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Administration officials alarmed by White House push to fast track lucrative 5G spectrum contract, sources say

Administration officials alarmed by White House push to fast track lucrative 5G spectrum contract, sources say

CNN reports: Senior officials throughout various departments and agencies of the Trump administration tell CNN they are alarmed at White House pressure to grant what would essentially be a no-bid contract to lease the Department of Defense’s mid-band spectrum — premium real estate for the booming and lucrative 5G market — to Rivada Networks, a company in which prominent Republicans and supporters of President Donald Trump have investments. The pressure campaign to fast track Rivada’s “Request for Proposal” (RFP) by…

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U.S. weighs labeling leading NGOs ‘anti-Semitic’ because they defend human rights of Palestinians

U.S. weighs labeling leading NGOs ‘anti-Semitic’ because they defend human rights of Palestinians

Politico reports: The Trump administration is considering declaring that several prominent international NGOs — including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Oxfam — are anti-Semitic and that governments should not support them, two people familiar with the issue said. The proposed declaration could come from the State Department as soon as this week. If the declaration happens, it is likely to cause an uproar among civil society groups and might spur litigation. Critics of the possible move also worry it…

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The rare Chilean soapbark tree that could help stop the pandemic

The rare Chilean soapbark tree that could help stop the pandemic

Brendan Borrell writes: In early April, Paul Hiley was kicking back in the executive suite at Desert King International LLC, gazing out the window at the San Diego sunshine and daydreaming about his golf game. California had issued its initial stay-at-home order for COVID-19, but apart from the hand sanitizer around the office, life was more or less normal. Retirement was on the horizon for Hiley. Maybe he’d sell the business. Maybe his son, Damian, would take over. For more…

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QAnon has become a linchpin of far-right media — and the effort to preemptively delegitimize the election

QAnon has become a linchpin of far-right media — and the effort to preemptively delegitimize the election

Renée DiResta writes: Whether President Donald Trump wins or loses, some version of QAnon is going to survive the election. On the day of the vice-presidential debate between Mike Pence and Kamala Harris, the individual or group known as “Q” sent out a flurry of posts. “ONLY THE ILLUSION OF DEMOCRACY,” began one. “Joe 30330—Arbitrary?—What is 2020 [current year] divided by 30330? Symbolism will be their downfall,” read another, darkly hinting at satanic numerology in Joe Biden’s campaign text-messaging code….

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Half of Trump supporters believe QAnon’s fictitious claims even while many never heard of QAnon, poll finds

Half of Trump supporters believe QAnon’s fictitious claims even while many never heard of QAnon, poll finds

Yahoo News reports: A full 50 percent of President Trump’s supporters now believe the bizarre, made-up claims about an international ring of child sex traffickers at the core of the extremist conspiracy theory known as QAnon, according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll — a disturbing sign of how susceptible partisans have become to bogus stories in an age of rampant polarization and unbridled social media. The survey, which interviewed 1,583 registered voters from Oct. 16 to 18, shows that…

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Michael Steele: I’m a Republican voting for Joe Biden because I’m an American first

Michael Steele: I’m a Republican voting for Joe Biden because I’m an American first

Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, writes: I am an American, a conservative and a Republican, in that order. And I am voting for Joe Biden on Nov. 3. Why? It certainly is not because of political expediency. For me, it never has been. As a teenager growing up in a monolithically Democratic community, I recognized that the values articulated by President Ronald Reagan echoed those of my mother — a sharecropper’s daughter who worked in a…

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How Trump burned through $1 billion in a flailing campaign

How Trump burned through $1 billion in a flailing campaign

The Associated Press reports: President Donald Trump’s sprawling political operation has raised well over $1 billion since he took the White House in 2017 — and set a lot of it on fire. Trump bought a $10 million Super Bowl ad when he didn’t yet have a challenger. He tapped his political organization to cover exorbitant legal fees related to his impeachment. Aides made flashy displays of their newfound wealth — including a fleet of luxury vehicles purchased by Brad…

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The real divide in America is between political junkies and everyone else

The real divide in America is between political junkies and everyone else

Yanna Krupnikov and John Barry Ryan write: The common view of American politics today is of a clamorous divide between Democrats and Republicans, an unyielding, inevitable clash of harsh partisan polarization. But that focus obscures another, enormous gulf — the gap between those who follow politics closely and those who don’t. Call it the “attention divide.” What we found is that most Americans — upward of 80 percent to 85 percent — follow politics casually or not at all. Just…

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Mysterious weapon targeting U.S. officials: CIA investigation points the blame at Russia

Mysterious weapon targeting U.S. officials: CIA investigation points the blame at Russia

Julia Ioffe writes: Marc Polymeropoulos awoke with a start. The feeling of nausea was overwhelming. Food poisoning, he thought, and decided to head for the bathroom. But when he tried to get out of bed, he fell over. He tried to stand up and fell again. It was the early morning hours of December 5, 2017, and his Moscow hotel room was spinning around him. His ears were ringing. He felt, he recalled, “like I was going to both throw…

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Scientists may have discovered new secretive organs in the center of your head

Scientists may have discovered new secretive organs in the center of your head

The New York Times reports: After millenniums of careful slicing and dicing, it might seem as though scientists have figured out human anatomy. A few dozen organs, a couple hundred bones and connective tissue to tie it all together. But despite centuries of scrutiny, the body is still capable of surprising scientists. A team of researchers in the Netherlands has discovered what may be a set of previously unidentified organs: a pair of large salivary glands, lurking in the nook…

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Herd immunity is not a plan; it’s magical thinking

Herd immunity is not a plan; it’s magical thinking

Gigi Kwik Gronvall and Rachel West write: Ten months into the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, there is mounting frustration that life is not back to “normal.” Many U.S. schools and businesses remain closed, people are hesitant to fly and enjoy vacations, and in many places, restaurants and indoor activities are sharply limited, with severe economic consequences. With patience wearing thin, it may be tempting to consider policies that give us a return to normalcy, whatever the consequences. This wishful thinking describes the…

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Discord inside the White House task force as coronavirus surges

Discord inside the White House task force as coronavirus surges

The Washington Post reports: As summer faded into autumn and the novel coronavirus continued to ravage the nation unabated, Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist whose commentary on Fox News led President Trump to recruit him to the White House, consolidated his power over the government’s pandemic response. Atlas shot down attempts to expand testing. He openly feuded with other doctors on the coronavirus task force and succeeded in largely sidelining them. He advanced fringe theories, such as that social distancing and…

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How to cover Election Day and beyond

How to cover Election Day and beyond

Vivian Schiller and Garrett M. Graff write: Americans think about elections wrong; they aren’t only about tallying votes to declare a winner. Elections in a democracy are just as much about convincing the loser that he or she actually lost—and that the process was free, fair, and secure enough that the loser can accept the result as legitimate. Now, only weeks before Election Day, there’s a growing realization that the complexity of this year’s electoral landscape—from pandemic-related social distancing and…

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Justice Kavanaugh unlocked ways to fight foreign interference in U.S. elections

Justice Kavanaugh unlocked ways to fight foreign interference in U.S. elections

Ellen L. Weintraub, a commissioner on the Federal Election Commission, writes: Among many other recent developments not likely on anyone’s 2020 bingo card, a Supreme Court decision about foreign aid and legalized prostitution has shattered perceived constraints on the authority of the United States to robustly defend its elections against foreign interference. This summer, in U.S. Agency for International Development v. Alliance for Open Society International, the Supreme Court, in a 5-to-3 decision, with the majority opinion written by Justice…

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