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Category: Politics

Crisis of command: The Pentagon, the president, and January 6

Crisis of command: The Pentagon, the president, and January 6

Ryan Goodman and Justin Hendrix write: One of the most vexing questions about Jan. 6 is why the National Guard took more than three hours to arrive at the Capitol after D.C. authorities and Capitol Police called for immediate assistance. The Pentagon’s restraint in allowing the Guard to get to the Capitol was not simply a reflection of officials’ misgivings about the deployment of military force during the summer 2020 protests, nor was it simply a concern about “optics” of…

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Who is Gabriel Boric, Chile’s next president?

Who is Gabriel Boric, Chile’s next president?

The New York Times reports: Gabriel Boric rose to prominence in Chile ten years ago as a shaggy-haired student leading massive demonstrations for free quality public education. He ran for president this year, calling for a square deal for more Chileans, with more social protections for the poor and higher taxes on the rich. Now, having won the presidency on Sunday — with more votes than any other candidate in history — Mr. Boric is poised to oversee what could…

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Assad shows human rights abusers everywhere how to commit atrocities with impunity

Assad shows human rights abusers everywhere how to commit atrocities with impunity

Bente Scheller writes: The regime has so far given no reason to assume that diplomacy alone will get it to change its behavior. Nor has it given any indication that it is willing to make concessions for a lasting peace. It could have offered or honored amnesties, but there isn’t one example of successful reconciliation from any province in Syria. The local cease-fires strategy embraced by the U.N. under then-Special Envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura delivered much of Syria…

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Behind Manchin’s opposition, a long history of fighting measures for tackling climate change

Behind Manchin’s opposition, a long history of fighting measures for tackling climate change

The New York Times reports: Senator Joe Manchin III on Monday cited a litany of issues that drove him to oppose President Biden’s $2 trillion Build Back Better bill, from Democrats’ refusal to attach work requirements to social benefits to their failure to raise tax rates on the rich. But left almost unsaid was the issue that has always propelled his political career as a Democratic maverick: climate change. The version of the bill that passed the House last month…

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Trump implores supporters to take credit for the vaccines — even if they don’t want to take the vaccines

Trump implores supporters to take credit for the vaccines — even if they don’t want to take the vaccines

CNN reports: According to video tweeted by O’Reilly’s “No Spin News,” the former Fox News host says, “Both the President and I are vaxxed” and then asks Trump, “Did you get the booster?” “Yes,” Trump says to a smattering of boos in the audience. “Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t,” Trump says in the video, seemingly trying to quiet the boos. “That’s all right, it’s a very tiny group over there.” CNN has reached out to a Trump spokesperson for more…

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Coal in America: A legacy of environmental catastrophe

Coal in America: A legacy of environmental catastrophe

James Bruggers writes: Along the winding, two lane road that leads to Tracy Neece’s mountain in Floyd County, Kentucky, there’s no hint of the huge scars in the hills beyond the oaks and the pines. Green forests cover steep slopes on each side of the road, which turns from blacktop to dusty gravel. Modest homes are nestled into the bottomlands along a creek with gardens that grow corn and zucchini under a hot summer sun. The first sign of the…

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Biden should take Manchin’s deal right now

Biden should take Manchin’s deal right now

Jonathan Chait writes: Sunday morning, Joe Manchin threw a giant twist into the plot of the Biden presidency by announcing his opposition to the administration’s signature domestic agenda. But the new plot had a gaping hole: Biden noted that, a few days before walking away, Manchin had made a counteroffer to Biden at the White House. What was the counteroffer? And why did Biden reject it? The Washington Post fills in the answer. Manchin’s proposal included universal pre-kindergarten, an expansion…

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A relentless assault on the Amazon rainforest poses a threat to the planet

A relentless assault on the Amazon rainforest poses a threat to the planet

Georgina Gustin writes: The Amazon is enveloping and lush, a place of stupefying richness. But a powerful web of extractive forces is also at work here. Every day, thousands of miners, loggers, farmers and ranchers burn or cut roughly 10,000 acres of forest, working to satisfy a growing demand for the resources it contains. They are tiny cogs in a sprawling global machine that has destroyed nearly one-fifth of the Brazilian rainforest—an area about the size of California—over the last…

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Did Manchin just kill Biden’s domestic agenda? Or is he back to negotiating yet again?

Did Manchin just kill Biden’s domestic agenda? Or is he back to negotiating yet again?

Jonathan Chait writes: When historians record the Biden presidency, the aspect they will struggle to capture is just how much of it was spent attempting to divine the objectives and motivation of Joe Manchin. The West Virginia senator once again threw Washington into chaos by appearing on Fox News Sunday to deliver what may or may not be a death blow to the centerpiece of Biden’s domestic agenda. “I can’t move forward. I cannot vote to continue with this piece…

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The fallen mercenaries in Russia’s dark army

The fallen mercenaries in Russia’s dark army

New Lines reports: “If you’d have come here to tell me that my son is still alive, you would have made me the happiest mom in the world.” Svetlana Antipova opens the gate to allow us into her yard in the village of Shyryajeve. It is a pitch-black Saturday evening, a little over an hour’s drive outside Odessa, Ukraine. The stillness is interrupted only by dogs barking in the neighbors’ yards, altered to the arrival of strangers. Evgeny Antipov, Svetlana’s…

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Hidden Pentagon records reveal pattern of failures in deadly strikes

Hidden Pentagon records reveal pattern of failures in deadly strikes

The New York Times reports: Shortly before 3 a.m. on July 19, 2016, American Special Operations forces bombed what they believed were three ISIS “staging areas” on the outskirts of Tokhar, a riverside hamlet in northern Syria. They reported 85 fighters killed. In fact, they hit houses far from the front line, where farmers, their families and other local people sought nighttime sanctuary from bombing and gunfire. More than 120 villagers were killed. In early 2017 in Iraq, an American…

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A humanitarian catastrophe: ‘No one benefits from a failed state in Afghanistan’

A humanitarian catastrophe: ‘No one benefits from a failed state in Afghanistan’

David Ignatius writes: Americans have been generous after military victories. Just look at the postwar economic miracles in Germany and Japan. But it’s harder to be generous in defeat — as we see in the Biden administration’s wary response to the humanitarian catastrophe in Afghanistan following the Taliban’s seizure of power there in August. As winter approaches, Afghanistan’s battered population faces food shortages approaching famine; its financial system has imploded, thanks in part to U.S. Treasury sanctions. There is, literally,…

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In South Africa, Gauteng’s Omicron wave is already peaking. Why?

In South Africa, Gauteng’s Omicron wave is already peaking. Why?

David Wallace-Wells writes: In Gauteng, South Africa’s Omicron epicenter, the wave seems to be cresting. In other parts of the country, too, the terrifyingly fast rise of the new variant appears already to be slowing and even receding. This is very encouraging, since it suggests that Omicron waves elsewhere in the world may also be, if disorientingly fast, also mercifully short. But it is also a bit confusing, given that the wave has peaked well before anything like it had…

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Trump White House made ‘deliberate efforts’ to undermine Covid response, report says

Trump White House made ‘deliberate efforts’ to undermine Covid response, report says

NBC News reports: The Trump administration engaged in “deliberate efforts” to undermine the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic for political purposes, a congressional report released Friday concludes. The report, prepared by the House select subcommittee investigating the nation’s Covid response, says the White House repeatedly overruled public health and testing guidance by the nation’s top infectious disease experts and silenced officials in order to promote then-President Donald Trump’s political agenda. In August of last year, for example, Trump hosted…

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McConnell rips ‘horrendous’ January 6 riot, says public ‘needs to know’ what happened

McConnell rips ‘horrendous’ January 6 riot, says public ‘needs to know’ what happened

HuffPost reports: Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell described the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 as “horrendous” in a surprising interview Thursday, and said he was looking forward to what the House select committee investigating it discovers. “I think the fact finding is interesting. We’re all going to be watching it,” McConnell told Spectrum News. “It was a horrendous event, and I think what they’re seeking to find out is something the public needs to know.” [Continue reading…]…

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The most openly anti-Semitic president in U.S. history

The most openly anti-Semitic president in U.S. history

Jonathan Chait writes: Donald Trump is the most openly anti-Semitic president in American history. There is no close second. While many presidents expressed anti-Semitic beliefs in private, only Trump has done so repeatedly, and usually in public. If you go through the list of classic anti-Semitic beliefs, Trump has checked off nearly every box: — Jews are natural negotiators (“I’m a negotiator, like you folks”) — Jews buy off politicians (“You want to control your own politician”) — Jews are…

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