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Category: Politics

Vindman twin accused top NSC officials of misconduct, claims retaliation

Vindman twin accused top NSC officials of misconduct, claims retaliation

Politico reports: A former senior ethics official and lawyer on the National Security Council has filed a complaint with a Pentagon watchdog raising concerns that he was retaliated against for reporting that the national security adviser and his chief of staff “committed several ethics and legal compliance violations” late last year and into 2020. Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman, the twin brother of impeachment witness Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman (Ret.), filed the complaint on August 18, according to his attorneys and…

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China has secretly built a vast new infrastructure to imprison Muslims

China has secretly built a vast new infrastructure to imprison Muslims

BuzzFeed reports: China has secretly built scores of massive new prison and internment camps in the past three years, dramatically escalating its campaign against Muslim minorities even as it publicly claimed the detainees had all been set free. The construction of these purpose-built, high-security camps — some capable of housing tens of thousands of people — signals a radical shift away from the country’s previous makeshift use of public buildings, like schools and retirement homes, to a vast and permanent…

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They tried to get Trump to care about right-wing terrorism. He ignored them

They tried to get Trump to care about right-wing terrorism. He ignored them

Politico reports: Elizabeth Neumann spent March 13 and 14 of 2019 at a conference in the picturesque Spanish port city of Málaga. The topic: terrorism. Western leaders were deeply worried about the dangers foreign terrorist fighters traveling back from places like Iraq, Libya and Syria would pose to their home countries. And that’s what Neumann expected to dominate the two-day event. Neumann was DHS’s assistant secretary for threat prevention and security policy at the time, handling counterterrorism work from the…

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The Kenosha shooting suspect was in the front row of a Trump rally in January

The Kenosha shooting suspect was in the front row of a Trump rally in January

BuzzFeed reports: The law enforcement–obsessed 17-year-old who was charged with shooting and killing two people and injuring another in Kenosha, Wisconsin, during protests for Jacob Blake appeared in the front row at a Donald Trump rally in January. Kyle Howard Rittenhouse’s social media presence is filled with him posing with weapons, posting “Blue Lives Matter,” and supporting Trump for president. Footage from the Des Moines, Iowa, rally on Jan. 30 shows Rittenhouse feet away from the president, in the front…

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CDC makes ‘potentially dangerous’ guidelines change for people exposed to coronavirus

CDC makes ‘potentially dangerous’ guidelines change for people exposed to coronavirus

The New York Times reports: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention quietly modified its coronavirus testing guidelines this week to exclude people who do not have symptoms of Covid-19 — even if they have been recently exposed to the virus. Experts questioned the revision, pointing to the importance of identifying infections in the small window immediately before the onset of symptoms, when many individuals appear to be most contagious. Models suggest that about half of transmission events can be…

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How Mike Pence slowed down the coronavirus response

How Mike Pence slowed down the coronavirus response

Politico reports: Mike Pence had just accepted the biggest assignment of his political life, overseeing the nation’s response to the emerging Covid-19 virus, when White House officials confronted the vice president with an urgent question: what to do about the cruise ships? It was the last weekend of February, and the nation’s top health officials had concluded that cruise lines were a major factor in spreading the virus — each vessel a potential hothouse of invisible infections. Hundreds of passengers…

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U.S. service members injured in Syria after skirmish with Russian forces

U.S. service members injured in Syria after skirmish with Russian forces

Politico reports: U.S. service members were injured after an altercation with Russian forces in northeast Syria on Wednesday, according to a draft military statement and a person familiar with the matter. Four U.S. troops have been diagnosed with mild concussion-like symptoms after the incident involving Russian and coalition armored vehicles, according to the statement reviewed by POLITICO. A second U.S. source briefed on the matter confirmed that multiple U.S. troops were injured. After POLITICO first published this story on Wednesday,…

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Intel officials contradict Trump on voting by mail

Intel officials contradict Trump on voting by mail

Politico reports: The intelligence community has seen no evidence that foreign powers intend to manipulate mail-in voting in the 2020 election, senior Trump administration officials said Wednesday, undercutting a claim by President Donald Trump that such fraud “will be the scandal of our times.” “We have no information or intelligence that any nation-state threat actor is engaging in any activity to undermine the mail-in vote or ballots,” said a top official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence,…

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Population panic lets rich people off the hook for the climate crisis they are fueling

Population panic lets rich people off the hook for the climate crisis they are fueling

George Monbiot writes: When a major study was published last month, showing that the global population is likely to peak then crash much sooner than most scientists had assumed, I naively imagined that people in rich nations would at last stop blaming all the world’s environmental problems on population growth. I was wrong. If anything, it appears to have got worse. Next week the BirthStrike movement – founded by women who, by announcing their decision not to have children, seek…

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Wade Davis on the unraveling of America

Wade Davis on the unraveling of America

  Wade Davis writes: Never in our lives have we experienced such a global phenomenon. For the first time in the history of the world, all of humanity, informed by the unprecedented reach of digital technology, has come together, focused on the same existential threat, consumed by the same fears and uncertainties, eagerly anticipating the same, as yet unrealized, promises of medical science. In a single season, civilization has been brought low by a microscopic parasite 10,000 times smaller than…

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Number of voters who are deeply engaged on issue of climate change is rising sharply

Number of voters who are deeply engaged on issue of climate change is rising sharply

The New York Times reports: The number of Americans who feel passionately about climate change is rising sharply, and the issue appears likely to play a more important role in this year’s election than ever before, a new survey shows. What’s more, despite the turmoil caused by overlapping national and global crises, support for action to curb climate change has not diminished. Backing for government to do more to deal with global warming, at 68 percent in May of 2018,…

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FDA ‘grossly misrepresented’ blood plasma data for Covid patients, scientists say

FDA ‘grossly misrepresented’ blood plasma data for Covid patients, scientists say

The New York Times reports: At a news conference on Sunday announcing the emergency approval of blood plasma for hospitalized Covid-19 patients, President Trump and two of his top health officials cited the same statistic: that the treatment had reduced deaths by 35 percent. Mr. Trump called it a “tremendous” number. His health and human services secretary, Alex M. Azar II, a former pharmaceutical executive, said, “I don’t want you to gloss over this number.” And Dr. Stephen M. Hahn,…

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The platform the GOP is too scared to publish

The platform the GOP is too scared to publish

David Frum writes: Republicans have decided not to publish a party platform for 2020. This omission has led some to conclude that the GOP lacks ideas, that it stands for nothing, that it has shriveled to little more than a Trump cult. This conclusion is wrong. The Republican Party of 2020 has lots of ideas. I’m about to list 13 ideas that command almost universal assent within the Trump administration, within the Republican caucuses of the U.S. House and Senate,…

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Trump has now siphoned $2.3 million of campaign-donor money into his private business

Trump has now siphoned $2.3 million of campaign-donor money into his private business

Forbes reports: Donald Trump continued to shift money from his donors to his business last month, as his reelection campaign paid his private companies for rent, food, lodging and other expenses, according to a review of the latest Federal Election Commission filings. The richest president in American history, who has yet to donate to his 2020 campaign, has now moved $2.3 million of contributions from other people into his private companies. The most recent expenses look familiar. The president accepted…

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Trump’s Republican Party is the very definition of a cult of personality

Trump’s Republican Party is the very definition of a cult of personality

Tim Alberta writes: Earlier this month, while speaking via Zoom to a promising group of politically inclined high school students, I was met with an abrupt line of inquiry. “I’m sorry, but I still don’t understand,” said one young man, his pitch a blend of curiosity and exasperation. “What do Republicans believe? What does it mean to be a Republican?” You could forgive a 17-year-old, who has come of age during Donald Trump’s reign, for failing to recognize a cohesive…

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Business partner of Falwells says affair with evangelical power couple spanned seven years

Business partner of Falwells says affair with evangelical power couple spanned seven years

Reuters reports: In a claim likely to intensify the controversy surrounding one of the most influential figures in the American Christian conservative movement, a business partner of Jerry Falwell Jr has come forward to say he had a years-long sexual relationship involving Falwell’s wife and the evangelical leader. Giancarlo Granda says he was 20 when he met Jerry and Becki Falwell while working as a pool attendant at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach hotel in March 2012. Starting that month and…

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