vox--2020-09-08--Black Republicans, Donald Trump, and America’s “George Floyd moment”

The Republican Party began losing the Black vote around 1936 .
Since then , Republicans have commissioned reports , hired consultants , and spent huge sums of campaign dollars trying to win back Black voters .
The project continues today : This year ’ s Republican National Convention presented a lineup of speakers far more diverse than the Republican Party itself , making the case for the “ Party of Lincoln.
” A third of African Americans , after all , self-identify as “ conservative.
” And yet , no Republican presidential candidate has won more than 15 percent of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have received well under 10 percent ) .
Leah Wright Rigueur is a historian and public policy scholar at Harvard ’ s Kennedy School of Government and the author of The Loneliness of the Black Republican , a remarkable study of the distinctive ideologies woven through the Black conservative and Black Republican traditions .
The book traces the history of why Black voters left the GOP and what the Republican Party has tried to do — and what it has refused to do — to win them back .
Rigueur has also spent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ protests , riots , and how they shaped American politics in the 20th century .
We discuss the historical analogues for today ’ s protest movement , what ’ s different now than in 1968 , the complex relationship between protesters and electoral politics , how these movements can lead to both lasting change and white backlash , and more on The Ezra Klein Show .
An edited excerpt from our conversation follows .
The full conversation can be heard on The Ezra Klein Show .
I wanted to start with the report @ @ @ @ @ @ @ way back when .
Tell me the context of that report and what it recommended .
At the time , Ralph Bunche is a political scientist , a professor at Howard University .
He goes on later to be a career diplomat and wins the Nobel Peace Prize in the 1950s .
So he ’ s a revered figure in Black politics , but also in American politics , particularly in American statesmanship and statecraft .
And here he is in the 1940s working with the Republican Party — not out of any @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but more so out of concern for the idea of two-party politics and where Black people fit within that two-party political system .
He ’ d been really upset about the New Deal .
He felt like the New Deal hadn ’ t gone far enough for Black people and that there had been elements of the New Deal that had essentially been racist .
So when the Republican Party reaches out to Ralph Bunche to do some consulting work , asking how to get Black voters to come back into the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he agrees only on the condition that when he finishes his final report on this that the report be published in its entirety .
And that ’ s really where things start to get interesting .
As some context here , I think people believe that the racial realignment happened around the Civil Rights Act .
But for Black voters , it started happening earlier .
You point out that Black voters were heavily Republican before the New Deal and then they began to swing Democratic after it .
So what happened there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Republican Party asking Bunche for his help ?
There ’ s this idea that African Americans leave the Republican Party in the 1960s .
To some extent that is true , but the really interesting thing here is that African Americans leave the Republican Party , the party of Lincoln , in droves in 1936 during Roosevelt ’ s second election .
And they leave because of the economic impact of the New Deal .
They actually experience the policies , the plans , the procedures , the programs of the New @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lives .
That allows them to overlook that history of discrimination of the Democratic Party and the persistent segregationists that are within the Democratic Party .
On top of that , Black voters really are affected by the civil rights activism of Eleanor Roosevelt .
And you see a watershed movement .
The Republican Party notices this almost immediately .
They start up all different kinds of efforts on how to get Black voters back .
In 1939 , they reach out to Ralph Bunche because they say , “ We have to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Deal and with the Roosevelt administration .
We ’ re bleeding voters.
” You know , Black voters are still affiliating as Republicans , but they ’ re not voting Republican anymore .
So how do we change this ?
And what does Bunche recommend ?
Ralph Bunche gives them this comprehensive report [ on ] where the New Deal has failed .
He essentially says the New Deal hasn ’ t gone far enough — that the New Deal has had discriminatory practices and policies ingrained even in some of its most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Republican Party has not done enough — that the Republican Party should be going further in its policies , and they can no longer rely on the “ spirit of Abraham Lincoln ” freeing the slaves to move Black voters .
So he argues in favor of all kinds of policy changes .
He says you need to be more effective on health care and calls for universal health care .
He says you need to be more effective on Social Security relief , finance , agriculture , labor — all of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is room for the Republican Party to make inroads among Black voters by speaking to the very issues and needs that Black voters want .
He ’ s also very explicit about the need for these programs and policies to be economic .
When the Republican Party gets this report initially , they widely praise it .
They said this exactly what we need .
But Bunche put in a caveat saying either you publish the report in full or you don ’ t publish it at all .
So when the Republican @ @ @ @ @ @ @ want to publish the parts where he attacks the New Deal , Bunche says no : You have to publish the entire thing or not at all .
So they end up not publishing it at all , but bits and pieces end up being leaked to the press , particularly the Black press and the Black media .
It comes to be known , particularly as Bunche is making the rounds , talking about the fact that the Republican Party has a blueprint for how to move African Americans back into the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do it .
I love this story because it seems to me that it ’ s been the same question for a long time now : The Republican Party wants to win back Black voters , but what they would like is for there to be an easier way to do it than to have to change their policy agenda to meet the actual economic and social needs of Black voters .
They keep looking for a message or an orientation or a messenger .
But every time somebody comes to them and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a very high uninsurance rate , you need a better idea for what to do about that than the Democrats have , they say no , we want some other way of addressing this .
Absolutely .
I think there are a couple takeaways from that Ralph Bunche report .
The first is that he says you can not run with both hare and hound , meaning that the Republican Party has to decide whether it wants to court , say , the dissident white vote of the Democratic Party and rely on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people — or do you really want Black voters ?
You can not seduce both .
And in the case of Black voters , economic policy in particular is really , really important .
In the 1970s , we see McNeill and Associates , which is a Black Republican consulting group consulting with the RNC , say virtually the same thing that Ralph Bunche has said in 1939 and 1940 .
They say we have to find a way to make these ideas palatable or attractive to Black people because right now , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ even in cases where they don ’ t like Democrats — even in cases where they might be more aligned religiously , spiritually , what have you , with the Republican Party .
They will not choose the Republican Party because , one , they believe Republicans are racist and racially antagonistic , and two , there are no [ Republican ] policies that they see affecting their day-to-day lives for the better .
It ’ s the two things that go hand in hand .
And all too often we see that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ re unwilling to make either one of those kind of significant structural changes in order to actually get a significant proportion of the Black vote .
Help keep Vox free for all Millions turn to Vox each month to understand what ’ s happening in the news , from the coronavirus crisis to a racial reckoning to what is , quite possibly , the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn .
Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers , your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work , and helping everyone make sense of an increasingly chaotic world .
Contribute today from as little as $ 3 .

The Republican Party began losing the Black vote around 1936. Since then, Republicans have commissioned reports, hired consultants, and spent huge sums of campaign dollars trying to win back Black voters. The project continues today: This year’s Republican National Convention presented a lineup of speakers far more diverse than the Republican Party itself, making the case for the “Party of Lincoln.” A third of African Americans, after all, self-identify as “conservative.” And yet, no Republican presidential candidate has won more than 15 percent of the Black vote since 1964 (many have received well under 10 percent).
Leah Wright Rigueur is a historian and public policy scholar at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and the author of The Loneliness of the Black Republican, a remarkable study of the distinctive ideologies woven through the Black conservative and Black Republican traditions. The book traces the history of why Black voters left the GOP and what the Republican Party has tried to do — and what it has refused to do — to win them back.
Rigueur has also spent the past decade teaching classes on racial protests, riots, and how they shaped American politics in the 20th century. We discuss the historical analogues for today’s protest movement, what’s different now than in 1968, the complex relationship between protesters and electoral politics, how these movements can lead to both lasting change and white backlash, and more on The Ezra Klein Show.
An edited excerpt from our conversation follows. The full conversation can be heard on The Ezra Klein Show.
Ezra Klein
I wanted to start with the report Ralph Bunche wrote for the Republican Party way back when. Tell me the context of that report and what it recommended.
Leah Wright Rigueur
At the time, Ralph Bunche is a political scientist, a professor at Howard University. He goes on later to be a career diplomat and wins the Nobel Peace Prize in the 1950s. So he’s a revered figure in Black politics, but also in American politics, particularly in American statesmanship and statecraft. And here he is in the 1940s working with the Republican Party — not out of any kind of affinity for the Republican Party, but more so out of concern for the idea of two-party politics and where Black people fit within that two-party political system.
He’d been really upset about the New Deal. He felt like the New Deal hadn’t gone far enough for Black people and that there had been elements of the New Deal that had essentially been racist. So when the Republican Party reaches out to Ralph Bunche to do some consulting work, asking how to get Black voters to come back into the Republican fold, Bunche agrees. But he agrees only on the condition that when he finishes his final report on this that the report be published in its entirety. And that’s really where things start to get interesting.
Ezra Klein
As some context here, I think people believe that the racial realignment happened around the Civil Rights Act. But for Black voters, it started happening earlier. You point out that Black voters were heavily Republican before the New Deal and then they began to swing Democratic after it. So what happened there? And how does it lead to the Republican Party asking Bunche for his help?
Leah Wright Rigueur
There’s this idea that African Americans leave the Republican Party in the 1960s. To some extent that is true, but the really interesting thing here is that African Americans leave the Republican Party, the party of Lincoln, in droves in 1936 during Roosevelt’s second election. And they leave because of the economic impact of the New Deal.
They actually experience the policies, the plans, the procedures, the programs of the New Deal in ways that affect their day-to-day lives. That allows them to overlook that history of discrimination of the Democratic Party and the persistent segregationists that are within the Democratic Party. On top of that, Black voters really are affected by the civil rights activism of Eleanor Roosevelt. And you see a watershed movement.
The Republican Party notices this almost immediately. They start up all different kinds of efforts on how to get Black voters back. In 1939, they reach out to Ralph Bunche because they say, “We have to be able to compete with the New Deal and with the Roosevelt administration. We’re bleeding voters.” You know, Black voters are still affiliating as Republicans, but they’re not voting Republican anymore. So how do we change this?
Ezra Klein
And what does Bunche recommend?
Leah Wright Rigueur
Ralph Bunche gives them this comprehensive report [on] where the New Deal has failed. He essentially says the New Deal hasn’t gone far enough — that the New Deal has had discriminatory practices and policies ingrained even in some of its most effective programs. But he also says the Republican Party has not done enough — that the Republican Party should be going further in its policies, and they can no longer rely on the “spirit of Abraham Lincoln” freeing the slaves to move Black voters.
So he argues in favor of all kinds of policy changes. He says you need to be more effective on health care and calls for universal health care. He says you need to be more effective on Social Security relief, finance, agriculture, labor — all of these different areas. He says there is room for the Republican Party to make inroads among Black voters by speaking to the very issues and needs that Black voters want. He’s also very explicit about the need for these programs and policies to be economic.
When the Republican Party gets this report initially, they widely praise it. They said this exactly what we need. But Bunche put in a caveat saying either you publish the report in full or you don’t publish it at all. So when the Republican Party comes back and says they only want to publish the parts where he attacks the New Deal, Bunche says no: You have to publish the entire thing or not at all.
So they end up not publishing it at all, but bits and pieces end up being leaked to the press, particularly the Black press and the Black media. It comes to be known, particularly as Bunche is making the rounds, talking about the fact that the Republican Party has a blueprint for how to move African Americans back into the party but they’re unwilling to do it.
Ezra Klein
I love this story because it seems to me that it’s been the same question for a long time now: The Republican Party wants to win back Black voters, but what they would like is for there to be an easier way to do it than to have to change their policy agenda to meet the actual economic and social needs of Black voters. They keep looking for a message or an orientation or a messenger. But every time somebody comes to them and says, look, African Americans have a very high uninsurance rate, you need a better idea for what to do about that than the Democrats have, they say no, we want some other way of addressing this.
Leah Wright Rigueur
Absolutely. I think there are a couple takeaways from that Ralph Bunche report. The first is that he says you cannot run with both hare and hound, meaning that the Republican Party has to decide whether it wants to court, say, the dissident white vote of the Democratic Party and rely on racial antagonisms on the backs of Black people — or do you really want Black voters? You cannot seduce both. And in the case of Black voters, economic policy in particular is really, really important.
In the 1970s, we see McNeill and Associates, which is a Black Republican consulting group consulting with the RNC, say virtually the same thing that Ralph Bunche has said in 1939 and 1940. They say we have to find a way to make these ideas palatable or attractive to Black people because right now, Black voters are making a pragmatic vote even in cases where they don’t like Democrats — even in cases where they might be more aligned religiously, spiritually, what have you, with the Republican Party.
They will not choose the Republican Party because, one, they believe Republicans are racist and racially antagonistic, and two, there are no [Republican] policies that they see affecting their day-to-day lives for the better.
It’s the two things that go hand in hand. And all too often we see that Republicans recognize this, but they’re unwilling to make either one of those kind of significant structural changes in order to actually get a significant proportion of the Black vote.


vox--2020-09-08--Covid-19 vaccine makers are pushing back against pressures to deliver by Election Day

Nine companies leading the charge to develop a Covid-19 vaccine released a pledge Tuesday to stick to the science in the development and licensing of a vaccine in what appears to be an attempt to preempt pressure from the White House to rush vaccine approval before the November election .
The vaccine makers said they are committed “ to developing and testing potential vaccines for COVID-19 in accordance with high ethical standards and sound scientific principles.
” The statement comes as the Trump administration is expecting significant movement on a Covid-19 vaccine before the presidential election on November 3 .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( CDC ) told hospitals across the country to prepare for the potential delivery of a Covid-19 vaccine within two months , alarming researchers and health workers who fear it is yielding to political pressure .
President Trump has also accused the Food and Drug Administration ( FDA ) without evidence of deliberately delaying vaccine approval .
“ How can you not worry that the FDA has been influenced ?
” said Paul Offit , director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children ’ s Hospital of Philadelphia .
The new pledge @ @ @ @ @ @ @ BioNTech , GlaxoSmithKline , Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson , Merck , Moderna , Novavax , Pfizer , and Sanofi — shows that these manufacturers are concerned that political influence could undermine the successful delivery of the vaccine as well .
If there ’ s a perception that safety was sacrificed for political expediency , manufacturers , pharmacies , and public health agencies could have a harder time getting people to take the vaccine .
“ If there is any suspicion that there are political machinations in this process , that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ difficult , ” said Jonathan Zenilman , a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine .
Recent polling data suggests vaccine hesitancy is rising in the United States .
Adding to the confusion are mixed signals from the FDA , which is chalking out all the ways that it could potentially authorize a vaccine by November while insisting it will only be swayed by scientific evidence .
As Covid-19 fatalities mount , as the presidential election draws nearer , and as the prospect of a winter spike in cases looms , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Let ’ s walk through how a vaccine can gain approval and how political influence , or even the appearances thereof , can undermine the process .
Federal agencies are already signaling that a vaccine could begin distribution by October , but phase 3 clinical trials have barely begun Even with all the tensions of the moment , vaccine development for Covid-19 is happening at an unprecedented speed and scale .
There are more than 200 vaccine candidates around the world in development and nine are in phase 3 clinical trials , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can give a vaccine the go-ahead for distribution .
Nonetheless , agencies are already getting the ball rolling .
The New York Times obtained documents sent to state and city officials on August 27 showing that the CDC is instructing hospitals to begin preparing personnel , ultra-cold freezers , and distribution sites to administer a vaccine by as soon as the end of October .
“ Jurisdictions must be prepared to immediately vaccinate identified critical populations when the earliest COVID-19 vaccine doses are available and approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one of the CDC documents ( emphasis in the original document ) .
But some of the phase 3 trials are just getting started , and they can not be easily sped up .
Such trials are crucial because they show how effective a vaccine is against the actual virus spreading in the wild .
They also identify rarer potential complications with a vaccine that may not have emerged in earlier phases of a trial .
Since vaccines are distributed to vastly more people than drugs , including those that are healthy and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ meet a higher safety threshold than other therapies prior to approval .
For phase 3 trials , researchers are recruiting 30,000 volunteers per candidate vaccine .
“ The reason why they ’ re having such enormous numbers is if you have a larger trial , you get to the endpoint faster , ” said Johns Hopkins ’ s Zenilman , who has supervised clinical trials for vaccines .
Simply recruiting enough volunteers is a time-consuming task .
To date , no trial has finished filling out its trial pool in the United States @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Oxford ’ s Jenner Institute , are conducting trials across multiple countries .
Vaccine developer Moderna says it may have enough participants in the US later this month .
Those volunteers will then be divided into two groups , where roughly half will get a vaccine and the other half will receive a placebo .
Neither the recipients nor the administrators know which group is which .
Many of these vaccine candidates require two doses , spaced between 14 days and 28 days apart .
That means October is the earliest a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with the full dose .
At that point , researchers have to wait and see how many people get infected in their pool of volunteers .
After about 150 or so confirmed infections within the group , trial observers can break down the blinds and see how those infections were split between the group that received the vaccine and the group that didn ’ t to get an estimate of the efficacy of the vaccine .
How quickly infections accumulate in the volunteer group depends on how much Covid-19 is circulating in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ More community spread would mean the number of infections in the pool adds up faster .
Some of the phase 3 trials underway have already recruited thousands of volunteers , given many participants the full dose of the vaccine , and are starting to detect infections within the group .
Pfizer , one of the vaccine companies in phase 3 trials , says it has added 23,000 participants to its volunteer roll so far .
“ A significant number of them have already started getting the second dose of the vaccine , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , told Reuters on September 3 .
Covid-19 is a mercurial disease — many people with infections don ’ t show signs at all , while for others , it can take days or weeks before they experience symptoms like fever , coughing , or shortness of breath .
For a phase 3 vaccine trial , suspected infections have to be confirmed with testing , which adds even more delays to getting all the requisite data .
Taken together , these factors mean that it can take weeks or months before a phase @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a safety and efficacy determination for a Covid-19 vaccine .
That ’ s why some researchers think it ’ s highly unlikely that such a trial will wrap up in time for the November election .
“ All of those pieces are very time consuming and we just haven ’ t seen enough time go by to allow for ” the needed data to come in before the election , said Saskia Popescu , an assistant professor at George Mason University who studies epidemiology .
However , Bourla , Pfizer ’ s CEO @ @ @ @ @ @ @ determination about its vaccine candidate before November .
“ We expect , by the end of October , normally , we should be able to have enough events to say if the product works or not , ” he said .
“ If we have enough events , we may be able to say the product is safe and efficacious in the October timeframe and submit immediately for approval.
” Researchers are concerned the FDA may abuse its emergency use authorization process to boost an unready Covid-19 vaccine The current pace of phase @ @ @ @ @ @ @ might not have enough evidence of safety and efficacy to grant full approval to a Covid-19 vaccine before November .
Instead , the agency may invoke an emergency use authorization , or EUA , for a vaccine .
This provision gives the FDA wide latitude to allow health providers to use approaches during a public health emergency that have a likely benefit .
That ’ s a much lower bar than is needed for conventional approval , which requires a demonstrated health benefit with completed clinical trials .
FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ idea of issuing an EUA for a vaccine , bypassing phase 3 trials , but companies would have to take the lead .
“ It is up to the sponsor [ vaccine developer ] to apply for authorisation or approval , and we make an adjudication of their application , ” Hahn told the Financial Times on August 30 .
“ If they do that before the end of phase 3 , we may find that appropriate .
We may find that inappropriate , we will make a determination.
” In their statement @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to “ [ o ] nly submit for approval or emergency use authorization after demonstrating safety and efficacy through a Phase 3 clinical study that is designed and conducted to meet requirements of expert regulatory authorities such as FDA.
” So they did not entirely rule it out .
The FDA has received a torrent of criticism in issuing EUAs during the Covid-19 pandemic , apparently bending to political influence .
For instance , the agency granted one to hydroxychloroquine after Trump called it “ one of the biggest game changers in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ evidence for its effectiveness .
The FDA then revoked this authorization as the benefits failed to materialize and cases of serious side effects mounted .
More recently , the FDA ’ s EUA for convalescent plasma for Covid-19 treatment has come under scrutiny .
The National Institutes of Health reviewed the research justifying the approval of the therapy and called it “ insufficient.
” “ I think , in isolation , the notion that one could stop a phase 3 [ vaccine ] trial early is not necessarily upsetting , ” Offit , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ director , said .
“ The problem is the context of that statement.
” Researchers warn that the FDA could further erode its credibility when trust is most critical .
An EUA still needs to be backed by evidence from clinical trials , and that takes time as well The standard of evidence for an EUA from the FDA is lower than in granting a full license for manufacturing , but it ’ s not zero .
“ If you ’ re licensing a vaccine , you have to prove that it ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that it ’ s effective , ” Offit said .
“ If you ’ re not licensing it , but rather you ’ re trying to get it authorized through the emergency use authorization , it doesn ’ t necessarily have to be proven to be effective .
The quote in the FDA guidelines is ‘ may be effective , ’ which is much lesser , and open to interpretation.
” The FDA ’ s guidance for a Covid-19 vaccine sets a minimum benchmark of 50 percent efficacy for approval , meaning at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ vaccine must gain protection from the disease .
The same standard holds for an EUA for a vaccine , but officials said that the evidence has to be robust .
“ If a vaccine is efficacious , an EUA will require that the documentation and demonstration of efficacy be flawless , ” Moncef Slaoui , the lead scientific adviser to the US government ’ s Operation Warp Speed , said in a September 3 interview in Science magazine .
Operation Warp Speed is a $ 10 billion effort aimed at delivering 300 million @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2021 .
The program is funding research and development as well as manufacturing so that once a vaccine is approved , doses will be available right away .
The data needed to grant an EUA will still have to come from a phase 3 trial , but it could be gleaned before the trial is completed .
The main gatekeepers of this information are data and safety monitoring boards for the various vaccine trials .
These are groups of nongovernmental scientists and researchers who independently evaluate the evidence presented in clinical trials .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ review the evidence gathered at predetermined intervals .
If a phase 3 trial needs 150 confirmed infections in its 30,000-person testing pool to yield a statistically significant result , the DSMB could conduct a review when 70 infections are confirmed .
The board could then examine how the infections are split among the vaccine treatment group and the placebo control group .
“ If at that point you see an absolutely even split , then you may want to call the study to an end due to futility .
‘ Let ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Zenilman said .
“ On the other hand , if there is a 70 percent split [ between the placebo group and the vaccine group ] , the advice to the study team would be to keep on going.
” But to justify an EUA at this point , the evidence for efficacy would have to be overwhelming , with close to every detected infection in the control group and almost none in the group that received a vaccine .
Even so , there will be much less data about the safety @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ The long-term evidence of safety is going to be limited because these vaccines are going to have only six months or five months of data , ” Slaoui said .
Establishing safety is especially critical for some of the Covid-19 vaccines in phase 3 trials because they are using vaccine technologies that have never been approved for widespread human use before , like Moderna ’ s mRNA vaccine and the University of Oxford ’ s adenovirus vector vaccine .
That could lead to a situation by late October where there is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ effective but weak evidence that it ’ s safe for large segments of the population .
If a vaccine developer decides to seek an EUA at that point , it could force the FDA to make some difficult decisions .
The question now is what is the lowest standard of evidence the FDA will use to justify an EUA for a vaccine and how soon clinical trials will clear that bar .
Peter Marks , director of the FDA ’ s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research , the group that would approve @ @ @ @ @ @ @ determination one way or the other would be solely guided by the science .
He confirmed to Reuters that he would resign if a vaccine were authorized without adequate data to support it .
“ I could not stand by and see something that was unsafe or ineffective that was being put through , ” Marks told Reuters .
“ You have to decide where your red line is , and that ’ s my red line.
” The FDA and CDC need to go out of their way to show the public @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not politics Getting a Covid-19 vaccine approved , whether through a full license or with an EUA , is only the first step in an immunization campaign to thwart the pandemic .
Next steps would require manufacturing capacity to produce the millions of doses needed , thousands of workers trained to administer the vaccine , robust monitoring systems to keep track of recipients , and hardware like freezers to store the vaccine .
These things will take months to set up and little if any of this infrastructure will be in place prior @ @ @ @ @ @ @ doses of a vaccine would also be earmarked for people like doctors and essential workers who face the greatest risk of exposure .
But perhaps the biggest factor affecting a vaccination effort — public faith in a vaccine — may also be the most fragile element .
Appearances that political pressure influenced the release of a vaccine or the emergence of complications that weren ’ t detected in a curtailed clinical trial would make it harder to convince people to get inoculated against Covid-19 .
“ From a public health standpoint , I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just that we ’ re rushing this ... but also really that if there are negative outcomes , that is really going to impact trust that the public has in the vaccine , the CDC , and our ability to respond , ” said Popescu .
“ It ’ s kinda hard not to see a November 1 push with a November 3 election date as anything but politically motivated.
” However , Herschel Nachlis , a research assistant professor of government at Dartmouth College , noted that political pressure is almost impossible @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Even under the best circumstances , regulatory decision-makings are always a partial combination of law and policy , and political context , ” Nachlis said .
Nachlis co-authored a recent article in the journal JAMA examining the FDA ’ s missteps with its previous EUAs like that for hydroxychloroquine , and how lessons from those mistakes should be applied to a Covid-19 vaccine to increase transparency .
“ The FDA conveying to the public that it knows what it ’ s doing and that it ’ s doing things consistent with its expertise @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Nachlis said .
To this end , the FDA will hold a public meeting of its Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee on October 22 , less than two weeks before the presidential election .
The meeting will go over some of the evidence collected from phase 3 trials by then and discuss any potential vaccine approvals and license applications .
“ I want to assure the American people that the process and review for vaccine development will be as open and transparent as possible , ” FDA Commissioner Hahn said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ It is critical for people to see FDA ’ s expectations for data to support safety and effectiveness.
” But as the election nears , the political pressure to approve a Covid-19 vaccine will only mount .
So the CDC and the FDA will have to go out of their way to demonstrate that their decisions are guided by data and not politics .
And with past missteps , the groups have some ground to make up .
“ There ’ s two components here : There ’ s the science and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Nachlis said .
“ Even the best science can ’ t cure a distrustful public.
” Help keep Vox free for all Millions turn to Vox each month to understand what ’ s happening in the news , from the coronavirus crisis to a racial reckoning to what is , quite possibly , the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers , your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work , and helping everyone make sense of an increasingly chaotic world .
Contribute today from as little as $ 3 .

Nine companies leading the charge to develop a Covid-19 vaccine released a pledge Tuesday to stick to the science in the development and licensing of a vaccine in what appears to be an attempt to preempt pressure from the White House to rush vaccine approval before the November election.
The vaccine makers said they are committed “to developing and testing potential vaccines for COVID-19 in accordance with high ethical standards and sound scientific principles.”
The statement comes as the Trump administration is expecting significant movement on a Covid-19 vaccine before the presidential election on November 3. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told hospitals across the country to prepare for the potential delivery of a Covid-19 vaccine within two months, alarming researchers and health workers who fear it is yielding to political pressure. President Trump has also accused the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) without evidence of deliberately delaying vaccine approval.
“How can you not worry that the FDA has been influenced?” said Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
The new pledge from the nine companies — AstraZeneca, BioNTech, GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Moderna, Novavax, Pfizer, and Sanofi — shows that these manufacturers are concerned that political influence could undermine the successful delivery of the vaccine as well. If there’s a perception that safety was sacrificed for political expediency, manufacturers, pharmacies, and public health agencies could have a harder time getting people to take the vaccine.
“If there is any suspicion that there are political machinations in this process, that is going to make vaccinations much more difficult,” said Jonathan Zenilman, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Recent polling data suggests vaccine hesitancy is rising in the United States. Adding to the confusion are mixed signals from the FDA, which is chalking out all the ways that it could potentially authorize a vaccine by November while insisting it will only be swayed by scientific evidence.
As Covid-19 fatalities mount, as the presidential election draws nearer, and as the prospect of a winter spike in cases looms, these tensions will likely only grow. Let’s walk through how a vaccine can gain approval and how political influence, or even the appearances thereof, can undermine the process.
Federal agencies are already signaling that a vaccine could begin distribution by October, but phase 3 clinical trials have barely begun
Even with all the tensions of the moment, vaccine development for Covid-19 is happening at an unprecedented speed and scale. There are more than 200 vaccine candidates around the world in development and nine are in phase 3 clinical trials, the large-scale human testing needed before the FDA can give a vaccine the go-ahead for distribution.
Nonetheless, agencies are already getting the ball rolling. The New York Times obtained documents sent to state and city officials on August 27 showing that the CDC is instructing hospitals to begin preparing personnel, ultra-cold freezers, and distribution sites to administer a vaccine by as soon as the end of October.
“Jurisdictions must be prepared to immediately vaccinate identified critical populations when the earliest COVID-19 vaccine doses are available and approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA),” according to one of the CDC documents (emphasis in the original document).
But some of the phase 3 trials are just getting started, and they cannot be easily sped up. Such trials are crucial because they show how effective a vaccine is against the actual virus spreading in the wild. They also identify rarer potential complications with a vaccine that may not have emerged in earlier phases of a trial. Since vaccines are distributed to vastly more people than drugs, including those that are healthy and those with preexisting conditions, vaccines must meet a higher safety threshold than other therapies prior to approval.
For phase 3 trials, researchers are recruiting 30,000 volunteers per candidate vaccine. “The reason why they’re having such enormous numbers is if you have a larger trial, you get to the endpoint faster,” said Johns Hopkins’s Zenilman, who has supervised clinical trials for vaccines.
Simply recruiting enough volunteers is a time-consuming task. To date, no trial has finished filling out its trial pool in the United States. Some groups, like the University of Oxford’s Jenner Institute, are conducting trials across multiple countries. Vaccine developer Moderna says it may have enough participants in the US later this month.
Those volunteers will then be divided into two groups, where roughly half will get a vaccine and the other half will receive a placebo. Neither the recipients nor the administrators know which group is which.
Many of these vaccine candidates require two doses, spaced between 14 days and 28 days apart. That means October is the earliest a trial can have a pool of participants with the full dose.
At that point, researchers have to wait and see how many people get infected in their pool of volunteers. After about 150 or so confirmed infections within the group, trial observers can break down the blinds and see how those infections were split between the group that received the vaccine and the group that didn’t to get an estimate of the efficacy of the vaccine.
How quickly infections accumulate in the volunteer group depends on how much Covid-19 is circulating in the community where the trial is occurring. More community spread would mean the number of infections in the pool adds up faster. Some of the phase 3 trials underway have already recruited thousands of volunteers, given many participants the full dose of the vaccine, and are starting to detect infections within the group.
Pfizer, one of the vaccine companies in phase 3 trials, says it has added 23,000 participants to its volunteer roll so far. “A significant number of them have already started getting the second dose of the vaccine,” Albert Bourla, the CEO of Pfizer, told Reuters on September 3.
Covid-19 is a mercurial disease — many people with infections don’t show signs at all, while for others, it can take days or weeks before they experience symptoms like fever, coughing, or shortness of breath. For a phase 3 vaccine trial, suspected infections have to be confirmed with testing, which adds even more delays to getting all the requisite data.
Taken together, these factors mean that it can take weeks or months before a phase 3 trial generates enough data to make a safety and efficacy determination for a Covid-19 vaccine. That’s why some researchers think it’s highly unlikely that such a trial will wrap up in time for the November election.
“All of those pieces are very time consuming and we just haven’t seen enough time go by to allow for” the needed data to come in before the election, said Saskia Popescu, an assistant professor at George Mason University who studies epidemiology.
However, Bourla, Pfizer’s CEO, said the company could make a determination about its vaccine candidate before November. “We expect, by the end of October, normally, we should be able to have enough events to say if the product works or not,” he said. “If we have enough events, we may be able to say the product is safe and efficacious in the October timeframe and submit immediately for approval.”
Researchers are concerned the FDA may abuse its emergency use authorization process to boost an unready Covid-19 vaccine
The current pace of phase 3 clinical trials means that the FDA might not have enough evidence of safety and efficacy to grant full approval to a Covid-19 vaccine before November.
Instead, the agency may invoke an emergency use authorization, or EUA, for a vaccine. This provision gives the FDA wide latitude to allow health providers to use approaches during a public health emergency that have a likely benefit. That’s a much lower bar than is needed for conventional approval, which requires a demonstrated health benefit with completed clinical trials.
FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said that his agency is open to the idea of issuing an EUA for a vaccine, bypassing phase 3 trials, but companies would have to take the lead. “It is up to the sponsor [vaccine developer] to apply for authorisation or approval, and we make an adjudication of their application,” Hahn told the Financial Times on August 30. “If they do that before the end of phase 3, we may find that appropriate. We may find that inappropriate, we will make a determination.”
In their statement on Tuesday, nine vaccine developers vowed to “[o]nly submit for approval or emergency use authorization after demonstrating safety and efficacy through a Phase 3 clinical study that is designed and conducted to meet requirements of expert regulatory authorities such as FDA.” So they did not entirely rule it out.
The FDA has received a torrent of criticism in issuing EUAs during the Covid-19 pandemic, apparently bending to political influence.
For instance, the agency granted one to hydroxychloroquine after Trump called it “one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine,” despite flimsy evidence for its effectiveness. The FDA then revoked this authorization as the benefits failed to materialize and cases of serious side effects mounted.
More recently, the FDA’s EUA for convalescent plasma for Covid-19 treatment has come under scrutiny. The National Institutes of Health reviewed the research justifying the approval of the therapy and called it “insufficient.”
“I think, in isolation, the notion that one could stop a phase 3 [vaccine] trial early is not necessarily upsetting,” Offit, the children’s hospital vaccine center director, said. “The problem is the context of that statement.”
Researchers warn that the FDA could further erode its credibility when trust is most critical.
An EUA still needs to be backed by evidence from clinical trials, and that takes time as well
The standard of evidence for an EUA from the FDA is lower than in granting a full license for manufacturing, but it’s not zero.
“If you’re licensing a vaccine, you have to prove that it’s safe, you have to prove that it’s effective,” Offit said. “If you’re not licensing it, but rather you’re trying to get it authorized through the emergency use authorization, it doesn’t necessarily have to be proven to be effective. The quote in the FDA guidelines is ‘may be effective,’ which is much lesser, and open to interpretation.”
The FDA’s guidance for a Covid-19 vaccine sets a minimum benchmark of 50 percent efficacy for approval, meaning at least half the people who get the vaccine must gain protection from the disease. The same standard holds for an EUA for a vaccine, but officials said that the evidence has to be robust.
“If a vaccine is efficacious, an EUA will require that the documentation and demonstration of efficacy be flawless,” Moncef Slaoui, the lead scientific adviser to the US government’s Operation Warp Speed, said in a September 3 interview in Science magazine. Operation Warp Speed is a $10 billion effort aimed at delivering 300 million doses of a Covid-19 vaccine by January 2021. The program is funding research and development as well as manufacturing so that once a vaccine is approved, doses will be available right away.
The data needed to grant an EUA will still have to come from a phase 3 trial, but it could be gleaned before the trial is completed. The main gatekeepers of this information are data and safety monitoring boards for the various vaccine trials. These are groups of nongovernmental scientists and researchers who independently evaluate the evidence presented in clinical trials.
During a trial, the safety boards periodically review the evidence gathered at predetermined intervals. If a phase 3 trial needs 150 confirmed infections in its 30,000-person testing pool to yield a statistically significant result, boards could conduct a review when 70 infections are confirmed. The board could then examine how the infections are split among the vaccine treatment group and the placebo control group.
“If at that point you see an absolutely even split, then you may want to call the study to an end due to futility. ‘Let’s just call it a day,’” Zenilman said. “On the other hand, if there is a 70 percent split [between the placebo group and the vaccine group], the advice to the study team would be to keep on going.”
But to justify an EUA at this point, the evidence for efficacy would have to be overwhelming, with close to every detected infection in the control group and almost none in the group that received a vaccine. Even so, there will be much less data about the safety of the vaccine at this early point.
“The long-term evidence of safety is going to be limited because these vaccines are going to have only six months or five months of data,” Slaoui said. Establishing safety is especially critical for some of the Covid-19 vaccines in phase 3 trials because they are using vaccine technologies that have never been approved for widespread human use before, like Moderna’s mRNA vaccine and the University of Oxford’s adenovirus vector vaccine.
That could lead to a situation by late October where there is strong evidence that a Covid-19 vaccine is effective but weak evidence that it’s safe for large segments of the population. If a vaccine developer decides to seek an EUA at that point, it could force the FDA to make some difficult decisions.
The question now is what is the lowest standard of evidence the FDA will use to justify an EUA for a vaccine and how soon clinical trials will clear that bar.
Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, the group that would approve a Covid-19 vaccine, insisted that his determination one way or the other would be solely guided by the science. He confirmed to Reuters that he would resign if a vaccine were authorized without adequate data to support it.
“I could not stand by and see something that was unsafe or ineffective that was being put through,” Marks told Reuters. “You have to decide where your red line is, and that’s my red line.”
The FDA and CDC need to go out of their way to show the public their decisions are based on science, not politics
Getting a Covid-19 vaccine approved, whether through a full license or with an EUA, is only the first step in an immunization campaign to thwart the pandemic.
Next steps would require manufacturing capacity to produce the millions of doses needed, thousands of workers trained to administer the vaccine, robust monitoring systems to keep track of recipients, and hardware like freezers to store the vaccine. These things will take months to set up and little if any of this infrastructure will be in place prior to the November election. The earliest doses of a vaccine would also be earmarked for people like doctors and essential workers who face the greatest risk of exposure.
But perhaps the biggest factor affecting a vaccination effort — public faith in a vaccine — may also be the most fragile element. Appearances that political pressure influenced the release of a vaccine or the emergence of complications that weren’t detected in a curtailed clinical trial would make it harder to convince people to get inoculated against Covid-19.
“From a public health standpoint, I think what worries me especially is not just that we’re rushing this ... but also really that if there are negative outcomes, that is really going to impact trust that the public has in the vaccine, the CDC, and our ability to respond,” said Popescu. “It’s kinda hard not to see a November 1 push with a November 3 election date as anything but politically motivated.”
As a healthcare worker, I would be one of the first groups eligible for a vaccine in November. Despite the horror of what I've seen from #coronavirus firsthand, I would not take a vaccine that had not undergone Phase 3 clinical trials. Period. — uché blackstock, md (@uche_blackstock) September 3, 2020
However, Herschel Nachlis, a research assistant professor of government at Dartmouth College, noted that political pressure is almost impossible to decouple from the process.
“Even under the best circumstances, regulatory decision-makings are always a partial combination of law and policy, and political context,” Nachlis said.
Nachlis co-authored a recent article in the journal JAMA examining the FDA’s missteps with its previous EUAs like that for hydroxychloroquine, and how lessons from those mistakes should be applied to a Covid-19 vaccine to increase transparency.
“The FDA conveying to the public that it knows what it’s doing and that it’s doing things consistent with its expertise and high reputation is really important,” Nachlis said.
To this end, the FDA will hold a public meeting of its Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee on October 22, less than two weeks before the presidential election. The meeting will go over some of the evidence collected from phase 3 trials by then and discuss any potential vaccine approvals and license applications.
“I want to assure the American people that the process and review for vaccine development will be as open and transparent as possible,” FDA Commissioner Hahn said in a statement announcing the meeting. “It is critical for people to see FDA’s expectations for data to support safety and effectiveness.”
But as the election nears, the political pressure to approve a Covid-19 vaccine will only mount. So the CDC and the FDA will have to go out of their way to demonstrate that their decisions are guided by data and not politics. And with past missteps, the groups have some ground to make up.
“There’s two components here: There’s the science and the public’s trust,” Nachlis said. “Even the best science can’t cure a distrustful public.”


vox--2020-09-08--Top Putin critic Alexei Navalny out of a coma after suspected nerve agent poisoning

Alexei Navalny , Russian President Vladimir Putin ’ s most outspoken critic , has come out of the medically induced coma he ’ s been in since he was poisoned three weeks ago with a nerve agent the Kremlin has long been suspected of using against political dissidents .
“ The patient has been removed from his medically induced coma and is being weaned off mechanical ventilation , ” the Charité hospital in Berlin , where Navalny is being treated , said in a Monday statement .
“ He is responding to verbal stimuli , ” the statement said , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ early to gauge the potential long-term effects of his severe poisoning.
” Still , it ’ s good news for Navalny , his wife , his team , and his millions of supporters , as it appears he ’ ll survive the suspected attack .
That prospect was somewhat in doubt when the German government last week revealed a toxicology report showing evidence of the nerve agent Novichok in Navalny ’ s system .
Novichok is one of the world ’ s most lethal nerve agents .
It was developed by the Soviet @ @ @ @ @ @ @ double agent in the UK two years ago .
The use of the deadly nerve agent increases the likelihood that the Russian government was behind Navalny ’ s poisoning , as many have suspected , and led to condemnations from world leaders like German Chancellor Angela Merkel and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg .
President Donald Trump , however , has yet to significantly rebuke the Kremlin or President Putin for Navalny ’ s condition .
Which means the fallout from the suspected murder attempt might further split ties between a Europe united @ @ @ @ @ @ @ actions and an America unwilling to chastise Moscow for the heinous act .
On August 20 , Navalny drank tea at a Siberian airport before boarding a flight to Moscow .
He became ill on the aircraft , with a video purportedly showing the politician moaning and needing immediate medical attention .
The plane made an emergency landing in Omsk , near Kazakhstan , where an ambulance waited to take him to a local hospital .
But Navalny ’ s condition worsened , and he fell into a coma before he arrived at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Emergency Hospital No .
1 , where Navalny was first treated , became the site of a frustrating standoff between Navalny ’ s family and supporters and the doctors overseeing his care .
Navalny ’ s wife and team alleged the doctors were controlled by the Kremlin and tried to cover up the poisoning attack instead of properly treating their patient .
The physicians at the time said Navalny wasn ’ t poisoned but instead suffered from a “ metabolic disorder ” that led to low blood sugar .
“ Poisons or traces @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not been identified , ” Anatoly Kalinichenko , the deputy chief doctor at the Omsk emergency hospital , told reporters on Friday .
“ The diagnosis of ‘ poisoning ’ remains somewhere in the back of our minds , but we do not believe that the patient suffered poisoning.
” But Navalny ’ s team — including his wife Yulia Navalnaya , who was barred from seeing her husband in the Russian hospital , according to a spokesperson — suspected foul play .
They had good reason to believe that : The Kremlin @ @ @ @ @ @ @ poisoning political dissidents , defectors , and other enemies of the state .
“ The medics are being totally commanded by the FSB and hardly release anything , ” Vladimir Milov , a close Navalny associate , told me last week , using the acronym for Russia ’ s Federal Security Service , the successor agency to the Soviet-era KGB responsible for internal security , among other things .
“ We of course can not trust this hospital and we demand for Alexei to be given to us , so that we could @ @ @ @ @ @ @ whose doctors we trust , ” Navalnaya said in another press conference on August 21 .
A medical plane sent by the Berlin-based humanitarian group Cinema for Peace Foundation arrived in Omsk on Friday to take the opposition leader to Germany for treatment .
The Russian doctors initially blocked the transfer , saying Navalny wasn ’ t stable enough to travel , before finally allowing the German physicians to take a look at the patient ’ s condition .
Navalnaya wrote a letter to Putin , pleading for him to allow the transfer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the issue and expressed concern about the situation in a Friday call with Putin .
Late that Friday , the Russian physicians granted the transfer request , and Navalny arrived in Berlin over the weekend .
Hanging over all the drama is one pressing question : Did Putin have anything to do it ?
As of right now , we don ’ t have a definitive answer to that question — and we may never get it .
Turns out , that may be exactly the point .
Why Putin may be responsible @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Ask people familiar with how the Russian government handles dissidents , and they unanimously note that what likely happened to Navalny is part of a long-standing Russian government playbook — one that Putin follows .
“ Killing or intimidating ‘ enemies of the people ’ has been a staple of Kremlin policy for over 100 years , ” said John Sipher , who ran CIA operations in Russia during his 28-year intelligence career before retiring six years ago .
“ Putin has continued this tactic of killing his enemies at home and abroad @ @ @ @ @ @ @ those who wish to earn the Kremlin ’ s support need to do [ his ] bidding , ” Sipher said .
“ Whether or not Putin personally ordered the poisoning , he is behind any and all efforts to maintain control through intimidation and murder.
” Poisoning people is kind of the Kremlin ’ s thing .
In 2004 , Viktor Yushchenko campaigned against a Putin ally for the presidency of Ukraine .
But then he fell ill , with his face mysteriously and suddenly blotchy and the left side paralyzed .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ pain .
He said he had been poisoned — with dioxin , a toxic chemical , no less — but Russian officials have long denied having anything to do with what happened to him .
( Oh , and Yushchenko ended up winning the presidency . )
In 2006 , two Russian agents put polonium-210 — a highly radioactive chemical — in former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko ’ s tea at a London hotel bar ( he had defected to the UK ) .
It took weeks for Litvinenko to die , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ You may succeed in silencing one man , ” Litvinenko said from his hospital bed , “ but the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate , Mr. Putin , in your ears for the rest of your life.
” Russia continues to deny any involvement in Litvinenko ’ s death .
In 2018 , the UK determined that Russian operatives poisoned a former Russian double agent and his daughter in Britain with Novichok , one of the world ’ s most lethal nerve agents ( that just so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Soviet Union ) , putting both victims in the hospital in serious condition .
They both recovered from the attack and are now in an unknown location — hiding out of fear of another potential attack .
And while poison is one of the most commonly used assassination tools , the Kremlin isn ’ t above using more prosaic methods .
Boris Nemtsov , for instance , was shot near the Kremlin in February 2015 .
Nemtsov had been digging up dirt on the government ’ s misdeeds , which may have prompted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ A man was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the murder , but many critics believe the whole trial was a sham and a cover-up by the president ’ s team .
The common thread among all of these episodes , as Sipher alluded to , is that it ’ s unclear just how directly Putin may or may not have been involved .
Plausible deniability is baked into the cake of his authoritarian system .
Everyone who works in the government knows what Putin wants without him having to explicitly ask @ @ @ @ @ @ @ green light to pursue some of those goals — like knocking off a political rival — while officially keeping Putin out the loop .
That , in a sense , is how he gets what he wants without having his fingerprints on the government ’ s dirtiest actions .
So Putin could have ordered Navalny dead himself , but it ’ s equally possible that someone who wanted to make Putin happy did it on their own initiative .
“ Navalny has lots of enemies , ” said Judy Twigg , a Russia @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has been repeatedly jailed for instigating protests against Putin and was twice attacked with an antiseptic green dye in 2017 .
“ It looks funny but it hurts like hell , ” Navalny tweeted about the attacks .
And last summer , while Navalny was serving a 30-day prison sentence for leading anti-government protests , he was taken to the hospital with symptoms of facial swelling , itching , and a rash .
As the Guardian reported at the time , doctors at the hospital said Navalny was experiencing an allergic reaction to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that something was .
One of Navalny ’ s personal doctors also examined him , though , and she said he was suffering from “ the result of harmful effects of undefined chemical substances ... induced by a ‘ third person.
’ ” In other words , poison .
There ’ s still no official proof of foul play ( of course ) .
But beyond this very suggestive history , there are two other potential context clues that point the finger in Putin ’ s direction in this latest incident .
First @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pressure on the Omsk hospital , as the Navalny associate Milov alleged , that would imply that Putin or someone close to him cares deeply about how Navalny ’ s situation is handled .
Twigg told me it ’ s certainly possible the FSB was involved .
“ The FSB would surely be highly engaged in a situation where there ’ s contact with foreigners , ” said Twigg , especially since employees of the state — which includes most Russian medical staff — must report their contacts with international visitors , such @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , any state security officials that were involved may have just been following protocol by inserting themselves into a situation that would clearly garner global attention .
But their suspected role in keeping the German doctors from initially seeing Navalny , if true , could mean they were trying to hide something — like , say , any evidence of poison coursing through the opposition figure ’ s veins .
Second , things aren ’ t looking too great for Putin right now .
He ’ s overseeing one of the world ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that question his leadership , and watching as his ally in Belarus faces nationwide calls to step down .
With all that instability , Putin may have wanted to target his main political rival to send a strong message .
“ This is an escalation and a sign that the regime is anxious and eager to clamp down once and for all , ” Alina Polyakova , the president of the Center for European Policy Analysis , told me .
If that was the plan , it ’ s unclear whether it will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , he may have even more credibility to form a larger opposition movement against Putin as a result of the suspected attack , experts say .
Instead of getting rid of his biggest political rival , Putin ( or whoever might be responsible ) may have just made him more powerful .
Whether or not Navalny bounces back and is able to wield that power is what many inside and outside Russia — and certainly many inside the Kremlin — will be waiting to see .
Help keep Vox free for all Millions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what ’ s happening in the news , from the coronavirus crisis to a racial reckoning to what is , quite possibly , the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes .
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The world’s top chemical weapons watchdog group concluded that the substance ingested in August by Alexei Navalny, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most outspoken critic, was a nerve agent with “similar structural characteristics” to Novichok — providing more evidence the Kremlin was behind a chemical attack on a political opponent.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons’s (POCW) finding on Tuesday backs what a toxicology report in Germany found last month. Novichok is one of the world’s most lethal nerve agents. It was developed by the Soviet Union and was used on a Russian double agent in the UK two years ago.
That’s why the OPCW seemed especially concerned about what they concluded. “These results constitute a matter of grave concern,” it said in a statement. “The use of chemical weapons by anyone under any circumstances [are] reprehensible and wholly contrary to the legal norms established by the international community.”
Luckily, Navalny was released from a German hospital on September 23 and is expected to make a full recovery. Such an outcome wasn’t guaranteed after he was placed in a medically induced after being poisoned before boarding a flight in Russia in August.
The confirmed use of a deadly nerve agent increases the likelihood that the Russian government was behind Navalny’s poisoning, as many have suspected, and has already led to condemnations from world leaders like German Chancellor Angela Merkel and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. Sanctions from European countries may follow, though it’s unclear if the United States will take any direct action.
Which means the fallout from the suspected murder attempt might further split ties between a Europe united in its disdain for Russia’s actions and an America unwilling to chastise Moscow for the heinous act.
What happened to Navalny, briefly explained
On August 20, Navalny drank tea at a Siberian airport before boarding a flight to Moscow. He became ill on the aircraft, with a video purportedly showing the politician moaning and needing immediate medical attention.
The plane made an emergency landing in Omsk, near Kazakhstan, where an ambulance waited to take him to a local hospital. But Navalny’s condition worsened, and he fell into a coma before he arrived at the facility.
Russia’s Omsk Emergency Hospital No. 1, where Navalny was first treated, became the site of a frustrating standoff between Navalny’s family and supporters and the doctors overseeing his care. Navalny’s wife and team alleged the doctors were controlled by the Kremlin and tried to cover up the poisoning attack instead of properly treating their patient.
The physicians at the time said Navalny wasn’t poisoned but instead suffered from a “metabolic disorder” that led to low blood sugar. “Poisons or traces of their presence in the body have not been identified,” Anatoly Kalinichenko, the deputy chief doctor at the Omsk emergency hospital, told reporters on Friday. “The diagnosis of ‘poisoning’ remains somewhere in the back of our minds, but we do not believe that the patient suffered poisoning.”
But Navalny’s team — including his wife Yulia Navalnaya, who was barred from seeing her husband in the Russian hospital, according to a spokesperson — suspected foul play. They had good reason to believe that: The Kremlin has a long, sordid history of poisoning political dissidents, defectors, and other enemies of the state.
“The medics are being totally commanded by the FSB and hardly release anything,” Vladimir Milov, a close Navalny associate, told me last week, using the acronym for Russia’s Federal Security Service, the successor agency to the Soviet-era KGB responsible for internal security, among other things.
“We of course cannot trust this hospital and we demand for Alexei to be given to us, so that we could have him treated in an independent hospital whose doctors we trust,” Navalnaya said in another press conference on August 21.
A medical plane sent by the Berlin-based humanitarian group Cinema for Peace Foundation arrived in Omsk on Friday to take the opposition leader to Germany for treatment. The Russian doctors initially blocked the transfer, saying Navalny wasn’t stable enough to travel, before finally allowing the German physicians to take a look at the patient’s condition.
Navalnaya wrote a letter to Putin, pleading for him to allow the transfer, and EU leader Charles Michel raised the issue and expressed concern about the situation in a Friday call with Putin. Late that Friday, the Russian physicians granted the transfer request, and Navalny arrived in Berlin over the weekend.
Hanging over all the drama is one pressing question: Did Putin have anything to do it?
As of right now, we don’t have a definitive answer to that question — and we may never get it. Turns out, that may be exactly the point.
Why Putin may be responsible for Navalny’s poisoning with Novichok
Ask people familiar with how the Russian government handles dissidents, and they unanimously note that what likely happened to Navalny is part of a long-standing Russian government playbook — one that Putin follows.
“Killing or intimidating ‘enemies of the people’ has been a staple of Kremlin policy for over 100 years,” said John Sipher, who ran CIA operations in Russia during his 28-year intelligence career before retiring six years ago.
“Putin has continued this tactic of killing his enemies at home and abroad, and has created a system where those who wish to earn the Kremlin’s support need to do [his] bidding,” Sipher said. “Whether or not Putin personally ordered the poisoning, he is behind any and all efforts to maintain control through intimidation and murder.”
Poisoning people is kind of the Kremlin’s thing. In 2004, Viktor Yushchenko campaigned against a Putin ally for the presidency of Ukraine. But then he fell ill, with his face mysteriously and suddenly blotchy and the left side paralyzed. He also suffered immense abdominal and back pain. He said he had been poisoned — with dioxin, a toxic chemical, no less — but Russian officials have long denied having anything to do with what happened to him. (Oh, and Yushchenko ended up winning the presidency.)
In 2006, two Russian agents put polonium-210 — a highly radioactive chemical — in former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko’s tea at a London hotel bar (he had defected to the UK). It took weeks for Litvinenko to die, and he blamed Putin for orchestrating the attack.
“You may succeed in silencing one man,” Litvinenko said from his hospital bed, “but the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr. Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life.” Russia continues to deny any involvement in Litvinenko’s death.
In 2018, the UK determined that Russian operatives poisoned a former Russian double agent and his daughter in Britain with Novichok, one of the world’s most lethal nerve agents (that just so happens to have been developed by the Soviet Union), putting both victims in the hospital in serious condition. They both recovered from the attack and are now in an unknown location — hiding out of fear of another potential attack.
And while poison is one of the most commonly used assassination tools, the Kremlin isn’t above using more prosaic methods. Boris Nemtsov, for instance, was shot near the Kremlin in February 2015. Nemtsov had been digging up dirt on the government’s misdeeds, which may have prompted Putin allies to want him dead. A man was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the murder, but many critics believe the whole trial was a sham and a cover-up by the president’s team.
The common thread among all of these episodes, as Sipher alluded to, is that it’s unclear just how directly Putin may or may not have been involved. Plausible deniability is baked into the cake of his authoritarian system. Everyone who works in the government knows what Putin wants without him having to explicitly ask. That means Kremlin operatives have the green light to pursue some of those goals — like knocking off a political rival — while officially keeping Putin out the loop.
That, in a sense, is how he gets what he wants without having his fingerprints on the government’s dirtiest actions.
So Putin could have ordered Navalny dead himself, but it’s equally possible that someone who wanted to make Putin happy did it on their own initiative. “Navalny has lots of enemies,” said Judy Twigg, a Russia expert at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Navalny has been repeatedly jailed for instigating protests against Putin and was twice attacked with an antiseptic green dye in 2017. “It looks funny but it hurts like hell,” Navalny tweeted about the attacks.
And last summer, while Navalny was serving a 30-day prison sentence for leading anti-government protests, he was taken to the hospital with symptoms of facial swelling, itching, and a rash. As the Guardian reported at the time, doctors at the hospital said Navalny was experiencing an allergic reaction to something but didn’t say what that something was.
One of Navalny’s personal doctors also examined him, though, and she said he was suffering from “the result of harmful effects of undefined chemical substances ... induced by a ‘third person.’”
In other words, poison. There’s still no official proof of foul play (of course).
But beyond this very suggestive history, there are two other potential context clues that point the finger in Putin’s direction in this latest incident.
First, if the FSB did indeed put pressure on the Omsk hospital, as the Navalny associate Milov alleged, that would imply that Putin or someone close to him cares deeply about how Navalny’s situation is handled.
Twigg told me it’s certainly possible the FSB was involved. “The FSB would surely be highly engaged in a situation where there’s contact with foreigners,” said Twigg, especially since employees of the state — which includes most Russian medical staff — must report their contacts with international visitors, such as the German doctors.
Of course, any state security officials that were involved may have just been following protocol by inserting themselves into a situation that would clearly garner global attention. But their suspected role in keeping the German doctors from initially seeing Navalny, if true, could mean they were trying to hide something — like, say, any evidence of poison coursing through the opposition figure’s veins.
Second, things aren’t looking too great for Putin right now. He’s overseeing one of the world’s worst coronavirus outbreaks, facing protests that question his leadership, and watching as his ally in Belarus faces nationwide calls to step down. With all that instability, Putin may have wanted to target his main political rival to send a strong message.
“This is an escalation and a sign that the regime is anxious and eager to clamp down once and for all,” Alina Polyakova, the president of the Center for European Policy Analysis, told me.
If that was the plan, it’s unclear whether it will actually work. If Navalny fully recovers, he may have even more credibility to form a larger opposition movement against Putin as a result of the suspected attack, experts say. Instead of getting rid of his biggest political rival, Putin (or whoever might be responsible) may have just made him more powerful.
Whether or not Navalny bounces back and is able to wield that power is what many inside and outside Russia — and certainly many inside the Kremlin — will be waiting to see.


vox--2020-09-08--Books to read when you want literary glamour

Welcome to the latest installment of Vox ’ s Ask a Book Critic , in which I , Vox book critic Constance Grady , provide book recommendations to suit your very specific mood : either how you ’ re feeling right now or how you ’ d like to be feeling instead .
My friends , it has been a little while since we ’ ve done one of these !
I ’ ve received some concerned messages from readers who worried that the series was over for good , but I promise it is not .
It will continue @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as it was for awhile .
What have you been reading in the interim ?
I just finished rereading Elif Batuman ’ s The Idiot for the Vox Book Club , and I ’ m delighted to find that my memory had undersold how funny it is .
( The scene where Selin keeps talking about how clean the strawberries are ?
You ’ ll get it if you read it . )
I am also faintly terrified that I have signed myself up for a month of discussing this book , because @ @ @ @ @ @ @ strongly resists discourse .
But we will find our way through together !
Of course , I am aware that a person is not always in the mood to read a book about complex language games and adolescent disillusionment .
That ’ s why this column exists : You tell me exactly what you want to read , and I will find the book for you .
Let ’ s get started .
I ’ m feeling lost figuring out exactly what kind of man I want to be after transitioning .
Do @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with a male protagonist who is already an adult ?
Love this question !
Just on the off chance you haven ’ t come across these transmasculine memoirs already , definitely pick up Daniel Lavery ’ s Something That May Shock and Discredit You ( published under the name Daniel Mallory Ortberg ) , and also consider Amateur by Thomas Page McBee .
In terms of novels , I think a solid bet for you is going to be quest novels , because the hero is often an adult and generally the thing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out to be what kind of person he is .
Sean Stewart ’ s Perfect Circle is a great option here , and I ’ d also throw in Possession ( dual protagonists , a whole lot of thinking about how what we grow up believing we want from life is not in fact what we want as adults ) .
This is also the kind of thing the classics are actually great for in a way a lot of contemporary novels won ’ t be .
So often contemporary novels in which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have assholes as main characters because contemporary literary fiction is too steeped in irony to handle this question with the sincerity it deserves .
I ’ m thinking Daniel Deronda , and honestly War and Peace , which is in large part devoted to Pierre trying to work out what kind of man he is and what kind of man he wants to be .
I ’ ve read Eve Babitz ’ s books during quarantine and am looking for something similar .
She writes about things I love to read about — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sex , fame , and parties , but she ’ s also super smart , witty , and literary .
I ’ ve already read Joan Didion .
Try Bill Cunningham ’ s memoir Fashion Climbing for glamour and parties , Tina Brown ’ s Vanity Fair Diaries for name-dropping with literary flair , and maybe some Cookie Mueller for all around fabulousness .
I have a long-running search for books that have a strong sense of place and I ’ m always sort of drawn to the mountain west .
My favorite @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
I love Steinbeck when he kept the story reasonably tight .
So I ’ d love other thoughts on writers along those lines .
My friend , this is a list crying out for some Annie Proulx !
Her most famous story has mountain right there in the title , and all of her stuff is very intimately , richly grounded in the natural landscape .
Plus , there is no one on the planet who writes a more devastatingly tight sentence than her .
I need something that ’ s exactly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or The Hitchhiker ’ s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams .
To be completely honest here , I have to admit that The Kingkiller Chronicles are not my jam ( no man is allowed to complain to me about Mary Sues until Rothfuss atones for Kvothe ) , but I do love a good sword-and-sorcery fantasy .
A great option for you would be Ellen Kushner ’ s Riverside series , starting with Swordspoint — velvety prose , intricate worldbuilding , and incredibly rich , compelling characters .
It always makes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ immaculate porcelain cup .
For something like Hitchhiker , my go-to recs are Terry Pratchett and Jasper Fforde .
If you have already read them , consider Patricia C. Wrede ’ s Enchanted Forest Chronicles .
She ’ s American so her comedic sensibility is different , but she does similar riffs on genre tropes and her books are all extremely lovable .
I really enjoyed Wilkie Collins ’ s The Woman in White and The Moonstone .
I loved the fun plots , the distinctive characters , and the shifting narratives .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Oh trust , I love a Victorian thriller .
So Collins actually had a protégé named Mary Elizabeth Braddon , and scholars sometimes call them respectively the king and queen of the sensation novel .
Try starting with Braddon ’ s Lady Audley ’ s Secret — there ’ s bigamy and murder and a scheming social striver who is technically the villain but whom I personally always root for .
I would also maybe consider trying George Gissing , who is an interesting writer because he veers back and forth so sharply @ @ @ @ @ @ @ world where characters are always throwing acid in each other ’ s faces and running away cackling .
This is maybe because the details of Gissing ’ s real life read like a pulp novel and he legitimately did not seem to understand the difference between the two genres — his first wife was a prostitute , his second wife was eventually committed to an insane asylum , it just gets wilder from there — but it makes for a very compelling reading experience .
I ’ m looking for a good erotic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Caution by Eileen Chang .
Try Silk by Alessandro Baricco .
The prose is so delicate and precise it feels tactile .
If you ’ d like me to recommend a book for you , email me at constance.grady @ vox.com with the subject line “ Ask a Book Critic.
” The more specific your mood , the better !
Help keep Vox free for all Millions turn to Vox each month to understand what ’ s happening in the news , from the coronavirus crisis to a racial reckoning to what is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ presidential election of our lifetimes .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
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Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers , your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work , and helping everyone make sense of an increasingly chaotic world .
Contribute today from as little as $ 3 .

Welcome to the latest installment of Vox’s Ask a Book Critic, in which I, Vox book critic Constance Grady, provide book recommendations to suit your very specific mood: either how you’re feeling right now or how you’d like to be feeling instead.
My friends, it has been a little while since we’ve done one of these! I’ve received some concerned messages from readers who worried that the series was over for good, but I promise it is not. It will continue, just not on a weekly basis as it was for awhile.
What have you been reading in the interim? I just finished rereading Elif Batuman’s The Idiot for the Vox Book Club, and I’m delighted to find that my memory had undersold how funny it is. (The scene where Selin keeps talking about how clean the strawberries are? You’ll get it if you read it.) I am also faintly terrified that I have signed myself up for a month of discussing this book, because it is the kind of book that strongly resists discourse. But we will find our way through together!
Of course, I am aware that a person is not always in the mood to read a book about complex language games and adolescent disillusionment. That’s why this column exists: You tell me exactly what you want to read, and I will find the book for you. Let’s get started.
I’m feeling lost figuring out exactly what kind of man I want to be after transitioning. Do you have suggestions for a coming-of-age-style story with a male protagonist who is already an adult?
Love this question! Just on the off chance you haven’t come across these transmasculine memoirs already, definitely pick up Daniel Lavery’s Something That May Shock and Discredit You (published under the name Daniel Mallory Ortberg), and also consider Amateur by Thomas Page McBee.
In terms of novels, I think a solid bet for you is going to be quest novels, because the hero is often an adult and generally the thing that he finds at the end turns out to be what kind of person he is. Sean Stewart’s Perfect Circle is a great option here, and I’d also throw in Possession (dual protagonists, a whole lot of thinking about how what we grow up believing we want from life is not in fact what we want as adults).
This is also the kind of thing the classics are actually great for in a way a lot of contemporary novels won’t be. So often contemporary novels in which a man tries to find his identity have assholes as main characters because contemporary literary fiction is too steeped in irony to handle this question with the sincerity it deserves. I’m thinking Daniel Deronda, and honestly War and Peace, which is in large part devoted to Pierre trying to work out what kind of man he is and what kind of man he wants to be.
I’ve read Eve Babitz’s books during quarantine and am looking for something similar. She writes about things I love to read about — the 1960s, LA, love, sex, fame, and parties, but she’s also super smart, witty, and literary. I’ve already read Joan Didion.
Try Bill Cunningham’s memoir Fashion Climbing for glamour and parties, Tina Brown’s Vanity Fair Diaries for name-dropping with literary flair, and maybe some Cookie Mueller for all around fabulousness.
I have a long-running search for books that have a strong sense of place and I’m always sort of drawn to the mountain west. My favorite book is The Winter of Our Discontent. I love Steinbeck when he kept the story reasonably tight. So I’d love other thoughts on writers along those lines.
My friend, this is a list crying out for some Annie Proulx! Her most famous story has mountain right there in the title, and all of her stuff is very intimately, richly grounded in the natural landscape. Plus, there is no one on the planet who writes a more devastatingly tight sentence than her.
I need something that’s exactly like The Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss or The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.
To be completely honest here, I have to admit that The Kingkiller Chronicles are not my jam (no man is allowed to complain to me about Mary Sues until Rothfuss atones for Kvothe), but I do love a good sword-and-sorcery fantasy. A great option for you would be Ellen Kushner’s Riverside series, starting with Swordspoint — velvety prose, intricate worldbuilding, and incredibly rich, compelling characters. It always makes me crave rich hot chocolate in an immaculate porcelain cup.
For something like Hitchhiker, my go-to recs are Terry Pratchett and Jasper Fforde. If you have already read them, consider Patricia C. Wrede’s Enchanted Forest Chronicles. She’s American so her comedic sensibility is different, but she does similar riffs on genre tropes and her books are all extremely lovable.
I really enjoyed Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White and The Moonstone. I loved the fun plots, the distinctive characters, and the shifting narratives. Would love recommendations for anything similar!
Oh trust, I love a Victorian thriller. So Collins actually had a protégé named Mary Elizabeth Braddon, and scholars sometimes call them respectively the king and queen of the sensation novel. Try starting with Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret — there’s bigamy and murder and a scheming social striver who is technically the villain but whom I personally always root for.
I would also maybe consider trying George Gissing, who is an interesting writer because he veers back and forth so sharply between social realism and an extremely heightened world where characters are always throwing acid in each other’s faces and running away cackling. This is maybe because the details of Gissing’s real life read like a pulp novel and he legitimately did not seem to understand the difference between the two genres — his first wife was a prostitute, his second wife was eventually committed to an insane asylum, it just gets wilder from there — but it makes for a very compelling reading experience.
I’m looking for a good erotic novel in the vein of Lust, Caution by Eileen Chang.
Try Silk by Alessandro Baricco. The prose is so delicate and precise it feels tactile.
If you’d like me to recommend a book for you, email me at constance.grady@vox.com with the subject line “Ask a Book Critic.” The more specific your mood, the better!


The great rebuild

The Covid-19 pandemic is a tragedy , a massive policy failure , and an existential threat to the livelihood and health of millions of Americans — with the pain disproportionality falling on Black Americans .
With more than 5 million cases worldwide , more than 175,000 Americans dead , more than 16 million US jobs eliminated , and schools and businesses shuttered , half measures won ’ t cut it .
It didn ’ t have to be this way .
However , there is still much we can do to recover — and not just recover , but rebuild @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thinkers , economists , and policymakers , The Great Rebuild imagines how we could marshal the power of the federal government and the potential of its citizens to fight back against the catastrophic effects of Covid-19 , and in the process create a system steeped in fairness , inclusion , and sustainability .
The Great Rebuild is made possible thanks to support from Omidyar Network , a social impact venture that works to reimagine critical systems and the ideas that govern them , and to build more inclusive and equitable societies .
All @ @ @ @ @ @ @ produced by our journalists .
The former presidential candidate discusses universal basic income , artificial intelligence , and his next job in politics .
How to decarbonize America — and create 25 million jobs The US has the technology to decarbonize by 2035 .
Here ’ s a plan to do it .
What it would take to end child poverty in America Rep. Barbara Lee on why rebuilding the economy should mean investing in our kids .
What would Keynes do ?
What the 20th century ’ s most influential economist can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The failed dream of the American small business Small businesses were once pillars of communities , but economic and systemic forces left many fighting for survival .
Then came the pandemic .

The Covid-19 pandemic is a tragedy, a massive policy failure, and an existential threat to the livelihood and health of millions of Americans — with the pain disproportionality falling on Black Americans.
A problem this big demands a bold solution.
With more than 30 million cases worldwide, more than 200,000 Americans dead, millions of US jobs eliminated, and schools and businesses shuttered, half measures won’t cut it. It didn’t have to be this way. However, there is still much we can do to recover — and not just recover, but rebuild.
Tapping the voices of prominent American thinkers, economists, and policymakers, The Great Rebuild imagines how we could marshal the power of the federal government and the potential of its citizens to fight back against the catastrophic effects of Covid-19, and in the process create a system steeped in fairness, inclusion, and sustainability.
The Great Rebuild is made possible thanks to support from Omidyar Network, a social impact venture that works to reimagine critical systems and the ideas that govern them, and to build more inclusive and equitable societies. All Great Rebuild coverage is editorially independent and produced by our journalists.
A blueprint exists for a more inclusive, successful nation that invests in the well-being of its citizens. We only have to look to the past.
by Zachary D. Carter
The problem with our social safety net is clear. The solution is, too.
by Emily Stewart
We have more than enough work to go around for the next generation if we address one of our nation’s biggest problems: infrastructure.
by Andrew Yang
It’s time to ask why we continue to spend millions of taxpayer dollars on police misconduct lawsuits and billions more on policing that yields poor outcomes.
by Sean Collins
A massive boom in new construction would create countless jobs and help finally end the legacy of racist housing policies.
by Matthew Yglesias
We must bail out the industry that allows millions of parents to work.
by Anna North
The former presidential candidate discusses universal basic income, artificial intelligence, and his next job in politics.
by Ezra Klein
The US has the technology to decarbonize by 2035. Here’s a plan to do it.
By Ezra Klein
Rep. Barbara Lee on why rebuilding the economy should mean investing in our kids.
By Ezra Klein
What the 20th century’s most influential economist can teach us about rebuilding the US economy.
By Ezra Klein
Small businesses were once pillars of communities, but economic and systemic forces left many fighting for survival. Then came the pandemic.
By Laura Entis
Party of One is a collaborative creative studio founded by Melissa Deckert and Nicole Licht, based in Brooklyn, New York. Through combined experience in fine arts and traditional design, Party of One creates compelling visuals with an emphasis on unique and often handcrafted prop design, styling, and sets.