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In Trump White House, classified records were routinely mishandled, aides say

In Trump White House, classified records were routinely mishandled, aides say

The Washington Post reports: Aides who had worked in Donald Trump’s White House were not surprised this summer when the FBI found highly classified material in boxes at Mar-a-Lago, mixed with news clippings and other items. They’d seen such haphazard collections before. During his four years in office, Trump never strictly followed the rules and customs for handling sensitive government documents, according to 14 officials from his administration, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss what…

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Election officials confront a new problem: Whether they can trust their own poll workers

Election officials confront a new problem: Whether they can trust their own poll workers

Politico reports: Election officials are growing concerned about a new danger in November: that groups looking to undermine election results will try to install their supporters as poll workers. The frontline election workers do everything from checking people in at voting locations to helping process mail ballots — in other words, they are the face of American elections for most voters. And now, some prominent incidents involving poll workers have worried election officials that a bigger wave of trouble could…

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How blindsight answers the hard problem of consciousness

How blindsight answers the hard problem of consciousness

Nicholas Humphrey writes: The cover of New Scientist magazine 50 years ago showed a picture of a rhesus monkey, with the headline ‘A Blind Monkey That Sees Everything’. The monkey, named Helen, was part of a study into the neuropsychology of vision, led by Lawrence (Larry) Weiskrantz in the psychology laboratory at the University of Cambridge. In 1965, he had surgically removed the primary visual cortex at the back of Helen’s brain. Following the operation, Helen appeared to be quite…

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Lawyer refused Trump request in February to say all documents returned

Lawyer refused Trump request in February to say all documents returned

The Washington Post reports: Former president Donald Trump asked one of his lawyers to tell the National Archives and Records Administration in early 2022 that Trump had returned all materials requested by the agency, but the lawyer declined because he was not sure the statement was true, according to people familiar with the matter. As it turned out, thousands more government documents — including some highly classified secrets — remained at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and private club. The later discovery…

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Donald Trump is extremely racist

Donald Trump is extremely racist

Jonathan Chait writes: One of the important phenomena of this current era that has been weirdly hiding in plain sight is Donald Trump’s habit of saying racist things in public. These episodes tend to go underanalyzed in part because American intellectuals are riven by disputes over much subtler forms of racism. Progressive intellectuals are debating structural racism embedded in American history and its social systems and tearing each other to shreds over questions like whether journalists should be fired for…

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Kremlin unsure about which parts of Ukraine it has ‘annexed’

Kremlin unsure about which parts of Ukraine it has ‘annexed’

The Guardian reports: The Kremlin is still determining which areas of occupied Ukraine it has “annexed”, Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson has said, suggesting Russia does not know where its self-declared international borders are. The surprising admission came in a phone call with journalists, during which Dmitry Peskov was peppered with requests to clarify to which Ukrainian territory Putin had laid claim at a pomp-filled Kremlin ceremony last week. Putin has vowed to protect Russia’s newly claimed territories using “all means at…

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A whole generation revolts against Iran’s oppressive regime

A whole generation revolts against Iran’s oppressive regime

Kim Ghattas writes: “From Beirut to Tehran, one revolution that does not die,” people chanted on the streets of Beirut during a wave of protests against Lebanon’s corrupt politicians in October 2019. It was catchy, it rhymed in Arabic, and it was an expression of a surprising new sense of solidarity among members of a young generation connected across borders. The protesters were not chanting in support of the revolution that turned Iran into a theocracy in 1979, but against…

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America is choosing to remain vulnerable to pandemics

America is choosing to remain vulnerable to pandemics

Ed Yong writes: Recently, after a week in which 2,789 Americans died of COVID-19, President Joe Biden proclaimed that “the pandemic is over.” Anthony Fauci described the controversy around the proclamation as a matter of “semantics,” but the facts we are living with can speak for themselves. COVID still kills roughly as many Americans every week as died on 9/11. It is on track to kill at least 100,000 a year—triple the typical toll of the flu. Despite gross undercounting,…

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Justices shield spouses’ work from potential conflict of interest disclosures

Justices shield spouses’ work from potential conflict of interest disclosures

Politico reports: A year after Amy Coney Barrett joined the Supreme Court, the boutique Indiana firm SouthBank Legal opened its first-ever Washington office in Penn Quarter, a move the firm hailed in a 2021 press release as an “important milestone.” The head of the office, Jesse M. Barrett, is the justice’s husband, whose work is described by the firm as “white-collar criminal defense, internal investigations, and complex commercial litigation.” SouthBank Legal — which lists fewer than 20 lawyers — has…

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A plan to turn America into a theocracy

A plan to turn America into a theocracy

Rolling Stone reports: Lance Wallnau, A self-styled “prophet” and one of America’s most strident Christian Nationalists, and Doug Mastriano, the GOP candidate who casts his bid for governor of Pennsylvania as a mission from God, are birds of a feather. They each fired up the faithful at the Jericho March / ”Let the Church ROAR!” event in Washington, D.C., in December 2020, a Christian protest seeking divine intervention to keep Donald Trump in office. And both men were on the…

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‘Women, Life, Freedom’

‘Women, Life, Freedom’

The Observer reports: The messages, printed on scraps of paper, were thrown on doorsteps across Iran overnight by protesters determined that an online crackdown would not stop their movement. “The Islamic Republic is falling. Join the people,” said one handed out in northern Rasht city. In southern Ahvaz organisers gave an address and time for protest, and a broader call to action. “If you cannot come, spread the message so other people come,” it urged readers. Hours later a video…

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Russia’s annexation of Ukrainian territory puts world ‘two or three steps away’ from nuclear war

Russia’s annexation of Ukrainian territory puts world ‘two or three steps away’ from nuclear war

The Washington Post reports: Nuclear weapons would only likely be used after mobilization, sabotage and other measures have failed to turn the tide, and it’s unclear what Putin would achieve by using them, [Stefan] Gady [a senior fellow with the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London] said. Despite some wild predictions on Russian news shows that the Kremlin would lash out at a Western capital, with London appearing to be a favored target, it is more likely that Moscow…

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Ten torture sites in one town: How Russia sowed pain and fear in Izium

Ten torture sites in one town: How Russia sowed pain and fear in Izium

The Associated Press reports: The first time the Russian soldiers caught him, they tossed him bound and blindfolded into a trench covered with wooden boards for days on end. Then they beat him, over and over: Legs, arms, a hammer to the knees, all accompanied by furious diatribes against Ukraine. Before they let him go, they took away his passport and Ukrainian military ID — all he had to prove his existence — and made sure he knew exactly how…

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Supreme Court to decide cases with ‘monumental’ impact on democracy

Supreme Court to decide cases with ‘monumental’ impact on democracy

The Guardian reports: On Monday, the nine justices of the US supreme court will take their seats at the start of a new judicial year, even as the shock waves of the panel’s previous seismic term continue to reverberate across America. In their first full term that ended in June, the court’s new six-to-three hard-right supermajority astounded the nation by tearing up decades of settled law. They eviscerated the right to an abortion, loosened America’s already lax gun laws, erected…

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