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Category: Politics

Prosecutors’ witness list offers glimpse into January 6 trial strategy

Prosecutors’ witness list offers glimpse into January 6 trial strategy

Politico reports: Prosecutors late Monday began laying out their trial strategy for Jan. 6 cases in the clearest detail yet, indicating they intend to call multiple Capitol Police officers, a former Senate aide, a member of the Three Percenters militia who was granted immunity and the Secret Service agent who helped supervise then-Vice President Mike Pence’s visit to the Capitol that day. Prosecutors revealed their proposed witness list in the case of Guy Reffitt, a Texas man who was charged…

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Call it ‘codger power.’ We’re older and fighting for a better America

Call it ‘codger power.’ We’re older and fighting for a better America

Bill McKibben and Akaya Windwood write: Neil Young and Joni Mitchell did more than go after Spotify for spreading Covid disinformation last week. They also, inadvertently, signaled what could turn out to be an extraordinarily important revival: of an older generation fully rejoining the fight for a working future. You could call it (with a wink!) codger power. We’ve seen this close up: Over the past few months, we’ve worked with others of our generation to start the group Third…

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Rightwing lobby group ALEC driving laws to blacklist companies that boycott the oil industry

Rightwing lobby group ALEC driving laws to blacklist companies that boycott the oil industry

The Guardian reports: The influential rightwing lobby group the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec) is driving a surge in new state laws to block boycotts of the oil industry. The group’s strategy, which aims to protect large oil firms and other conservative-friendly industries, is modelled on legislation to punish divestment from Israel. Since the beginning of the year, state legislatures in West Virginia, Oklahoma and Indiana have introduced a version of a law drafted by Alec, called the Energy Discrimination…

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Why Biden’s judges are different — and what that means for the Supreme Court

Why Biden’s judges are different — and what that means for the Supreme Court

Chris Geidner writes: President Joe Biden’s judges are different. Not only are they different from those of President Donald Trump, but Biden’s judicial nominees are different from those of any president before him. In three ways, the first year of Biden’s judicial selections tells an important story about the effect the president is looking to have on the judiciary — a story that provides the clearest available information about how Biden will likely choose his first Supreme Court nominee. First,…

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What’s behind the right-wing book-ban frenzy? Big money, and a long-term plan

What’s behind the right-wing book-ban frenzy? Big money, and a long-term plan

Jon Skolnik writes: Until very recently, “book bans” seemed like a term out of the past, or a phenomenon that erupted sporadically in a small school or library district in the most conservative areas of the country. But over the last several years, parents’ groups aggrieved by the left’s alleged influence K-12 education have been working tirelessly to bring them back. All kinds of books have been exiled from library shelves or school curricula in the latest book-ban frenzy, although…

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Macron hopes for ‘historic solution’ to Ukraine crisis ahead of Putin meeting

Macron hopes for ‘historic solution’ to Ukraine crisis ahead of Putin meeting

The Guardian reports: French president Emmanuel Macron believes he can deliver “a historic solution” to the Ukraine crisis ahead of his arrival in Moscow for talks with Russian president Vladimir Putin. After a flurry of diplomatic activity that included talks with US president Joe Biden this weekend and three phone calls with Putin, Macron will land in Moscow on Monday seeking a “de-escalation” of the tense standoff on Ukraine’s eastern borders. Russia has denied planning to invade Ukraine but has…

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Lies are the building blocks of Trumpian authoritarianism

Lies are the building blocks of Trumpian authoritarianism

William Saletan writes: Americans like to think our country is immune to authoritarianism. We have a culture of freedom, a tradition of elected government, and a Bill of Rights. We’re not like those European countries that fell into fascism. We’d never willingly abandon democracy, liberty, or the rule of law. But that’s not how authoritarianism would come to America. In fact, it’s not how authoritarianism has come to America. The movement to dismantle our democracy is thriving and growing, even…

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Senate GOP backlash smacks RNC after Cheney-Kinzinger censure

Senate GOP backlash smacks RNC after Cheney-Kinzinger censure

Politico reports: Senate Republicans are not happy with the Republican National Committee. In interviews on Monday evening, GOP senators lashed out at their own national party’s overwhelming vote to censure Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) for working on the House’s investigation into the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. They warned that alienating a portion of the party for being overly anti-Trump is not a political winner heading into the midterms, a sharp message from sitting members that goes…

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Peter Thiel steps down from Meta’s board to support Trump-aligned candidates

Peter Thiel steps down from Meta’s board to support Trump-aligned candidates

The Wall Street Journal reports: Peter Thiel, one of Facebook’s earliest investors and its longest-serving outside board member, is planning to step down from his position at the social-media giant, parent company Meta Platforms Inc. said Monday. Mr. Thiel intends to focus his efforts on helping Republican candidates supporting the agenda of former President Donald Trump in the 2022 midterm elections, according to a person familiar with the matter. Mr. Thiel, a multibillionaire who has made his fortune as one…

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White House warns Russian invasion of Ukraine could come ‘any day now’

White House warns Russian invasion of Ukraine could come ‘any day now’

The Wall Street Journal reports: White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan warned Sunday that a Russian invasion of Ukraine could be imminent and might entail a high cost for the civilians living there. “We are in the window,” Mr. Sullivan told Fox News Sunday. “Any day now, Russia could take military action against Ukraine or it could be a couple of weeks from now, or Russia could choose to take the diplomatic path instead.” Russia has 83 battalion tactical…

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Russia could seize Kyiv in days and cause 50,000 civilian casualties in Ukraine, U.S. assessments find

Russia could seize Kyiv in days and cause 50,000 civilian casualties in Ukraine, U.S. assessments find

The Washington Post reports: Russia is close to completing preparations for what appears to be a large-scale invasion of Ukraine that could leave up to 50,000 civilians killed or wounded, decapitate the government in Kyiv within two days, and launch a humanitarian crisis with up to 5 million refugees fleeing the resulting chaos, according to updated U.S. military and intelligence assessments briefed to lawmakers and European partners over the past several days. The rising concerns come as the Russian military…

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Macron vows ‘de-escalation,’ but hints at concessions to Putin

Macron vows ‘de-escalation,’ but hints at concessions to Putin

Politico reports: French President Emmanuel Macron is optimistic he can secure a de-escalation over Ukraine when he travels to Moscow to meet his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Monday, but hinted that Western countries could have to make concessions to the Kremlin. His bullish prognosis of a diplomatic compromise will trigger alarm bells among those who advocate a more hawkish line on Russia, particularly in Central and Eastern European capitals that fear Russian aggression. In an interview with the weekly…

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The Covid policy that really mattered wasn’t a policy

The Covid policy that really mattered wasn’t a policy

Ezra Klein writes: If the C.D.C. had recommended better masks from the beginning, how many people would have worn them and for how long? If the Biden administration had flooded stores with cheap rapid tests, would people have used them? If boosters had been pushed earlier, and more loudly, would the United States no longer trail peer nations in vaccinations? Put differently: How much would getting our pandemic policies right have mattered? It’s easy to speak as if policy smoothly…

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How Big Oil used Facebook to push Joe Manchin to kill Build Back Better

How Big Oil used Facebook to push Joe Manchin to kill Build Back Better

Vice News reports: Last August, during the hottest summer in U.S. history, the Senate began debating the country’s most ambitious plan ever to fight the climate crisis: President Biden’s sweeping Build Back Better bill. The next day, Big Oil swung into action against it. The industry knew exactly who to target: the voters of Sen. Joe Manchin, the all-powerful Democrat who infamously refused to support Build Back Better, and this week, declared the plan “dead.” America’s top oil industry group,…

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One year later: The Texas freeze revealed a fragile energy system and inspired lasting misinformation

One year later: The Texas freeze revealed a fragile energy system and inspired lasting misinformation

Inside Climate News reports: Texas is recovering from this week’s winter storm, nearly a year after a much more severe set of storms led to a devastating failure of the electricity system and about 250 deaths. The February 2021 storms showed the fragility of the grid at a time when climate change is contributing to an increase in extreme weather. But the most enduring legacy of the 2021 blackouts may be the spread of a falsehood: the idea that the…

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Dismal Russian record in occupied eastern Ukraine serves as warning

Dismal Russian record in occupied eastern Ukraine serves as warning

The Wall Street Journal reports: The Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine’s Luhansk and Donetsk regions were once the engines of the country’s economy and dominated its politics. They produced its richest man, billionaire industrialist Rinat Akhmetov, as well as former President Viktor Yanukovych, ousted by the street protests that triggered the Russian invasion in 2014. Since then, however, the two areas—now nominally independent “people’s republics” inside the larger regions of Luhansk and Donetsk—have turned into impoverished, depopulated enclaves that increasingly rely…

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