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Attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband follows years of GOP demonizing her

Attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband follows years of GOP demonizing her

The Washington Post reports: In 2010, Republicans launched a “Fire Pelosi” project — complete with a bus tour, a #FIREPELOSI hashtag and images of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) engulfed in Hades-style flames — devoted to retaking the House and demoting Pelosi from her perch as speaker. Eleven years later, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) joked that if he becomes the next leader of the House, “it will be hard not to hit” Pelosi with the speaker’s gavel. And…

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Twitter roils with hate speech as trolls test Musk’s self-described free speech absolutism

Twitter roils with hate speech as trolls test Musk’s self-described free speech absolutism

Bloomberg reports: In the wake of Elon Musk buying Twitter Inc., a tide of slurs and racist memes swelled on the platform, sparking concern that the site is entering an era of hateful speech. Twitter has long wrestled with how to enforce content policies fairly on its platform in order to appease the advertisers, users and powerful world leaders that use its service. But as Musk, a self-styled “free speech absolutist,” took over ownership of the company, some conservative officials,…

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American Jews start to think the unthinkable

American Jews start to think the unthinkable

Dana Milbank writes: [U]ntil the American experiment, Jews in the diaspora were marginalized, ghettoized, persecuted and eventually converted, exiled or killed. “As Jews, we know at some point the music stops,” [the Anti-Defamation League’s Jonathan] Greenblatt said. “This is burned into the collective consciousness of every Jewish person.” The United States has until now been different because of our constitutional protections of minority rights: our bedrock principles of equal treatment under law, free expression and free exercise of religion. Now,…

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Leadership during crisis: A conversation with Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki

Leadership during crisis: A conversation with Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki

  Poland, which shares over 300 miles of its borders with Russia, has provided massive military support to Ukraine and refuge to millions of Ukrainians fleeing Putin’s aggression. On Tuesday, October 25, the Washington Post’s David Ignatius talked to Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki about the current course of the war, fears of a growing energy crisis this winter and his country’s relationship with the European Union.

COVID-19 origins: Investigating a ‘complex and grave situation’ inside a Wuhan lab

COVID-19 origins: Investigating a ‘complex and grave situation’ inside a Wuhan lab

By Katherine Eban, Vanity Fair, and Jeff Kao, ProPublica “A Secret Language of Chinese Officialdom” Toy Reid has always had a gift for languages — one that would carry him far from what he calls his “very blue-collar” roots in Greenville, South Carolina. In high school, Spanish came easily. At nearby Furman University, where he became the first person in his family to attend college, he studied Japanese. Then, “clueless but curious,” as he puts it, he channeled his fascination…

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World close to ‘irreversible’ climate breakdown, warn major studies

World close to ‘irreversible’ climate breakdown, warn major studies

The Guardian reports: The climate crisis has reached a “really bleak moment”, one of the world’s leading climate scientists has said, after a slew of major reports laid bare how close the planet is to catastrophe. Collective action is needed by the world’s nations more now than at any point since the second world war to avoid climate tipping points, Prof Johan Rockström said, but geopolitical tensions are at a high. He said the world was coming “very, very close…

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Strongman politics remain a major threat to climate action, experts warn

Strongman politics remain a major threat to climate action, experts warn

Inside Climate News reports: It hasn’t been a great year for democracy. In February, Vladimir Putin, Russia’s ironfisted leader, shocked the world by invading Ukraine, which sparked a global energy crisis and left Western democracies scrambling to respond. Weeks later in April, strongman politician Viktor Orbán was reelected as the president of Hungary, despite being accused of rigging the election and using his power to jail and intimidate journalists. Soon after, far-right leaders with neo-facist roots were also elected into…

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As temperatures fall, Russia steps up attacks on Ukraine’s vulnerable power grid

As temperatures fall, Russia steps up attacks on Ukraine’s vulnerable power grid

Michael Weiss and James Rushton report: Large parts of the Ukrainian capital have been experiencing rolling blackouts in recent weeks, after increased Russian attacks over the past month that have destroyed an estimated 30% of Ukraine’s power and heating generation capacity. Kyiv has accused Russia, which continues to suffer a string of embarrassing setbacks on the battlefield, of pursuing a determined strategy of targeting such facilities in order both to increase Ukrainian refugee flows into Europe and to freeze the…

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Inside the secretive effort by Trump allies to access voting machines

Inside the secretive effort by Trump allies to access voting machines

The Washington Post reports: A week after the 2020 election, as Donald Trump raged over what he claimed was rampant fraud, officials in a rural county in southern Georgia received a disturbing report from the employee who ran their elections. New voting machines in use across the state could “very easily” be manipulated to flip votes from one candidate to another, she claimed at a meeting of the county elections board, and ballots could be scanned and counted more than…

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Top national-security prosecutor joins Trump Mar-a-Lago investigation

Top national-security prosecutor joins Trump Mar-a-Lago investigation

The Washington Post reports: One of the Justice Department’s most experienced national security prosecutors has joined the team overseeing the intensifying investigation of classified documents at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and private club, people familiar with the matter said. National security law experts interviewed by The Washington Post say prosecutors appear to have amassed evidence in the case that would meet some of the criteria for bringing charges against the former president — an unprecedented action that they said likely…

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45% of Americans say U.S. should be a ‘Christian nation’ but there is no consensus on what that means

45% of Americans say U.S. should be a ‘Christian nation’ but there is no consensus on what that means

Pew Research Center: Growing numbers of religious and political leaders are embracing the “Christian nationalist” label, and some dispute the idea that the country’s founders wanted a separation of church and state. On the other side of the debate, however, many Americans – including the leaders of many Christian churches – have pushed back against Christian nationalism, calling it a “danger” to the country.  Most U.S. adults believe America’s founders intended the country to be a Christian nation, and many say they think it should…

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Ancient virus may be protecting the human placenta

Ancient virus may be protecting the human placenta

Science reports: About 30 million years ago, a virus infected our primate ancestors and one of its genes got trapped in their genomes. Over time, this viral gene became “domesticated”—and territorial. It helped primates fight off other viruses by preventing them from entering cells. The invader—known as Suppressyn (SUPYN)—is still around today, and it’s still helping us out: A new study reveals that this viral turncoat might help the placenta protect embryos from viral infection. “It’s a beautiful story supported…

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A new climate reality is coming into view

A new climate reality is coming into view

David Wallace-Wells writes: You can never really see the future, only imagine it, then try to make sense of the new world when it arrives. Just a few years ago, climate projections for this century looked quite apocalyptic, with most scientists warning that continuing “business as usual” would bring the world four or even five degrees Celsius of warming — a change disruptive enough to call forth not only predictions of food crises and heat stress, state conflict and economic…

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War in Ukraine likely to speed, not slow, shift to renewable and nuclear power, IEA says

War in Ukraine likely to speed, not slow, shift to renewable and nuclear power, IEA says

The New York Times reports: The energy crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is likely to speed up rather than slow down the global transition away from fossil fuels and toward cleaner technologies like wind, solar and electric vehicles, the world’s leading energy agency said Thursday. While some countries have been burning more fossil fuels such as coal this year in response to natural gas shortages caused by the war in Ukraine, that effect is expected to be short-lived,…

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