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Category: Politics

What makes Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden’s indispensable partner

What makes Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden’s indispensable partner

Jamelle Bouie writes: Joe Biden built his political career as the New Deal order came to an end, one of a generation of Democrats who sought to reconcile the Democratic Party to the Reagan revolution by placing distance between the party and the racial and cultural upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s. His was a politics attuned to the worries and fears of suburban white voters, from busing and crime to guns and drugs. Now, of course, those politics are…

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Sweden’s coronavirus strategy isn’t what it seems

Sweden’s coronavirus strategy isn’t what it seems

Ishaan Tharoor writes: As societies battened down the hatches and imposed quarantines, one European country appeared to take a different approach. In Sweden, there have been no invasive lockdowns to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus. Restaurants and even nightclubs are operating, though under guidelines to enforce social distancing. Schools for students under the age of 16 remain open. Large gatherings are restricted to a maximum of 50 people, a far cry from the enforced confinement imposed on entire cities…

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FBI accidentally reveals name of Saudi official suspected of directing support for 9/11 hijackers

FBI accidentally reveals name of Saudi official suspected of directing support for 9/11 hijackers

Yahoo News reports: The FBI inadvertently revealed one of the U.S. government’s most sensitive secrets about the Sept. 11 terror attacks: the identity of a mysterious Saudi Embassy official in Washington who agents suspected had directed crucial support to two of the al-Qaida hijackers. The disclosure came in a new declaration filed in federal court by a senior FBI official in response to a lawsuit brought by families of 9/11 victims that accuses the Saudi government of complicity in the…

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Fauci warns against triggering ‘an outbreak that you may not be able to control’ by reopening too soon

Fauci warns against triggering ‘an outbreak that you may not be able to control’ by reopening too soon

The Week reports: Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on Tuesday warned the Senate about the dangers of states reopening too quickly amid the coronavirus pandemic, saying this could result in more “suffering and death.” Fauci, a member of President Trump’s coronavirus task force, remotely testified before the Senate on Tuesday and said that the “consequences could be really serious” if states reopen their economies too quickly without following the White House’s guidelines,…

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Unreleased White House report, at odds with Trump’s declaration, shows coronavirus rates spiking across America

Unreleased White House report, at odds with Trump’s declaration, shows coronavirus rates spiking across America

NBC News reports: Coronavirus infection rates are spiking to new highs in several metropolitan areas and smaller communities across the country, according to undisclosed data the White House’s pandemic task force is using to track rates of infection, which was obtained by NBC News. The data in a May 7 coronavirus task force report are at odds with President Donald Trump’s declaration Monday that “all throughout the country, the numbers are coming down rapidly.” The 10 top areas recorded surges…

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Trump’s America-first push for a coronavirus vaccine

Trump’s America-first push for a coronavirus vaccine

Science reports: Conventional wisdom is that a vaccine for COVID-19 is at least 1 year away, but the organizers of a U.S. government push called Operation Warp Speed have little use for conventional wisdom. The project, vaguely described to date but likely to be formally announced by the White House in the coming days, will pick a diverse set of vaccine candidates and pour essentially limitless resources into unprecedented comparative studies in animals, fast-tracked human trials, and manufacturing. Eschewing international…

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How Donald Trump became a loser

How Donald Trump became a loser

David Frum writes: A couple of years ago, BuzzFeed asked a former White House official to explain the logic behind some bizarre Trump action. The official responded with one of the master quotes of the Trump era. President Trump, the official said, is not playing “the sort of three-dimensional chess people ascribe to decisions like this. More often than not he’s just eating the pieces.” Over Mother’s Day and then through Monday—and who knows, perhaps continuing today—Trump has fired off…

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Senate Republicans break with Trump over ‘Obamagate’

Senate Republicans break with Trump over ‘Obamagate’

Politico reports: President Donald Trump’s aggressive campaign to encourage sweeping investigations of his predecessor Barack Obama met a unanimous response from Senate Republicans: No thanks. Trump’s Senate allies on Monday stopped short of echoing Trump’s claim that Obama acted illegally when the Justice Department began probing incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn in late 2016. And they indicated that the Senate would pass on investigating the former president as they conduct their own investigations that could soon ensnare other senior…

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How Trump is undermining efforts to find a cure for Covid-19 by cutting vital coronavirus research

How Trump is undermining efforts to find a cure for Covid-19 by cutting vital coronavirus research

  60 Minutes: Peter Daszak is a scientist whose work is helping in the search for a COVID-19 cure. So why did the president just cancel Daszak’s funding? It’s the kind of politics which might seem ill-advised in a health crisis. President Trump is blaming China’s government for the pandemic. The outbreak was first detected in the city of Wuhan. The administration has said, at times, the virus is man-made or that, if it’s natural, it must have leaked out…

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CEOs in Iowa who came to meet Pence in masks were told to remove them

CEOs in Iowa who came to meet Pence in masks were told to remove them

The Intercept reports: Mike Pence was unmasked in Iowa on Friday, attending two events without covering his face, even though public health officials say masks slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus and one of the vice president’s aides tested positive for Covid-19 just before he departed Washington. Two days later, the recklessness of that behavior came into sharper focus as Bloomberg News reported that Pence had decided to self-isolate at his home in Washington over the weekend — skipping…

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William Barr is undermining the rule of law

William Barr is undermining the rule of law

Jonathan Kravis writes: Three months ago, I resigned from the Justice Department after 10 years as a career prosecutor. I left a job I loved because I believed the department had abandoned its responsibility to do justice in one of my cases, United States v. Roger Stone. At the time, I thought that the handling of the Stone case, with senior officials intervening to recommend a lower sentence for a longtime ally of President Trump, was a disastrous mistake that…

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Almost 2,000 former DOJ officials call for Attorney General William Barr to resign over Flynn case

Almost 2,000 former DOJ officials call for Attorney General William Barr to resign over Flynn case

ABC News reports: Nearly 2000 former Justice Department officials have signed onto a letter calling for Attorney General William Barr to resign over what they describe as his improper intervention in the criminal case of former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn. Last week, the DOJ moved to drop charges against Flynn who had pleaded guilty twice to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the former Russian ambassador during the presidential transition. The letter, signed mostly by former…

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During the pandemic, mutual aid is suddenly getting mainstream attention

During the pandemic, mutual aid is suddenly getting mainstream attention

Jia Tolentino writes: We are not accustomed to destruction looking, at first, like emptiness. The coronavirus pandemic is disorienting in part because it defies our normal cause-and-effect shortcuts to understanding the world. The source of danger is invisible; the most effective solution involves willing paralysis; we won’t know the consequences of today’s actions until two weeks have passed. Everything circles a bewildering paradox: other people are both a threat and a lifeline. Physical connection could kill us, but civic connection…

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Trump’s call to arms: Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do to get me reelected

Trump’s call to arms: Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do to get me reelected

Politico reports: President Donald Trump wants to draft every American to go to war. Encouraging the public to transition out of isolation and into the world, the president is increasingly deploying battlefield rhetoric in asking everyday Americans to confront a raging coronavirus pandemic that has already infected 1.3 million people in the U.S. and killed nearly 80,000 — and this week clawed into the inner circle of his White House. “The people of our country should think of themselves as…

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As Trump clamps down on coronavirus communications, voices of experts give way to those of politicians

As Trump clamps down on coronavirus communications, voices of experts give way to those of politicians

Politico reports: President Donald Trump’s oscillations over the fate of his coronavirus task force have tapped into a growing fear within the nation’s public health community: That at a critical juncture in the pandemic fight, the government’s top health experts might still be seen, but increasingly not heard. The Trump administration in recent weeks has clamped down on messaging, largely shifting its focus to cheerleading a restart of the nation’s economy even as states and businesses clamor for guidance on…

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The four men responsible for America’s COVID-19 test disaster

The four men responsible for America’s COVID-19 test disaster

Tim Dickinson writes: Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control, flanked Donald Trump at the podium in the White House briefing room. It was February 29th, the day of the first reported U.S. death from the coronavirus, and the president fielded an urgent question: “How should Americans prepare for this virus?” a reporter asked. “Should they go on with their daily lives? Change their routine? What should they do?” In that moment, America was flying blind…

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