Attention to the Unseen

The New York Times reports: When Representative Troy Nehls of Texas voted last year to reject Donald J. Trump’s electoral defeat, many of his constituents back home in Fort Bend County were thrilled. Like the former president, they have been unhappy with the changes unfolding around them. Crime and sprawl from Houston, the big city next door, have been spilling over into their once bucolic towns. (“Build a wall,” Mr. Nehls likes to say, and make Houston pay.) The county…

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The Guardian reports: Rishi Sunak is about to become the UK’s first prime minister of colour and the first Hindu prime minister, both milestones in Britain’s evolution as a multicultural and multi-faith society. Although there has been a marked increase in politicians of colour being appointed to senior cabinet roles, including the key posts of chancellor, home secretary and foreign secretary, the UK has never had a black or brown prime minister before. It was “an historic moment” that “simply…

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Reuters reports: Former President Donald Trump is too much of a coward to obey a subpoena from the U.S. Congress compelling him to testify to a special committee investigating his role in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested on Sunday. “I don’t think he’s man enough to show up. I don’t think his lawyers will want him to show up because he has to testify under oath,” Pelosi said in an…

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Rolling Stone reports: In early September, Donald Trump welcomed a handful of Republican allies to Manhattan’s Trump Tower with an urgent message: He saw a “scam” happening with midterm election voting in Philadelphia and elsewhere in Pennsylvania, and he wanted conservatives to do something about it. “During our briefing, he was concerned that 2020 is going to happen again in 2022,” says former senior Trump administration official Michael Caputo, referencing Trump’s debunked assertion that voter fraud in Philadelphia helped win…

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Bob Woodward writes: In more than 50 years of reporting, I have never disclosed the raw interviews or full transcripts of my work. But after listening again to the 20 interviews I conducted with President Donald Trump during his last year as chief executive, I have decided to take the unusual step of releasing them. I was struck by how Trump pounded in my ears in a way the printed page cannot capture. In their totality, these interviews offer an…

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Alireza Eshraghi writes: On September 20, three days after the women-led protests erupted across Iran in response to the death of Mahsa (Jina) Amini, the state-run radio and television channels began airing a series of debate shows. In them, men—yes! dozens of men—were featured discussing women’s bodies and grievances. Meanwhile, on the street, according to leaked documents published by Amnesty International, state forces were being instructed to “mercilessly confront” demonstrators, even to the point of death. Two days later, when…

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Denise Dresser writes: When Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador took office four years ago, he promised to deliver what he branded a “Fourth Transformation,” the next in a series of defining junctures in Mexican history: the War of Independence in the early 1800s, the liberal movement of President Benito Juárez later that century, and the Revolution of 1910. To “make Mexico great again,” he said he would fight deeply ingrained corruption and eradicate persistent poverty. But in the name…

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Politico reports: On the Pacific side of the Panama Canal, a massive gray convention center built largely by Chinese contractors gleams in the sun, eagerly hosting visitors from a world emerging from the Covid-19 pandemic. A few miles north, colorful shipping containers lay stacked under the stern gaze of quay cranes at the Port of Balboa, a facility run by a Chinese-linked firm. A new bridge is supposed to rise in the same area. Various plans have called for it…

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