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Category: Politics

Homeland Security was destined to become a secret police force

Homeland Security was destined to become a secret police force

Masha Gessen writes: In a press conference on Tuesday, Chad Wolf, the acting head of the Department of Homeland Security, responded to media reports that unidentified federal agents using unmarked vehicles have been arresting protesters in Portland, Oregon. Since early July, men in military-style uniforms have waged battle against protesters there, using tear gas and nonlethal munitions; video and photographs coming out of Portland have shown scenes of urban warfare, with what looks like a regular army moving on unarmed…

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Media coverage of the 2016 campaign was disastrous. Now’s the last chance to get 2020 right

Media coverage of the 2016 campaign was disastrous. Now’s the last chance to get 2020 right

Margaret Sullivan writes: How did the news media mess up in the 100 days leading up to the 2016 presidential election? Let me count the ways. Journalists relied too much on what opinion polls were saying and often presented a skewed interpretation of their meaning. That fed the sense that Hillary Clinton would be the inevitable winner. They vastly overplayed the Clinton email story, particularly the “reopened investigation” aspect in October. Given Donald Trump’s background and behavior, the emphasis was…

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Corporate insiders pocket $1 billion in rush for coronavirus vaccine

Corporate insiders pocket $1 billion in rush for coronavirus vaccine

The New York Times reports: On June 26, a small South San Francisco company called Vaxart made a surprise announcement: A coronavirus vaccine it was working on had been selected by the U.S. government to be part of Operation Warp Speed, the flagship federal initiative to quickly develop drugs to combat Covid-19. Vaxart’s shares soared. Company insiders, who weeks earlier had received stock options worth a few million dollars, saw the value of those awards increase sixfold. And a hedge…

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Italy’s illnesses could be contagious

Italy’s illnesses could be contagious

Rachel Donadio writes: In Europe, Italy was hit hardest by the pandemic because it was hit first. Hospitals filled up with patients; one local newspaper was so overwhelmed with obituaries that it published only thumbnail-size ones. The entire country was subject to draconian restrictions, the strictest in the West. Still, Italy rallied: Infections are now under control, a contact-tracing system is in place, and its economy and borders have reopened, although not to visitors from the United States. Tourist-dependent cities…

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The silent majority stands against Trump

The silent majority stands against Trump

Jamelle Bouie writes: President Trump believes he represents the “silent majority” of the country against a dangerous, radical minority. He says as much on Twitter, frequently yelling “SILENT MAJORITY” at his followers. Accordingly, his campaign for re-election has tried to appeal to this “majority” with displays tailored to its perceived interests. Because Trump believes that this silent majority is protective of Confederate statues and other monuments, he marked Independence Day with a speech on July 3 denouncing “angry mobs” for…

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Portland, polarization, and the crisis of the Republican Party

Portland, polarization, and the crisis of the Republican Party

Vox reports: Late on Wednesday evening, Portland, Oregon, Mayor Ted Wheeler (D) was tear-gassed in his own city. Wheeler was visiting the main site of the city’s ongoing protests, which have devolved into violent clashes with the police for weeks, to try to understand their grievances. Seemingly out of nowhere, as-yet-unidentified law enforcement personnel unleashed gas on the crowd — while the mayor was still in it. “I saw nothing that provoked this response,” Wheeler told a New York Times…

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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez denounces the abuse faced by women in Congress and across the nation

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez denounces the abuse faced by women in Congress and across the nation

  The New York Times reports: Ever since Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez came to Congress as the youngest woman elected to the House, she has upended traditions, harnessing the power of social media and challenging leaders, including President Trump, who are 50 years her senior. On Thursday, she had her most norm-shattering moment yet when she took to the House floor to read into the Congressional Record a sexist vulgarity that Representative Ted Yoho, a Florida Republican, had used to refer…

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The wealthy Republicans who want to oust Trump in November’s election

The wealthy Republicans who want to oust Trump in November’s election

Reuters reports: Jimmy Tosh, who runs a multi-million dollar hog and grain farm in Tennessee, is a lifelong Republican. He is pro-gun, supports lower taxes and agrees with most of Republican President Donald Trump’s agenda. He is also spending his money to help defeat Trump in November’s election. “I agree with 80% of the things he does; I just cannot stand a liar,” Tosh, 70, said of Trump. Tosh is one of a growing number of wealthy conservative Americans who…

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A ragtag group of Ukrainian operatives say they’re still working with Giuliani

A ragtag group of Ukrainian operatives say they’re still working with Giuliani

Christopher Miller reports: Andriy Telizhenko, his eyes concealed by dark sunglasses, gabbed away between sips of iced tea and puffs of a fat Nicaraguan cigar on the terrace of a glitzy Kyiv hotel in the July heat. A fan blew cool mist in his direction. As smoke rolled out of his mouth, so did conspiracy theories. He paused only briefly to greet some of the VIP guests who sauntered in for lunchtime espressos or champagne; their bodyguards watched conspicuously from…

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The federal response to protests extends far beyond Portland

The federal response to protests extends far beyond Portland

Ken Klippenstein reports: In a conspicuous show of force, armed Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers were recently seen in Portland carrying out surveillance and arrests. Agency director Mark Morgan has defended the deployment as measured and restrained. “I will not send any resource out anywhere to confront American citizens,” he told Time. But CBP’s support to local law enforcement has extended far beyond its controversial Portland deployment, and includes not just thousands of personnel but also drones and dozens…

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Trump is putting on a show in Portland

Trump is putting on a show in Portland

Anne Applebaum writes: The very idea seems, on the face of it, sheer madness. In Portland, Oregon, federal security officers dressed for combat—wearing jungle-camouflage uniforms with unclear markings, carrying heavy weapons, using batons and tear gas—are patrolling the streets, making random arrests, throwing people into unmarked vans. The officers do not come from institutions that specialize in political crowd control. Instead, they come from Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Transportation Security Administration, and the Coast Guard….

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Why is Trump using little green men in American cities?

Why is Trump using little green men in American cities?

Daniel W. Drezner writes: This is not actually about anarchy in Portland because the city seems both ordered and copacetic with what’s happening. This is about something else. What political gain does Trump see from escalating and nationalizing this situation? One possibility is that he believes this kind of law-and-order “performative authoritarianism” as a winning move because it a) is not about covid-19 and b) plays into old partisan divisions. According to my Post colleagues Nick Miroff and Mark Berman,…

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We’re police officers. You should know our names. That goes for Portland, too

We’re police officers. You should know our names. That goes for Portland, too

Patrick Skinner writes: My name is Patrick Skinner, and I’m a local police officer. I love that I can say that. For me, one of the best things about being a local police officer is the openness of the job. On patrol my name is on my uniform; as a detective my name is on my business cards. Either way, it’s always on my tongue: I introduce myself to literally every single neighbor I meet while on duty. By definition…

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The November election is going to be a mess

The November election is going to be a mess

Norm Ornstein writes: American voters face a nightmare in November. The recent stretch of primary elections has raised a slew of red flags of glitches, missteps, incompetence, and worse that could plague the national elections in November. In Wisconsin, the failure of election officials to send out absentee ballots requested by voters and the failure of the United States Postal Service to deliver them in time forced those voters to physically go to the polls during the pandemic. Once there,…

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An arms race for space has begun

An arms race for space has begun

Time reports: American intelligence analysts have been watching a pair of Russian satellites, identified as Cosmos 2542 and 2543, for months. Or rather, they have been watching them since they were one satellite, deployed by a Soyuz rocket that took off from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome on Nov. 26, 2019. It was 11 days after that launch that the first satellite split in two, the second somehow “birthed” from the other, and no one in the U.S. military was happy about…

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How Biden’s climate plan makes clean energy by 2035 ‘very doable’

How Biden’s climate plan makes clean energy by 2035 ‘very doable’

NBC News reports: When Hillary Clinton proposed a climate plan in the run-up to the 2016 election that included $60 billion for clean energy infrastructure and $30 billion more to redevelop coal-mining communities, it was met with mixed reviews: an “ambitious” plan but one with “holes.” The plan proposed some of the largest investments in clean energy tech put forward by a major presidential candidate, a sign of how far the topic of climate change had come in politics but,…

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