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Category: Politics

Trump’s pandemic adviser promoted reduced testing, making it harder to control the spread of infections

Trump’s pandemic adviser promoted reduced testing, making it harder to control the spread of infections

CNN reports: Shortly after joining the White House as President Donald Trump’s pandemic adviser, Dr. Scott Atlas launched a quiet effort that seemed counterintuitive to some of his colleagues — encouraging officials to limit Covid-19 testing mainly to people experiencing symptoms. Atlas, a neuroradiologist, not an infectious disease expert, strongly supported a decision in August to revise federal guidelines to de-emphasize the need to test people without symptoms, according to two sources familiar with the process. He shared his view with…

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It may be time to reset expectations on when we’ll get a Covid-19 vaccine

It may be time to reset expectations on when we’ll get a Covid-19 vaccine

STAT reports: The ambitious drive to produce Covid-19 vaccine at warp speed seems to be running up against reality. We all probably need to reset our expectations about how quickly we’re going to be able to be vaccinated. Pauses in clinical trials to investigate potential safety issues, a slower-than-expected rate of infections among participants in at least one of the trials, and signals that an expert panel advising the Food and Drug Administration may not be comfortable recommending use of…

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Turkish bank case showed Erdogan’s influence over Trump

Turkish bank case showed Erdogan’s influence over Trump

The New York Times reports: Geoffrey S. Berman was outraged. The top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, Mr. Berman had traveled to Washington in June 2019 to discuss a particularly delicate case with Attorney General William P. Barr and some of his top aides: a criminal investigation into Halkbank, a state-owned Turkish bank suspected of violating U.S. sanctions law by funneling billions of dollars of gold and cash to Iran. For months, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey had been pressing…

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Why workers will decide the 2020 election

Why workers will decide the 2020 election

Rev. William J. Barber, II and Sen. Sherrod Brown write: For far too long, we have failed to recognize that work’s purpose is to support and nurture our families and communities and civil society – not Wall Street. But under the Trump administration, Wall Street has been running the country. The current president’s cabinet looks like a big bank executive retreat. The halls of Congress teem with corporate lobbyists. And those lobbyists take their cues from Wall Street, which rewards…

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Undocumented immigrants may actually make American communities safer – not more dangerous – new study finds

Undocumented immigrants may actually make American communities safer – not more dangerous – new study finds

President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that undocumented immigrants cause more crime, but new research suggests the opposite might be true. Apu Gomes/AFP via Getty Images By Robert M. Adelman, University at Buffalo and Lesley Reid, University of Alabama The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work. The big idea Undocumented immigration does not increase the violent crime rate in U.S. metropolitan areas. In fact, it may reduce property crime rates. These are the key findings from…

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Supreme Court will not speed up review of Pennsylvania mail-in voting fight

Supreme Court will not speed up review of Pennsylvania mail-in voting fight

Reuters reports: The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday handed a setback to Republicans by declining to quickly decide whether to hear their latest bid to overturn a lower court’s ruling that extended Pennsylvania’s deadline to receive mail-in ballots in next Tuesday’s election. The justices declined to expedite their consideration of the request by the Republican Party of Pennsylvania to hear and decide before the election its appeal of a ruling by the state’s top court ordering officials to count mail-in…

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Finally at zero new cases, Victoria, Australia, is on top of the world after unprecedented lockdown effort

Finally at zero new cases, Victoria, Australia, is on top of the world after unprecedented lockdown effort

By Stephen Duckett, Grattan Institute and Tom Crowley, Grattan Institute If the past few months have been like a long-haul flight, Victorians are now standing in the aisles waiting for the cabin door to open, a little groggy and disoriented but relieved. They have every right to be. No other place in the world has tamed a second wave this large. Few have even come close. Read more: Of all the places that have seen off a second coronavirus wave,…

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Trump to strip protections from Tongass National Forest, one of the biggest intact temperate rainforests

Trump to strip protections from Tongass National Forest, one of the biggest intact temperate rainforests

The Washington Post reports: President Trump will open up more than half of Alaska’s Tongass National Forest to logging and other forms of development, according to a notice posted Wednesday, stripping protections that had safeguarded one of the world’s largest intact temperate rainforests for nearly two decades. As of Thursday, it will be legal for logging companies to build roads and cut and remove timber throughout more than 9.3 million acres of forest — featuring old-growth stands of red and…

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The Republican Party’s Supreme Court

The Republican Party’s Supreme Court

In an editorial, the New York Times says: What happened in the Senate chamber on Monday evening was, on its face, the playing out of a normal, well-established process of the American constitutional order: the confirmation of a president’s nominee to the Supreme Court. But Senate Republicans, who represent a minority of the American people, are straining the legitimacy of the court by installing a deeply conservative jurist, Amy Coney Barrett, to a lifetime seat just days before an election…

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The Supreme Court’s recent rulings don’t mean the justices will decide the presidential race

The Supreme Court’s recent rulings don’t mean the justices will decide the presidential race

Richard L. Hasen writes: If [Amy Coney] Barrett does not recuse herself from election disputes next month, there’s every reason to worry that a 5-4 court could interfere in the election to help Trump if a case that might swing the outcome gets before the court. So why not panic about all of this? Mainly because, as both Jonathan Lai and Greg Sargent explained on Tuesday, the chances of the election being decided by the Supreme Court are very slim….

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Former U.S. attorneys — all Republicans — back Biden because Trump threatens ‘the rule of law’

Former U.S. attorneys — all Republicans — back Biden because Trump threatens ‘the rule of law’

The Washington Post reports: Twenty former U.S. attorneys — all of them Republicans — on Tuesday publicly called President Trump “a threat to the rule of law in our country,” and urged that he be replaced in November with his Democratic opponent, former vice president Joe Biden. “The President has clearly conveyed that he expects his Justice Department appointees and prosecutors to serve his personal and political interests,” said the former prosecutors in an open letter. They accused Trump of…

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As Trump warns of economic disaster, Wall Street, hoping for stability, welcomes the prospect of a Biden win

As Trump warns of economic disaster, Wall Street, hoping for stability, welcomes the prospect of a Biden win

Politico reports: President Donald Trump loves to say that if Joe Biden wins the White House, stocks will crash, retirement accounts will vanish and an economic depression “the likes of which you’ve never seen” will engulf the nation. But much of Wall Street is already betting on a Biden win — with a much different take on what the results will mean. Traders in recent weeks have been piling into bets that a “blue wave” election, in which Democrats also…

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As election nears, Trump administration takes new steps to suppress climate science

As election nears, Trump administration takes new steps to suppress climate science

The New York Times reports: The Trump administration has recently removed the chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the nation’s premier scientific agency, installed new political staff who have questioned accepted facts about climate change and imposed stricter controls on communications at the agency. The moves threaten to stifle a major source of objective United States government information about climate change that underpins federal rules on greenhouse gas emissions and offer an indication of the direction the…

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In rural America, resentment over COVID-19 shutdowns is colliding with rising case numbers

In rural America, resentment over COVID-19 shutdowns is colliding with rising case numbers

Business restrictions early in the pandemic, when rural towns had few cases, triggered a backlash that haunts them now. Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images By Lauren Hughes, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and Roberto Silva, University of Colorado Denver As COVID-19 spreads through rural America, new infection numbers are rising to peaks not seen during this pandemic and pushing hospitals to their limits. Many towns are experiencing their first major outbreaks, but that doesn’t mean rural communities had previously been spared…

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Jared Kushner tells Black people they’re lazy and unambitious — and hopes they’ll vote for Trump

Jared Kushner tells Black people they’re lazy and unambitious — and hopes they’ll vote for Trump

Bess Levin writes: For anyone who’s not entirely up to speed on first son-in-law Jared Kushner’s backstory, a brief primer: the son of a wealthy real estate developer who went to prison, in part for retaliating against his brother-in-law for cooperating with federal investigators by hiring a prostitute to seduce the guy, filming the encounter, and sending it to his sister, Kushner attended Harvard to which his dad had reportedly conveniently pledged $2.5 million shortly before he was accepted. In…

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FBI sits on report detailing white-supremacist terror threat

FBI sits on report detailing white-supremacist terror threat

The Daily Beast reports: The FBI has failed to produce a legally required report detailing the scope of white supremacist and other domestic terrorism, despite mounting concerns that the upcoming election could spark far-right violence. According to a key House committee chairman, that leaves the country in the dark about what the FBI concedes is America’s most urgent terrorist threat, as well as the resources the U.S. government is devoting to fight it. In June, the bureau was supposed to…

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