Yasmeen Serhan/Atlantic:
How Western News Is Getting Around Putin’s Digital Iron Curtain
As Vladimir Putin asserts control over his country’s media space, many outlets are fighting back.
Although the majority of Russians rely on state-run television as their primary source of news, the fact that some consume news from foreign outlets has long upset the Russian government, which has spent years asserting control over domestic and foreign media in the country. But even by the Kremlin’s standards, this latest effort to block Russians from much of the internet marks an escalation—one that has quickly transformed the country into a digital pariah.
Russians are, however, finding technical workarounds to sidestep the government’s bans, some of which have been encouraged by international news outlets that are keen to maintain a digital presence in the country, even if they can no longer claim a physical one.
Renée DiResta/Atlantic:
The Ukraine Crisis Briefly Put America’s Culture War in Perspective
When something real happened, Americans found a way to pay attention.
“Has Putin ever called me a racist?” [Tucker] Carlson wondered aloud. “Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him?” COVID-truther conspiracy theorists sagely pronounced the Russian military buildup a “wag the dog” moment, a “fabricated crisis” ginned up by elites pushing the “Great Reset,” a malicious gambit to redirect people’s attention away from truckers fighting vaccine tyranny.
But then, on February 24, the invasion began. On American social networks, where the culture war normally rages ceaselessly, the fights that tend to dominate online debate—such as the ones over COVID policies, school curriculums, and trans athletes—suddenly went quiet. This wasn’t for lack of effort; many hyperpartisan influencers tried to keep up their shtick. But the public’s attention appeared to be turning elsewhere. Data from CrowdTangle, a tool that tracks user engagement with Facebook content, suggested that many of the top posts among American users focused on the horrors and heroism of the conflict—families splitting up, Ukrainians volunteering to defend their country, a young soldier sacrificing himself to blow up a bridge. Although an imperfect metric, a top-10 list derived from CrowdTangle data—a ranking typically dominated by the most successful political rage content of the moment—suggested that, at least for a couple of days following the invasion, users were more engrossed in coverage of the breaking war.
Sahil Kapur/NBC News:
Ketanji Brown Jackson: Highlights from Day 2 of a tense Supreme Court hearing
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., focused all of his questioning on child pornography cases and sought to depict Jackson as too lenient against defendants. She appeared visibly frustrated as she sought to explain her role in sentencing.
“It is heinous. It is egregious,” she said of the crimes. “What a judge has to do is determine how to sentence defendants proportionally consistent with the elements that the statutes include, with the requirements that Congress has set forward.”
Hawley said: “I am questioning your discretion and your judgment.”
Posting on Twitter during Hawley’s questioning, White House spokesman Andrew Bates called his claims a “QAnon-signaling smear," referring to the extreme-right conspiracy group.
Philip Bump/WaPo:
GOP drops any subtlety in centering the Jackson nomination fight on race
Republicans have had a tricky time trying to undercut President Biden’s nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court. On Monday, the first day of Senate Judiciary Committee hearings considering her nomination, several Republican senators offered lines of attack on her background and sentencing history. It seemed a bit scattershot. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), for example, tried to suggest that Jackson goes easy on pedophiles, a claim that even the conservative National Review shrugged at.
Dana Milbank/WaPo:
Republicans promised ‘no circus’ at Jackson’s hearing. Then the clown car rolled in.
Jackson is within the mainstream of judicial behavior. In portraying her as having a soft spot for sex offenders “preying on children,” Hawley is outside the mainstream of honorable behavior.
The pedophilia smear put the lie to Republicans’ assurances that they would conduct the hearings with dignity.
“We won’t try to turn this into a spectacle,” proposed Sen. Charles E. Grassley (Iowa), the committee’s ranking Republican.
“It won’t be a circus,” promised Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.).
Even Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.), a regular ringmaster, said “this will not be a political circus.”
Then the clown car rolled in.
Robin Givhan/WaPo:
History unfolds with glory, insults, comfort and patience
As Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson made her way through the marble-floored hallway, into the wood-paneled room in the Hart Senate Office Building and toward her seat at the witness table on the first day of her Supreme Court confirmation hearings, she was surrounded by a cadre of White men. They were there as professional guides, as antagonistic foils and, in the case of her husband, for personal support. They were a quick visual reminder of just how much the halls of power and the top rungs of success remain a place that they dominate. For more than 200 years, White men have ruled the Supreme Court. Of the 115 justices, 108 have been White men. This is the history that Jackson is helping to topple as the first Black woman nominated to serve as an associate justice. This is the history that’s being slowly laid to rest. Not just with her nomination and, perhaps, her confirmation, but with all of the glory, insult, comfort and patience that fill these proceedings.
Jessica Grose/NY Times:
Who’s Unhappy With Schools? The Answer Surprised Me.
I would have thought that the latest numbers about parental satisfaction might be lower because of all the pandemic-related chaos. But according to Gallup, which has tracked school satisfaction annually since 1999, in 2021, “73 percent of parents of school-aged children say they are satisfied with the quality of education their oldest child is receiving.” More parents were satisfied in 2021 than they were in 2013 and 2002, when satisfaction dipped into the 60s, and in 2019, we were at a high point in satisfaction — 82 percent — before the Covid pandemic dealt schools a major blow.
Digging deeper into the Gallup numbers revealed that the people who seem to be driving the negative feelings toward American schools do not have children attending them: Overall, only 46 percent of Americans are satisfied with schools