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Category: Politics

Biden must stop methane pipelines to deliver on climate change and environmental justice

Biden must stop methane pipelines to deliver on climate change and environmental justice

Crystal Cavalier and Michael E. Mann write: Four years of President Donald Trump have cost America dearly. We lost our global leadership on addressing climate change and saw the struggle for environmental justice thwarted here at home. President Joe Biden has defined both of these objectives as cornerstones of his legacy, but a huge interstate methane gas pipeline now being rammed through the Appalachian Mountains threatens to undermine the progress his administration has promised. The 42-inch diameter Mountain Valley Pipeline…

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How Democrats are ‘unilaterally disarming’ in the redistricting wars

How Democrats are ‘unilaterally disarming’ in the redistricting wars

Politico reports: Oregon Democrats had finally secured total control of redistricting for the first time in decades. Then, just months before they were set to draw new maps, they gave it away. In a surprise that left Democrats from Salem to Washington baffled and angry, the state House speaker handed the GOP an effective veto over the districts in exchange for a pledge to stop stymieing her legislative agenda with delay tactics. The reaction from some of Oregon’s Democratic House…

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The man who controls the Senate

The man who controls the Senate

Evan Osnos writes: On a frosty night in February, Joe Manchin III, the senior senator from West Virginia, invited a few colleagues over for dinner aboard the houseboat he docks on the Potomac. In the past, opponents have sought to highlight the vessel for political effect; a 2018 advertisement by the National Republican Senatorial Committee called it a “$700,000 D.C. luxury yacht.” (In response, Manchin’s office reported that he bought it, used, for two hundred and twenty thousand dollars.) The…

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Progressives crank up filibuster pressure on Sinema with million-dollar ad buy in Arizona

Progressives crank up filibuster pressure on Sinema with million-dollar ad buy in Arizona

NBC News reports: A progressive group is launching a seven-figure ad campaign aiming to pressure Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., to support abolition of the filibuster, as the Senate eyes a vote to advance major voting rights legislation. The group, Just Democracy, is spending $1.2 million for TV ads and another $200,000 on digital ads in Arizona from June 21 to June 30, said a spokesman for the group, adding the effort will feature two ads on cable news programs, local…

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The authoritarian instincts of police unions

The authoritarian instincts of police unions

Adam Serwer writes: In May 2020, Darnella Frazier, a 17-year-old with a smartphone camera, documented the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. Most Americans who watched the video of Floyd begging for his life, as Officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on his neck, saw a human being. Robert Kroll did not. The head of the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis saw a “violent criminal” and viewed the protests that followed as a “terrorist movement.” In a letter to…

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Since 9/11, military suicides dwarf the number of soldiers killed in combat

Since 9/11, military suicides dwarf the number of soldiers killed in combat

NBC News reports: Since 9/11, four times as many U.S. service members and veterans have died by suicide than have been killed in combat, according to a new report. The research, compiled by the Costs of War Project at Brown University, found an estimated 30,177 active duty personnel and veterans who have served in the military since 9/11 have died by suicide, compared with 7,057 killed in post 9/11 military operations. The figures include all service members, not just those…

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Everyone wants to sell the last barrel of oil

Everyone wants to sell the last barrel of oil

Bill McKibben writes: A final victory last week over the Keystone XL pipeline is a reminder that fighting particular fossil-fuel projects is a necessary strategy if the climate is to be saved. The defeat of Keystone XL doesn’t mean that Canada’s vast tar-sands project, which is generally regarded as the largest industrial project in the world, is over, but the fight has been a gut punch to the fossil-fuel industry. In 2011, when protests began outside the White House, Canada’s…

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Iran’s next president, Ebrahim Raisi, isn’t who you think he is

Iran’s next president, Ebrahim Raisi, isn’t who you think he is

Sajjad Safaei writes: In late May, the 12-member Guardian Council—Iran’s election watchdog, many of whose members are associated with Raisi—barred prominent moderate and pro-reform figures from running in the race. Some still clung to the hope that Khamenei would eventually intervene, just as he had done in 2005, to reinstate some of the disqualified candidates. Khamenei eventually called on the Guardian Council to “make amends” for its “unjust” conduct, but without demanding any specific candidate to be reinstated; the Guardian…

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Historic change: Arab political parties are now legitimate partners in Israel’s politics and government

Historic change: Arab political parties are now legitimate partners in Israel’s politics and government

Mansour Abbas, Israeli Arab politician and leader of the Ra’am Party, in a meeting at the Israeli president’s residence in Jerusalem on April 5, 2021. Abir Sultan/Pool/ AFP/Getty Images Morad Elsana, American University The next government is not going to be a typical one for the citizens of the state of Israel, and especially for members of the Palestinian Arab minority, who are 20% of Israel’s population. This is the first time the Zionist political parties forming the government are…

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Delta variant could create ‘two Americas’ of Covid, experts warn

Delta variant could create ‘two Americas’ of Covid, experts warn

BuzzFeed News reports: The Delta coronavirus variant, which devastated India and forced the UK to delay lifting its remaining coronavirus restrictions, is now on the rise in the US. What that means for you will depend on whether you are fully vaccinated and where you live. Experts say we may be about to see the emergence of “two Americas” of COVID: One with high rates of vaccination where the Delta coronavirus variant poses little threat, and the other with low…

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How Republican states are expanding their power over elections

How Republican states are expanding their power over elections

The New York Times reports: Lonnie Hollis has been a member of the Troup County election board in West Georgia since 2013. A Democrat and one of two Black women on the board, she has advocated Sunday voting, helped voters on Election Days and pushed for a new precinct location at a Black church in a nearby town. But this year, Ms. Hollis will be removed from the board, the result of a local election law signed by Gov. Brian…

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A simple remedy for January 6 trutherism

A simple remedy for January 6 trutherism

Jack Shafer writes: The human appetite for alternative, and usually hair-brained, explanations for why events blossomed the way they did can never be sated. Oh, you can battle a poison fruitcake ideology like QAnon to the point that it can be contained in a 55-gallon drum and sealed. You can repel one nutter idea after another—Obama birtherism, Benghazi, Sandy Hook, the Katrina levee breach, Bush’s foreknowledge of 9/11—a new one will pop up to replace it like a target in…

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That ‘well-regulated militia?’ It was originally created to quell rebellions by the enslaved

That ‘well-regulated militia?’ It was originally created to quell rebellions by the enslaved

Leonard Pitts Jr. writes: Conservatives have a special purgatory for uppity black women who dare question America’s founding myths. New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones — her Pulitzer Prize-winning “1619 Project” centralized slavery in America’s origin story, a heresy that inspired laws banning her work from classrooms — now lives there. And she’s about to have company. In her new book, “The Second,” Emory University history professor Carol Anderson takes on an even more sacred cow: guns. She argues that…

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Drought-stricken communities push back against resource hungry data centers

Drought-stricken communities push back against resource hungry data centers

NBC News reports: On May 17, the City Council of Mesa, Arizona, approved the $800 million development of an enormous data center — a warehouse filled with computers storing all of the photos, documents and other information we store “in the cloud” — on an arid plot of land in the eastern part of the city. But keeping the rows of powerful computers inside the data center from overheating will require up to 1.25 million gallons of water each day,…

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Trump’s commerce secretary Wilbur Ross raked in $53 million while in public office

Trump’s commerce secretary Wilbur Ross raked in $53 million while in public office

HuffPost reports: Donald Trump’s commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, earned at least $53 million from private companies while he was collecting a taxpayer salary and supposed to be looking out for the public instead of his own profits. Ross reported making somewhere between $53 million and $127 million during his four years as head of the Commerce Department. The federal government only requires officials to report broad ranges of outside income. It’s possible that Ross earned “significantly more” since he was…

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A deeper look at the history of Black self-liberation

A deeper look at the history of Black self-liberation

Daina Ramey Berry writes: Two centuries ago, a woman named Esther claimed her freedom. The enslaved woman filed a suit against her enslaver, Bernard H. Buckner, on behalf of herself and her two children in federal court. In 1827, Buckner had intended to move the family to his new home in the District of Columbia, but had neglected to heed a local law requiring him to relocate them within a year of establishing residency. It was a technicality, part of…

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