Trump pardons former national security adviser Flynn

Trump pardons former national security adviser Flynn

Politico reports: Outgoing President Donald Trump pardoned his former national security adviser Michael Flynn on Wednesday for lying to FBI agents investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election. “It is my Great Honor to announce that General Michael T. Flynn has been granted a Full Pardon,” the president tweeted. “Congratulations to @GenFlynn and his wonderful family, I know you will now have a truly fantastic Thanksgiving!” Trump’s move is an extraordinary intervention on behalf of an ally who pleaded guilty…

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Where is the dividing line between you and the world

Where is the dividing line between you and the world

Frédérique de Vignemont and Colin Klein write: Heini Hediger, a noted 20th-century Swiss biologist and zoo director, knew that animals ran away when they felt unsafe. But when he set about designing and building zoos himself, he realised he needed a more precise understanding of how animals behaved when put in proximity to one another. Hediger decided to investigate the flight response systematically, something that no one had done before. Hediger found that the space around an animal could be…

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Yes, the Biden administration should hold Trump accountable

Yes, the Biden administration should hold Trump accountable

Philip Allen Lacovara writes: After the final tumultuous months of the Nixon presidency, Gerald R. Ford decided to end the “long national nightmare” that was Watergate by pardoning his predecessor, thus sparing Richard M. Nixon from the dock where his senior aides awaited trial. Because I considered Ford’s pardon a serious mistake, I resigned in protest as the counsel to the Watergate special prosecutor. I hope that when President-elect Joe Biden assumes office, he will not repeat the same mistake….

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Why Trump can’t grant himself a pardon

Why Trump can’t grant himself a pardon

Eric L. Muller writes: As Donald Trump’s tenure in office comes in for its landing, a major question is whether the president—facing questions about liability for offenses including bank and tax fraud—can pardon himself. This might seem like the right operational question, but it is imprecise as a constitutional one. Article II of the Constitution says that the president “shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” Did you…

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Trump should not be left off the hook

Trump should not be left off the hook

Andrew Weissmann writes: When the Biden administration takes office in 2021, it will face a unique, fraught decision: Should Donald Trump be criminally investigated and prosecuted? Any renewed investigative activity or a criminal prosecution would further divide the country and stoke claims that the Justice Department was merely exacting revenge. An investigation and trial would be a spectacle that would surely consume the administration’s energy. But as painful and hard as it may be for the country, I believe the…

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Trump stress-tested the election system, and the cracks showed

Trump stress-tested the election system, and the cracks showed

The New York Times reports: As President Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election have steadily disintegrated, the country appears to have escaped a doomsday scenario in the campaign’s epilogue: Since Nov. 3, there have been no tanks in the streets or widespread civil unrest, no brazen intervention by the judiciary or a partisan state legislature. Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s obvious victory has withstood Mr. Trump’s peddling of conspiracy theories and his campaign of groundless lawsuits. In the end —…

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Inside the Trump cult almost no voters consider Biden the legitimate 2020 election winner

Inside the Trump cult almost no voters consider Biden the legitimate 2020 election winner

CNBC reports: Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election. Nearly every supporter of President Donald Trump thinks otherwise, according to a new CNBC/Change Research poll. As the president makes unsubstantiated claims about electoral malfeasance and sows doubts about vote tallies, only 3% of Trump voters surveyed said they accept Biden’s victory as legitimate, the survey released Monday found. A staggering 73% of respondents consider Trump the legitimate winner. Another 24% said they are not sure. A mere 3% of Trump…

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Michigan vote shows local Republicans have backbone that national leaders lack

Michigan vote shows local Republicans have backbone that national leaders lack

Saundra Torry writes: A handful of once-obscure state officials have shown the country that they have something that too many national Republican leaders lack: A backbone. As they go about what’s usually the routine business of certifying election results, these officials have been thrust into the position of guarding our democracy from President Donald Trump’s schemes to ignore the votes of nearly 80 million Americans who voted for Joe Biden and snatch the election from the former vice president. While…

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Facebook struggles with the conflict between public interest and profit

Facebook struggles with the conflict between public interest and profit

The New York Times reports: In the tense days after the presidential election, a team of Facebook employees presented the chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, with an alarming finding: Election-related misinformation was going viral on the site. President Trump was already casting the election as rigged, and stories from right-wing media outlets with false and misleading claims about discarded ballots, miscounted votes and skewed tallies were among the most popular news stories on the platform. In response, the employees proposed an…

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Antony Blinken: Biden’s secretary of state nominee is sharp break with Trump era

Antony Blinken: Biden’s secretary of state nominee is sharp break with Trump era

The Guardian reports: After reports first emerged on Sunday night that Antony Blinken would be US secretary of state in the Biden administration, one particular interview from his past began circulating on social media. It was a September 2016 conversation with Grover, a character from Sesame Street, on the subject of refugees, directed at American children who might have new classmates from faraway countries. “We all have something to learn and gain from one another even when it doesn’t seem…

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Trump fears his legal ‘elite strike force team’ is actually a bunch of ‘fools that are making him look bad’

Trump fears his legal ‘elite strike force team’ is actually a bunch of ‘fools that are making him look bad’

CNBC reports: President Donald Trump is sweating over his campaign lawyers’ dismal and often outlandish efforts to reverse President-elect Joe Biden’s projected electoral victory. Trump is worried that his campaign’s legal team, which is being led by his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, is composed of “fools that are making him look bad,” NBC News reported Monday. That group, which has unironically called itself an “elite strike force team,” to date has failed to win any legal victories that would invalidate…

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Republican national security experts call on Trump to concede, begin transition

Republican national security experts call on Trump to concede, begin transition

The Washington Post reports: A group of leading GOP national security experts — including former homeland security secretary Tom Ridge — urged congressional Republicans on Monday to demand President Trump concede the election and immediately begin the transition to the incoming Biden administration. “President Trump’s refusal to permit the presidential transition poses significant risks to our national security, at a time when the U.S. confronts a global pandemic and faces serious threats from global adversaries, terrorist groups, and other forces,”…

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Business leaders, citing damage to country, urge Trump to begin transition

Business leaders, citing damage to country, urge Trump to begin transition

The New York Times reports: Concerned that President Trump’s refusal to accept the election results is hurting the country, more than 160 top American executives asked the administration on Monday to immediately acknowledge Joseph R. Biden Jr. as the president-elect and begin the transition to a new administration. Even one of Mr. Trump’s stalwart supporters, Stephen A. Schwarzman, the chief executive of Blackstone, the private equity firm, said in a statement that “the outcome is very certain today and the…

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When ‘creatives’ turn destructive: Image-makers and the climate crisis

When ‘creatives’ turn destructive: Image-makers and the climate crisis

Bill McKibben writes: Past sins are past no more: an overdue historical recalibration is under way, with monuments being pulled down, dorms renamed, restitution offered. People did things, bad things; even across the span of centuries, they’re being held to account, and there’s something noble about that. The Reverend Robert W. Lee IV, for instance, recently backed the removal of his famous ancestor’s statue from Richmond, Virginia. The memorial, he wrote, “is a hollow reminder of a painful ideology and…

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