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Category: Politics

White supremacy was her world. Then she left

White supremacy was her world. Then she left

Seyward Darby writes: Hate always exists, but it surges during periods of social upheaval, offering racist explanations for seismic change. The Ku Klux Klan formed after the Civil War and reached its zenith in the 1920s, in an expanding, diversifying country. “Its allures were manifold,” the historian Linda Gordon writes of the Klan. “They included the rewards of being an insider, of belonging to a community, of expressing and acting on resentments, of participating in drama, of feeling religiously and…

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Netanyahu’s annexation plan turning into fiasco

Netanyahu’s annexation plan turning into fiasco

Al Monitor reports: “Right now, I put the chances of Israeli annexation of any part of the West Bank at low to nonexistent,” a top Israeli security official told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. “There are too many conditions and circumstances that have to occur and ripen before that can happen.” The first condition is a green light from Washington, which is currently nowhere in sight. US President Donald Trump appears to have lost interest in the issue he so…

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CDC says U.S. could get coronavirus under control in one to two months if everyone wears a mask

CDC says U.S. could get coronavirus under control in one to two months if everyone wears a mask

CNBC reports: The United States could get the coronavirus pandemic under control in one to two months if every American wore a mask, a top Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official said Tuesday. “The time is now,” Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the CDC, said during an interview with the Journal of the American Medical Association’s Dr. Howard Bauchner. “I think if we could get everybody to wear a mask right now I think in four, six, eight weeks…

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Coronavirus data has already disappeared after Trump administration shifted control from CDC

Coronavirus data has already disappeared after Trump administration shifted control from CDC

CNBC reports: Previously public data has already disappeared from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website after the Trump administration quietly shifted control of the information to the Department of Health and Human Services. Since the pandemic began, the CDC regularly published data on availability of hospital beds and intensive care units across the country. But Ryan Panchadsaram, who helps run a data-tracking site called Covid Exit Strategy, said that when he tried to collect the data from the…

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Trump weakens environmental law to speed up permits for pipelines and other infrastructure

Trump weakens environmental law to speed up permits for pipelines and other infrastructure

CNBC reports: President Donald Trump on Wednesday finalized a rollback to the country’s landmark environmental law, the National Environmental Policy Act, by speeding up approval for federal projects like pipelines, highways and power plants. NEPA was signed into law by President Richard Nixon 50 years ago and requires federal agencies to consider the environmental consequences of infrastructure projects before they are approved. The law has also been vital in allowing communities to weigh in on how such projects impact climate…

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‘Outright lies’: Voting misinformation flourishes on Facebook

‘Outright lies’: Voting misinformation flourishes on Facebook

By Ryan McCarthy, ProPublica, July 16, 2020 On April 3, Terrence K. Williams, a politically conservative actor and comedian who’s been praised by President Donald Trump, assured his nearly 3 million followers on Facebook that Democrats would light ballots on fire or throw them away. Wearing a red “Keep America Great” hat, Williams declared, “If you mail in your vote, your vote will be in Barack Obama’s fireplace.” The video has been viewed more than 350,000 times. On May 8,…

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Is the Saudi government plotting against another U.S.-based critic?

Is the Saudi government plotting against another U.S.-based critic?

Dexter Filkins reports: In early May, officials with the C.I.A. reached out to Ali Soufan, a former F.B.I. agent who served as a lead investigator in the months before the September 11th attacks, to say they had learned that Al Qaeda militants were plotting against him. The officials asked Soufan not to disclose many details, but, he told me, “The information was specific enough that they felt that they had to inform me.” Two weeks later, Soufan, who lives in…

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In historic move, Asheville, North Carolina approves reparations for Black residents

In historic move, Asheville, North Carolina approves reparations for Black residents

Asheville Citizen Times reports: In an extraordinary move, the Asheville City Council has apologized for the North Carolina city’s historic role in slavery, discrimination and denial of basic liberties to Black residents and voted to provide reparations to them and their descendants. The 7-0 vote came the night of July 14. “Hundreds of years of Black blood spilled that basically fills the cup we drink from today,” said Councilman Keith Young, one of two African American members of the body…

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Fauci: ‘Bizarre’ White House behavior only hurts Trump

Fauci: ‘Bizarre’ White House behavior only hurts Trump

The Atlantic reports: Anthony Fauci isn’t about to quit, despite the White House’s clumsy attempts to stain his public image. More so now than at any other point in their uneasy partnership, it seems that if President Donald Trump wants to be rid of Fauci, he’ll need to fire him. In recent days especially, the White House has stepped up efforts to discredit Fauci, a move he describes as “bizarre.” “Ultimately, it hurts the president to do that,” Fauci told…

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Global surge in coronavirus cases is being fed by the developing world — and the U.S.

Global surge in coronavirus cases is being fed by the developing world — and the U.S.

The Washington Post reports: When the United States began shutting down this spring, a virus that emerged months earlier as a mysterious outbreak in a Chinese provincial capital had infected a total of fewer than 200,000 people worldwide. So far this week, the planet has added an average of more than 200,000 cases every day. The novel coronavirus — once concentrated in specific cities or countries — has now crept into virtually every corner of the globe and is wreaking…

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Trump administration strips CDC of control of coronavirus data

Trump administration strips CDC of control of coronavirus data

The New York Times reports: The Trump administration has ordered hospitals to bypass the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and send all Covid-19 patient information to a central database in Washington beginning on Wednesday. The move has alarmed health experts who fear the data will be politicized or withheld from the public. The new instructions were posted recently in a little-noticed document on the Department of Health and Human Services website. From now on, the department — not the…

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Trump’s final presidential pardon: himself

Trump’s final presidential pardon: himself

Bill Press writes: Jan. 20, 2021. EXCLUSIVE TO THE HILL: According to official documents obtained by our team of White House correspondents, President Trump’s last official act as president, just minutes before leaving the White House to head directly for Mar-A-Lago, pointedly boycotting incoming President Joe Biden’s Inauguration, was to issue one final presidential pardon. In a brief written statement, Trump said, “Under absolute powers bestowed on me as president under Article II of the Constitution, I am awarding a…

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I’m a former civil servant. We are professionals, not a ‘deep state’

I’m a former civil servant. We are professionals, not a ‘deep state’

Russell E. Travers writes: If the intelligence community needs to correct understatements of threat (no, the Islamic State is not defeated) or correct overstatements of threat (no, data doesn’t suggest a significant threat from refugees), that’s not a “deep state” undermining the president; that’s a professional civil service doing its job. Just like the civil servants at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Justice Department and everywhere else in the government. A century ago,…

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The pandemic may get much, much worse. We must act now

The pandemic may get much, much worse. We must act now

John M. Barry writes: When you mix science and politics, you get politics. With the coronavirus, the United States has proved politics hasn’t worked. If we are to fully reopen both the economy and schools safely — which can be done — we have to return to science. To understand just how bad things are in the United States and, more important, what can be done about it requires comparison. At this writing, Italy, once the poster child of coronavirus…

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New Biden plan sees millions of jobs in aggressive climate action

New Biden plan sees millions of jobs in aggressive climate action

The Verge reports: On Wednesday, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden revealed a revamped climate and energy plan that raises spending, expands efforts to address racial disparities, and sets an earlier deadline for cutting greenhouse gases. Biden’s plan aims to eliminate carbon pollution from the power sector by 2035. Biden had previously committed to reaching a 100 percent “clean energy economy” by 2050. The plan comes with a $2 trillion price tag over four years, higher than his previous ten-year…

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We ran the CDC. No president ever politicized its science the way Trump has

We ran the CDC. No president ever politicized its science the way Trump has

Tom Frieden, Jeffrey Koplan, David Satcher and Richard Besser write: As America begins the formidable task of getting our kids back to school and all of us back to work safely amid a pandemic that is only getting worse, public health experts face two opponents: covid-19, but also political leaders and others attempting to undermine the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As the debate last week around reopening schools more safely showed, these repeated efforts to subvert sound public…

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