Attention to the Unseen

CBS News reports: Pharrell Williams is not “happy” with President Trump. The singer and producer’s lawyer sent the president a cease-and-desist letter on Monday, objecting to the use of the song “Happy” at a recent Trump rally, according The Hollywood Reporter. The president played Williams’ hit song at a political event on Saturday, just hours after a gunman opened fire at Pittsburgh synagogue, killing 11 and wounding at least six others. Mr. Trump spoke at a Future Farmers of America…

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Jelani Cobb writes: On the afternoon that the first of the funerals for the eleven people killed at the Tree of Life synagogue, in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, were held, a crowd began to spill over the street and onto the sidewalks and lawns along a stately stretch of Beechwood Boulevard. There is not a word in the American lexicon for such gatherings—the semi-spontaneous assembly of people in the wake of tragedy, who are united by both grief…

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Vanity Fair‘s Emily Jane Fox reports: During our conversation, [Trump’s former lawyer, Micheal] Cohen recalled a discussion at Trump Tower, following the then-candidate’s return from a campaign rally during the 2016 election cycle. Cohen had watched the rally on TV and noticed that the crowd was largely Caucasian. He offered this observation to his boss. “I told Trump that the rally looked vanilla on television. Trump responded, ‘That’s because black people are too stupid to vote for me.’” (The White…

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Halie Soifer, executive director of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, writes: Trump’s rhetoric matters. He is the President of the United States and he has — at best — been grossly irresponsible and utterly reckless with his words. At worst, he has inspired violence targeting minority groups in a manner reminiscent of the darkest moments in history. Whether Donald Trump himself is an anti-Semite, racist, neo-Nazi or white supremacist is almost irrelevant. Those who align with these movements feel…

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The Hill reports: President Trump said Wednesday that he “wouldn’t be surprised” if billionaire philanthropist George Soros or someone else is funding the caravan of Central American migrants moving toward the U.S. “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Trump told reporters outside the White House when asked if “someone” is paying for the caravan. “George Soros?” a reporter interjected. “I don’t know who, but I wouldn’t be surprised,” Trump said. “A lot of people say yes.” The unfounded conspiracy theory that Soros,…

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The Washington Post reports: U.S. archivists on Wednesday revealed one of the last great secrets of the Watergate investigation — the backbone of a long-sealed report used by special prosecutor Leon Jaworski to send Congress evidence in the legal case against President Richard M. Nixon. The release of the referral — delivered in 1974 as impeachment proceedings were being weighed — came after a former member of Nixon’s defense team and three prominent legal analysts filed separate lawsuits seeking its…

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As nationalism threatens the European peace project, six leading German thinkers write in an open letter: After the 55 million deaths caused by WWII, after centuries of nationalist and imperialist wars left Europe in ruins, the peoples and the national governments across the continent finally realized that European unity was the only way to stop this madness. Immanuel Kant had had this vision 150 years earlier in his philosophical treatise “On Eternal Peace.” So, at long last, Europe’s leaders set…

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The Washington Post reports: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman described slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi as a dangerous Islamist days after his disappearance in a phone call with President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and national security adviser John Bolton, according to people familiar with the discussion. In the call, which occurred before the kingdom publicly acknowledged killing Khashoggi, the crown prince urged Kushner and Bolton to preserve the U.S.-Saudi alliance and said the journalist was a member of the Muslim…

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