Donald Trump has long exhibited authoritarian impulses, but his policy operation is now more sophisticated, and the buffers to check him are weaker.
White House Warns Ukraine Aid Is Running Out, Pressing Congress for More
The warning, in a letter to congressional leaders, comes as Republican support for funding Kyiv’s war effort is waning, and an emergency funding package is stalled in Congress.
The New Yorker – December11, 2023 issue: The new issue‘s cover featuresBarry Blitt’s “Special Delivery” – The artist discusses holiday shopping and his prized Popeye punching bag.
After the Civil War, Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederacy, was to be tried for treason. Does the debacle hold lessons for the trials awaiting Donald Trump?
Jefferson Davis, the half-blind ex-President of the Confederate States of America, leaned on a cane as he hobbled into a federal courthouse in Richmond, Virginia. Only days before, a Chicago Tribune reporter, who’d met Davis on the boat ride to Richmond, had written that “his step is light and elastic.” But in court, facing trial for treason, Davis, fifty-eight, gave every appearance of being bent and broken. A reporter from Kentucky described him as “a gaunt and feeble-looking man,” wearing a soft black hat and a sober black suit, as if he were a corpse. He’d spent two years in a military prison. He wanted to be released. A good many Americans wanted him dead. “We’ll hang Jeff Davis from a sour-apple tree,” they sang to the tune of “John Brown’s Body.”
The companies had honed a protocol for releasing artificial intelligence ambitiously but safely. Then OpenAI’s board exploded all their carefully laid plans.
At around 11:30 a.m. on the Friday before Thanksgiving, Microsoft’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, was having his weekly meeting with senior leaders when a panicked colleague told him to pick up the phone. An executive from OpenAI, an artificial-intelligence startup into which Microsoft had invested a reported thirteen billion dollars, was calling to explain that within the next twenty minutes the company’s board would announce that it had fired Sam Altman, OpenAI’s C.E.O. and co-founder. It was the start of a five-day crisis that some people at Microsoft began calling the Turkey-Shoot Clusterfuck.
Eighty percent of Gazans are displaced from their homes as Israel orders more evacuations. See where thousands have been sheltering amid the war’s destruction.
Ego, Fear and Money: How the A.I. Fuse Was Lit
The people who were most afraid of the risks of artificial intelligence decided they should be the ones to build it. Then distrust fueled a spiraling competition.
‘Medical Freedom’ Activists Take Aim at New Target: Childhood Vaccine Mandates
Mississippi has long had high childhood immunization rates, but a federal judge has ordered the state to allow parents to opt out on religious grounds.
Beleaguered Gazans, having fled the territory’s north, emerged from a night of bombardment wondering where to go next for safety.
Drunk and Asleep on the Job: Air Traffic Controllers Pushed to the Brink
A nationwide shortage of controllers has resulted in an exhausted and demoralized work force that is increasingly prone to making dangerous mistakes.
Divided by Politics, a Colorado Town Mends Its Broken Bones
Two years after death threats and aspersions roiled little Silverton, the town has found a semblance of peace and a lesson for a ruptured nation.
A Russian Village Buries a Soldier, and Tries to Make Sense of the War
In Russia, the pain and loss of the war in Ukraine are felt most profoundly in small villages, where a soldier’s burial produces not just grief but a yearning to find meaning in his death.
Talks on extending a weeklong cease-fire broke down, with each side blaming the other. The truce had included the release of hostages held in Gaza for people in Israeli prisons.
Nearly half of the G.O.P. House delegation voted to expel Mr. Santos, a remarkable rebuke of a colleague who had survived two prior expulsion bids.
Blinken Urges Israel to Take Concrete Steps to Aid Civilians as More Hostages Are Freed
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken met with Israeli officials and a Palestinian leader on Thursday to seek improved conditions for Gaza’s civilians and to try to exert influence over Israel’s expected military offensive.
A Tense Climate Summit Begins Against a Backdrop of War and Record Heat
World leaders at climate talks in Dubai invoked faith, science and economics in their calls for a rapid transition away from fossil fuels.
Hostages who have returned to Israel in the past week have come home malnourished, ill, injured and bearing psychological wounds.
Airlines Race Toward a Future of Powering Their Jets With Corn
Carriers want to replace jet fuel with ethanol to fight global warming. That would require lots of corn, and lots of water.
Biden Administration to Require Replacing of Lead Pipes Within 10 Years
The proposal to rip out nine million pipes across the country could cost as much as $30 billion but would nearly eliminate the neurotoxin from drinking water.
The Economist Magazine (November 30, 2023): The latest issue features ‘Blue-Collar Bonanza’ – Why conventional wisdom on inequality is wrong; Is Putin winning?; America’s most conservative court; Political Islam after Gaza, and more…
Few ideas are more unshakable than the notion that the rich keep getting richer while ordinary folks fall ever further behind. The belief that capitalism is rigged to benefit the wealthy and punish the workers has shaped how millions view the world, whom they vote for and whom they shake their fists at. It has been a spur to political projects on both left and right, from the interventionism of Joe Biden to the populism of Donald Trump. But is it true?
Old stereotypes are haunting the Middle East once more. The biggest butchery of Israeli civilians since the state’s creation, carried out on October 7th, has been followed by a slaughter of Palestinian civilians. America, which has funded, armed and defended Israel is again an object of ire. So are its Western allies. Together they are blamed for facilitating Gaza’s pummelling and the displacement of its people. A truce which began on November 24th, and which was set to expire as The Economist went to press, had led to the release of 81 hostages and 180 Palestinian detainees as of November 28th.
The most powerful secretary of state of the postwar era, he was both celebrated and reviled. His complicated legacy still resonates in relations with China, Russia and the Middle East.
Officials from Qatar, Egypt and the U.S. hope that a succession of pauses will pave the way toward a larger goal: bringing the war to a close.
In the West Bank, Release of Prisoners Deepens Support for Hamas
Some people in the West Bank, where frustration with the Palestinian Authority has been simmering for years, believe Hamas and other armed groups are the only ones they can trust to protect them.
Both Israel and Hamas are reaping benefits from the cease-fire, but as the hostage-for-prisoner exchanges continue, Israeli leaders may feel growing pressure to resume the war.
Gavin Newsom Wants Fox News Viewers to Hear Him Out
After sparring twice with Sean Hannity, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California will jump into the ring this week with Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. The stakes are high for both men.
Memorial Celebrates Rosalynn Carter’s Life, a ‘Public Love Story’
Former President Jimmy Carter emerged from hospice care to join a cast of political heavyweights paying tribute to Mrs. Carter, who died at 96 last week at her home in Plains, Ga.
Can U.S.-China Student Exchanges Survive Geopolitics?
The flow of students between the countries has been a mainstay of their relationship, even when ties have soured. Now these exchanges, too, are under threat.
The extension, and another exchange of hostages and prisoners, raised hopes that more people would be set free and more humanitarian aid would reach people in the Gaza Strip.
At the president’s urging, the temporary truce between Israel and Hamas was extended two more days. The challenge is what comes next.
Inside U.S. Efforts to Untangle an A.I. Giant’s Ties to China
American spy agencies have warned about the Emirati firm G42 and its work with large Chinese companies that U.S. officials consider security threats.
Russian Women Protest Long Deployments for Soldiers in Ukraine
“Make way for someone else,” a new grass-roots movement demands as women challenge the official argument that the mobilized troops are needed in combat indefinitely.
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