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Bob Menendez, Al Franken, and the presumption of innocence

Bob Menendez, Al Franken, and the presumption of innocence

Judd Legum writes: “Bob Menendez has been a dedicated public servant and is always fighting hard for the people of New Jersey. He has a right to due process and a fair trial.” That was the response of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to the indictment of Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) on Friday. Federal prosecutors accused Menendez and his wife, Nadine, of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in exchange for using his official position to benefit…

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Biden is presiding over a labor renaissance

Biden is presiding over a labor renaissance

Noah Berlatsky writes: President Joe Biden announced last week that he will join striking United Auto Workers (UAW) workers on the picket line in Michigan on Tuesday. This will likely be the first time a president has ever walked a picket line. Biden is branding himself as a labor president. And his actions are not just symbolic. We are currently in the middle of an era of labor action and labor power unlike anything we have seen in decades. This…

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After summer’s extreme weather, more Americans see climate change as a culprit, AP-NORC poll shows

After summer’s extreme weather, more Americans see climate change as a culprit, AP-NORC poll shows

The Associated Press reports: Kathleen Maxwell has lived in Phoenix for more than 20 years, but this summer was the first time she felt fear, as daily high temperatures soared to 110 degrees or hotter and kept it up for a record-shattering 31 consecutive days. “It’s always been really hot here, but nothing like this past summer,” said Maxwell, 50, who last week opened her windows for the first time since March and walked her dog outdoors for the first…

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Yes, there was global warming in prehistoric times. But nothing in millions of years compares with what we see today

Yes, there was global warming in prehistoric times. But nothing in millions of years compares with what we see today

Michael E. Mann writes: “The climate is always changing!” So goes a popular refrain from climate deniers who continue to claim that there’s nothing special about this particular moment. There is no climate crisis, they say, because the Earth has survived dramatic warming before. Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy recently exemplified misconceptions about our planet’s climate past. When he asserted that “carbon dioxide as a percentage of the atmosphere is still at a relative low through human history,” he didn’t…

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As Trump prosecutions move forward, threats and concerns increase

As Trump prosecutions move forward, threats and concerns increase

The New York Times reports: At the federal courthouse in Washington, a woman called the chambers of the judge assigned to the election interference case against former President Donald J. Trump and said that if Mr. Trump were not re-elected next year, “we are coming to kill you.” At the Federal Bureau of Investigation, agents have reported concerns about harassment and threats being directed at their families amid intensifying anger among Trump supporters about what they consider to be the…

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North Carolina Republicans just passed a massive power grab to seize control of elections

North Carolina Republicans just passed a massive power grab to seize control of elections

Mother Jones reports: North Carolina Republicans on Friday passed a major power grab, stripping the state’s Democratic governor of the authority to appoint a majority of members to state and county election boards and giving the heavily gerrymandered GOP legislature far more influence over how elections are run and certified in the battleground state. In North Carolina, the governor dictates the political makeup of the state and county election boards, which are each composed of five members. Under Democratic Gov….

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A monopoly-busting Amazon lawsuit might be Biden’s boldest move yet to tame tech

A monopoly-busting Amazon lawsuit might be Biden’s boldest move yet to tame tech

Politico reports: A long-awaited antitrust case against Amazon’s massive online retail operations is expected to be filed in federal court as soon as Tuesday, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. The Federal Trade Commission has been preparing a complaint since at least the start of this year targeting an array of Amazon’s business practices. The exact details of the lawsuit are not known, and changes to the final complaint are possible until it’s officially submitted. But personnel…

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Derna’s man-made disaster and the tragedy of Libya’s fate

Derna’s man-made disaster and the tragedy of Libya’s fate

Emadeddin Badi writes: Where the echoes of helpless cries linger amid the ruins of Derna in eastern Libya, its citizens are living a nightmare brought about by the callousness of successive rulers and the unbridled cruelty of military elites. Two dams, remnants of a bygone era under Moammar Gadhafi’s rule, had stood for decades as neglected sentries, guarding a coastal city deliberately left vulnerable to climate-induced changes. As the dams eventually broke under the weight of Mediterranean Storm Daniel’s heavy…

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Saudi Arabia sentences schoolgirl to 18 years over tweets, says rights group

Saudi Arabia sentences schoolgirl to 18 years over tweets, says rights group

Middle East Eye reports: Saudi Arabia has sentenced a secondary schoolgirl to 18 years in jail and a travel ban for posting tweets in support of political prisoners, according to a rights group. On Friday, ALQST rights group, which documents human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia, revealed that the Saudi Specialised Criminal Court handed out the sentence in August to 18-year-old Manal al-Gafiri, who was only 17 at the time of her arrest. The Saudi judiciary, under the de facto…

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A new human species? Mystery surrounds 300,000-year-old fossil

A new human species? Mystery surrounds 300,000-year-old fossil

Nature reports: A fossilized jawbone discovered in a cave in eastern China bears a curious mix of ancient and modern features, according to a detailed analysis that compares it with dozens of other human specimens. The finding, published in the Journal of Human Evolution, indicates that the 300,000-year-old bone could have belonged to an as-yet undescribed species of archaic human. Scientists excavating a cave called Hualongdong, located in Anhui province in eastern China, have unearthed remains of 16 individuals that…

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The wrecking-ball caucus: How the far right brought Washington to its knees

The wrecking-ball caucus: How the far right brought Washington to its knees

The New York Times reports: When it comes to his view of the United States government, Representative Bob Good, a right-wing Republican who represents a Virginia district that was once the domain of Thomas Jefferson, doesn’t mince words. “Most of what Congress does is not good for the American people,” Mr. Good declared in an interview off the House floor as the chamber descended into chaos last week. “Most of what we do as a Congress is totally unjustified.” Though…

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Clarence Thomas’ latest pay-to-play scandal finally connects all the dots

Clarence Thomas’ latest pay-to-play scandal finally connects all the dots

Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern write: ProPublica released a new report on Friday detailing Justice Clarence Thomas’ close relationship with the Koch brothers with previously undisclosed and extraordinarily damning new details. According to ProPublica, the justice developed a friendship with the Kochs as they were funneling hundreds of millions of dollars into right-wing causes, many of which ended up before the Supreme Court. The brothers then used Thomas to raise money for their sprawling network, inviting him to speak…

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Misinformation research is buckling under GOP legal attacks

Misinformation research is buckling under GOP legal attacks

The Washington Post reports: Academics, universities and government agencies are overhauling or ending research programs designed to counter the spread of online misinformation amid a legal campaign from conservative politicians and activists who accuse them of colluding with tech companies to censor right-wing views. The escalating campaign — led by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and other Republicans in Congress and state government — has cast a pall over programs that study not just political falsehoods but also the quality of…

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Lawrence Wright on why domestic terrorism is America’s ‘present enemy’

Lawrence Wright on why domestic terrorism is America’s ‘present enemy’

Democracy in Exile reports: Twenty-two years after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the biggest threat to the United States is not al-Qaeda or another foreign terrorist group, but domestic terrorism, says writer and journalist Lawrence Wright, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. “The present enemy, as far as the United States is concerned, is domestic terrorism,” Wright tells Democracy in Exile in an extensive interview. “And what has happened is that the domestic terrorists are…

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