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News Reports
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Editor's Choice: Scroll below for our monthly blend of mainstream and alternative May 2023 news and viewsNote: Excerpts are from the authors' words except for subheads and occasional "Editor's notes" such as this.
May 29
Top Headlines
- Washington Post, Retropolis: Black people may have started Memorial Day. Whites erased it from history, Donald Beaulieu
- New York Times, New Details in Debt Limit Deal: Where $136 Billion in Cuts Would Come From, Jim Tankersley and Alan Rappeport
- New York Times, Why the Debt Limit Spending Cuts Likely Won’t Shake the Economy
- New York Times, Analysis: In debt-limit negotiations, did President Biden find the reasonable middle or give away too much? Peter Baker
- New York Times, With a debt limit deal in hand, President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy turned to the task of selling it
- Politico, Debt ceiling deal includes surprise approval of natural gas pipeline championed by Manchin
- New York Times, Trump Looks Like He Will Get the 2024 Crowd He Wants
- New York Times, ‘It’s Time’: Ukraine’s Top Commander Says Counteroffensive Is Imminent
Turkey's Elections, Impact
- New York Times, Turkey Elections: President Erdogan Wins Re-Election in Turkey
- New York Times, Will Erdogan’s Victory Soften Turkey’s Opposition to Sweden in NATO?
- New York Times, Here are five takeaways from Turkey’s presidential election
U.S. Economy, Default, Debt, Budget, Jobs, Banking, Crypto
- The American Prospect, Opinion: X-DATE: As Deals Go, This Is One of Them, David Dayen
Pro-Trump Insurrectionists, Election Deniers
- Washington Post, More Oath Keepers convicted with Rhodes for Jan. 6 attack are sentenced
- Emptywheel, Analysis: OATHS BROKEN, OATH KEEPERS BOWED: Sentences for 2 more in marquee Jan. 6 conspiracy case, Brandi Buchman
More On U.S. Courts, Crime, Immigration
New York Times, A Small Town’s Tragedy, Distorted by Donald Trump’s Megaphone, Charles Homans and Ken Bensinger- New York Times, Opinion: The Supreme Court Is Crippling Environmental Protections. Where Is Congress? Jim Murphy
- Washington Post, Judges rebuke Social Security for errors as disability denials stack up
U.S. Politics, Elections, Governance
- New York Times, Texas House Votes to Impeach Ken Paxton, Exposing G.O.P. Fissures
New York Times, Feinstein, Back in the Senate, Relies Heavily on Staff to Function
More On Ukraine War
New York Times, Barely Noting the Ukraine War in Public, Putin Acts Like Time Is on His Side- Washington Post, Kyiv readies for counteroffensive as commander vows to ‘take back what’s ours’
More Global News, Views, Human Rights
New York Times, Uganda’s President Signs Punitive Anti-Gay Bill Into Law- New York Times, A Russian Deserter’s Flight to Norway Presents a Fraught Dilemma
Probes, Suits Against Trump
- New York Times, Mar-a-Lago Worker Provided Prosecutors New Details in Trump Documents Case
- Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: Jack Smith’s SECRET WITNESS against Trump finally Revealed, Michael Popok
2024 U.S. Presidential Race
- New York Times, Ron DeSantis Plows Ahead With Campaign Tour After Digital Rollout Misfires
- Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: Are we seeing another Opus Dei power behind a politician? Wayne Madsen
- Washington Post, Nikki Haley let the Confederate flag fly until a massacre at a Black church forced her hand, Michael Kranish
U.S. Abortion, Birth Control, #MeToo
Dead State, Pastor at Christian college arrested for letting his ‘spiritual mentor’ sexually abuse young boys- New York Times, Indiana Reprimands Doctor Who Provided Abortion to 10-Year-Old Rape Victim
- Washington Post, In middle age, they realized they were trans: ‘A lightbulb went off’
Environment, Transportation, Energy, Space, Disasters, Climate
- New York Times, Opinion: The Supreme Court Is Crippling Environmental Protections. Where Is Congress? Jim Murphy
- New York Times, You May Have Never Heard of Him, but He’s Remaking the Pollution Fight, Coral Davenport
- New York Times, Ukraine Sees New Virtue in Wind Power: It’s Harder to Destroy”
New York Times, A Breakthrough Deal to Keep the Colorado River From Going Dry, for Now- New York Times, Supreme Court Limits E.P.A.’s Power to Address Water Pollution
- New York Times, Heat Wave and Blackout Would Send Half of Phoenix to E.R., Study Says
Pandemics, Public Health, Privacy
New York Times, Covid Is Coming Back in China; Lockdowns Are Not- New York Times, Hundreds of Thousands Lose Medicaid Coverage as Pandemic Protections End
More On U.S. Media, Education, Arts, Sports
Politico, EU’s Breton says Twitter ‘can’t hide’ after platform ditches disinformation code
New York Times, Opinion: How the Internet Shrank Musk and DeSantis, Ross Douthat
Top Stories
An 1865 photo of the graves of Union soldiers who were buried at the racecourse in Charleston, S.C., during the Civil War. (Library of Congress)
Washington Post, Retropolis: Black people may have started Memorial Day. Whites erased it from history, Donald Beaulieu, May 29, 2023. On May 1, 1865, thousands of newly freed Black people gathered in Charleston, S.C., for what may have been the nation’s first Memorial Day celebration. Attendees held a parade and put flowers on the graves of Union soldiers who had helped liberate them from slavery.The event took place three weeks after the Civil War surrender of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee and two weeks after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. It was a remarkable moment in U.S. history — at the nexus of war and peace, destruction and reconstruction, servitude and emancipation.
But the day would not be remembered as the first Memorial Day. In fact, White Southerners made sure that for more than a century, the day wasn’t remembered at all.
It was “a kind of erasure from public memory,” said David Blight, a history professor at Yale University.
The contested Confederate roots of Memorial Day
In February 1865, Confederate soldiers withdrew from Charleston after the Union had bombarded it with offshore cannon fire for more than a year and began to cut off supply lines. The city surrendered to the Union army, leaving a massive population of freed formerly enslaved people.
Also left in the wake of the Confederate evacuation were the graves of more than 250 Union soldiers, buried without coffins behind the judge’s stand of the Washington Race Course, a Charleston horse track that had been converted into an outdoor prison for captured Northerners. The conditions were brutal, and most of those who had died succumbed to exposure or disease.
In April, about two dozen of Charleston’s freed men volunteered to disinter the bodies and rebury them in rows of marked graves, surrounded by a wooden, freshly whitewashed fence, according to newspaper accounts from the time.
The clubhouse at the Charleston racecourse, where Union officers were confined, in April 1865. (Library of Congress)Then, on May 1, about 10,000 people — mostly formerly enslaved people — turned out for a memorial service that the freed people had organized, along with abolitionist and journalist James Redpath and some White missionaries and teachers from the North. Redpath described the day in the New-York Tribune as “such a procession of friends and mourners as South Carolina or the United States never saw before.”
The day’s events began around 9 a.m. with a parade led by about 2,800 Black schoolchildren, who had just been enrolled in new schools, bearing armfuls of flowers. They marched around the horse track and entered the cemetery gate under an arch with black-painted letters that read “Martyrs of the Race Course.” The schoolchildren proceeded through the cemetery and distributed the flowers on the gravesites.
New York Times, New Details in Debt Limit Deal: Where $136 Billion in Cuts Would Come From, Jim Tankersley and Alan Rappeport, May 29, 2023. The full legislative text of Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s agreement in principle with President Biden to suspend the nation’s borrowing limit revealed new and important details about the deal, which House lawmakers are expected to vote on this week.The centerpiece of the agreement remains a two-year suspension of the debt ceiling, which caps the total amount of money the government is allowed to borrow. Suspending that cap, which is now set at $31.4 trillion, would allow the government to keep borrowing money and pay its bills on time — as long as Congress passes the agreement before June 5, when Treasury has said the United States will run out of cash.
In exchange for suspending the limit, Republicans demanded a range of policy concessions from Mr. Biden. Chief among them are limits on the growth of federal discretionary spending over the next two years. Mr. Biden also agreed to some new work requirements for certain recipients of food stamps and the Temporary Aid for Needy Families program.
Both sides agreed to modest efforts meant to accelerate the permitting of some energy projects — and, in a surprise move, a fast track to construction for a new natural gas pipeline from West Virginia to Virginia that has been championed by Republican lawmakers and a key centrist Democrat.
Among the components in the deal are two years of spending caps, additional work requirements for food stamps and cuts to I.R.S. funding.
New York Times, Why the Debt Limit Spending Cuts Likely Won’t Shake the Economy, Jim Tankersley, May 29, 2023. With low unemployment and above-trend inflation, the economy is well ...
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Past News Reports
- May 2023 News, Views
- April 2023 News
- March 2023 News
- Feb. 2023 News
- Jan. 2023 News
- Dec. 2022 News
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- Oct. 2022 News (Pt. 2)
- Oct. 2022 News, Views
- Sept. 2022 News, Pt. 2
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- July 2022 News, Views
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- May 2022 News, Views
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- Nov. 2021 News, Views
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- Sept. News (Pt. 2)
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