Breaking News

This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in each source note. Quotation marks are not used.

---

• 
• SOURCE: New York Magazine
  3/30/2020
  

  Odds of a Contested November Election Are on the Rise

  Now that state-run electoral systems are in chaos in the midst of a pandemic, with no assurances the conditions for normal voting behavior will return by November, the odds of a contested general election (not just by Trump, but by elements of both parties) have gone up.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/30/2020
  

  Penguin Classics and Others Work to Diversify Offerings From the Canon

  Across the industry, publishers are releasing titles by authors who were previously marginalized or entirely lost to history.

• 
• SOURCE: ABC Religion and Ethics
  3/30/2020
  

  Coping With Coronavirus Disappointments: Five Lessons From Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  For a case study in coping with disappointment in the context of isolation and social distancing, we find a surprising source of help in Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  3/31/2020
  

  The Case Against Waging ‘War’ on the Coronavirus

  There is a long history of world leaders framing fights against disease within the context of war.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Post
  3/30/2020
  

  Helen Hunt Brings Trailblazing War Journalist to Life in "World On Fire"

  “I remember reading that she called her paper the next day and held the phone out the window [so they could hear the gunfire and chaos] and said, ‘It’s happening right now!'”

• 
• SOURCE: American Civil War Museum
  3/30/2020
  

  15th Turns 150!

  The presence of new citizens in the form of formerly enslaved people forced Congress to consider what citizenship and voting actually meant. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/28/2020
  

  They Survived the Spanish Flu, the Depression and the Holocaust: They Have Some Advice For You

  Two extraordinary women — one 101, the other 95 — lived through the worst of the 20th century. They have some advice for you.

• 
• SOURCE: Fortune
  3/30/2020
  

  USPS Warns it Might Have to Shutter by June as $2 Trillion Coronavirus Stimulus Package Provides No Funding

  The USPS is the federal government’s most favorably viewed agency, with an approval rating of 90%.

• 
• SOURCE: NPR
  3/24/2020
  

  In Blackbeard Pirate Ship Case, Supreme Court Scuttles Copyright Claims

  Ruling unanimously, the U.S. Supreme Court said that a videographer who spent two decades documenting the salvaging of Blackbeard's ship cannot sue the state of North Carolina in federal court for using his videos without his permission.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  3/31/2020
  

  Coronavirus Kills Its First Democracy

  You could say that Hungary was already “immunocompromised.”

• 
• SOURCE: Associated Press
  3/29/2020
  

  Virus Forces Europeans To Ask: How United Do We Want To Be?

  The north-south divide that has dogged the European Union for years has resurfaced as the virus has galloped across the continent.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/30/2020
  

  The Quarantine Diaries

  Around the world, the history of our present moment is taking shape in journal entries and drawings.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  3/28/2020
  

  Seven ‘Twilight Zone’ Episodes that are Eerily Timely During the Coronavirus Pandemic

  Some “Twilight Zone” stories are especially relevant to life under self-quarantine, and some episodes of the classic series can be a diverting emotional escape.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  3/25/2020
  

  A Troublemaker With a Gavel

  by Karen Tumulty

  Perhaps, before too long, the troublemaker with a gavel will finally get her wish—to no longer hear herself introduced as the most powerful woman in American history.

• 
• SOURCE: The Nation
  3/30/2020
  

  All the President's Crackpots

  by Jeet Heer

  Richard A. Epstein’s crank theories about the coronavirus are influential thanks to a powerful network of right-wing legal activists.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/28/2020
  

  The Lost Month: How a Failure to Test Blinded the US to COVID-19

  The Coronavirus Task Force squandered its best chance of containing the virus’s spread. Instead, Americans were left largely blind to the scale of a looming public health catastrophe.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/29/2020
  

  The U.S. Tried to Build a New Fleet of Ventilators. The Mission Failed.

  As the coronavirus spreads, the collapse of the project helps explain America’s acute shortage.

• 
• SOURCE: CBS Boston
  3/28/2020
  

  Boston Colleges To Celebrate Women’s History Month By Editing Wikipedia Pages

  Students at Simmons University and Wentworth Institute of Technology are honoring Women's History Month by improving the online representation of female activists.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/30/2020
  

  Records in 1946 Lynching Case Must Remain Sealed, Court Rules

  No one was ever charged in the killing of two black couples by a group of white men in rural Georgia, known as the Moore’s Ford lynchings.

• 
• SOURCE: Detroit Free Press
  3/29/2020
  

  Coronavirus Comparisons to World War II Are Rampant. Are We Ready to Be the Greatest Generation?

  How similar is coronavirus mobilization to World War II mobilization?