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Category: Politics

The Civilian Climate Corps is a big government plan that all Americans can embrace

The Civilian Climate Corps is a big government plan that all Americans can embrace

The people are on our side and they know what’s at stake. ⁰⁰We need to pass an infrastructure bill that invests in communities and creates a robust #CivilianClimateCorps. Just so we're clear @POTUS, we’re coming to D.C. tomorrow. We’ll be the ones in black. Can't miss us 😈 pic.twitter.com/aAYuchnovC — Sunrise Movement 🌅 (@sunrisemvmt) June 27, 2021 Jim Lardner writes: It was a rare case of Presidential understatement in the unveiling of a program: the Secretary of Agriculture and the…

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Why Barr broke up with Trump

Why Barr broke up with Trump

Jonathan D. Karl writes: Trump was sitting at the table. Meadows was sitting next to him with his arms crossed; the White House adviser Eric Herschmann stood off to the side. The details of this meeting were described to me by several people present. One told me that Trump had “the eyes and mannerism of a madman.” He went off on Barr. “I think you’ve noticed I haven’t been talking to you much,” Trump said to him. “I’ve been leaving…

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Why the ‘Trump court’ won’t be like Trump

Why the ‘Trump court’ won’t be like Trump

Peter S. Canellos writes: When Donald Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, went before the Senate Judiciary Committee for confirmation in early 2017, he offered a surprising choice of role model. Gorsuch — a conservative member of the Federalist Society, carrying the personal imprimatur of Mitch McConnell — named John Marshall Harlan, the progressive 19th-Century justice best known as the sole member of the Supreme Court to stand up for Black rights and economic protections. “Justice Harlan got the…

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They joined the Proud Boys looking for brotherhood. They found racism, bullying and antisemitism

They joined the Proud Boys looking for brotherhood. They found racism, bullying and antisemitism

USA Today reports: Daniel Berry said he was searching for camaraderie. The 40-year-old Army veteran yearned to forge the sort of bonds he had in the military: a brotherhood of like-minded men watching one another’s backs, holding one another up, united in a common goal. Last year, Berry said, he remembered a guy at the Veterans of Foreign Wars hall asking him if he had heard of the Proud Boys. The group was vocal in its support for then-President Donald…

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Colonialism is built on the rubble of false idea of ancient Rome

Colonialism is built on the rubble of false idea of ancient Rome

Jamie Mackay writes: At the dawn of the 20th century, Italian patriots were struggling to overcome a profound inferiority complex. Ever since 1861, when Giuseppe Garibaldi unified the country’s disparate regions into a nation-state, politicians and intellectuals had been anticipating the arrival of a glorious new era. Decades on, however, the economic, diplomatic and cultural results were wanting. Nationalists knew they needed a new mythos to boost public confidence, something to make Italy seem strong and competitive on the world…

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Biden administration backs Trump-approved oil sands pipeline project

Biden administration backs Trump-approved oil sands pipeline project

The New York Times reports: The Biden administration has defended a contentious pipeline project that would carry hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil through Minnesota’s delicate watersheds, urging in a court brief that a challenge brought by local tribes and environmental groups be thrown out. The closely watched filing in federal court was the latest in a series of actions taken by the administration to back Trump-era approvals of oil and gas infrastructure, despite President Biden’s pledge to aggressively…

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The cruel logic of the Republican Party, before and after Trump

The cruel logic of the Republican Party, before and after Trump

Adam Serwer writes: Donald Trump has claimed credit for any number of things he benefited from but did not create, and the Republican Party’s reigning ideology is one of them: a politics of cruelty and exclusion that strategically exploits vulnerable Americans by portraying them as an existential threat, against whom acts of barbarism and disenfranchisement become not only justified but worthy of celebration. This approach has a long history in American politics. The most consistent threat to our democracy has…

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Canada puts U.S. Three Percenters militia on terror list, cites risk of violent extremism

Canada puts U.S. Three Percenters militia on terror list, cites risk of violent extremism

Reuters reports: Canada officially named the U.S. right-wing militia group Three Percenters a terrorist entity on Friday, saying it posed a “significant threat” to Canadian domestic security. Earlier this month U.S. prosecutors obtained a conspiracy indictment against six men associated with the Three Percenters, the latest in a series of such charges arising from the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol by former President Donald Trump’s supporters. Canadian officials cited the Jan. 6 riot in their listing. Public Safety…

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Where did the coronavirus come from? What we already know is troubling

Where did the coronavirus come from? What we already know is troubling

Zeynep Tufekci writes: There were curious characteristics about the H1N1 influenza pandemic of 1977-78, which emerged from northeastern Asia and killed an estimated 700,000 people around the world. For one, it almost exclusively affected people in their mid-20s or younger. Scientists discovered another oddity that could explain the first: It was virtually identical to a strain that circulated in the 1950s. People born before that had immunity that protected them, and younger people didn’t. But how on earth had it…

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Before condo collapse, rising seas have long pressured Miami coastal properties

Before condo collapse, rising seas have long pressured Miami coastal properties

The Washington Post reports: The 12-story condo tower that crashed down early Thursday near Miami Beach was built on reclaimed wetlands and is perched on a barrier island facing an ocean that has risen about a foot in the past century due to climate change. Underneath its foundation, as with Miami Beach, is sand and organic fill —over a plateau of porous limestone — brought in from the bay after the mangroves were deforested. The fill sinks naturally and the…

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Government report can’t explain UFOs, but offers no evidence of aliens

Government report can’t explain UFOs, but offers no evidence of aliens

Politico reports: A new intelligence report sent to Congress on Friday concludes that virtually all of the 144 sightings of unidentified flying objects documented by the military since 2004 are of unknown origin, in an extremely rare public accounting of the U.S. government’s data on UFOs that is likely to fuel further speculation about phenomena the intelligence community has long struggled to understand. The report — the government’s first unclassified assessment in half a century — does not offer any…

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They seemed like Democratic activists. They were secretly conservative spies

They seemed like Democratic activists. They were secretly conservative spies

The New York Times reports: The young couple posing in front of the faux Eiffel Tower at the Paris hotel in Las Vegas fit right in, two people in a sea of idealistic Democrats who had arrived in the city in February 2020 for a Democratic primary debate. Large donations to the Democratic National Committee — $10,000 each — had bought Beau Maier and Sofia LaRocca tickets to the debate. During a cocktail reception beforehand, they worked the room of…

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Justice Department is suing Georgia over voter suppression law

Justice Department is suing Georgia over voter suppression law

Mother Jones reports: In its first major action to combat GOP voter suppression laws, the Biden Justice Department announced on Friday that it is suing the state of Georgia over its new voting restrictions. The lawsuit was first reported by Mother Jones. “Today the Department of Justice is suing the state of Georgia,” Attorney General Merrick Garland announced at a press conference at the Justice Department headquarters. Gov. Brian Kemp has said “there is nothing Jim Crow” about the Georgia…

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Nearly all Covid deaths in U.S. are now among unvaccinated

Nearly all Covid deaths in U.S. are now among unvaccinated

The Associated Press reports: Nearly all COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. now are in people who weren’t vaccinated, a staggering demonstration of how effective the shots have been and an indication that deaths per day — now down to under 300 — could be practically zero if everyone eligible got the vaccine. An Associated Press analysis of available government data from May shows that “breakthrough” infections in fully vaccinated people accounted for fewer than 1,200 of more than 853,000 COVID-19…

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Why is there such a gender gap in Covid vaccination rates?

Why is there such a gender gap in Covid vaccination rates?

Angelica Puzio writes: For months, local, state and federal officials have been consumed with how to persuade Americans who are wary of the COVID-19 vaccine to get the shot anyway. The conversation has focused in large part on specific demographic groups and how to overcome certain cultural factors to get the vaccines into people’s arms. Experts worried about low turnout among women, who reported significantly more vaccination hesitancy than men prior to the vaccine rollout. And public health officials warned…

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Lab leaks happen, and not just in China. We need to take them seriously

Lab leaks happen, and not just in China. We need to take them seriously

David A. Relman writes: If we scientists are not forced to confront the issues of laboratory safety and risky research in a serious and sustained manner, history suggests that we will not do so. In 2012, controversy erupted when it transpired that two sets of researchers — at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands — were altering highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses to enhance their transmissibility among mammals (to understand their potential…

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