Andrew Sullivan writes: Whatever else it will be, Tuesday will be a relief. We will finally find out where we are in the surreal dystopia of the last two years. We will see, in a tangible way, what America now is. These years have been overwhelmed and saturated by a single figure with no political experience, who won almost 3 million fewer votes than his opponent, has had consistently lower approval numbers than any of his recent predecessors, and speaks…
The New York Times reports: The Nigerian Army, part of a military criticized for rampant human rights abuses, on Friday used the words of President Trump to justify its fatal shootings of rock-throwing protesters. Soldiers fired this Monday on a march of about 1,000 Islamic Shiite activists who had blocked traffic on the outskirts of the capital, Abuja. Videos that circulated on social media showed several protesters hurling rocks at heavily armed soldiers who then shot fleeing demonstrators in the…
The Washington Post reports: Gun-carrying civilian groups and border vigilantes have heard a call to arms in President Trump’s warnings about threats to American security posed by caravans of Central American migrants moving through Mexico. They’re packing coolers and tents, oiling rifles and tuning up aerial drones, with plans to form caravans of their own and trail American troops to the border. “We’ll observe and report, and offer aid in any way we can,” said Shannon McGauley, a bail bondsman…
Robert F Worth reports: In March 2015, Saudi Arabia unleashed a full-scale military campaign against the Houthis, who had captured most of Yemen a few months earlier. The Saudis had assembled a coalition of nine states, and they made clear that they considered the Houthis, who are allied with Iran, a mortal threat on their southern border. The war has turned much of Yemen into a wasteland and has killed at least 10,000 civilians, mostly in errant airstrikes. The real…
The New York Times reports: As Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia charmed Goldman Sachs bankers and Silicon Valley executives on an American tour this spring, some of his most trusted lieutenants were taking care of business in Washington. In a low-key ceremony two blocks from the White House, Saudi officials signed an agreement with Booz Allen Hamilton, the American consulting company, to help train the kingdom’s growing ranks of cyberfighters. The agreement would “open great horizons” by…
Vox reports: The Tallahassee shooting was the third crime in a single week that was apparently preceded by a trail of online hate. Robert Bowers, the man suspected of killing 11 people and wounding six others in a shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue last Saturday, appears to have posted threatening language about Jewish people and HIAS National Refugee Shabbat, a refugee aid group formerly known as the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society, on Gab, a social network that has become a…
The New York Times reports: In the final months of the Obama administration, Walmart was under pressure from federal officials to pay nearly $1 billion and accept a guilty plea to resolve a foreign bribery investigation. Barclays faced demands that it pay nearly $7 billion to settle civil claims that it had sold toxic mortgage investments that helped fuel the 2008 financial crisis, and the Royal Bank of Scotland was ensnared in a criminal investigation over its role in the…
The Guardian reports: The world must thrash out a new deal for nature in the next two years or humanity could be the first species to document our own extinction, warns the United Nation’s biodiversity chief. Ahead of a key international conference to discuss the collapse of ecosystems, Cristiana Pașca Palmer said people in all countries need to put pressure on their governments to draw up ambitious global targets by 2020 to protect the insects, birds, plants and mammals that…
Janet Reitman writes: White supremacists and other far-right extremists have killed far more people since Sept. 11, 2001, than any other category of domestic extremist. The Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism has reported that 71 percent of the extremist-related fatalities in the United States between 2008 and 2017 were committed by members of the far right or white-supremacist movements. Islamic extremists were responsible for just 26 percent. Data compiled by the University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism Database shows that the…
The Wall Street Journal reports: The Congress of El Salvador agreed in April to extend the authority of jailers to keep gang leaders in solitary confinement. Over the next five days, the two reigning street gangs killed more than 100 people. With the highest homicide rate of all countries in the world, El Salvador is a nation held hostage. Law-enforcement officials estimate that one gang, MS-13, operates an extortion racket with little pressure from authorities in 248 of the 262…
The New York Times reports: A federal judge in Maryland on Friday ordered evidence-gathering to begin in a lawsuit accusing President Trump of violating the Constitution by maintaining a financial interest in his company’s Washington hotel. The plaintiffs are seeking records that could illuminate potential conflicts of interest between Mr. Trump and foreign leaders or state officials who patronize Trump International Hotel, blocks from the White House. The judge, Peter J. Messitte of the United States District Court in Greenbelt,…
CNN reports: The Republican candidate running in a competitive House race in North Carolina has a history of making anti-Muslim comments, a CNN KFile review finds. Mark Harris, a former pastor who stepped down from his congregation in 2017, is the GOP nominee in North Carolina’s 9th District, which runs along the state’s southern border below Charlotte and Fayetteville. Harris defeated three-term GOP Rep. Robert Pittenger in a May primary and is now facing Democrat Dan McCready. CNN rates the race toss-up, the most competitive designation. Harris, as the…
CBS News reports: Pharrell Williams is not “happy” with President Trump. The singer and producer’s lawyer sent the president a cease-and-desist letter on Monday, objecting to the use of the song “Happy” at a recent Trump rally, according The Hollywood Reporter. The president played Williams’ hit song at a political event on Saturday, just hours after a gunman opened fire at Pittsburgh synagogue, killing 11 and wounding at least six others. Mr. Trump spoke at a Future Farmers of America…
Jelani Cobb writes: On the afternoon that the first of the funerals for the eleven people killed at the Tree of Life synagogue, in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, were held, a crowd began to spill over the street and onto the sidewalks and lawns along a stately stretch of Beechwood Boulevard. There is not a word in the American lexicon for such gatherings—the semi-spontaneous assembly of people in the wake of tragedy, who are united by both grief…
Vanity Fair‘s Emily Jane Fox reports: During our conversation, [Trump’s former lawyer, Micheal] Cohen recalled a discussion at Trump Tower, following the then-candidate’s return from a campaign rally during the 2016 election cycle. Cohen had watched the rally on TV and noticed that the crowd was largely Caucasian. He offered this observation to his boss. “I told Trump that the rally looked vanilla on television. Trump responded, ‘That’s because black people are too stupid to vote for me.’” (The White…