Tag: coming weeks
What Is No Labels’ Grand Plan?
“We are in this to win it,” No Labels’ chief strategist, Ryan Clancy, told me one morning earlier this month. Clancy and 16 other representatives of the beleaguered centrist group were staring at me through their respective Zoom boxes during a private briefing, electoral maps and polling data at the ready, all in defense of their quest to alter the course of the 2024 presidential campaign.
He continued: “And that’s a function not only of having a ticket eventually
The Doctor Who Helped Take Down FTX in His Spare Time
The world of cryptocurrency is rich with eccentric characters and anonymous Twitter personalities. So perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that one of the early figures who called attention to the problems with Sam Bankman-Fried’s cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, is a 30-year-old Michigan psychiatrist who investigates financial crimes as a hobby.
James Block, who runs a crypto newsletter called Dirty Bubble Media, has gotten overlooked in the swift and spectacular collapse of FTX. On November 2, a report from the
The Harvard Business School Professor Who Isn’t Counting Elon Musk Out
In the weeks since Elon Musk took over as CEO of Twitter, the company has laid off nearly half of its workers and offered the remaining employees an ultimatum: Commit to being “extremely hardcore” going forward or leave the company. According to The New York Times, hundreds of employees have opted for the latter.
On Wednesday night—as the deadline loomed—Andy Wu, an assistant professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, told me that Musk’s tough, authoritarian management style
The January 6 Committee Is Not Messing Around
The open hearing last week of the committee investigating the January 6 coup attempt plunged viewers back into the brutality and terror of that day. The committee featured footage of insurrectionists beating the law-enforcement officers who attempted to stop them from entering the Capitol, material disturbing enough that YouTube later labeled video of the hearing as “inappropriate for some users.” Caroline Edwards, a Capitol Police officer who testified about her injuries at the hands of the rioters, described “slipping in
Boris Johnson Has Only Delayed the Inevitable
Boris Johnson lives to fight another day. Britain, meanwhile, lives to endure another day in his shadow, a bit part in the soap opera of his life, watching on as the drama is set on an endless doom loop from comic farce to tragedy.
After months of turmoil over Johnson’s behavior in office, in which he became the first sitting British prime minister ever to be fined for breaking the law, enough of his fellow Conservative members of Parliament finally
What Happens When We Back Putin Into a Corner
This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Every Friday, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
What are your thoughts about the war in Ukraine? What questions do you have? What are your hopes or fears?
Email your answers to [email protected]. I’ll publish a selection in Friday’s newsletter.
Conversations of Note
War is ravaging Ukraine.
Omicron Isn’t Mild for Hospitals
When a health-care system crumbles, this is what it looks like. Much of what’s wrong happens invisibly. At first, there’s just a lot of waiting. Emergency rooms get so full that “you’ll wait hours and hours, and you may not be able to get surgery when you need it,” Megan Ranney, an emergency physician in Rhode Island, told me. When patients are seen, they might not get the tests they need, because technicians or necessary chemicals are in short supply.
Iran Feels Cornered by the Biden Administration
Few Saudi officials are more candid or colorful these days than Prince Turki al-Faisal, a son of the late King Faisal and former ambassador to Washington. Although he no longer holds a government position, the prince retains influence and insight into the kingdom and, thanks to a two-decade-long career as Riyadh’s intelligence chief, understands better than anyone its rivalry with Iran. So I was mildly surprised by his frank assessment of the current state of affairs. “The Iranians,” he
The Omicron Variant: We Still Know Almost Nothing
As fall dips into winter in the Northern Hemisphere, the coronavirus has served up the holiday gift that no one, absolutely no one, asked for: a new variant of concern, dubbed Omicron by the World Health Organization on Friday.
Omicron, also known as B.1.1.529, was first detected in Botswana and South Africa earlier this month, and very little is known about it so far. But the variant is moving fast. South Africa, the country that initially flagged Omicron to WHO
Delta Has Changed the Pandemic Endgame
In September 2020, just before COVID-19 began its wintry surge through the United States, I wrote that the country was trapped in a pandemic spiral, seemingly destined to repeat the same mistakes. But after vaccines arrived in midwinter, cases in the U.S. declined and, by summer’s edge, had reached their lowest levels since the pandemic’s start. Many Americans began to hope that the country had enough escape velocity to exit its cycle of missteps and sickness. And though