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Category: Politics

The people who invaded the Capitol have spent years showing us who they are online

The people who invaded the Capitol have spent years showing us who they are online

Abby Ohlheiser writes: Maybe you saw this coming nearly a decade ago, when #YourSlipIsShowing laid bare how racist Twitter users were impersonating Black women on the internet. Maybe, for you, it was during Gamergate, the online abuse campaign targeting women in the industry. Or maybe it was the mass shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand, when a gunman steeped in the culture of 8chan livestreamed himself murdering dozens of people. Maybe it was when you, or your friend, or your community,…

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Trump pressed Justice Department to go directly to Supreme Court to overturn election results

Trump pressed Justice Department to go directly to Supreme Court to overturn election results

The Wall Street Journal reports: In his last weeks in office, former President Donald Trump considered moving to replace the acting attorney general with another official ready to pursue unsubstantiated claims of election fraud, and he pushed the Justice Department to ask the Supreme Court to invalidate President Biden’s victory, people familiar with the matter said. Those efforts failed due to pushback from his own appointees in the Justice Department, who refused to file what they viewed as a legally…

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Son tipped off FBI about his father, who is charged in Capitol riot

Son tipped off FBI about his father, who is charged in Capitol riot

The New York Times reports: Two days after the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, Jackson Reffitt’s father, Guy W. Reffitt, returned to the family’s home in Texas. He told his son that he had stormed the Capitol, according to an F.B.I. affidavit. Then his father leveled a threat: If Jackson, 18, reported him to the police, he would have no choice but to do his “duty” for his country and “do what he had to do.” In interviews with investigators,…

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State Republicans push new voting restrictions after Trump’s loss

State Republicans push new voting restrictions after Trump’s loss

Politico reports: Republican legislators across the country are preparing a slew of new voting restrictions in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s defeat. Georgia will be the focal point of the GOP push to change state election laws, after Democrats narrowly took both Senate seats there and President Joe Biden carried the state by an even smaller margin. But state Republicans in deep-red states and battlegrounds alike are citing Trump’s meritless claims of voter fraud in 2020 — and…

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Asia’s Covid recovery: Vietnam’s breakout moment

Asia’s Covid recovery: Vietnam’s breakout moment

Nikkei Asia reports: On a recent Friday in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City, friends kissed hello as they entered the Racha Room, a tunnel-shaped bar lit by warm, ochre lamps. Inside, patrons shouted over booming classic rock and sipped from each other’s Old-Fashioneds. It was a scene to strike a chill into the hearts of the COVID-conscious. A standing-room-only venue, windows clamped shut against the night air, and not a mask in sight. It might have been a glimpse into…

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Mahatma Gandhi’s killer venerated as Hindu nationalism resurges in India

Mahatma Gandhi’s killer venerated as Hindu nationalism resurges in India

The Guardian reports: Last Sunday, in a nondescript building in the India city of Gwalior, 200 miles south of Delhi, a large crowd of men gathered. Most wore bright saffron hats and scarves, a colour evoking Hindu nationalism, and many held strands of flowers as devotional offerings. They were there to attend the inauguration of the Godse Gyan Shala, a memorial library and “knowledge centre” dedicated to Nathuram Godse, the man who shot Mahatma Gandhi. The devotional yellow and pink…

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Trump jumps into a divisive battle over the Republican Party — with a threat to start a ‘MAGA Party’

Trump jumps into a divisive battle over the Republican Party — with a threat to start a ‘MAGA Party’

The Washington Post reports: Former president Donald Trump threw himself back into politics this weekend by publicly endorsing a devoted and divisive acolyte in Arizona who has embraced his false election conspiracy theories and entertained the creation of a new “MAGA Party.” In a recorded phone call, he offered his “complete and total endorsement” for another term for Arizona state party chairwoman Kelli Ward, a lightning rod who has sparred with the state’s Republican governor, been condemned by the business…

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Why McConnell dumped Trump

Why McConnell dumped Trump

Jane Mayer writes: On the afternoon of January 6th, less than an hour before a violent mob supporting President Donald Trump broke into the Capitol, causing mayhem that led to the deaths of five Americans, Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, gave the most powerful speech of his life. In a cold disavowal of Trump’s false claims about rampant election fraud, McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, stood behind the Senate dais and stated the obvious: despite two months of increasingly…

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Capitol rioter charged with threatening to ‘assassinate’ Rep. Ocasio-Cortez

Capitol rioter charged with threatening to ‘assassinate’ Rep. Ocasio-Cortez

CNN reports: The Justice Department revealed new charges against a Texas man who allegedly participated in the Capitol attack and posted online death threats against Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a US Capitol Police officer. Garret Miller of Texas faces five criminal charges stemming from the Capitol insurrection, including trespassing offenses and making death threats. Miller allegedly tweeted, “assassinate AOC,” according to court documents. He also said the police officer who fatally shot a Trump supporter during the attack “deserves…

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Military and police investigate members charged in Capitol riot

Military and police investigate members charged in Capitol riot

The Wall Street Journal reports: Jacob Fracker is a member of the Virginia National Guard and a police officer in the small town of Rocky Mount, Va. On Jan. 6, he joined the mob that broke into the U.S. Capitol and posted a photo of himself next to a fellow off-duty officer with his middle finger raised in front of a statue of a Revolutionary War commander, according to court documents. Mr. Fracker and the other officer, Thomas Robertson, were…

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Police crack down on Russian protests against jailing of Kremlin foe Navalny

Police crack down on Russian protests against jailing of Kremlin foe Navalny

Reuters reports: Police detained more than 3,000 people and used force to break up rallies across Russia on Saturday as tens of thousands of protesters ignored extreme cold and police warnings to demand the release of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny. Navalny had called on his supporters to protest after being arrested last weekend as he returned to Russia from Germany for the first time since being poisoned with a nerve agent he says was slipped to him by state security…

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Trump and Justice Dept. lawyer said to have plotted to oust acting attorney general

Trump and Justice Dept. lawyer said to have plotted to oust acting attorney general

The New York Times reports: The Justice Department’s top leaders listened in stunned silence this month: One of their peers, they were told, had devised a plan with President Donald J. Trump to oust Jeffrey A. Rosen as acting attorney general and wield the department’s power to force Georgia state lawmakers to overturn its presidential election results. The unassuming lawyer who worked on the plan, Jeffrey Clark, had been devising ways to cast doubt on the election results and to…

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Oath Keeper charged in Capitol riots was ‘preparing for literal war,’ feds say

Oath Keeper charged in Capitol riots was ‘preparing for literal war,’ feds say

The Daily Beast reports: A member of the far-right paramilitary group the Oath Keepers who’s been charged with conspiring to storm the Capitol was ready “for violence” during the deadly riot and had plans for a “further insurrection,” federal prosecutors said Friday. “The plan was never for peaceful protest,” a Virginia prosecutor said during a detention hearing for Donovan Crowl, a former U.S. Marine. “The Oath Keepers arrived in D.C. prepared for violence.” Crowl, 50, is one of three members…

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Organizers of Trump rally had been on campaign’s payroll

Organizers of Trump rally had been on campaign’s payroll

Bloomberg reports: Former President Donald Trump’s campaign paid more than $2.7 million over two years to individuals and firms that organized the Jan. 6 rally that led to rioters storming the U.S. Capitol, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The payments, which span Trump’s re-election campaign, show an ongoing financial relationship between the rally’s organizers and Trump’s political operation. They were all made through Nov. 23, the most recent date covered by Federal Election Commission filings, which is before…

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The enduring allure of conspiracies

The enduring allure of conspiracies

By Greg Miller, Knowable Magazine The United States of America was founded on a conspiracy theory. In the lead-up to the War of Independence, revolutionaries argued that a tax on tea or stamps is not just a tax, but the opening gambit in a sinister plot of oppression. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were convinced — based on “a long train of abuses and usurpations” — that the king of Great Britain was conspiring to establish “an absolute…

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The glittering Gulf city-states are genuine slave societies

The glittering Gulf city-states are genuine slave societies

Bernard Freamon writes: The six city-states on the Arab side of the Persian Gulf, each formerly a sleepy, pristine fishing village, are now all glitzy and futuristic wonderlands. In each of these city-states one finds large tracts of ultramodern architecture, gleaming skyscrapers, world-class air-conditioned retail markets and malls, buzzing highways, giant, busy and efficient airports and seaports, luxury tourist attractions, game parks, children’s playgrounds, museums, gorgeous beachfront hotels and vast, opulent villas housing fabulously affluent denizens. The six city-states ­–…

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