Attention to the Unseen

Nicholas Kristof writes: Thirty years ago in the spring of 1989, as the world’s most populous country teetered on the edge of freedom, I received a late-night phone call in my apartment in Beijing: The Chinese Army was invading its own capital. Students and workers had made roads impassable by setting up barricades to block the army, so I jumped on my bicycle and pedaled furiously toward the gunfire. I reached Tiananmen Square shortly before the army, and then I…

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The Washington Post reports: Republican senators warned Trump administration officials Tuesday they were prepared to block the president’s effort to impose tariffs on Mexican imports, promising what would be GOP lawmakers’ most brazen defiance of the president since he took office. During a closed-door lunch, at least a half-dozen senators spoke in opposition to the tariffs, while no one spoke in support, according to multiple people present who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private meeting. Senators…

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David Brooks writes: For much of the 20th century, young and old people voted pretty similarly. The defining gaps in our recent politics have been the gender gap (women preferring Democrats) and the education gap. But now the generation gap is back, with a vengeance. This is most immediately evident in the way Democrats are sorting themselves in their early primary preferences. A Democratic voter’s race, sex or education level doesn’t predict which candidate he or she is leaning toward,…

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Robert Mackey writes: Washington and Westminster politics seemed to merge on Monday, as Donald Trump arrived in London for a state visit — tweeting insults from Air Force One at the city’s mayor, Sadiq Khan — just as Boris Johnson, described by the American president as “a friend of mine,” officially launched his campaign to become the country’s new prime minister. Before his trip, Trump had warm words for Johnson in an interview with The Sun, Rupert Murdoch’s British tabloid….

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Paul Rosenzweig writes: President Donald Trump has repeatedly said that his administration is the “most transparent in history,” and that it has “cooperated totally” with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, or words to that effect. But the truth is quite the opposite. No prior administration has pushed the envelope of the law to deflect outside scrutiny to the same degree as this one. In a recent letter from the White House to the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, the…

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NBC News reports: As Democrats agonize over a spate of state laws restricting abortion rights and even a potential reversal of Roe v. Wade, one 2020 presidential candidate is putting an ambitious, long-shot plan to reform the Supreme Court front-and-center of his campaign. Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has talked about his plan to overhaul the high court since his first days as a candidate. In short, it calls for expanding the number of justices from nine…

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The New York Times reports: The email arrived in Washington before dawn. An official at the American Embassy in Beijing was urgently seeking advice from the State Department about an “ethics question.” “I am writing you because Mission China is in the midst of preparing for a visit from Department of Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao,” the official wrote in October 2017. Ms. Chao’s office had made a series of unorthodox requests related to her first scheduled visit to China as…

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Bloomberg reports: Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner said in an interview that the Palestinians aren’t yet able to govern themselves and declined to promise them an independent state in the White House’s long-awaited Mideast peace plan. “The hope is that they over time will become capable of governing,” Kushner said in an interview with Axios on HBO that aired on Sunday. Kushner is leading a White House effort to draft a new peace proposal for the Israelis…

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Gilbert Achcar writes: Images of popular protests that recall the revolutionary movement of 2011 have dominated news from the Arabic-speaking world for months. Uprisings began in Sudan on 19 December and in Algeria with the marches of Friday 22 February. They revived memories of the huge, peaceful demonstrations early in the Arab Spring that shook Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Libya and Syria. Commentators have been more cautious this time, asking questions rather than commenting directly, mindful of the bitter disappointment…

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Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, writes: Praising the “very fine people on both sides” when torch-wielding white supremacists and antisemites marched through the streets clashing with anti-racist campaigners. Threatening to veto a ban on the use of rape as a weapon of war. Setting an immigration policy that forcefully separates young children from their parents at the border. The deliberate use of xenophobia, racism and “otherness” as an electoral tactic. Introducing a travel ban to a number of predominately…

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