Attention to the Unseen

James Comey writes: People have been asking me hard questions. What happened to the leaders in the Trump administration, especially the attorney general, Bill Barr, who I have said was due the benefit of the doubt? How could Mr. Barr, a bright and accomplished lawyer, start channeling the president in using words like “no collusion” and F.B.I. “spying”? And downplaying acts of obstruction of justice as products of the president’s being “frustrated and angry,” something he would never say to…

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Uri Friedman writes: In the effort to topple Nicolás Maduro, Colombia’s ambassador to the United States once told me, the military men propping up Venezuela’s authoritarian president are like chess pieces. If they defect from the regime, “you lose that chess piece,” Francisco Santos explained. “They work better from the inside.” As Tuesday, April 30, began, the United States and its allies thought they finally had checkmate, after months of building up the opposition leader Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s legitimate…

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The Guardian reports: Populists across the world are significantly more likely to believe in conspiracy theories about vaccinations, global warming and the 9/11 terrorist attacks, according to a landmark global survey shared exclusively with the Guardian. The YouGov-Cambridge Globalism Project sheds new light on a section of the world population that appears to have limited faith in scientific experts and representative democracy. Analysis of the survey found the clearest tendency among people with strongly held populist attitudes was a belief…

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Southern Poverty Law Center reports: Thanks to the anonymity of the internet, a man can become a major player in the white supremacist “alt-right” movement without ever revealing his face to his audience. And that’s just what Joseph Jordan did. Jordan, a 30-year-old-man from Queens, New York, with light olive skin, slicked-back hair and rockabilly sideburns, has inhabited the busy, online alt-right persona of “Eric Striker” since at least 2015, Hatewatch determined through over a dozen interviews with people inside…

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Robert Reich writes: On Sunday, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee threatened to subpoena Attorney General William P. Barr if he refuses to testify this week about the Mueller report. But a subpoena is unlikely to elicit Barr’s cooperation. “We’re fighting all the subpoenas,” says the President of the United States. In other words, there is to be no congressional oversight of this administration: No questioning the Attorney General about the Mueller Report. No questioning a Trump adviser about…

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There is not a single American expert on the Muslim Brotherhood who supports designating them as a terrorist group, says @shadihamid. pic.twitter.com/blaOvvSNf7 — Brookings (@BrookingsInst) April 30, 2019 The New York Times reports: The White House is pushing to issue an order that would designate the Muslim Brotherhood a foreign terrorist organization, bringing the weight of American sanctions against a storied and influential Islamist political movement with millions of members across the Middle East, according to officials familiar with the…

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The Washington Post reports: In recent months, U.S. national security officials have been preparing for Russian interference in the 2020 presidential race by tracking cyber threats, sharing intelligence about foreign disinformation efforts with social media companies and helping state election officials protect their systems against foreign manipulation. But these actions are strikingly at odds with statements from President Trump, who has rebuffed warnings from his senior aides about Russia and sought to play down that country’s potential to influence American…

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