Search Results for Presidential debate

Before Facebook, There Was BlackPlanetIllustrations by Frank DorreyA few years ago, Stephanie Williams and her husband fielded a question from their son: How had they met?So they told him. They’d first encountered each other on a website called BlackPlanet.To the 5-year-old, the answer seemed fantastical. “He clearly didn’t hear ‘website,’ ” Williams, a writer and comic creator, told me. “He was like, ‘Wait, you all met on Black Planet? Like, there’s a planet that’s full of Black people? Why did you leave?!’ ”Williams had to explain that they’d actually been right here on “regular Earth.” But in some ways, their son’s wide-eyed response wasn’t so off base: From the perspective of the 2020s, there is something otherworldly about the mid-aughts internet that brought his parents together. In a social-media era dominated by the provocation and vitriol of billionaire-owned mega-platforms, it can be hard to imagine a time when the concept of using…

The Undecided Women of Bucks CountyEverybody loves Lynne. At least, that’s what all of her friends kept telling me last week, as they filed through Lynne’s front door in the Philadelphia suburbs, and sipped chardonnay in her crowded kitchen. When you meet her, you see why. Lynne Kelleher, a 66-year-old Bucks County Realtor, is utterly charming. Her pointed questions take you by surprise, and her impressive range of swear words makes you laugh until you snort.Kelleher’s magnetism is why I reached out to her in the first place. Through her work and the local charity group she founded, she has more friends than she can count. Pennsylvania will again be one of a handful of battleground states that will determine the outcome of the upcoming presidential election, and I’d been searching for women in the area to discuss that with. Kelleher was the ideal person to convene my own personal…

Joe Biden’s Drug-Price ConundrumSuppose the president asked you to design the ideal piece of legislation—the perfect mix of good politics and good policy. You’d probably want to pick something that saves people a lot of money. You’d want it to fix a problem that people have been mad about for a long time, in an area that voters say they care about a lot—such as, say, health care. You’d want it to appeal to voters across the political spectrum. And you’d want it to be a policy that polls well.You would, in other words, want something like letting Medicare negotiate prescription-drug prices. This would make drugs much more affordable for senior citizens—who vote like crazy—and, depending on the poll, it draws support from 80 to 90 percent of voters. The idea has been championed by both Bernie Sanders and Joe Manchin. Turn it into reality, and surely you’d see parades…

A Study in Senate CowardiceIn late June of 2022, Cassidy Hutchinson, a former Trump-administration aide, provided testimony to the congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol. This testimony was unnerving, even compared with previous revelations concerning Donald Trump’s malignant behavior that day. Hutchinson testified that the president, when told that some of his supporters were carrying weapons, said, “I don’t fucking care that they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me. Take the fucking mags away.” He was referring to the metal detectors meant to screen protesters joining his rally on the Ellipse, near the White House.Hutchinson also testified that Trump became so frantic in his desire to join the march to the Capitol that at one point he tried to grab the steering wheel of his SUV. This assertion has subsequently been disputed by Secret Service agents, but what has not been disputed is an…

The Woman Who Chased a Shredding TruckSalleigh Grubbs was in her office on Friday, November 20, 2020, when she got a phone call from a friend. Susan’s at Jim Miller Park—they’re shredding ballots! the friend said. Susan was Susan Knox, a woman Salleigh had met a week earlier when both were volunteering as election observers at Jim R. Miller Park, an event center in Cobb County, Georgia, northwest of Atlanta, where the county government was now conducting a hand recount of the ballots in the presidential election. The recount had been ordered by Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state, under pressure from President Donald Trump and his allies, who insisted that Trump hadn’t really lost Georgia by more than 11,000 votes. Salleigh didn’t believe the result either. Her own Cobb County had been the largest source of Republican votes in the state, and for decades it had formed the…

Senate Shoots Down Both Mayorkas Impeachment ArticlesThe Senate voted to dismiss both articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on a party-line vote that saw Democrats voting to shut the process down and deny Republicans the spectacle of a lengthy Senate trial. House Republicans voted to impeach Mayorkas over the influx of migrants at the southern border back in February, the second time a Cabinet member has been impeached in U.S. history, with the only other time happening almost 150 years ago. The vote occurred along party lines with lawmakers voting 51-49 to dismiss the two articles of impeachment. Soon after, the Senate voted to end the impeachment trial as well by the same vote margin. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer claimed during his speech on the floor that the House passed “the least legitimate, least substantive and most politicized impeachment trial ever in the history of the…