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Category: Politics

I’ve been a critical race theorist for 30 years. Our opponents are just proving our point for us

I’ve been a critical race theorist for 30 years. Our opponents are just proving our point for us

Gary Peller writes: Some 25 states have already enacted or are considering laws to ban teaching what they call “critical race theory” (“CRT”) in public schools, a concept that school officials around the country deny they even teach. A parents’ group in Washoe County, Nevada wants teachers to wear body cams, just to make sure. And Ted Cruz just charged that CRT is “every bit as racist as the klansmen in white sheets.” As a law professor closely associated with…

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The Republican senator who decided to tell the truth

The Republican senator who decided to tell the truth

Tim Alberta writes: Right around the time Donald Trump was flexing his conspiratorial muscles on Saturday night, recycling old ruses and inventing new boogeymen in his first public speech since inciting a siege of the U.S. Capitol in January, a dairy farmer in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula sat down to supper. It had been a trying day. The farmer, Ed McBroom, battled sidewinding rain while working his 320 acres, loading feed and breeding livestock and at one point delivering a distressed…

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Kamala Harris’ office — ‘not a healthy environment’ — is rife with dissent

Kamala Harris’ office — ‘not a healthy environment’ — is rife with dissent

Politico reports: When Vice President Kamala Harris finally made the decision to visit the Mexico border last week, people inside her own office were blindsided by the news. For days, aides and outside allies had been calling and texting with each other about the political fallout that a potential trip would entail. But when it became known that she was going to El Paso, it left many scrambling, including officials who were responsible for making travel arrangements and others outside…

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Calls grow for an investigation into FDA approval of Biogen’s Alzheimer’s drug

Calls grow for an investigation into FDA approval of Biogen’s Alzheimer’s drug

STAT reports: Former health secretary Donna Shalala called for a federal investigation into the Food and Drug Administration’s polarizing approval of a Biogen treatment for Alzheimer’s disease, citing STAT’s revelation Tuesday that regulators were far more closely aligned with the company than previously disclosed. “When you see a report like this, you have to investigate it,” said Shalala, a former member of Congress who led the Department of Health and Human Services under President Clinton. “You cannot hesitate and you…

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Big Tech’s threat to democracy

Big Tech’s threat to democracy

Matthew B Crawford writes: The convenience of the smart home may be worth the price; that’s for each of us to decide. But to do so with open eyes, one has to understand what the price is. After all, you don’t pay a monthly fee for Alexa, or Google Home. The cost, then, is a subtle one: a slight psychological adjustment in which we are tipped a bit further into passivity and dependence. The Sleep Number Bed is typical of…

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The demographic shift isn’t driving white people to the right

The demographic shift isn’t driving white people to the right

Mark R Reiff writes: Why are so many white people throughout the liberal democratic world moving to the illiberal Right? The conventional explanation is that they are being driven by fear of the ‘demographic shift’. That is, because of immigration, both legal and illegal, and differing fertility rates among the relevant groups, white people of specific ethnic and religious backgrounds will soon no longer make up the electoral majority in the regions they currently dominate. Losing their majority status, in…

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How the drug industry has exploited reforms started in the fight against AIDS

How the drug industry has exploited reforms started in the fight against AIDS

Robert Bazell writes: Three decades ago, a small group from within the AIDS activist organization ACT UP changed the course of medicine in the United States. They employed what they called “the outside/inside strategy.” The activists staged large, noisy demonstrations outside the Food and Drug Administration and other federal government agencies, demanding an acceleration of the drug-approval process. Others learned the minutiae of the science and worked quietly with receptive bureaucrats, bringing the patient’s perspective to the table toward the…

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The war on Indigenous rights in Brazil is intensifying

The war on Indigenous rights in Brazil is intensifying

Mark Harris and Denise Ferreira Da Silva write: Indigenous peoples in Brazil are under siege by the Brazilian government, which is waging war on two fronts. New legislation in the form of a bill known as PL 490/2007 threatens to cancel legal protections for Indigenous territories, while a landmark Supreme Court case over the so-called marco temporal, a 1988 cut-off date that threatens to strip the Indigenous peoples of existing land rights. Though not as visible as the effects of…

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The war on history is a war on democracy

The war on history is a war on democracy

Timothy Snyder writes: In March 1932, the cover of Fortune magazine featured a painting of Red Square by Diego Rivera. A numberless crowd of faceless men marched with red banners, surrounding a locomotive engine emblazoned with hammer and sickle. This was the image of communist modernization the Soviets wished to transmit during Stalin’s first five-year plan: The achievement was impersonal, technical, unquestionable. The Soviet Union was transforming itself from an agrarian backwater into an industrial power through sheer disciplined understanding…

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What Biden must do to right the wrongs of Guantanamo

What Biden must do to right the wrongs of Guantanamo

Benjamin R. Farley writes: Many Americans like to tell themselves a story about the choices the country makes in times of national crisis. We see our country’s policies as a pendulum. We may overreact at first, temporarily sacrificing principles and rights to meet the emergency at hand. But eventually the crisis recedes, and in restoring our commitment to foundational principles and the rule of law, we push the pendulum back toward equilibrium. This story is comforting; it makes sense of…

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Arizona ballot audit shows signs of backfiring on GOP

Arizona ballot audit shows signs of backfiring on GOP

Politico reports: When Arizona Republicans first pushed for a partisan audit of the 2020 presidential ballots cast in the Phoenix metropolitan area, they argued that they needed to know if any irregularities or fraud caused President Trump to lose this rapidly evolving swing state. But the audit itself could be damaging Republican prospects, according to a new Bendixen & Amandi International poll, which shows roughly half of Arizona voters oppose the recount effort. In addition, a narrow majority favors President…

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Congressman recruits Holocaust deniers into the Republican Party

Congressman recruits Holocaust deniers into the Republican Party

Jonathan Chait writes: Some of the most cartoonishly nutty members of the Republican caucus simply want to get famous, rich, or the affections of younger women. Representative Paul Gosar, on the other hand, has a plan. He wants to extend the rightward boundary of the Republican Party coalition and bring it right up to the edge of open Nazism. Gosar announced last night that he is holding a fundraiser with Nick Fuentes: Arizona GOP Congressman Paul Gosar isn’t even trying…

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The Justice Department is suing Georgia. Don’t expect Garland to end there

The Justice Department is suing Georgia. Don’t expect Garland to end there

Joyce White Vance writes: On Friday, Attorney General Merrick Garland delivered on his promise to use all his statutory authority to protect the right to vote: He announced he was suing the state of Georgia for enacting a law he said the legislature passed to deny Black people that right. The majority-Republican legislature adopted the law, S.B. 202, in the aftermath of historic Black turnout and the election of two Democratic senators in the last cycle. Originally just three pages…

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We’re learning the wrong lessons from the world’s happiest countries

We’re learning the wrong lessons from the world’s happiest countries

Joe Pinsker writes: Since 2012, most of the humans on Earth have been given a nearly annual reminder that there are entire nations of people who are measurably happier than they are. This uplifting yearly notification is known as the World Happiness Report. With the release of each report, which is published by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network, the question is not which country will appear at the top of the rankings, but rather which Northern European country…

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Virologist Danielle Anderson paints a very different picture of the Wuhan Institute

Virologist Danielle Anderson paints a very different picture of the Wuhan Institute

Bloomberg reports: From her first visit before it formally opened in 2018, Anderson was impressed with the institute’s maximum biocontainment lab. The concrete, bunker-style building has the highest biosafety designation, and requires air, water and waste to be filtered and sterilized before it leaves the facility. There were strict protocols and requirements aimed at containing the pathogens being studied, Anderson said, and researchers underwent 45 hours of training to be certified to work independently in the lab. The induction process…

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Biden wants to dismantle two weapons the richest 0.1% use to avoid taxes

Biden wants to dismantle two weapons the richest 0.1% use to avoid taxes

Bloomberg reports: An unpleasant surprise for wealthy Americans was lurking halfway through a 114-page document released by the U.S. Treasury late last month. Technical provisions in the proposal — not mentioned when President Joe Biden presented his plans to raise taxes on the rich in April — could disrupt or dismantle some of the most popular ways super wealthy people have legally avoided taxes for decades. One target is dynasty trusts, vehicles that wealthy families can use to benefit multiple…

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