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Category: Politics

Brad Parscale used Facebook to get Trump elected in 2016. He’s poised to do it again

Brad Parscale used Facebook to get Trump elected in 2016. He’s poised to do it again

Andrew Marantz writes: In September, at a resort hotel in the Coachella Valley, the California Republican Party held its fall convention. Brad Parscale—forty-four, six feet eight, balding, prolifically bearded—walked onstage in shirtsleeves and tilted the microphone upward, mumbling a self-deprecating joke about being “awkwardly tall.” Parscale has lived in a red county in California and a blue county in Texas, and he now splits his time between Washington, D.C., and two luxury properties in South Florida, yet he still speaks…

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Trump is winning his war on American institutions

Trump is winning his war on American institutions

George Packer writes: When Donald Trump came into office, there was a sense that he would be outmatched by the vast government he had just inherited. The new president was impetuous, bottomlessly ignorant, almost chemically inattentive, while the bureaucrats were seasoned, shrewd, protective of themselves and their institutions. They knew where the levers of power lay and how to use them or prevent the president from doing so. Trump’s White House was chaotic and vicious, unlike anything in American history,…

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Why Trump made a baseless attack on Supreme Court justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor

Why Trump made a baseless attack on Supreme Court justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor

George T. Conway III writes: President Trump is treating the judiciary the way he treats the media. But the harm created by these attacks could be far greater. In 2016, CBS “60 Minutes” correspondent Lesley Stahl asked Trump off camera why he persisted in going after journalists. In one of those sporadic moments in which he reveals the raw truth, Trump replied, according to Stahl, “I do it to discredit you all and demean you all, so when you write…

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Hush money: How Bloomberg silences unhappy employees

Hush money: How Bloomberg silences unhappy employees

The New York Times reports: Every year, hundreds of departing employees at Bloomberg L.P. are presented with a choice: Either leave the company empty-handed or accept a generous financial package and agree to never speak ill of the company. Many take the money. The result is that some employees at Michael R. Bloomberg’s company are barred from publicly describing misconduct and what they perceived as an entrenched culture of bullying, where women are often objectified and sometimes face discrimination, according…

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Netanyahu’s war on Israel’s tenuous democracy

Netanyahu’s war on Israel’s tenuous democracy

Zack Beauchamp reports: On a cool November night in the West Bank, Murad Shteiwi walked me through the streets where he had been shot. Shteiwi is an activist leader in the town of Kufr Qaddum, a quiet village near the northern city of Nablus. Israel closed the road between Kufr Qaddum and Nablus during the second intifada in the 2000s to prevent Palestinians from getting too close to the nearby Israeli settlement Qadumim. A drive to Nablus that should take…

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Trump administration response to coronavirus crisis described as ‘complete chaos’ by senior official

Trump administration response to coronavirus crisis described as ‘complete chaos’ by senior official

The Washington Post reports: Minutes before President Trump was preparing Wednesday to reassure a skittish nation about the coronavirus threat, he received a piece of crucial information: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had identified in California the first U.S. case of the illness not tied to foreign travel, a sign that the virus’s spread in the United States was likely to explode. But when Trump took to the lectern for a news conference intended to bring transparency to…

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Kept at the hospital on coronavirus fears, now facing large medical bills

Kept at the hospital on coronavirus fears, now facing large medical bills

The New York Times reports: The federal government has the authority to quarantine and isolate patients if officials believe them to be a public health threat. These powers, which date back to cholera outbreaks among ship passengers in the late 19th century, are rarely used. They don’t say anything about who pays when the isolation happens in a nongovernmental medical facility — or when they’re brought there by a private ambulance company. “There is no uniform practice,” said Lawrence Gostin,…

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The media is amplifying Trump’s lies

The media is amplifying Trump’s lies

Margaret Sullivan writes: Some months ago, I wrote about the linguist George Lakoff’s prescription for handling the president’s false statements and lies, an approach that’s become known as the “truth sandwich.” Rather than lead with the falsehood and then try to debunk it, Lakoff — an expert on how propaganda works — suggested flipping that formula: Lead with the truth, air the falsehood, and then follow with the fact-check. Avoid giving prominence to lies, he advises. Don’t put them in…

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The South’s white suburban women, whose loyalty Trump can’t afford to lose

The South’s white suburban women, whose loyalty Trump can’t afford to lose

The Washington Post reports: [Miranda Murphey] is 39, a high school English teacher with a PhD and part of a voting demographic whose rebellion could upend the political map of the country: not just suburban women, not just white suburban women, but white suburban women in the South, whose loyalty Trump will need to remain in power. It is the kind of loyalty that has always been expected of white Southern women, who have long played a role as allies…

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Major GOP donor and activist investor, seeks shake-up at Twitter

Major GOP donor and activist investor, seeks shake-up at Twitter

Bloomberg reports: Activist investor Elliott Management Corp. has taken a sizable stake in Twitter Inc. and plans to push for changes at the social media company, including replacing Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey, according to people familiar with the matter. The New York-based firm has nominated four directors to Twitter’s board, said the people, who asked to not be identified because the matter isn’t public. There are only three seats becoming available at this year’s annual meeting but Elliott wanted…

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Israel’s UN ambassador interferes in U.S. election with derogatory remarks about Bernie Sanders

Israel’s UN ambassador interferes in U.S. election with derogatory remarks about Bernie Sanders

The Times of Israel reports: Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations on Sunday assailed US Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders as an “ignorant fool,” two days before a key test for the Jewish frontrunner when primaries will be held in 14 states in Super Tuesday. At a conference hosted by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Danny Danon made the daring remark — which could be construed as Israeli interference in the election process in the United States —…

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Trump is ignoring the lessons of 1918 flu pandemic that killed millions, historian says

Trump is ignoring the lessons of 1918 flu pandemic that killed millions, historian says

The Washington Post reports: The first wave wasn’t that bad. In the spring of 1918, a new strain of influenza hit military camps in Europe on both sides of World War I. Soldiers were affected, but not nearly as severely as they would be later. Even so, Britain, France, Germany and other European governments kept it secret. They didn’t want to hand the other side a potential advantage. Spain, on the other hand, was a neutral country in the war….

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Global downturn looms as countries struggle to contain coronavirus outbreak

Global downturn looms as countries struggle to contain coronavirus outbreak

Reuters reports: The coronavirus spread further on Friday, with cases reported for the first time in at least six countries across four continents, battering markets and leading the World Health Organization (WHO) to raise its impact risk alert to “very high.” Hopes that the epidemic that started in China late last year would be over in months, and that economic activity would quickly return to normal, have been shattered. World shares were on course for their largest weekly fall since…

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After first U.S. coronavirus death near Canadian border, Trump administration considers restrictions at Mexican border

After first U.S. coronavirus death near Canadian border, Trump administration considers restrictions at Mexican border

Reuters reports: The Trump administration is considering imposing entry restrictions at the U.S.-Mexico border to control the spread of the coronavirus in the United States, according to two U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials. Mexico’s government said on Friday it had detected three cases of coronavirus infection in three men who had all recently traveled to Italy, making the country the second in Latin America to register the fast-spreading virus. The concern over containing the virus at the southern…

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Trump says he can bring in coronavirus experts quickly. The experts say it is not that simple

Trump says he can bring in coronavirus experts quickly. The experts say it is not that simple

The Washington Post reports: The White House official charged with leading the U.S. response to deadly pandemics left nearly two years ago as his global health security team was disbanded. Federal funding for preventing and mitigating the spread of infectious disease has been repeatedly threatened since President Trump’s election. Despite the mounting threat of a coronavirus outbreak in the United States, Trump said he has no regrets about those actions and that expertise and resources can be quickly ramped up…

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Taliban and U.S. strike deal to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan

Taliban and U.S. strike deal to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan

The New York Times reports: The United States signed a deal with the Taliban on Saturday that sets the stage to end America’s longest war — the nearly two-decade-old conflict in Afghanistan that began after the Sept. 11 attacks, killed tens of thousands of people, vexed three White House administrations and left mistrust and uncertainty on all sides. The agreement lays out a timetable for the final withdrawal of United States troops from Afghanistan, the impoverished Central Asian country once…

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