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Category: Politics

The GOP is raising money off Tucker Carlson’s racism

The GOP is raising money off Tucker Carlson’s racism

David Corn reports: Recent Republican fundraising efforts have been ugly and, worse, have fueled conspiracy theories, hatred, and demagoguery. Sen. Josh Hawley and Donald Trump have raised millions off the Big Lie about the 2020 election. Sen. Ted Cruz this week sent out an email enticing contributions by offering anyone who donates to his campaign war chest a vote on whether “we machine gun [John Boehner’s new memoirs], take a chainsaw to it, or burn the book to light cigars.”…

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Capitol riot defendant pleads guilty, will cooperate with government

Capitol riot defendant pleads guilty, will cooperate with government

Politico reports: Jon Schaffer, a heavy metal guitarist and self-described “lifetime member” of the Oath Keepers, on Friday became the first Capitol rioter to plead guilty to charges based on his participation in the attack and has entered into a cooperation agreement with the government. The move from Schaffer came at an unannounced proceeding before U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta on Friday morning. During a lengthy plea dialogue with Metha, Schaffer acknowledged that the deal requires him to “cooperate…

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U.S. Treasury provides missing link: Manafort’s partner gave campaign polling data to Kremlin in 2016

U.S. Treasury provides missing link: Manafort’s partner gave campaign polling data to Kremlin in 2016

Just Security reports: The U.S. Treasury Department said Thursday that Konstantin Kilimnik, an associate and ex-employee of Paul Manafort, “provided the Russian Intelligence Services with sensitive information on polling and campaign strategy,” during the 2016 election, an apparently definitive statement that neither Special Counsel Robert Mueller nor the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation made in their final reports. “This is new public information that connects the provision of internal Trump campaign data to Russian intelligence,” Andrew Weissmann, who led the prosecution…

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‘I never thought China could ever be this dark’

‘I never thought China could ever be this dark’

Melissa Chan writes: On a summer afternoon nearly four years ago, Maryam Muhammet thought her family’s long journey to freedom was almost complete. The Uyghur woman had arrived in Istanbul from Egypt weeks prior with her two sons, a toddler and an infant, after fleeing the Chinese region of Xinjiang. Her husband had not yet joined the family in Turkey. The couple had heard from others in their community that Egyptian immigration officials—ostensibly acting at the behest of the Chinese…

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Facebook planned to remove fake accounts in India – until it realized a BJP politician was involved

Facebook planned to remove fake accounts in India – until it realized a BJP politician was involved

The Guardian reports: Facebook allowed a network of fake accounts to artificially inflate the popularity of an MP from India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), for months after being alerted to the problem. The company was preparing to remove the fake accounts but paused when it found evidence that the politician was probably directly involved in the network, internal documents seen by the Guardian show. The company’s decision not to take timely action against the network, which it had already…

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Welcome to the new progressive era

Welcome to the new progressive era

Anand Giridharadas writes: Washington in the first days of the Biden administration is a place for double takes: A president associated with the politics of austerity is spending money with focused gusto, a crisis isn’t going to waste, and Senator Bernie Sanders is happy. People like to tell you they saw things coming. But as I talked to many of the campers in Joe Biden’s big tent, particularly those who, like me, were skeptical of Biden, I found that the…

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America never knew what it was doing in Afghanistan

America never knew what it was doing in Afghanistan

Wesley Morgan writes: The senior U.S. officer in the Pech, Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Ryan, surprised me when I interviewed him about his battalion’s mission. Forty-one years old but with less gray in his short haircut than some of his company commanders, Ryan was a West Point graduate from Pearl River, New York, and he had been in and out of Afghanistan and Iraq since the first months after September 11, as an officer in the night-raiding 75th Ranger Regiment. I…

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Biden needs to stop Netanyahu from sabotaging talks to resume the Iran nuclear deal

Biden needs to stop Netanyahu from sabotaging talks to resume the Iran nuclear deal

Fred Kaplan writes: White House press secretary Jen Psaki has denied U.S. involvement in the [latest] attack [on Iran’s nuclear-fuel center at Natanz]. But since the United States and Israel jointly crafted Stuxnet, the 2010 covert program that sabotaged uranium enrichment at Natanz through highly sophisticated cyber attacks (a program that U.S. officials still don’t discuss openly a decade later), it’s not deeply paranoid for Iranian officials to assume that Washington was in on the plot. This isn’t the first…

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The U.S. media is touting Israel’s Covid recovery. But occupied Palestinians are left out

The U.S. media is touting Israel’s Covid recovery. But occupied Palestinians are left out

Yara M Asi writes: The US media has widely lauded Israel’s vaccine success – as a country in a “post-pandemic future” of concerts and indoor dining; as a country that could teach the United States a few lessons in pandemic management; as a country that, despite being in the midst of a contentious election, leaned on its robust universal public health system to vaccinate as many people as possible. However, many of these vaccine success stories mention the issue of…

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Amazon lives off America’s failure

Amazon lives off America’s failure

Sarah Jones writes: Bill Bodani liked his old job. He cleaned slag out at the Sparrows Point steel mill in Maryland, cleared the flues and the broken brick out of the blast furnace. He loved it despite the asbestosis it gave him, writes Alec MacGillis in his new book, Fulfillment. “I enjoyed the people,” Bodani told MacGillis. “They made it enjoyable. The Black, the white. It was a family thing. I don’t care if you knew them for five minutes,…

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Taliban boycotts key peace talks after U.S. pull-out delay

Taliban boycotts key peace talks after U.S. pull-out delay

The Daily Beast reports: Hours after the Biden administration announced that the remaining 3,500 American troops will return from Afghanistan by the twentieth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, a Taliban spokesperson announced a refusal to join U.S.-facilitated peace talks between the Islamic group and the Afghan government. “Until all foreign forces completely withdraw from our homeland, the Islamic Emirate will not participate in any conference that shall make decisions about Afghanistan,” Mohammed Naeem, a spokesperson for the Taliban’s political…

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Republicans are making four key mistakes

Republicans are making four key mistakes

David Frum writes: It’s not only Georgia. In every state where Republicans control a chamber of the legislature, bills to restrict voting are advancing fast. Arizona and Texas Republicans have acted especially aggressively to choke off unwanted voters in time for 2022. Arizona Republicans propose to reduce the number of days for early voting. They want to purge voter rolls of people who missed the previous election. They want to cut off mail-in balloting five days before Election Day. And…

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The jewels of America’s landscape should be returned to America’s original peoples

The jewels of America’s landscape should be returned to America’s original peoples

David Treuer writes: In 1851, members of a California state militia called the Mariposa Battalion became the first white men to lay eyes on Yosemite Valley. The group was largely made up of miners. They had been scouring the western slopes of the Sierra when they happened upon the granite valley that Native peoples had long referred to as “the place of a gaping mouth.” Lafayette Bunnell, a physician attached to the militia, found himself awestruck. “None but those who…

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The Biden White House media doctrine: Less can be more

The Biden White House media doctrine: Less can be more

Politico reports: Three months in, Joe Biden’s White House has settled on a firm press strategy: First, do no self-harm. The president is not doing cable news interviews. Tweets from his account are limited and, when they come, unimaginably conventional. The public comments are largely scripted. Biden has opted for fewer sit down interviews with mainstream outlets and reporters. He’s had just one major press conference — though another is coming — and prefers remarks straight to camera for the…

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How to stop the minority-rule doom loop

How to stop the minority-rule doom loop

Adam Jentleson writes: President Joe Biden came into office facing four “converging crises”: COVID-19, climate change, racial justice, and the economy. But after a few weeks of fast action on a pandemic relief plan, a fifth crisis will determine the fate of the rest of his administration, and perhaps that of American democracy itself: the minority-rule doom loop, by which predominantly white conservatives gain more and more power, even as they represent fewer Americans. The doom loop consists of four…

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Hawley hauls in $3M after attempt to block election results

Hawley hauls in $3M after attempt to block election results

Politico reports: Sen. Josh Hawley raised more than $3 million during the first three months of the year, underscoring how the Missouri Republican converted his high-profile opposition to the certification of the 2020 election into big fundraising support. The freshman senator drew widespread attention for leading the Jan. 6 effort to block the acceptance of the Electoral College results, a controversial stand that liberals and some Republicans claim undermined faith in the political system. But he won plaudits from loyalists…

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