In 1787, the year the Constitution was born, Thomas Jefferson famously wrote to a friend, “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
FROM THE WASHINGTON POST
Rising prices have erased U.S. workers’ meager wage gains, the latest sign strong economic growth has not translated into greater prosperity for the middle and working classes.
Cost of living was up 2.9 percent from July 2017 to July 2018, the Labor Department reported Friday, an inflation rate that outstripped a 2.7 percent increase in wages over the same period. The average U.S. “real wage,” a federal measure of pay that takes inflation into account, fell to $10.76 an hour last month, 2 cents down from where it was a year ago.
FROM BBC NEWS
US President Donald Trump has shaken the foundations of global trade, slapping steep tariffs on billions of dollars’ worth of goods from the EU, Canada, Mexico and China.
All these countries are responding in kind, retaliating with levies on thousands of US products.
This puts the world’s largest economies at each other’s throats.
But what is a trade war? How does protectionism work? And how will it all affect you?
The president and top administration officials say U.S. laws or court rulings are forcing them to separate families that are caught trying to cross the southern border.
These claims are false. Immigrant families are being separated primarily because the Trump administration in April began to prosecute as many border-crossing offenses as possible. This “zero-tolerance policy” applies to all adults, regardless of whether they cross alone or with their children.
Administration officials have pointed to “the law” as the reason why undocumented children are being separated from their parents. But there’s no such law. (Meg Kelly/The Washington Post)
After 28-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s stunning upset against Rep. Joe Crowley in the New York Democratic congressional primary on Tuesday, the word “socialist” was repeatedly used to describe her.
from The New York Times by Mikayla Bouchard The special counsel is investigating events that span years and cross international borders. The basics Russia carried out a campaign to influence the outcome of the 2016 American presidential election, denigrating Hillary Clinton and boosting Donald J. Trump, according to American intelligence …
from The New York Times by Livia Albeck-Ripka and Kendra Pierre-Louis A huge oil spill. A river catching fire. Lakes so polluted they were too dangerous for fishing or swimming. Air so thick with smog it was impossible to see the horizon. That was the environmental state of the nation 50 years …
Facebook Inc. is under fire following reports that the personal data of 50 million users were obtained by an analytics firm that helped elect President Donald Trump. Lawmakers and regulators in the U.S. and U.K. are now scrutinizing the social media giant, whose shares have dropped more than 9 percent since the news broke on March 17.
(from NPR – Anya Kamenetz)
After Parkland, there have been many calls to make schools a “harder target” — for example, by arming teachers. But there’s a decent amount of research out there on what actually makes schools safer, and most of it doesn’t point to more guns.
