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Texas is heading down a dangerous path, local leaders warn as coronavirus cases and hospitalizations surge

Texas is heading down a dangerous path, local leaders warn as coronavirus cases and hospitalizations surge

The Texas Tribune reports: As Texas’ coronavirus cases and hospitalizations continue to break records for a second straight week, leaders and health experts in the largest cities are warning that the state is heading down a dangerous path and hospitals could soon be overwhelmed. Gov. Greg Abbott struck a more urgent tone Monday, calling the increases in hospitalizations and cases across the state unacceptable. He said the state would only shut down businesses again as a last resort but cautioned…

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Trump joked about Covid testing slowdown? He denies it while Fauci and Birx call for increase

Trump joked about Covid testing slowdown? He denies it while Fauci and Birx call for increase

ABC News reports: The White House said Monday that President Donald Trump was speaking only in “jest” when he said at Saturday night’s rally that he told officials to slow down testing for the coronavirus and that he had not actually ordered anyone to do so. “No, he has not directed that,” White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said in an exchange with ABC News’ Ben Gittleson in Monday’s press briefing and added that “any suggestion that testing has been…

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In American journalism, objective truth is decided almost exclusively by white reporters and their mostly white bosses

In American journalism, objective truth is decided almost exclusively by white reporters and their mostly white bosses

Wesley Lowery writes: It was a brief interaction, during the first weeks of my career. There had been a stabbing, and I’d been dispatched to a block in Roxbury, a predominantly black section of Boston, to snag quotes from anyone who might know anything about what had happened. “Who are you with?” inquired the first person I had approached, a black man in his 50s. “The Globe?” he exclaimed after hearing my response. “The Globe doesn’t have black reporters. What…

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State terrorism: A low-flying ‘show of force’

State terrorism: A low-flying ‘show of force’

The Washington Post reports: Hemmed in by police on all sides, Camellia Magness feared that the military helicopter descending on downtown Washington might unleash a final assault on protesters. It was June 1, nearly three hours after federal police in riot gear charged largely peaceful demonstrators as they gathered near the White House to protest after the killing of George Floyd. Magness and others had lingered downtown past a 7 p.m. curfew. Military helicopters had been flying high overhead, seeming…

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CHOP’s legacy: ‘This has been a life-changing experience. For all of us’

CHOP’s legacy: ‘This has been a life-changing experience. For all of us’

The Seattle Times reports: On a sunny Monday morning, after a weekend that saw two nighttime shootings, the streets and fields of CHOP (Capitol Hill Organized Protest) were mostly deserted. Just a few days ago, the 24/7 protest, which occupies several blocks around Cal Anderson Park and a recently abandoned police precinct, had been bustling with life: activists; rubberneckers; reporters; volunteer security guards, some openly carrying guns; masked medics. But after two bursts of gunfire on successive nights — two…

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Trump vows to quash potential ‘autonomous zone’ in D.C.

Trump vows to quash potential ‘autonomous zone’ in D.C.

Politico reports: President Donald Trump on Tuesday vowed to stamp out any protesters seeking to establish a so-called “autonomous zone” in the nation’s capital, echoing conservative outrage over the prospect of police-free enclaves cropping up in major American cities. “There will never be an ‘Autonomous Zone’ in Washington, D.C., as long as I’m your President,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “If they try they will be met with serious force!” The president’s social media post comes after U.S. Park Police officers…

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A Republican war to control election maps for next decade

A Republican war to control election maps for next decade

The Guardian reports: A little-known Republican group is ramping up millions of dollars in funding from major US corporations such as CitiGroup and Chevron to protect the conservative stronghold on the country. The Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) – which held the key to the GOP’s political takeover a decade ago – launched the Right Lines 2020 campaign last September, taglined: “Socialism starts in the states. Let’s stop it there, too.” It’s hoping to meet a $125m investment goal in…

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Amid threats and political pushback, public health officials are leaving their posts

Amid threats and political pushback, public health officials are leaving their posts

The Washington Post reports: For Lauri Jones, the trouble began in early May. The director of a small public health department in Washington state was working with a family under quarantine because of coronavirus exposure. When she heard one family member had been out in the community, Jones decided to check in. The routine phone call launched a nightmare. “Someone posted on social media that we had violated their civil liberties [and] named me by name,” Jones recalled. “They said,…

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Three plausible — and troubling — reasons why Bill Barr tried to force Geoffrey Berman out

Three plausible — and troubling — reasons why Bill Barr tried to force Geoffrey Berman out

Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes write: The big question is why. Why would the president fire a federal prosecutor just five months before an election, with no indication of wrongdoing on the prosecutor’s part, in a manner sure to ignite controversy? Three days into the scandal around the abrupt dismissal of the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Geoffrey Berman, we still have no answers. The administration’s handling of Berman’s firing was comically—and typically—inept: The Justice Department…

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What Fiona Hill learned in the White House

What Fiona Hill learned in the White House

Adam Entous writes: The Brookings Institution is one of many think tanks in Washington, D.C., where scholars and bureaucrats sit in quiet offices and wait by the phone. They write op-eds and books, give talks and convene seminars, hoping that, when reputations falter or Administrations shift, they will be rescued from the life of opining and contemplation and return to the adrenaline rush and consequence of government. Nearly always, the yearning is to be inside. Strobe Talbott, who became the…

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Trump’s Oklahoma debacle

Trump’s Oklahoma debacle

Politico reports: Following an uproar over the initial decision to hold the rally on Juneteenth, a holiday celebrating the emancipation of slaves, the president pushed the event a day later. Still, interest in the event was high. About 1.1 million people registered to attend, forcing aides to begin making plans to stage an added outdoor event. Aides knew the 1.1 million figure was inflated: After sorting through the sign-ups — a process that included looking at registrants’ voting histories —…

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Art, adornment and sophisticated hunting technologies flourished not only in prehistoric Europe but across the globe

Art, adornment and sophisticated hunting technologies flourished not only in prehistoric Europe but across the globe

Gaia Vince writes: In 1868, workmen near the hamlet of Les Eyzies-de-Tayac-Sireuil in southwestern France opened up a rock shelter and found animal bones, flints and, most intriguingly, human skulls. Work on the road was paused while a geologist, Louis Lartet, was called to excavate the site. What he discovered would transform our understanding of the origins of humanity. Lartet unearthed the partial skeletons of four adults and an infant at the Cro-Magnon rock shelter, as well as perforated shells…

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Halos of clay can preserve billion-year-old microbes

Halos of clay can preserve billion-year-old microbes

Meredith Fore writes: Putting together the history of life on Earth has a major stumbling block: Prior to about 540 million years ago, most life was squishy and microbial, which meant it rarely fossilized. This major blind spot makes it difficult for researchers to study ancient life at a key point in Earth’s evolutionary history, and even more difficult to potentially find evidence of ancient microbial life on Mars. But a recent study of kaolinite, an aluminum-rich clay, gives researchers…

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How many needless Covid-19 deaths were caused by delays in responding? Most of them

How many needless Covid-19 deaths were caused by delays in responding? Most of them

Isaac Sebenius and James K. Sebenius write: More than 120,000 Americans have now perished from Covid-19, surpassing the total number of U.S. dead during World War I. Had American leaders taken the decisive, early measures that several other nations took when they had exactly the same information the U.S. did, at exactly the same time in their experience of the novel coronavirus, how many of these Covid-19 deaths could have been prevented? That isn’t a hypothetical question. And the answer…

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