#William Finnegan, "Blood on the Tracks," Odyssey," The New Yorker, May 24, 2021. - Since the beginning of this year, thirty-five horses had died at Santa Anita." "Racehorses, especially those running on oval tracks, give their lower legs a terrible pounding, straining ligaments, tendons, joints." Racehorses are "drugged, whipped, trained, and raced too young, pushed to the breaking point and beyond; though they're social animals, they spend most of their lives in solitary confinement in a stall."
"Perhaps most important to racing's bottom line, however, have been the extraordinary investments in breeding farms and racing stables by Saudi royals, and, especially by the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum."
"The movement to abolish horse racing -- its cultural indictment as animal slavery -- has been gaining momentum on social media, for years."
"The Water Hay Oats Alliance had its dream come true in 2020: legislation passed that will establish a national regulatory body, under the aegis of the United States Anti-Doping Agency."
#Molly Ball, "Stonewalled," TIME, June 17/June 24, 2021. - An independent investigation of the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), ordered by the state of Virginia, is probing the racial climate on campus after reports of racist behavior from lynching threats to the disproportionate disciplining of Black students. "White students also seemed to feel no compunction about using the 'N' word... 'You heard it several times a day,' " said one of the cadets. "Black cadets have reported a slew of disturbing incidents in recent years, including students wearing blackface and using the 'N' word. In 2017, a group of white cadets dressed up as 'Trump's Wall of Halloween,' with 'graffiti' reading 'KEEP OUT' and a slur for Latinos." " 'Once Trump got into office, VMI became a different place,' says Keniya Lee, a 2019 gradate who is Black. 'People felt like they could do thing, say things, tell certain people they don't belong.' "
Molly Ball's article also detailed the steady stream of racial slurs cadets posted on Jodel, an anonymous chat app.
"By the time VMI began admitting Black students, it was the last public college in Virginia to do so, and the federal government had threatened to withdraw funding."
[VMI's] "honor code is cherished for its simplicity: 'A cadet will not lie, cheat, or steal, nor tolerate those that do.' A single violation results in expulsion, enforced by a cadet-run Honor Court."
#Nina Burleigh, "Smash the State," The Nation, 5.31 - 6.7.2021. - "The president of the United States of America is the emcee, clad in the casual costume he wears for events slightly more important than golfing, but less serious than his official duties -- including foreign leaders and rousing the rabble at rallies." "The CDC was everything evangelical Christian fanatics wanted to root out."
"The pillar of Trump's political power, contrary to popular belief, was not the 'deplorable' rabble that -- inexplicably in the eyes of coastal elites and progressives.-- voted against their own interests on things like national health care, and taxing the superrich. Trump's true backers were crony capitalists and stone-cold anti-government ideologues."
"Corporate libertarians and white evangelical Christians got Trump elected with bold aims: nothing less than the remaking of America into a quantum-age Wild West in which money talks and bullshit walks, women stay home or teeter around on fxxk-me shoes, useless animals go extinct."
#Elie Mystal, "Juvenile Judgment," The Nation, 5.31- 6.7.2021. - "The justice who wrote the opinion condemning a man to life in prison for a crime he had committed before he finished high school was the same justice who was accused of trying to rape a girl while he was in high school: Brett Kavanaugh." "There is no requirement that judges engage in actual fact-finding to determine 'incorrigibility' before sending a juvenile away forever."
"He [Kavanaugh] argued, in angry, sneering tones, that his youthful indiscretions (the ones he admitted to at least) should not bar him from getting a lifetime job." "Kavanaugh has a habit of doing this in his opinions: making bad opinions and then adding language suggesting he was just going along with the crowd." "Kavanaugh closed his opinion by telling the teenage Jones to plead his case for clemency to the 'state legislators, state courts, or Governor.' "
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