Preview: Moderna also asked the FDA to authorize its vaccine for children 6- to 11-years-old, the company announced Wednesday.

Preview: Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced $2.9 billion for competitive grants designed to improve U.S. transportation infrastructure.

Preview: Jackson, President Joe Biden's first Supreme Court nominee, already spent more than 13 hours before the Senate Judiciary Committee defending her judicial career.

Preview: On Tuesday, the major averages rose as investors evaluated recent comments from Federal Reserve chief Jerome Powell on interest rates and inflation.

Preview: Fast-rising mortgage rates are causing a drop in mortgage demand, especially refinances.

Preview: Credit Kudos develops software that uses consumers’ banking data to make more informed credit checks on loan applications.

Preview: There were high expectations coming into today's event and Nvidia did not disappoint.

Preview: One of the two black boxes containing data from Monday's plane crash has been found, Chinese state media said Wednesday.

Preview: President Joe Biden's Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson is set to answer senators' questions during the third day of her confirmation hearings.

Preview: The two companies announced the joint venture nearly a year ago with the goal of creating plant-based snacks and drinks together.

Preview: Watch live | Takeaways from the confirmation hearing | Photos

Preview: Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is likely to be confirmed as a justice on the US Supreme Court, but her confirmation hearing demonstrates how conservatives are winning the ideological war over the Constitution.

Preview: During Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's Supreme Court confirmation hearing, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz pressed Jackson about critical race theory. CNN's Abby Philip breaks down the moment.

Preview: Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson could make history as the first Black female Supreme Court justice but some Senate Republicans with their eyes on higher political office are making her confirmation hearing all about them.

Preview: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) pressed Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson about her political leanings and stormed out of the hearing after questioning her defense of Guantanamo detainees as an attorney.

Preview: Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson has emphasized her family and faith as part of her introduction to lawmakers during her Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

Preview: On Wednesday, ahead of President Joe Biden’s European trip to meet with North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies to discuss possible new sanctions and other efforts to hamper the Russia military in Ukraine, the Russian government warned that if NATO were to send soldiers from any of its member to countries to serve as peacekeepers ...

Preview: A convoy of 11 buses driving toward Mariupol to rescue trapped residents was captured by Russian forces, along with 15 humanitarian workers and drivers, according to the Ukrainian government. The buses, along with workers and drivers, have been moved to an undisclosed location, according to Ukraine’s report. “We are trying to organize stable humanitarian corridors ...

Preview: The number of deaths in the United States from alcohol-related causes soared during the coronavirus pandemic, jumping 25% year-over-year in 2020, according to a new study. Researchers with the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism published the results of their study into the number of alcohol-related deaths during the pandemic in The Journal of ...

Preview: On Monday, a 73-year-old grandmother had her arm severed and later died after being dragged down the street as four teenagers carjacked her car and she was trapped outside the vehicle with her arm caught by the seatbelt. “Locals said the teens did momentarily stop the vehicle to open the door to kick her out, ...

Preview: A tornado hit the New Orleans area Tuesday night, destroying homes and cars, as well as leaving at least one person dead following the storm. The weather-related damage hit the St. Bernard Parish the hardest; one person was reported dead and others injured. The damage followed the widespread tornadoes associated with the storm system that ...

Preview: As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine enters its second month, consumers already burdened by record inflation rates could soon see yet another spike in the cost of essential goods — this time groceries in particular.  Before the war, Russia led the world in wheat exports, earning billions each year while supplying nearly a fifth of the ...

Preview: The Centers for Disease and Control updated its COVID-19 death statistics last week, revealing that the agency had included an additional 72, 277 deaths that should not have been counted as COVID-19 deaths.  The change impacted 26 states and all age groups. The CDC explained in a footnote that the overcount stemmed from a “coding ...

Preview: California, along with much of the west, is experiencing a historic drought, with rainfall in January and February of 2022 hitting hundred-year lows in some areas. The California drought is entering its third year. A survey this month from the Department of Water Resources found that the snowpack around the state is almost 40% down, ...

Preview: Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson said Tuesday that she could not provide a definition for the word “woman.” Jackson, who appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee for her second day of confirmation hearings, pushed back on the question from Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and said that it was not in her purview as a ...

Preview: WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson serves on the board of an elite Washington, D.C. school promoting Critical Race Theory (CRT). Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz highlighted Jackson’s relationship with the Georgetown Day School when she appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, asking Jackson, “what does critical race ...

Preview: Biden seeks new sanctions, help for Ukrainians in Europe... (Top headline, 1st story, link) Related stories: 'Hellscape' in Mariupol where 100,000 trapped... Outgunned Air Force Fighting Back... Dissent Brews Over Putin Leadership... Adviser Quits and Flees... Ally warns of nuclear dystopia... Squads ordered to kill deserting soldiers... CHURCH PROMOTES WAR... KREMLIN LASHES OUT AT POLAND... Belarusian military could soon join war...

Preview: 'Hellscape' in Mariupol where 100,000 trapped... (Top headline, 2nd story, link) Related stories: Biden seeks new sanctions, help for Ukrainians in Europe... Outgunned Air Force Fighting Back... Dissent Brews Over Putin Leadership... Adviser Quits and Flees... Ally warns of nuclear dystopia... Squads ordered to kill deserting soldiers... CHURCH PROMOTES WAR... KREMLIN LASHES OUT AT POLAND... Belarusian military could soon join war...

Preview: Outgunned Air Force Fighting Back... (Top headline, 3rd story, link) Related stories: Biden seeks new sanctions, help for Ukrainians in Europe... 'Hellscape' in Mariupol where 100,000 trapped... Dissent Brews Over Putin Leadership... Adviser Quits and Flees... Ally warns of nuclear dystopia... Squads ordered to kill deserting soldiers... CHURCH PROMOTES WAR... KREMLIN LASHES OUT AT POLAND... Belarusian military could soon join war...

Preview: Dissent Brews Over Putin Leadership... (Top headline, 4th story, link) Related stories: Biden seeks new sanctions, help for Ukrainians in Europe... 'Hellscape' in Mariupol where 100,000 trapped... Outgunned Air Force Fighting Back... Adviser Quits and Flees... Ally warns of nuclear dystopia... Squads ordered to kill deserting soldiers... CHURCH PROMOTES WAR... KREMLIN LASHES OUT AT POLAND... Belarusian military could soon join war...

Preview: Adviser Quits and Flees... (Top headline, 5th story, link) Related stories: Biden seeks new sanctions, help for Ukrainians in Europe... 'Hellscape' in Mariupol where 100,000 trapped... Outgunned Air Force Fighting Back... Dissent Brews Over Putin Leadership... Ally warns of nuclear dystopia... Squads ordered to kill deserting soldiers... CHURCH PROMOTES WAR... KREMLIN LASHES OUT AT POLAND... Belarusian military could soon join war...

Preview: Ally warns of nuclear dystopia... (Top headline, 6th story, link) Related stories: Biden seeks new sanctions, help for Ukrainians in Europe... 'Hellscape' in Mariupol where 100,000 trapped... Outgunned Air Force Fighting Back... Dissent Brews Over Putin Leadership... Adviser Quits and Flees... Squads ordered to kill deserting soldiers... CHURCH PROMOTES WAR... KREMLIN LASHES OUT AT POLAND... Belarusian military could soon join war...

Preview: Squads ordered to kill deserting soldiers... (Top headline, 7th story, link) Related stories: Biden seeks new sanctions, help for Ukrainians in Europe... 'Hellscape' in Mariupol where 100,000 trapped... Outgunned Air Force Fighting Back... Dissent Brews Over Putin Leadership... Adviser Quits and Flees... Ally warns of nuclear dystopia... CHURCH PROMOTES WAR... KREMLIN LASHES OUT AT POLAND... Belarusian military could soon join war...

Preview: CHURCH PROMOTES WAR... (Top headline, 8th story, link) Related stories: Biden seeks new sanctions, help for Ukrainians in Europe... 'Hellscape' in Mariupol where 100,000 trapped... Outgunned Air Force Fighting Back... Dissent Brews Over Putin Leadership... Adviser Quits and Flees... Ally warns of nuclear dystopia... Squads ordered to kill deserting soldiers... KREMLIN LASHES OUT AT POLAND... Belarusian military could soon join war...

Preview: KREMLIN LASHES OUT AT POLAND... (Top headline, 9th story, link) Related stories: Biden seeks new sanctions, help for Ukrainians in Europe... 'Hellscape' in Mariupol where 100,000 trapped... Outgunned Air Force Fighting Back... Dissent Brews Over Putin Leadership... Adviser Quits and Flees... Ally warns of nuclear dystopia... Squads ordered to kill deserting soldiers... CHURCH PROMOTES WAR... Belarusian military could soon join war...

Preview: Belarusian military could soon join war... (Top headline, 10th story, link) Related stories: Biden seeks new sanctions, help for Ukrainians in Europe... 'Hellscape' in Mariupol where 100,000 trapped... Outgunned Air Force Fighting Back... Dissent Brews Over Putin Leadership... Adviser Quits and Flees... Ally warns of nuclear dystopia... Squads ordered to kill deserting soldiers... CHURCH PROMOTES WAR... KREMLIN LASHES OUT AT POLAND...

Preview: These war widows and their families are part of a nonprofit called Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS) Ukraine. It's a peer-based support program that for the past seven years has been dedicated to helping families grieve the death of their fallen heroes.

Preview: Smash-and-grab suspects targeted Luxury Jewels of Beverly Hills in broad daylight, stealing millions in jewelry.

Preview: A tornado hit New Orleans and its nearby suburbs Tuesday, destroying some homes and knocking out power. At least one person has died in the destruction.

Preview: A multi-day severe weather event continues Wednesday, as powerful storms move east through the Gulf Coast states.

Preview: A crash between a passenger vehicle and a semi-truck in Oklahoma on Tuesday left six high school students dead, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol confirmed.

Preview: Jayana Tanae Webb posted she was the "best drunk driver ever" weeks before allegedly killing two state troopers and a pedestrian while driving under the influence

Preview: Border Patrol agents in the Del Rio Sector in Texas rescued a small child who they say had been left on a riverbank by human traffickers.

Preview: Miami Beach officials said the city is contending with large and disruptive crowds that have turned violent, prompting the implementation of a curfew.

Preview: Pennsylvania State Police announced 18 charges against a 21-year-old woman accused of striking and killing two state troopers and a pedestrian on Monday, including three counts of third-degree murder, three counts of homicide by vehicle while driving under the influence, and two counts of second-degree manslaughter of a law enforcement officer.

Preview: Ukraine's military seeks to retake ground lost to Russians as Biden begins European trip: Live updates  USA TODAY Ukraine claims Russia has taken captive 15 workers from Mariupol relief convoy: LIVE UPDATES  Fox News Russia intensifies Mariupol bombardment as street fighting rages  Al Jazeera English Russia invades Ukraine: Live updates  CNN Russia-Ukraine war news: Live updates  The Washington Post View Full Coverage on Google News

Preview: Late Night Sees Through Republican Questions for Ketanji Brown Jackson  The New York Times Ketanji Brown Jackson, Biden's Supreme Court pick, refuses to define the word 'woman'  Fox News Jackson defends herself against Republican attacks: 'Nothing could be further from the truth'  Yahoo News What GOP senators seem to mind most about Ketanji Brown Jackson is what I most admire  Kansas City Star Editorial: With respect, Republicans got nothing on Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson  Houston Chronicle View Full Coverage on Google News

Preview: Black box found from Boeing passenger jet that crashed in China, state media says  CNBC Severely damaged black box from doomed China Eastern plane recovered  Fox News Investigators Search For Black Boxes From Deadly Boeing Crash In China  NBC News China crash is 'unprecedented' given Boeing 737's stellar safety record, says aviation analyst  CNBC China Eastern crash: Wallets, IDs but no survivors found  Fox News View Full Coverage on Google News

Preview: At least one dead following New Orleans-area tornado that left path of destruction; thousands without power  The Washington Post New Orleans, surrounding areas, ravaged by tornado as severe weather moves into Deep South, at least 1 dead  Fox News New Orleans tornado leaves one dead, thousands without power  CNN Incredible video shows massive tornado cross Mississippi River  WDSU New Orleans Damage in NO East  WWLTV View Full Coverage on Google News

Preview: Ukraine Humanitarian Crisis Worsens, as Biden Heads to Europe  The Wall Street Journal Previewing President Biden's trip to Europe  CBS News Russia-Ukraine War Latest News: Live Updates  The New York Times Russia's Ukraine war foreshadowed by this Biden NATO speech  NBC News Biden's risk-averse approach to Russia could create greater threat, experts say  ABC News View Full Coverage on Google News

Preview: Russia says sending international peacekeepers to Ukraine would be 'very reckless'  Reuters.com Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov issues chilling warning about 'direct clash' with NATO  Fox News Russia Warns of Direct Clash with NATO If Peacekeepers Sent to Ukraine  Newsweek View Full Coverage on Google News

Preview: Covid-19 Live Updates: Case Counts, Mandates and News  The New York Times Moderna says its low-dose COVID shots work for kids under 6  WAVY TV 10 Moderna says its coronavirus vaccine for young children is safe, but efficacy is a more complicated picture  The Washington Post Moderna says its lower dose of COVID vaccine works for babies and toddlers  KING 5 Moderna will seek FDA emergency use authorization for its vaccine in kids under 6  ABC News View Full Coverage on Google News

Preview: Utah lawmakers to meet Friday to override Gov. Cox's veto on bill to ban transgender girls in female school sports  Salt Lake Tribune GOP governors veto anti-trans sports bans in Indiana and Utah  CNN Utah Governor Vetoes Transgender-Athlete Bill  The New York Times Eric Holcomb's transgender sports veto has lesson for Republicans  IndyStar It's not about sports. It's about harming the most vulnerable among us. Why Cox's veto should stand, Editorial Board writes  Salt Lake Tribune View Full Coverage on Google News

Preview: LI Woman Arrested in ‘Senseless' Manhattan Street Shove Death of 87-Year-Old Voice Coach  NBC New York Long Island woman is arrested for death of vocal coach who she shoved in the street  Daily Mail Suspect in shoving death of NYC singing coach hid at parents' house, deleted wedding site, prosecutors say  Yahoo News Woman turns herself in for shove that killed beloved voice coach: cops  New York Post 26-Year-Old Woman Arrested in Pushing Death of Vocal Coach  Inside Edition View Full Coverage on Google News

Preview: ‘Only emergency is that Black people are on the Beach.’ Critics blast spring break curfew  Miami Herald Curfew Coming To Miami Beach  CBS Miami Miami Beach commissioners approve midnight spring break curfew after 2 shootings leave 5 injured  CNN ‘Peacefully off the street.’ Curfew set for spring break in South Beach this week  Miami Herald Miami Beach City Leaders Unanimously Support Spring Break Curfew  CBS Miami View Full Coverage on Google News

Preview: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Tuesday grew increasingly combative in his line of questioning of Ketanji Brown Jackson, asking President Biden's Supreme Court nominee about her religious faith, her de...

Preview: Whatever value Putin believes exists in casting aside his supporters has no upside for him - but possibly does for us.

Preview: Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson tangled with GOP senators for roughly 13 hours on Tuesday on the first day of questioning in her confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court.Republicans aren't expected to be able to sin...

Preview: Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) on Tuesday expressed - and then walked back - opposition to the Supreme Court ruling that legalized interracial marriage.Braun was on a conference call with reporters fro...

Preview: Former President Trump has pulled an endorsement of Rep. Mo Brooks in this year's Alabama Senate primary, slamming the Republican as "woke" and disloyal to him for doubting his claims about the 2020 presidential election....

Preview: Sen. Josh Hawley (Mo.), the first Republican senator to raise concerns about Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's handling of child pornography cases, told the Supreme Court nominee that he lives in fear that his own kids could...

Preview: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) repeatedly pressed Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman nominated to serve on the Supreme Court, about critical race theory and whether it might influence her work as a justice during her c...

Preview: Democrats in Congress are pressing the Biden administration to extend the suspension of student loan payments before it's set to expire May 1 as they seek to avoid cutting off a pandemic-induced benefit in the middle of a...

Preview: We heard a lot about collusion during the Trump era, but the real collusion happened between broadcast, print and social media all working together to either squash or dismiss the Hunter Biden laptop story.

Preview: Belarus granted refugee status to Capitol riot defendant Evan Neumann, according to Belarusian state-run media, which circulated a photo of him apparently holding country documents. "US citizen E...

Preview: The former president delivered a major blow to the Alabama Republican's campaign.

Preview: The nation’s 18 million children under 5 are the only age group not yet eligible for vaccination.

Preview: Evan Neumann, indicted on charges of assaulting police officers in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, is wanted on a U.S. arrest warrant.

Preview: The employee was hospitalized with injuries to both his arms following the incident at Wooten’s Everglades Airboat Tours in Ochopee, said deputies.

Preview: Filmmaker accidentally lets a tiger loose in abandoned Detroit factory

Preview: Florida's GOP governor faced criticism for saying the NCAA was "making a mockery of its championships" by allowing Lia Thomas to compete in the women's event.

Preview: The damaged aircraft made an emergency landing en route to Paraguay, the singer said.

Preview: The former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine said she couldn’t do it “if I wanted to keep my integrity intact.”

Preview: "Spot the difference," said MSNBC's Mehdi Hasan.

Preview: The warning highlights the White House's heightened cybersecurity concerns due to the ongoing war in Ukraine.

Preview: U.S. stock index futures are lower ahead of an update on new-home sales and more Fed speakers are ahead, as the war in Ukraine also stays in focus.

Preview: Okta Inc. said it is investigating a potential digital breach of its software that lets businesses authenticate the identity of their customers and employees, sending company shares down as much as 8%.

Preview: Nvidia Corp. Chief Executive Jensen Huang spoke at length to the public about his company's plans Tuesday for the first time since dropping his pursuit of chip designer Arm Ltd., including the introduction of the next generation of its core product.

Preview: Nike said it would test stores that only sell the Jordan brand during its fiscal third-quarter earnings announcement.

Preview: The investment banking executive is taking his electronic dance music side hustle to the iconic summer music festival.

Preview: Adobe Inc. shares slipped 1% in extended trading Tuesday after the software company reported fiscal first-quarter revenue that surpassed Wall Street analysts’ lofty forecasts but offered tepid guidance.

Preview: Crude prices are climbing ahead of U.S. inventory data, while the war in Ukraine continues to drive supply worries.

Preview: Here's everything you need to know if you want to tune in to Hollywood's biggest night.

Preview: Gold futures edge higher Wednesday, finding their footing as traders keep an eye on an increasingly hawkish Federal Reserve and monitor developments in the Russia-Ukraine war.

Preview: Procter & Gamble was upgraded at Truist Securities as analysts believe customers will remain loyal to the company's products post-pandemic

Preview: Senate confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court Justice nominee were political opportunism at its grossest.

Preview: Joy Reid and her panel analyze day two of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Ketanji Brown Jackson, “bested you intellectually and you’re mad about it,” Joy Reid says regarding Tom Cotton and other GOP senators on the Senate Judiciary committee. “Stay mad.”

Preview: Republicans made clear with their ineffective questions that they have no salient arguments to justify keeping Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson off the Supreme Court.

Preview: Some critics seem to think that if America isn't dropping bombs, it's "doing nothing" in Ukraine.

Preview: Ali Velshi reports on research done by members of Alexei Navalny's anti-corruption activist group showing that a mysterious superyacht near Italy probably belongs to Vladimir Putin.

Preview: White supremacists' latest scheme to valorize violence and hypermasculinity has gone digital.

Preview: Trump suggested he had a secret plan to end the crisis in Ukraine. Now that he’s elaborated on the details, he probably should’ve kept it under wraps.

Preview: Gimmicky new voter fraud enforcement programs could help foster rising authoritarian sentiment on the right.

Preview: Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., asked Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson if there should be more or less police in America. Jackson replied “that is not something judges have control over” and declined to answer because it was a “policy question.”

Preview: Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson said that she will not make comments about that schools can and cannot teach when Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., asked about transgender teaching in the classroom.

Preview: The "Real Housewives of New York City" star appeared on "Watch What Happens Live" Tuesday and addressed her drunken antics at gay piano bar Townhouse.

Preview: An iconic image of Marilyn Monroe created by Andy Warhol is coming to auction, with Christie’s auction house estimating the price at around $200 million.

Preview: Gonzaga is a clear pick to make the Final Four, but Houston, Purdue, and Kansas each have a case of their own to represent the other three regions of the March Madness tournament.

Preview: The assignment was a “note-taking exercise” designed to spark conversations during a unit on the Age of Imperialism, a Cambridge Public Schools spokeswoman said.

Preview: The journey, Biden's first international trip since this past fall, will test the president's ability to navigate Europe's worst crisis since World War II.

Preview: Valentin Yudashkin, who lent his touch to Russia's military uniforms in 2008, is in contract to sell his penthouse on the Upper East Side.

Preview: The mayor, 61, stepped out for Ralph Lauren’s first in-person fashion show since the start of the pandemic in the Big Apple.

Preview: "So ... awkward."

Preview: Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson will face the Senate Judiciary Committee one more time Wednesday after undergoing 13 hours of questioning on Day 2 of her confirmation hearing.

Preview: Heavyweight Chris Daukaus returns to the octagon Saturday for his second consecutive Fight Night headliner as he faces Curtis Blaydes.

Preview: Military losses have mounted, progress has slowed, and a blame game has begun among some Russian supporters of the war.

Preview: A Soviet-era pipeline, opposed by the president but supported by the oil and gas industry, set up the dependency that today helps fund the Russian assault on Ukraine.

Preview: Some conservatives have echoed the Kremlin’s misleading claims about the war and vice versa, giving each other’s assertions a sheen of credibility.

Preview: Przemysl’s history has been intertwined with war. This time, like much of Poland, it wants to do things differently.

Preview: A chief goal of the meetings this week is to show that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will not lead to sniping and disagreement among the United States and its allies.

Preview: Conflicts among the U.S., Russia and China — and endless Covid-19 outbreaks — strain the interdependent economy and Western ideas of post-Cold War stability.

Preview: Grilling Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman nominated to the Supreme Court, conservative senators painted her as a jurist who had coddled criminals and embraced “woke” education.

Preview: In her first day of responding to senators’ questions, the judge gave few hints about her judicial philosophy but spoke forcefully about public safety and terrorism.

Preview: Senators will get their final shot at questioning the Supreme Court nominee, but it is unclear whether any new ground will be broken.

Preview: The coronavirus was expected to devastate the continent, but higher-income and better-prepared countries appear to have fared far worse.

Preview: “If 988 is executed the way 911 is executed, people will die.”

Preview: It’s a fascinating example of how even the digital supply chain can be concentrated in one geographic area.

Preview: “Only the very greatest art invigorates without consoling.”

Preview: Maybe!

Preview: No work of criticism needs that many references to oral sex.

Preview: Also, sitting with Drive My Car and elongating movie runtimes.

Preview: Congress is at an impasse over a $15 billion dollar aid package for pandemic readiness.

Preview: West Side Story’s Rachel Zegler wasn’t supposed to go to the Oscars, but then the internet got involved.

Preview: Behind Cruz were propped blown-up images of the picture book Antiracist Baby, replete with cartoon drawings of children in diapers.

Preview: Mike Braun of Indiana told reporters that the Supreme Court was wrong to strike down state laws that banned Black and white Americans from wedding.

Preview: A much less intimate song than the last one I posted, written for the war to the tune of the Italian "Bella Ciao" ("Beautiful, Goodbye"), which served in 1943-45 as an Italian song of resistance against the Nazis. It's sung and apparently written by prominent Ukrainian singer Khrystyna Soloviy in Ukrainian, but with English subtitles…

Preview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iThtELZvfPs From Physiotherapy Assocs., Inc. v. ATI Holdings, LLC, decided Friday by Judge Karon Owen Bowdre (M.D. Ala.): "Keep it secret; keep it safe." The wizard Gandalf's brief command leaves little doubt as to the importance of the ring that he entrusts to the hobbit Frodo. Only determination and serious effort will keep an item of…

Preview: There are no public health gains from booting kids out of the country.

Preview: 3/23/1870: Justice Joseph Bradley takes oath.

Preview: Authoritarianism grows increasingly popular, with environmentalists among the greatest enthusiasts.

Preview: A Decatur, Alabama, liquor store owner is suing the city and a police officer who punched him when cops responded to a shoplifting incident he reported. Kevin Penn held the shoplifter at gunpoint and called cops. When police arrived, store surveillance video appeared to show Penn unloaded his gun and placed it on a counter.…

Preview: The senator argues that questioning sex offender policies "endangers our children."

Preview: It's episode 399 of the Cyberlaw Podcast

Preview: From U.S. Army ROTC ECP Cadet Doe v. Biden, decided yesterday by Chief Judge Beryl Howell (D.D.C.) (contrary to decisions in M.D. Fla., N.D. Ill. and D. Colo., but consistently with this nonprecedential Seventh Circuit order): Plaintiff, "a nineteen-year-old male ROTC Early Commissioning Program (ECP) candidate" who is "currently a drilling member of the Army…

Preview: But 37 states allow medical or recreational use, and arrests are falling.

Preview: Full coverage on Ukraine

Preview: Newsletters --> Inbox

Preview: Take our map quiz 🌍

Preview: Listen now 🎧

Preview: Ukraine's military has begun taking back territory overrun by Russia's initial onslaught. Meanwhile, Biden travels to Europe. Live updates.

Preview: Parts of St. Bernard Parish appeared to take the brunt of the storm's effects after a tornado touched down in the New Orleans area Tuesday night.

Preview: Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson faces another day of questions from senators. If confirmed, she would be the first Black woman on the Supreme Court.

Preview: Ashleigh Barty, the No. 1 women's tennis player in the world, has announced her retirement from the sport at 25 years old.

Preview: Outsiders are finding creative ways to make sure Russians hear the truth about war in Ukraine as the Kremlin tamps down on news outlets, social media.

Preview: Pandemic policies like expanded tax credits and universal free school lunches have or will come to an end. The toll on kids has been immediate.

Preview: Documentary director Stanley Nelson received his first Academy Award nomination for Attica, chronicling the infamous New York state prison rebellion. | Corey Nickols The Oscar-nominated director of Attica keeps showing us the real America. I was a teenager when I watched Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon, and I had no idea what Al Pacino was yelling about outside that bank. “Attica! Attica!” made me curious, but there was nothing about it in my high school textbooks and not that much in the library. I’d have to wait many years to understand more about the largest and deadliest prison insurrection in United States history. Amidst a conservative crusade to criminalize the teaching of that history, there may not have been a better time for documentarian Stanley Nelson’s Attica to emerge. During much of the three decades Nelson has spent making films, he has told stories about Black life in America. His films have shed new light on everything from the 1921 Tulsa pogrom to the fight for civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s, with films such as Freedom Summer and The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution. Now, the 70-year-old documentarian has received his first Academy Award nomination for his feature-length look at one of the most pivotal events in the history of American criminal punishment. Co-directed by fellow nominee Traci A. Curry (a friend and former colleague of mine), the documentary begins with the inception of the rebellion — an explosion of the frustration building up in the men imprisoned at Attica Correctional Facility. The persistently poor treatment they were receiving ranged from insufficient medical care to a lack of showers and toilet paper. The disrespect and dehumanization by the all-white roster of guards may have been at the top of the list. The prison’s population has a heavy majority of Black or brown men so, as one interviewee asked sardonically early in the film, “What could go wrong?” One answer to that question came on September 13, 1971, five days after the standoff began. State police retook the prison, using gunfire. Thirty of the 33 incarcerated men who died that week were killed by law enforcement. Though a cover story emerged that alleged the prisoners were responsible for all 10 deaths of Attica prison guards during the insurrection, medical examiners quickly determined that authorities killed nine of them. As the film details, authorities also hunted down many of the insurrection’s leaders. The captive insurrectionists who survived were held at gunpoint in the open yard. They had been stripped completely naked and lined up. The image evokes captives huddled together in the hull of a slaver’s ship, or placed in line before being auctioned off like cattle. Dehumanization of the prisoners by authorities sparked the insurrection, and their punishment was an even more accelerated version of it. It’s perhaps the film’s most striking image, and it’s where I wanted to start my conversation with Nelson. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. I’ve always believed nothing is truly comparable to chattel slavery except chattel slavery. But those images of the incarcerated men, those who survived, standing and sitting naked out in the yard… Had you seen that before? I just saw it for the first time making the film. My reaction was: Oh, shit. Wait a minute. Are these pictures real? One of the strange things is that so many times, the footage acquires its real power from the way it’s edited in the film. When you see [the naked men] in context and people talking about that they were made to strip all their clothes off and just sit there with their hands on their head, stark naked. Then those pictures gain even more power. Courtesy of Showtime The Attica prison rebellion in 1971. This is your first Oscar nomination after directing more than 25 films, and I know you’ve produced many more. What does this particular recognition mean to you? I know there are other accolades — you won the DGA (award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary) — but an Oscar nomination … what does that mean to you? Well, the Oscar was always the biggest. It’s just so special. I remember, as a kid, watching the Oscars with my mother and just being fascinated by all the gowns, the movie stars, that whole thing. It’s just really huge. Just being nominated draws so much more attention to Attica and so many more people will see it. The Oscar nomination is like a stamp of approval. It’s really big for me personally, but it’s even bigger ’cause it means more people will now see the film. Also, it isn’t as if one necessarily has to see it in the theater. People can pull it up on Showtime and YouTube. There’s more accessibility to the material you’re putting out there. The accessibility of my films and all films has changed the industry, especially for documentaries. People who might not go to the movies to see a documentary call one up at any time and see it. They can say, “Hey, honey, we’re tired of watching people swing on webs — let’s try a doc.” And without costing them any money. They can watch the first five or 10 minutes and see if they wanna proceed. Courtesy of Showtime Attica guard William Quinn is taken to safety by prisoners on September 9, 1971, after being assaulted near the beginning of the insurrection. Quinn died two days later due to his injuries. I’d like to talk more about how the film begins, with the very first moments of the rebellion — including the violence done to (and care for) William Quinn, the only guard who died from injuries caused by the men incarcerated at the prison. And it tells us about the poor treatment that inspired the insurrection. Having done a number of historical films, one of the hardest things to do is to tell what we call the backstory. Why did the prisoners rebel? What was happening in Attica? So many times, we kinda have to leave out that history because you gotta get to the story. With Attica, we had this little historical segment that talked about the town of Attica, New York — and then [another in which] they talked about the mistreatment of the prisoners. We didn’t know where to put it. We actually tried to put the history unit first, and it was like, “I thought we were talking about a rebellion in the prison. Why are we talking about this town?” Then we found this great piece where “L.D.” Barkley, one of the prisoners, is talking into the mic after the rebellion starts on the first day. And he says, well, you wanna know why we’re here? We’re here because of the mistreatment that we’ve been [subjected to] in the Attica prison. And it seemed the perfect way to go back in time. So we started the film, immediately, with the rebellion and that seemed to work. If the story of the rebellion was exciting enough that first day, you wouldn’t be sitting there wondering, “Well, why did they rebel?” “Attica became really a symbol of the power that is [in] rebelling: The power that the prisoners had to rebel, and then the power that the state would take.” You’re a New Yorker, and I’ve lived in New York before for many years. The Attica prison and the rebellion were things that you heard about, that you knew about. But there are folks who just have no frame of reference whatsoever. I think one of the things that we had to do with this film is it had to play to everybody. So that there were people like yourself who knew the broad outlines of Attica or [just] some of the details. There are people who don’t know anything about Attica. I mean, I can’t tell you the number of people, when we say “Attica,” they’re like, “Oh, so what’s that? Is it a type of dog? Is it a place? Is it a thing?” We had to make the film make sense to everybody and also hold everybody’s attention. Yeah. And that’s the thing: It’s tough to know necessarily what everybody would want or need. Do you feel like there has been a change in how your films, including this one, are received as time has passed? In a way, I think that Attica definitely has been received in a different way than it would have, like three or four years ago. Because of George Floyd, because of the protests against the police, because we’ve seen — over and over and over again — the police violence against people of color. The door is cracked open a little bit for people. The people who are interviewed in Attica are all so incredibly convincing — from the prisoners to the news people, to the hostage families, to the observers, to the National Guard. You don’t doubt for one second that anything they tell you is the truth. I’m interested in what you knew of the truth before. Can you describe what Attica signified to you and to other Black people in New York City well before the rebellion, particularly before the massacre happened? I was 20 years old when Attica happened. I was old enough to remember it. It was like a thriller story: the prisoners had taken over this prison, what’s gonna happen? What’s gonna happen through five days? And then finally, devastating that it ended with such incredible violence that nobody thought it would end in. Nobody thought that they would just go in with guns blazing and kill [nearly] 40 people. So, I think that for so many people, especially in New York, Attica came to symbolize the power law enforcement [has] and the willingness to use that power to put down any kind of rebellion in the most violent way. Attica became really a symbol of the power that is [in] rebelling: The power that the prisoners had to rebel, and then the power that the state would take, and the violence that the state was perpetrating on people who rebelled against it. Because there’s probably no one more powerless than prisoners in a penitentiary. “We didn’t know anything about Attica. It was an upstate prison, 250 miles from New York City.” We didn’t know anything about Attica. It was an upstate prison, 250 miles from New York City. Unless you were involved in the prison system or you had a loved one in the prison system, nobody talked about it or thought about it. I mean, that’s what prisons are made to do. That’s one reason why prisons are in the middle of nowhere. We don’t have to see it day-to-day and we don’t have to think about the prisoners and that’s what prisons are set up to do. So we don’t have to think about the prisoners and the fact that we’re incarcerating more than 2 million people. We don’t have to think about it. What did you learn about the rebellion and the massacre during the process of filmmaking? I learned, one, why the rebellion started. We never really understood why the rebellion started, how cruel and unusual the punishment was. Why they felt that they had to rebel. The vast majority of people never quite understood the ins and outs of why [New York Gov. Nelson] Rockefeller ordered them to go in and use deadly force. We learned that in the film, through interviews that we did. The phone calls [with President Nixon], which are just really shocking. I knew about the incident, but I didn’t realize the political consequences for Rockefeller’s career that stemmed from that. I knew him as the vice president under President Ford. I had actually not really understood how this incident really helped embolden his power. Propel him to go to be vice president, yeah. You’ve spent a great deal of your career, Stanley, telling various stories about Black experiences. Profiles of people such as Madam C.J. Walker, Marcus Garvey, and the Freedom Riders. You’ve looked at tragedies like Tulsa, as well. How has making these films changed how you personally look at America, if at all? I think that one of the things it’s done for me is it’s helped me to understand that — that America’s like a roller coaster ride, you know? [laughs] Sometimes up and sometimes down, on this back up and there’s down again. And a lot of times we, especially, as African Americans, wanna look at the idea of “up from slavery.” Slavery was the worst, and now, it’s upward progression into the light. But it is really a roller coaster ride. There’s times when [it’s] at the top and there’s times when it goes down to the bottom. But it stays at the top much longer as long as we push. That’s not only African Americans, but [all] people of color. As long as we push for change, at least we’ve got a chance. Courtesy of Showtime Attica Correctional Facility in Attica, New York. During the 1971 rebellion, more than 1,000 prisoners controlled the central control facility, known as “Times Square,” among other areas. As the documentary makes clear early on, the physical structure of Attica aided the insurrection in the first place. How did you make decisions about the film’s structure, the graphics that you use, archival footage, to illustrate points such as that most effectively? You as an audience had to be aware of the physical structure of the prison. That you had to be aware of where you were in time. And then, we could really concentrate on the kind of roller coaster ride, which was every day, of Attica. You had to understand that they were trapped in one yard in the prison and that there were guys with guns on the walls, trained down at them, for five days. And that the only thing that held [those guns] off was the fact that they had hostages. And you needed to understand that every day was different. And so, we have a very simple five-day structure to most of the film. The exhilaration of the first day. The despair of the fourth and, then, the morning of the fifth day. We really wanted to have a framework so that you could understand that much easier. How did all the technical expertise that you’ve acquired over the course of your career help audiences to comprehend a story like this in full? We made the film during the time of Covid. So many of the archives were closed down and we just had to wait and keep calling. Find people’s home phone numbers, sometimes to call at home and see what we get. [We had] to be tenacious. We made a couple decisions early. I made a number of films in the last few years without narration, and we thought that we could make this one without it. I think it kind of makes the audience see the film in a very different way. So we don’t have anybody, like the “voice of God,” telling you what to think. We had thought that we would need historians to talk about it. We actually filmed one historian and cut together a couple of scenes, and he was great. But we realized that we didn’t need them. We would let the story all be told by people who were there. And we realized early that we just wanted the music to kind of be a wind at the back of the story. We didn’t want the music to take over. That was really complicated because we had to really cut back on the drama, on how loud the music was. The story’s just so amazingly dramatic in and of itself, and we didn’t wanna send it overboard. “Unless you were involved in the prison system or you had a loved one in the prison system, nobody talked about it or thought about it” Some of the logistical challenges you alluded to with Covid, I mean … I’ve spent a lot of time digging through archival footage during my career. How much do you enjoy that particular part of the filmmaking process, if at all? ’Cause I know so many people don’t get to see that. I love watching old film. Finding archival material and looking at old pictures. And I never knew that [before]. It wasn’t like I went into filmmaking, and made a bunch of historical films ’cause I was like, “Oh, I love looking at old films and seeing old pictures.” But I just really do. I love it. I love looking for the details. Think [about] when the helicopters come in on the final day. They fly over and they’re gonna go into the prison. There’s a shot of the families outside and these three or four women, and they all look up. I mean, it’s just as if you were directing a feature film. All those kinds of great things that just happened. There’s a woman with her head bowed and then the camera pans down and she’s praying, Her hands are together and she’s praying. It’s just like, “Oh, shit!” [laughs] “This is great stuff.” It’s a matter of really loving the footage. And we really had to mine it and look at it over again. I understand exactly what you mean. I was astonished by some of the stuff that you were able to find. I mean, the footage of the incarcerated men rolling out the injured guard, William Quinn, on a stretcher. I’m thinking, “Who was even filming at this point?” That’s the shot. When I saw the first rough cut, when I saw that shot, I thought, “Now we’re in the prison. Let’s keep you there.” We’ve got something that’s special. It’s recognizing those shots. Putting together a film is like putting together a puzzle without a picture of what it looks like when it’s completed, right? You just gotta figure out how it fits. I would do jigsaw puzzles with my daughter. There’s a whole line of puzzles that are hand-cut, that don’t have a picture. They’re supposed to be impossible. You have no guide. “We’re not gonna teach about the enslavement of African Americans because it makes somebody uncomfortable?” Talking about pictures, I’m reminded of the first image we talked about, of the naked prisoners held in the yard after the insurrection. It slaps everyone across the face. What kind of urgency is there for you as time moves on to tell such stories while you can? And if so, how does that— I mean, am I gonna die soon? No, no, no, no, no. [laughs] I don’t mean it like that. I’m not sure if there is urgency. You know, I’m truly honored to be able to tell the stories that I’ve been able to tell. I think that it’s really exciting because you know, there’s any number of stories to tell about the African American experience. Given that, what are your thoughts about the government determining which parts of the African American experience that students can or cannot learn in school? And what parts of history are considered palatable? [laughs] I think that it’s unbelievable. We have to really be conscious of what’s happening. Ten years ago, you wouldn’t have believed it if somebody told you what was gonna happen and what’s happening. We’re not gonna teach about the enslavement of African Americans because it makes somebody uncomfortable? I just think that it’s really, really destructive, and it boils down to the cliché: If you don’t know your history, you’re doomed to repeat your mistakes. It’s an incredible step backward.

Preview: Amanda Northrop/Vox Who is restorative justice restoring? Part of our series on America’s struggle for forgiveness. Defining forgiveness is still a matter of great debate, but philosophers ground the concept in two things: Forgiveness requires one person to have caused another harm and for the victim to forswear revenge or bad feelings toward their transgressor. That leaves a lot more unsaid than it clarifies. Is the purpose of forgiveness to get back to normal? What are the power relations inherent in asking for and granting forgiveness? Who has the authority to forgive? Most importantly, why is forgiveness necessary? The rise of restorative justice programs has introduced the concept of forgiveness — usually kept far away from America’s courtrooms — to the criminal justice system. While forgiveness is not the focus of these programs, its potential fills the air as victim, offender, and community members all meet in the same place. These programs are alternatives to the traditional sentencing models and offer an opportunity for victims, offenders, and members of their respective communities to meet and, ideally, repair harm, answer lingering questions, and restore broken bonds. But restorative justice’s answers to forgiveness’s thorniest questions and its relationship to the concept more broadly are up in the air. While forgiveness is widely seen as both virtuous and healing, the specter of forgiveness that hangs above restorative justice proceedings can be a hollow and fragile imitation of the real thing, and it carries with it the potential to reinforce cycles of violence. What is restorative justice? There is no one definitive answer to this question. Restorative justice is a burgeoning philosophical framework that asks people to rethink the best way to respond to harmful behavior. Perhaps the most expansive definition comes from Griffith University criminologist Kathleen Daly, who calls restorative justice “a set of ideals about justice that assumes a generous, empathetic, supportive, and rational human spirit.” Restorative justice is “a set of ideals about justice that assumes a generous, empathetic, supportive, and rational human spirit” Criminologist Howard Zehr, the “grandfather of restorative justice,” began his work in the 1970s for two main reasons: The harsh, punitive, and counterproductive ways that the criminal justice system often responds to offenders and the growing anger that victims are often entirely shut out of the criminal justice process. “We were really concerned that victims were not only being left out of the justice process, but they were re-traumatized by it. So we wanted to provide a better experience and more options for victims,” Zehr explained in an interview published by Eastern Mennonite University, where he founded the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding in 2015. “Accountability is understanding the harm you’ve caused and doing something to make it right.” Restorative justice has spurred the development of private and public programs within schools and universities that seek to apply restorative justice principles to conflicts that arise within these institutions. Even more crucially, there are restorative justice programs that seek to replace or reform existing practices within the criminal justice system; state-sanctioned programs now exist in the vast majority of American states. Restorative justice is not a fact-finding process and so it cannot in its current form replace the adversarial justice system, which seeks to determine whether the accused is guilty. Its role generally comes after someone’s guilt has already been determined, either through a plea agreement or a trial. Then comes sentencing. The sentencing process generally follows this pattern: An offender is convicted of a crime, the judge sets a date for sentencing, and then the judge conducts a pre-sentence investigation to determine the appropriate sentence. According to the American Bar Association, this investigation “may consider the defendant’s prior criminal record, family situation, health, work record, and any other relevant factor.” In the vast majority of cases, the sentence is solely up to the judge. Restorative justice programs in operation throughout the country — some of which explicitly label themselves as such and some of which are clearly influenced by its principles — seek to upend the post-conviction process. The programs are run by different groups, some by state and local governments and others by independent or even for-profit organizations. Participation in these programs varies, with some states allowing these programs to exist as alternatives only for certain crimes or certain offenders (e.g., juveniles). These programs are generally opt-in for offenders in qualifying cases, and so, the vast majority of offenders still go through the traditional sentencing process. Rich Pedroncelli/AP California state Sen. Steve Glazer discusses a state-funded restorative justice program during a news conference in Sacramento, California, in 2019. Glazer’s measure, SB 678, which was co-authored by Assemblymember Susan Eggman, left, created a pilot program where the victims of crimes can deal directly with their offenders. According to research by Occidental College law professor Thalia González, as of July 2020, “The only states that have not codified restorative justice into criminal law are North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, South Carolina, and Wyoming.” (Restorative justice programs can be found outside the US too, from Canada to Ireland to Australia.) Impact Justice, a criminal justice reform group, lays out a simple model for understanding restorative justice when it comes to criminal proceedings. Instead of asking what law was broken, who broke it, and what punishment is warranted — as our punitive system does — restorative justice asks who was harmed, what do they need, and whose obligation is it to meet those needs. Typically, these programs involve what practitioners call a “conference” where the victim, offender, and community members (often friends or family of both parties) sit down. The offender will apologize or take responsibility for the harm they have caused and seek to make amends, and the victim is given the opportunity to ask questions and make clear all the ways the crime has impacted them and their community. While these conferences vary widely, restorative justice facilitator sujatha baliga explained for Vox what session results can look like: “At the end of the process, which typically ends with one or more face-to-face sessions with the entire circle, a plan to meet the survivor’s self-identified needs is made by consensus of everyone present. The responsible person is supported by family and community to do right by those they’ve harmed. For example, if joining a sports team is a part of the responsible person’s plan to help them stay out of trouble after school, people in his circle agree to take him to practice, or pay for the enrollment fees.” It’s notable that the majority of these programs are for juvenile offenders; Gonzalez found that 91 laws in 33 jurisdictions are related to restorative justice programs aimed at minors, while just 42 laws in 15 jurisdictions are related to adult offenders. While the research is mixed, there is good evidence that programs focused on minors have been found to reduce recidivism. “Accountability is understanding the harm you’ve caused and doing something to make it right” A 2017 meta-analysis of restorative justice programs, which looked at dozens of research projects and studies, found “a moderate reduction in future delinquent behavior relative to more traditional juvenile court processing.” The authors, however, were wary as to the reliability of these results since reductions were smaller for the “more credible random assignment studies.” Encouragingly, one recently released paper looked at offenders ages 13 to 17 that were randomly assigned to either go through a restorative justice program or the traditional process. After six months, the former group was rearrested at a rate 19 percentage points fewer than those in a control group prosecuted in the ordinary juvenile justice system. What restorative justice can — and cannot — do for victims Restorative justice is perhaps overly optimistic about what it expects. It imagines a world where victims can be magnanimous about some of the most heinous transgressions, guilty offenders can be truly apologetic, and the broader community is positioned and able to help both parties. According to University of New South Wales Sydney criminologist Julie Stubbs, there is disagreement over whether restorative justice programs actually prioritize victims. Participants cite high levels of satisfaction, but it’s unclear how much of this can be attributed specifically to the programs as opposed to selection effects (are the types of people ending up in restorative justice programs somehow different from people who aren’t?), the effects of time, or support from their communities. She also notes that satisfaction has been conceptualized and measured inconsistently, making it hard to be definitive about victims’ experiences. Cymone Fuller, co-director of the Restorative Justice Project at Impact Justice, told Vox that victims often come to restorative justice conferences looking for answers: “They might be asking for very practical things like, ‘I want my car back,’ and then sometimes they really are looking for a fuller narrative for what happened to them.” One study by Fuller’s organization of 100 cases that were diverted to a restorative justice program in Alameda County, California, found that 91 percent of the victim participants who completed the survey would be willing to participate in another conference, and the same percentage would recommend the process to a friend. When asked about the role of forgiveness in these encounters, Fuller argues that “it’s so important to disentangle this assumption or this requirement that people assume it’s necessary for restorative justice to equal forgiveness. There is no expectation that at the end of this it becomes this huge moment of forgiveness.” Matt Jonas/Digital First Media/Boulder Daily Camera via Getty Images A letter written by a shoplifter is seen tacked to the wall at the Longmont Community Justice Partnership in Longmont, Colorado. The restorative justice program there includes apology letters from offenders. There are some practical problems with seeking forgiveness within a criminal justice system, even one purporting to be “restorative.” While there may be those among us who can forgive an unrepentant offender — if forgiveness is even the right word for such an act — for most of us, forgiveness requires a sincere apology. There isn’t extensive research on the question, but a set of interviews in 1999 with minors who went through a restorative justice program indicated that while 61 percent of offenders said they really were sorry, just 27 percent of their victims thought the offenders were sincerely apologetic. This could be because in some restorative justice programs, facilitators require participants to apologize. Victims can feel as though the apology is only happening because the perpetrator is being prompted to give it, not because they truly feel contrition. Even with a sincere apology, the coercive environment extends to the victim as well. “Forgiving under government pressure is not really forgiveness, and it places further burdens on people already victimized,” former Harvard Law School dean Martha Minow wrote in her book When Should Law Forgive? It’s uncomfortable not to accept someone’s apology, especially in front of other people. In most restorative justice settings, victims are not only in front of a facilitator but also the offender’s family or friends and members of their community. Some research has shown that in these communal conference situations, victims will say they forgive the offender simply to avoid the embarrassment of not doing so. It is bad for victims to feel forced to accept their perpetrator’s apology in and of itself, but the larger concern is that it could lead to further abuse. “There is no expectation that at the end of this it becomes this huge moment of forgiveness” “There’s a danger about pressures to forgive, particularly on some victims more than others,” York University philosophy professor Alice MacLachlan cautions. It’s helpful to think about this in terms of intimate partner violence and the cycle of abuse, as that cycle includes reconciliation. Following a period of building tension, an incident will occur, perhaps physical violence, after which the perpetrator — overcome with guilt or simply scared that their partner will reveal the crime to the community or law enforcement — will attempt to reconcile. This reconciliation process often includes pleas for forgiveness and, if the victim relents, can bring the two closer together and lay the groundwork for continued abuse. Restorative justice conferences could unwittingly play a role in this cycle of abuse by facilitating apologies and eliciting forgiveness, potentially laying the groundwork for further harm. As Stubbs writes, because “domestic violence is commonly recurrent” and the “threat of violence may be ongoing and not reducible to discrete incidents,” restorative justice programs that seek to find closure for a specific offense are inappropriately theorizing how this crime functions. “I came to this whole work out of concern about mass violence, genocide, atrocities, and seeing cycles of violence,” Minow told the New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner about her work on forgiveness in the criminal justice system. “And the cycles of violence are perpetuated by resentments because of the way the last cycle of violence was resolved. I fear that that’s where we are living right now, and that there are many justified resentments. And maybe some unjustified ones, but, because there’s a perception that some people are treated better than others, we are laying the seeds for further conflict.” Forgiveness and power At its root, forgiveness is about letting go of justified negative emotions and a desire for retribution. It is also about giving up a certain form of social power that victims hold. Paul Marotta/Getty Images Martha Minow at Harvard University in 2013. “Expectations of forgiveness are raced and gendered,” Minow argued on the Brennan Center for Justice’s podcast. “They’re also about class. They’re about power, but that’s partly because forgiveness is one of the powers of the weak. To claim the ability to forgive — and let’s be clear, to not forgive — is to claim the position of equality and dignity. And that’s a power that we shouldn’t actually ever take away from people.” Before forgiving, victims can try and gain necessary concessions from society or from offenders, but after, forgiveness implies that the victim has moved on and society has permission to do so as well. But a community getting over the impact of a specific crime without addressing the underlying systemic reasons why the wrong happened in the first place can just make things worse. Put another way, with forgiveness, victims provide society a catharsis and relief from the tension of recognizing that a wrong must be rectified. It’s therefore not surprising that there is a notable tension in left-leaning political spaces between calls for leniency and restorative justice for criminal offenses, and calls for punitive measures against sexual abusers as the Me Too movement gained traction. Georgetown University philosophy professor Alisa Carse has seen her students’ reluctance to bring restorative justice programs to their college campus for the purpose of resolving sexual misconduct cases. “I was so surprised,” she told Vox. “But a lot of the students felt like it would convey that we think these crimes are less important.” “We tend to think of forgiveness in very transactional, dyadic terms,” she adds, “but often it’s the broader community that’s playing a very important role both in bolstering the wronged party and in validating that what was done counted as a wrong.” If that is lacking, Carse argues, and you have a culture that valorizes forgiveness, it leads to isolation of the wronged party — creating a “toxic” situation. At first glance, it can seem like a simple case of hypocrisy: liberals that support less punitive measures for criminals who are unlikely to hurt them, but more punitive measures for criminals when they view themselves as more likely to be potential victims. But perhaps there’s more than that going on; it’s not difficult to see how sexual assault cases are distinct. Unlike a murder or a robbery where society regularly recognizes a clear victim and clear aggressor, in cases of sexual misconduct, society has so often shown indifference — shrugging at the problem, as if adjudicating “he said/she said” is only possible when sexual violence isn’t involved. Restorative justice asks who was harmed, what do they need, and whose obligation is it to meet those needs However, as baliga wrote for Vox in 2018, restorative justice has been shown to work in some sexual violence cases. In one promising example, baliga recounts a conference she helped facilitate between a young woman, Sofia, who had been assaulted by a classmate, Michael. “Sofia’s transformation was breathtaking — she found her voice that day. And by the end of our time together, it felt like Michael had gained an understanding of consent. As we moved into creating a plan to repair the harm, Michael offered to clear up Sofia’s reputation by posting on social media a public apology to her, which included the words ‘she didn’t lie.’ Michael also agreed with Sofia’s request for him to spend a month of school at home to give Sofia space. Afterward, everyone except for Michael and Sofia hugged.” Baliga writes that Sofia’s self-confidence returned to her in the weeks following the conference and that, following graduation, Michael wrote a research paper on sexual violence. Restorative justice can, then, help restore both individuals to a community. But the expectations may be too high. In encouraging these interactions between offender and victim, restorative justice makes the potential for forgiveness much more real, which may play a part in why many victims of violent crime reject the idea of entering into a conference with their offender. “If we’re going to think about forgiveness in terms of restorative justice, the only morally and politically careful way to do that is to recognize the legitimacy of the unforgiving victim,” MacLachlan told Vox. “Not forgiving is a legitimate response to being seriously harmed.”

Preview: Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson testifies during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill March 22, 2022, in Washington, DC. | Win McNamee/Getty Images Republicans turned the hearing into a blizzard of misleading attacks, many of which seem designed to appeal to QAnon supporters. One day after Republican senators promised they wouldn’t levy personal attacks against Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, several of them generated a storm of misleading — and often offensive — attacks against her. On Monday, the first day of Jackson’s confirmation hearing, several Republicans complained about the way that Justice Brett Kavanaugh was treated prior to his confirmation, after Kavanaugh was credibly accused of sexually assaulting a woman while he was in high school. Multiple Republican senators promised not to levy similarly “personal attacks” against Jackson. “No Republican senator is going to unleash an attack on your character when the hearing is almost over,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) promised Jackson. It’s not hard to guess what happened next. Tuesday, the first day of the hearing where senators on the Judiciary Committee could actually ask questions of Judge Jackson, included allegations from five Republican senators that Jackson is soft on child pornography offenders. Before those misleading attacks kicked off in real force, Graham stormed out of the hearing after attacking Jackson for providing legal counsel to Guantanamo Bay detainees — and suggesting that by doing so, Jackson endangered national security. Two other Republican senators attacked the high school that one of Jackson’s daughters attends. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) spent much of his question time on Tuesday criticizing Georgetown Day School — Jackson is a member of this school’s board of trustees, and she told Cruz that she was drawn to the school because it was founded to provide a racially integrated education at a time when Washington, DC’s public schools were segregated. Cruz attacked the school because, he said, it teaches books he finds objectionable by Boston University historian and National Book Award-winning author Ibram X. Kendi. Cruz also accused Jackson of being a proponent of critical race theory, an academic framework for examining how racism is embedded in America’s laws and institutions. He did this even though Jackson said that critical race theory has “never been something I’ve studied or relied on” as a judge. The Republican Party tweeted a similar attack on Jackson shortly before Cruz brought up critical race theory at the hearing. https://t.co/wYFmFNUepU pic.twitter.com/NGa6SgTxdY — GOP (@GOP) March 22, 2022 The most inflammatory — and, sadly, the most predictable — allegation against Jackson was that she’s spent her career trying to protect sexual predators, and specifically child pornographers. Sen. Josh Hawley previewed this attack on Twitter last week, and at least four other senators, Cruz and Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT), Marsha Blackburn (R-TX), and Tom Cotton (R-AR), brought versions of it up on Monday or Tuesday. The broad strokes of this allegation are false, and the details of it rely on a mendacious reading of federal sentencing policy. Hawley’s dishonest attack on Jackson, briefly explained The gravamen of Hawley’s attack is that, in seven cases involving child pornography offenders, Jackson sentenced these offenders to less prison time than federal sentencing guidelines recommended. This allegation is narrowly truthful — Jackson did, indeed, sentence these offenders to a prison term below that recommended by the guidelines — but this is the ordinary practice within the federal judiciary. The Federal Sentencing Guidelines are an advisory manual that recommend a sentencing range for various offenses to federal judges. But the consensus view among judges and sentencing policymakers is that these guidelines recommend sentences that are too harsh for “nonproduction” child pornography crimes — that is, crimes where the offender views or distributes child sexual abuse material but does not produce it. According to a 2021 report by the US Sentencing Commission, “the majority (59.0%) of nonproduction child pornography offenders received a variance below the guideline range.” When judges do depart downward from the guidelines, they typically impose sentences that are more than 50 months lower than the minimum sentence recommended by the guidelines. Indeed, in a majority of the child pornography cases heard by Judge Jackson, the prosecution recommended a below-guidelines sentence. It’s also worth noting that the guidelines are a blunt instrument that take only limited account of the particular circumstances of an individual offender’s actions. Before a criminal defendant is sentenced, probation officials recommend a sentence that is tailored to their specific circumstances. And Jackson handed down sentences that were at or above the probation office’s recommendations in five of the seven cases identified by Hawley. Numerous independent fact-checkers examined this attack on Jackson and determined that it is bogus. The New York Times said Republicans are “distorting” Jackson’s record. The Associated Press said that Republicans “twist Ketanji Brown Jackson’s judicial record.” ABCNews warned of “a flurry of misleading allegations by Republican Sen. Josh Hawley.” Even the conservative National Review described the allegations against Jackson as a “smear” that “appears meritless to the point of demagoguery.” Cruz and Hawley paid particular attention to one case — that of an 18-year-old Wesley Hawkins. Hawkins was still in high school when he committed his offense, which included sharing child abuse images and videos online and with an undercover detective. A psychological evaluation of Hawkins determined that “there is no indication that he is sexually interested in prepubescent children,” and that “his interest in watching teens engaged in homosexual activity was a way for him to explore his curiosity about homosexual activity and connect with his emotional peers.” Although the guidelines recommended a minimum sentence of 97 months in prison for Hawkins, even the prosecution felt this was too harsh. Prosecutors recommended two years in prison for Hawkins, and Jackson sentenced him to three months of incarceration plus an additional 73 months of supervised release. As Jackson explained during the hearing, all child pornography crimes are “heinous and egregious,” because the mere act of looking at such images helps create a market for content that can only be produced by abusing a child. But federal law requires judges to hand down a sentence that is “sufficient, but not greater than necessary” to punish a particular offender. And, in Hawkins’s case, the prosecution, the defense, probation officers, and ultimately Jackson all agreed that the guidelines’ recommended sentencing range was much too high. Though these allegations are unlikely to derail Jackson’s confirmation — when crucial Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) was asked about Hawley’s attack on the judge Monday, Manchin responded by questioning Hawley’s credibility — the stakes here are very high. For one thing, at least according to polling data, a simply astonishing percentage of Republicans believe or believed in conspiracy theories tying top Democrats to child sex trafficking — as much as half of all Donald Trump supporters, according to a 2020 poll. Last year, 15 percent of Americans said they believed Satan-worshiping pedophiles ran the country. Perhaps progressives or media don't see the QAnon signaling, or assume no-one buys it. That is a mistake. About half of Republicans believe Democratic leaders are engaged in child sex trafficking! Thats a huge constituency! 2/ https://t.co/Yd1fNp47AZ pic.twitter.com/yXmtYM5BbS — Don Moynihan (@donmoyn) March 20, 2022 The false belief that top Democrats are in league with child abusers is the core of conspiracy theories such as QAnon or Pizzagate. These conspiracy theories have inspired violence in the past. In 2016, for example, a man with an assault rifle opened fire in a DC pizzeria because he falsely believed that Hillary Clinton and her former campaign chair John Podesta ran a child sexual abuse ring in the restaurant’s basement. If Republicans succeed in derailing Jackson’s nomination with these kinds of allegations, that will teach the GOP that this kind of allegation works. It will teach them that the apparently quite large minority of Americans who believe in ridiculous conspiracy theories about Democrats and sex offenders are a powerful political force that can be tapped into. But even if they don’t succeed, Republicans are tapping into the ugliest ideas that exist in American society. They’re throwing around allegations that rely on distorted versions of someone’s actions. And they’re doing so in the hopes of derailing the nomination of a judge with an entirely mainstream record. If this works, things are likely to get much uglier very fast.

Preview: A masked demonstration for voting rights outside Congress this past January. Insufficient prevention funding by Congress could mean a lot more years of maskings in the future. | Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images The PREVENT Pandemics Act is a good bill. It isn’t enough to prevent pandemics. As I write this, the White House is warning that it will soon run out of funding to address the Covid-19 pandemic. Without additional money, uninsured Americans will stop being able to get free tests and treatments for Covid-19 after March 22, and won’t be able to get free vaccinations through the federal Uninsured Program after April 5. The White House says it won’t be able to buy additional antiviral pills or new monoclonal antibody treatments for people with Covid, or to fund surveillance that could catch future waves of the virus. The administration wants $22 billion; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has tried to pass $15 billion only to face a rebellion from both Republicans and Democrats angry that the money would come out of the Biden stimulus plan’s funds for state governments. If this stalemate holds, the federal effort to halt the virus could effectively be over, even though the pandemic itself clearly isn’t. That would be a disaster. Equally disastrous, though, is that Congress is simultaneously refusing to invest heavily in preventing the next pandemic. The failures that made Covid-19 such a catastrophe — and kept the federal government and international community from squelching it when it was still a minor outbreak — still exist. We still lack the ability to adequately monitor new infectious diseases, and we still don’t invest sufficiently in preparing treatments and vaccines for viruses that could cause a pandemic if unchecked. To be fair, Congress hasn’t done zero. There’s bipartisan support for a bill including some legal changes that could improve pandemic preparedness. Called the PREVENT Pandemics Act, it’s the culmination of a year-long effort by Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) committee chair Patty Murray (D-WA) and ranking member Richard Burr (R-NC), and it passed the committee by an overwhelming 20-2 margin on March 15. The bill authorizes a 9/11 Commission-style investigation into the government’s failure to contain Covid-19, establishes a White House office for pandemic preparedness, and demands more information sharing between the CDC, state and local health departments, and other public health agencies, among many other provisions. If the bipartisan committee vote is any indication, the measure has strong odds of passing the Senate and House and making it to Joe Biden’s desk. But the act only includes about $2 billion in new spending to prevent future pandemics. For comparison, a bipartisan group of former government officials (including noted conservatives like former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and Lisa Monaco, who served under Presidents Bush and Obama as a national security official) has called for a $10 billion annual investment in biodefense over the next decade, adding up to $100 billion over the next 10 years. Biden’s own pandemic preparedness plan calls for $65.3 billion in funding over the next seven to 10 years; over $24 billion would go to developing and manufacturing vaccines alone. The PREVENT Pandemics Act, in other words, leaves out about 97 percent of the funding that bipartisan experts, and the White House, think is necessary to prevent pandemics. “Time after time, throughout the past two years we have seen how our response to this pandemic could have, and should have, been better — how public health data was slow and incomplete, how development and review of tests and treatments could have been faster, and so much more,” Murray told Vox in a statement. “The PREVENT Pandemics Act is a set of bipartisan solutions that will help address these policy breakdowns and help us better respond to future public health threats. “But getting the PREVENT Pandemics Act across the finish line is just one part of the equation: we also need to pass the COVID-19 emergency supplemental funding so that our response right now doesn’t falter, and we absolutely need sustained, annual funding for public health so that preparedness remains a priority into the future, as I’ve proposed in my Public Health Infrastructure Saves Lives Act.” I hope Sen. Murray is successful — but I worry that this bill might have been an optimal place to put that funding. The current American policy toward pandemics is, frankly, nuts. The federal government is slashing funding for combating a pandemic still killing hundreds of people a day, and not investing much of anything toward preventing another pathogen from unleashing similar or worse damage. Prevention funding would easily pay for itself if it even slightly lowers the odds of a future pandemic. So why isn’t Congress ponying up? What Congress is spending versus what it needs to spend The PREVENT Act is, at least, a start. But it’s much more a set of rules changes than a funding bill. The difference becomes clear when you compare it to the White House’s much more comprehensive pandemic prevention proposal. Nikki Teran, the senior biosecurity fellow at the Institute for Progress and a PhD geneticist, has been tracking the PREVENT Pandemics bill closely and helpfully put together a chart comparing spending levels in the bill to those in Biden’s pandemic prevention plan. Institute for Progress / Nikki Teran The chart tallies the amounts on each area of pandemic prevention that the American Pandemic Preparedness Plan, the White House proposal to boost preparedness, and how they compare to the funding amounts authorized in the PREVENT Pandemics Act. The White House proposal includes, among other things, $24.2 billion in spending on vaccine preparedness (for instance, improving manufacturing capacity and developing candidate vaccines for common types of viruses), $11.8 billion to prepare antiviral and other therapies against likely pandemic pathogens, and $5 billion on research and manufacturing for testing, as well as funding for personal protective equipment (PPE) and improving building design (for instance through better ventilation). It’s worth reviewing the spending plan in full just to get a sense of how sprawling and comprehensive it is. Public health experts, like those authoring the White House plan, have a decent idea of where the money ought to go. What they don’t have is the actual money from Congress. They won’t necessarily get the money, even if PREVENT passes. Note that the PREVENT Act does not actually appropriate any money. The HELP committee where the act originated does not have the ability to allocate spending; in this case that’s the province of the appropriations committee. Authorizing funding merely creates a pathway for the funding to be appropriated in the next congressional spending bill. Even if the act passed, in other words, it would need additional action from Congress to get the measly $2 billion it authorizes spent. With a 50-50 Senate and Republicans likely to retake Congress this fall, the odds of even that happening aren’t too high. What it does authorize isn’t bad. It includes, for instance, $175 million for the CDC to distribute for genomic sequencing. That’s encouraging, because even a small system of linked sequencing machines at major hospitals, combined with routine sequencing of blood samples from ER patients, would enable the CDC to catch viruses with novel DNA before they’ve spread widely. The US has been a laggard when it comes to this technology; Australia, the UK, and South Africa have been much more aggressive at using genomic surveillance to detect new Covid-19 variants. That’s not nearly enough for the kind of system we need, however. “The cost to set up and run a surveillance architecture in 200 urban hospitals in the US would be well under $1 billion, and it could be done within a year,” scientist David Ecker wrote in Scientific American last year. More troublingly, the money comes with some odd strings. Teran notes that the funding is required to go to government agencies, like local health offices, or academic institutions/national labs. It can’t go to, say, nonprofit hospitals, except perhaps through affiliated medical schools. That might make deployment to the high-volume ERs where this sequencing is needed more challenging: most large hospitals are nonprofits, and they can’t directly acquire genomic sequencers through this funding, creating possible gaps in how many Americans the ER surveillance system covers. “I do think it will likely go to the right spots,” Teran said about the funding, but added that this restriction is “a bit limiting.” The next largest bucket of money, $161.8 million, goes to the CDC directly to improve its data sharing. The agency was long considered the world leader in infectious disease control, but it hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory during this pandemic. In his book on the Covid-19 emergency, former FDA Director Scott Gottlieb reports that the agency delayed test availability because its scientists patented the rights to the first tests and sharply limited commercial manufacturers’ access to samples of the virus, which they needed to make their own tests. “Anyone who wanted to make a lab test for COVID had to follow the CDC’s test design, Gottlieb notes, “but to use that blueprint, they had to first secure a license to the agency’s intellectual property.” Making matters worse, the first test that became available from the CDC turned out to be wholly ineffective, because of an appalling, preventable lab screw-up by CDC scientists. Some might wonder — I, in fact, wonder — whether it’s prudent to give an agency that’s behaved so poorly additional funding without very substantial reforms. Increased funding can, for sure, help dysfunctional agencies whose main problem is a shortage of funding, and many experts have identified a lack of funding (especially for data sharing) as one of the CDC’s big problems. But there are other problems too. Gottlieb reports in his book that Deborah Birx, who coordinated Covid-19 response under President Trump, secured funding to send to the CDC “to modernize its reporting of the COVID hospital data.” The modernization was incredibly mild; the Atlantic’s Alexis Madrigal reports that it amounted to a single spreadsheet column, showing how many doses of the antiviral remdesivir hospitals had. The CDC insisted that adding this single spreadsheet column would take three weeks — in July 2020, as severe cases were piling up and accurately targeting remdesivir to the hospitals that needed it most was essential. Birx wound up having to set up a parallel system collating hospital data because of the CDC’s inability to get the job done. If the CDC wasn’t able to rapidly improve data-sharing when given money at the height of the pandemic, why would they be inclined to do so now? The PREVENT Act does offer some reforms apart from the new CDC funding. It makes the CDC director Senate-confirmable, requires annual testimony by them, and directs the agency to improve data sharing (which is what the bulk of the funding is for). But it doesn’t remove the CDC’s ability to patent diagnostic tests and strictly ration access to viral samples. Simply directing the agency to get better at data sharing and offering money for the project might not be enough. We need real pandemic prevention investment My point here is not to beat up on the PREVENT Act. Given an all-or-nothing choice between passing it and not passing it, we should pass it. A real investigation into the government’s response to Covid-19 would reveal more important failures like those limned above, and could spur congressional action toward more reforms and investment in preventing the next pandemic. Having a standing office for pandemic prevention in the White House will help keep the issue on decision-makers’ minds. But it’s crucial that the federal government not stop there. It would be valuable for the Senate’s counterparts in the House to add additional funding authorizations for whole categories of interventions not included in the Senate bill, if feasible on a bipartisan basis: more funding for better tests, vaccine and treatment candidates against potential pandemic pathogens, new manufacturing facilities so we can surge production of countermeasures in an emergency, etc. And if this bill does not wind up being the occasion for that sort of investment, Congress should be sure to find another occasion. $2 billion in spending authorizations simply is not enough to prevent pandemics going forward. We know what to do, and what it costs. We simply have to do it.

Preview: Alana, Danielle, and Este Haim in a still from the video for their song “Little of Your Love,” directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, who would later direct Alana in Licorice Pizza. | Haim The Licorice Pizza director has made beautiful loners out of Haim, Fiona Apple, Radiohead, and more. Honestly, a lot of Paul Thomas Anderson’s movies — including his Oscar-nominated comedy Licorice Pizza — feel like extended music videos. Sometimes, they basically are: Magnolia, released in 1999, was Anderson’s attempt to adapt his friend Aimee Mann’s music into a movie. (The results suggest it was a good idea.) Licorice Pizza’s needle drops, woven into the heady emotional landscape of a 1970s summer in the Valley, feel like pleasant little heart-thunks, every single time. In composing the weird tinkly soundtrack for Punch-Drunk Love (2002), Jon Brion mixed original music with a song from Robert Altman’s 1980s film Popeye, to delicious effect. And, of course, Boogie Nights (1997) plays like one long party, so laden with bangers that they had to release the soundtrack in two volumes. Maybe this explains why Anderson’s music videos, in turn, seem like films. In some cases, they actually are short films: there’s Valentine (2017), a fly-on-the-wall documentary in the studio with the LA-based pop-rock band Haim, and Anima (2019), a collaboration with Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, which plays like dystopian sci-fi with a hopeful side. But even the more traditional-length ones — dozens of which he’s been directing since the ’90s with artists including (ex-girlfriend) Fiona Apple, Joanna Newsom, Radiohead, Haim, Aimee Mann, and Michael Penn — feel like mini-films bearing his unmistakable fingerprints. What are those fingerprints? Anderson’s films always feel a little smudgy, a little off-kilter, with main characters who often seem a bit out of place in their world — a perfect match for musicians. In The Master (2012), loner Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) is jaggedly inappropriate and unpredictable, a man who seems on the verge of exploding or shriveling at any unexpected moment. Two years later in Inherent Vice, Phoenix is now a strung-out detective who’s a day late and a dollar short while life is racing on ahead of him. Boogie Nights’ Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg) is really just a kid looking for a family to belong to; he finds it in a glamorous but ragtag band of porn actors. Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), the prospector at the center of There Will Be Blood (2007), is a man out of time, simultaneously modern and somehow medieval in his outlook. The list could go on, so it’s super fun to see those show up in his music videos, too. Take this one, my personal favorite, for Fiona Apple’s 1998 cover of “Across the Universe”: Apple sits singing placidly and earnestly in the middle of a diner being absolutely trashed by a horde of men in suits. The result is a blurry dreamscape, and we’re left wondering what exactly this nice young woman is doing in the midst of absolute chaos. She’s in a different world. (And nothing’s gonna change it.) Same vibe in this Aimee Mann video, for “Save Me”: Mann sits in the midst of scenes from Magnolia, seemingly describing the emotional plea of the lonely cast of characters — “Why don’t you save me?” — but also her own, as one of those in the “ranks of the freaks / who suspect / they could never love anyone.” After all, she’s a ghost here. They don’t even know she’s there. Or this video for Joanna Newsom’s song “Divers,” in which she looms over the landscape like a goddess or a giant, alone in the midst of harmonious nature, a strange and eerie presence singing about a lost love: “You don’t know my name,” she concludes. “But I know yours.” Sometimes Anderson renders his characters’ disjointedness, their eerie alienation, by following them as they stride forcefully through scenes of absolute chaos. Long tracking shots are another of his cinematic hallmarks; they’re all over Licorice Pizza, of course, but perhaps most famous is the three-minute unbroken shot that opens Boogie Nights: He’s just showing off with this, but he loves to do it. Here he is tracking Joanna Newsom — this time without a steadicam — through the hectic streets of Greenwich Village as she sings “Sapokanikan”: Or, in this very famous music video, he backs away in one unbroken shot from Boogie Nights composer Michael Penn, who’s singing “Try” while powering down the longest corridor in America (at a quarter mile). Spot the Philip Seymour Hoffman cameos: In recent years, Anderson has frequently teamed up with Haim, and in those videos you can see all his fingerprints once again; the videos are messy and beautiful, and the camera is as much a character as the musicians are. The most fun of these might be the video for their 2019 single “Summer Girl,” in which the sisters walk around Los Angeles slowly removing layers of sweatshirts and shirts as they enter the warmest season: The group started shooting the “Summer Girl” video with Anderson basically before the song was completed, and he ended up contributing some unused movie lines to it (then turned down a writing credit). Most recently, his video for “Lost Track” (released March 1) features Danielle Haim looking like a disaffected teenager miserable at a terrible party where she’s the odd one out. “I’m tryin’ to feel all right / around all these people / I try but I’m just numb / this time,” she sings to camera as a gaggle of women in retro dresses buzz around her having a great time: Haim’s collaboration with Anderson runs so deep that the youngest Haim, Alana, is the star of Licorice Pizza, in a breakout performance that’s garnered universal acclaim. She plays another young woman who feels out of place everywhere, from the world of adults she’s reluctant to join to her own family (played, delightfully, by her own real-life sisters and parents). In the film, you can feel the trust between artist and director, the kind of thing that’s gained over years of collaboration. That’s what’s always made Anderson’s films so enormously satisfying to watch. He’s a director who loves to push at people’s bruises and prod them in the side, but never in a painful way. You get the feeling that he loves his characters. It’s no different in his music videos: Whether he’s zooming in slowly on Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood playing guitars in a twilight park, or turning Fiona Apple into an avant-garde contrapuntal goddess, or watching Danielle Haim go through a car wash, you can feel the fascination with faces and the tug between joy and a sense that life’s just real weird coming through. Watch them all in order, and you might start to wonder if he’s a music video director first, after all. Paul Thomas Anderson’s music videos are available to watch on YouTube. For more recommendations from the world of culture, check out the One Good Thing archives.

Preview: Ena Da, with some of the things she looks at online. | Ena Da Ena Da, better known by her handle @Park_Slope_Arsonist, loves shitposting, bizarre TikToks, and trolling Tinder dudes. Welcome to 24 Hours Online, where we ask one extremely internetty person to document a day in their life looking at screens. People tend to talk about their screen time the way they talk about fast food: Too much is “bad,” a marker of gluttony or laziness or some other moral failing. Ena Da, an actor, comedian, and manager of what I would argue is Instagram’s best meme account, has a more nuanced approach. Despite her self-proclaimed “ungodly” 10-to-12 hours per day online, she argues that the lack of available third places in American society creates a void of shared community and culture that can only be filled by the internet. That’s not what her meme page — current handle: @park_slope_arsonist — is about. Describing it is sort of impossible; it’s a mix between straight-up shitposts, chaotic TikTok curation, and intentionally amateurish WordArt graphics that skewer everything from US foreign politics to parallel parking. Her Stories are where the real action is, however: Nearly every day, she posts at least a dozen of the weirdest TikToks (a thirst edit of the old man from Courage the Cowardly Dog, the tragedy of children wanting to be marine biologists but never becoming them), and intersperses them with her own hilarious commentary. Like a lot of 27-year-olds living in Brooklyn, Da’s first real experience on the internet was Tumblr, but she avoided the more discourse-poisoned corners and remained in her niche of surrealist posts written by people for whom “being funny on the internet” would someday become their identity. Here’s how she spent one day online in March, from trolling Tinder dudes to avoiding being recognized in Prospect Park, in her own words. 11 am If my mother saw how much time I spent online, she would immediately drop to her knees and pray because it can only be described as ungodly. I know that I usually spend upward of 12 hours online every day, but I never turn on Screen Time on my phone because I don’t need to be reminded of that (except for today). I never click on the notifications tab because I read an article that said notifications on social media were conditioning us like Pavlov’s dog and I thought to myself, “I am no dog” Speaking of ungodly, I wake up around 10:49 am and immediately start my daily routine: slowly cycling through my different social media platforms. I liken myself to a medieval knight traveling across the realm collecting taxes and keeping peace or some shit. My first stop is the land of Instagram. I don’t ever click on the notifications tab because a few years ago I read an article that said notifications on social media were conditioning us like Pavlov’s dog and I thought to myself, “I am no dog.” The likes I don’t dwell on too much, but the comments I keep a close eye on. Like a knight keeping the peace, I gotta be on the lookout for any comments that disturb the order. This morning, there were none in sight — surprising, for what some would consider an “inflammatory” post. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Ena Da, Content Creator (@park_slope_arsonist) The responses to my Story make me feel very plugged into the psyche of others. I get countless messages from people, many of whom have responded to my Stories in the past, and even though I have never returned the response, it doesn’t seem to faze them. It’s a phenomenon that fascinates me to no end. I feel as though I’ve been transported inside their heads (some of which could use some serious spring cleaning). 3 pm I leave the house to go for a stroll through Prospect Park. Or should I say, a scroll through Prospect Park because I am on my Twitter timeline while walking. Naturally, I stop to tweet about the breathtaking views. Walking around this world with a low cut shirt staring at my own tits, truly the female gaze at its best — Park Slope Arsonist (@PSArsonist) March 15, 2022 Scrolling and walking is such a surreal experience because it feels like my brain exists in a different plane than the rest of my body. Unfortunately, I don’t keep a close enough eye on the physical realm because I come inches away from a tree branch in my corneas mid-walk. I catch the eye of a woman with a stroller, who smirks sympathetically as if to say, “we’ve all been there.” There’s been a few times where people have recognized me from my Tumblr, which is weird because I’m like, “You’re from Tumblr, what are you doing outside your house?” [People recognizing me from] Instagram is happening a lot, especially in the past year. There’s about a 5 to 10 percent chance that I’ll get recognized when I go out in New York. I never get used to it. It’s embarrassing! 4 pm As a chronically single 20-something woman, I would be lying if I said I didn’t check my Tinder at any point during the day. During this check, like most, I just look to see if I have any new messages. Nothing of significance today except a follow-up message from some guy trying to understand why it says “no twins” in my bio. It’s a tongue-in-cheek parody of the occasional bigoted, exclusionary statements that some people put in their bio, but he doesn’t need to know that. I will not be elaborating. Tinder for me is a mixed bag. I’ve been on some good dates, but I find it hard to engage with full sincerity since I’m convinced that the platform actively works against you in order to force you to pay for its exclusive features. The mild online popularity doesn’t exactly help my case either as I’ve come across too many potential suitors who absolutely repel me by mentioning my other online activities. I went on a date with a guy one time who was really cool and we were vibing, and then he revealed to me that he followed me on Instagram. After the fact, it left a bad taste in my mouth. People get a first impression of who you are from your online presence — your mannerisms, the way you talk — that you didn’t get the chance to introduce or influence yourself. They might not like the reality of you because they like the idea of you a lot better. 5 pm I have a Google Meet call with fellow comedians Reed Kavner (@reedkavner), Annie Rauwerda (@annierau), and Juan Nicolon (@juannicolon) to plan our upcoming show called Depths of Wikipedia Live. This show is a perfect example of what I like to call “the URL in the IRL” in which a popular, very internetty phenomenon breaks containment and interacts with the real world. The line between the internet and real life has never been blurrier, but sometimes that’s not such a bad thing. One less line to cross. 6 pm My roommate and I have a playful argument at dinnertime. I said I thought it was weird that she accompanies her meals with baby carrots. She found it equally strange that I do so with cherry tomatoes. So I decide to poll the netizens: 1,300 people voted that the baby carrots were weirder; 2,800 people voted for the cherry tomatoes. Whatever! 9 pm I scroll through Tumblr for a bit. I find the overall climate of the website to be comforting, like a twisted mental break. It’s my favorite social media platform, maybe because I really think I developed a lot of my identity on the site — which is a bit of a concerning statement now that I read that back. But Tumblr had long text posts where people would go in-depth about, like, “this is what it’s like to be trans” or another part of their identity and issues that affect them. I feel like I had a front-row seat to learning a lot of different perspectives that I wouldn’t have gotten on other platforms. It’s also where a lot of memes and jokes used to start out, so it’s like being in the primordial soup of internet culture. Or maybe I like it so much because where else on the web do you find absolute nonsense like this: 11 pm I end my day by watching some TikToks. My unpaid TikTok intern, my little sister who’s in college, sends me a hefty stack of videos (175!) and I watch every single one of them in its entirety to find ones I would like to save for my Instagram Story the following day. I always find myself losing track of time while doing this. Today, I spent almost three hours watching TikToks, but I like to think of it as a labor of love. I don’t watch TV, so it fills that niche. Everything I do is because I love my online community and it brings me joy to entertain them. I definitely spend more time online than the average person, but I don’t see it as a waste. I think these days, there are fewer available third places — spaces that are neither your home or workplace and are not commercialized, where you can hang out and do nothing in. And that’s what the internet is fulfilling. Malls are dying, and you can’t always go to parks. People who say the youth spend too much time online miss that important aspect: They spend so much time online because there isn’t anywhere else to go. So yes, my screen time is crazy, but if you think about it, imagine me hanging out at the mall all day. Which, I guess, is equally pathetic. Total screen time: 10 hours and 1 minute This column was first published in The Goods newsletter. Sign up here so you don’t miss the next one, plus get newsletter exclusives.

Preview: Amanda Northrop/Vox Modern outrage is a cycle. Could a culture of public forgiveness ever break it? Part of our series on America’s struggle for forgiveness. The state of modern outrage is a cycle: We wake up mad, we go to bed mad, and in between, the only thing that might change is what’s making us angry. The one gesture that could offer substantive change, or at least provide a way forward — forgiveness — seems perpetually beyond our reach. In the public sphere, we’re constantly being asked to weigh in on the question of forgiveness as a cultural process. The consensus thus far has largely been that American culture has no room for the concept. In a tweet from March 2021, Atlantic writer Elizabeth Bruenig wrote, “as a society we have absolutely no coherent story — none whatsoever — about how a person who’s done wrong can atone, make amends, and retain some continuity between their life/identity before and after the mistake.” In other words, everyone wants forgiveness, but no one is being forgiven, and no one knows how to negotiate forgiveness at a cultural level. In an era of polarized politics, “cancel culture,” and the tendency of social media users to conduct informal modern tribunals without a lot of due process, seeking and granting public forgiveness is increasingly complicated. The questions involved get harder by the day: What use is a good apology if people are unwilling to hear it? Whose forgiveness matters most? And what’s the point of agreeing on answers to any of the other questions if all we really want is to hang onto our anger, scoring points online rather than moving on? Bound up in the hand-wringing over cancel culture is the idea that lurking on the internet is a potential vigilante justice mob, out to insist that a score must be settled and retribution must be taken. In this messy context, on such a public stage, there’s little room for humanization between offense and vengeance. We wake up mad, we go to bed mad, rinse and repeat The idea of “canceling” turns every potential interaction into a bad-faith nightmare, reframing earnest calls for accountability as witch hunts and often derailing the possibility of penitence before the question of forgiveness can ever arise. Those who sound the cancel culture alarm do have some valid concerns, namely: How is anyone supposed to attain lasting forgiveness at a cultural level without having their past offenses permanently held against them? What if they don’t want your forgiveness — can you still interact with them and their work? When is it okay to move on? Is it ever? If things are at such an impasse, is public forgiveness even a worthy goal? Perhaps not, but it is preferable to either a public figure’s summary cancellation (unlikely as that is to achieve) or a furious, endless standoff between offender and offended. In practice, rather than becoming an alternative to outrage and wariness, the idea of forgiveness can fuel just as much outrage and wariness as anything else these days. That’s all thanks to the nature of modern outrage itself — the self-perpetuating cycle thrives on never letting go and turning every attempt at moving past it into another source of anger, another element to distrust. And so it goes: We wake up mad, we go to bed mad, rinse and repeat. If we applied a positive road map to a typical outrage cycle, what we would hope to find after that initial period of outrage is discussion, apology, atonement, and forgiveness. That process almost never happens on the modern public stage. Instead, far too often, a single offense becomes part of a litany of wrongs that follow the offender around the public sphere, with the long tail of their sins — imagined, real, or alleged — trailing behind them forever, ready to be brought up the next time they draw attention, leading them to endure still more damnation every time they make new mistakes. That’s all optimistically assuming we can get them to admit and apologize for the offense to begin with. With the rise of cancel culture — or, more accurately, the rise of hysteria around the idea of a hypothetical “cancel culture” that may or may not exist — public figures, especially ones with massive platforms, have a reason to completely disengage from their critics and from whatever the issue is that may or may not be getting them canceled. The problem starts, before any apology or even offense, with the public sphere. We seem to be incapable of handling potential opposition in good faith. Sometimes this looks like the deliberate misinterpretation of old statements, like the intentional twisting, by right-wing pundits in 2017, of an old tweet by MSNBC correspondent Sam Seder, a furor that led to Seder being fired and then rehired. It can take the shape of broad fan-led cultural conversations like the backlash over the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot — before it had been released — because the reboot had an all-female cast. Or it can come from misassumptions born of vulnerability, like the harassment by the queer and trans sci-fi community of the anonymous trans writer Isabel Fall — and the subsequent harassment, over a year later, of people peripherally associated with her harassment, in a tale without apparent end. In all of these cases, the common thread is the presumption, all around, of ill intent. “When you think of somebody as being immoral, that shuts down the ability to have a conversation” Internet researcher Alice Marwick’s investigations into morally motivated networked harassment shed some light on why we’re so suspicious of one another and willing to behave so aggressively. Marwick found that when groups of people on social media believed their moral code had been violated, they felt so justified in their harassment of their targets that they refused to acknowledge it as harassment. “When you think of somebody as being immoral, that shuts down the ability to have a conversation,” Marwick told me in a 2021 interview. “It really does encourage dehumanization and seeing other people as the other, rather than as actual people. There are places where our sense of morality is so strong that we don’t believe the other person can be redeemed.” Imagine facing down this kind of collective movement. A person who starts out willing to listen and learn from their critics can become so badly burned by toxic harassment that they lash out at their critics and dig in their heels instead. That has a bunch of ripple effects. It makes the harassers feel even more validated in their actions and anger. It fuels the idea that the offender was never sincerely sorry to begin with, which can lead to more anger and retribution. It also can make the target even less likely to listen and learn the next time someone accuses them of doing something wrong because they’ve already been burned and they have less reason than ever to trust their accusers. The idea of “bad-faith engagement” has become kind of a buzzy shorthand for the messiness of this process, but it really is the key to any conversation we have about forgiveness. To reach a point where anger and toxicity are diminished, we have to engage with each other sincerely and respectfully, believing that the people on the receiving end of our anger have the best of intentions in engaging with us. We have to replace bad-faith engagement with good-faith engagement. That doesn’t mean, necessarily, that we must wind up dealing in good faith with extremists, conspiracists, disinformation agents, and other bad actors. It might mean that we stop assuming everyone who says anything with which we disagree falls into one of those categories. We’re a long way from knowing how to do that. It doesn’t help that a sincere apology — the thing society requires to move forward, presuming a threshold of good faith can be met at all — is often a disaster when it happens on a public stage. If it happens at all. The classic apology, as described by social psychologists in 2004, involves “admitting fault, admitting damage, expressing remorse, asking for forgiveness, and offering compensation.” Yet while plenty of research has been done on the perfect apology, we’ve had very few cultural examples of one being delivered effectively and sincerely. We’ve had even fewer examples of such an apology being followed up with a process of actual atonement. Louis C.K., who many were eager to forgive in the wake of Me Too revelations of his sexual misconduct in 2017, drew plenty of tentative praise for his apology to his victims, and his promise to “step back and take a long time to listen.” When C.K. returned to standup, less than a year later, it was a far cry from what his apology had promised; instead of making amends, C.K. mocked and denigrated those who had tried to cancel him. “Fuck it, what are you going to take away, my birthday?” he replied to a shocked audience. “My life is over, I don’t give a shit.” Even when we get close to something that looks like the “textbook” apology, it’s difficult to trust. After nearly ruining his career by filming a dead body in Japan’s Aokigahara forest in 2017, wildly popular YouTuber Logan Paul embarked on a long and well-mapped-out redemption tour, one that involved making repeated public apologies, including a notoriously poorly received one on YouTube. The classic apology involves “admitting fault, admitting damage, expressing remorse, asking for forgiveness, and offering compensation” At first, his core audience wasn’t buying it, but Paul’s strategy appeared to work. He filmed himself talking to suicide survivors and prevention organizations, rapidly absorbed and adopted the progressive language of the restorative justice movement, and spoke often about social issues on his podcast, Impaulsive. By 2020, his fans were praising him for things like his unequivocal, articulate support of Black Lives Matter. Business Insider observed that Paul “has been more or less forgiven for doing what many consider to be one of the worst things a major YouTuber has ever done on the platform,” and praised him for pulling off a remarkable “redemption story … largely of his own making.” Some might think Paul has done just about all a person can do to apologize and make amends. Yet wariness persists. Paul’s apology video set off a chain reaction of YouTuber apology videos, each one less sincere than the last, to the point where the media began treating them (and similar videos from others) like their own terrible genre. In 2020, linguists published “A Discourse Analysis on Logan Paul’s Apologies: Are They Apologetic Enough?” The answer, they found, was not quite: While Paul’s apologies contained some of the ingredients of a successful apology, they were missing a few key factors: an offer of repairing the wrong done and compensating those harmed by his actions. In other words, Paul’s apologies were effective but flawed, and his subsequent comeback is arguably as much a lesson in effective image repair as it is in atonement. That’s not to say that no celebrity has ever managed an effective apology and won forgiveness from their intended recipient. In 2018, after making a lengthy and considered apology to a former junior colleague whom he had sexually harassed for months, Dan Harmon, creator of Community and Rick and Morty, received a public pardon from her. Their exchange made headlines at the time — though Vice has since noted that Harmon “has a history of being a proud asshole, but apologizing when he gets caught.” Whether someone possesses the ability to make a thoughtful, heartfelt apology and then apply those learned lessons to avoid other similar mistakes may seem like an apology side quest. But it’s a further consideration for those who’ve been victimized: When experience teaches you that some people can and do hide bad behavior under a mask of contrition, it only increases your mistrust. Still, we might be able to live with a celebrity doing superficial image repair, or a celebrity who seems to struggle to make lasting change, over a celebrity who’s convinced no offense has happened to begin with. Take a J.K. Rowling or a Dave Chappelle, whose offenses against trans people have yet to make a significant dent in their huge and loyal fan bases. In that kind of case, how does the forgiveness process begin for the rest of us, or should it begin at all? We really don’t know who forgiveness is for It’s a basic existential question for which we have no answer. We really don’t know who forgiveness is for. Is it for the alienated, hurt victims of an act, or is it for everyone? Is its aim to heal the injured or to allow the general public to move on? Consider Roman Polanski. Plenty of major Hollywood figures over the years have publicly called for Polanski to be forgiven for raping a 13-year-old girl in 1977. As an adult, his victim publicly forgave him herself. In the absence of any serious accountability for Polanski, however, many refuse to move on. “Forgiveness is not enough,” Julia Baird wrote for Newsweek in 2009, in a piece stressing the importance of holding Polanski accountable rather than treating his victim’s forgiveness as a form of absolution. Or consider Mel Gibson, who has apologized and made reparations to Jewish people for his anti-Semitism, but not to queer communities for his homophobia. “I’ll apologize [to gay people] when hell freezes over,” he told Playboy in 1995. In recent years, he’s become adept at apologizing without actually apologizing. Because there’s no way to collectively arbitrate accountability for unaccountable public figures, there’s no easily definable start and end point for forgiveness. Asking everyone who’s invested in the process to just give up and move on, or to collectively agree that someone has atoned, is all but impossible. That brings us to what is arguably the most difficult aspect of the forgiveness conversation: letting go. Perhaps the most important takeaway from Marwick’s research is that the social media dynamics that cause us to feel morally justified in harassing one another also reward holding onto our outrage. So much of the genuine fear of cancel culture involves this idea that once you’re “canceled,” nothing you can do, however well-intentioned, will be enough to satisfy the people baying for your blood. It’s easy to see why that fear exists. Social media rewards pithy, angry takes rather than nuanced, balanced discussions, then boosts those takes so they attract more angry, non-nuanced takes. It can feel good to be part of that collective anger, especially when you feel righteous. It’s often extremely difficult to let that anger go, to forgive, adjust, and move on. Most moral and spiritual authorities teach us that the cycle of repentance usually involves grace Most moral and spiritual authorities teach us that the cycle of repentance usually involves grace. Grace, the act of allowing people room to be human and make mistakes while still loving them and valuing them, might be the holiest, most precious concept of all in this conversation about right and wrong, penance and reform — but it’s the one that almost never gets discussed. That’s understandable. Grace relies on some huge assumptions: that people mean well and that their intent is not to be hurtful; that they are capable of self-reflection and change; and, of course, that we all possess equal shares of dignity and humanity. These are all pretty big asks in a world that has become increasingly divisive and hateful. It’s easy to say we shouldn’t assume that every anonymous internet stranger or every person on the other side of a debate is a bad actor, sure. Still, when you’re meeting people only in the limited context of a username, a profile pic, and a few angry statements on social media, it’s not easy to stop and remember there might be a whole, well-intentioned person behind the avatar. That’s what makes the concept of grace so powerful. It forces us to contend not only with other people’s human frailty but with our own: to remember how good it feels when someone, out of the blue, treats us with respect, empathy, and kindness in the middle of an angry conversation where we expect nothing but hostility. To be shown the kindness of strangers when we expect cruelty, and then bestow that gift in turn — that’s the remarkable quality of grace. But there’s little room for it when we’re barely able to handle the concept of forgiveness, and equally unable to stop being angry with the offender after all is said and done. And so, we arrive back at the beginning of the cycle: We hang on to our anger, and all of this anger puts the possibility of grace even further out of reach. Perhaps there’s a perverse commonality in knowing that no matter what “side” we’re on, we’re all bad at this. Being generous and gracious to each other is a difficult, grueling process for everyone. We all struggle at it, together.

Preview: US Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson is sworn in during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, March 21, in Washington, DC.  | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images The hearing surfaced a slew of old grievances and political attacks. Senate Republicans — who know they probably won’t be able to prevent Ketanji Brown Jackson from being confirmed to the Supreme Court — opened her confirmation hearing by focusing on something else: old grievances. Several Republicans, including Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Ted Cruz (R-TX), sought to draw a direct contrast between how Jackson is being treated and how Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was treated during his hearing in 2018. Repeatedly, senators noted that Jackson’s questioning would focus on her legal record and not what they called the “personal attacks” Kavanaugh experienced, when he was faced with allegations of sexual assault. In doing so, they downplayed the allegations brought against him and tried to suggest that their treatment of Jackson this week would be an improvement upon how Democrats previously behaved. “When we say this is not Kavanaugh, what do we mean?” Graham said. “It means Democratic senators are not going to have their windows busted by groups. No Republican senator is going to unleash an attack on your character when the hearing is almost over.” It’s a way to preempt the possible blame Republicans might get for their questioning of Jackson, said Mike Davis, the head of the Article III Project, a right-leaning advocacy group focused on the federal judiciary. “It preempts any complaints Democrats might have about GOP criticisms of Judge Jackson’s record because their attacks on Justice Kavanaugh were personal and unproven,” Davis, who has been informally advising Republican staff, told Vox. “It’s also a reminder to the public of how terribly Democrats treated Justice Kavanaugh and his family. The GOP will focus on her professional record, giving their criticisms more credibility.” (There are key differences between the two: for instance, Kavanaugh faced credible allegations of sexual assault, while Jackson does not.) Republicans also emphasized Democrats’ past opposition to federal judicial nominees Miguel Estrada, who is Latino, and Janice Rogers Brown, who is Black, to suggest that Democrats have been harsher on nominees of color if they are GOP appointees. Republicans’ questions and attacks this week are intended to make the hearing “more of a political wash instead of a political win for Democrats,” Davis previously explained. By drawing attention to the ways Democrats have allegedly mistreated Republican nominees, the GOP is trying to suggest that its treatment of Jackson is well within Senate norms. “If there’s one thing you can say about the judicial nomination wars, they’ll always say they’re responding to the previous bad behavior of the other side,” said Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University and adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. Republicans relitigated past nominations Republicans spent much of the first day walking through a litany of grievances about past nomination fights. Many referenced Kavanaugh in some way, and many also spoke about Estrada and Rogers. “We will be fair and thorough, as people would expect us to be, but we won’t get down in the gutter like Democrats did during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said in his remarks. Kavanaugh was confirmed after a dramatic nomination fight that saw allegations surface against him of decades-old sexual misconduct, prompting an incredibly acrimonious fight among senators, large protests at the Capitol, and a dramatic and emotional second round of hearings and testimony at the height of the national Me Too movement. The comparison suggests that Jackson and Kavanaugh’s nominations are taking place under similar contexts, though of course they are not. Republicans didn’t acknowledge that, and even played down the allegations. “No one is going to inquire into your teenage dating habits,” Cruz said in remarks that appeared to gloss over the allegations Kavanaugh faced. Statements by Republicans about both Estrada and Rogers Brown also seemed aimed at showing that Democrats have also previously opposed nominees of color. From 2001 to 2003, Democrats blocked Estrada’s nomination for the DC Circuit Court of Appeals due to questions about his experience and the belief that he’d add to the conservative tilt of the court. He was ultimately forced to withdraw his nomination. Rogers Brown, meanwhile, was confirmed for an appeals court seat in 2005, but only after Democrats delayed her nomination for two years because of her conservative views on issues including labor rights. “The point Republicans might be trying to make is, if it was okay for Dems to oppose Janice Rogers Brown on judicial philosophy grounds, Republicans can oppose Ketanji Brown Jackson on judicial philosophy grounds,” Somin said. In addition to citing their complaints with how past nominations were handled, Republicans also previewed other topics they intend to ask Jackson about this week, including her sentencing decisions in child porn cases, her work defending Guantanamo Bay detainees, and her position on packing the court. Somin notes that Kavanaugh’s hearing was widely viewed as energizing Republican voters in 2018, just ahead of those midterm elections, and references to it now could at least temporarily fuel the base. Republicans have also tied Jackson’s positions on sentencing to a broader “soft on crime” attack they’ve fielded against Democrats prior to the midterms. As crime rates have increased during the pandemic, the GOP has sought to pin the blame on President Joe Biden and other Democratic lawmakers. This week’s hearings offer them another avenue to make that same case.

Preview: Health workers admit a patient to the Princess Margaret Hospital in Hong Kong on March 3. Hong Kong is facing its worst coronavirus outbreak. | Emmanuel Serna/LightRocket via Getty Images The same: The brutal math of exponential growth. Different: Our pandemic fatigue is worse than ever. Covid-19 cases are rising again in Europe. They’re outright exploding across much of Asia. The United States, however, is in a Covid lull, having just come down from the winter’s omicron outbreak. It’s an uneasy time. On one hand, it’s likely the worst of the pandemic is over, at least in terms of severe illness and death. But on the other hand, we have to ask: Do these upticks in the rest of the world foreshadow America’s future? It’s true that the US often sees cases rise several weeks after they tick upward in the United Kingdom. We are again watching a new(ish) variant, BA.2, trace a familiarly steep curve on graphs tracking new cases, provoking a familiar but chronically contentious question: What should we do about it, as individuals and as a society? While this moment feels familiar in many ways, several factors set it apart from previous pandemic lulls. Collectively, we have more immunity, and more treatments, than ever before. At the same time, we’re more fatigued about the state of the pandemic and arguably less prepared for a wave, considering there’s more confusion than ever about what our individual risk is at any place and time. Taking a hard look at what’s new and what’s not about ourselves, the virus, and our policy landscape can help us convert some of that painful familiarity — and some of the scary unknowns — into preparedness. To do that, it’s helpful to take stock of how a next wave will likely behave like past waves, and how it might be different. So let’s start with what won’t change. The same: The brutal math of exponential growth Although the omicron subvariant BA.2 was first identified in November 2021, it has only become a dominant variant over the past several weeks in parts of Asia and Europe. Early laboratory work has suggested this variant is about 30 percent more contagious than the already highly transmissible BA.1 omicron variant, which was the dominant strain during the last US surge. Regardless of the exact variant, the shape of each wave is determined by the same brutal math. Small upticks in cases quickly explode due to exponential growth, and case counts grow exponentially until they don’t. We’re already starting to see that growth start as transmission rises in the United Kingdom, Germany, and other European countries. Our World in Data Cases are starting to rise again in Europe. At home and abroad, we can generally expect to see hospitalizations rise one to two weeks after cases rise, and deaths to rise another four to six weeks after that, depending on the public health system’s capacity. Hong Kong and South Korea are in this phase, reporting increasing and record-high death rates. Our World in Data Though both countries are experiencing a surge, death rates are much higher in Hong Kong than in South Korea. The same: The tools we used to fight past waves still work No matter how transmissible a variant is, the same precautionary measures — like vaccination, quarantine and isolation, masking, and testing — work to prevent its spread. If those measures are in effect, transmission slows. If they are dropped, it speeds up. In this light, the current waves in Europe and Asia may have as much to do with policy decisions as they do with the transmissibility of the BA.2 variant. In Europe, rising cases coincided with the lifting of rules requiring masking and other preventive measures in multiple countries (such as requiring isolation after a positive test, vaccination proof requirements for entering shops, and pre-travel negative test requirements). That suggests the continent’s increase in BA.2 transmission was facilitated at least in part by a drop in protective behaviors, all leading to more infected people mixing socially while contagious. In Asia, too, the causes of rising deaths seem to go beyond the virus’s intrinsic properties. The BA.2 subvariant doesn’t appear to cause more severe disease than earlier omicron variants, nor to be any more evasive of vaccines than other variants. While it can still cause severe illness and death, especially in elderly people, vaccines seem to remain highly effective even in this high-risk population. In Hong Kong, the sudden spike in deaths is likely due to the lack of vaccine coverage among elderly people. There, the pandemic is raging largely among unvaccinated seniors without much previous exposure to Covid-19; few vaccinated people are being hospitalized. Notably, even though deaths are higher than ever in both countries, the death rate is actually much lower in South Korea, likely due to its much higher rate of vaccinations among elderly residents in particular. Anthony Kwan/Getty Images Pedestrians cross an intersection at a busy shopping district in Hong Kong on March 21. Hong Kong is experiencing a sudden spike in Covid-19 death rates. America has the tools to fight a new wave — it’s just a question of how and whether it uses them, said Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, a professor at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health. “The fundamental question,” Sharfstein said, is “can we be nimble and flexible to the facts of the pandemic?” Will people and policymakers be willing to bring back restrictions like mask mandates now that they’ve been dialed down? Masks, especially respirators (these are the high-quality N95s or KN95s), still work to protect individuals if they’re exposed to people infected with Covid-19. N95 respirators offer excellent protection from viral exposure, even if you’re the only one wearing one in a group of people. And manufacturers are getting better at making them more comfortable to wear for hours on end. Rapid home Covid-19 tests still work to provide in-the-moment actionable information. During the first omicron wave, some people got in the habit of testing before any group social activity, and after exposures. When a wave is rising, that practice should resume. It should be helpful that rapid tests are now far more widely available than they were during the previous wave. We also know more about ventilation and air filtration than we have at earlier points in the pandemic. The Environmental Protection Agency just released new guidance on ventilation, and as the weather warms, opening windows and using fans to choreograph good air flow can do a lot to reduce risk during gatherings. When fresh air isn’t an option, air cleaners (think HEPA filters) help — and while many good ones are commercially available, DIY options also work well and are relatively easy to construct. Whichever protective measures work best in your world, it’s a good idea to gather several weeks’ worth of supplies before cases rise. Different: US levels of population immunity are higher now than ever before, and there are more therapies to avoid severe disease One of the key differences between this moment and previous pandemic lulls is the level of community immunity. The US has high rates of vaccination — 65 percent of all Americans have received at least two vaccines, and 50 percent of those eligible have been boosted. There’s also more infection-acquired immunity; a high proportion of even those who are unvaccinated have some infection-related protection. All told, nearly three-quarters of the US population has some level of immunity, according to researchers at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. More immunity means people are less likely to be hospitalized with Covid-19, even if case counts surge. “We may be doomed to repeat history” —Dial Hewlett, an infectious disease physician For those who do get sick, a range of therapies is now more broadly available than at any other point during the pandemic. Monoclonal antibodies, which identify and attack viral particles before they can cause severe disease, now come in long-lasting formulations to protect immunocompromised people; the antibodies act like an additional, durable layer of immunity on top of vaccinations, which can help prevent infections in this vulnerable group. Several shorter-acting forms of this therapy can also be used to treat high-risk or severely ill people if infection has already happened. Additionally, antiviral medications are now available in both oral and intravenous forms. The biggest challenge to getting these therapies right now is politics: Congress recently axed $15 billion in Covid-19 funding that would have covered the costs of antibody treatments and maintained access to Paxlovid, an antiviral medication. The abrupt vacuum of resources severely muddled the path forward on identifying and accessing Covid-19 treatment for everyone, but especially for people without insurance. Whether and how this problem will be solved is unclear, although without continued funding, people needing treatment will feel the effects of the cuts beginning in April. “Not all of the policymakers have learned their lesson,” said Dial Hewlett, an infectious disease physician who is deputy commissioner of the Westchester County health department in White Plains, New York. Without investments in research, public health infrastructure, and regulatory agency staff, he said, “We may be doomed to repeat history.” Different: Assessing personal risk is deeply confusing In early April 2020, federal guidance recommended masks in public places, and masks have been required in federal buildings since January 2021. The CDC issued recommendations for schools in September 2020 recommending masking and other strategies for students and teachers. All of those recommendations have now expired, replaced by a system for assessing county Covid-19 levels based on case counts and hospitalizations. (A federal requirement to wear masks when using most public modes of travel will stay in place until at least April 18.) The CDC’s new website offers guidance to state and local health departments and school districts, with the specific guidance varying based on local transmission rates and hospitalizations. It’s these more local authorities who ultimately make the rules for their jurisdictions. However, because these authorities follow the CDC’s guidance to widely varying degrees, neighboring counties may take very different approaches to public preventive measures like indoor masking requirements or capacity limits. For the near term, many US residents will continue to live amid a patchwork of precaution that might be different in the county where you live than in the one where you work or send your kids to school. Marvin Joseph/Washington Post via Getty Images Students stage a walkout in protest of the DC Public Schools response to Covid-19 safety on January 25. If you live in a jurisdiction that’s proactive about instituting preventive policies, congrats, your next steps may be clear. However, many are not in that position, and may feel baffled about the best way to determine when to mask up or take other safety measures. What’s a well-intentioned person to do amid all this confusion — especially given the concern that so many other people are not going to do that much? The CDC’s county check website, while imperfect, may be a good place to start: It allows people to view safety recommendations specific to their county’s Covid-19 levels (i.e., a metric based on cases and hospitalizations), and suggests additional layers of protection high-risk people should add. But it has a big limitation: “It doesn’t help you understand your own personal vulnerability,” said Jay Varma, a physician and epidemiologist based in New York City. For individual users of the website, there’s no easy way to determine what “high risk” means and whether your age, medical conditions, or lifestyle places you in that category. “It’s not the best tool for individuals to use as an instrument to guide them — it’s not as good as a weather report,” said Varma. While determining your local risk level day to day may not be straightforward, ensuring your Covid-19 vaccinations are up to date — including a fourth shot, if that’s what’s recommended for you — is the simplest way for most people to minimize their individual risk. Additionally, wearing a high-quality mask like a KN95 or N95 when you judge yourself or your situation to be high-risk protects you regardless of what other people are doing (or not doing). Different: Pandemic fatigue is real Two years into the pandemic, our collective level of exhaustion is manifesting in some worrisome ways. Deaths are creeping toward a million, but collective action isn’t keeping pace. Anger and denial have led to irrational decision-making and behavior by leaders and individuals. Panagis Galiatsatos, a physician and professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine who has engaged Baltimore-area faith leaders and congregations in Covid-19 education since the pandemic’s early days, said he is concerned about the level of pandemic fatigue he’s heard during recent meetings. After the holiday omicron wave forced many worship services online, “what they fear is going back to not being in person again,” he said. If public health leaders forbid in-person gatherings due to another wave of transmission, he fears it will lead many members of the public to lose faith in public health leaders altogether. “I think we’re going to lose our audience,” he said. “So I think what’s different now is definitely the fatigue is there.” Mindy Schauer/MediaNewsGroup/Orange County Register via Getty Images Protesters against mask mandates gather outside the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District office in Southern California on January 18. One of the biggest risks of low social morale is that it could delay buy-in to critical Covid-19 prevention measures even if the virus is causing a great deal of community suffering. People may take longer to agree to mask up, or may be more reluctant to show vaccination cards. And when precautions are eventually implemented, will it be too late? Is there hope of doing something about denial and fatigue before they become the death of us? With our trust in institutions at a low point, one-on-one conversations between individuals may be one of the most important ways forward. “If it’s not going to be public messaging, let’s do private messaging,” said Galiatsatos. That involves a lot of listening and compassion by scientists and public health authorities, but it also involves making recommendations that meet people where they are. “People aren’t switches to turn off and on,” he said. “We’re not going to be ignorant of the next wave, but we’re definitely going to discuss it in a way, like, ‘How do you make it adaptable?’” Perhaps the biggest difference we can hope for is a broader understanding of the pandemic itself, not as a thing we can turn off or on, but as a dimmer switch that our collective action moves — and keeps — up or down.

Preview: Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson at the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit on February 18. | Jacquelyn Martin/AP A look at the Supreme Court nominee’s record defending indigent clients. The last two times that Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson went through the Senate confirmation process, one part of her résumé drew particular scrutiny from Republicans: her work as a federal public defender. “I have questions about your views on the rights of detainees, and that in turn causes some concern about how you will handle terrorism cases that may come before you if you are confirmed,” Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) said at a hearing in 2012, when Jackson, now President Joe Biden’s nominee to replace Justice Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court, was confirmed as a federal district court judge. “Have you ever represented a terrorist at Guantánamo Bay?” asked Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) during her confirmation hearing for the DC Circuit Court of Appeals last year. Would Jackson’s work “result in more violent criminals — including gun criminals — being put back on the streets?” Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) asked in a written follow-up questionnaire. As Supreme Court confirmation hearings begin Monday, Jackson’s background could come under attack again. But that very work is one reason putting Jackson on the bench would be historic. During Jackson’s time as a federal public defender, a job she held from 2005 to 2007, she represented some of the country’s most vulnerable people, which has given her a perspective that would be unique on the current Supreme Court. And because people of color are disproportionately arrested, prosecuted, and locked up, her work is also inextricably tied up with the fight for racial justice. The pipeline from being a corporate attorney or prosecutor to judge is robust. By contrast, the public-defender-to-judge pipeline barely exists. The Center for American Progress reported in 2020 that only about 1 percent of all federal appellate judges spent the majority of their careers as public defenders or legal aid attorneys. And only about 8 percent of all federal judges are former public defenders, experience that researchers say can make a difference in sentencing. A recent study, examining millions of sentences handed down by district court judges, found that former public defenders were somewhat less likely to sentence someone to incarceration. (Jackson has not spent most of her career as a public defender, but she continued to advocate for criminal defendants as a private corporate attorney and at the federal Sentencing Commission, which reduced sentences in guidelines for drug offenses during her tenure as vice chair.) Jackson defended Khi Ali Gul, a man whom the US government considered an “enemy combatant,” wading into a new area of the law when she advocated for his right to challenge his imprisonment at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. She filed briefs and assisted in cases on behalf of an indigent parent in a child custody proceeding and a pregnant juvenile who was a victim of human trafficking. “100% percent of my time was devoted to the disadvantaged,” Jackson wrote of her time as a public defender. Jackson would be the first public defender on the Court in a generation If confirmed, Jackson would be the first justice in more than 30 years with significant experience representing criminal defendants. The last was Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first Black Supreme Court justice, who left the court in 1991 after serving for 24 years. The parallel to Marshall is noteworthy, said April Frazier Camara, the president and CEO of the National Legal Aid & Defender Association and a co-founder of the Black Public Defender Association. The work Marshall did before he joined the court had a lasting influence on his perspective and decisions. Before he joined the Court, Marshall “represented indigent people who were oftentimes accused of capital offenses in the South — some very socially unpopular clients like Black men who had death penalty cases after being accused of raping white women,” she said, noting that the charges were often inflated or unsupported. In 1941, Marshall defended young illiterate Black sharecropper W.D. Lyons, who was falsely accused of three counts of murder. Police beat him and coerced his confession. Though Marshall lost the case, it galvanized him to take on the most obscure cases in an effort to extend equal protection of the law to all people regardless of their race. And even after arguing Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 before the Supreme Court, in which he invalidated segregation in public schools under the 14th Amendment — one of the Court’s landmark decisions — Marshall was met with resistance at his 1967 confirmation hearing from Southern senators who questioned his record. North Carolina Sen. Sam Ervin, for example, expressed concern that “the easiest way to destroy the Constitution” was to have it “manned by judges who will not exercise judicial self-restraint.” Nevertheless, Marshall was confirmed; by the time he retired, he had become known as “the Great Dissenter” on a court that had grown increasingly conservative. Bettmann Archive Thurgood Marshall, left, represents Walter Lee Irvin, center, in court in Ocala, Florida, in 1952. Irvin was one of four Black men known as the Groveland Four, who were charged with kidnapping and raping a white woman in 1949. All four men were found guilty, but were granted a posthumous pardon in 2019 by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and were fully exonerated in November 2021. Marshall worked as a public defender well before Gideon v. Wainwright established in 1963 that guarantee of counsel for criminal defendants is a fundamental right. “Back then, the structured public defender system that we have now wasn’t in place,” Camara said. “He was really filling a gap.” By the time Jackson became a public defender, the system had more of a structure — a job in the federal defender’s office was competitive — but a stigma in representing criminal defendants remained. Still, the value of seeing the justice system from the perspective of defendants has not diminished. “For Judge Jackson to walk in those shoes and actually serve a person that’s accused of an offense, there’s an intimate understanding of how important it is that our legal system, specifically judges, ensure that every person’s rights are fully recognized,” Camara said. Why public defenders matter, including on the Supreme Court When Jackson responded to Sasse’s questions last year, she likened her intent as a public defender to that of the framers of the Constitution: “In order to guarantee liberty and justice for all, the government has to provide due process to the individuals it accuses of criminal behavior, including the rights to ... competent legal counsel.” Public defenders, who are appointed by the courts to represent people who cannot afford a lawyer, uphold one of the most basic rights afforded by the Constitution: that people put on trial for a crime will have the assistance of counsel to defend themselves. They do not have the power to choose the indigent criminal defendants whom they represent, and they must take any and every case given to them. “One of the unique things about the public defender role is it’s really one of the only jobs that’s guaranteed by the Constitution,” said Vida Johnson, a professor of law at Georgetown University and former public defender at the federal public defender’s office. “The Sixth Amendment provides that people who can’t afford a lawyer will be given one. Public defenders play this enormously important role in the legal system, and without it, the system couldn’t function.” Jackson worked for DC’s Office of the Federal Public Defender from 2005 to 2007, when she left for the corporate law firm Morrison & Foerster. A.J. Kramer, the current federal public defender and the federal public defender who assigned Jackson’s cases, said she had no choice in who she represented. But when Jackson applied for the role, she specifically requested to work on appeals — seeking relief for people who had already been convicted in federal court. “I think she believed it was her strength, where she could best use her writing abilities and her ability to analyze,” Kramer said. Like any other public defender, her responsibility was to look at the record of the case and decide what issues needed to be raised before a higher court. She ultimately argued before the appeals courts about 10 times. “Being a public defender and working from within the system gives someone a full grasp of how the criminal justice system works because you get to see the people involved on both sides, from the prosecutor’s perspective and the client’s,” Kramer said. “You really get to see that clients are human beings.” Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Ketanji Brown Jackson arrives at the offices of Sen. Deb Fischer before a meeting in the Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on March 17. Former defense attorneys have direct experience with the perspectives of people arrested and incarcerated, a population with a disproportionate number of people of color. Public defenders also represent the majority of people who come before the court in criminal cases. “In addition to having this perspective about what it means to be a person accused of a crime, what it means to be a poor person accused, and what it means to be a poor person of color accused of a crime, Jackson also brings the perspective of what prosecutors do and the role that prosecutors play in our criminal legal system,” Johnson said. This is key since federal prosecutors are known for using harsh tactics in federal court and have lobbied Congress to get high statutory maximum sentences and mandatory minimums for a number of crimes to have leverage over criminal defendants, Johnson said, adding, “Judge Jackson will really have this very interesting perspective that no other justice would have.” Plus, there’s the added layer of Jackson’s gender and racial identity in the context of her public defender experience. “As a Black public defender, this work is professional, but it is also personal. It’s hard for you to find a Black public defender or maybe even a Black attorney who does not have a loved one who is directly impacted specifically by the criminal legal system,” Camara said. While Jackson served as a federal public defender, her uncle, Thomas Brown Jr., was serving a life sentence in Florida for a nonviolent drug offense, which President Barack Obama later commuted. Two of her other uncles served in law enforcement — one worked as a sex crimes detective in Miami-Dade County and the other became chief of the Miami Police Department. Her brother served as a police officer in Baltimore, including time in an undercover drug sting unit; he also joined the National Guard and led two battalions during tours of duty in Iraq and the Sinai Peninsula. “We uniquely understand what it means to work within those systems every day with a law degree,” Camara said. “But then we return home to communities where we see the very real experience of what mass incarceration means for our communities. Public defenders, Black public defenders, Black woman public defenders, are uniquely qualified to be fair and just.” Jackson’s public defender caseload Legal experts who spoke to Vox argue that there’s no real reason to inspect the cases that Jackson worked on as a public defender; after all, like other public defenders, she was assigned her cases and did not choose her clients. “The views that were expressed were the views of my clients. I represented them in that capacity and the briefs did not necessarily represent my personal views,” Jackson said in a 2012 confirmation hearing. Evan Vucci/AP Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson meets with Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Chuck Grassley on Capitol Hill on March 2. But even if she did not choose her own cases, how she argued them can shed light on her thinking, including how she used her power as a public defender to call out procedural errors on the part of prosecutors and judges. “The Court is grappling with doing novel criminal justice issues all the time, whether that is Fourth Amendment cases or taking up issues related to constitutional policing,” said Daniel Goldberg, the legal director of Alliance for Justice, a progressive advocacy organization. “Jackson has seen these issues from a broad perspective — as a litigator, as a policy maker and as a judge. The Court currently lacks this multi-faceted perspective.” One case that has attracted much attention is that of Khi Ali Gul, the Guantánamo Bay detainee. Jackson made her way to the public defender’s office after the Supreme Court ruled in Rasul v. Bush in 2004 that detainees on the base in Cuba could challenge their detainment in federal court. “Our office had a number of these cases. It was a brand new area of law so nobody really knew what the law was. We didn’t yet know what claims or issues we could raise,” Kramer said. But as cases arose, the office needed someone to help with this legal work. “It was complex and very novel. It required somebody who had a brilliant legal mind. It was assigned to Ketanji,” Kramer said. “She did not ask for it.” Gul was seeking habeas corpus review of his classification as an “enemy combatant” and his detention in Guantánamo Bay. In a brief filed in 2005, Jackson argued that Gul lacked the ability to “vindicate his rights under domestic and international law” since he was being held at Guantánamo without being charged with an offense, appearing before a military or civil tribune, or being given access to counsel. The United States was holding Gul “virtually incommunicado,” Jackson wrote, not informing him of his rights under the Constitution, the standards of the US military, the Geneva Convention, and other international law. She argued his rights to “freedom from torture” and from “cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment” had been violated and that he was suffering from severe physical and psychological abuse as a result of being locked in his cell for 23 hours a day. The case was later consolidated with other detainee cases; Gul was sent back to Afghanistan in 2015, following a 2009 executive order from President Obama that initiated a review of cases like Gul’s. In an effort to close the Guantánamo Bay prison, Gul’s transfer was unanimously approved by the many departments commissioned to review the case. Jackson considered the case career-defining. Although she wasn’t able to see Gul’s case through while she was a public defender, she continued to advocate on behalf of Guantánamo detainees, co-writing Supreme Court amicus briefs for two cases (Boumediene v. Bush and Al-Odah v. United States) while at Morrison & Foerster. She also co-wrote a brief on behalf of the libertarian Cato Institute and other groups in 2009, arguing that the US did not have the authority to detain lawful residents as enemy combatants. “I believe that I was assigned to work on these amicus briefs because of the knowledge of the military tribunal processes that I had accumulated from my prior work as an assistant federal public defender,” Jackson wrote. When asked whether she was concerned that her work for Gul would return him to “his terrorist activities,” Jackson explained that her brother was deployed in Iraq when she represented Gul, giving her a deeper understanding of the US’s detention of people in Guantánamo. Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images Ketanji Brown Jackson delivers remarks at the White House in February on her nomination by President Joe Biden to serve as an associate justice of the Supreme Court. “In the wake of the horrific terrorist attacks in September of 2001, I was also among the many lawyers who were keenly aware of the threat that the 9-11 attacks had posed to foundational constitutional principles, in addition to the clear danger to the people of the United States,” she wrote. But she maintained that as an attorney, her duty was to “represent her clients zealously.” The case showed how Jackson handled a new and quickly evolving area of law. In other moments during her time as a public defender, she worked on behalf of criminal defendants seeking to appeal their convictions. In 2007, Jackson convinced a three-judge panel to vacate the conviction of her client Andrew J. Littlejohn III. Littlejohn had been convicted of unlawfully possessing a gun as a felon after police found a gun hidden in his home. Jackson, upon appealing the case, argued that the jury selection process had been flawed — the trial judge asked potential jurors questions in a manner that allowed them to avoid answering whether they had relatives who were police officers, a detail that, if true, could make them biased against the defendant. The judges unanimously ruled that the trial violated Littlejohn’s Sixth Amendment right to an impartial jury. In 2006, Jackson secured a plea deal for a man accused of threatening to blow up the federal courthouse in DC. Jackson argued that since he did not act on the threat, most of the charges against him should be dropped. Prosecutors agreed, and a sentencing judge determined that the time he served in pretrial detention was sufficient and ensured the man moved to Florida — away from the people he threatened — and seek out counseling, according to the Washington Post. Jackson got the government to back down in favor of an order that took the defendant’s state of mind into account. In 2005, Jackson’s advocacy overturned the conviction of former lawyer Navron Ponds, who had been convicted of five felony counts of tax evasion (he owed over $117,000 after failing to file federal personal income taxes for several years) in connection to accepting a Mercedes-Benz that the mother of a drug dealer gifted him as a retainer. Ponds was sentenced to 20 months in prison. Jackson argued in an appeal that prosecutors violated Ponds’s Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when they required that he turn over certain personal records. “Because the government has failed to show with reasonable particularity that it knew of the existence and location of most of the subpoenaed documents, we hold that Ponds’ act of production was sufficiently testimonial to implicate his right against self-incrimination,” the panel of judges wrote. They sent the case back to the lower district court, where Ponds was sentenced to probation. The Supreme Court’s work on criminal cases often doesn’t get the same attention as its highest-profile decisions, and typically the bulk of its workload is civil actions. But the Court encounters cases involving criminal law frequently: in 2020, according to Harvard Law Review, the Court considered two state criminal cases; six appeals on federal incarceration; and seven federal criminal cases. Their decisions can be life or death, if dealing with an inmate facing execution; they can affect how criminal cases are handled across the country. Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson waits for the US Capitol subway in between meetings on March 16. But for the past three decades, no one on the Court has had public defender experience representing the people who are most affected by its decisions in criminal cases like this. Public defenders — and those who believe that it is past time to bring greater diversity to the Supreme Court — see Jackson’s potential appointment as an opportunity for America to bolster its ideals. “We claim that the goals of the criminal legal system are fairness and justice,” Camara said. “Public defenders stand up every day to make sure that those principles are actually realized by people who are oftentimes disproportionately facing targeted racism and other inequities.” When Jackson’s record has come under scrutiny in the past, she has never expressed regret. Instead, she spoke about the valuable perspective she gained from the work. When questioned last year by senators about why she decided to spend her time defending criminals, she wrote: “I lacked a practical understanding of the actual workings of the federal criminal justice system, and I decided that serving ‘in the trenches,’ so to speak, would be helpful.” Ultimately, she said, it was about giving clients a fair chance under the law. In her questionnaire, she wrote that she saw her work as promoting “core constitutional values.” “The government cannot deprive people who are subject to its authority of their liberty without meeting its burden of proving its criminal charges,” she wrote, continuing: “Every person who is accused of criminal conduct by the government, regardless of wealth and despite the nature of the accusations, is entitled to the assistance of counsel.”

Preview: Workers at two Staten Island warehouses are nearing a decision that could make them the first U.S. employees of the company to unionize.

Preview: Employee demonstrations in several states marked the start of a third week of turmoil over the company’s response to GOP-led legislation that many staffers say targets the LGBT community.

Preview: The ruling ended a five-year probation for the telecoms-gear company that stemmed from a guilty plea to violating sanctions on Iran.

Preview: Alibaba boosted its share buyback program to $25 billion from $15 billion, in a bid to reassure investors about the company’s prospects after a year in which its stock has fallen by more than half.

Preview: Authorities were working to verify whether the black box was a flight-data recorder or a cockpit voice recorder.

Preview: The deal will help lower costs of imported steel for U.S. users.

Preview: Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said the central bank supported innovation in digital financial products but warned it is easy to see the risks of certain new technologies, including cryptocurrencies.

Preview: The Biden administration is preparing sanctions on most members of Russia’s State Duma, the lower house of parliament, as the U.S. continues its crackdown on Moscow over its ongoing war against Ukraine.

Preview: Around 37 million federal student-loan borrowers were spared $195 billion in loan payments, and many of them are likely to struggle with their debts when the moratorium is lifted, according to a Federal Reserve Bank of New York report.

Preview: A growing union battle has come to the coffee chain’s hometown, as Howard Schultz is set to return as CEO.

Preview: Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson said at her confirmation hearings Tuesday that more women should be on the federal bench. But she stumbled when asked for a definition of “woman.” In an exchange with Sen. Marsha Blackburn, Judge Jackson evaded the question when the Tennessee Republican asked her “can you provide ...

Preview: BRISBANE, Australia — World No. 1-ranked Ash Barty has announced her retirement from tennis at the age of 25. Barty said in an emotional video posted Wednesday on social media: “I wasn’t quite sure of how I was gonna do this . . . it’s hard to say … I’m ...

Preview: SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a new law on Tuesday that will make abortions cheaper for people on private insurance plans, the first of more than a dozen bills the state's Democratic leaders plan to pass this year to prepare for a potential U.S. Supreme Court ruling ...

Preview: WASHINGTON — Nathan Walker scored the go-ahead goal hours after being called up, helping the St. Louis Blues snap a three-game skid with a 5-2 win over the Washington Capitals on Tuesday night. Brandon Saad and Brayden Schenn each had a goal and an assist, and captain Ryan O'Reilly scored ...

Preview: Sonya Douglass Horsford, the wife of Rep. Steven Horsford, described her disappointment with her husband on Twitter for deciding to run for reelection after he revealed two years ago that had a decade-long affair with a former Senate intern. Mrs. Horsford said she has remained silent for ...

Preview: Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson vehemently rejected accusations of leniency toward child pornography offenders, telling senators Tuesday that she was following Congress’ instructions when she habitually delivered sentences well below what guidelines suggested. Confronted with one case in which she issued a three-month sentence to an 18-year-old man who had a ...

Preview: COLLEGE PARK — Kevin Willard could use a beer. “I really like hanging out with anyone that likes to have a beer. And if anybody wants to have one in about an hour,” Willard joked as he looked at his watch, “I’d appreciate it.” After a whirlwind few days — ...

Preview: Republicans accused Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee of hiding documents from them during the confirmation hearing Tuesday for Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson related to her sentencing of felons convicted of child porn crimes. They say she has been weak on defendants in child pornography cases. Sen. ...

Preview: NEW YORK — Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Tuesday she has tested positive for COVID-19 with “mild" symptoms. On social media, the former Democratic presidential candidate said she was “feeling fine" and that former President Bill Clinton had tested negative and was quarantining until their household was fully ...

Preview: The stakes for President Biden's meeting with NATO allies as war rages in Ukraine could not be higher, but expectations are low for quick and concrete results as Europe and the U.S. show little appetite for their remaining options to deter Russian President Vladimir Putin's forces. With Russia's invasion of ...

Preview: U.S.—The Department of Treasury revealed on Tuesday that President Joe Biden will lend his likeness to a new denomination of American currency: the trillion-dollar bill. The large bill is designed to withstand soaring inflation rates for the foreseeable future. The post Biden To Get Face On New Trillion Dollar Bill appeared first on The Babylon Bee.

Preview: NEW YORK, NY—With diversity, equity, and inclusion steamrolling a path for trans women to dominate women in all aspects of life, especially sports, the nation has come together with hopes that someday a trans woman basketball player will finally make the WNBA watchable. The post Nation Excited For First Trans Woman Basketball Player To Finally Make WNBA Watchable appeared first on The Babylon Bee.

Preview: U.S.—Hunter Biden's laptop has been validated by major new sources and the Babylon Bee has secured an exclusive look at the Google search history therein. Our team of Beexperts has been analyzing the search history for a couple of minutes and we are now ready to share the less horrifying ones with the world.  The post EXCLUSIVE: The Babylon Bee Has Obtained Copies Of Hunter Biden's Google Search History appeared first on The Babylon Bee.

Preview: WASHINGTON, D.C.—After over a year of courtship, Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy and White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki have announced they are finally tying the knot.  The post Finally: Peter Doocy And Jen Psaki Announce Their Engagement appeared first on The Babylon Bee.

Preview: ORLANDO, FL—In a bold statement against Florida's recently passed bill which prohibits teachers from discussing inappropriate sexual topics with kindergarteners, Disney World has unveiled its latest attraction: "Sodom & Gomorrah." The post Disney Unveils Exciting New 'Sodom And Gomorrah' Attraction appeared first on The Babylon Bee.

Preview: WASHINGTON, D.C.—The Senate is continuing their questioning of Supreme Court Nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson this week to make sure she meets the qualifications of the highest court in the land. As an added measure, Democrat Senators brought in a skin color chart to make sure their nominee is black enough. The post Senate Pulls Out Skin Color Chart To Make Sure Ketanji Brown Jackson Is Black appeared first on The Babylon Bee.

Preview: KABUL—Taliban spokesperson Mohammad Naeem Warda has finally been banned from Twitter this week after carelessly sharing a satirical headline from The Babylon Bee. The post Taliban Spokesman Finally Banned From Twitter After Sharing Babylon Bee Headline appeared first on The Babylon Bee.

Preview: BABYLON—According to sources not yet thrown into the fiery furnace, The Babylon Bee was taken by Twitter and thrown into a fiery furnace after refusing to worship the massive, gold-trimmed pride flag erected by the great Queen Nebujacknezzar (they/them). The post Twitter Throws Babylon Bee Into Fiery Furnace After Refusal To Worship Pride Flag appeared first on The Babylon Bee.

Preview: Brought to you by: The post 10 Classic Books That Would Be Banned On Twitter As Hate Speech Today appeared first on The Babylon Bee.

Preview: We keep this counter updated with every arrest! Check-in often to see the latest number! The post Click Here For An Updated Number Of Epstein Island Pedophiles That Have Been Arrested appeared first on The Babylon Bee.

Preview: Read more...

Preview: HOUSTON—Watching from mission control, where they whistled carefree tunes and capered about the room in an improvised, frolicsome dance, whimsical flight directors at NASA confirmed Wednesday they had launched a single balloon into outer space. “T-minus 30 seconds to liftoff of our solitary red balloon, which will… Read more...

Preview: NEW YORK—A comprehensive five-year study conducted by scientists at Columbia University’s Irving Medical Center found a troubling link between childhood obesity and an increased risk of adult anime consumption, officials confirmed Wednesday. “Our study found that overweight and obese children are far more likely to… Read more...

Preview: CUPERTINO, CA—Noting the feature would come preinstalled on all phones, Apple unveiled a new privacy setting Wednesday that would allow iPhone users to silence all calls from people who love them. “With this update, your phone won’t ring or even notify you that people who deeply care about your mental and emotional… Read more...

Preview: Soccer star David Beckham has handed over control of his Instagram account to a doctor in Ukraine as part of a bid to highlight the “amazing work” of medical professionals caring for patients amid Russia’s invasion. What do you think? Read more...

Preview: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was admitted to the Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington where he is being treated for an infection. Court officials said he plans to still take part in cases despite missing oral arguments. What do you think? Read more...

Preview: WASHINGTON—Arguing that the glaring gap in her record raised serious questions about her fitness for the role, Senate Republicans spent Tuesday’s nomination hearings attacking Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson for her lack of experience on the U.S. Supreme Court. “Judge Jackson, I’m struggling to understand how you expect… Read more...

Preview: WASHINGTON—Calling attention to the U.S. Supreme Court nominee’s “extremely troubling” record, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) slammed Ketanji Brown Jackson Tuesday for letting pedophiles like himself walk free. “There should be no room for leniency when it comes to sentencing depraved child sex offenders like me,” said… Read more...

Preview: While Americans enjoy freedom of speech, citizens in heavily censored autocratic regimes experience the complete opposite. If Russian citizens say any of the following things, they will be arrested and punished immediately. Read more...

Preview: OGDEN, UT—Admitting that it wasn’t his area of expertise, a customer at local service center Barry’s Tire and Automotive told reporters Tuesday that he wished he knew enough about cars to tell if a repair on his Hyundai Elantra should really cost one whole blow job. “I should have done some research beforehand so I’d… Read more...