In the summer of 1980, Antony Blinken, then 18 and about to matriculate at Harvard, interned for the U.S. senator who brought to Congress the most mental bandwidth since Rep. James Madison. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), an empiricist in an arena âgovernment â that often is inhospitable to such, said this: âThe social sciences do not tell us what to do, they tell us the consequences of what we are doing.â It is in that empirical spirit that Secretary of State Blinken surveys a globe that has no time zone without a test for U.S. policy.
The most challenging, China, has by its behavior â repression ashore, aggression in the South China Sea â refuted what Blinken calls a âWashington consensusâ to which he says he once subscribed but no longer does. It was that China, woven into global commerce in a way the primitive Soviet Union never was, would, like Gulliver among the Lilliputians, be constrained, and perhaps liberalized, by a thousand
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) â Mississippi lawmakers grabbed national headlines this year by banning transgender athletes from competing on girls or women s sports teams. They walked away from some other divisive issues during their three-month session.
Republican Sen. Angela Hill of Picayune argued in favor of the transgender sports bill, and she stood behind Republican Gov. Tate Reeves as he signed it into law. Hill filed a separate bill that would have prohibited hormone treatments or surgery from being performed on transgender minors.
Senate Bill 2171, the Transgender 21 Act, died because it was not brought up for votes in the Senate Public Health Committee and the Senate Accountability, Efficiency and Transparency Committee. Arkansas legislators passed a similar bill this year, pushing it into law over the veto of Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson.
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This file photo shows the Supreme Court in Washington. After more than a decade in which the Supreme Court moved gradually toward more leniency for minors convicted of murder, the justices have moved the other way. The high court ruled 6-3 Thursday along ideological lines against a Mississippi inmate sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for fatally stabbing his grandfather when the defendant was 15 years old. The case is important because it marks a break with the courtâs previous rulings and is evidence of the impact of a newly more conservative court.
J. Scott Applewhite I AP
HATLEY ⢠Donnie Williams and his wife, Amy, were awake in the early morning hours Wednesday, tracking the storm front as it passed through Hatley, when they lost television service to their Weaver Creek Drive home.
âWhen the lightning got continuous, I knew the storm was getting worse and there was no doubt we were in a mess,â Williams said. âIt was roaring, and stuff was breaking.â
The couple quickly took shelter underneath the stairs. When they emerged, they discovered their house largely untouched.
âI think weâre blessed to be in the shape weâre in,â Williams said. âNobody got hurt. Even though there was a lot of damage, we were still blessed.â