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Category: Politics

Robert Mueller: Roger Stone remains a convicted felon, and rightly so

Robert Mueller: Roger Stone remains a convicted felon, and rightly so

Robert Mueller writes: The work of the special counsel’s office — its report, indictments, guilty pleas and convictions — should speak for itself. But I feel compelled to respond both to broad claims that our investigation was illegitimate and our motives were improper, and to specific claims that Roger Stone was a victim of our office. The Russia investigation was of paramount importance. Stone was prosecuted and convicted because he committed federal crimes. He remains a convicted felon, and rightly…

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Genocide denial gains ground 25 years after Srebrenica massacre

Genocide denial gains ground 25 years after Srebrenica massacre

The Guardian reports: At the genocide memorial centre outside Srebrenica, thousands of simple white gravestones stretch across the gently inclined hillside for as far as the eye can see. Nearby, over a number of days in July 1995, Bosnian Serb forces systematically murdered around 8,000 Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) men and boys. It was the worst crime of the Bosnian war, and remains the only massacre on European soil since the second world war to be ruled a genocide. Even today,…

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The Supreme Court puts Trump in his place

The Supreme Court puts Trump in his place

Timothy L. O’Brien writes: If you’re the president of the United States, you don’t stand above the law. But if you’re a member of Congress seeking the president’s personal records in order to exercise oversight of the executive branch, you better not overreach. That, essentially, is how the Supreme Court ruled in a pair of opinions released Thursday morning. Both cases, Trump v. Vance and Trump v. Mazars, involved efforts to gain access to President Donald Trump’s tax returns, bank…

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Trump’s ‘woe-is-me’ reaction to the pandemic

Trump’s ‘woe-is-me’ reaction to the pandemic

The Washington Post reports: Callers on President Trump in recent weeks have come to expect what several allies and advisers describe as a “woe-is-me” preamble. The president rants about the deadly coronavirus destroying “the greatest economy,” one he claims to have personally built. He laments the unfair “fake news” media, which he vents never gives him any credit. And he bemoans the “sick, twisted” police officers in Minneapolis, whose killing of an unarmed black man in their custody provoked the…

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Facebook considering political-ad blackout ahead of U.S. election

Facebook considering political-ad blackout ahead of U.S. election

Bloomberg reports: Facebook Inc. is considering imposing a ban on political ads on its social network in the days leading up to the U.S. election in November, according to people familiar with the company’s thinking. The potential ban is still only being discussed and hasn’t yet been finalized, said the people, who asked not to be named talking about internal policies. A halt on ads could defend against misleading election-related content spreading as people prepare to vote. Still, there are…

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A letter on justice and open debate

A letter on justice and open debate

More than 150 prominent artists and public thinkers signed the following letter: Our cultural institutions are facing a moment of trial. Powerful protests for racial and social justice are leading to overdue demands for police reform, along with wider calls for greater equality and inclusion across our society, not least in higher education, journalism, philanthropy, and the arts. But this needed reckoning has also intensified a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms…

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I no longer believe in a Jewish state

I no longer believe in a Jewish state

Peter Beinart writes: I was 22 in 1993 when Yitzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat shook hands on the White House lawn to officially begin the peace process that many hoped would create a Palestinian state alongside Israel. I’ve been arguing for a two-state solution — first in late-night bull sessions, then in articles and speeches — ever since. I believed in Israel as a Jewish state because I grew up in a family that had hopscotched from continent to continent…

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Trump’s America is slipping away

Trump’s America is slipping away

Ronald Brownstein writes: Donald Trump is running for the presidency of an America that no longer exists. Trump in recent weeks has repeatedly reprised two of Richard Nixon’s most memorable rallying cries, promising to deliver “law and order” for the “silent majority.” But in almost every meaningful way, America today is a radically different country than it was when Nixon rode those arguments to win the presidency in 1968 amid widespread anti-war protests, massive civil unrest following the assassination of…

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Solving the climate crisis is about everything and everyone

Solving the climate crisis is about everything and everyone

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson writes: The Black Lives Matter movement is not a distraction from saving the planet. We can’t solve the climate crisis without people of color, but we could probably solve it without racists. Whether it’s Hurricane Katrina or air pollution, storms and exposure to toxins cause much greater harm to communities of color. (Although, yes, in the longer term, climate change is coming for us all, even if you have a bunker in New Zealand.) So it follows…

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Supreme Court rules large swath of Oklahoma is Indian reservation

Supreme Court rules large swath of Oklahoma is Indian reservation

The New York Times reports: The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that much of eastern Oklahoma falls within an Indian reservation, a decision that could reshape the criminal-justice system by preventing state authorities from prosecuting offenses there that involve Native Americans. The 5-to-4 decision, potentially one of the most consequential legal victories for Native Americans in decades, could have far-reaching implications for the people who live across what is now deemed “Indian Country” by the high court. The lands include…

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America is refusing to learn how to fight the coronavirus

America is refusing to learn how to fight the coronavirus

David Wallace-Wells writes: Just before the holiday weekend, on the day that Donald Trump stood beneath Mount Rushmore and warned against “a merciless campaign to wipe out our history” and the day before his Washington, D.C., fireworks display generated air pollution 15 times the EPA standard and roughly equivalent to the choking megacities of India and China, the state of Arizona reached a terrible pandemic milestone. For the first time in its history, indeed for the first time in any…

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Trump Tulsa rally ‘likely’ source of virus surge, local health official says

Trump Tulsa rally ‘likely’ source of virus surge, local health official says

The Associated Press reports: President Donald Trump’s campaign rally in Tulsa that drew thousands of people in late June, along with large protests that accompanied it, “likely contributed” to a dramatic surge in new coronavirus cases, Tulsa City-County Health Department Director Dr. Bruce Dart said Wednesday. Tulsa County reported 261 confirmed new cases on Monday, a one-day record high, and another 206 cases on Tuesday. Although the health department’s policy is to not publicly identify individual settings where people may…

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Churches were eager to reopen. Now they’re a major source of new coronavirus cases

Churches were eager to reopen. Now they’re a major source of new coronavirus cases

The New York Times reports: Weeks after President Trump demanded that America’s shuttered houses of worship be allowed to reopen, new outbreaks of the coronavirus are surging through churches across the country where services have resumed. The virus has infiltrated Sunday sermons, meetings of ministers and Christian youth camps in Colorado and Missouri. It has struck churches that reopened cautiously with face masks and social distancing in the pews, as well as some that defied lockdowns and refused to heed…

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Facebook ad boycott organizers met with Zuckerberg. It was ‘nothing more than a PR exercise’

Facebook ad boycott organizers met with Zuckerberg. It was ‘nothing more than a PR exercise’

CNN reports: Civil rights and activist groups blasted Facebook’s leadership on Tuesday after meeting with CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other executives to discuss the demands of a large advertiser boycott that now includes hundreds of brands. “The meeting we just left was a disappointment,” said Rashad Robinson, the president of Color of Change. “[Facebook] showed up to the meeting expecting an ‘A’ for attendance.” Free Press, a media activist group and one of the organizers of the #StopHateForProfit campaign to…

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Jack Posobiec, promoted by Trump, collaborated for years with white supremacists, neo-fascists and antisemites

Jack Posobiec, promoted by Trump, collaborated for years with white supremacists, neo-fascists and antisemites

SPLC Hatewatch reports: Jack Posobiec, a correspondent for One America News Network (OANN) whose work has been embraced by President Trump, collaborated for years with white supremacists, neo-fascists and antisemites, a Hatewatch investigation has determined. Posobiec’s ties to far-right extremists travel beyond borders into Europe. His connections to white supremacy are too numerous to compile into one article, so Hatewatch is running a series of stories on the correspondent’s ties to the movement and promotion of it. This first story…

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