Attention to the Unseen

Mother Jones reports: The GOP-controlled North Carolina legislature, which has already gone to extreme lengths to undermine the will of the voters, is set to pass a new Trump-inspired gerrymandered congressional map this week that is expected to give Republicans one additional seat heading into the midterms. It will make one of the most gerrymandered states in the country even more gerrymandered, likely giving Republicans nearly 80 percent of US House seats in an otherwise closely divided swing state where…

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CNBC reports: The White House on Tuesday dismissed anger over the demolition of parts of the building’s East Wing to build a new ballroom at the behest of President Donald Trump. “In the latest instance of manufactured outrage, unhinged leftists and their Fake News allies are clutching their pearls over President Donald J. Trump’s visionary addition of a grand, privately funded ballroom to the White House,” the White House said in a statement. The White House called the ballroom “a…

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Paul Waldman writes: In my years of writing about politics, there’s one question I’ve gotten more than any other from readers, attendees at bookstore events, and my own friends and family: “But what can we do?” It’s an earnest question born of a dilemma faced by every member of a giant democratic polity such as ours. We’re more attuned than ever to the goings-on in politics and government; the average American living 50 or 100 or 150 years ago had…

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Paul Krugman writes: Last Saturday’s No Kings Day 2 was awesome to behold. The very best of America shone through. From coast to coast, in big cities and small, in red states as well as blue states, Americans peacefully marched to uphold our humanity as a country and to show our solidarity against autocracy and lawlessness. And also awesome were the right-wing attacks on Kings Day 2 participants in the days before the rallies. They were so extreme and so…

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By Andy Kroll This story was originally published by ProPublica On the second day of the federal government shutdown, President Donald Trump shared an AI-generated video set to the classic song “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” by Blue Öyster Cult. The star of that video, which quickly went viral, was Russell Vought, the president’s top budget adviser. More than that, Vought is the architect of Trump’s broader plan to fire civil servants, freeze government programs and dismantle entire agencies, and he’s…

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Politico reports: Paul Ingrassia, President Donald Trump’s embattled nominee to lead the Office of Special Counsel, told a group of fellow Republicans in a text chain the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday should be “tossed into the seventh circle of hell” and said he has “a Nazi streak,” according to a text chat viewed by POLITICO. Ingrassia, who has a Senate confirmation hearing scheduled Thursday, made the remarks in a chain with a half-dozen Republican operatives and influencers, according to…

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Alan Elrod writes: “The Spanish came to America and had sex with every single woman.” “Sex is gay” “Sex? It was rape.” “Epic” This text exchange is part of the cache of messages sent in a Telegram group chat by Young Republicans. In these messages, exposed by POLITICO reporters Jason Beeferman and Emily Ngo, hundreds of racial and homophobic slurs are used by leading Young Republicans, including a Kansas state senator, along with joking references to Hitler and the Holocaust….

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