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Trump’s repeat-donations ploy led to millions in refunds into 2021

Trump’s repeat-donations ploy led to millions in refunds into 2021

The New York Times reports: The aggressive fund-raising tactics that former President Donald J. Trump deployed late in last year’s presidential campaign have continued to spur an avalanche of refunds into 2021, with Mr. Trump, the Republican Party and their shared accounts returning $12.8 million to donors in the first six months of the year, newly released federal records show. The refunds were some of the biggest outlays that Mr. Trump made in 2021 as he has built up his…

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Tucker Carlson paying homage to Viktor Orbán

Tucker Carlson paying homage to Viktor Orbán

Anne Applebaum writes: Orbán’s visitors serve the same end as Stalin’s. Soviet leaders wanted to prove to their compatriots that their system is better than Western democracy, and to provide an answer to foreign criticism. Orbán’s purpose is identical. When Carlson—or Rod Dreher, Christopher Caldwell, or any of the other American commentators who have made their pilgrimage to Budapest—sings the Hungarian leader’s praises, that helps bolster Orbán’s image at home. It also gives him ammunition against the growing chorus of…

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Climate crisis: Scientists spot warning signs of Gulf Stream collapse

Climate crisis: Scientists spot warning signs of Gulf Stream collapse

The Guardian reports: Climate scientists have detected warning signs of the collapse of the Gulf Stream, one of the planet’s main potential tipping points. The research found “an almost complete loss of stability over the last century” of the currents that researchers call the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC). The currents are already at their slowest point in at least 1,600 years, but the new analysis shows they may be nearing a shutdown. Such an event would have catastrophic consequences…

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Alarmed Louisiana residents turn to vaccines in ‘darkest days’ of pandemic

Alarmed Louisiana residents turn to vaccines in ‘darkest days’ of pandemic

The New York Times reports: Officials in Louisiana have been willing to try just about anything to jolt the state’s lagging Covid-19 vaccination rates, from a $1 million cash giveaway to a public service announcement featuring the recent 14-year-old national spelling bee champion. But when Madeline LeBlanc relented and got her first vaccine dose this week, she was motivated by something entirely different: fear. After seeing news reports about the Delta variant raging across the state, Ms. LeBlanc, 24, had…

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I went to a party with 14 other vaccinated people; 11 of us got Covid

I went to a party with 14 other vaccinated people; 11 of us got Covid

Allan Massie writes: I was sitting on an examination table at an urgent care clinic in Timonium, giving my history to a physician’s assistant. An hour later, she would call me to confirm that I was positive for COVID-19. Given the way that I felt, it was what I expected. But it wasn’t supposed to happen: I’ve been fully vaccinated for months. Five days earlier, I had gone to a house party in Montgomery County. There were 15 adults there,…

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What Mike Fanone can’t forget

What Mike Fanone can’t forget

Molly Ball reports: It wasn’t a cop bar; that was the point. They weren’t there to meet other cops. They were there to meet girls. The three police officers took seats at the wine bar in D.C.’s trendy Navy Yard neighborhood—exposed concrete walls, leather banquettes, $13 tuna tartare—and despite its being a wine bar, despite the Wednesday night half-price-wine special, they ordered beers. May 12, 2021, was a balmy night, and dozens of newly vaccinated young urbanites mingled out on…

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Facebook is an ad tech company. That’s how we should regulate it

Facebook is an ad tech company. That’s how we should regulate it

Nathalie Maréchal writes: Another day, another Facebook accountability scandal. On Wednesday, Facebook shut down the accounts of NYU researchers Laura Edelson and Damon McCoy on the grounds that their Ad Observer tool violated Facebook users’ privacy. At first blush, this seems absurd: the users in question voluntarily installed the Ad Observer plug-in in their browser for the express purpose of sharing targeting info related to the political ads they see on Facebook with the researchers. Dig a little deeper, and…

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Trump is planning a much more respectable coup next time

Trump is planning a much more respectable coup next time

Richard L. Hasen writes: In recent weeks, we’ve gotten an even greater glimpse into Donald Trump’s efforts to discredit and overturn the results of the 2020 election. From the clownish ongoing audit in Arizona to the revelation of Jeffrey Clark’s insane and rejected December plan for the Department of Justice to cajole legislatures in states Biden won into overturning those results to the attorneys being sanctioned for their frivolous Trump election lawsuits, the 2020 election subversion attempt is being shown…

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In string of wins, ‘Biden Democrats’ see a reality check for the left

In string of wins, ‘Biden Democrats’ see a reality check for the left

The New York Times reports: Nina Turner, the hard-punching Bernie Sanders ally who lost a special election for Congress in Ohio this week, had unique political flaws from the start. A far-left former state legislator, Ms. Turner declined to endorse Hillary Clinton over Donald J. Trump in 2016. Last year, she described voting for President Biden as a grossly unpalatable option. There were obvious reasons Democratic voters might view her with distrust. Yet Ms. Turner’s unexpectedly wide defeat on Tuesday…

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‘Dark times’: Houston’s fourth Covid wave to be the largest yet, medical leaders predict

‘Dark times’: Houston’s fourth Covid wave to be the largest yet, medical leaders predict

Houston Chronicle reports: Fueled by the delta variant, a surge in Houston COVID-19 hospitalizations is growing as fast as at any time during the pandemic so far, and is projected to pass previous records by mid-August — even though roughly half of all eligible Houstonians are fully vaccinated. “We’re heading into dark times,” said Texas Medical Center CEO Bill McKeon. Already, he said, “our ICUs are filled with unvaccinated people.” On Tuesday, Texas Medical Center hospitals listed 1,372 people in…

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Hundreds of AI tools have been built to catch Covid. None of them helped

Hundreds of AI tools have been built to catch Covid. None of them helped

Will Douglas Heaven writes: When covid-19 struck Europe in March 2020, hospitals were plunged into a health crisis that was still badly understood. “Doctors really didn’t have a clue how to manage these patients,” says Laure Wynants, an epidemiologist at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, who studies predictive tools. But there was data coming out of China, which had a four-month head start in the race to beat the pandemic. If machine-learning algorithms could be trained on that data to…

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Tucker Carlson has seen the future, and it is fascist

Tucker Carlson has seen the future, and it is fascist

Jonathan Chait writes: In 1919, the progressive journalist Lincoln Steffens visited the nascent Soviet Union and declared, “I have seen the future and it works.” Tucker Carlson’s weeklong visit to Budapest, where he is using his Fox News show as an infomercial for Viktor Orban’s illiberal regime, is being conducted in much the same spirit. “If you care about Western civilization and democracy and families, and the ferocious assault on all three of those things by the leaders of our…

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A Trump bombshell quietly dropped last week, but it should shock us all

A Trump bombshell quietly dropped last week, but it should shock us all

Robert Reich writes: We’ve become so inured to Donald Trump’s proto-fascism that we barely blink an eye when we learn that he tried to manipulate the 2020 election. Yet the most recent revelation should frighten every American to their core. On Friday, the House oversight committee released notes of a 27 December telephone call from Trump to then acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen, in which Trump told Rosen: “Just say the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me…

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Mexico sues U.S. gun makers, eyes $10 billion in damages

Mexico sues U.S. gun makers, eyes $10 billion in damages

Reuters reports: Mexico sued several gun makers in a U.S. federal court on Wednesday, accusing them of reckless business practices that supply what it called a “torrent” of illegal arms to violent Mexican drug cartels, leading to thousands of deaths. The lawsuit alleges that units of Smith & Wesson, Barrett Firearms, Colt’s Manufacturing Company, Glock Inc, Sturm, Ruger & Co and others knew their business practices had encouraged illegal arms trafficking into Mexico. The lawsuit cites weapons that had entered…

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