government contracts.

A mom reported her 6-year-old missing. She’d actually run him over and thrown him in a river, police said.

The making of Madison Cawthorn: How falsehoods helped propel the career of a new pro-Trump star of the far right: Cawthorn has emerged as one of the most visible figures among newly arrived House Republicans, who have promoted baseless assertions and pushed a radicalized ideology that has become a driving force in the GOP [ed. note: dude lies about everything]

‘Nobody came, nobody helped’: Fears of anti-Asian violence rattle the community

Reading archive 2021-03-01

When your playwrights are in despair, Kansas, it’s past time to be worried

Israel expands probe into the oil spill endangering its shoreline

At the Golden Globes, faulty connections and some mixed messages about diversity

As CPAC dismisses claims that its stage resembled a Nazi insignia, Hyatt calls hate symbols ‘abhorrent’

We could be traveling again by summer. This is what to consider before you plan.

S.D. Gov. Kristi Noem says she nailed the pandemic response. Fauci: The numbers ‘don’t lie.’

How to care for your wood cutting board so it lasts a lifetime

Johnson & Johnson vaccine deepens concerns over racial and geographic inequities: Governors weigh ease of use against perception of a two-tiered system if new coronavirus vaccine is deployed primarily to harder-to-reach communities

A man refused to mask up at a high school basketball game. Then he killed an officer who intervened, police say.

How George Floyd’s death is fueling a push for affordable housing in mostly White parts of D.C.

Rewriting January 6th: Republicans push false and misleading accounts of Capitol riot - "A legion of conservative activists, media personalities and elected officials are seeking to rewrite the story of what happened at the Capitol on Jan. 6, hoping to undermine the clear picture of the attack that has emerged from video and photo evidence, law enforcement officials, journalistic accounts and the testimonials of the rioters themselves: that a pro-Trump mob, mobilized by the former president’s false claims of a stolen election, stormed the seat of American government to keep Trump in power through violent means."

Where Jill Biden drops by for a cup of coffee can make quite a statement