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Category: Politics

Anti-critical race theory laws are un-American

Anti-critical race theory laws are un-American

Kmele Foster, David French, Jason Stanley and Thomas Chatterton Williams write: What is the purpose of a liberal education? This is the question at the heart of a bitter debate that has been roiling the nation for months. Schools, particularly at the kindergarten-to-12th-grade level, are responsible helping turn students into well-informed and discerning citizens. At their best, our nation’s schools equip young minds to grapple with complexity and navigate our differences. At their worst, they resemble indoctrination factories. In recent…

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China’s big plan for post-U.S. Afghanistan

China’s big plan for post-U.S. Afghanistan

The Daily Beast reports: As the U.S. exits Afghanistan, Beijing is preparing to swoop into the war-torn country and fill the vacuum left by the departed U.S. and NATO troops. China is poised to make an exclusive entry into post-U.S. Afghanistan with its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Speaking on condition of anonymity, a source close to government officials in Afghanistan told The Daily Beast that Kabul authorities are growing more intensively engaged with China on an extension of the…

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The Weisselberg indictment is not a ‘fringe benefits’ case

The Weisselberg indictment is not a ‘fringe benefits’ case

Daniel Shaviro writes: In the days before the July 1, 2021 issuance of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Weisselberg-Trump Organization indictment, public anticipation was positively underwhelming. It would just be a fringe benefits case, we were told – meaning, a dispute, of a picayune sort that almost never yields criminal charges, regarding whether or not an employee’s use of, say, a company car or apartment yielded taxable income, in the face of admitted personal benefit but also with plausible claims of…

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Critical race theory: What it is and what it isn’t

Critical race theory: What it is and what it isn’t

President Lyndon Johnson signing the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which aimed to do away with racial discrimination in the law. But discrimination persisted. AP file photo By David Miguel Gray, University of Memphis U.S. Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana sent a letter to fellow Republicans on June 24, 2021, stating: “As Republicans, we reject the racial essentialism that critical race theory teaches … that our institutions are racist and need to be destroyed from the ground up.” Kimberlé Crenshaw, a…

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The divide between vaccinated and unvaccinated America

The divide between vaccinated and unvaccinated America

Sarah Zhang writes: Last winter, when vaccines were still incredibly scarce in the United States, Ashish Jha told The Atlantic that he was feeling optimistic about summer: By July 4, Jha, the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, expected enough people to be vaccinated that he could host a backyard barbecue. Indeed, Jha confirmed to me this week, he will be grilling burgers and hot dogs for friends this Fourth of July. He had predicted back in…

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Partisanship has made American politics struggle to respond to real changes in the real world

Partisanship has made American politics struggle to respond to real changes in the real world

The New York Times reports: In another age, the events of this season would have been nearly certain to produce a major shift in American politics — or at least a meaningful, discernible one. Over a period of weeks, the coronavirus death rate plunged and the country considerably eased public health restrictions. President Biden announced a bipartisan deal late last month to spend hundreds of billions of dollars rebuilding the country’s worn infrastructure — the most significant aisle-crossing legislative agreement…

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Massive ransomware attack may impact thousands of victims

Massive ransomware attack may impact thousands of victims

Bloomberg reports: Just weeks after President Joe Biden implored Vladimir Putin to curb cyber crime, a notorious, Russia-linked ransomware gang has been accused of pulling off an audacious attack on the global software supply chain. REvil, the group blamed for the May 30 ransomware attack of meatpacking giant JBS SA, is believed to be behind hacks on at least 20 managed-service providers, which provide IT services to small- and medium-sized businesses. More than 1,000 businesses have already been impacted, a…

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Lawmaker threatens to subpoena Exxon after revelations from secret video

Lawmaker threatens to subpoena Exxon after revelations from secret video

The New York Times reports: The chairman of a House subcommittee is demanding that executives of Exxon Mobil Corp., Shell, Chevron and other major oil and gas companies testify before Congress about the industry’s decades-long effort to wage disinformation campaigns around climate change. Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, said Friday he was prepared to use subpoena power to compel the companies to appear before lawmakers if they don’t do so voluntarily. The move comes a day after a secretive…

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As Afghan forces crumble, an air of unreality grips Kabul

As Afghan forces crumble, an air of unreality grips Kabul

The New York Times reports: The security blanket that the United States provided for two decades haunts the Afghan government’s actions, inactions and policies, fostering an atrophying of any proactive planning, in the view of some analysts. If there is a plan to counter the Taliban advance, it is not evident as the government’s hold on the countryside shrinks. Some intelligence assessments have said that the Afghan government could fall under pressure from the Taliban in from six months to…

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In case against Trump’s company, echoes of his father’s tactics on taxes

In case against Trump’s company, echoes of his father’s tactics on taxes

The New York Times reports: Long before Donald J. Trump’s company was accused of plotting detours around the tax code to compensate its chief financial officer with carpeting, televisions and car leases, there were the $16,135 boilers. The boilers were bought for that amount by Mr. Trump’s father, Fred, in the 1990s for his numerous apartment buildings. But in a bit of financial alchemy that embodied the family ethos of paying as little tax as possible, the elder Mr. Trump…

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Democrats have one option left

Democrats have one option left

Ronald Brownstein writes: Today’s Supreme Court decision further weakening the Voting Rights Act affirmed that the only way Democrats can reverse the wave of restrictive voting laws in GOP-controlled states is to pass new federal voting rights by curtailing the Senate filibuster. Congressional action has long seemed the only realistic lever for Democrats to resist red states’ surge of voter-suppression laws, which are passing, as I’ve written, on an almost entirely party-line basis. In the state legislatures, Democrats lack the…

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The Supreme Court is putting democracy at risk

The Supreme Court is putting democracy at risk

Richard L. Hasen writes: In two disturbing rulings closing out the Supreme Court’s term, the court’s six-justice conservative majority, over the loud protests of its three-liberal minority, has shown itself hostile to American democracy. In one case, Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, the court has weakened the last remaining legal tool for protecting minority voters in federal courts from a new wave of legislation seeking to suppress the vote that is emanating from Republican-controlled states. In the other, Americans for…

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Why the law is strong enough to take on Trump

Why the law is strong enough to take on Trump

Donald Ayer, Norman Eisen and E. Danya Perry write: A 15-count indictment for tax fraud and other charges filed in New York on Thursday against the Trump Organization and its longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, has already stimulated as much hand-wringing as satisfaction from those who have called for accountability for Donald Trump. Some express concern that Mr. Trump himself was not charged and may never be. Others note that these are “only” state tax fraud counts against his…

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The looming stagflationary debt crisis

The looming stagflationary debt crisis

Nouriel Roubini writes: In April, I warned that today’s extremely loose monetary and fiscal policies, when combined with a number of negative supply shocks, could result in 1970s-style stagflation (high inflation alongside a recession). In fact, the risk today is even bigger than it was then. After all, debt ratios in advanced economies and most emerging markets were much lower in the 1970s, which is why stagflation has not been associated with debt crises historically. If anything, unexpected inflation in…

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Trump was not indicted. But the charges still threaten him

Trump was not indicted. But the charges still threaten him

The New York Times reports: After all the suspicion and anticipation, it was not a conspiracy involving Russia, widespread money laundering or a sweeping allegation of racketeering and corruption. Instead, it was an investigation that uncovered the alleged abuse of run-of-the-mill perks — like car leases, apartments and school tuition — that transformed Donald J. Trump’s family business from real estate branding empire to criminal defendant. On Thursday, prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office announced charges against the Trump…

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Big oil and gas kept a dirty secret for decades. Now they may pay the price

Big oil and gas kept a dirty secret for decades. Now they may pay the price

Chris McGreal reports: After a century of wielding extraordinary economic and political power, America’s petroleum giants face a reckoning for driving the greatest existential threat of our lifetimes. An unprecedented wave of lawsuits, filed by cities and states across the US, aim to hold the oil and gas industry to account for the environmental devastation caused by fossil fuels – and covering up what they knew along the way. Coastal cities struggling to keep rising sea levels at bay, midwestern…

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