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Category: Politics

We found the forced labor factories inside China’s mass internment camps

We found the forced labor factories inside China’s mass internment camps

BuzzFeed reports: China has built more than 100 new facilities in Xinjiang where it can not only lock people up, but also force them to work in dedicated factory buildings right on site, BuzzFeed News can reveal based on government records, interviews, and hundreds of satellite images. In August, BuzzFeed News uncovered hundreds of compounds in Xinjiang bearing the hallmarks of prisons or detention camps, many built during the last three years in a rapid escalation of China’s campaign against…

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Mass confusion over Trump’s endgame as Washington barrels toward shutdown, economic crisis

Mass confusion over Trump’s endgame as Washington barrels toward shutdown, economic crisis

The Washington Post reports: As President Trump rapidly approached a Monday deadline to avert a government shutdown, aides and lawmakers appeared flummoxed about his strategy, left to interpret musings from his Twitter feed while he golfed and otherwise remained out of public view. A large spending bill that Congress passed last week must be signed into law by midnight on Monday to prevent many federal agencies from dramatically scaling back their operations. After Congress passed the bill, Trump posted a…

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‘This just has to get done’: Lawmakers push Trump to sign the relief bill

‘This just has to get done’: Lawmakers push Trump to sign the relief bill

The New York Times reports: Lawmakers on Sunday urged President Trump to sign a sweeping $900 billion aid package after millions of Americans lost their unemployment coverage on Saturday as the president put the fate of the measure in limbo by pushing for bigger relief checks. Mr. Trump’s resistance to signing the bill risks leaving millions of unemployed Americans without crucial benefits, jeopardizes other critical assistance for businesses and families set to lapse at the end of the year, and…

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Texas fracking billionaires drew Covid-19 aid while investing in rivals

Texas fracking billionaires drew Covid-19 aid while investing in rivals

The Wall Street Journal reports: As the coronavirus pandemic and low oil prices walloped U.S. frackers this spring, Texas billionaires Dan and Farris Wilks got a $35 million relief loan to help one of their fracking companies stay afloat. At the same time, they were on a buying spree in the country’s oil patch. Since spring, businesses controlled by the Wilks brothers have hunted for deals among fracking firms going through bankruptcy and taken or increased stakes in at least…

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Rep. Kinzinger calls efforts to overturn election ‘a scam’

Rep. Kinzinger calls efforts to overturn election ‘a scam’

Politico reports: “This is a scam,” said Illinois Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger of continued efforts by President Donald Trump and some House Republicans to overturn the election of President-elect Joe Biden. Kinzinger, speaking Sunday morning on CNN’s “State of the Union,” said: “The reality is there is no impetus to overthrow an election,” and added that even if there were reasons to do so, there is not a constitutional mechanism to overturn a presidential election after states have formally certified…

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Americans’ acceptance of Trump’s behavior will be his vilest legacy

Americans’ acceptance of Trump’s behavior will be his vilest legacy

Robert Reich writes: Most of the 74,222,957 Americans who voted to re-elect Donald Trump – 46.8%of the votes cast in the 2020 presidential election – don’t hold Trump accountable for what he’s done to America. Their acceptance of Trump’s behavior will be his vilest legacy. Nearly forty years ago, political scientist James Q Wilson and criminologist George Kelling observed that a broken window left unattended in a community signals that no one cares if windows are broken there. The broken…

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A ‘great cultural depression’ looms for legions of unemployed performers

A ‘great cultural depression’ looms for legions of unemployed performers

The New York Times reports: In the top echelons of classical music, the violinist Jennifer Koh is by any measure a star. With a dazzling technique, she has ridden a career that any aspiring Juilliard grad would dream about — appearing with leading orchestras, recording new works, and performing on some of the world’s most prestigious stages. Now, nine months into a contagion that has halted most public gatherings and decimated the performing arts, Ms. Koh, who watched a year’s…

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The triumph of Trump’s kleptocracy

The triumph of Trump’s kleptocracy

Franklin Foer writes: Paul Manafort came of age in New Britain, Connecticut. His father, the garrulous mayor of that decaying factory town, taught him how to cobble together an electoral coalition, passing down the tricks of the trade that became the basis for the son’s lucrative career as a political consultant. But as the local hardware manufacturers fled to foreign shores, the Mafia moved into town. To hear the local papers tell the story—or to read the counts alleged in…

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Instead of draining the swamp, Trump grants clemency to former congressmen convicted of federal crimes

Instead of draining the swamp, Trump grants clemency to former congressmen convicted of federal crimes

The Washington Post reports: As Donald Trump campaigned for the presidency in 2016, his vow to “drain the swamp” included outrage at past use of presidential pardons. Citing the way President Bill Clinton had pardoned a fugitive financier during his last week in office, Trump fumed, “People couldn’t believe it.” Yet now, in the closing days of his term, Trump has added to his portfolio of pardons and commutations several people who seemed to exemplify the very swamp that Trump…

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Inside Trump and Barr’s last-minute killing spree

Inside Trump and Barr’s last-minute killing spree

ProPublica reports: In its hurry to use its final days in power to execute federal prisoners, the administration of President Donald Trump has trampled over an array of barriers, both legal and practical, according to court records that have not been previously reported. Officials gave public explanations for their choice of which prisoners should die that misstated key facts from the cases. They moved ahead with executions in the middle of the night. They left one prisoner strapped to the…

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Giuliani told to preserve all records as lawyers for Dominion warn legal action is ‘imminent’

Giuliani told to preserve all records as lawyers for Dominion warn legal action is ‘imminent’

CNN reports: A defamation law firm representing Dominion Voting Systems has sent letters to White House counsel Pat Cipollone and President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani instructing them to preserve all records related to the company at the center of Trump’s conspiracy theories and warning Giuliani that legal action is “imminent.” Through two well-known defamation attorneys, Dominion Voting Systems sent letters to Cipollone and Giuliani Tuesday, demanding Giuliani stop making “defamatory claims against Dominion” and ensure there is “no…

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Trump stirs chaos in Washington

Trump stirs chaos in Washington

Politico reports: President Donald Trump has once again thrown Washington into chaos, making uneven demands that have left lawmakers baffled and Americans coping with a global pandemic uncertain when they’ll be getting long-promised financial help. On Tuesday night, Trump blindsided all of Washington — including his own staff — with a series of eleventh-hour demands to amend coronavirus relief and government funding legislation that his own administration had helped carefully craft and supported. Overnight and into Wednesday, senior Republicans, Hill…

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The ‘red slime’ lawsuit that could sink right-wing media

The ‘red slime’ lawsuit that could sink right-wing media

Ben Smith reports: Antonio Mugica was in Boca Raton when an American presidential election really melted down in 2000, and he watched with shocked fascination as local government officials argued over hanging chads and butterfly ballots. It was so bad, so incompetent, that Mr. Mugica, a young Venezuelan software engineer, decided to shift the focus of his digital security company, Smartmatic, which had been working for banks. It would offer its services to what would obviously be a growth industry:…

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Inside Trump’s pressure campaign to overturn the election

Inside Trump’s pressure campaign to overturn the election

Politico reports: It started with a phone call. In mid-November, President Donald Trump rang Monica Palmer, the Republican chair of an obscure board in Michigan that had just declared Joe Biden winner of the state’s most populous county. Within 24 hours, Palmer announced she wanted to “rescind” her vote. Her reasoning mirrored Trump’s public and private rants: The Nov. 3 election may have been rife with fraud. “The Wayne County election had serious process flaws which deserve investigation,” she wrote…

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Undercutting Trump, Barr says there’s no basis for seizing voting machines, using special counsels for election fraud, Hunter Biden

Undercutting Trump, Barr says there’s no basis for seizing voting machines, using special counsels for election fraud, Hunter Biden

The Washington Post reports: Outgoing Attorney General William P. Barr said Monday he saw no basis for the federal government seizing voting machines and that he did not intend to appoint a special counsel to investigate allegations of voter fraud — again breaking with President Trump as the commander in chief entertains increasingly desperate measures to overturn the election. At a news conference to announce charges in a decade old terror case, Barr — who has just two days left…

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‘I’m haunted by what I did’ as a lawyer in the Trump Justice Department

‘I’m haunted by what I did’ as a lawyer in the Trump Justice Department

Erica Newland writes: I was an attorney at the Justice Department when Donald Trump was elected president. I worked in the Office of Legal Counsel, which is where presidents turn for permission slips that say their executive orders and other contemplated actions are lawful. I joined the department during the Obama administration, as a career attorney whose work was supposed to be independent of politics. I never harbored delusions about a Trump presidency. Mr. Trump readily volunteered that his agenda…

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