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Category: Politics

Black Lives Matter protests in Trump country test his hold in rural white areas

Black Lives Matter protests in Trump country test his hold in rural white areas

The Associated Press reports: In the lake country 200 miles (320 kilometers) northwest of Detroit, hundreds danced, prayed and demanded racial justice in Cadillac, a Michigan town that was long home to a neo-Nazi group. It was not an isolated scene. In eastern Ohio, even more demonstrated in rural Mount Vernon, a town with its own current of racial intolerance, just as others did in Manheim, Pennsylvania, a tiny farming town in Lancaster County, with its small but active Ku…

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Trump’s actions rattle the military world

Trump’s actions rattle the military world

The New York Times reports: Erin Fangmann grew up in a military family, has been married to a captain in the Air Force for 18 years and has voted Republican all her life, including for Donald J. Trump. But as with a number of other veterans, troops and military family members who have watched the president with alarm, her support has evaporated. “He has hurt the military,” said Ms. Fangmann, who lives in Arizona, one of several states in play…

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As cities grew safer, police budgets kept growing

As cities grew safer, police budgets kept growing

The New York Times reports: In Boston, Los Angeles and Milwaukee, about one in every 10 dollars of local government spending goes to the police. In Minneapolis, it’s about one in every 20 dollars. American society has not settled on what that number should be — how much of a priority the police ought to have, alongside schools and parks and housing and health care. But the police share of spending has grown over the past 40 years, even as…

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Yes, we mean literally abolish the police

Yes, we mean literally abolish the police

Mariame Kaba writes: Congressional Democrats want to make it easier to identify and prosecute police misconduct; Joe Biden wants to give police departments $300 million. But efforts to solve police violence through liberal reforms like these have failed for nearly a century. Enough. We can’t reform the police. The only way to diminish police violence is to reduce contact between the public and the police. There is not a single era in United States history in which the police were…

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Americans are pretending that the pandemic is over

Americans are pretending that the pandemic is over

Yascha Mounk writes: A second wave of the coronavirus is on the way. When it arrives, we will lack the will to deal with it. Despite all the sacrifices of the past months, the virus is likely to win—or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it already has. In absolute terms, the United States has been hit harder than any other country. About a quarter of worldwide deaths have been recorded on these shores. And while the…

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Seattle’s CHAZ: Inside the occupied vegan paradise – and Trump’s ‘ugly anarchist’ hell

Seattle’s CHAZ: Inside the occupied vegan paradise – and Trump’s ‘ugly anarchist’ hell

The Independent reports: There were activists with bullhorns, and artists painting designs on the street. Stalls collected donations for the homeless and others offered vegan curry. There were people posing for images in front of a boarded-up police station, while others sat on the grass. There were people of colour, and there were white people, lots of white people. But the “ugly anarchists” denounced by Donald Trump on Twitter that very morning? Could it be they existed only in his…

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Most Americans, including Republicans, support sweeping Democratic police reform proposals, poll finds

Most Americans, including Republicans, support sweeping Democratic police reform proposals, poll finds

Reuters reports: Most Americans, including a majority of President Donald Trump’s Republican Party, support sweeping law enforcement reforms such as a ban on chokeholds and racial profiling after the latest death of an African American while in police custody, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Thursday. The national survey on June 9-10, shows the public broadly on the side of Democratic lawmakers, who proposed a series of changes to police departments (here) in the United States as protesters…

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Trump prizes re-election more than public health

Trump prizes re-election more than public health

The Daily Beast reports: As President Donald Trump prepared to return to the campaign trail amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, administration officials and several close advisers warned him of the dangers that could come with packing a venue full of his political supporters. He was not dissuaded. “He’s been [gently] reminded of the concerns,” said a senior administration official, regarding the potential for spreading the virus at large public gatherings. “The president said something like, ‘My team will make sure…

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Bolton rips Trump: ‘Getting reelected was the only thing that mattered’

Bolton rips Trump: ‘Getting reelected was the only thing that mattered’

Politico reports: President Donald Trump repeatedly endangered national security — and committed a series of potentially impeachable offenses — to boost his reelection prospects, former national security adviser John Bolton argues in a forthcoming White House memoir. Bolton writes that the House should have broadened its impeachment inquiry to other areas of his foreign policy, contending that he can document — and identify witnesses to — “Ukraine-like transgressions … across the full range of his foreign policy,” according to a…

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America is losing in the fight against Covid-19

America is losing in the fight against Covid-19

The Hill reports: When throngs of tourists and revelers left their homes over Memorial Day weekend, public health experts braced for a surge in coronavirus infections that could force a second round of painful shutdowns. Two weeks later, that surge has hit places like Houston, Phoenix, South Carolina and Missouri. Week-over-week case counts are on the rise in half of all states. Only 16 states and the District of Columbia have seen their total case counts decline for two consecutive…

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Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff apologizes for his role in Trump’s Lafayette Square photo op

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff apologizes for his role in Trump’s Lafayette Square photo op

The New York Times reports: The country’s top military official apologized on Thursday for taking part in President Trump’s walk across Lafayette Square for a photo op after the authorities used tear gas and rubber bullets to clear the area of peaceful protesters. “I should not have been there,” Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a prerecorded video commencement address to National Defense University. “My presence in that moment and in that…

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Why are so many NYPD officers refusing to wear masks at protests?

Why are so many NYPD officers refusing to wear masks at protests?

The New York Times reports: Riot helmets, ballistic vests, shields, batons — fully decked-out police officers have become staples in New York City as the protests against racism and police brutality approach their third week. But increasingly, one piece of equipment has attracted attention with its absence: the face mask. On any given day, any corner, any group of officers, some or all of them are not wearing masks. Others wear them below their chin. With masks having become as…

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Inside Seattle’s ‘autonomous zone’ with free food, free speech, and no police

Inside Seattle’s ‘autonomous zone’ with free food, free speech, and no police

The New York Times reports: On the streets next to a police precinct in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, protesters and officers spent a week locked in a nightly cycle of standoffs, at times ending with clouds of tear gas. But facing a growing backlash over its dispersal tactics in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, the Seattle Police Department this week offered a concession: Officers would abandon their precinct, board up the windows and let the protesters have…

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Four years embedded with the alt-right

Four years embedded with the alt-right

Daniel Lombroso writes: White nationalists have always been able to find one another in America, but the recent resurgence of the white-nationalist movement—and the extent to which its ideas have seeped into the mainstream alongside Donald Trump’s political ascent—is stunning. In November 2016, I captured footage of Trump supporters throwing Nazi salutes in celebration of his presidential victory, a moment that became an explosive story in the days that followed, and set the tone for the Trump presidency. In the…

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Federal arrests show no sign that antifa activists plotted protests

Federal arrests show no sign that antifa activists plotted protests

The New York Times reports: Inciting a riot. Hurling a Molotov cocktail. Plotting to sow destruction. Those are some of the most serious charges brought by federal prosecutors against demonstrators at protests across the country in recent weeks. But despite cries from President Trump and others in his administration, none of those charged with serious federal crimes amid the unrest have been linked so far to the loose collective of anti-fascist activists known as antifa. A review of the arrests…

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Most Americans trust Black Lives Matter movement more than Trump to promote justice and racial equality

Most Americans trust Black Lives Matter movement more than Trump to promote justice and racial equality

USA Today reports: The police crackdown to clear protesters from Lafayette Square last week looms as a defining moment in the national debate over race and law enforcement that has been sparked by the death of George Floyd. An exclusive USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll finds Americans overwhelmingly endorse the right of peaceful protest outside the White House – a view held by nearly 9 of 10 people across racial and partisan lines. Nearly 9 of 10 had heard about the clashes…

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