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Category: Politics

Trump’s war against Americans

Trump’s war against Americans

Kevin Baron writes: President Donald Trump finally got the war he wanted. It isn’t in Afghanistan, or Iraq, Syria, or North Korea. It’s right here in Washington, D.C., where on Monday the president claimed moral and Constitutional authority and ordered federal law enforcement and the U.S. military to turn against Americans who opposed him. After warning over the weekend that out-of-line rabble-rousers across the street from the White House would face “vicious dogs,” Trump instead sicced police, troops, and U.S….

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Police kicked priest out of church near White House so that Trump could have his bible-wielding photo-op

Police kicked priest out of church near White House so that Trump could have his bible-wielding photo-op

Religion News Service reports: Early Monday evening, President Donald Trump stood before the historic St. John’s Episcopal Church in downtown Washington and held aloft a Bible for cameras. The photo opportunity had an eerie quality: Trump said relatively little, positioned stoically in front of the boarded-up church, which had been damaged the day before in a fire during protests sparked by the death of George Floyd on May 25 in Minneapolis. The church appeared to be completely abandoned. It was,…

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White supremacist group, Identity Evropa, posing as Antifa, called for violence on Twitter

White supremacist group, Identity Evropa, posing as Antifa, called for violence on Twitter

NBC News reports: A Twitter account claiming to belong to a national “antifa” organization and pushing violent rhetoric related to ongoing protests has been linked to the white nationalist group Identity Evropa, according to a Twitter spokesperson. The spokesperson said the account violated the company’s platform manipulation and spam policy, specifically the creation of fake accounts. Twitter suspended the account after a tweet that incited violence. As protests were taking place in multiple states across the U.S. Sunday night, the…

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How to make this moment the turning point for real change in America

How to make this moment the turning point for real change in America

Barack Obama writes: As millions of people across the country take to the streets and raise their voices in response to the killing of George Floyd and the ongoing problem of unequal justice, many people have reached out asking how we can sustain momentum to bring about real change. Ultimately, it’s going to be up to a new generation of activists to shape strategies that best fit the times. But I believe there are some basic lessons to draw from…

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Worse than 1968

Worse than 1968

Julian Zelizer writes: Trump thrives in a partisan world that is in many ways more dysfunctional than what we saw in 1968. Whereas the tensions of that year revolved around specific issues, like the war and civil rights, we now live in a partisan world where our institutions perpetuate constant red-blue divisions over almost every issue, no matter how large or small they might be. Everything — even wearing masks to prevent a contagious, potentially deadly disease from spreading —…

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Facebook employees challenge Zuckerberg and stage virtual walkout to protest Trump posts

Facebook employees challenge Zuckerberg and stage virtual walkout to protest Trump posts

The New York Times reports: Dozens of Facebook employees, in rare public criticism on Monday of their own company, protested executives’ decision not to do anything about inflammatory posts that President Trump had placed on the giant social media platform over the past week. The employees, who said they refused to work in order to show their support for demonstrators across the country, added an automated message to their digital profiles and email responses saying that they were out of…

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Sweden’s coronavirus experiment has well and truly failed

Sweden’s coronavirus experiment has well and truly failed

Wired reports: There was a familiar refrain from political commentators on certain corners of the internet in the early days of the pandemic – a three-word slogan in the vein of ‘Get Brexit Done’ that popped up wherever people felt the government’s lockdown plans impinged on their rights: what about Sweden? The Nordic country was used as an example of why closing down society in the way that most other European countries have done was unnecessary. Even now, restaurants and…

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The law-enforcement abuses that don’t bother Trump

The law-enforcement abuses that don’t bother Trump

Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes write: President Donald Trump has seen abusive law enforcement before—stared it in the face, called it by its name, denounced it. He did not, to be sure, see the killing of George Floyd—the latest African American man to be killed by a police officer—as a reason to condemn abusive policing, although video of Floyd’s death prompted millions of Americans to recoil in horror and sparked outrage, protest, and violence nationwide. The president has been mostly…

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Judge Sullivan says he is not required to ‘rubber stamp’ DOJ’s bid to dismiss Flynn case

Judge Sullivan says he is not required to ‘rubber stamp’ DOJ’s bid to dismiss Flynn case

The Washington Post reports: U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan should not be required to act as a “mere rubber stamp” for the government’s unusual move to undo the guilty plea of President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn, the judge’s lawyers told a federal appeals court in Washington on Monday. Sullivan’s attorneys asked the appeals court to stay on the sidelines to give the judge an opportunity to ensure the “integrity of the judicial process” and to rule…

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America must listen to its wounds. They will tell us where to look for hope

America must listen to its wounds. They will tell us where to look for hope

Reverend William Barber writes: No one wants to see their community burn. But the fires burning in Minneapolis, just like the fire burning in the spirits of so many marginalized Americans today, are a natural response to the trauma black communities have experienced, generation after generation. No one wants the fires – even activists on the ground have said this. But they have also shared how their non-violent pleas and protests have gone unnoticed for years as the situation has…

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Trump is the looter

Trump is the looter

David Frum writes: When pro-Trump protesters descended on state capitals to demand reopening, nobody shot at them, not even when they endangered police lives by screaming into their faces, unmasked, during a pandemic. Nobody shot at them when they carried weapons into state legislative buildings to intimidate state legislators and governors. And of course, those protesters received the full-throated endorsement of President Trump. “Liberate Minnesota!” Trump tweeted on April 17. Threats of armed violence by pro-Trump demonstrators forced the shutdown…

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The U.S. has opposite systems of justice – one for white people, one for people of color

The U.S. has opposite systems of justice – one for white people, one for people of color

Paul Butler writes: On Friday the CNN journalist Omar Jimenez was arrested on live television as he covered protests of police brutality in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Jimenez identifies as African American and Hispanic, and when the cops confronted him, he did just what minority parents tell their kids to do. Jimenez cooperated; he was respectful, deferential even. He said: “We can move back to where you like … We are getting out of your way … Wherever you want us, we…

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Police violence escalates unrest across America

Police violence escalates unrest across America

Slate reports: The ongoing protests following the killing of George Floyd were caught up in violence again on Saturday, as police all over the country tear-gassed protesters, drove vehicles through crowds, opened fire with nonlethal rounds on journalists or people on their own property, and in at least one instance, pushed over an elderly man who was walking away with a cane. Here are some of the ways law enforcement officers escalated the national unrest. Share widely: National guard and…

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Police are deliberately targeting journalists during George Floyd protests

Police are deliberately targeting journalists during George Floyd protests

Bellingcat reports: Bellingcat has identified and collected multiple instances of US law enforcement deliberately targeting journalists during the protests against the killing of George Floyd. The arrest of a CNN crew in Minneapolis while broadcasting live on air on May 29th was a shocking event, especially in a country with such strong protections on freedom of speech. However as of the time of writing we have identified at least 50 separate incidents where journalists have been attacked by law enforcement….

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Gripped by a pandemic, unemployment and outrage at the police, America plunges into crisis

Gripped by a pandemic, unemployment and outrage at the police, America plunges into crisis

The Washington Post reports: A global pandemic has now killed more than 100,000 Americans and left 40 million unemployed in its wake. Protests — some of them violent — have once again erupted in spots across the country over police killings of black Americans. President Trump, meanwhile, is waging a war against Twitter, attacking his political rivals, criticizing a voting practice he himself uses and suggesting that looters could be shot. America’s persistent political dysfunction and racial inequality were laid…

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Far-right extremists are hoping to turn the George Floyd protests into a new civil war

Far-right extremists are hoping to turn the George Floyd protests into a new civil war

Vice News reports: Far-right extremists are showing up, with guns, to the protests against police brutality that have exploded across the country. Others are egging on the violence from behind their computers, urging followers to carry out acts of violence against black protesters with the goal of sparking a “race war.” Their presence makes an uneasy addition to the escalating unrest, which was triggered by the death of George Floyd, a black man who was choked to death by a…

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