Browsed by
Category: Politics

New reporting restrictions on the Senate impeachment trial suppress freedom of the press

New reporting restrictions on the Senate impeachment trial suppress freedom of the press

NPR reports: News organizations and journalists’ advocates are battling restrictive new ground rules for reporters assigned to cover the Senate impeachment trial. Correspondents who submit to an official credentialing process are granted broad access throughout the Capitol complex and usually encounter few restrictions in talking with members of Congress or others. But now Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Michael Stenger has imposed new requirements for the impeachment trial, negotiated in part with Republican leadership: Reporters are being confined to small cordoned-off sections of…

Read More Read More

William Barr is going after Trump’s enemies one by one

William Barr is going after Trump’s enemies one by one

Jonathan Chait writes: In May of 2016, shortly after Donald Trump had wrapped up his party’s nomination, but when the notion he might win the presidency seemed remote at best, Benjamin Wittes wrote one of the very early essays attempting to analyze how an obviously authoritarian president might abuse his powers. “The soft spot, the least tyrant-proof part of the government, is the U.S. Department of Justice,” he argued, laying out how prosecutorial discretion could allow a president to harass…

Read More Read More

The murderous conflict in Syria has been simplified and distorted by both right and left

The murderous conflict in Syria has been simplified and distorted by both right and left

Ben Ehrenreich writes: It is happening again. Over the last year protest movements – some of them deep and broad enough that we might dare to call them revolutions – have once more been shaking the Middle East and North Africa, ending decades-long dictatorships in Sudan and Algeria, forcing the prime ministers of Lebanon and Iraq to resign. And yet the war brought to Syria by the last wave of revolutionary upheaval – the Arab spring that began in 2011…

Read More Read More

Inside Trump’s stunning tirade against generals in the Pentagon in 2017

Inside Trump’s stunning tirade against generals in the Pentagon in 2017

In an article adapted from “A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump’s Testing of America,” Carol D. Leonnig and Philip Rucker write: Trump by now was in one of his rages. He was so angry that he wasn’t taking many breaths. All morning, he had been coarse and cavalier, but the next several things he bellowed went beyond that description. They stunned nearly everyone in the room, and some vowed that they would never repeat them. Indeed, they have not…

Read More Read More

Trump administration proposed rule changes will increase childhood obesity and promote diabetes

Trump administration proposed rule changes will increase childhood obesity and promote diabetes

The Washington Post reports: The U.S. Department of Agriculture has taken another whack at former first lady Michelle Obama’s signature achievement: Establishing stricter nutritional standards for school breakfasts and lunches. And on her birthday. On Friday, USDA Deputy Under Secretary Brandon Lipps proposed new rules for the Food and Nutrition Service that would allow schools to cut the amount of vegetables and fruits required at lunch and breakfasts while giving them license to sell more pizza, burgers and fries to…

Read More Read More

We can’t afford to ignore Lev Parnas’s explosive claims

We can’t afford to ignore Lev Parnas’s explosive claims

David A. Graham writes: Irony is thriving in the Trump administration. Consider this: The president spent months, and was ultimately impeached for, badgering the Ukrainian government to announce a probe into the natural-gas company Burisma. Yet all it took was the release of some text messages by Lev Parnas, an accused criminal with a checkered past, for Ukraine to quickly announce it is investigating alleged illegal surveillance of former U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch. The supposed surveillance, which is described in…

Read More Read More

How misinformation overwhelmed our democracy

How misinformation overwhelmed our democracy

Vox reports: No matter how President Trump’s impeachment trial plays out in the Senate, one thing is certain: Despite the incontrovertible facts at the center of the story, the process will change very few minds. Regardless of how clear a case Democrats make, it seems likely that a majority of voters will remain confused and unsure about the details of Trump’s transgressions. No single version of the truth will be accepted. This is a serious problem for our democratic culture….

Read More Read More

White House violated the law by freezing Ukraine aid, GAO says

White House violated the law by freezing Ukraine aid, GAO says

Politico reports: The White House budget office violated the law when it froze U.S. military aid to Ukraine, the Government Accountability Office concluded in a new report. President Donald Trump ordered the hold on the critical security assistance in July, a slew of senior White House officials testified to House impeachment investigators late last year. It was a move that coincided with an effort by the president and his allies to pressure Ukraine to investigate Trump’s Democratic rivals. “Faithful execution…

Read More Read More

Russia’s cabinet resigns and it’s all part of Putin’s plan

Russia’s cabinet resigns and it’s all part of Putin’s plan

Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) and now-former Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev (R) in Sochi, Russia, Dec. 7, 2019. Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images By Regina Smyth, Indiana University Editor’s note: Russia’s prime minister, Dmitry A. Medvedev, and cabinet resigned on Jan. 15. Russian politics are often not what they seem, especially to those in the West. We asked Regina Smyth, a Russia scholar at Indiana University, to help readers understand what’s going on. 1. What just happened? Russian President Vladimir Putin, who…

Read More Read More

No, your country doesn’t care about Middle Eastern lives

No, your country doesn’t care about Middle Eastern lives

Timothy E. Kaldas writes: Many breathed a sigh of relief this week when it became clear there were no casualties caused by Iranian missile strikes on Iraqi military bases housing US troops. Some applauded Donald Trump’s ‘success’ in carrying out the targeted killing of a key Iranian military leader without experiencing immediate deadly retaliation. Pundit, professor and president of the Eurasia Group, Ian Bremmer tweeted it is “impossible not to call this a win” for Trump. In Iran, state media…

Read More Read More

When will Australia’s prime minister accept the reality of the climate crisis?

When will Australia’s prime minister accept the reality of the climate crisis?

Carolyn Kormann writes: When Prime Minister Scott Morrison took Australia’s top office, in August, 2018, the leadership of his predecessor, Malcolm Turnbull, had been in question for months, if not years, by his coalition of right-leaning National and Liberal parties. But the final blow came after Turnbull supported a national energy plan that would have moderately reduced the power sector’s reliance on fossil fuels, thereby cutting greenhouse-gas emissions and mitigating global climate change. In an attempt to save himself, at…

Read More Read More

Russian premier abruptly quits amid swirl of speculation on Putin

Russian premier abruptly quits amid swirl of speculation on Putin

The New York Times reports: Russia’s political order, largely unchanged since the early 1990s, was thrown into feverish uncertainty on Wednesday after President Vladimir V. Putin proposed sweeping constitutional changes that could extend his hold on power indefinitely. Adding to widespread bewilderment, Mr. Putin’s loyal protégé promptly resigned as prime minister, along with the rest of the government. Mr. Putin described his proposals, announced in his annual state of the nation address, as an effort to enhance democracy. But his…

Read More Read More

Giuliani associate Parnas says Trump ‘knew exactly what was going on’

Giuliani associate Parnas says Trump ‘knew exactly what was going on’

NBC News reports: Lev Parnas, the indicted associate of Rudy Giuliani who has been implicated in an alleged attempt to pressure the Ukrainian government to dig up dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, says, “President Trump knew exactly what was going on.” “He was aware of all my movements. I wouldn’t do anything without the consent of Rudy Giuliani, or the president. I have no intent, I have no reason to speak to any of these…

Read More Read More

The case for Elizabeth Warren

The case for Elizabeth Warren

Ezra Klein writes: Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s most viral debate moments feature blistering rebuttals to challengers who dare emphasize presidential constraint or political limits. “I don’t understand why anybody goes to all the trouble of running for president of the United States just to talk about what we really can’t do and shouldn’t fight for,” she snapped at former Rep. John Delaney in the July debate. “I don’t get it.” But the next Democratic president will be limited by Senate Republicans,…

Read More Read More

Insider trading: Warren calls for SEC probe into whether Trump tipped off Mar-a-Lago pals to Soleimani attack

Insider trading: Warren calls for SEC probe into whether Trump tipped off Mar-a-Lago pals to Soleimani attack

The Daily Beast reports: 2020 presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is calling on financial regulatory agencies to investigate whether associates and attendees of President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago illegally traded in defense company stocks or commodities after he gave them a heads up that he was planning something “big” in response to Iran’s killing of an American contractor in Iraq. The Daily Beast previously reported that Trump told allies at his Palm Beach club, that he had something “big” in…

Read More Read More

A narrative collapses as Trump tweets: ‘It doesn’t really matter’

A narrative collapses as Trump tweets: ‘It doesn’t really matter’

The New York Times reports: In the 10 days since it carried out the drone strike that killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the Trump administration has been struggling to draft an after-the-fact narrative to justify it. On Monday, President Trump put an end to that hash of explanations. “It doesn’t really matter,” he tweeted, “because of his horrible past.” Until that message on Twitter, the administration had insisted in various ways that General Suleimani, Iran’s most important military official, was…

Read More Read More