Attention to the Unseen

Mother Jones reports: North Carolina Republicans on Friday passed a major power grab, stripping the state’s Democratic governor of the authority to appoint a majority of members to state and county election boards and giving the heavily gerrymandered GOP legislature far more influence over how elections are run and certified in the battleground state. In North Carolina, the governor dictates the political makeup of the state and county election boards, which are each composed of five members. Under Democratic Gov….

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Emadeddin Badi writes: Where the echoes of helpless cries linger amid the ruins of Derna in eastern Libya, its citizens are living a nightmare brought about by the callousness of successive rulers and the unbridled cruelty of military elites. Two dams, remnants of a bygone era under Moammar Gadhafi’s rule, had stood for decades as neglected sentries, guarding a coastal city deliberately left vulnerable to climate-induced changes. As the dams eventually broke under the weight of Mediterranean Storm Daniel’s heavy…

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The New York Times reports: When it comes to his view of the United States government, Representative Bob Good, a right-wing Republican who represents a Virginia district that was once the domain of Thomas Jefferson, doesn’t mince words. “Most of what Congress does is not good for the American people,” Mr. Good declared in an interview off the House floor as the chamber descended into chaos last week. “Most of what we do as a Congress is totally unjustified.” Though…

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Democracy in Exile reports: Twenty-two years after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the biggest threat to the United States is not al-Qaeda or another foreign terrorist group, but domestic terrorism, says writer and journalist Lawrence Wright, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. “The present enemy, as far as the United States is concerned, is domestic terrorism,” Wright tells Democracy in Exile in an extensive interview. “And what has happened is that the domestic terrorists are…

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The New York Times reports: Interviews with three witnesses to the killing and descriptions of the security footage showing the moments leading up to the shooting provide details about the gunmen whom Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada has branded as “agents” of the Indian government. The gunmen were dressed in black, with hoods over their heads and black medical masks covering their faces, and one of them dropped a blue medical glove that was later recovered by the police,…

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The Washington Post reports: Millions of federal employees and active military service members will stop receiving paychecks — but many will be forced to report to work anyway. Some national parks may close, museums could shutter, and airports nationwide might see new disruptions and delays. And the most pivotal federal aid programs — including those assisting the victims of the deadly wildfires in Maui — could struggle to provide urgently needed support. In only eight days, the U.S. government is…

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