Lunch money, voting from space, make your own prescriptions: Weekend reads for September 7, 2024

The links worth your time this weekend

This week, we saw a host of revelations: of a huge Russian disinformation campaign, of the continuing inadequacy of our legal system to bring the declining former president to justice, and perhaps worst of all, of our continued failure to address America’s epidemic of gun violence. 

Here at The Ink, we’re keeping an eye on the future and at possible solutions: how to change the way we raise children, what a Harris administration can do to take on some of the biggest challenges of the day, and why the U.S. needs to change its foreign policy approach and stop undermining those abroad it considers friends.

This coming week, we’ll be looking ahead to the debate on Tuesday evening, and we’ll be bringing you interviews and essays that look back at the history of our electoral challenges and forward to what leaders in key states are doing to ensure fairness in November.

In the meantime, as we do each weekend for our paid subscribers, we bring you a selection of the most interesting, challenging, and surprising pieces we’ve found in the course of our reading and research. We hope these pieces — on the ongoing fight against corporate lunch-money thefts, about biohackers looking to break monopoly power over drug pricing with a mad-scientist approach, how the trapped astronauts might be able to vote, and much more — inspire and entertain you this weekend.

---

As always, if you like what we do here and you haven’t already become part of our community, would you consider joining us as a supporting subscriber? This is what makes it possible for us to bring you this work and keep going. And if you know someone who you think would enjoy being a part of this, consider giving a gift subscription. We are grateful for your support!

---

In case you missed it

Continuing our UNBURDENED series, in which we ask thinkers to outline their priorities for a Harris administration free to pursue new ideas, we asked A.I. activist Sneha Revanur to outline her program for a truly humane technology regulation policy that serves and protects people before capital.

An area where we see a critical need for fresh democratic leadership is on A.I. in labor. We've yet to see a serious recognition of the potential for mass unemployment or any work to consider what might be done if that does occur. It increasingly seems that until a major crisis is already upon us, Democrats and Republicans will hope that nothing bad happens. Both parties should already know that this strategy is a failure: their lack of action to protect workers through the effects of globalization led to a massive wage restructuring and the hollowing out of industrial towns. A reactive approach here is not enough; such a fundamentally transformative technology demands foresight and preparation.

With the Harris campaign promising to get three million new homes built to address the affordability crisis, housing policy is back on the agenda. We talked to Matthew Lewis of California YIMBY to understand the history of the fight against exclusionary zoning and how to house those who need it most.

The idea, though, that expands from that is the use of zoning as a tool for racial and class segregation. And I think it's important to ground it there because the reality of the history of the YIMBY movement is that you've had planners and affordable housing developers and early urbanists who for decades have been trying to undo these deliberate segregationist policies.

An unsealed indictment this week exposed the receipts of a massive Russian disinformation campaign that rewarded right-wing influencers for their efforts to undermine America. We get into the details not to understand the Russian plan — but to ask what the revelations tell us about ourselves.

We are less divided than we seem. As I keep stressing, I don’t want to overstate the effect of these Russian operations. It’s a drop in the ocean. But it is the case that many of the most prominent voices out there inflaming our conversations are doing so, even if unknowingly, at a foreign power’s nudging. This suggests that we may have an impression of our discourse, of our state of relationship with each other, that is not entirely accurate. 

As hundreds of thousands of Israelis protest the Netanyahu government and the PM’s own cabinet criticizes him in blunt terms, we ask why U.S. leaders and the American press continue to treat Netanyahu with kid gloves — and why America’s unconditional friendship for Israel does more harm than good. 

The problem is reflected in the press but goes far beyond it. Forget what campus protestors or leaders in the Arab world are saying. Why is the American leadership class so wary of saying what Israeli journalists and Israeli citizens openly declare?

Isn’t an important part of friendship holding up a mirror and telling the truth?

We talked to psychologist and author Jo-Ann Finkelstein about her new book, Sexism & Sensibility, and how we can build a better, more equitable future by changing the way we raise girls. 

We can no longer afford to raise our daughters to believe they’re fragile, inferior, and less deserving in the millions of small ways we unwittingly do. Not only does it pummel their well-being and mental health and put them at increased risk for violence, but our country is making it clear if they don’t fight for their rights, they won’t have any.

With Trump’s sentencing in the New York criminal trial now delayed until after the election, we ask once again — will justice ever come for the former president?

And in a brand-new experiment, we’re taking on your most pressing questions — and we decided to answer them in a video.

---

Readings

Busting the lunch-money thieves

Instead, the fees were going to one of the largest payment processing companies in the world — one that has been fighting a years-long legal battle to protect the millions it makes upcharging parents on lunch money. Now, that operation is facing new scrutiny from the courts and federal regulators. 

At the same time, efforts are ramping up to provide universal free school lunches, which Minnesota adopted last year under the governorship of Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz. But the school-lunch tycoons — and their powerful legal and lobbying teams — won’t be relinquishing their lunch-money millions without a fight. [The Lever]