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Category: Politics

Where was the FBI before the attack on the Capitol?

Where was the FBI before the attack on the Capitol?

Ryan Goodman and Andrew Weissmann write: What did the FBI know before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol? What did it do to make sure it had the necessary intelligence? And what did the bureau do with what it did know? After two days of recent hearings with FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, these questions remain frustratingly unanswered. Many law enforcement and intelligence agencies fell short in the run-up to Jan. 6; they failed to adequately prepare for the…

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Granting Russia ‘great power’ status, wins Biden praise in Moscow

Granting Russia ‘great power’ status, wins Biden praise in Moscow

The New York Times reports: For months, Russia’s state news media have ridiculed President Biden as bumbling, confused and well past his prime. But by Thursday, the mood had shifted: Here was a man in the White House, some said, who understands us, whom we can do business with. Mr. Biden’s meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin in Geneva touched off celebrations on Russia’s often over-the-top political talk shows as well as quieter expressions of cautious optimism in Moscow’s foreign…

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How to hold Trump accountable

How to hold Trump accountable

Ronald Brownstein writes: A torrent of new revelations is filling in the picture of how Donald Trump used, and abused, his authority as president. But the disclosures may serve only to underscore how little remains known about all the ways in which Trump barreled through traditional limits on the exercise of presidential power—and highlight the urgency of developing a more comprehensive accounting before the 2024 election, when he may seek to regain those powers. The steady flow of discoveries over…

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Rumors swirl of U.S. secretly harboring top China security official Dong Jingwei

Rumors swirl of U.S. secretly harboring top China security official Dong Jingwei

The Daily Beast reports: Chinese-language anti-communist media and Twitter are abuzz this week with rumors that a vice minister of State Security, Dong Jingwei defected in mid-February, flying from Hong Kong to the United States with his daughter, Dong Yang. Dong Jingwei supposedly gave the U.S. information about the Wuhan Institute of Virology that changed the stance of the Biden Administration concerning the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. Dong is, or was, a longtime official in China’s Ministry of State…

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Putin hails Biden after Russian senator questions U.S. president’s fitness

Putin hails Biden after Russian senator questions U.S. president’s fitness

Bloomberg reports: Russian President Vladimir Putin slammed the door on state-media speculation that his U.S. counterpart Joe Biden was too old to go toe-to-toe with him after the two met Wednesday for their first summit. “The image of President Biden that our, and even American, media present has nothing to do with reality,” Putin said in response to a Russian senator’s question if the U.S. president was suffering from what she called “dementia.” “Biden’s a professional, you have to be…

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New $3.2 billion program will support the development of drug to treat Covid-19

New $3.2 billion program will support the development of drug to treat Covid-19

The New York Times reports: The U.S. government spent more than $18 billion last year funding drugmakers to make a Covid vaccine, an effort that led to at least five highly effective shots in record time. Now it’s pouring more than $3 billion on a neglected area of research: developing pills to fight the virus early in the course of infection, potentially saving many lives in the years to come. The new program, announced on Thursday by the Department of…

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Racial bias makes white Americans more likely to support wars in nonwhite foreign countries – new study

Racial bias makes white Americans more likely to support wars in nonwhite foreign countries – new study

White Americans who hold racist attitudes are likely to prefer military action over diplomacy in foreign countries like Iran and, in particular, China. Frank Rossoto Stocktrek via Getty By Vladimir Enrique Medenica, University of Delaware and David Ebner, University of Delaware The effects of American racial bias and anti-Asian sentiment do not end at the nation’s borders. The racial attitudes of white people also influence their support for American military intervention abroad, according to our working paper on U.S. foreign…

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In secret recording, Florida Republican threatens to send Russian-Ukrainian ‘hit squad’ to make rival ‘disappear’

In secret recording, Florida Republican threatens to send Russian-Ukrainian ‘hit squad’ to make rival ‘disappear’

Politico reports: A little-known GOP candidate in one of Florida’s most competitive congressional seats was secretly recorded threatening to send “a Russian and Ukrainian hit squad” to a fellow Republican opponent to make her “disappear.” During a 30-minute call with a conservative activist that was recorded before he became a candidate, William Braddock repeatedly warned the activist to not support GOP candidate Anna Paulina Luna in the Republican primary for a Tampa Bay-area congressional seat because he had access to…

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Netanyahu ordered papers shredded before leaving office, report claims

Netanyahu ordered papers shredded before leaving office, report claims

The Times of Israel reports: A report Thursday claimed that just before former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu left the Prime Minister’s Office on Sunday, his staff shredded documents that were being stored in safes. A spokesperson for Netanyahu called the report “total lies. No such thing ever happened.” If true, the allegations detailed by the Haaretz daily would represent an ignominious and likely illegal final act by the Likud leader, as his efforts to hold on to power reached their…

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Loyalty to Trump? ‘It’s all about the money’

Loyalty to Trump? ‘It’s all about the money’

Andy Kroll writes: A week after the January 6th insurrection, House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy rebuked Trump. McCarthy, nicknamed “my Kevin” by Trump, had been one of the many Republicans in thrall to Trump. He held his tongue when asked about the latest Trump scandal, and parroted Trump’s baseless attacks on the integrity of the 2020 election. McCarthy was forced into hiding in the Capitol complex during the insurrection, during which Trump reportedly called him to complain that the rioters…

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Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, forceful on January 6, now privately in turmoil

Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, forceful on January 6, now privately in turmoil

The Wall Street Journal reports: The far-right group the Oath Keepers is splintering after board members accused the founder of spending its money on hair dye, steaks and guns. The leader of the Proud Boys, choked off from the financial system, is printing “Black Lives Matter” T-shirts to make money. The finances of the two most visible groups with members involved in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol are sputtering. Leaders are low on cash, struggling with defections…

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Putin has nothing to fear from Biden

Putin has nothing to fear from Biden

Elena Chernenko writes: Ahead of September’s legislative elections, the authorities have disbanded the opposition and docked the media, closing down the space for dissent. But a majority of Russians, consumed by the concerns of everyday life and long inured to Mr. Putin’s rule, don’t seem to care much. With them, Mr. Biden’s message about the inviolability of human rights and the sanctity of democracy — both of which are slipping away in Russia, to no general uproar — is likely…

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The FDA should be our toughest regulatory body, but the pharmaceutical lobby has torn it to shreds

The FDA should be our toughest regulatory body, but the pharmaceutical lobby has torn it to shreds

Natalie Shure writes: Last week the Food and Drug Administration approved Aduhelm—the first new Alzheimer’s drug in 18 years—an event that, at first blush, heralds the amazing news of a medical advance. Perhaps it might have been, had the whole process leading up to the agency giving its nod to the medication played out in a functional health care system. But that’s not what happened. Far from hailing the advent of a transformative breakthrough for the six million Americans suffering…

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Attorney General Garland confronts long-building crisis over leak inquiries and journalism

Attorney General Garland confronts long-building crisis over leak inquiries and journalism

Charlie Savage writes: Government leak hunters have been ratcheting up pressure on the ability of journalists to do their jobs for a generation — a push fueled by changing technology and fraught national-security issues that arose after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Now, those tensions have reached an inflection point. Recent disclosures about aggressive steps that the Justice Department secretly took under President Donald J. Trump while hunting for the confidential sources of reporters — at The New York Times,…

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Out-of-touch media elites are ignoring working-class Biden voters

Out-of-touch media elites are ignoring working-class Biden voters

Eric Levitz writes: In the primary’s early days, the media treated him like an afterthought. At cocktail parties in Martha’s Vineyard and happy hours in the East Village, economic and cultural elites agreed that the candidate was more of a has-been — or a punch line — than a serious contender for the presidency. After all, he had the ineloquent uncouthness of a pretender and the political record of a traitor; myriad activist groups within the party firmament distrusted his…

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Manchin thinks the filibuster fosters bipartisanship. Here’s why it doesn’t

Manchin thinks the filibuster fosters bipartisanship. Here’s why it doesn’t

Norman Ornstein writes: Eliminate the filibuster? Both Sens. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) emphatically say no. Both say the filibuster is key to making bipartisanship possible, and bipartisanship is the linchpin to a functioning Senate and democracy. “The idea of the filibuster was created by those who came before us in the United States Senate to create comity and to encourage senators to find bipartisanship and work together,” Sinema told reporters early this month. Manchin, writing in…

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