Trump Pentagon nominee spreads debunked conspiracies and tweets suggesting Trump declare martial law

Trump Pentagon nominee spreads debunked conspiracies and tweets suggesting Trump declare martial law

CNN reports: President Donald Trump’s nominee to become a senior Pentagon official spread debunked conspiracies on Twitter that called Trump’s election loss to Joe Biden a “coup” attempt and shared tweets that suggest Trump should declare martial law. Scott O’Grady, a former fighter pilot and Trump loyalist, repeatedly retweeted tweets that falsely stated Trump won the election in “landslide fashion” and that millions of votes were stolen from the President. On November 25, O’Grady retweeted a tweet that said, “Trump…

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Judge orders restoration of DACA program

Judge orders restoration of DACA program

CBS News reports: A federal judge on Friday ordered the Trump administration to fully restore an Obama-era initiative that protects undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children from deportation, requiring officials to open the program to new applicants for the first time since 2017. Judge Nicholas Garaufis of the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn instructed the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to post a public notice by Monday that states the department will accept and adjudicate Deferred Action for…

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How do you solve a problem like John Durham?

How do you solve a problem like John Durham?

Benjamin Wittes writes: How should the next attorney general, whoever he or she turns out to be, handle the John Durham probe? The more I study what Attorney General Bill Barr did in his secret October order naming the Connecticut U.S. attorney as a special counsel, the more devilishly clever it seems—and the bigger the pickle it creates for Barr’s successor. This, presumably, is Barr’s intention. Untangling this knot is going to take no small amount of diplomacy, lawyering and…

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House votes to legalize weed

House votes to legalize weed

Politico reports: The House on Friday passed a landmark bill that would remove federal penalties on marijuana and erase cannabis-related criminal records. The bill passed by a vote of 228-164, with several Republicans on board. While the MORE Act is not expected to come up in the Senate this year, and likely won’t in the next session of Congress either, its passage nevertheless marks a monumental step in marijuana policy. “We’ve been patient for years on this,” said Rep. Earl…

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Team Trump is trying to slay the Frankenstein monster it created

Team Trump is trying to slay the Frankenstein monster it created

The Daily Beast reports: On Wednesday evening, what was left of Donald Trump’s reelection campaign began insinuating that an attorney striving to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 win in Georgia could, in fact, be a Democratic plant working against the Republican Party and the president. Lin Wood, the charismatic though increasingly off-the-wall celebrity lawyer, has spent the past few weeks making wild accusations that the election in his state was corrupted and should be awarded to Trump. On Wednesday, he took…

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Trump is acting crazy, so why are we shrugging it off?

Trump is acting crazy, so why are we shrugging it off?

Susan Glasser writes: On Wednesday, more than three thousand Americans died because of the coronavirus, the nation’s deadliest day yet during the pandemic. The same day, the President of the United States chose to release, on social media, a forty-six-minute videotaped address from the White House. He called it possibly “the most important speech I’ve ever made.” The pandemic’s grim toll was never mentioned. What was? The “tremendous vote fraud and irregularities” in last month’s election, the results of which…

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Trump aide banned from Justice after trying to get case info

Trump aide banned from Justice after trying to get case info

The Associated Press reports: The official serving as President Donald Trump’s eyes and ears at the Justice Department has been banned from the building after trying to pressure staffers to give up sensitive information about election fraud and other matters she could relay to the White House, three people familiar with the matter tell The Associated Press. Heidi Stirrup, an ally of top Trump adviser Stephen Miller, was quietly installed at the Justice Department as a White House liaison a…

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Trump administration sets wave of executions for days leading up to Biden inauguration

Trump administration sets wave of executions for days leading up to Biden inauguration

The Washington Post reports: After nearly two decades without any federal executions, the Justice Department reversed course this summer by carrying out three death sentences in four days. Now the department is planning a similarly busy schedule of executions during the Trump administration’s final days, before a president who staunchly backs capital punishment is succeeded by one who opposes it. The Justice Department’s push to carry out executions during the run-up to President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration — including scheduling three…

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I wrote the special counsel rules. Barr has abused them

I wrote the special counsel rules. Barr has abused them

Neal K. Katyal writes: Attorney General William Barr’s decision on Tuesday to name John Durham, the U.S. attorney for the District of Connecticut appointed by President Trump, as special counsel to investigate matters surrounding the 2016 election violates the rules for special counsels as well as fundamental democratic principles. There may be reasons the inquiry by Mr. Durham — an investigation that began in 2019 into the Trump-Russia inquiry — should continue, but there is absolutely no reason to permit…

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Physicists nail down the ‘magic number’ that shapes the universe

Physicists nail down the ‘magic number’ that shapes the universe

Natalie Wolchover writes: As fundamental constants go, the speed of light, c, enjoys all the fame, yet c’s numerical value says nothing about nature; it differs depending on whether it’s measured in meters per second or miles per hour. The fine-structure constant, by contrast, has no dimensions or units. It’s a pure number that shapes the universe to an astonishing degree — “a magic number that comes to us with no understanding,” as Richard Feynman described it. Paul Dirac considered…

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Why Trump might just fade away

Why Trump might just fade away

Yascha Mounk writes: President Donald Trump has made one thing painfully clear: After he grudgingly leaves the White House, he will keep doing what he can to stay in the news. He will tweet insults and conspiracy theories. He may start his own television channel. And according to members of his inner circle, he may even run for president in 2024. After half a decade under his spell, many pundits and political observers assume that Trump will succeed in keeping…

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People depolarize after elections as their attachment to their preferred political party weakens

People depolarize after elections as their attachment to their preferred political party weakens

PsyPost reports: Affective polarization — one’s level of animosity towards political rivals – tends to decline in the wake of elections, according to new research that examined data from 42 countries. The study, published in the journal Electoral Studies, indicates that this depolarization is partially the result of citizens becoming less strongly attached to political parties over time. “Affective polarization is one of the main concerns for the health and quality of contemporary democracies. Some polarization may be beneficial for…

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Minority rule is unsustainable in America

Minority rule is unsustainable in America

Kenneth Owen writes: Minority rule is fast becoming the defining feature of the American republic. In 2000 and 2016, presidential candidates who received fewer votes than their opponents were nevertheless sent to the White House. Joe Biden’s 2020 victory came not because he won nearly 7 million more votes nationally than President Donald Trump, but rather because he won about 200,000 votes more in a handful of swing states. Congress has seen a similar dynamic: Though Republican senators make up…

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The climate debt the U.S. owes the world

The climate debt the U.S. owes the world

Bill McKibben writes: Central America has been through a wet version of Hell these past few weeks, as first a Category 4 and then a Category 5 hurricane crashed into the same part of Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast, dumping crippling amounts of rain on that country, Guatemala, and Honduras. Delphine Schrank opened an account of the toll on Honduras’s second-largest city, San Pedro Sula, for the Washington Post with this anecdote: “Blanca Costa crouched on a wooden cart with her three…

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What Rudy Giuliani is really up to

What Rudy Giuliani is really up to

Peter Stone writes: In his frenzied crusade to help President Donald Trump overturn the 2020 election result, Rudy Giuliani has displayed many of the characteristics that Trump has long demanded in his personal lawyers—albeit with more surreal and comedic elements. Giuliani has shown unswerving loyalty, gleefully obfuscated facts, launched wild attacks on the media, hosted circus-style press conferences, and gone to court, all in a fruitless, evidence-free quest to persuade several states to block Joe Biden’s electoral victories. But that…

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