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Category: Politics

Voter suppression: Trump pledges to send ‘sheriffs’ and ‘law enforcement’ to polling places on Election Day

Voter suppression: Trump pledges to send ‘sheriffs’ and ‘law enforcement’ to polling places on Election Day

CNN reports: President Donald Trump on Thursday said he would send law enforcement officials to polling locations to guard against voter fraud in November’s election, although it’s not clear he has the authority to do so. “We’re going to have sheriffs, and we’re going to have law enforcement, and we’re going to have, hopefully, US attorneys, and we’re going to have everybody and attorney generals (sic),” Trump said during an interview on Fox News with Sean Hannity. Trump’s comments come…

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It looks like Steve Bannon wasn’t clever enough to avoid getting caught committing a crime

It looks like Steve Bannon wasn’t clever enough to avoid getting caught committing a crime

Isaac Chotiner spoke to Bloomberg‘s Joshua Green about Steve Bannon and the federal criminal charges he now faces: When did you hear about the charges, and what do you make of them? I was actually out on a boat in the middle of a lake, and I looked at my phone and I had five texts that all said the same thing from different people: “Holy fuck, Bannon.” And I knew the moment had arrived when he had stepped in…

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The Republican embrace of QAnon goes far beyond Trump

The Republican embrace of QAnon goes far beyond Trump

The New York Times reports: Late last month, as the Texas Republican Party was shifting into campaign mode, it unveiled a new slogan, lifting a rallying cry straight from a once-unthinkable source: the internet-driven conspiracy theory known as QAnon. The new catchphrase, “We Are the Storm,” is an unsubtle cue to a group that the F.B.I. has labeled a potential domestic terrorist threat. It is instantly recognizable among QAnon adherents, signaling what they claim is a coming conflagration between President…

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USPS headquarters tells managers not to reconnect mail sorting machines, emails show

USPS headquarters tells managers not to reconnect mail sorting machines, emails show

Motherboard reports: Shortly after USPS Postmaster General Louis DeJoy issued a public statement saying he wanted to “avoid even the appearance” that any of his policies would slow down election mail, USPS instructed all maintenance managers around the country not to reconnect or reinstall any mail sorting machines they had already disconnected, according to emails obtained by Motherboard. “Please message out to your respective Maintenance Managers tonight. They are not to reconnect / reinstall machines that have previously been disconnected…

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Trump campaign, pressed for evidence, offers court zero instances of mail-in vote fraud

Trump campaign, pressed for evidence, offers court zero instances of mail-in vote fraud

The Intercept reports: President Donald Trump’s campaign, ordered by a federal court judge in Pennsylvania to back up its claims of fraud in the state’s vote-by-mail system, has documented only a handful of cases of election fraud in recent years — none of which involved mail-in ballots. The revelation, which came in the form of a partially redacted 524-page document produced by the Trump campaign last week, undermines the claim by Trump team operatives that mail-in ballot fraud is a…

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Top Republican national security officials will vote for Biden

Top Republican national security officials will vote for Biden

The New York Times reports: Four years after 50 of the nation’s most senior Republican national security officials warned that Donald J. Trump “would be the most reckless president in American history,” they are back with a new letter, declaring his presidency worse than they had imagined and urging voters to support former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. The new letter, released just hours before Mr. Biden formally accepts the nomination, lays out a 10-point indictment of Mr. Trump’s…

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Inside Biden’s plan to take over a tumultuous Covid-19 response

Inside Biden’s plan to take over a tumultuous Covid-19 response

STAT reports: No president has ever inherited a pandemic. But if Joe Biden is elected in November, he has made clear that his first moments in office would mark a dramatic shift in the nation’s approach to Covid-19. Biden’s first post-election phone call, he has said, would be to Anthony Fauci, requesting that the renowned infectious disease researcher continue his government service. For months, he and his staff have pressed for specific answers about how many coronavirus tests the U.S….

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Leading Putin critic, Alexey Navalny, target of apparent assassination attempt

Leading Putin critic, Alexey Navalny, target of apparent assassination attempt

The Daily Beast reports: Vladimir Putin’s nemesis, corruption fighter Aleksey Navalny, is fighting for his life in a Siberian hospital after allegedly being poisoned at an airport while travelling to Moscow. Navalny’s closest aide, Kira Yarmysh, said Navalny was poisoned after drinking a cup of tea at Tomsk airport early Thursday morning. He then boarded a flight to the Russian capital but fell violently ill en route. Taken from the aircraft on a stretcher after it was diverted to the…

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There is still time to keep the presidential election fair

There is still time to keep the presidential election fair

Richard L. Hasen writes: The threat to the 2020 election’s legitimacy finally broke through into everyday conversation last week. People who pay little attention to politics started talking about whether President Trump was looking to mess with the United States Postal Service to slow down the receipt of mail-in ballots. Mr. Trump was not shy about it. He told Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business Network last Thursday that he was pushing back against Democrats’ demand for further U.S.P.S. funding in…

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Joe Biden, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the shaky unity of the Democratic National Convention

Joe Biden, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the shaky unity of the Democratic National Convention

Benjamin Wallace-Wells writes: On Day Two of the Democratic National Convention, the Party’s recent past kept ghosting in and out. Before the networks had even begun their broadcasts, the Party rolled through half a century of its own history: Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, from Georgia, and then Caroline Kennedy and her son in front of the unpainted shingles of a Cape Cod home, and, finally, Bill Clinton, sitting on a flowered couch at his home in Chappaqua, New York. Clinton…

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In Alaska, Trump doubles down on environmental vandalism

In Alaska, Trump doubles down on environmental vandalism

Bill McKibben writes: Of all the jobs I’ve ever watched humans do, few have seemed more appealing to me than counting salmon at the head of the Ugashik River, in Alaska. Every hour, the man charged with this duty would rouse himself from his cabin in that vast and sweeping wilderness, climb a ladder into what looked like a lifeguard’s chair, and then stare down at the stream—with a clicker in his hand, like an usher at a movie theatre….

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Democrats drop demand to end fossil fuel subsidies from party platform

Democrats drop demand to end fossil fuel subsidies from party platform

HuffPost reports: The Democratic National Committee this week quietly dropped language calling for an end to fossil fuel subsidies and tax breaks from its party platform, HuffPost has learned. On July 27, officials added an amendment to the Manager’s Mark, a ledger of party demands voted on as one omnibus package, stating: “Democrats support eliminating tax breaks and subsidies for fossil fuels, and will fight to defend and extend tax incentives for energy efficiency and clean energy.” The amendment was…

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Local officials in China hid coronavirus dangers from Beijing, U.S. intelligence agencies find

Local officials in China hid coronavirus dangers from Beijing, U.S. intelligence agencies find

The New York Times reports: Trump administration officials have tried taking a political sledgehammer to China over the coronavirus pandemic, asserting that the Chinese Communist Party covered up the initial outbreak and allowed the virus to spread around the globe. But within the United States government, intelligence officials have arrived at a more nuanced and complex finding of what Chinese officials did wrong in January. Officials in Beijing were kept in the dark for weeks about the potential devastation of…

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A recent prosecution shows the hypocrisy of Michael Flynn’s defenders

A recent prosecution shows the hypocrisy of Michael Flynn’s defenders

Barbara McQuade and Chuck Rosenberg write: Materiality appears to mean different things to the leadership of the Justice Department these days, depending on the defendant. An FBI lawyer named Kevin Clinesmith will reportedly soon plead guilty to a felony in federal district court. According to the charges filed against Clinesmith, he made a false statement to a colleague that was relayed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, in connection with an FBI application to surveil Trump campaign foreign policy adviser…

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Postal Service backs down on changes as at least 20 states sue over potential mail delays ahead of election

Postal Service backs down on changes as at least 20 states sue over potential mail delays ahead of election

CNN reports: Embattled Postmaster General Louis DeJoy reversed course Tuesday, saying that all changes being made to the Postal Service would be suspended until after the November 3 election, just as 20 Democratic states announced plans to file federal lawsuits. DeJoy said that some of the deferred decisions mean that retail hours at post offices will not change, mail processing equipment and blue collection boxes will remain in place and no mail processing facilities will be closed. At least 20…

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Trump is ‘flooding the zone.’ It’s a form of modern censorship

Trump is ‘flooding the zone.’ It’s a form of modern censorship

Charlie Warzel writes: In the Trump era, news doesn’t break, it invades. It doesn’t respect nights or weekends. Many journalists live at the whim of President Trump’s Twitter feed. A rattled off Friday afternoon tweet from Mr. Trump about banning TikTok or a late night hint of an executive order means a weekend of wild goose chases around answering a fundamental question: Can he even do that? It’s not just journalists who feel this exhaustion. Over the last four years…

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