Browsed by
Author: From elsewhere

American democracy cannot survive four more years of Trump

American democracy cannot survive four more years of Trump

Ronald Brownstein writes: President Donald Trump’s open admission yesterday that he’s sabotaging the Postal Service to improve his election prospects crystallizes a much larger dynamic: He’s waging an unprecedented campaign to weaponize virtually every component of the federal government to partisan advantage. Trump is systematically enlisting agencies, including the Postal Service, Census Bureau, Department of Justice, and Department of Homeland Security, that traditionally have been considered at least somewhat insulated from political machinations to reward his allies and punish those…

Read More Read More

An inland hurricane tore through Iowa. You probably didn’t hear about it

An inland hurricane tore through Iowa. You probably didn’t hear about it

Lyz Lenz writes: On Monday, Iowa was leveled by what amounted to a level-two hurricane. But you wouldn’t know that from reading, listening to or watching the news. While the storm did garner some coverage, mostly via wire stories, its impact remains underreported days later. The dispatches, focused on crop damage and electrical outages, have been shouted down by the coverage of the veepstakes and the fate of college football. Conservatives’ consternation over the new Cardi B single has gotten…

Read More Read More

Trump’s attacks on the Postal Service deserve sustained, red-alert coverage from the media

Trump’s attacks on the Postal Service deserve sustained, red-alert coverage from the media

Margaret Sullivan writes: Can something as dull-sounding as the workings of the Post Office compete with former Trump attorney’s new tell-all book, whose foreword includes lines like: “From golden showers in a sex club in Vegas, to tax fraud, to deals with corrupt officials from the former Soviet Union, to catch and kill conspiracies to silence Trump’s clandestine lovers, I wasn’t just a witness to the president’s rise — I was an active and eager participant.” Can it break into…

Read More Read More

UPS, FedEx warn they cannot carry ballots like U.S. Postal Service

UPS, FedEx warn they cannot carry ballots like U.S. Postal Service

Reuters reports: United Parcel Service and FedEx on Friday shot down social media calls that they step in to deliver mail-in ballots from the U.S. Postal Service, which is warning states of potentially “significant” delays. “State ballots must be postmarked to be considered valid and only the USPS has lawful postmarking status. Therefore UPS, FedEx and other private parties cannot technically be involved in shipping ballots,” UPS told Reuters in a statement. “FedEx does accept individual ballots, and we advise…

Read More Read More

Israel-UAE deal could open up U.S. weapons sales to Gulf kingdom, experts say

Israel-UAE deal could open up U.S. weapons sales to Gulf kingdom, experts say

Reuters reports: Normalized diplomatic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates could pave the way for more U.S. weapons sales to the Gulf Arab country, according to experts. Israel and the UAE announced on Thursday that they will normalize diplomatic ties and forge a broad new relationship under an accord that U.S. President Donald Trump helped broker. The agreement makes the UAE only the third Arab state after Egypt and Jordan to make such a deal with Israel, which…

Read More Read More

Mitochondria may hold keys to anxiety and mental health

Mitochondria may hold keys to anxiety and mental health

Elizabeth Landau writes: Carmen Sandi recalls the skepticism she faced at first. A behavioral neuroscientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, she had followed a hunch that something going on inside critical neural circuits could explain anxious behavior, something beyond brain cells and the synaptic connections between them. The experiments she began in 2013 showed that neurons involved in anxiety-related behaviors showed abnormalities: Their mitochondria, the organelles often described as cellular power plants, didn’t work well —…

Read More Read More

On the origin of an interstellar species

On the origin of an interstellar species

Caleb Scharf writes: Once upon a time there was a molecule. That molecule, when it reacted with other molecules, set in motion a story that would result in the universe making another molecule almost exactly like that first one. Then that new molecule, when it reacted with other molecules, set in motion a story that would result in another molecule almost exactly like it. And all across the galaxy there were molecules setting stories in motion. A fundamental property of…

Read More Read More

Postal Service warns 46 states their voters could be disenfranchised by delayed mail-in ballots

Postal Service warns 46 states their voters could be disenfranchised by delayed mail-in ballots

The Washington Post reports: Anticipating an avalanche of absentee ballots, the U.S. Postal Service recently sent detailed letters to 46 states and D.C. warning that it cannot guarantee all ballots cast by mail for the November election will arrive in time to be counted — adding another layer of uncertainty ahead of the high-stakes presidential contest. The letters sketch a grim possibility for the tens of millions of Americans eligible for a mail-in ballot this fall: Even if people follow…

Read More Read More

Obama: Trump trying to ‘actively kneecap’ Postal Service to affect 2020 election

Obama: Trump trying to ‘actively kneecap’ Postal Service to affect 2020 election

NBC News reports: Former President Barack Obama, in an interview released Friday, slammed President Donald Trump for trying to “actively kneecap the Postal Service” to affect mail-in voting in the 2020 election and urged lawmakers and citizens to take actions to “protect the integrity” of the election. Obama, speaking on the podcast of his former campaign manager David Plouffe, was responding to recent comments by Trump, who said earlier this week that holding up emergency funds for the U.S. Postal…

Read More Read More

As he attacks mail-in votes, Trump and the first lady requested absentee ballots in Florida

As he attacks mail-in votes, Trump and the first lady requested absentee ballots in Florida

The Washington Post reports: On Thursday, President Trump repeated his attacks against mail balloting, saying it would lead to “the greatest rigged election in history” and “the greatest fraud ever perpetrated.” At the same time, his own absentee ballot to vote in Florida’s primary election on Tuesday was en route to Mar-a-Lago. According to the Palm Beach County elections website, the president and first lady Melania Trump both requested absentee ballots on Wednesday. Trump has voted absentee at least twice…

Read More Read More

The plan that could give us our lives back

The plan that could give us our lives back

Robinson Meyer and Alexis C. Madrigal write: Michael Mina is a professor of epidemiology at Harvard, where he studies the diagnostic testing of infectious diseases. He has watched, with disgust and disbelief, as the United States has struggled for months to obtain enough tests to fight the coronavirus. In January, he assured a newspaper reporter that he had “absolute faith” in the ability of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to contain the virus. By early March, that conviction…

Read More Read More

Black like Kamala

Black like Kamala

Jamelle Bouie writes: Black American identity within the United States emerges from the interaction between structures of oppression — slavery, the slave trade and race hierarchy — and the needs and goals of those enmeshed within them. Slavery bound African captives together into a group; the desire to assert their personhood — to build community, to find respite, to resist — was cause to adopt a common identity. In turn, that common identity gave those individuals and their descendants a…

Read More Read More

Government Accountability Office finds Chad Wolf, Ken Cuccinelli are ineligible to serve in their top DHS roles

Government Accountability Office finds Chad Wolf, Ken Cuccinelli are ineligible to serve in their top DHS roles

Politico reports: Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf and Acting Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli were invalidly appointed to their positions and are ineligible to serve, a congressional watchdog determined Friday. The Government Accountability Office — Congress’ independent investigative arm — concluded that after the resignation of Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen in April 2019, an improper succession occurred, with Kevin McAleenan taking on the position. McAleenan then altered the order of succession for other officials to succeed him after his departure. “Because…

Read More Read More

Former FBI lawyer expected to plead guilty in review of Russia inquiry

Former FBI lawyer expected to plead guilty in review of Russia inquiry

The New York Times reports: A former F.B.I. lawyer intends to plead guilty after he was charged with falsifying a document as part of a deal with prosecutors conducting their own criminal inquiry of the Russia investigation, according his lawyer and court documents made public on Friday. The lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, 38, who was assigned to the Russia investigation, plans to admit that he altered an email from the C.I.A. that investigators relied on to seek renewed court permission in…

Read More Read More