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Category: Politics

Andrew Cuomo’s war against a federal prosecutor

Andrew Cuomo’s war against a federal prosecutor

Ronan Farrow writes: In April, 2014, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo placed a call to the White House and reached Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to President Barack Obama. Cuomo was, as one official put it, “ranting and raving.” He had announced that he was shuttering the Moreland Commission, a group that he had convened less than a year earlier to root out corruption in New York politics. After Cuomo ended the group’s inquiries, Preet Bharara, then the U.S. Attorney…

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Trump asked his AG about legal strategy to overturn election, Rosen tells senators

Trump asked his AG about legal strategy to overturn election, Rosen tells senators

Politico reports: Donald Trump asked the country’s top legal official in late December about a conspiratorial draft complaint aimed at overturning the 2020 election results, according to a previously unreported account of Trump’s phone call with former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen. Rosen persuaded Trump the lawsuit wasn’t a good idea, he told Senate investigators last weekend, two sources familiar with his testimony said. The previously unreported details underscore how hard DOJ lawyers worked to shoot down the increasingly harebrained…

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‘Reign of Terror’ brilliantly traces the course from 9/11 to President Trump

‘Reign of Terror’ brilliantly traces the course from 9/11 to President Trump

Jennifer Szalai writes: Spencer Ackerman’s barnburner of a new book, “Reign of Terror,” reminded me of that moment in 2015 (remember then?) when Donald J. Trump descended his golden escalator to announce his long-shot candidacy for the highest office. Instead of starting with the usual heartwarming clichés about the country’s better angels, Trump came out swinging, declaring that the United States was in trouble: “When was the last time the U.S. won at anything?” It certainly hadn’t been winning any…

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‘Expert mathematician’ on election fraud actually a a convicted drug dealer with no college degree, lawsuit says

‘Expert mathematician’ on election fraud actually a a convicted drug dealer with no college degree, lawsuit says

Motherboard reports: On January 27, the pro-Trump channel OAN broadcast a segment interviewing an “expert mathematician” named Ed Solomon who claimed to have found evidence within precinct-level reporting that the election was rigged by an algorithm. The basis of Solomon’s claim is that he found several precincts throughout the country reporting exactly the same results at various times throughout the vote tabulation process. Asked by host Christina Bobb what the likelihood of what Solomon claimed to have found being a…

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Acceleration of global warming signals ‘code red’ for humanity

Acceleration of global warming signals ‘code red’ for humanity

Phys.org reports: We ignored the warnings, and now it’s too late: global heating has arrived with a vengeance and will see Earth’s average temperature reach 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels around 2030, a decade earlier than projected only three years ago, according to a landmark UN assessment published on Monday. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) bombshell—landing 90 days before a key climate summit desperate to keep 1.5C in play—says the threshold will be breached around 2050, no…

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As Taliban capture cities, U.S. says Afghan forces must fend for themselves

As Taliban capture cities, U.S. says Afghan forces must fend for themselves

The New York Times reports: If the Taliban had seized three provincial capitals in northern Afghanistan a year ago, like they did on Sunday, the American response would most likely have been ferocious. Fighter jets and helicopter gunships would have responded in force, beating back the Islamist group or, at the very least, stalling its advance. But these are different times. What aircraft the U.S. military could muster from hundreds of miles away struck a cache of weapons far from…

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Neighbors’ deaths from Covid-19 have an Arkansas town reassessing vaccines

Neighbors’ deaths from Covid-19 have an Arkansas town reassessing vaccines

The Wall Street Journal reports: Michael Lejong fully intended to get vaccinated for Covid-19, his wife said, standing in the pavilion that the prominent architect designed for his hometown. But he was relatively young, very healthy and not overly concerned about the virus. He wanted to get his shots separately from his wife, so he could care for her if she had adverse side effects. She got hers immediately in April and he put his off. In late June, he…

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Republicans treated Covid like a bioweapon. Then it turned against them

Republicans treated Covid like a bioweapon. Then it turned against them

Rebecca Solnit writes: Some of the most powerful conservatives in the United States have, since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, chosen to sow disinformation along with mockery and distrust of proven methods of combating the disease, from masks to vaccines to social distancing. Their actions have afflicted the nation as a whole with more disease and death and economic crisis than good leadership aligned with science might have, and, in spite of hundreds of thousands of well-documented deaths and…

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Former acting attorney general testifies about Trump’s efforts to subvert election

Former acting attorney general testifies about Trump’s efforts to subvert election

The New York Times reports: Jeffrey A. Rosen, who was acting attorney general during the Trump administration, has told the Justice Department watchdog and congressional investigators that one of his deputies tried to help former President Donald J. Trump subvert the results of the 2020 election, according to a person familiar with the interviews. Mr. Rosen had a two-hour meeting on Friday with the Justice Department’s office of the inspector general and provided closed-door testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee…

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Taliban seize Kunduz, a key city in northern Afghanistan

Taliban seize Kunduz, a key city in northern Afghanistan

The New York Times reports: The Taliban seized the city of Kunduz in northern Afghanistan on Sunday, officials said. It is the first major city to be overtaken by the insurgents since they began their sweeping military offensive in May, and it happened just weeks before U.S. forces were set to complete a total withdrawal from Afghanistan. It was also the third provincial capital to be overtaken by Taliban in three days, and a major blow to the Afghan government….

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Taliban capture second provincial capital, tightening grip on Afghanistan

Taliban capture second provincial capital, tightening grip on Afghanistan

The Wall Street Journal reports: Taliban fighters seized the capital of northern Afghanistan’s Jowzjan province Saturday, the second such provincial center to fall to the insurgency in two days, as the U.S. Embassy advised American citizens to leave the country immediately. The fall of the city of Sheberghan is particularly important because Jowzjan has long been the traditional stronghold of ethnic Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, one of the country’s main anti-Taliban leaders who served as Afghanistan’s vice president until…

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9/11 families to President Biden: Don’t come to our memorial events

9/11 families to President Biden: Don’t come to our memorial events

NBC News reports: Nearly 1,800 Americans directly affected by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks are opposing President Joe Biden’s participation in any memorial events this year unless he upholds his pledge to declassify U.S. government evidence that they believe may show a link between Saudi Arabian leaders and the attacks. The victims’ family members, first responders and survivors will release a statement Friday calling on Biden to skip 20th-anniversary events in New York and Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and at the…

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Facebook let fossil-fuel industry push climate misinformation, report finds

Facebook let fossil-fuel industry push climate misinformation, report finds

The Guardian reports: Facebook failed to enforce its own rules to curb an oil and gas industry misinformation campaign over the climate crisis during last year’s presidential election, according to a new analysis released on Thursday. The report, by the London-based thinktank InfluenceMap, identified an increase in advertising on the social media site by ExxonMobil and other fossil-fuel companies aimed at shaping the political debate about policies to address global heating. InfluenceMap said its research shows the fossil-fuel industry has…

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Facebook killed research into the Capitol riot to protect itself — not its users

Facebook killed research into the Capitol riot to protect itself — not its users

Dell Cameron writes: When the Federal Trade Commission fined Facebook $5 billion for deceiving its users on privacy, it celebrated the fine as “record-breaking and history-making.” Two years and $200 billion in revenue later, Facebook has found a way to turn lemons into lemonade, deceiving its users once again and using a seemingly powerless FTC to do it. Facebook’s Tuesday night crackdown on research into the dangerous falsehoods perpetuated by its platform was predicated on the lie that the FTC…

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For GOP, passage of infrastructure bill could signal Trump’s diminishing influence

For GOP, passage of infrastructure bill could signal Trump’s diminishing influence

The New York Times reports: Donald J. Trump tried mightily to kill the $1 trillion infrastructure bill, hurling the kind of insult-laden statements and threats of primary challenges that for years sent a chill down Republican spines. But the reaction inside the Senate, where many members of his party once cowered from Mr. Trump’s angry tweets and calculated their votes to avoid his wrath, was mostly yawns. Now, the legislation appears on a glide path to pass the Senate with…

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Trump’s repeat-donations ploy led to millions in refunds into 2021

Trump’s repeat-donations ploy led to millions in refunds into 2021

The New York Times reports: The aggressive fund-raising tactics that former President Donald J. Trump deployed late in last year’s presidential campaign have continued to spur an avalanche of refunds into 2021, with Mr. Trump, the Republican Party and their shared accounts returning $12.8 million to donors in the first six months of the year, newly released federal records show. The refunds were some of the biggest outlays that Mr. Trump made in 2021 as he has built up his…

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