Music: Louis Cole — ‘I’m Tight’
Timothy Snyder connects the dots: FBI, McGonigal, Manafort, Deripaska, Trump, and Putin
In a 20-tweet thread, Timothy Snyder outlines the timeline and connections that now scream out for further investigation following the indictment of Charles McGonigal, the former Special Agent in Charge (“SAC”) of FBI’s Counterintelligence Division in New York: In April 2016, I broke the story of Trump and Putin, using Russian open sources. Afterwards, I heard vague intimations that something was awry in the FBI in New York, specifically counter-intelligence and cyber. We now have a suggestion as to why….
How Nick Fuentes groomed a new generation of racist hate
Mother Jones reports: Eight months before the white nationalist figure Nicholas J. Fuentes ignited a political firestorm by dining with Kanye West and Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, he strode out onstage to a crowd of what he claimed were 1,000 followers, chanting “America First.” Behind a podium, flanked by two American flags and one with that slogan, he hit his standard beats (the nation is in decline, Christ is king) while sprinkling in some extremely troubling riffs, like comparing Vladimir…
The private angst over Donald Trump’s racist attacks on Elaine Chao goes public
Politico reports: Over the past several months, the leading Republican presidential candidate has launched a series of racist attacks on the wife of the Republican Party’s Senate leader, a woman who once served in his Cabinet. But while former President Donald Trump’s taunts at Elaine Chao — demeaning her as “Coco Chow” or a variation of Mitch McConnell’s “China-loving wife” — have been mostly met with silence from fellow GOP officials, the main target of them is now speaking out….
The improbability of George Santos’ $199 expenses
Politico reports: Rep. George Santos’ congressional campaign reported dozens of transactions just cents below the threshold that would have triggered a requirement to preserve spending records — an unusual spending pattern that is now part of broader complaints about alleged financial improprieties. Santos, who admitted in December that he faked parts of his biography, already faces a complaint filed with the Federal Election Commission alleging his campaign repeatedly reported suspicious expenses. Those included eight charges of exactly $199.99 at an…
Elon Musk bows to pressure from India to censor BBC documentary critical of Modi
The Intercept reports: Twitter and YouTube censored a report critical of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in coordination with the government of India. Officials called for the Big Tech companies to take action against a BBC documentary exploring Modi’s role in a genocidal 2002 massacre in the Indian state of Gujarat, which the officials deemed a “propaganda piece.” In a series of posts, Kanchan Gupta, senior adviser at the Indian government’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, denounced the BBC documentary…
Archives weighs asking past presidents, VPs to look for classified items
The Washington Post reports: The National Archives is weighing whether to ask living former presidents and vice presidents to review their personal records to verify that no classified materials are inadvertently outstanding, according to two people familiar with the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail private conversations. The deliberation comes after the discovery and return of a limited number of records bearing classified markings in recent weeks at President Biden’s home and a think tank bearing…
Elephants, the gardeners of Africa’s rainforests, play a vital role in promoting carbon retention
Anthropocene magazine reports: Elephants been called a lot of things: the world’s largest land creatures, imperiled, majestic, charismatic. Now scientists have a few more terms for describing them: foresters and climate champions. In the jungles of equatorial Africa, scientists report that forest elephants play an important role in shaping the forest around them as they vacuum up as much as 200 kilograms worth of plants every day. Their appetites influence not just what trees survive but how much carbon the…
Music: Moonchild — ‘Wise Women’
Germany and U.S. poised to send battle tanks to Ukraine
Politico reports: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is set to announce the delivery of German Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine on Wednesday, two officials with knowledge of the matter told POLITICO. That decision is a significant U-turn and potentially a decisive moment in the war as it should pave the way for a broader coalition of countries to send battle tanks to the frontlines against the Russian invaders. As Leopard 2 tanks are made in Germany, Berlin has to give its…
Pence and Biden demonstrate how to handle mishandled classified documents
Politico reports: The Justice Department has taken possession of a “small number” of documents with classified markings that former Vice President Mike Pence found in his Indiana residence earlier this month, according to Greg Jacob, the custodian of Pence’s White House records. In a Jan. 22 letter to the National Archives, Jacob indicated that FBI agents came to Pence’s Indiana home on the night of Jan. 19 to retrieve documents that the former vice president had located a few days…
Former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, gears up for likely 2024 run for president
CNBC reports: Nikki Haley, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under former President Donald Trump, has hired key staff and is canvassing potential donors as she explores a presidential run against her former boss in 2024, according to people briefed on her plans. Haley is putting together a national finance committee and communications team in advance of a potential campaign, these people explained. Some of the new hires have been directed to report for work at Haley’s nonprofit…
Mike Pompeo dismisses murder of Jamal Khashoggi by saying such crimes are ‘routine’ in Middle East
In response to comments reportedly made by Mike Pompeo in his new memoir, Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) issued the following statement: “Pompeo’s crass and craven comments appearing to justify Jamal Khashoggi’s murder by disparaging his political views and falsely associating them with terrorism mirror the same justifications Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) and other tyrants use to excuse their crimes,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Executive Director of DAWN. “It is despicable that a senior American official is suggesting…
Could independents upend U.S. climate politics?
Alexander Burns writes: A small band of political strategists gathered last September in a restaurant near Dupont Circle to meet a visitor from the other side of the world. Everyone at the table was immersed in the battle against climate change; nearly all had been involved in passing the Inflation Reduction Act, the clean-energy law Democrats enacted over the summer. Their guest was Byron Fay, an Australian operative who had arrived in Washington with an exotic political scheme in mind….
Has Earth’s inner core stopped its strange spin?
Nature reports: Thousands of kilometres beneath your feet, Earth’s interior might be doing something very weird. Many scientists think that the inner core spins faster than the rest of the planet — but sometime in the past decade, according to a study, it apparently stopped doing so. “We were quite surprised,” say Yi Yang and Xiaodong Song, seismologists at Peking University in Beijing who reported the findings today in Nature Geoscience. The results could help to shine light on the…
How gut bacteria are controlling your brain
Miriam Frankel and Matt Warren write: Your gut is a bustling and thriving alien colony. They number in their trillions and include thousands of different species. Many of these microorganisms, including bacteria, archaea and eukarya, were here long before humans, have evolved alongside us and now outnumber our own cells many times over. Indeed, as John Cryan, a professor of anatomy and neuroscience at University College Cork, rather strikingly put it in a TEDx talk: “When you go to the…