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How a fake persona laid the groundwork for a Hunter Biden conspiracy deluge

How a fake persona laid the groundwork for a Hunter Biden conspiracy deluge

NBC News reports: One month before a purported leak of files from Hunter Biden’s laptop, a fake “intelligence” document about him went viral on the right-wing internet, asserting an elaborate conspiracy theory involving former Vice President Joe Biden’s son and business in China. The document, a 64-page composition that was later disseminated by close associates of President Donald Trump, appears to be the work of a fake “intelligence firm” called Typhoon Investigations, according to researchers and public documents. The author…

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Stephen Miller’s plan to make America white again

Stephen Miller’s plan to make America white again

NBC News reports: President Donald Trump’s senior adviser Stephen Miller has fleshed out plans to rev up Trump’s restrictive immigration agenda if he wins re-election next week, offering a stark contrast to the platform of Democratic nominee Joe Biden. In a 30-minute phone interview Thursday with NBC News, Miller outlined four major priorities: limiting asylum grants, punishing and outlawing so-called sanctuary cities, expanding the so-called travel ban with tougher screening for visa applicants and slapping new limits on work visas….

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Noam Chomsky says Trump is ‘the worst criminal in human history’

Noam Chomsky says Trump is ‘the worst criminal in human history’

Isaac Chotiner writes: Noam Chomsky, the American linguist, activist, and political writer, is one of the most famous and harshest critics of American foreign policy. His critiques of Presidential Administrations from Nixon to Obama, and the stridency of his views—comparing 9/11 to Bill Clinton’s bombing of a factory in Khartoum, for example—have made him the target of much ire, as well as a hero of the global left. “Chomsky always refuses to talk about motives in politics,” Larissa MacFarquhar wrote…

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Trump, unable to win more votes, focuses instead on making it harder for citizens to vote

Trump, unable to win more votes, focuses instead on making it harder for citizens to vote

Politico reports: Donald Trump won the presidency with 46 percent of the popular vote. His approval rating, according to Gallup, has never hit 50 percent. He remains under 50 percent in national polling averages. The president’s inability to capture a majority of support sheds light on his extraordinary attempts to limit the number of votes cast across the battleground state map — a massive campaign-within-a-campaign to maximize Trump’s chances of winning a contest in which he’s all but certain to…

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Trump trivializes the pandemic and ignores the dead

Trump trivializes the pandemic and ignores the dead

The New York Times reports: As an immense new surge in coronavirus cases sweeps the country, President Trump is closing his re-election campaign by pleading with voters to ignore the evidence of a calamity unfolding before their eyes and trust his word that the disease is already disappearing as a threat to their personal health and economic well being. The president has continued to declare before large and largely maskless crowds that the virus is vanishing, even as case counts…

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Trump’s pandemic adviser promoted reduced testing, making it harder to control the spread of infections

Trump’s pandemic adviser promoted reduced testing, making it harder to control the spread of infections

CNN reports: Shortly after joining the White House as President Donald Trump’s pandemic adviser, Dr. Scott Atlas launched a quiet effort that seemed counterintuitive to some of his colleagues — encouraging officials to limit Covid-19 testing mainly to people experiencing symptoms. Atlas, a neuroradiologist, not an infectious disease expert, strongly supported a decision in August to revise federal guidelines to de-emphasize the need to test people without symptoms, according to two sources familiar with the process. He shared his view with…

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It may be time to reset expectations on when we’ll get a Covid-19 vaccine

It may be time to reset expectations on when we’ll get a Covid-19 vaccine

STAT reports: The ambitious drive to produce Covid-19 vaccine at warp speed seems to be running up against reality. We all probably need to reset our expectations about how quickly we’re going to be able to be vaccinated. Pauses in clinical trials to investigate potential safety issues, a slower-than-expected rate of infections among participants in at least one of the trials, and signals that an expert panel advising the Food and Drug Administration may not be comfortable recommending use of…

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Turkish bank case showed Erdogan’s influence over Trump

Turkish bank case showed Erdogan’s influence over Trump

The New York Times reports: Geoffrey S. Berman was outraged. The top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, Mr. Berman had traveled to Washington in June 2019 to discuss a particularly delicate case with Attorney General William P. Barr and some of his top aides: a criminal investigation into Halkbank, a state-owned Turkish bank suspected of violating U.S. sanctions law by funneling billions of dollars of gold and cash to Iran. For months, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey had been pressing…

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Glenn Greenwald does The Intercept a big favor

Glenn Greenwald does The Intercept a big favor

The editors of The Intercept write: Glenn Greenwald’s decision to resign from The Intercept stems from a fundamental disagreement over the role of editors in the production of journalism and the nature of censorship. Glenn demands the absolute right to determine what he will publish. He believes that anyone who disagrees with him is corrupt, and anyone who presumes to edit his words is a censor. Thus, the preposterous charge that The Intercept’s editors and reporters, with the lone, noble…

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Are the brain’s electromagnetic fields the seat of consciousness?

Are the brain’s electromagnetic fields the seat of consciousness?

Tam Hunt writes: Christof Koch is a neuroscientist distinguished by his rock-solid scientific work and romantic yearning to understand consciousness. He recently closed an essay by wondering: “What is it about the brain, the most complex piece of active matter in the known universe, that turns its activity into the feeling of life itself?” No coincidence with that phrasing—The Feeling of Life Itself is his latest book. He argues that consciousness is produced by the brain but that it’s also…

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Why workers will decide the 2020 election

Why workers will decide the 2020 election

Rev. William J. Barber, II and Sen. Sherrod Brown write: For far too long, we have failed to recognize that work’s purpose is to support and nurture our families and communities and civil society – not Wall Street. But under the Trump administration, Wall Street has been running the country. The current president’s cabinet looks like a big bank executive retreat. The halls of Congress teem with corporate lobbyists. And those lobbyists take their cues from Wall Street, which rewards…

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Undocumented immigrants may actually make American communities safer – not more dangerous – new study finds

Undocumented immigrants may actually make American communities safer – not more dangerous – new study finds

President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that undocumented immigrants cause more crime, but new research suggests the opposite might be true. Apu Gomes/AFP via Getty Images By Robert M. Adelman, University at Buffalo and Lesley Reid, University of Alabama The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work. The big idea Undocumented immigration does not increase the violent crime rate in U.S. metropolitan areas. In fact, it may reduce property crime rates. These are the key findings from…

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Supreme Court will not speed up review of Pennsylvania mail-in voting fight

Supreme Court will not speed up review of Pennsylvania mail-in voting fight

Reuters reports: The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday handed a setback to Republicans by declining to quickly decide whether to hear their latest bid to overturn a lower court’s ruling that extended Pennsylvania’s deadline to receive mail-in ballots in next Tuesday’s election. The justices declined to expedite their consideration of the request by the Republican Party of Pennsylvania to hear and decide before the election its appeal of a ruling by the state’s top court ordering officials to count mail-in…

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Finally at zero new cases, Victoria, Australia, is on top of the world after unprecedented lockdown effort

Finally at zero new cases, Victoria, Australia, is on top of the world after unprecedented lockdown effort

By Stephen Duckett, Grattan Institute and Tom Crowley, Grattan Institute If the past few months have been like a long-haul flight, Victorians are now standing in the aisles waiting for the cabin door to open, a little groggy and disoriented but relieved. They have every right to be. No other place in the world has tamed a second wave this large. Few have even come close. Read more: Of all the places that have seen off a second coronavirus wave,…

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