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Why Trump’s America has been a ‘gift’ to Putin

Why Trump’s America has been a ‘gift’ to Putin

The Washington Post reports: Under President Trump, the United States has abandoned international climate and nuclear arms agreements. It has announced its withdrawal from the World Health Organization, questioned the future of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and antagonized stalwart allies like Germany. America’s past presidents have long promoted democracy, human rights and the rule of law abroad, yet Trump instead has waged an assault on those values at home, where he has weakened institutions, shredded norms and declared without…

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The challenge of reclaiming the commons from capitalism

The challenge of reclaiming the commons from capitalism

Dirk Philipsen writes: A basic truth is once again trying to break through the agony of worldwide pandemic and the enduring inhumanity of racist oppression. Healthcare workers risking their lives for others, mutual aid networks empowering neighbourhoods, farmers delivering food to quarantined customers, mothers forming lines to protect youth from police violence: we’re in this life together. We – young and old, citizen and immigrant – do best when we collaborate. Indeed, our only way to survive is to have…

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Reining in Google

Reining in Google

The New York Times reports: Months before the Justice Department filed a landmark antitrust suit against Google this week, the internet company’s adversaries hustled behind the scenes to lay the groundwork for a case. Nonprofits critical of corporate power warned lawmakers that Google illegally boxed out rivals. With mounds of documents, economists and antitrust scholars detailed to regulators and state investigators how the company throttled competition. And former Silicon Valley insiders steered congressional investigators with firsthand evidence of industry wrongdoing….

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Superspreader: Trump jets around America leaving a trail of coronavirus outbreaks in his wake

Superspreader: Trump jets around America leaving a trail of coronavirus outbreaks in his wake

USA Today reports: As President Donald Trump jetted across the country holding campaign rallies during the past two months, he didn’t just defy state orders and federal health guidelines. He left a trail of coronavirus outbreaks in his wake. The president has participated in nearly three dozen rallies since mid-August, all but two at airport hangars. A USA TODAY analysis shows COVID-19 cases grew at a faster rate than before after at least five of those rallies in the following…

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Trump campaign flouted agreement to follow health guidelines at rally, documents show

Trump campaign flouted agreement to follow health guidelines at rally, documents show

The Washington Post reports: The start of President Trump’s rally was still hours away when it became clear that his campaign would not keep its promise. In the days leading up to the Sept. 30 event in Duluth, Minn., local officials had privately pressed the campaign to abide by state public health guidelines aimed at slowing the spread of the novel coronavirus, documents show. In response, the campaign signed an agreement pledging to follow those rules, limiting attendance to 250…

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Far-right groups behind most U.S. terrorist attacks, report finds

Far-right groups behind most U.S. terrorist attacks, report finds

The New York Times reports: White supremacists and other like-minded groups have committed a majority of the terrorist attacks in the United States this year, according to a report by a security think tank that echoed warnings made by the Department of Homeland Security this month. The report, published Thursday by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, found that white supremacist groups were responsible for 41 of 61 “terrorist plots and attacks” in the first eight months of this…

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Boogaloo Bois member opened fire on Minneapolis police precinct during protests over George Floyd, FBI says

Boogaloo Bois member opened fire on Minneapolis police precinct during protests over George Floyd, FBI says

Star Tribune reports: In the wake of protests following the May 25 killing of George Floyd, a member of the Boogaloo Bois opened fire on the Minneapolis Police Third Precinct with an AK-47-style gun and screamed “Justice for Floyd” as he ran away, according to a federal complaint made public Friday. A sworn affidavit by the FBI underlying the complaint reveals new details about a far-right anti-government group’s coordinated role in the violence that roiled through civil unrest over Floyd’s…

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Forbes estimates China paid Trump at least $5.4 million while in office, via mysterious Trump Tower lease

Forbes estimates China paid Trump at least $5.4 million while in office, via mysterious Trump Tower lease

Forbes reports: President Donald Trump, who declared “I don’t make money from China” in Thursday night’s presidential debate, has in fact collected millions of dollars from government-owned entities in China since he took office. Forbes estimates that at least $5.4 million has flowed into the president’s business from a lease agreement involving a state-owned bank in Trump Tower. The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China signed a lease for space in 2008, years before the president took office, paying about…

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The Epoch Times’ anti-China, pro-Trump media empire

The Epoch Times’ anti-China, pro-Trump media empire

Kevin Roose reports: For years, The Epoch Times was a small, low-budget newspaper with an anti-China slant that was handed out free on New York street corners. But in 2016 and 2017, the paper made two changes that transformed it into one of the country’s most powerful digital publishers. The changes also paved the way for the publication, which is affiliated with the secretive and relatively obscure Chinese spiritual movement Falun Gong, to become a leading purveyor of right-wing misinformation….

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Inside a refugee camp on America’s doorstep

Inside a refugee camp on America’s doorstep

The New York Times reports: A butter yellow sun rose over the crowded tent camp across the river from Texas and a thick heat baked the rotten debris below, a mixture of broken toys, human waste and uneaten food swarming with flies. Clothing and sheets hung from trees and dried stiff after being drenched and muddied in a hurricane the week before. As residents emerged from the zipper-holes of their canvas homes that morning in August, some trudged with buckets…

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The U.S. is poised to enter into its worst stretch yet of the coronavirus pandemic

The U.S. is poised to enter into its worst stretch yet of the coronavirus pandemic

The Washington Post reports: America is poised to enter the worst stretch ever of the coronavirus pandemic, with cases spiking and the country on the precipice of shattering its daily record for infections in the next few days. The current surge is already considerably more widespread than the waves from last summer and spring. On Thursday, the number of cases topped 70,000 for the first time since July. The unprecedented geographic spread of the current surge makes it especially dangerous,…

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Election experts game out the chaos that could unfold after the last ballot is cast

Election experts game out the chaos that could unfold after the last ballot is cast

Garrett M. Graff writes: North Carolina and Florida, two key bellwethers, both will likely report results relatively quickly on election night itself; early victories for Biden in either or both states will hint that Biden might be the clear winner within a day or so. And while a Trump win in either or both states wouldn’t necessarily foreclose an eventual Biden victory, it would likely mean that the nation would be in for a long period of uncertainty. And the…

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The Trump administration shut down an office dedicated to studying the long-term safety of vaccines

The Trump administration shut down an office dedicated to studying the long-term safety of vaccines

Carl Zimmer reports: As the first coronavirus vaccines arrive in the coming year, government researchers will face a monumental challenge: monitoring the health of hundreds of millions of Americans to ensure the vaccines don’t cause harm. Purely by chance, thousands of vaccinated people will have heart attacks, strokes and other illnesses shortly after the injections. Sorting out whether the vaccines had anything to do with their ailments will be a thorny problem, requiring a vast, coordinated effort by state and…

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You’re not supposed to be able to make sense of the rumors about Biden

You’re not supposed to be able to make sense of the rumors about Biden

Anne Applebaum writes: On Tuesday, Fox News’ Laura Ingraham broke some news: An “investigative journalist” named Matthew Tyrmand had uncovered a cache of 26,000 emails belonging to Hunter Biden’s disgraced business partner Bevan Cooney, who is now in jail. Tyrmand claimed that he had gotten hold of the emails via a person in the same facility as Cooney (a “federal work camp for white-collar infractions,” is how Tyrmand put it). Tyrmand explained that Cooney felt stiffed by Biden, the son…

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