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Trump nominates former lobbyist for the fossil fuel industry as the next Interior secretary

Trump nominates former lobbyist for the fossil fuel industry as the next Interior secretary

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The Washington Post reports: President Trump announced Monday that he will nominate David Bernhardt, a veteran lobbyist who has helped orchestrate the administration’s push to expand oil and gas drilling as the Interior Department’s number-two official, to serve as the next secretary. If confirmed, Bernhardt, a 49-year old Colorado native known for his unrelenting work habits, would be well positioned to roll back even more of the Obama-era conservation policies he has worked to unravel since joining Interior a year…

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Trump administration is slower to fill jobs and has higher turnover than any other administration

Trump administration is slower to fill jobs and has higher turnover than any other administration

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The Washington Post reports: From the Justice Department to Veterans Affairs, vast swaths of the government have top positions filled by officials serving in an acting capacity — or no one at all. More than two years into Trump’s term, the president has an acting chief of staff, attorney general, defense secretary, Office of Management and Budget director and Environmental Protection Agency chief. To deal with the number of vacancies in the upper ranks of departments, agencies have been relying…

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Most Americans support appropriate levels of taxation on those with excessive wealth

Most Americans support appropriate levels of taxation on those with excessive wealth

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Politico reports: The prospect of 70 percent tax rates for multimillionaires and special levies on the super-rich draw howls about creeping socialism and warnings of economic disaster in much of Washington. But polling suggests that when it comes to soaking the rich, the American public is increasingly on board. Surveys are showing overwhelming support for raising taxes on top earners, including a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll released Monday that found 76 percent of registered voters believe the wealthiest Americans should…

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David Wallace-Wells on climate: ‘we have done more damage knowingly than we ever managed in ignorance’

David Wallace-Wells on climate: ‘we have done more damage knowingly than we ever managed in ignorance’

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Jonathan Watts writes: David Wallace-Wells’s apocalyptic depiction of a world made uninhabitable by climate chaos caused an outcry when it was published in New York magazine in 2017. Based on the worst-case scenarios foreseen by science, his article portrayed a world of drought, plague and famine, in which acidified oceans drown coastal homelands, dormant diseases are released from ancient ice, conflicts surge, economies collapse, human cognitive abilities decline and heat stress becomes more intolerable in New York City than in…

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Welcome to the new age of nuclear instability

Welcome to the new age of nuclear instability

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Rachel Bronson writes: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s announcement on Friday that the United States is suspending the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty should worry everyone. The I.N.F. is a landmark treaty and it has made the world a safe place. It was the first nuclear agreement to ever outlaw an entire class of weapons. The Trump administration has dismissed the I.N.F. as irrelevant because Russia has abrogated its commitment to it by developing a treaty-busting cruise missile of its own….

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John Bolton is a serial arms control killer

John Bolton is a serial arms control killer

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Joseph Cirincione writes: John Bolton relishes in targeting nuclear arms treaties. He is very good at it. The U.S. national security adviser’s latest hit is the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, but his list of victims goes back decades. He had a hand in either the U.S. withdrawal or repeal of Richard Nixon’s Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, Bill Clinton’s Agreed Framework with North Korea and Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal. Now he has helped put the knife into Ronald Reagan’s landmark…

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How will John Roberts respond to a constitutional crisis?

How will John Roberts respond to a constitutional crisis?

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Michael O’Donnell writes: Two years ago, Chief Justice John Roberts gave the commencement address at the Cardigan Mountain School, in New Hampshire. The ninth-grade graduates of the all-boys school included his son, Jack. Parting with custom, Roberts declined to wish the boys luck. Instead he said that, from time to time, “I hope you will be treated unfairly, so that you will come to know the value of justice.” He went on, “I hope you’ll be ignored, so you know…

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Regulate social media now. The future of democracy is at stake

Regulate social media now. The future of democracy is at stake

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Anne Applebaum writes: A few days ago, ProPublica, an independent, nonprofit newsroom, discovered that a tool it was using to track political advertising on Facebook had been quietly disabled — by Facebook. The browser extension had detected political ad campaigns and gathered details on the ads’ target audiences. Facebook also tracks political ad campaigns, but sometimes it fails to detect them. For the past year, the company had accepted corrections from ProPublica — until one day it decided it didn’t…

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Sorry, Republicans. You can’t call out Northam for racism and give Trump a pass

Sorry, Republicans. You can’t call out Northam for racism and give Trump a pass

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Tom Nichols writes: Finally, the GOP is calling out a chief executive for his appalling insensitivity on an issue of race: Saturday, via Twitter, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the highest-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, decried that chief executive’s “past racist behavior” and said “He should resign.” In two tweets posted on Saturday, Republican Party chair Ronna McDaniel listed off what she sees as that same chief executive’s callousness on race, including, apparently, his appearance, in a photo,…

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How Cory Booker got his real education

How Cory Booker got his real education

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Michael Grunwald writes: Senator Cory Booker was educated at Stanford, Oxford and Yale, but he likes to say he got his real education at Brick Towers, the dilapidated and dangerous housing project in inner-city Newark where he spent eight years as a tenant—not by necessity, but by choice. Living in a 16th-floor apartment that often lacked heat, hot water and elevator service, among poor neighbors trapped on the slum side of the American Dream, this celebrated black prodigy from a…

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Tens of thousands of protesters in Venezuela demand Maduro’s exit

Tens of thousands of protesters in Venezuela demand Maduro’s exit

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The Guardian reports: Tens of thousands of Venezuelan protesters streamed on to the streets of the capital on Saturday for what they described as the final push to force Nicolás Maduro from power. “I believe [the end] is coming very soon – this week,” said Barbara Angarita, 49, as she and thousands of other demonstrators poured down the Avenida Principal de las Mercedes in Caracas. “We must have a free country, free for all Venezuelans and for our descendants.” The…

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How Trump’s wall would harm immigrants and refugees

How Trump’s wall would harm immigrants and refugees

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Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin writes: Is the border wall ethical? President Trump has suggested the wall is moral and those who oppose it immoral. His critics claim the opposite. To answer this, we have to consider its effect on humans. What harm could a border wall cause to immigrants and refugees, all of whom are equal to us in the eyes of God? Some people who cross the border are in desperate search of work to support their families. A…

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Why Trump’s most reliable lender decided in 2016 he had become too risky for another loan

Why Trump’s most reliable lender decided in 2016 he had become too risky for another loan

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The New York Times reports: Donald J. Trump was burning through cash. It was early 2016, and he was lending tens of millions of dollars to his presidential campaign and had been spending large sums to expand the Trump Organization’s roster of high-end properties. To finance his business’s growth, Mr. Trump turned to a longtime ally, Deutsche Bank, one of the few banks still willing to lend money to the man who has called himself “The King of Debt.” Mr….

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Russia sees how Tulsi Gabbard could be useful during 2020 race

Russia sees how Tulsi Gabbard could be useful during 2020 race

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NBC News reports: The Russian propaganda machine that tried to influence the 2016 U.S. election is now promoting the presidential aspirations of a controversial Hawaii Democrat who earlier this month declared her intention to run for president in 2020. An NBC News analysis of the main English-language news sites employed by Russia in its 2016 election meddling shows Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who is set to make her formal announcement Saturday, has become a favorite of the sites Moscow…

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