Attention to the Unseen

Politico reports: Democrats made structural racism a centerpiece of the 2020 presidential primary. Now the Republican rebuttal is emerging as an early plank of the 2024 GOP contest: America is not a racist country. The mantra, used by nearly all of the Republican contenders, is unavoidable in the earliest stages of the GOP’s nominating campaign. At the annual Family Leadership Summit in Iowa this month, all three potential presidential prospects on stage — former Vice President Mike Pence, former Secretary…

Read More Read More

The New York Times reports: Even in defeat, nothing sells in the Republican Party quite like Donald J. Trump. The Republican National Committee has been dangling a “Trump Life Membership” to entice small contributors to give online. The party’s Senate campaign arm has been hawking an “Official Trump Majority Membership.” And the committee devoted to winning back the House has been touting Mr. Trump’s nearly every public utterance, talking up a nonexistent Trump social media network and urging donations to…

Read More Read More

What a moment https://t.co/SySsgNoLRk — 💫 Margaret Sullivan (@Sulliview) July 27, 2021 Elaine Godfrey writes: All along the hallways of the Capitol complex today, members of the Capitol Police stared at their phones and nearby TV screens. Four of their fellow officers were testifying before Congress for the first time about the treatment they’d endured on January 6. They described being beaten with metal flagpoles, sprayed in the eyes with wasp repellent, and shocked with their own Tasers. One of…

Read More Read More

Kurt Bardella writes: Two things happened on Jan. 6. First, there was that domestic terrorist attack on the U.S. Capitol and second, 147 Republicans returned to the U.S. Capitol AFTER said domestic terrorist attack and gave the legislative equivalent of a stamp of approval to said domestic terrorists by voting to overturn the results of a free and fair presidential election. On this day, it became the official position of many (most?) in the Republican Party to reject democracy. It…

Read More Read More

Politico reports: The two House Republicans participating in the Democratic-led investigation into the Jan. 6 Capitol attack issued pointed rejoinders to their party’s leadership, defending their own conservative credibility, during the select panel’s first hearing on Tuesday. An emotional Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois spent much of his questioning time criticizing fellow Republicans who “have treated this as just another partisan fight.” While he didn’t mention House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy by name, the GOP leader has chastised Kinzinger and…

Read More Read More

The New York Times reports: Tunisia’s fledgling democracy, the only one remaining from the popular revolutions that swept the Arab world a decade ago, trembled on the brink of collapse Monday after its president sought to seize power from the rest of the government in what his political opponents denounced as a coup. The president, Kais Saied, who announced the power grab late Sunday, did not appear to have completely succeeded in taking control as of Monday evening, as chaos…

Read More Read More

Politico reports: After Georgia Republicans passed a restrictive voting law in March, Democrats here began doing the math. The state’s new voter I.D. requirement for mail-in ballots could affect the more than 270,000 Georgians lacking identification. The provision cutting the number of ballot drop boxes could affect hundreds of thousands of voters who cast absentee ballots that way in 2020 — and that’s just in the populous Atlanta suburbs alone. It didn’t take long before the implications became clear to…

Read More Read More

Michael Wolff writes: To write three books in four years about Donald Trump has been an immersion into his obsessions and fixations. This is why I know the obvious: Donald Trump will run for president again. This spring, in another of his compulsive bids for attention — indifferent to whether it is good or bad — he hosted me at Mar-a-Lago, even after I had written two unflattering books about him (one whose publication he tried to stop), for an…

Read More Read More

The Washington Post reports: In a television interview two decades ago, the fringe congressman didn’t hesitate to say it: If he were president, he would shut down the Brazilian congress and stage a military takeover. “There’s not even the littlest doubt,” Jair Bolsonaro said. “I’d stage a coup the same day [I became president,] the same day. Congress doesn’t work. I’m sure at least 90 percent of people would party and clap.” Now the congressman is president of Brazil, and…

Read More Read More