The disillusionment of a young Biden administration official

The disillusionment of a young Biden administration official

Jonathan Blitzer writes: In the spring of 2019, Andrea Flores, then a thirty-one-year-old associate at a law firm in Washington, D.C., received an e-mail from the head of an organization called National Security Action. Its mission sounded lofty and urgent, and also typical for the time: “advancing American global leadership” and “opposing the reckless policies of the Trump Administration.” What distinguished National Security Action was that it would soon become a laboratory for the Biden transition. Flores, who’d worked in…

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NATO won’t put troops in Ukraine, but Western foreigners are volunteering to join the fight against Russia

NATO won’t put troops in Ukraine, but Western foreigners are volunteering to join the fight against Russia

BuzzFeed News reports: He walked and talked and dressed like a Ukrainian soldier — and according to a contract with its armed forces, he is one. But Private Aiden “Johnny” Aslin is a British citizen with a Midlands accent and no formal orders from his home government to be fighting on the battlefields of the Donbas. “It was my own decision to come here,” the 27-year-old told BuzzFeed News in this war-ravaged village, just north of the Sea of Azov….

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Joni Mitchell joins Neil Young’s Spotify protest over anti-vax content

Joni Mitchell joins Neil Young’s Spotify protest over anti-vax content

The Guardian reports: In an act of solidarity between two veteran rock stars with a shared history of espousing progressive causes, Joni Mitchell has joined Neil Young in removing her music from Spotify in protest at it hosting a popular anti-vax podcast. Mitchell, whose 1971 album Blue is regarded as one of the greatest of all time, is the first high-profile musician to take a stand alongside Young against the streaming behemoth. “Irresponsible people are spreading lies that are costing…

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The Great Unconformity has baffled geologists for a century

The Great Unconformity has baffled geologists for a century

Motherboard reports: Scientists can reconstruct incredible details about bygone eras in Earth’s history using fossils, rocks, and other clues preserved in its crust. But sometimes, the absence of geological records is just as telling as their presence. The Great Unconformity, a missing chunk of time that appears in rocks across the world, is the ultimate example of this phenomenon. This giant lapse in Earth’s memory exceeds one billion years in some places, resulting in 550 million-year-old rocks sitting atop ancient…

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Don’t create panic, Ukraine’s Zelensky tells West

Don’t create panic, Ukraine’s Zelensky tells West

BBC News reports: Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has called on the West not to create panic amid the build-up of Russian troops on his country’s borders. He told reporters that warnings of an imminent invasion were putting Ukraine’s economy at risk. On Thursday, US President Joe Biden said he believed Russia could attack its neighbour next month. Russia, however, denies it is planning to invade and on Friday its foreign minister said Moscow did not want war. While Russia has…

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Russia sends medical units to Ukrainian front

Russia sends medical units to Ukrainian front

The Wall Street Journal reports: Moscow has put what appear to be final preparations for an invasion of Ukraine by sending medical units to the front, moving to a level of readiness that it hadn’t reached in past buildups, according Western defense officials. While the moves don’t mean an attack is certain, they are prerequisites for battle and have intensified debates among Western allies over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intentions. The U.S. and European allies, particularly Germany and France, appear…

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Fox News is increasingly out of step with Republicans on Russia

Fox News is increasingly out of step with Republicans on Russia

David Frum writes: Night after night, the host of the top-rated show on Fox News repeats Vladimir Putin’s talking points justifying aggression against Ukraine and opposing U.S. aid to that threatened sovereign country. Tucker Carlson’s influence is felt across right-wing social media, where it is amplified by figures such as Steve Bannon, Mike Cernovich, Glenn Greenwald, and Mollie Hemingway. A highly visible coterie of socially conservative intellectuals also argues the case against helping Ukraine. Meanwhile, day after day, Republican officeholders…

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The Supreme Court is political and always has been

The Supreme Court is political and always has been

Jack Shafer writes: Everybody is two-faced about the Supreme Court. First, they fuss about the court having become a venue for politics. This was the position Justice Sonia Sotomayor took last month. Someone who votes reliably with the minority of justices who were appointed by Democratic presidents, she received a chorus of hallelujahs from her comrades when she worried aloud during oral arguments in an abortion case that if the court did not decide her way in the case, the…

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In GOP-run Georgia, forty-five times more people were denied the right to vote by mail in 2021 than in 2020

In GOP-run Georgia, forty-five times more people were denied the right to vote by mail in 2021 than in 2020

Mother Jones reports: “States are not engaging in trying to suppress voters whatsoever,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) declared last year. Facts on the ground in Georgia tell a different story. A new data analysis by Mother Jones shows that the number of voters disenfranchised by rejected mail ballot applications skyrocketed after the GOP-controlled legislature passed sweeping new restrictions on mail voting last year. The law enacted in March 2021 shortened the time people have to request and return…

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Earth is now a coalmine, and every wild bird is a canary

Earth is now a coalmine, and every wild bird is a canary

Kim Heacox writes: When the poet Mary Oliver wrote “Instructions for living a life,” she reminded us: “Pay attention. Be astounded. Tell about it.” This past autumn, wildlife officials announced that a bird, a male bar-tailed godwit, flew nonstop across the Pacific Ocean 8,100 miles from Alaska to Australia in just under 10 days. Fitted with a small solar-powered satellite tag, the godwit achieved “a land bird flight record”. But of course godwits have been doing this for centuries. Come…

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Americans’ trust in science now deeply polarized, poll shows

Americans’ trust in science now deeply polarized, poll shows

The Associated Press reports: Republicans’ faith in science is falling as Democrats rely on it even more, with a trust gap in science and medicine widening substantially during the COVID-19 pandemic, new survey data shows. It’s the largest gap in nearly five decades of polling by the General Social Survey, a widely respected trend survey conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago that has been measuring confidence in institutions since 1972. That is unsurprising to more than a dozen…

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No, America is not on the brink of a civil war

No, America is not on the brink of a civil war

Musa al-Gharbi writes: According to a number of polls and surveys, significant majorities of Republican-aligned voters seem to believe the big lie that Trump was the rightful winner of the 2020 US presidential election and, consequently, the Biden administration is illegitimate. Taking these data at face value, a growing chorus insists that we’re living in a “post-truth” era, where members of one political party, the Republican party, can no longer tell facts from falsehood. As a result of the Republican…

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What if Putin is bluffing?

What if Putin is bluffing?

Owen Matthews writes: The evidence for Vladimir Putin’s apparent intent on reinvading Ukraine is familiar enough, not least because it has been trumpeted by top officials in Washington and London over recent weeks with unusual and increasing emphasis. Some 170,000 Russian troops have been building up on Ukraine’s borders since October. According to U.S. intelligence sources, those troops’ commanders have been given orders to prepare detailed tactical plans for a land invasion. Russian agents have been preparing attacks and provocations…

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Ukraine crisis: Nord Stream 2 pipeline could be axed

Ukraine crisis: Nord Stream 2 pipeline could be axed

BBC News reports: Germany and the US have warned they could target a key Russian gas pipeline if the country invades Ukraine. A US state department spokesman said the Nord Stream 2 pipeline “will not move forward” if Russia were to attack. The controversial energy project is designed to double gas flow and runs from Russia direct to Germany under the Baltic Sea. It circumvents Ukraine, which relies on existing pipelines for income and is under threat from Russian forces….

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