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Category: Politics

Threat to evacuate U.S. diplomats from Iraq raises fear of war

Threat to evacuate U.S. diplomats from Iraq raises fear of war

Reuters reports: Washington has made preparations to withdraw diplomats from Iraq after warning Baghdad it could shut its embassy, two Iraqi officials and two Western diplomats said, a step Iraqis fear could turn their country into a battle zone. Any move by the United States to reduce its diplomatic presence in a country where it has up to 5,000 troops would be widely seen in the region as an escalation of its confrontation with Iran, which Washington blames for missile…

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In Trump’s eyes, evangelical leaders are ‘all husters’

In Trump’s eyes, evangelical leaders are ‘all husters’

McKay Coppins writes: One day in 2015, Donald Trump beckoned Michael Cohen, his longtime confidant and personal attorney, into his office. Trump was brandishing a printout of an article about an Atlanta-based megachurch pastor trying to raise $60 million from his flock to buy a private jet. Trump knew the preacher personally—Creflo Dollar had been among a group of evangelical figures who visited him in 2011 while he was first exploring a presidential bid. During the meeting, Trump had reverently…

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An insider’s account of how the Mueller investigation fell flat

An insider’s account of how the Mueller investigation fell flat

Garrett M. Graff writes: Andrew Weissmann headed the prosecution of Paul Manafort on Robert Mueller’s team. His new memoir, Where Law Ends, is an elegy for the Russia investigation that never was—one in which the special counsel’s office was actually able to crack the oddball collection of grifters who populated Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016, from Paul Manafort to George Papadopoulos, and figure out the actual truth of their relationship with an expansive cast of Russian oligarchs and intelligence…

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Supreme Court reform is not revenge

Supreme Court reform is not revenge

Lawrence Goldstone writes: Following Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, Democrats, not surprisingly, are outraged at Republicans’ course reversal on filling a vacancy during an election year. Two proposals are gaining momentum among commentators and progressive activists: expanding the number of justices and instituting term limits. These ideas almost always seem to smack of political revenge. But to think only in terms of getting even is to miss the point. Each of these notions is in line with what the Founders…

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Vote like the future of humanity depends on it — because it does

Vote like the future of humanity depends on it — because it does

Bill McKibben writes: To understand the planetary importance of this autumn’s presidential election, check the calendar. Voting ends on November 3rd — and by a fluke of timing, on the morning of November 4th the United States is scheduled to pull out of the Paris Agreement. President Trump announced that we would abrogate our Paris commitments during a Rose Garden speech in 2017. But under the terms of the accords, it takes three years to formalize the withdrawal. So on…

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Trump campaign strategy to deter millions of Black Americans from voting in 2016

Trump campaign strategy to deter millions of Black Americans from voting in 2016

  Channel 4 News has exclusively obtained a vast cache of data used by Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign on almost 200 million American voters. It reveals that 3.5 million Black Americans were categorised by Donald Trump’s campaign as ‘Deterrence’ – voters they wanted to stay home on election day. Tonight, civil rights campaigners said the evidence amounted to a new form of voter “suppression” and called on Facebook to disclose ads and targeting information that has never been made…

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Trump’s ‘biggest fear’ is ‘massive’ IRS bills and potential tax fraud charges, says Michael Cohen

Trump’s ‘biggest fear’ is ‘massive’ IRS bills and potential tax fraud charges, says Michael Cohen

Yahoo News reports: Michael Cohen, President Trump’s longtime former personal attorney, has a theory. He believes the president is terrified of receiving a large bill from the Internal Revenue Service. “His biggest fear is … he will end up with a massive tax bill, fraud penalties, fines, and possibly even tax fraud,” Cohen said in an interview with Yahoo News on Monday, the morning after the New York Times published a report detailing how Trump, a self-described billionaire, paid zero…

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Trump’s taxes show he’s a national security threat

Trump’s taxes show he’s a national security threat

Timothy L. O’Brien writes: Due to his indebtedness, his reliance on income from overseas and his refusal to authentically distance himself from his hodgepodge of business, Trump represents a profound national security threat – a threat that will only escalate if he’s re-elected. The tax returns also show the extent to which Trump has repeatedly betrayed the interests of many of the average Americans who elected him and remain his most loyal supporters. I have some history with Trump and…

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New document reveals scope and structure of Operation Warp Speed and underscores vast military involvement

New document reveals scope and structure of Operation Warp Speed and underscores vast military involvement

STAT reports: When President Trump unveiled Operation Warp Speed in May, he declared that it was “unlike anything our country has seen since the Manhattan Project.” The initiative — to accelerate the development of Covid-19 vaccines and therapeutics — lacks the scale, and the degree of secrecy, of the effort to build the atomic bomb. But Operation Warp Speed is largely an abstraction in Washington, with little known about who works there other than its top leaders, or how it…

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Overheard: CDC Director Robert Redfield voices alarm over influence of Trump’s new coronavirus task force adviser

Overheard: CDC Director Robert Redfield voices alarm over influence of Trump’s new coronavirus task force adviser

NBC News reports: The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has grown increasingly concerned that President Donald Trump, pushed by a new member of his coronavirus task force, is sharing incorrect information about the pandemic with the public. Dr. Robert Redfield, who leads the CDC, suggested in a conversation with a colleague Friday that Dr. Scott Atlas is arming Trump with misleading data about a range of issues, including questioning the efficacy of masks, whether young people…

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Trump, facing financial ruin, sought control of his elderly father’s estate. The family fight was epic

Trump, facing financial ruin, sought control of his elderly father’s estate. The family fight was epic

The Washington Post reports: Donald Trump was facing financial disaster in 1990 when he came up with an audacious plan to exert control of his father’s estate. His creditors threatened to force him into personal bankruptcy, and his first wife, Ivana, wanted “a billion dollars” in a divorce settlement, Donald Trump said in a deposition. So he sent an accountant and a lawyer to see his father, Fred Trump Sr., who was told he needed to immediately sign a document…

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William Barr, the fanatic

William Barr, the fanatic

Donald Ayer writes: Over the past 19 months, we have all heard a lot about Bill Barr’s misuse of the office of attorney general and the resources of the Justice Department to do the personal bidding of President Donald Trump, to undermine the evenhanded rule of law, and to work in countless other ways to put the president in a position of nearly autocratic power. What first came to our attention as surprising accounts of specific actions out of sync…

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Trump has spent a year building a legal network to fight the election

Trump has spent a year building a legal network to fight the election

Politico reports: A year before President Donald Trump alarmed Americans with talk of disputing elections last week, his team started building a massive legal network to do just that. Dozens of lawyers from three major law firms have been hired. Thousands of volunteer attorneys and poll watchers across the country have been recruited. Republicans are preparing pre-written legal pleadings that can be hurried to the courthouse the day after the election, as wrangling begins over close results and a crush…

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There should be no doubt why Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett

There should be no doubt why Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett

Jeffrey Toobin writes: Amy Coney Barrett, whom President Trump has nominated to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court, was born in 1972, so she can expect to spend several decades shaping both American law and American life. As it happens, a year before Barrett’s birth, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., then a prominent lawyer in Richmond, Virginia, and later a Supreme Court Justice himself, wrote a now famous memorandum to the United States Chamber of Commerce, arguing that businesses…

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James Baker thinks Trump is ‘nuts’ — but he still might vote for him, again

James Baker thinks Trump is ‘nuts’ — but he still might vote for him, again

Susan B. Glasser and Peter Baker write: Over lunch a few blocks from the White House on a bright, sunny day in the summer of 2019, one of the architects of the modern Republican Party admitted he was thinking the unthinkable. If Joseph R. Biden, Jr., won the his party’s nomination, former Secretary of State James A. Baker III confided that he might vote for the Democrat over President Trump. For Baker, that would be a profound break with the…

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Tax-dollars for Trump: $300 million HHS ad campaign is designed put a positive spin on the pandemic

Tax-dollars for Trump: $300 million HHS ad campaign is designed put a positive spin on the pandemic

Politico reports: The health department is moving quickly on a highly unusual advertising campaign to “defeat despair” about the coronavirus, a $300 million-plus effort that was shaped by a political appointee close to President Donald Trump and executed in part by close allies of the official, using taxpayer funds. The ad blitz, described in some budget documents as the “Covid-19 immediate surge public advertising and awareness campaign,” is expected to lean heavily on video interviews between administration officials and celebrities,…

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