Offering asides, recommended links, blogworthy quotations, and more, In Brief is the Northwest Progressive Institute's microblog of world, national, and local politics.
Welcome to In Brief, the Northwest Progressive Institute's microblog. In Brief provides a continuously curated collection of asides, recommended links, quotations, audio and video clips, still images, and transcribed dialogue. Click on a thumbnail to open an item.
“Mohamed Egal, Jake Simpson and Iris Guzmán won their races as three progressive candidates in Seattle were defeated, attracting notice in the big city and calling attention to efforts by political groups to make change throughout South King County,” Seattle Times political reporter Daniel Beekman reports.
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Watch highlights from the seventh episode of SNL’s forty-seventh season, hosted by Simu Liu, with Saweetie as the musical guest, including the Jeanine Pirro spoof cold open.
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Watch highlights from the sixth episode of SNL’s forty-seventh season, hosted by Jonathan Majors, with Taylor Swift as the musical guest, including the Ted Cruz Sesame Street cold open.
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“He clearly doesn’t care about being labeled a hypocrite. It just doesn’t bother him. He is brazen about it. That’s one of the cynical sides of Mitch. He doesn’t care. If it’s expedient, he’ll do it,” U.S. Representative John Yarmuth said.
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Watch highlights from the fifth episode of SNL’s forty-seventh season, hosted by Kieran Culkin, with Ed Sheeran as the musical guest, including the Weekend Update segment on reproductive rights.
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Watch highlights from the fourth episode of SNL’s forty-seventh season, hosted by Jason Sudeikis, with Brandi Carlile as the musical guest, including the return of What Up With That.
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Watch highlights from the third episode of SNL’s forty-seventh season, hosted by Rami Malek, with Young Thug as the musical guest, including the cold open skewering the NFL.
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Watch highlights from the second episode of SNL’s forty-seventh season, hosted by Kim Kardashian West with Halsey as the musical guest.
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Watch highlights from the inaugural episode of SNL’s forty-seventh season, hosted by Owen Wilson, with Kacey Musgraves as the musical guest, including the cold open skewering Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin.
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“High-quality respirators such as N95s and KN95s are now widely available and provide the best protection against COVID, according to experts. Why aren’t more people wearing them?” Tanya Lewis asks.
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“It seems Republicans have taken a divisive issue and created an enormous bipartisan coalition against themselves, uniting pro-choice and even some antiabortion voters who don’t like the vigilante mechanism,” Jennifer Rubin writes.
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In a lengthy Facebook post, Joohn Choe explains why the extremist, militant Georgia member of Congress is a poseur rather than a legit shooter. As Choe puts it: “Trashy weapon, threatening posture, and always, a thin veneer of Instagram ‘gun-bunny’ posturing overlaying stark ignorance and rank mediocrity.”
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“For decades, the rangers at Denali National Park in Alaska were easily winning their battle against a slow-moving landslide underneath the park’s only road. Now, due in part to the effects of climate change, they are losing very badly,” Andrew R. Chow reports.
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“The betrayal of America’s professed principles was the friendly fire of the war on terror,” Carlos Lozada writes.
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“After years of ignoring Afghanistan, many close to the Biden White House — and the president himself — feel some major outlets are adopting a pro-war stance,” Huffington Post’s Daniel Marans writes.
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“The burden of this pandemic now rests on the shoulders of the unvaccinated,” writes Anita Sircar. “On those who are eligible to get vaccinated, but choose not to, a decision they defend by declaring, ‘vaccination is a deeply personal choice.’ But perhaps never in history has anyone’s personal choice impacted the world as a whole as it does right now.”
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“The United States remains among nations with the highest rate of new Covid-19 cases, driven mostly by a surge in the South, where many states are lagging in getting people vaccinated against the coronavirus,” Aya Elamroussi reports.
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“It’s been a summer of sweltering heat waves and raging wildfires, and now it’s confirmed: July 2021 was the hottest month on Earth since record-keeping began,” Li Cohen reports.
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“Idaho’s population has reached about 1.8 million and rose 17.3% in the past decade, according to new U.S. Census Bureau data. That spike makes it the second-fastest-growing state in the U.S., trailing only a neighbor to the south, Utah,” Hayat Norimine reports.
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“He’s describing what we would now call a ‘trophic cascade,’ and for me, as a scientist, I just find that genius that he anticipated that concept by a decade or more,” anthropologist and evolutionary biologist Nathaniel Dominy told NPR.
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“Sanders, just weeks from his eightieth birthday, is on the cusp of leaving an indelible mark on the federal government, having shepherded a $3.5 trillion spending blueprint through the Senate this week,” The Washington Post’s Mike DeBonis reports.
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