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Category: Politics

America is not ready for Omicron

America is not ready for Omicron

Ed Yong writes: America was not prepared for COVID-19 when it arrived. It was not prepared for last winter’s surge. It was not prepared for Delta’s arrival in the summer or its current winter assault. More than 1,000 Americans are still dying of COVID every day, and more have died this year than last. Hospitalizations are rising in 42 states. The University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, which entered the pandemic as arguably the best-prepared hospital in the country,…

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January 6 investigators mull whether Trump violated obstruction law

January 6 investigators mull whether Trump violated obstruction law

Politico reports: Members of the Jan. 6 select committee are homing in on a politically explosive question: Did Donald Trump’s actions amid the Capitol attack amount to criminal obstruction of Congress? Twice this week, committee vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) has raised the possibility that Trump’s conduct while a mob of his supporters overtook the Capitol could qualify as an effort to obstruct the certification of Joe Biden’s victory. Cheney described that as a “key” topic facing the panel,…

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How Meadows and a band of loyalists fought to keep Trump in power

How Meadows and a band of loyalists fought to keep Trump in power

The New York Times reports: Two days after Christmas last year, Richard P. Donoghue, a top Justice Department official in the waning days of the Trump administration, saw an unknown number appear on his phone. Mr. Donoghue had spent weeks fielding calls, emails and in-person requests from President Donald J. Trump and his allies, all of whom asked the Justice Department to declare, falsely, that the election was corrupt. The lame-duck president had surrounded himself with a crew of unscrupulous…

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Omicron has all the makings of a massive wave

Omicron has all the makings of a massive wave

David Wallace-Wells writes: For all their limitations, the models right now are flashing bright red. Over the course of the pandemic, again and again, projections based on simplistic extrapolations of current trends have missed the mark when the trajectories turned. Sometimes this has been for the good, with dire warnings looking excessive after waves peaked and declined well before a full penetration of the population; sometimes, unfortunately, the turn has been in the other direction. But right now we don’t…

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How border walls are triggering ecological disaster

How border walls are triggering ecological disaster

George Monbiot writes: This is the century in which humanitarian and environmental disasters converge. Climate breakdown has driven many millions from their homes, and is likely to evict hundreds of millions more. The famine harrowing Madagascar at the moment is the first to have been named by the UN as likely to have been caused by the climate emergency. It will not be the last. Great cities find themselves dangerously short of water as aquifers are drained. Air pollution kills…

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New York City’s gas ban takes fight against climate change to the kitchen

New York City’s gas ban takes fight against climate change to the kitchen

The New York Times reports: New York City is set to ban gas-powered stoves, space heaters and water boilers in all new buildings, a move that would significantly affect real estate development and construction in the nation’s largest city and could influence how cities around the world seek to reduce the burning of fossil fuels, which drives climate change. The City Council is expected on Wednesday to approve a bill banning gas hookups in new buildings — effectively requiring all-electric…

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Lies about the January 6 Capitol attack and its significance

Lies about the January 6 Capitol attack and its significance

Politifact reports: Shortly after 2 p.m. on Jan. 6, supporters of President Donald J. Trump breached the U.S. Capitol, turning the seat of American democracy into the scene of an unforgettable crime. Inside, lawmakers had been preparing to count the Electoral College votes that would bring Trump’s presidency to a close. Outside, the rioters erected a hanging gallows. They waved “Trump 2020,” “Blue Lives Matter” and Confederate flags. Some were armed. After marching down Pennsylvania Avenue at Trump’s urging, the…

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The military-intelligence veterans who helped lead Trump’s campaign of disinformation

The military-intelligence veterans who helped lead Trump’s campaign of disinformation

Reuters reports: During the Afghan and Iraq wars, the careers of two military officers often intersected. Army General Michael Flynn and an Army Reserve colonel named Phil Waldron worked together on secret projects in both countries, Waldron said. When Flynn was appointed to run the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency in 2012, Waldron said he worked at the DIA’s clandestine service. Flynn was an intel expert. Waldron’s specialty was psychological operations, or PSYOPs – targeting foreign adversaries, as an Army field…

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American citizens are mostly subjects following the dictates of their employers

American citizens are mostly subjects following the dictates of their employers

Jamelle Bouie writes: For a vast majority of Americans, democracy ends when work hours begin. Most people in this country are subject, as workers, to the nearly unmediated authority of their employers, which can discipline, sanction or fire them for nearly any reason at all. In other words, Americans are at the mercy of what the philosopher Elizabeth Anderson calls “private government,” a workplace despotism in which most workers “cede all of their rights to their employers, except those specifically…

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The pro-Trump conspiracy internet is moving from Facebook to your doorstep

The pro-Trump conspiracy internet is moving from Facebook to your doorstep

BuzzFeed News reports: The man at the door said he was just there to verify some publicly available information. In the home security video, he seems nervous and out of breath as he waits at the doorway, glancing frequently at his phone. Strangers don’t knock on doors much in Waterville Valley, New Hampshire, a small ski town. For a decade, it had just 250 year-round residents, until the pandemic hit and a bunch of Massachusetts residents decided to cross state…

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Mark Meadows’ personal cell phone is becoming a personal hell

Mark Meadows’ personal cell phone is becoming a personal hell

The Daily Beast reports: It turns out Mark Meadows may have good reason to not want to turn over all of the communications on two personal phones and two Gmail accounts. After the Jan. 6 Committee disclosed just a few choice text messages between Meadows and Fox News hosts, an anonymous lawmaker, and Donald Trump Jr. about the insurrection, the battle for all of Meadows’ communications has taken on new meaning. And Meadows’ assertions of executive privilege are undermined by…

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Two January 6 organizers are coming forward and naming names: ‘We’re turning it all over’

Two January 6 organizers are coming forward and naming names: ‘We’re turning it all over’

Rolling Stone reports: Two key organizers of the main Jan. 6 rally in Washington, D.C. are coming in from the cold. Dustin Stockton and Jennifer Lynn Lawrence are set to testify next week before the House select committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol. The pair will deliver testimony and turn over documents, including text messages, that indicate the extensive involvement members of Congress and the Trump administration had in planning the House challenge to certifying Biden’s election and…

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America’s anti-democratic movement

America’s anti-democratic movement

David Leonhardt writes: American politics these days can often seem fairly normal. President Biden has had both big accomplishments and big setbacks in his first year, as is typical. In Congress, members are haggling over bills and passing some of them. At the Supreme Court, justices are hearing cases. Daily media coverage tends to reflect this apparent sense of political normalcy. But American politics today is not really normal. It may instead be in the midst of a radical shift…

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The GOP is an anti-America party

The GOP is an anti-America party

Juan Williams writes: I am a Democrat. Yet I have voted for Republicans. In fact, one of my sons ran for office as a Republican. My other son worked for Republicans in Congress and the Republican National Committee. But I can’t stomach what has happened to the GOP in the last year. And I can’t understand why every American isn’t screaming about it. How can anyone dismiss a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol as just “one day in January,”…

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Taliban seek ties with U.S., other ex-foes

Taliban seek ties with U.S., other ex-foes

The Associated Press reports: Afghanistan’s new Taliban rulers are committed in principle to education and jobs for girls and women, a marked departure from their previous time in power, and they seek the world’s “mercy and compassion” to help millions of Afghans in desperate need, a top Taliban leader said in a rare interview. Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi also told The Associated Press that the Taliban government wants good relations with all countries and has no issue with…

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The U.S. has a dirty-money problem

The U.S. has a dirty-money problem

Anne Applebaum writes: In 2010, things started going wrong at the steel plant in Warren, Ohio, a Rust Belt town that went on to cast its votes twice for Donald Trump. A cooling panel started leaking, and the furnace operator didn’t see the leak in time; the water hit molten steel, leading to an explosion that sent workers to the hospital with burns and severe injuries. A year later, another explosion caused another round of destruction. A federal regulatory investigation…

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