American Turmoil | ModeShift

In Montgomery, Bryan Stevenson is Thurgood Marshall’s Heir Apparent For Supreme Court

by Keith SchneiderOctober 9, 2019May 4, 20200

Montgomery, which has occupied one bank of the Alabama River since 1819, never deliberately set out to distinguish itself as the white hot furnace of American racial injustice, or the historic hearth of reconciliation. That’s what Alabama’s capital has become, though. Yesterday the city of 200,000, where slaves were sold and where the Civil Rights movement was born, took another memorable step. It elected Steven Reed, Montgomery County’s first African American probate judge, as its …

Will Americans Defend Our Democracy?

by Keith SchneiderApril 21, 2019April 21, 20192

SOMERSET, KY. — During the first week of March 2016, nine months after Donald Trump announced his candidacy for the U.S. presidency, the Russian Federationâ€™s Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff (GRU), opened their online assault on American democracy. The Russian military intelligence unit began to hack, according to Robert Mueller’s special counsel report, “the computers and email accounts of organizations, employees, and volunteers supporting the Clinton campaign, including the email account of campaign …

What Keeps Us Sane – Family and Friends

by Keith SchneiderDecember 4, 2018June 22, 20208

SOMERSET, KY — This is the week that Robert Mueller, the special counsel, is supposed to make public sentencing memorandums for three Trump allies who pled guilty to various illegal acts committed in and out of service to the president. From what’s been made public, and from what I know from fact-checking Seth Abramson’s book, Proof of Collusion, it’s not going to be pretty or something to celebrate. The country has been in a state …

Enemy Of The People

by Keith SchneiderAugust 5, 2018October 28, 20210

There are places in the world where being a journalist is dangerous. Last year 65 journalists were killed around the world, according to Reporters Without Borders. Two of the nations at the top of the list for assassinating journalists are Mexico and the Philippines, where I’ve worked. Another is Pakistan, where I won’t work. Daniel Pearl, a Wall Street Journal reporter, was killed there in 2002. Very suddenly, though, it’s become dangerous to be an …

The November Election

by Keith SchneiderJune 19, 2018June 19, 20180

SOMERSET, KY — I’m not at all concerned by the talk about the “end of the American empire.” I saw that needless arrogance slipping by nine years ago in Beijing’s spotless and soaring international airport, fast subways, faster intercity high-speed rail lines, and well-dressed professionals building the Asian century on boulevards flanked by state-of-the art offices. No, what keeps me up at night — quite literally, I’m not sleeping well these days — is my …

30 Years Later — James Hansen Was Right

by Keith SchneiderJune 18, 2018June 18, 20180

SOMERSET, KY — This was the week 30 years ago, third week of June 1988, that global warming rose to the top of the list of national priorities. I was a young correspondent for the New York Times that summer, dispatched to Montana and the northern Great Plains to report on an unfolding drought so deep that elderly farmers told me it reminded them of Dust Bowl conditions a half century before. On June 23 …

Listen to Our Kids’ Call to Disarm America

by Keith SchneiderMarch 26, 2018March 26, 20181

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Republican right is unnerved in the days following Saturday’s March For Our Lives in Washington and hundreds of other cities across America and the world. Stricken with grief and stirred by the passions of love cut short by bullets, the students from Parkland, Florida stood up, stepped forward, and found a mass movement to end gun violence waiting for them. Hundreds of thousands of people were on Pennsylvania Avenue on Saturday, …

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s Tough Second Act

by Keith SchneiderFebruary 17, 2018February 19, 20180

SALT LAKE CITY — January was supposed to be a great month for Interior Secretary Ryan Keith Zinke, the tall, cowboy-fit, decorated SEAL warrior dispatched by the White House to battle the â€œelitesâ€ and elevate resource development to the primary goal of the worldâ€™s largest conservation agency. Guided by his personal hero, Teddy Roosevelt, who once said â€œconservation means development as much as it does protection,â€ Zinke opened the year with the most ambitious federal …

The White House Wants To Disrupt Elko County and a Whole Lot of Other Places in the West

by Keith SchneiderDecember 24, 2017January 19, 20182

ELKO, NEV. â€“ From this rest stop desert city midway between Salt Lake City and Reno the snow peaks of the Ruby Mountains are like finely crafted wainscoting in an elegant ballroom. The slopes rise sharply to form triangles in the sky. In 1989, Congress approved permanently safeguarding 92,650 wooded acres along the ridge lines from any intrusions in the Ruby Mountain Wilderness. The big flat sagebrush valley that runs up to the base of …

The Year Public Pressure Influenced Lending Practices

by Keith SchneiderDecember 30, 2016December 31, 20160

SOMERSET, KY — Rex Tillerson, the chairman of ExxonMobil, asked by president-elect Donald Trump to serve as secretary of state. Scott Pruitt, the climate-denying, energy-financed attorney general of Oklahoma, nominated for EPA administrator. Rick Perry, former governor of Texas and a board member of Energy Transfer Partners (developer of the Dakota Access Pipeline), nominated to oversee the Energy Department. The intent in Trump’s brotherhood of black fuels is clear enough — stabilize erratic global markets, …