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‘Lean into the culture war’: White conservatives in House push fight against critical race theory

‘Lean into the culture war’: White conservatives in House push fight against critical race theory

Politico reports: The head of Congress’ largest conservative caucus is encouraging Republicans to embrace anti-critical race theory rhetoric, as the GOP looks to lean into the nation’s culture wars ahead of the looming battle for the House. In a memo sent to members of the Republican Study Committee, its chair Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana said the “backlash against Critical Race Theory is real.” Banks framed the GOP’s opposition to the ideology “as an effort to renew American patriotism and…

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House investigates possible shadow operation in Trump’s Justice Department

House investigates possible shadow operation in Trump’s Justice Department

The Guardian reports: Top Democrats in the House are investigating whether Trump justice department officials ran an unlawful shadow operation to target political enemies of the former president to hunt down leaks of classified information, according to a source familiar with the matter. The House judiciary committee chairman, Jerry Nadler, is centering his investigation on the apparent violation of internal policies by the justice department, when it issued subpoenas against Democrats Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell in 2018. The use…

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Afghan government may collapse six months or sooner after U.S. withdrawal

Afghan government may collapse six months or sooner after U.S. withdrawal

The Wall Street Journal reports: The U.S. intelligence community concluded last week that the government of Afghanistan could collapse as soon as six months after the American military withdrawal from the country is completed, according to officials with knowledge of the new assessment. American intelligence agencies revised their previously more optimistic estimates as the Taliban swept through northern Afghanistan last week, seizing dozens of districts and surrounding major cities. Afghan security forces frequently surrendered without a fight, leaving their Humvees…

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Global herd immunity remains out of reach because of inequitable vaccine distribution – 99% of people in poor countries are unvaccinated

Global herd immunity remains out of reach because of inequitable vaccine distribution – 99% of people in poor countries are unvaccinated

A COVID-19 field hospital in Santo Andre, Brazil. The pandemic has killed over 503,000 people in Brazil; just 11% of the population is fully vaccinated. Mario Tama/Getty Images By Maria De Jesus, American University School of International Service In the race between infection and injection, injection has lost. Public health experts estimate that approximately 70% of the world’s 7.9 billion people must be fully vaccinated to end the COVID-19 pandemic. As of June 21, 2021, 10.04% of the global population…

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Chinese Covid-19 genetic data that could have aided pandemic research removed from NIH database

Chinese Covid-19 genetic data that could have aided pandemic research removed from NIH database

The Wall Street Journal reports: Chinese researchers directed the U.S. National Institutes of Health to delete gene sequences of early Covid-19 cases from a key scientific database, raising concerns that scientists studying the origin of the pandemic may lack access to key pieces of information. The NIH confirmed that it deleted the sequences after receiving a request from a Chinese researcher who had submitted them three months earlier. “Submitting investigators hold the rights to their data and can request withdrawal…

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My grandfather helped build Jewish American support for Israel. What’s his legacy now?

My grandfather helped build Jewish American support for Israel. What’s his legacy now?

Abraham Riesman writes: On February 25, 1986, my grandfather Robert Arnold Riesman Sr. delivered a speech at his synagogue in Providence, Rhode Island. Grandpa was a lantern-jawed, even-tempered man — an industrialist, a philanthropist, and a bona fide war hero — which made it all the more striking when, on occasions such as this, he invoked life’s horrors like a fire-and-brimstone shtetl rabbi. He began with a story of Dr. Josef Mengele, the infamous mad scientist of the Nazi camps,…

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Top general fires back at right-wing critics who object to Pentagon’s effort to combat racism

Top general fires back at right-wing critics who object to Pentagon’s effort to combat racism

Politico reports: The military’s top officer on Wednesday pushed back against GOP lawmakers who said the Pentagon’s efforts to combat racism and promote diversity have made the armed forces too “woke.” Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley gave a fiery defense of open-mindedness in the ranks during a House Armed Services hearing, saying he’s offended at the accusation that those efforts have undercut the military’s mission and cohesiveness. Milley, who was testifying alongside Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at a hearing…

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Michigan Republican-led investigation rejects Trump’s claim that November 3 election was stolen

Michigan Republican-led investigation rejects Trump’s claim that November 3 election was stolen

Detroit Free Press reports: An investigation led by Michigan Republican lawmakers found no basis for claims by former President Donald Trump and his allies that there was widespread fraud in the 2020 election, a Michigan Senate report released Wednesday concludes. The results of the inquiry by the Michigan Senate Oversight Committee, chaired by a Republican and comprised of a GOP-majority, are the latest repudiation of conspiracies and lies revolving around Michigan’s election results. “The Committee found no evidence of widespread…

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Voting rights bill will be blocked by the anti-democratic system it seeks to reform

Voting rights bill will be blocked by the anti-democratic system it seeks to reform

Mother Jones reports: Congressional Democrats’ signature voting rights bill, the For the People Act, is set to be defeated on Tuesday by the very anti-democratic system it’s meant to reform. The 50 Democratic senators who support the For the People Act (or least Sen. Joe Manchin’s compromise proposal keeping some key elements of the bill while excluding others) represent 43 million more Americans than the 50 Republican senators who oppose it, according to data compiled by Alex Tausanovitch of the…

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Biden’s Justice Dept may defend Trump in Capitol riot lawsuits

Biden’s Justice Dept may defend Trump in Capitol riot lawsuits

Reuters reports: Former U.S. President Donald Trump may have an unlikely ally to defend him against lawsuits alleging he incited the U.S. Capitol insurrection: President Joe Biden’s Justice Department. The Biden administration paved the way for that possibility, say constitutional scholars and lawyers in the cases, by arguing in an unrelated defamation case against Trump that presidents enjoy sweeping immunity for their comments while in office – and the right to a defense by government lawyers. Biden’s Justice Department used…

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Trump wanted his Justice Department to stop Saturday Night Live from teasing him

Trump wanted his Justice Department to stop Saturday Night Live from teasing him

The Daily Beast reports: It was the middle of Donald Trump’s presidency, and he was—yet again—mad at Saturday Night Live. And he wanted the federal government to help him settle the score. In March 2019, the then-president of the United States had just watched an episode of the long-running, liberal-leaning NBC sketch comedy series (it wasn’t even a new episode, it was a rerun), and grew immediately incensed that the show was gently mocking him. “It’s truly incredible that shows…

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Trump can’t be sued over the violent clearing of Lafayette Square last summer, a judge ruled

Trump can’t be sued over the violent clearing of Lafayette Square last summer, a judge ruled

BuzzFeed News reports: Donald Trump and a cadre of current and former federal officials can’t be sued over the violent clearing of peaceful protesters from a park in Washington, DC, last summer shortly before the then-president passed through for a photo op, a federal judge ruled Monday. Black Lives Matter DC and individual protesters who were forcibly removed from Lafayette Square on June 1, 2020, had sued Trump, former attorney general Bill Barr, and top officials from other federal agencies…

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A record buyout is just the start as wealthy flee U.S. tax hike

A record buyout is just the start as wealthy flee U.S. tax hike

Bloomberg reports: For 110 years, four generations of Mills family members earned their money by expanding their great-grandfather’s Chicago apron business into a medical supplier that ranked among the nation’s largest private companies. But soon after Democrats turned their attention toward raising taxes for the wealthy this year, the family signed a deal to cash out billions. It was no coincidence, according to people close to the more-than $30 billion transaction, which sold part of Medline Industries Inc. to a…

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Populist leaders in Eastern Europe have a problem: Unpopularity

Populist leaders in Eastern Europe have a problem: Unpopularity

The New York Times reports: A right-wing populist wave in Eastern Europe, lifted by Donald J. Trump’s surprise victory in 2016, has not crashed as a result of his defeat last November. But it has collided with a serious obstacle: Its leaders are not very popular. After winning elections by railing against widely disliked elites, right-wing populists on Europe’s formerly communist eastern flank, it turns out, are themselves not much liked. That is due in large part to unpopular coronavirus…

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Biden must stop methane pipelines to deliver on climate change and environmental justice

Biden must stop methane pipelines to deliver on climate change and environmental justice

Crystal Cavalier and Michael E. Mann write: Four years of President Donald Trump have cost America dearly. We lost our global leadership on addressing climate change and saw the struggle for environmental justice thwarted here at home. President Joe Biden has defined both of these objectives as cornerstones of his legacy, but a huge interstate methane gas pipeline now being rammed through the Appalachian Mountains threatens to undermine the progress his administration has promised. The 42-inch diameter Mountain Valley Pipeline…

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How Democrats are ‘unilaterally disarming’ in the redistricting wars

How Democrats are ‘unilaterally disarming’ in the redistricting wars

Politico reports: Oregon Democrats had finally secured total control of redistricting for the first time in decades. Then, just months before they were set to draw new maps, they gave it away. In a surprise that left Democrats from Salem to Washington baffled and angry, the state House speaker handed the GOP an effective veto over the districts in exchange for a pledge to stop stymieing her legislative agenda with delay tactics. The reaction from some of Oregon’s Democratic House…

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