Attention to the Unseen

Max Fisher and Amanda Taub write: It’s not your imagination, and the last few months are not an outlier: Mass protests are on the rise globally. They’ve been growing more common, year over year, since the end of World War II, now reaching an unprecedented level of frequency. And if it might seem difficult to find a common thread — anti-corruption rallies in Lebanon, separatist demonstrations in Spain, pro-democracy marches in Hong Kong, protests against inequality in Chile and over…

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The Washington Examiner reports: John Kelly warned President Trump that hiring a “yes man” to succeed him as White House chief of staff would lead to impeachment and, in hindsight, regrets his decision to resign. House Democrats launched an impeachment inquiry into Trump less than a year after Kelly departed the administration. The retired, four-star Marine general suggested the blame lies squarely with acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and other advisers who are unable, or unwilling, to…

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Politico reports: Tim Morrison, a National Security Council official who has been identified as a witness to one of the most explosive pieces of evidence unearthed by House impeachment investigators, plans to testify Thursday even if the White House attempts to block him. “If subpoenaed, Mr. Morrison plans to appear for his deposition,” his attorney, Barbara Van Gelder, said. A slew of high-profile witnesses have defied White House, State Department and Pentagon orders not to cooperate with the impeachment probe….

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The Washington Post reports: The peso is falling — and so, it seems, is the sky. Inflation and poverty rates are soaring. National reserves are shrinking fast. In short, Argentina — in a terrible deja vu of crises past — is hurtling once again toward the economic abyss. But on the bar stools and wooden chairs of Santa Evita, a grill house dedicated to Eva “Evita” Perón, the political heroine who died a Broadway-worthy death in 1952, the customers are…

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Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes write: In the spring of 1990, John Feffer, a 26-year-old American, spent several months criss-crossing eastern Europe in hope of unlocking the mystery of its post-communist future and writing a book about the historical transformation unfolding before his eyes. He was no expert, so instead of testing theories, he buttonholed as many people from as many walks of life as possible. The contradictions he encountered were fascinating and puzzling. East Europeans were optimistic but apprehensive….

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The New York Times reports: Nameless, faceless and voiceless, the C.I.A. officer who first triggered the greatest threat to President Trump’s tenure in office seemed to be practically the embodiment of the “deep state” that the president has long accused of trying to take him down. But over the last three weeks, the deep state has emerged from the shadows in the form of real live government officials, past and present, who have defied a White House attempt to block…

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