Attention to the Unseen

Robert Reich writes: In Wednesday night’s Democratic debate, the former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg charged that the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders’ policy proposals would cost $50tn. Holy Indiana. Larry Summers, formerly chief White House economic adviser for Barack Obama, puts the price tag at $60tn. “We are in a kind of new era of radical proposal,” he told CNN. Maya MacGuineas, president of the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, claims Sanders’ agenda would at least double federal…

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The Intercept reports: On Saturday, caucus-goers began gathering around 10 a.m. at the Desert Pines High School in Las Vegas, Nevada. It had started raining early in the morning — a rare occurrence in Las Vegas — and didn’t lighten up until the rain stopped in the early afternoon. The high school, whose mascot is a jaguar, is located in a predominantly Latino, working-class neighborhood. Almost all the caucus-goers were people of color. The school served as the caucus site…

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Sarah Chayes writes: Donald Trump’s decision this week to pardon several Americans convicted of fraud or corruption has garnered condemnation from many in the political establishment. The pardons were shocking to some, but to me they were eerily familiar—straight out of the kleptocratic playbook I’ve experienced and studied in a dozen other countries. I was immediately reminded, for instance, of an episode from August 2010. I had been living and working in Afghanistan for the better part of a decade,…

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Brian Barrett writes: If there’s one line intelligence officials have stuck to about Russian interference in US elections, it’s that it never stopped. Not after the 2016 election, not after the 2018 midterms, and certainly not now, well into the 2020 primary season. Which is why it should be no great surprise that, as The Washington Post first reported Friday, US officials warned Bernie Sanders that Russia is “attempting to help” his presidential campaign. It also shouldn’t be read as…

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The New York Times reports: Richard Grenell’s tenure as the nation’s top intelligence official may be short-lived, but he wasted no time this week starting to shape his team of advisers, ousting his office’s No. 2 official — a longtime intelligence officer — and bringing in an expert on Trump conspiracy theories to help lead the agency, according to officials. Mr. Grenell has also requested the intelligence behind the classified briefing last week before the House Intelligence Committee where officials…

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Politico reports: President Donald Trump arrives Monday in a country featuring the most Trump properties outside the U.S. The White House hopes the visit will advance trade talks and bolster the president’s standing with Indian-Americans ahead of the 2020 election. But it’s also a trip that will create attention that could help Trump-branded properties amid a slumping real estate market and slowing economy in India. Already, in the days leading up to the trip, some Indian media outlets have referenced…

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  Yale University’s Timothy Snyder, a historian and author who has devoted much of his career to understanding the rise of tyranny in different parts of the world, sits down with Ana Cabrera to discuss his concerns about a worrying trend taking root in the U.S.

Zeynep Tufekci writes: China is in the grip of a momentous crisis. The novel coronavirus that emerged late last year has already claimed three times more lives than the SARS outbreak in 2003, and it is still spreading. More than 50 million people (more than the combined metro populations of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and San Francisco) remain under historically unprecedented lockdown, unable to leave their city—and in many cases, even their apartment. Many countries no longer accept visiting…

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The Washington Post reports: U.S. officials have told Sen. Bernie Sanders that Russia is attempting to help his presidential campaign as part of an effort to interfere with the Democratic contest, according to people familiar with the matter. President Trump and lawmakers on Capitol Hill have also been informed about the Russian assistance to the Vermont senator, according to people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence. It is not clear what…

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By Isaac Arnsdorf, ProPublica, February 21, 2020 President Donald Trump’s new acting intelligence director, Richard Grenell, used to do consulting work on behalf of an Eastern European oligarch who is now a fugitive and was recently barred from entering the U.S. under anti-corruption sanctions imposed last month by the State Department. In 2016, Grenell wrote several articles defending the oligarch, a Moldovan politician named Vladimir Plahotniuc, but did not disclose that he was being paid, according to records and interviews….

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Jonathan Blitzer writes: One afternoon in November, a half-dozen government officials sat at a conference table in the White House, waiting for the arrival of Stephen Miller, a senior adviser to Donald Trump. Miller had summoned officials from the Departments of Homeland Security, State, and Justice to discuss a new Administration policy initiative: a series of agreements with the governments of Central America that would force asylum seekers to apply for protection in that region instead of in the United…

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