Browsed by
Category: Politics

Judge: Bolton can publish book despite White House efforts to block it

Judge: Bolton can publish book despite White House efforts to block it

The Associated Press reports: Former national security adviser John Bolton can move forward in publishing his tell-all book, a federal judge ruled Saturday, despite efforts by the Trump administration to block the release because of concerns that classified information could be exposed. The decision from U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth is a victory for Bolton in a court case that involved core First Amendment and national security issues, even as the White House pledged to keep pursuing the onetime top…

Read More Read More

In countries keeping the coronavirus at bay, experts watch U.S. case numbers with alarm

In countries keeping the coronavirus at bay, experts watch U.S. case numbers with alarm

The Washington Post reports: As coronavirus cases surge in the U.S. South and West, health experts in countries with falling case numbers are watching with a growing sense of alarm and disbelief, with many wondering why virus-stricken U.S. states continue to reopen and why the advice of scientists is often ignored. “It really does feel like the U.S. has given up,” said Siouxsie Wiles, an infectious-diseases specialist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand — a country that has…

Read More Read More

Intel report warns that violent far-right extremists ‘are routinely using peaceful protests as means of cover’

Intel report warns that violent far-right extremists ‘are routinely using peaceful protests as means of cover’

Politico reports: The Trump administration is warning law enforcement and public safety officials that a far-right extremist movement known as “boogaloo” may be setting its sights on the nation’s capital. On Monday, the National Capital Region Threat Intelligence Consortium (NTIC), a fusion center for Washington, D.C. that provides support to federal national security and law enforcement agencies, warned in an intelligence assessment that “the District is likely an attractive target for violent adherents of the boogaloo ideology due to the…

Read More Read More

Slave resistance brought about the end of slavery

Slave resistance brought about the end of slavery

Jamelle Bouie writes: Neither Abraham Lincoln nor the Republican Party freed the slaves. They helped set freedom in motion and eventually codified it into law with the 13th Amendment, but they were not themselves responsible for the end of slavery. They were not the ones who brought about its final destruction. Who freed the slaves? The slaves freed the slaves. “Slave resistance,” as the historian Manisha Sinha points out in “The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition,” “lay at the…

Read More Read More

Coronavirus cases rise sharply in prisons even as they plateau nationwide

Coronavirus cases rise sharply in prisons even as they plateau nationwide

The New York Times reports: Cases of the coronavirus in prisons and jails across the United States have soared in recent weeks, even as the overall daily infection rate in the nation has remained relatively flat. The number of prison inmates known to be infected has doubled during the past month to more than 68,000. Prison deaths tied to the coronavirus have also risen, by 73 percent since mid-May. By now, the five largest known clusters of the virus in…

Read More Read More

In Tulsa, Trump invites his followers inside a coronavirus petri dish

In Tulsa, Trump invites his followers inside a coronavirus petri dish

Virginia Heffernan writes: President Trump’s zeal for rally mode is rising almost as steeply as coronavirus cases in Tulsa, Okla., where his campaign plans to hold a little get-together on Saturday. The weather in Tulsa is expected to be muggy and nearly 90 degrees, with a high chance of thunder and lightning. You don’t say. “Bad idea” doesn’t begin to capture how reckless and vicious it is to pack an arena on a steamy night with thousands of rambunctious hotheads…

Read More Read More

Drinking water: Trump administration drops planned limit for toxin that damages infant brains

Drinking water: Trump administration drops planned limit for toxin that damages infant brains

The Associated Press reports: The Trump administration on Thursday rejected imposing federal drinking-water limits for a chemical used in fireworks and other explosives and linked to brain damage in newborns, opting to override Obama administration findings that the neurotoxin was contaminating the drinking water of millions of Americans. The contaminant is perchlorate, a component in rocket fuel, ammunition and other explosives, including fireworks. The Associated Press found one high-profile example of that on Thursday, reviewing a 2016 U.S. Geological Survey…

Read More Read More

On a roll: Supreme Court rejects Trump bid to end young immigrants’ protections

On a roll: Supreme Court rejects Trump bid to end young immigrants’ protections

The Associated Press reports: The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected President Donald Trump’s effort to end legal protections for 650,000 young immigrants, the second stunning election-season rebuke from the court in a week after its ruling that it’s illegal to fire people because they’re gay or transgender. Immigrants who are part of the 8-year-old Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program will retain their protection from deportation and their authorization to work in the United States — safe almost certainly at…

Read More Read More

Bad for America: Trump promotes divisions in an unhappy country

Bad for America: Trump promotes divisions in an unhappy country

The Associated Press reports: Americans are deeply unhappy about the state of their country — and a majority think President Donald Trump is exacerbating tensions in a moment of national crisis, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. With less than five months until Election Day, the survey offers few bright spots for a president confronting a historic pandemic, a sharp economic decline and national outrage over police brutality against black people. Most…

Read More Read More

Bolton: Trump’s not ‘fit for office,’ doesn’t have ‘competence to carry out the job’

Bolton: Trump’s not ‘fit for office,’ doesn’t have ‘competence to carry out the job’

ABC News reports: President Donald Trump is not “fit for office” and doesn’t have “the competence to carry out the job,” his former national security adviser John Bolton told ABC News in an exclusive interview. In an explosive new book about his 17 months at the White House, Bolton characterizes Trump as “stunningly uninformed,” ignorant of basic facts and easily manipulated by foreign adversaries. But his assessment that Trump is not “fit” to be president is among the most stunning…

Read More Read More

Rising Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations underscore the long road ahead

Rising Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations underscore the long road ahead

STAT reports: The U.S. is now confronting what public health experts have been warning about but many in the public had not absorbed: the coronavirus pandemic will be with us for many months, and lapses in vigilance will lead to more sickness and death. The country as a whole is tacking on about 20,000 new Covid-19 cases to its 2.1 million infection tally each day, a clip that’s been steady for weeks, according to STAT’s Covid-19 Tracker. But cases are…

Read More Read More

Elite CIA unit that developed hacking tools failed to secure its own systems, allowing massive leak

Elite CIA unit that developed hacking tools failed to secure its own systems, allowing massive leak

The Washington Post reports: The theft of top-secret computer hacking tools from the CIA in 2016 was the result of a workplace culture in which the agency’s elite computer hackers “prioritized building cyber weapons at the expense of securing their own systems,” according to an internal report prepared for then-director Mike Pompeo as well as his deputy, Gina Haspel, now the director. The breach — allegedly committed by a CIA employee — was discovered a year after it happened, when…

Read More Read More

Facebook groups are destroying America

Facebook groups are destroying America

Nina Jankowicz and Cindy Otis write: The Covid-19 “infodemic” has laid bare how vulnerable the United States is to disinformation. The country is less than five months away from the 2020 presidential election, and Americans by the thousands are buying into conspiracy theories about vaccines containing microchips and wondering about the healing powers of hair dryers. Where does all this come from? Let’s not be too distracted by a fear of rumormonger bots on the rampage or divisive ads purchased…

Read More Read More

‘They’re in denial’: How Trump’s White House is ignoring the pandemic

‘They’re in denial’: How Trump’s White House is ignoring the pandemic

CNN reports: President Donald Trump has largely tuned out the persistent coronavirus contagion — which is causing spikes in new cases across 21 states and daily death tolls that reach into the hundreds — to focus instead on reviving both the economy and his own political prospects. The insistence on pressing forward with reopening and a return to normal, even as cases increase in some areas, has led to concern among some administration officials that Trump and his aides are…

Read More Read More

Trump asked China’s Xi to help him win reelection, John Bolton writes

Trump asked China’s Xi to help him win reelection, John Bolton writes

The Washington Post reports: President Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to help him win the 2020 U.S. election, telling Xi during a summit dinner last year that increased agricultural purchases by Beijing from American farmers would aid his electoral prospects, according to a damning new account of life inside the Trump administration by former national security adviser John Bolton. During a one-on-one meeting at the June 2019 Group of 20 summit in Japan, Xi complained to Trump about China…

Read More Read More

Trump’s Covid data crunchers see coronavirus racing down America’s major highways

Trump’s Covid data crunchers see coronavirus racing down America’s major highways

The Daily Beast reports: Doctors behind a COVID-modeling study used by the president’s coronavirus task force are now warning that virus hot spots are beginning to converge and jump from county to county as people increase their travel for work and summer vacation. According to doctors working on a study put together by PolicyLab at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, the virus is moving along major highways and interstates—such I-10 in California, I-85 in the south and I-95 on the East…

Read More Read More