Browsed by
Author: From elsewhere

Bill Barr’s hidden truths about Justice Department’s rule of forbearance in an election

Bill Barr’s hidden truths about Justice Department’s rule of forbearance in an election

Ryan Goodman writes: With unprecedented numbers of Americans starting to cast early votes in the presidential election come mid-September, many eyes are on what Attorney General William Barr and his colleagues in the Justice Department will do. If they abide by a longstanding Justice Department rule of forbearance — sometimes called the 60 or 90-day rule — they will refrain from public indictments or other overt disclosures in cases that could affect the election. Prosecutors would, instead, conscientiously defer such…

Read More Read More

White House covered up Covid-19 public health risks while privately warning states of the threat

White House covered up Covid-19 public health risks while privately warning states of the threat

Politico reports: Senior Trump administration officials in June privately warned seven states about dangerous coronavirus outbreaks that put them in the highest risk “red zone” while publicly dismissing concerns about a second wave of Covid-19, according to White House documents House Democrats released on Monday. The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis released eight weeks of previously confidential reports obtained from the White House coronavirus task force that Democrats said showed the administration acting over the summer to willfully…

Read More Read More

New Trump pandemic adviser pushes controversial ‘herd immunity’ strategy, worrying public health officials

New Trump pandemic adviser pushes controversial ‘herd immunity’ strategy, worrying public health officials

The Washington Post reports: One of President Trump’s top medical advisers is urging the White House to embrace a controversial “herd immunity” strategy to combat the pandemic, which would entail allowing the coronavirus to spread through most of the population to quickly build resistance to the virus, while taking steps to protect those in nursing homes and other vulnerable populations, according to five people familiar with the discussions. The administration has already begun to implement some policies along these lines,…

Read More Read More

Trump’s popularity slips in latest Military Times poll — and more troops say they’ll vote for Biden

Trump’s popularity slips in latest Military Times poll — and more troops say they’ll vote for Biden

Military Times reports: The latest Military Times poll shows a continued decline in active-duty service members’ views of President Donald Trump and a slight but significant preference for former Vice President Joe Biden in the upcoming November election among troops surveyed. The results, collected before the political conventions earlier this month, appear to undercut claims from the president that his support among military members is strong thanks to big defense budget increases in recent years and promised moves to draw…

Read More Read More

The Oath Keepers are today’s Blackshirts

The Oath Keepers are today’s Blackshirts

Casey Michel writes: When [Stewart] Rhodes launched the Oath Keepers in 2009, he positioned the group as a disinterested platoon of law enforcement officers, military members, and other assorted volunteers looking simply to uphold their oaths to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Their fear was that an unscrupulous, overreaching president might order cops and service members to violate the rights of their own countrymen. This had nothing to do with…

Read More Read More

Court denies Flynn’s bid to end case and renews fight over McGahn subpoena

Court denies Flynn’s bid to end case and renews fight over McGahn subpoena

The New York Times reports: A Federal District Court judge may go forward with his plans to scrutinize the Justice Department’s request to drop the prosecution of President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn, a full appeals court ruled on Monday. A three-judge panel on the court had earlier ordered the judge to end the case immediately. Separately, a panel on that same court ruled for a second time that the House cannot sue Donald F. McGahn II,…

Read More Read More

Ayahuasca helps traumatized war veterans rediscover their humanity

Ayahuasca helps traumatized war veterans rediscover their humanity

The New York Times reports: Before their first ayahuasca ceremony, the veterans met individually with two Peruvian “maestros,” or healers, from the Shipibo community in Peru. “Their hearts are hardened,” said Teobaldo Ochavano, who helps run the nighttime ceremonies alongside his wife, Marina Sinti. “They seemed unable to experience love or joy.” Ms. Sinti said years of interacting with foreigners on retreats had made it painfully clear why these rituals are in such high demand. “People in the United States…

Read More Read More

Justice Dept. never fully examined Trump’s ties to Russia, ex-officials say

Justice Dept. never fully examined Trump’s ties to Russia, ex-officials say

The New York Times reports: The Justice Department secretly took steps in 2017 to narrow the investigation into Russian election interference and any links to the Trump campaign, according to former law enforcement officials, keeping investigators from completing an examination of President Trump’s decades-long personal and business ties to Russia. The special counsel who finished the investigation, Robert S. Mueller III, secured three dozen indictments and convictions of some top Trump advisers, and he produced a report that outlined Russia’s…

Read More Read More

Inside Trump’s pressure campaign on federal scientists over a covid-19 treatment

Inside Trump’s pressure campaign on federal scientists over a covid-19 treatment

The Washington Post reports: President Trump’s accusatory tweet barreled in at 7:49 a.m. a week ago Saturday: The “deep state” at the Food and Drug Administration was trying to sandbag his election prospects by slowing progress on coronavirus treatments and vaccines until after Nov. 3. Shocked and upset, FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn, who was tagged in the tweet, immediately began calling his contacts at the White House to find out why the president was angry. During his conversations, he mentioned…

Read More Read More

Trump embraces fringe theories on protests and the coronavirus

Trump embraces fringe theories on protests and the coronavirus

The New York Times reports: President Trump unleashed an especially intense barrage of Twitter messages over the weekend, embracing fringe conspiracy theories claiming that the coronavirus death toll has been exaggerated and that street protests are actually an organized coup d’état against him. In a concentrated predawn burst, the president posted or reposted 89 messages between 5:49 a.m. and 8:04 a.m. on Sunday on top of 18 the night before, many of them inflammatory comments or assertions about violent clashes…

Read More Read More

Trump threatens Portland mayor — ‘he hasn’t seen anything yet’ — after fatal shooting

Trump threatens Portland mayor — ‘he hasn’t seen anything yet’ — after fatal shooting

The New York Times reports: A fatal shooting during a night of political conflict in Portland, Ore., has yet again escalated tensions in the city and further inflamed the issues of crime, protest and race that President Trump is trying to make a focus of presidential politics. A man affiliated with a right-wing group was shot and killed on Saturday as a large group of supporters of President Trump traveled in a caravan through downtown Portland, Ore., which has seen…

Read More Read More

Big Oil is in trouble. Its plan: Flood Africa with plastic

Big Oil is in trouble. Its plan: Flood Africa with plastic

The New York Times reports: Confronting a climate crisis that threatens the fossil fuel industry, oil companies are racing to make more plastic. But they face two problems: Many markets are already awash with plastic, and few countries are willing to be dumping grounds for the world’s plastic waste. The industry thinks it has found a solution to both problems in Africa. According to documents reviewed by The New York Times, an industry group representing the world’s largest chemical makers…

Read More Read More

How Angela Merkel’s great migrant gamble paid off

How Angela Merkel’s great migrant gamble paid off

The Observer reports: Mohammad Hallak found the key to unlock the mysteries of his new homeland when he realised you could switch the subtitles on your Netflix account to German. The 21-year-old Syrian from Aleppo jotted down words he didn’t know, increased his vocabulary and quickly became fluent. Last year, he passed his end of high school exams with a grade of 1.5, the top mark in his year group. Five years to the month after arriving in Germany as…

Read More Read More

An American disaster foretold

An American disaster foretold

Roger Cohen writes: Henry Kissinger this month called François Delattre, the former French ambassador to the United States who is now the secretary general of the Foreign Ministry. Kissinger was concerned about the deteriorating state of U.S.-Chinese relations and the risk that the situation could slip out of control. Delattre told me he has his own concerns in that regard. An October surprise might involve a military incident in the South China Sea that President Trump uses to demonstrate American…

Read More Read More