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Category: Politics

Facebook is an ad tech company. That’s how we should regulate it

Facebook is an ad tech company. That’s how we should regulate it

Nathalie Maréchal writes: Another day, another Facebook accountability scandal. On Wednesday, Facebook shut down the accounts of NYU researchers Laura Edelson and Damon McCoy on the grounds that their Ad Observer tool violated Facebook users’ privacy. At first blush, this seems absurd: the users in question voluntarily installed the Ad Observer plug-in in their browser for the express purpose of sharing targeting info related to the political ads they see on Facebook with the researchers. Dig a little deeper, and…

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Trump is planning a much more respectable coup next time

Trump is planning a much more respectable coup next time

Richard L. Hasen writes: In recent weeks, we’ve gotten an even greater glimpse into Donald Trump’s efforts to discredit and overturn the results of the 2020 election. From the clownish ongoing audit in Arizona to the revelation of Jeffrey Clark’s insane and rejected December plan for the Department of Justice to cajole legislatures in states Biden won into overturning those results to the attorneys being sanctioned for their frivolous Trump election lawsuits, the 2020 election subversion attempt is being shown…

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In string of wins, ‘Biden Democrats’ see a reality check for the left

In string of wins, ‘Biden Democrats’ see a reality check for the left

The New York Times reports: Nina Turner, the hard-punching Bernie Sanders ally who lost a special election for Congress in Ohio this week, had unique political flaws from the start. A far-left former state legislator, Ms. Turner declined to endorse Hillary Clinton over Donald J. Trump in 2016. Last year, she described voting for President Biden as a grossly unpalatable option. There were obvious reasons Democratic voters might view her with distrust. Yet Ms. Turner’s unexpectedly wide defeat on Tuesday…

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Tucker Carlson has seen the future, and it is fascist

Tucker Carlson has seen the future, and it is fascist

Jonathan Chait writes: In 1919, the progressive journalist Lincoln Steffens visited the nascent Soviet Union and declared, “I have seen the future and it works.” Tucker Carlson’s weeklong visit to Budapest, where he is using his Fox News show as an infomercial for Viktor Orban’s illiberal regime, is being conducted in much the same spirit. “If you care about Western civilization and democracy and families, and the ferocious assault on all three of those things by the leaders of our…

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A Trump bombshell quietly dropped last week, but it should shock us all

A Trump bombshell quietly dropped last week, but it should shock us all

Robert Reich writes: We’ve become so inured to Donald Trump’s proto-fascism that we barely blink an eye when we learn that he tried to manipulate the 2020 election. Yet the most recent revelation should frighten every American to their core. On Friday, the House oversight committee released notes of a 27 December telephone call from Trump to then acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen, in which Trump told Rosen: “Just say the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me…

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Mexico sues U.S. gun makers, eyes $10 billion in damages

Mexico sues U.S. gun makers, eyes $10 billion in damages

Reuters reports: Mexico sued several gun makers in a U.S. federal court on Wednesday, accusing them of reckless business practices that supply what it called a “torrent” of illegal arms to violent Mexican drug cartels, leading to thousands of deaths. The lawsuit alleges that units of Smith & Wesson, Barrett Firearms, Colt’s Manufacturing Company, Glock Inc, Sturm, Ruger & Co and others knew their business practices had encouraged illegal arms trafficking into Mexico. The lawsuit cites weapons that had entered…

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Facebook bans academics who researched ad transparency and misinformation on Facebook

Facebook bans academics who researched ad transparency and misinformation on Facebook

The Verge reports: Facebook has banned the personal accounts of academics who researched ad transparency and the spread of misinformation on the social network. Facebook says the group violated its term of service by scraping user data without permission. But the academics say they are being silenced for exposing problems on Facebook’s platform. The researchers were part of NYU Ad Observatory, a project created to examine the origin and spread of political ads on Facebook. As the group explained in…

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Andrew and Chris Cuomo’s media love-ins come back to bite them

Andrew and Chris Cuomo’s media love-ins come back to bite them

Jon Allsop writes: Live by the press conference, die by the press conference. Last year, as the pandemic ravaged his state, Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, was widely lauded for the way he communicated. Pundits hailed him as authoritative, reassuring, even sexy; national networks carried his press conferences live, and they won a special Emmy award for Cuomo’s “masterful use of television to inform and calm people.” Then, early this year, Cuomo experienced a vicious narrative shift—he was…

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In the infrastructure bill, a recognition: Climate change is a crisis

In the infrastructure bill, a recognition: Climate change is a crisis

The New York Times reports: The bipartisan infrastructure deal struck this week provides new money for climate resilience unmatched in United States history: Tens of billions of dollars to protect against floods, reduce damage from wildfires, develop new sources of drinking water in areas plagued by drought, and even relocate entire communities away from vulnerable places. But the bill is remarkable for another reason. For the first time, both parties have acknowledged — by their actions, if not their words…

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Prosecuting Trump for role in Jan. 6 riot got easier thanks to Capitol officers’ testimony

Prosecuting Trump for role in Jan. 6 riot got easier thanks to Capitol officers’ testimony

Mike Ferrara, Shawn Crowley, and Magdalene Zier write: “All of them – all of them were telling us, ‘Trump sent us.” In harrowing, heart-wrenching testimony before a House select committee established to investigate the events of Jan. 6, U.S. Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino A. Gonell and his Capitol Police and D.C. Metropolitan Police Department colleagues described last week how those they witnessed violently breaching the Capitol explicitly pointed to then-President Donald Trump’s role in causing the insurrection. Although the court…

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From probable to possible: The ideas of Albert O Hirschman

From probable to possible: The ideas of Albert O Hirschman

Michele Alacevich writes: Like most disciplines, the field of development economics came into being not because of disinterested intellectual curiosity but rather due to pressing contemporary events. In the late 1960s, one prominent international civil servant and development economist reflected that: the cue to the continual reorientation of our work has normally come from the sphere of politics; responding to that cue, students turn to research on issues that have attained political importance. Theories are launched, data collected, and the…

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The Big Money behind Trump’s Big Lie

The Big Money behind Trump’s Big Lie

Jane Mayer writes: It was tempting to dismiss the show unfolding inside the Dream City Church in Phoenix, Arizona, as an unintended comedy. One night in June, a few hundred people gathered for the première of “The Deep Rig,” a film financed by the multimillionaire founder of Overstock.com, Patrick Byrne, who is a vocal supporter of former President Donald Trump. Styled as a documentary, the movie asserts that the 2020 Presidential election was stolen by supporters of Joe Biden, including…

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Biden’s climate plans are stunted after dejected experts fled Trump administration

Biden’s climate plans are stunted after dejected experts fled Trump administration

The New York Times reports: Juliette Hart quit her job last summer as an oceanographer for the United States Geological Survey, where she used climate models to help coastal communities plan for rising seas. She was demoralized after four years of the Trump administration, she said, in which political appointees pressured her to delete or downplay mentions of climate change. “It’s easy and quick to leave government, not so quick for government to regain the talent,” said Dr. Hart, whose…

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Pro-Trump social network flooded with ISIS propaganda

Pro-Trump social network flooded with ISIS propaganda

Politico reports: Just weeks after its launch, the pro-Trump social network GETTR is inundated with terrorist propaganda spread by supporters of Islamic State, according to a POLITICO review of online activity on the fledgling platform. The social network — started a month ago by members of former President Donald Trump’s inner circle — features reams of jihadi-related material, including graphic videos of beheadings, viral memes that promote violence against the West and even memes of a militant executing Trump in…

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Why Ben & Jerry’s decision to stop selling ice cream in the West Bank rattled Israel

Why Ben & Jerry’s decision to stop selling ice cream in the West Bank rattled Israel

Israelis have long had a sweet tooth for Ben & Jerry’s. AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov By Ronnie Olesker, St. Lawrence University In 2018, I was living in Israel while researching a book about the country’s fight against groups that challenge its legitimacy. Every Wednesday, a new batch of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream arrived at my local supermarket, and I would snap up as many tubs of vanilla as I could. By Thursday, there’d be none left. Clearly, Israelis love their…

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An uncertain new phase of the pandemic in which cases surge but deaths do not

An uncertain new phase of the pandemic in which cases surge but deaths do not

Benjamin Wallace-Wells writes: So many things have gone wrong in the American response to the pandemic, but two important things have gone right: scientists have developed a vaccine, and older Americans have got it. Seventy-six per cent of Americans between the ages of fifty and sixty-four have received at least one dose, according to the Mayo Clinic’s vaccination tracker. Between the ages of sixty-five and seventy-four, it’s ninety-one per cent, and among those over the age of seventy-five it’s eighty-seven….

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