Since 1999, there have been over a million deaths of despair—premature deaths due to alcohol poisoning, opioid overdose, and suicide—in the United States. In a special episode of the Brookings Cafeteria podcast, Vanda Felbab-Brown, Carol Graham, Keith Humphreys, Bryce Pardo, Bradley Stein, and Paul Wise detail the opioid crisis in America and explain why it has become so difficult to address.
"It would be easy to press snooze, to wait until we have passed the peak of the pandemic, until our economies have recovered, until great power competition has become less acute. But if there is one thing I learned in almost 15 years in government, it is that there is never a 'good time' to prioritize human rights." Molly Montgomery offers reflections on the state of human rights around the world on the 25th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide.
Despite a rise in COVID-19 cases across the United States, there has been increasing pressure for schools to reopen in the fall. Nora Gordon and Sarah Reber write that to reopen schools safely, Congress needs to immediately provide more financial assistance to school districts.
The winners and losers. This week, the Supreme Court made their rulings in the presidential subpoena cases Trump v. Vance and Trump v. Mazars. Despite President Trump's outrage at the decisions, determining the winners and losers of these two cases requires going beyond the Court's bottom lines, Richard Lempert writes.
Does Trump owe Russia money? While President Trump's financial information may not be available to the public for a long time, these records could eventually help explain why the president is so deferential to Russia and Vladimir Putin, Elaine Kamarck argues.
More analysis on the cases. On The Lawfare Podcast, Benjamin Wittes, Margaret Taylor, Scott Anderson, Quinta Jurecic, and Molly Reynolds share their thoughts on the Supreme Court's decisions and discuss what might come next for the president.
A note on the Brookings response to COVID-19:
The Brookings Institution campus in Washington, D.C. will be closed through at least September 7. For more information, read our full guidance here. As Brookings experts continue to assess the global impacts of COVID-19, read the latest analysis and policy recommendations at our coronavirus page or stay up to date with our coronavirus newsletter.
The conclusions and recommendations of any Brookings publication are solely those of its author(s), and do not reflect the views of the Institution, its management, or its other scholars.
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