Attention to the Unseen

Hagai El-Ad writes: If Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) had been allowed by Israel to visit her family in the Palestinian village of Beit Ur al-Fauqa, she might have been able to see with her own eyes the nearby highway that Israel built on confiscated Palestinian land — a highway that makes commutes easier for Israelis but is almost completely off-limits to Palestinians. If Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) had been allowed by Israel to visit the Palestinian city of Ramallah, she…

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The Guardian reports: Donald Trump used an apparently antisemitic trope when accusing Jewish Americans who vote for Democrats as showing “either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty”. The remarks came as part of a barrage of disparaging comments that threaten to re-ignite an ongoing feud with Democratic congresswomen Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib. They seemed to refer to a perception that Jewish Americans have a dual loyalty to both America and Israel. Trump, who recently encouraged…

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Miami New Times reports: Washington state resident Eric Lin was not shy about his love for Adolf Hitler. According to a criminal complaint filed Friday, Lin enjoyed referencing the Third Reich in writing: He apparently sent a litany of Hitler-referencing death threats to a Hispanic woman in Miami and got himself arrested last week after he planned to wire a man $10,000 to beat her up, hatched a plot to kidnap her and stuff her in a plastic bin, and…

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David A. Graham writes: One of the most enduring descriptions of presidential power comes from Teddy Roosevelt, whose description of the office as a “bully pulpit” reflected his conclusion that its true worth was not its constitutional powers, but the ability to speak with and persuade voters. A century later, political scientists had largely debunked Roosevelt. It turns out, Ezra Klein wrote in The New Yorker in 2012, that presidents don’t actually possess much power to sway public opinion. But…

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Henry Grabar reports: A single mother called a neighbor on the morning of Aug. 7, as federal immigration agents stormed the rural Mississippi chicken plant where she worked: “Manuel,” he remembered her saying, “I can’t get out. I have faith, and I trust you to take care of my kids.” That afternoon, Manuel Ramirez watched TV with the boys, who are 12, 10, and 5, making excuses for their mother’s absence until the oldest child saw on Facebook that U.S….

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M.J. Rosenberg writes: The most important thing to know about the Israeli government’s decision to ban two Democratic House members, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, from entering Israel and its occupied Palestinian territories is that it is not about them. That is why it doesn’t matter that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu subsequently reversed himself and agreed to let Tlaib in on “humanitarian” grounds; it wouldn’t even matter if he reversed himself on Omar. Again, it is not about them. It…

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Jamelle Bouie writes: If you want to understand American politics in 2019 and the strain of reactionary extremism that has taken over the Republican Party, a good place to start is 2011: the year after a backlash to Barack Obama’s presidency swept Tea Party insurgents into Congress, flipping control of the House. It was clear, at the start of that year, that Congress would have to lift the debt ceiling — the limit on bonds and other debt instruments the…

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