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Citizens from around the world share their coronavirus stories

Citizens from around the world share their coronavirus stories

Dhruv Khullar writes: Kirtiraj Rana grew up in Rajamunda, a village of fewer than a thousand people in the northeastern Indian state of Odisha, which faces the Bay of Bengal. A migrant worker, he dropped out of school when he was in tenth grade to help support his family—his parents, a brother who also dropped out, and a sister who received only a fifth-grade education. Odisha’s farming revolves around its brief rainy season. Unable to find work in the off…

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Biden proposes a science-led New Deal to end pandemic suffering

Biden proposes a science-led New Deal to end pandemic suffering

Science reports: After announcing a $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan” on Thursday to “change the course of the pandemic,” President-elect Joe Biden on Friday provided more details on how his administration will address what he called the “dismal failure” of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, safely reopen schools by March, and ramp up surveillance to track where SARS-CoV-2 is moving and how it’s mutating. “The more people we vaccinate and the faster we do it, the sooner we can put this…

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Misinformation dropped dramatically the week after Twitter banned Trump

Misinformation dropped dramatically the week after Twitter banned Trump

The Washington Post reports: Online misinformation about election fraud plunged 73 percent after several social media sites suspended President Trump and key allies last week, research firm Zignal Labs has found, underscoring the power of tech companies to limit the falsehoods poisoning public debate when they act aggressively. The new research by the San Francisco-based analytics firm reported that conversations about election fraud dropped from 2.5 million mentions to 688,000 mentions across several social media sites in the week after…

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Trump blows up the Arizona GOP on his way out

Trump blows up the Arizona GOP on his way out

Politico reports: The Trump era did more damage to the Republican Party in Arizona than almost anywhere else. Over the past two years, Republicans lost both Senate seats. In November, the state flipped Democratic in a presidential race for the first time since 1996. The GOP state party chair is currently at war with the governor. President Donald Trump’s fingerprints are on all of it, yet the state party will likely pass a resolution next week to officially “support &…

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Major NRA donor to challenge gun group’s bankruptcy over alleged fraud

Major NRA donor to challenge gun group’s bankruptcy over alleged fraud

The Guardian reports: A major donor to the National Rifle Association is poised to challenge key aspects of the gun group’s bankruptcy filing, in an attempt to hold executives accountable for allegedly having defrauded their members of millions of dollars to support their own lavish lifestyles. Dave Dell’Aquila, a former tech company boss who has donated more than $100,000 to the NRA, told the Guardian on Saturday he was preparing to lodge a complaint in US bankruptcy court in Dallas,…

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The importance, and incoherence, of Twitter’s Trump ban

The importance, and incoherence, of Twitter’s Trump ban

Andrew Marantz writes: After Twitter permanently suspended Donald Trump’s account, earlier this month, the reactions were quick, ubiquitous, and mostly predictable. Many of the takes seemed canned, the way an obituary of a terminally ill celebrity is often pre-written. On the Trump-apologist right, the suspension was denounced as Orwellian tyranny, deep-state collusion, or worse. (Glenn Beck, during a segment on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show, compared the Trump ban and other Big Tech crackdowns to “the Germans with the Jews…

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Post Trump, Republicans are headed for a bitter internal showdown

Post Trump, Republicans are headed for a bitter internal showdown

The New York Times reports: As President Trump prepares to leave office with his party in disarray, Republican leaders including Senator Mitch McConnell are maneuvering to thwart his grip on the G.O.P. in future elections, while forces aligned with Mr. Trump are looking to punish Republican lawmakers and governors who have broken with him. The bitter infighting underscores the deep divisions Mr. Trump has created in the G.O.P. and all but ensures that the next campaign will represent a pivotal…

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Off-duty police were part of the Capitol mob. Now police are turning in their own

Off-duty police were part of the Capitol mob. Now police are turning in their own

The Washington Post reports: During the chaos at the Capitol, overwhelmed police officers confronted and combated a frenzied sea of rioters who transformed the seat of democracy into a battlefield. Now police chiefs across the country are confronting the uncomfortable reality that members in their own ranks were among the mob that faced off against other law enforcement officers. At least 13 off-duty law enforcement officials are suspected of taking part in the riot, a tally that could grow as…

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Biden swells the ranks of his White House climate team

Biden swells the ranks of his White House climate team

The Washington Post reports: President-elect Joe Biden added more than a half-dozen climate staffers to his White House team Thursday, drawing from the ranks of green groups, environmental justice advocates and former Democratic administration officials to grow an inner circle that will help him try to slash the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions. The new hires include David J. Hayes, who served as Interior deputy secretary under Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama; Cecilia Martinez, a prominent environmental justice advocate based…

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The coronavirus is evolving before our eyes

The coronavirus is evolving before our eyes

James Hamblin writes: In the final, darkest days of the deadliest year in U.S. history, the world received ominous news of a mutation in the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. Scientists in the U.K. had identified a form of the virus that was spreading rapidly throughout the nation. Then, on January 4, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a lockdown that began almost immediately and will last until at least the middle of February. “It’s been both frustrating and alarming to see the speed…

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Trump’s Warp Speed leaders waited months to approve vaccine distribution plans

Trump’s Warp Speed leaders waited months to approve vaccine distribution plans

The Wall Street Journal reports: Operation Warp Speed leaders waited more than two months to approve a plan to distribute and administer Covid-19 vaccines proposed by U.S. health officials, administration officials said, leaving states with little time to implement a mass-vaccination campaign amid a coronavirus surge. State and local officials had been clamoring for months for help preparing for the largest vaccination program in U.S. history when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a playbook in September to…

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Joe Biden’s looming war on white supremacy

Joe Biden’s looming war on white supremacy

Ronald Brownstein writes: For four years, Donald Trump downplayed the risk of white-supremacist violence and denied that racial bias is pervasive in law enforcement. In a single, searing day, the assault on the U.S. Capitol exposed the price of both of those choices—and may have provided Joe Biden new political momentum for reversing direction on each front. At once, the rioters demonstrated how much the threat of white extremism has metastasized under Trump, while the restrained police response vivified a…

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Trump supporters had been declaring, at rally after rally, that they would go to violent lengths to keep their leader in power

Trump supporters had been declaring, at rally after rally, that they would go to violent lengths to keep their leader in power

Luke Mogelson writes: By the end of President Donald Trump’s crusade against American democracy—after a relentless deployment of propaganda, demagoguery, intimidation, and fearmongering aimed at persuading as many Americans as possible to repudiate their country’s foundational principles—a single word sufficed to nudge his most fanatical supporters into open insurrection. Thousands of them had assembled on the Mall, in Washington, D.C., on the morning of January 6th, to hear Trump address them from a stage outside the White House. From where…

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‘He has an obligation to them’: Attorney for ‘QAnon shaman’ asks Trump to pardon rioters

‘He has an obligation to them’: Attorney for ‘QAnon shaman’ asks Trump to pardon rioters

Politico reports: The lawyer for the “QAnon shaman” who was part of the deadly siege of the Capitol last week publicly petitioned President Donald Trump on Thursday to pardon his client. In an interview on CNN, attorney Albert Watkins said his client, Jacob Chansley, “felt like he was answering the call of our president” when he stormed the nation’s seat of government last Wednesday during a riot that resulted in the deaths of at least five people. Chansley, a 33-year-old…

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