New MAGA emails reveal plot to hand Arizona to Trump

New MAGA emails reveal plot to hand Arizona to Trump

Andy Kroll reports: The technology was complicated, but the plan was simple: Scan mail-in and absentee ballots in populous Maricopa County, remove the “invalid votes,” and recertify the state’s 2020 election count, surely declaring then-President Donald Trump the rightful winner. This scheme to subvert the election outcome in Arizona is laid out in newly released emails obtained by Rolling Stone. Sent in early December 2020, the emails cover a critical moment when the post-election push by Trump and Republican allies…

Read More Read More

How Larry Summers became the preeminent critic of the Biden era’s economic consensus

How Larry Summers became the preeminent critic of the Biden era’s economic consensus

Eric Levitz writes: There’s a story that progressives like to tell about Larry Summers. The doyen of Establishment economics is dining out with a populist politician. The two have made it through the meal with minimal awkwardness — their ideological tensions eased by booze and food — when Summers leans back in his chair and offers his left-wing foil a hard-won insight. There are two kinds of political actors in this world: insiders and outsiders. Outsiders are free to speak…

Read More Read More

The case for impeaching Justice Clarence Thomas

The case for impeaching Justice Clarence Thomas

Michael Tomasky writes: In a sane world, Jane Mayer’s excellent piece on Ginni Thomas in The New Yorker would set off a series of events that would lead to her husband Clarence Thomas’s impeachment and removal from the Supreme Court. Ginni is involved with numerous far-right organizations and schemes that take very public positions on court decisions across a range of social and political issues, such as last week’s 8–1 holding that Donald Trump could not block the release of…

Read More Read More

How one man changed the meaning of past present and future

How one man changed the meaning of past present and future

Emily Thomas writes: Events happen in order – you whisk icing before decorating a cake. Some events seem to be present, while others are future or past. A birthday party lies in the future, approaching slowly. When the big day arrives, the party is present; afterwards, it slips into memory and the past. Pastness, presentness and futurity seem to be real features of the world, but are they really? Philosophers disagree, and this debate pervades books such as Time and…

Read More Read More

Confusion over UK claim that Putin plans coup in Ukraine

Confusion over UK claim that Putin plans coup in Ukraine

The Observer reports: The Foreign Office has said that it had exposed evidence of a plot to install a pro-Moscow government in Ukraine, and Boris Johnson promised to “ramp up pressure on Russia”, as his own domestic political troubles deepened. Saturday’s rare reference to intelligence-gathering went into almost no detail about a conspiracy that, if accurate, could mean a serious escalation in the threat to Ukraine. Politicians there were sceptical that the government could be replaced without a full-blown invasion…

Read More Read More

Germany’s reliance on Russian gas limits Europe’s options in Ukraine crisis

Germany’s reliance on Russian gas limits Europe’s options in Ukraine crisis

The Wall Street Journal reports: Germany’s dependence on Russian gas has left Europe short of options to sanction Moscow if it invades Ukraine—and itself vulnerable should Russia stop gas exports to the West. A two-decade-old decision to phase out nuclear power and more recent moves to cut reliance on coal in an effort to bring down CO2 emissions mean Germany is now more reliant on Russian gas than most of its neighbors, not just for heating but also for power…

Read More Read More

How Russia decides when to invade suggests it might not move on Ukraine

How Russia decides when to invade suggests it might not move on Ukraine

Eugene Chausovsky writes: In its decision-making process on whether to intervene militarily in the former Soviet sphere, Russia’s calculus uses a strategic framework that rests primarily on five variables: 1) a trigger; 2) local support; 3) anticipated military reaction; 4) technical feasibility; and 5) relatively low anticipated political and economic costs, especially when it comes to nonmilitary responses to invasion such as sanctions or diplomatic restrictions. If any one of these conditions is insufficient or nonexistent, then Russia is unlikely…

Read More Read More

Covid will continue but the end of the pandemic is near

Covid will continue but the end of the pandemic is near

Christopher J L Murray writes: The world is experiencing a huge wave of infection with the omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2. Estimates based on Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) models suggest that on around Jan 17, 2022 there were 125 million omicron infections a day in the world, which is more than ten times the peak of the delta wave in April, 2021. The omicron wave is inexorably reaching every continent with only a few countries in eastern Europe,…

Read More Read More

How the worst attack on American democracy in generations has mutated into an emblem of resistance

How the worst attack on American democracy in generations has mutated into an emblem of resistance

The New York Times reports: There were moments when Paul Davis questioned his decision to join the crowd that marched on the United States Capitol last January. When he was publicly identified and fired from his job as a lawyer. When his fiancée walked out. But then something shifted. Instead of lingering as an indelible stain, Jan. 6 became a galvanizing new beginning for Mr. Davis. He started his own law practice as a “lawyer for patriots” representing anti-vaccine workers….

Read More Read More

Rediscovering the value of cynicism

Rediscovering the value of cynicism

Arthur Brooks writes: Cynicism—the belief that people are generally morally bankrupt and behave treacherously in order to maximize self-interest—dominates American culture. Since 1964, the percentage of Americans who say they trust the government to do what is right “just about always” or “most of the time” has fallen 53 points, from 77 to 24 percent. Sentiments about other institutions in society follow similar patterns. Whether cynicism is more warranted now than ever is yours to decide. But it won’t change…

Read More Read More

Hope isn’t optimism

Hope isn’t optimism

David B Feldman and Benjamin W Corn write: Hope is not wishful thinking, optimism, or ‘the power of positive thinking’. There’s nothing wrong with being optimistic, of course. Research shows that optimism is associated with many beneficial outcomes. But that doesn’t mean it’s the same as hope. The Cambridge Dictionary defines optimism as ‘the feeling that in the future good things are more likely to happen than bad things’. The influential psychologists Charles Carver and Michael Scheier, who have built…

Read More Read More

Scientists target PR and ad firms they accuse of spreading disinformation on climate change

Scientists target PR and ad firms they accuse of spreading disinformation on climate change

Reuters reports: More than 450 scientists on Wednesday called on the executives of major advertising and public relations firms to drop their fossil fuel clients and stop what the scientists said was their spread of disinformation around climate change. They sent a letter to the executives of major global public relations and advertising firms, including conglomerate WPP, Edelman and IPG, as well as the CEOs of their clients who tout sustainability goals including Unilever, Amazon and Microsoft. “As scientists who…

Read More Read More

As the legal net tightens, the ‘House of Trump is crumbling’

As the legal net tightens, the ‘House of Trump is crumbling’

The Guardian reports: When Donald Trump announced plans in 2006 to build a golf complex on ancient sand dunes on the Aberdeenshire coast in Scotland he told reporters it was love at first sight. “As soon as I saw it there was no question about it,” he said. It would be the world’s “greatest golf course”. This week Trump International Scotland became a central element of a case that looks poised to dominate his post-presidential life, and could even put…

Read More Read More

Georgia has a very strong legal case against Trump

Georgia has a very strong legal case against Trump

David French writes: Yesterday, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis sent a letter to the chief judge of the Fulton County Superior Court requesting to empanel a special grand jury “for the purpose of investigating the facts and circumstances relating directly or indirectly to possible attempts to disrupt the lawful administration of the 2020 elections in the State of Georgia.” The request was triggered by the reluctance of key witnesses, including Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, to cooperate without…

Read More Read More