John Light

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John Light is TPM's managing editor, based in New York. He previously worked as a producer for Bill Moyers and WNYC and has written for The Atlantic, Slate, Reuters and Grist.

Something New

Earlier today we put up a new page at TPM: our coronavirus community resource hub. It gathers together all of our latest coverage, along with some valuable resources that have informed our reporting.

Particularly interesting, for me, is a map showing various emails we’ve received from our readers — across America and around the world. These emails give first-hand accounts of what was happening on the ground as the coronavirus spread — first in China, then in Italy, then in Washington state, and now everywhere. Read More 

Something Different

Starting last week, and continuing this week, we’ve been publishing a series of articles by historians and legal scholars. Full disclosure: they have nothing to do with the coronavirus. This series was in the works for a few months, and though the crisis has our attention more or less 24/7, it’s sometimes a welcome break to think about something else. Even a democratic crisis.

The basic idea for this series is one shared with us by historian Greg Downs: that even if Democrats retake the Senate in 2020, hold onto the House, and win the presidency, it wouldn’t be enough for the Party to truly control the levers of power. They are, in a sense, not safe at home. The current political system enabled and in many cases ratified the excesses of the Trump presidency. Whoever holds power next must contend with that fact.

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The View In Thailand And Nepal

TPM reader JH writes in from Asia…

I’m an American (from Colorado), but I split my time between Nepal (where my work is) and Thailand (where my husband lives and works). And both countries exhibit so many of the key challenges that the world is facing as this pandemic expands beyond the developed, and frankly high capacity, countries of China, East Asia, Europe, and the US.
Read More 

The View From Slovakia

TPM reader MZ writes from Bratislava:

I am a US citizen but have lived in Slovakia for the past 7 years. I must begin by noting something about the perception of Slovakia (and former Eastern Bloc countries generally) by many “Western” Europeans and North Americans; this is relevant because the response to Covid-19 in Slovakia seems very different from the response west of here.

Read More 

NYC Closing Restaurants, Bars

The largest city in the U.S. is closing up restaurants and bars, restricting them to serving take-out only.

We’ve seen similar moves this weekend by the governors of Washington, Massachusetts, California, Illinois and Ohio.

Matt Shuham has more.

The Sanders-Biden Debate
LIVEBLOG: The South Carolina Primary
LIVEBLOG: South Carolina Democratic Debate
The Once And Future News Business Prime Badge

My discussion with TPM’s publisher Joe Ragazzo is posted in the TPM briefings archive.

It was a fun conversation with TPM Insiders about some of the difficulties facing the news business — from the decline of local newspapers to changes in how small outlets like TPM approach what they do to what Trump’s election has meant for us.

We also speculated a bit about what the future might hold, for us and for all journalists.

Watch it here.

Q&A With God’s Leftenant Prime Badge

Tomorrow, TPM’s publisher, Joe Ragazzo, is going to be doing an Inside briefing with me. I asked Joe how he’d describe himself. Answer: “Josh’s right-hand man and dauphin, appointed heir and God’s leftenant.”

Make of that what you will, but Joe’s an expert in the business of online news — one that has reinvented itself several times even in the last few years. This is your chance to ask him anything you want to ask him about TPM or the news business writ large.

Register here to join us on Friday at 3 p.m.

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