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Category: Politics

How John Eastman counseled Donald Trump to retain power by overturning the election

How John Eastman counseled Donald Trump to retain power by overturning the election

In an editorial, the New York Times says: However horrifying the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol appeared in the moment, we know now that it was far worse. The country was hours away from a full-blown constitutional crisis — not primarily because of the violence and mayhem inflicted by hundreds of President Donald Trump’s supporters but because of the actions of Mr. Trump himself. In the days before the mob descended on the Capitol, a corollary attack —…

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Rudy Giuliani is in an excruciating legal predicament — and could very well flip

Rudy Giuliani is in an excruciating legal predicament — and could very well flip

Peter Stone writes: Giuliani is being treated, by all appearances, as a dead man walking. America’s Mayor, as he was once known, has been abandoned by his most powerful friend [Donald Trump]. He has lost his megaphone at Fox News and is now going around with a begging bowl for money. And at the center of Giuliani’s legal troubles is a web of overlapping federal investigations, including a criminal probe focusing on him personally, which some experts say could force…

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The conservatives who are preparing for civil war

The conservatives who are preparing for civil war

Emma Green writes: “Let me start big. The mission of the Claremont Institute is to save Western civilization,” says Ryan Williams, the organization’s president, looking at the camera, in a crisp navy suit. “We’ve always aimed high.” A trumpet blares. America’s founding documents flash across the screen. Welcome to the intellectual home of America’s Trumpist right. As Donald Trump rose to power, the Claremont universe—which sponsors fellowships and publications, including the Claremont Review of Books and The American Mind—rose with…

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How military leadership assisted Portugal’s vaccination success

How military leadership assisted Portugal’s vaccination success

The New York Times reports: Portugal’s health care system was on the verge of collapse. Hospitals in the capital, Lisbon, were overflowing and the authorities were asking people to treat themselves at home. In the last week of January, nearly 2,000 people died as the virus spread. The country’s vaccine program was in a shambles, so the government turned to Vice Adm. Henrique Gouveia e Melo, a former submarine squadron commander, to right the ship. Eight months later, Portugal is…

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Joe Manchin, America’s climate decider-in-chief, is also a coal baron

Joe Manchin, America’s climate decider-in-chief, is also a coal baron

Mark Hertsgaard writes: Joe Manchin has never been this famous. People around the world now know that the West Virginia Democrat is the essential 50th vote in the US Senate that president Joe Biden needs to pass his agenda into law. That includes Biden’s climate agenda. Which doesn’t bode well for defusing the climate emergency, given Manchin’s longstanding opposition to ambitious climate action. It turns out that the Senator wielding this awesome power – America’s climate decider-in-chief, one might call…

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The Democrats’ last best shot to kill the filibuster

The Democrats’ last best shot to kill the filibuster

Ronald Brownstein writes: From multiple directions, the crisis over the filibuster is peaking for Democrats. In just the past week, the casualty count of Democratic priorities doomed by the filibuster has mounted; both police and immigration reform now appear to be blocked in the Senate, and legislation codifying abortion rights faces equally dim prospects. Simultaneously, the party has tied itself in knots attempting to squeeze its economic agenda into a single, sprawling “reconciliation” bill, because that process offers the only…

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How immunizations helped create America

How immunizations helped create America

David Leonhardt writes: The United States owes its existence as a nation partly to an immunization mandate. In 1777, smallpox was a big enough problem for the bedraggled American army that George Washington thought it could jeopardize the Revolution. An outbreak had already led to one American defeat, at the Battle of Quebec. To prevent more, Washington ordered immunizations — done quietly, so the British would not hear how many Americans were sick — for all troops who had not…

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Covid is killing rural Americans at twice the rate of people in urban areas

Covid is killing rural Americans at twice the rate of people in urban areas

NBC News reports: Rural Americans are dying of Covid at more than twice the rate of their urban counterparts — a divide that health experts say is likely to widen as access to medical care shrinks for a population that tends to be older, sicker, heavier, poorer and less vaccinated. While the initial surge of Covid-19 deaths skipped over much of rural America, where roughly 15 percent of Americans live, nonmetropolitan mortality rates quickly started to outpace those of metropolitan…

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Why Biden is patient as Democrats panic

Why Biden is patient as Democrats panic

Peter Nicholas writes: Defeating the pandemic may matter more politically than passing any bill. Last week, I observed a focus group made up of five white women, three of whom voted for Biden in 2020, the other two for Trump. How much do you follow news about the pandemic? the moderator asked. “It’s literally the first thing that everybody talks about,” said an independent voter from the Atlanta suburbs who backed Trump in 2016 and then switched to Biden in…

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We’re already barreling toward the next pandemic

We’re already barreling toward the next pandemic

Ed Yong writes: A year after the United States bombed its pandemic performance in front of the world, the Delta variant opened the stage for a face-saving encore. If the U.S. had learned from its mishandling of the original SARS-CoV-2 virus, it would have been better prepared for the variant that was already ravaging India. Instead, after a quiet spring, President Joe Biden all but declared victory against SARS-CoV-2. The CDC ended indoor masking for vaccinated people, pitting two of…

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Kyrsten Sinema’s positions have angered some Democrats in Arizona

Kyrsten Sinema’s positions have angered some Democrats in Arizona

The New York Times reports: Jade Duran once spent her weekends knocking on doors to campaign for Senator Kyrsten Sinema, the stubbornly centrist Democrat whose vote could seal the fate of a vast Democratic effort to remake America’s social safety net. But no more. When Ms. Sinema famously gave a thumbs down to a $15 minimum wage and refused to eliminate the filibuster to pass new voting rights laws this year, Ms. Duran, a Democrat and biomedical engineer from Phoenix,…

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Fox News embraces white nationalism and these advertisers embrace Fox News

Fox News embraces white nationalism and these advertisers embrace Fox News

Judd Legum writes: For months, Tucker Carlson has been promoting the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory. The concept, which is embraced by white nationalists and neo-Nazis, is that there is a secret plot to “replace” whites with non-white immigrants. It has been cited by mass murderers — in El Paso, New Zealand, Pittsburgh, and elsewhere — to justify violence. Its roots can be traced to a French novel, Le Camp des Saints, the urtext of modern white supremacist discourse. Carlson…

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Trump might not have to steal 2024

Trump might not have to steal 2024

David Frum writes: Are constitutionally committed Americans doing all they can to prevent a pro-Trump plot to pervert the 2024 election? Maybe not. But along with that question, here’s another: Are constitutionally committed Americans doing all they can to prevent Donald Trump from winning the 2024 election fair and square? The Biden administration’s numbers are slumping in the fall of 2021, opening the way for Republican gains in 2022 and the return of the twice-impeached ex-president as a presidential nominee….

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A radical group of centrists is wasting our best – and maybe last – chance to save the planet from climate change

A radical group of centrists is wasting our best – and maybe last – chance to save the planet from climate change

Dan Pfeiffer writes: There is no global solution to climate change without the United States; and our best chance to save the planet may be slipping through our fingers. John Podesta, the wisest of Washington wisemen, recently sent an urgent memo to every Democrat in the House and in the Senate, pleading with them to stop bickering and start legislating. Podesta spearheaded climate policy in the Obama White House during the second term and has been pushing the Democratic Party…

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Facebook’s effort to prey upon children goes beyond Instagram Kids, documents show

Facebook’s effort to prey upon children goes beyond Instagram Kids, documents show

The Wall Street Journal reports: Facebook Inc. has come under increasing fire in recent days for its effect on young users and its efforts to create products for them. Inside the company, teams of employees have for years been laying plans to attract preteens that go beyond what is publicly known, spurred by fear that Facebook could lose a new generation of users critical to its future. Internal Facebook documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show the company formed…

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Havana Syndrome attacks widen with CIA officer’s evacuation from Serbia

Havana Syndrome attacks widen with CIA officer’s evacuation from Serbia

The Wall Street Journal reports: The CIA evacuated an intelligence officer serving in Serbia in recent weeks who suffered serious injuries consistent with the neurological attacks known as Havana Syndrome, according to current and former U.S. officials. The incident in the Balkans, which hasn’t been previously reported, is the latest in what the officials describe as a steady expansion of attacks on American spies and diplomats posted overseas by unknown assailants using what government officials and scientists suspect is some…

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