Attention to the Unseen

The Los Angeles Times reports: At the urging of a controversial team of advisors, the Trump administration is mulling proposals to privatize national park campgrounds and further commercialize the parks with expanded Wi-Fi service, food trucks and even Amazon deliveries at tourist camp sites. Leaders of the Interior Department’s “Made in America” Outdoor Recreation Advisory Committee say these changes could make America’s national parks more attractive to a digitally minded younger generation and improve the quality of National Park Service…

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Shaun Assael and Peter Keating write: “Death to the Klan!” On Saturday, November 3, 1979, that chant swept over Morningside Homes, a mostly black housing project in Greensboro, North Carolina, as dozens of protesters—some donning blue hard hats for protection—hammered placards onto signposts and danced in the morning sun. The American left had largely given up on communism by then, but these demonstrators were full-on Maoists. Their ranks included professionals with degrees from places like Harvard and Duke. And they…

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Edward-Isaac Dovere writes: When I asked Cory Booker about the current crisis in America, he started talking about child poverty. We were standing in the parking lot outside a day-care center for low-income families here on Friday afternoon, and the senator from New Jersey had just finished a roundtable discussion that touched on ways to help young domestic-abuse survivors, parents staying at home with their children, and communities stricken by gun violence. But what about the constitutional crisis that America…

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BuzzFeed reports: In his July 2019 call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, President Donald Trump referenced a conspiracy theory that Ukraine was involved in hacking the Democratic National Committee in 2016, and asked for the “favor” of help investigating it. Trump’s own campaign was floating the theory that Ukraine, and not Russia, hacked the DNC as early as the summer of 2016, according to new documents obtained by BuzzFeed News from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. Three years later, Trump’s…

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The Washington Post reports: Three of President Trump’s top advisers met with him in the Oval Office in May, determined to convince him that the new Ukrainian leader was an ally deserving of U.S. support. They had barely begun their pitch when Trump unloaded on them, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with the meeting. In Trump’s mind, the officials said, Ukraine’s entire leadership had colluded with the Democrats to undermine his 2016 presidential campaign. “They tried to…

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The Washington Post reports: Smuggling gangs in Mexico have repeatedly sawed through new sections of President Trump’s border wall in recent months by using commercially available power tools, opening gaps large enough for people and drug loads to pass through, according to U.S. agents and officials with knowledge of the damage. The breaches have been made using a popular cordless household tool known as a reciprocating saw that retails at hardware stores for as little as $100. When fitted with…

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Thomas Pepinsky writes: For decades, Republicans and Democrats fought over the same things: whose values and policies work best for American democracy. But now, those age-old fights are changing. What was once run-of-the-mill partisan competition is being replaced by a disagreement over democracy itself. This is particularly evident as the president and many of his allies crow about the illegitimacy of the House impeachment inquiry, calling it an attempted coup, and as the White House refuses to comply with multiple…

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The New York Times reports: With a neon-red backpack and white Adidas shoes, he looks like any other undergraduate on the campus of Sichuan University in southwestern China. But Peng Wei, a 21-year-old chemistry major, has a special mission: He is both student and spy. Mr. Peng is one of a growing number of “student information officers” who keep tabs on their professors’ ideological views. They are there to help root out teachers who show any sign of disloyalty to…

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