Attention to the Unseen

The Washington Post reports: After closing off his country at the start of 2020, as covid-19 erupted in neighboring China, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is storming back onto the world stage with a series of audacious moves. He has abandoned North Korea’s seven-decade goal of reuniting with the South. He has dramatically ramped up idol-worship propaganda around himself. And he has sent thousands of North Korean troops to Russia — demonstrating his commitment to an alternative world order…

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The Guardian reports: Take a drive through the Salinas or Central valleys in California and you’ll pass from town to town advertising its specialty fruit or vegetable: strawberries in Watsonville, garlic in Gilroy, pistachios in Avenal and almonds in Ripon. More than 400 types of commodities are grown in the Golden state – including a third of the vegetables and three-quarters of the fruits and nuts produced in the United States. Much of that food is grown by immigrant farm…

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The Washington Post reports: Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, paid a woman who accused him of sexual assault as part of a nondisclosure agreement, though he maintained that their encounter was consensual, according to a statement from his lawyer Saturday and other documents obtained by The Washington Post. Hegseth’s attorney, Timothy Parlatore, said that Hegseth was “visibly intoxicated” at the time of the incident, and maintained that police who were contacted a few days after…

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Cécile Simmons writes: It only took a few hours after news of Donald Trump’s re-election for a sad spectacle to unfold online and beyond. The far-right slogan “Your body, my choice”, tweeted by white nationalist pundit and organiser Nick Fuentes, spread online and off, sparking waves of abuse against women. “You no longer have rights” was one of many similar messages addressed to women by extreme misogynist Andrew Tate, who is facing trial for rape and human trafficking charges in Romania. (He denies these charges.) Meanwhile,…

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Clara Jeffery writes: In the days before the election, when too many stories about deadlocked polls and undecided voters and the MAGAfication of young men began to wear on my soul, I turned to TikTok to see what women were thinking. Soon enough I was swimming in a sea of female excitement and angst. I watched videos of ordinary women of all ages and races—in deep blue districts and deep red ones—describing what this election meant to them. Women who…

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Politico reports: Democrats who won major Senate races have a blunt message for their party: Get a better economic message or keep losing. From Elissa Slotkin in Michigan to Ruben Gallego in Arizona and Adam Schiff in California, these soon-to-be senators took to the Sunday television shows to answer what they did right that other Democrats failed to do. It all came a week after many other Democrats hid from the networks last Sunday, in the aftermath of the election…

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Rolling Stone reports: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is Donald Trump’s pick to run the Department of Health and Human Services, recently called Trump’s diet “poison.” On Saturday, he was photographed on Trump’s plane eating McDonald’s with the president-elect and his inner circle. RFK Jr., who says he wants to operate under the slogan Make America Healthy Again (MAHA), criticized Trump’s diet on a podcast last week. “The stuff that he eats is really, like, bad,” he said. “Campaign food…

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The New York Times reports: Locked out of power next year, Democrats are hatching plans to oppose President-elect Donald J. Trump that look nothing like the liberal “resistance” of 2017. Gone are the pink knit caps and homemade signs from the huge protest that convulsed blue America that year, as exhausted liberals seem more inclined to tune out Mr. Trump than fight. Washington is far different, too. The Republicans who stymied some of Mr. Trump’s first-term agenda are now dead,…

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The New York Times reports: President-elect Donald J. Trump chose his attorney general almost on a whim, in the sky between Washington and Palm Beach, Fla. He scoffed at a candidate for the Department of Homeland Security, then abruptly changed his mind. His defense secretary pick was a snap judgment during a slide presentation at Mar-a-Lago. Emboldened, confident in his instincts and more contemptuous than ever of Washington expertise, Mr. Trump is staffing the most important roles in his government…

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Mother Jones reports: On Wednesday, President-elect Donald Trump announced former Fox News host Pete Hegseth was his pick for secretary of defense. The choice is iconoclastic to say the least. Although Hegseth served as an Army National Guard officer, he has no experience in government leadership that could inform the management of the federal government’s largest agency. What Hegseth does have are connections to the TheoBros, a group of mostly millennial, ultra-conservative men, many of whom proudly call themselves Christian…

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