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Multiple states are criminalizing free speech

Multiple states are criminalizing free speech

The Intercept reports: Prosecutors and lawmakers in several states have responded to mass protests against police brutality by charging demonstrators with committing felonies, including terrorism charges. The trend of criminalizing protest has been on the uptick since the 2016 protests against the Dakota Access pipeline at Standing Rock, during and after which numerous states upped charges for protests “near critical infrastructure” as felonies. Since 2016, 14 states have enacted new laws to restrict the right to peaceful assembly, according to…

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White House creating ‘very large’ dossier on journalist who reports on flow of tax dollars into Trump Organization

White House creating ‘very large’ dossier on journalist who reports on flow of tax dollars into Trump Organization

The Washington Post reports: The Secret Service had asked for a room close to the president. But Mar-a-Lago said it was too late. The room was booked. Would agents like a room across the street from the president, instead? “I do have a Beach Cabana available,” a staff member at President Trump’s club in Palm Beach, Fla., wrote in March 2017 to a Secret Service agent seeking rooms for the upcoming weekend. “Across the street at the Beach Club, North…

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Vindman twin accused top NSC officials of misconduct, claims retaliation

Vindman twin accused top NSC officials of misconduct, claims retaliation

Politico reports: A former senior ethics official and lawyer on the National Security Council has filed a complaint with a Pentagon watchdog raising concerns that he was retaliated against for reporting that the national security adviser and his chief of staff “committed several ethics and legal compliance violations” late last year and into 2020. Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman, the twin brother of impeachment witness Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman (Ret.), filed the complaint on August 18, according to his attorneys and…

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China has secretly built a vast new infrastructure to imprison Muslims

China has secretly built a vast new infrastructure to imprison Muslims

BuzzFeed reports: China has secretly built scores of massive new prison and internment camps in the past three years, dramatically escalating its campaign against Muslim minorities even as it publicly claimed the detainees had all been set free. The construction of these purpose-built, high-security camps — some capable of housing tens of thousands of people — signals a radical shift away from the country’s previous makeshift use of public buildings, like schools and retirement homes, to a vast and permanent…

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The return of existentialism

The return of existentialism

Carmen Lea Dege writes: Existentialist ideas have seen a remarkable comeback during the COVID-19 pandemic, from Albert Camus’s frequently invoked novel The Plague, Friedrich Nietzsche’s turn to tragedy, and Simone de Beauvoir’s and Jean-Paul Sartre’s critique of bad faith, to Giorgio Agamben’s Carl Schmitt–inspired musings about the state of emergency and what Michel de Montaigne, Martin Heidegger, and Blaise Pascal can teach us about facing death. The thread running through all these appeals to existentialism is a sensitivity to human…

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They tried to get Trump to care about right-wing terrorism. He ignored them

They tried to get Trump to care about right-wing terrorism. He ignored them

Politico reports: Elizabeth Neumann spent March 13 and 14 of 2019 at a conference in the picturesque Spanish port city of Málaga. The topic: terrorism. Western leaders were deeply worried about the dangers foreign terrorist fighters traveling back from places like Iraq, Libya and Syria would pose to their home countries. And that’s what Neumann expected to dominate the two-day event. Neumann was DHS’s assistant secretary for threat prevention and security policy at the time, handling counterterrorism work from the…

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The Kenosha shooting suspect was in the front row of a Trump rally in January

The Kenosha shooting suspect was in the front row of a Trump rally in January

BuzzFeed reports: The law enforcement–obsessed 17-year-old who was charged with shooting and killing two people and injuring another in Kenosha, Wisconsin, during protests for Jacob Blake appeared in the front row at a Donald Trump rally in January. Kyle Howard Rittenhouse’s social media presence is filled with him posing with weapons, posting “Blue Lives Matter,” and supporting Trump for president. Footage from the Des Moines, Iowa, rally on Jan. 30 shows Rittenhouse feet away from the president, in the front…

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CDC makes ‘potentially dangerous’ guidelines change for people exposed to coronavirus

CDC makes ‘potentially dangerous’ guidelines change for people exposed to coronavirus

The New York Times reports: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention quietly modified its coronavirus testing guidelines this week to exclude people who do not have symptoms of Covid-19 — even if they have been recently exposed to the virus. Experts questioned the revision, pointing to the importance of identifying infections in the small window immediately before the onset of symptoms, when many individuals appear to be most contagious. Models suggest that about half of transmission events can be…

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How Mike Pence slowed down the coronavirus response

How Mike Pence slowed down the coronavirus response

Politico reports: Mike Pence had just accepted the biggest assignment of his political life, overseeing the nation’s response to the emerging Covid-19 virus, when White House officials confronted the vice president with an urgent question: what to do about the cruise ships? It was the last weekend of February, and the nation’s top health officials had concluded that cruise lines were a major factor in spreading the virus — each vessel a potential hothouse of invisible infections. Hundreds of passengers…

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U.S. service members injured in Syria after skirmish with Russian forces

U.S. service members injured in Syria after skirmish with Russian forces

Politico reports: U.S. service members were injured after an altercation with Russian forces in northeast Syria on Wednesday, according to a draft military statement and a person familiar with the matter. Four U.S. troops have been diagnosed with mild concussion-like symptoms after the incident involving Russian and coalition armored vehicles, according to the statement reviewed by POLITICO. A second U.S. source briefed on the matter confirmed that multiple U.S. troops were injured. After POLITICO first published this story on Wednesday,…

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Intel officials contradict Trump on voting by mail

Intel officials contradict Trump on voting by mail

Politico reports: The intelligence community has seen no evidence that foreign powers intend to manipulate mail-in voting in the 2020 election, senior Trump administration officials said Wednesday, undercutting a claim by President Donald Trump that such fraud “will be the scandal of our times.” “We have no information or intelligence that any nation-state threat actor is engaging in any activity to undermine the mail-in vote or ballots,” said a top official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence,…

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Population panic lets rich people off the hook for the climate crisis they are fueling

Population panic lets rich people off the hook for the climate crisis they are fueling

George Monbiot writes: When a major study was published last month, showing that the global population is likely to peak then crash much sooner than most scientists had assumed, I naively imagined that people in rich nations would at last stop blaming all the world’s environmental problems on population growth. I was wrong. If anything, it appears to have got worse. Next week the BirthStrike movement – founded by women who, by announcing their decision not to have children, seek…

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Wade Davis on the unraveling of America

Wade Davis on the unraveling of America

  Wade Davis writes: Never in our lives have we experienced such a global phenomenon. For the first time in the history of the world, all of humanity, informed by the unprecedented reach of digital technology, has come together, focused on the same existential threat, consumed by the same fears and uncertainties, eagerly anticipating the same, as yet unrealized, promises of medical science. In a single season, civilization has been brought low by a microscopic parasite 10,000 times smaller than…

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Number of voters who are deeply engaged on issue of climate change is rising sharply

Number of voters who are deeply engaged on issue of climate change is rising sharply

The New York Times reports: The number of Americans who feel passionately about climate change is rising sharply, and the issue appears likely to play a more important role in this year’s election than ever before, a new survey shows. What’s more, despite the turmoil caused by overlapping national and global crises, support for action to curb climate change has not diminished. Backing for government to do more to deal with global warming, at 68 percent in May of 2018,…

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