Month: April 2020

Trump to Order U.S. Meat Plants to Stay Open Amid Supply Fears

April 30, 2020
President Donald Trump plans to order meat-processing plants to remain open, declaring them critical infrastructure as the nation confronts growing disruptions to the food supply from the coronavirus outbreak, a person familiar with the matter said. Trump plans to use the Defense Production Act to order the companies to stay open during the pandemic, and…

‘We’re Catching It Double.’ Amid Coronavirus Lockdowns, Gun Violence Continues to Plague Chicago

April 28, 2020
Despite a statewide shelter-in-place order to help limit the spread of the novel coronavirus, the city of Chicago is still facing high levels of gun violence. “It’s like a double whammy. We are catching it double. We have the virus and the violence to worry about,” Rodney Phillips, a violence prevention outreach worker in Chicago…

New York City Exposes the Stark Disparity in How COVID-19 Affects Low-Income Communities

April 27, 2020
Consider this for perspective: with 107,263 confirmed cases of COVID-19 across the five boroughs as of April 14., if New York City were a sovereign nation, it would be the sixth worst-hit country by the coronavirus. The city accounts for nearly 18% of all cases in the United States, which leads the world in infections…

How the Civil War Changed the Way Americans Thought About Economic Inequality

April 24, 2020
In the run-up to the 2020 election, some Americans are increasingly worried about the immense power that wealth plays in the country’s democracy. Those concerns would not have surprised Americans in 1776 — they assumed that property and political power were intertwined. Indeed, one had to own property to vote, although in America (unlike England)…

Republicans Could Use the Coronavirus to Suppress Votes Across the Country. This Week We Got a Preview

April 24, 2020
In 1946, Mississippi Senator Theodore Bilbo instructed his followers that the way to keep black people from voting was to get “the tar and feathers and don’t forget the match.” In the Jim Crow South, African Americans faced bullets, beatings, lynching and more for trying to cast a ballot. Over the years the weapon has…

Sundar Pichai on Big Tech’s Role During Coronavirus Crisis

April 20, 2020
In recent weeks, governments and citizens alike have turned to Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube, for help with the COVID-19 pandemic. In a rare partnership with Apple, the company is working to turn smartphones into contact-tracing devices, on an opt-in basis, to help notify people if they’ve been exposed to the virus.…

ESPN’s New Michael Jordan Documentary Is Exactly What We Need Right Now. Here’s How They Made It

April 18, 2020
ESPN has taken noble swings at programming a sports network with no sports. But there are only so many airings of marbles races, old games and gabfests about the April 23–25 NFL draft—an event that, during the COVID-19 pandemic, feels as significant as a speck of sand—that viewers can take. That’s why fans clamored so…

How New Efforts Are Recovering the Stories of People Who Were Deleted From History

April 15, 2020
There are holes in the stories we tell ourselves about history, gaping blanks that stand out like missing teeth in a broken smile. Certain types of people are often relegated to the background, or have been deleted altogether. Recently, a doctoral student at Duke University discovered that the oldest known copy of the Bible’s Gospel…

We Need to Rethink Our Food System to Prevent the Next Pandemic

April 13, 2020
Once a dangerous new pathogen is out, as we are seeing, it can be difficult if not impossible to prevent it going global. One as contagious as SARS-CoV-2 has the potential to infect the whole of humanity. Eighty per cent of cases may be benign, but with such a large pool of susceptible hosts, the…

‘I’ve Been Missing Caring for People.’ Thousands of Retired Health Care Workers Are Volunteering to Help Areas Overwhelmed By Coronavirus

April 11, 2020
Dr. Jane Bedell was less than a month into her retirement and was looking forward to hiking and visiting her son. But when the coronavirus pandemic hit and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo called on retired health care professionals and students to help care for the state’s rapidly rising confirmed COVID-19 cases, the 63-year-old New…

Bill Withers, Writer and Singer of ‘Lean On Me,’ Dies at 81

April 9, 2020
Bill Withers, who wrote and sang a string of soulful songs in the 1970s that have stood the test of time, including “Lean On Me,” “Lovely Day” and “Ain’t No Sunshine,” has died from heart complications, his family said in a statement to The Associated Press. He was 81. The three-time Grammy Award winner, who…

The Future of Bernie Sanders’ Campaign Could Depend on Michigan

April 7, 2020
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has a critical mission on Tuesday: beating former Vice President Joe Biden in Michigan. On a day when 352 of the remaining delegates in the Democratic presidential primary will be awarded, Michigan is the biggest prize, allocating 125 pledged delegates. But that’s not the only reason the Midwest state is crucial…

Joseph Lowery, Veteran Civil Rights Leader, Dies at 98

April 6, 2020
(ATLANTA) — The Rev. Joseph E. Lowery, a veteran civil rights leader who helped the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and fought against racial discrimination, died Friday, a family statement said. He was 98. A charismatic and fiery preacher, Lowery led the SCLC for two decades — restoring the…

Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett Enshrined Into the Basketball Hall of Fame

April 6, 2020
Kobe Bryant was already immortal. Now he’s officially a Hall of Famer as well. And he’s got plenty of elite company in the 2020 class. Bryant and fellow NBA greats Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett headlined a nine-person group announced Saturday as this year’s class of enshrinees into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.…

9 Women from American History You Should Know, According to Historians

April 4, 2020
With Women’s History Month underway and International Women’s Day approaching on March 8, classrooms and museums across the United States will be focusing on famous women who shaped the world we live in. But not everyone who did so has gotten the recognition she deserved. This week, TIME is telling the stories of women who…

Women With Access to Higher Education Changed America—But Now They’re Bearing the Brunt of the Student Debt Crisis

April 4, 2020
Higher education policy has taken center stage in the 2020 Democratic Presidential primary, with candidates proposing big ideas including free college and student debt cancellation. Candidates’ focus on this issue stems from a very real change in the experience of paying for college. One in five U.S. households was burdened by student loan debt, as…

I Feared My Enslaved Ancestors Had Been Dishonored in Death—But the African Burial Ground in New York City Tells a Different Story

April 2, 2020
The oral history of my family says that President James Madison, a Founding Father of our nation, was also a Founding Father of my African American family. In 1992, when I realized I knew a lot about how the president had lived his life but little about how his slaves had lived theirs, I took…