By Glenn Kessler, Salvador Rizzo, and Kelly Meg 1 May 2018 (The Washington Post) – In the 466 days since he took the oath of office, President Trump has made 3,001 false or misleading claims, according to The Fact Checker’s database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement uttered by the president. [For context, […]
By Ganesh Sitaraman 17 March 2018 (The Guardian) – Over the past few years, I have frequently been reminded of David Foster Wallace’s commencement address at Kenyon College in 2005. Wallace began with the story of two fish swimming together, when an older fish swims by and says “Morning boys, how’s the water?” After the […]
18 December 2017 (World Bank) – The majority of the world’s countries are governed by democratic regimes. Elections are one of the most well-established mechanisms available to citizens to strengthen accountability and responsiveness to their demands. The 2017 World Development Report on Governance finds that although they have become the most common mechanism to elect […]
1 March 2018 (Mongabay) – On Tuesday, a federal judge in California ruled that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not abuse its authority in waiving dozens of environmental laws to build sections of wall along the border between the U.S. and Mexico. The ruling frees the department to waive laws for future border […]
29 January 2018 (FashMaps) – This map is a collection of terrorist events committed by Nazis/White Supremacists/White Nationalists since 2001, in which their acts were motivated by their violent ideologies. It lists the events, number of people killed, and the narrative of the event.The Nazi/White Supremacist/White Nationalist ideology promotes violence against all people not seen […]
GENEVA, 14 February 2018 (UNHCR) – The United States Government must respect the rights of human rights defenders, a group of UN experts* has said, amid concern over action being taken against a Mexican woman who campaigns to protect migrants’ rights. Maru Mora Villalpando, who has been in the US since 1996, is facing deportation […]
By Lindsay Murdoch 13 February 2018 (The Sydney Morning Herald) – Women’s groups and human rights advocates have condemned Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte for encouraging soldiers to shoot female rebels in their genitals, the latest in a series of violent, misogynist remarks. Duterte, a former provincial mayor, told a group of former communist rebels to […]
By Justine Calma 5 February 2018 (Grist) – The unprecedented brutality of the 2017 hurricane season showed the potential that natural disasters have to destroy livelihoods, displace families, and uproot entire communities. The most recent example, of course, is the situation in Puerto Rico post-Maria. Experts estimate the U.S. territory will lose close to 500,000 […]
25 January 2017 (The Economist) – America, which has long defined itself as a standard-bearer of democracy for the world, has become a “flawed democracy” according to the taxonomy used in the annual Democracy Index from the Economist Intelligence Unit, our sister company. Although its score did not fall by much—from 8.05 in 2015 to […]
By Michael J. Abramowitz 18 January 2018 (Freedom House) – Political rights and civil liberties around the world deteriorated to their lowest point in more than a decade in 2017, extending a period characterized by emboldened autocrats, beleaguered democracies, and the United States’ withdrawal from its leadership role in the global struggle for human freedom. […]
