Plus, Andrew breaks down (or has a breakdown over) the viral photo of a card that purportedly allows the holder to enter any business without wearing a mask. Is it real or... really stupid?
Then we take a deep dive into DHS. v. Thuraissigiam, the asylum case recently decided by the Supreme Court.
In the first part of a two-part interview, Mike talks with police practices and civil rights expert Matthew Barge about how policy has failed to change how law enforcement agencies police communities, how police unions have played a huge role in where we find ourselves now, and what role consent decrees play in changing police behavior. Barge is a lawyer, a principal consultant with 21CP Solutions, and federal court-appointed monitor overseeing federal consent decrees in Cleveland, Ohio and Baltimore, Maryland.
Just two months ago, the Northeast was the epicenter of the pandemic in the U.S. On Wednesday, there were just 581 new reported cases of the coronavirus in New York and now visitors from other states are expected to quarantine after they arrive.
More Governors across the country are touting the benefits of masks but not all are willing to make wearing them a state policy.
NPR's Jon Hamilton reports that scientists are closely tracking mutations in the coronavirus to ensure the changes don't complicate a future vaccine.
Plus, COVID-19 has presented particular challenges for women and reproductive health. Many say that the pandemic is causing them to rethink their plans to have children.
Alyssa Mastromonaco joins as a guest host to talk about the Covid resurgence, what Tuesday’s progressive primary victories mean for the Democratic Party, and Joe Biden’s commanding lead over Donald Trump in the battleground states. Then Jamaal Bowman talks to Tommy about his upset victory in the primary for New York’s 16th Congressional district.
Progressive activists and politicians in Chicago believe that now is the time to reform Chicago schools, the police department, and more. But the protests and the shifts in attitudes in the wake of the killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police have yielded few tangible results. Ald. Rosanna Rodriguez-Sanchez (33rd) discusses her frustration with the mayor, CPS, the police, and more.
A record summer temperature in Siberia is an indication of major changes in the Arctic climate. Changing weather patterns there have a knock on effect for other parts of the planet says Climatologist Steve Vavrus
Chile appeared to get Covid-19 under control, but in reality the virus was spreading uncontrollably through poor areas, As we hear from our correspondent in Santiago Jane Chambers, the lockdown has tightened but cases continue to rise.
And could mass testing using new saliva tests help control or even end the epidemic? Epidemiologist Julian Peto tells us about his plan which is designed to contain the virus within individual households and stop community spread.
Experiments to investigate dark matter have produced some tantalising results, Physicist Laura Manenti says it’s not confirmation of detection, but potentially close.
(Image: Rural Scene in Verkhoyansk. Credit: Dean Conger/Corbis via Getty Images)
In April and May, states embarked on what now appear to be ambitious plans to reopen thanks to a resurgence of COVID-19 cases. Jeff Singer discusses the mistaken search for a single answer to a complicated problem.
Today’s edition of The Breakdown is an extended version of the Brief, this time covering five topics.
New Jobless claims - sticking stubbornly at ~1.5 million new claims per week, despite economist expectations
The “whack-a-mole” economy - Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers predicts as much as 30% of the economy may need to close to get COVID-19 under control
PlusToken scam pressure on BTC price: Has scam selling suppressed the price of bitcoin since early last year?
Biggest ever bitcoin option expiry; more than $1 billion in notational value BTC options are set to expire tomorrow, Friday, June 26
Apple’s UX privacy triumph: Users will have to opt-in to allow apps to track them across other apps as well
Just Andy this time, with a Thursday edition bonus episode, in which I talk with Brian Hioe of New Bloom, a bilingual online magazine with radical analysis of Taiwan and East Asia.
On Monday, New Bloom published an explainer essay on the very confusing phenomenon of “tankies,” aka people who argue that the true leftist position is to support the Chinese Communist Party as a check on US imperialism. Most famously, tankies denounce the Hong Kong protests as bourgeois and right-wing, as puppets of US empire.
Their statements are at once funny and depressing, amusing and exhausting. I think Brian and I agree, though, that they are worth taking seriously because they reflect a very real set of tensions in global politics—with few clear solutions.
Whom do we “side with” in an increasingly closed-off, nationalistic world? Must critics of US foreign policy — and the long history of Euro-American colonialism and imperialism — choose other states to support instead? For a Gen Z critical of free-market neoliberalism, what “actually existing” alternatives are there to global capitalism?
The New Bloom piece explores these questions by examining the mysterious Qiao Collective, whose members ostensibly belong to the left-nationalist Chinese diaspora. When it comes to the Asian diaspora (though not unique to it), there is the always fun, extra ingredient of confused identity and an unfulfilled sense of belonging, heightened by local xenophobic rhetoric.
Given these factors, Brian fears that tankie ideology may continue to spread.
Issues we touch on:
* Are Hong Kong’s protests “right-wing” if their citizens espouse xenophobia?
* Is the category “diaspora,” or huaqiao 華僑, good or bad?
* The Orientalism and self-orientalizing of tankies
* Tankies and US Republicans as bizarro mirror images of one another
Is there potential for common dialogue? With tankies or with the everyday people of China?
* The Critical China Scholars group (new site) will hold the 2nd of two webinars next Thursday (July 2) on the topic of “Against Racism and Nationalism.” Register at eventbrite here.
* A developing story worth monitoring is the border dispute between China and India, about one week old now. In India, there is now a call to boycott Chinese goods (most recently by hotels (SCMP), but analysts in India are skeptical if it’s even possible (The Quint). Worth paying attention to, if only because of the recent calls by other countries to decouple from China.
* Under-the-radar news: the Trump administration this week exploited the coronavirus pandemic to extend a ban on multiple visas into the US, from “high-skilled” (H-1B) to seasonal labor (H-2B) and other categories. Early analysis here (Common Dreams).
* Part of the hopeful wave of primary victories this week, Yuh-Line Niou successfully defended her seat against challenger Grace Lee in the Democratic primary for New York’s 65th Assembly District (including Wall Street and Chinatown). Beyond the superficial similarities of two Asian-American women running in the Democratic party, the two candidates represented different constituencies and political visions, a microcosm of the ongoing fight between liberals and progressives within the party (The Indypendent):
As always, feedback, questions, and comments are welcome.
A new daily high for coronavirus cases in the US. Murder indictments in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery. A non-white majority among young people in the US. Correspondent Deborah Rodriguez has the CBS World News Roundup for Thursday, June 25, 2020.