The Trump administration quietly spent billions in hospital funds on Operation Warp Speed

The Trump administration quietly spent billions in hospital funds on Operation Warp Speed

STAT reports: The Trump administration quietly took around $10 billion from a fund meant to help hospitals and health care providers affected by Covid-19 and used the money to bankroll Operation Warp Speed contracts, four former Trump administration officials told STAT. The Department of Health and Human Services appears to have used a financial maneuver that allowed officials to spend the money without telling Congress, and the agency got permission from its top lawyer to do so. Now, the Biden…

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Alex Jones on leaked video: ‘I wish I never met Trump’

Alex Jones on leaked video: ‘I wish I never met Trump’

SPLC’s Hatewatch reports: Before multimillionaire conspiracy theorist Alex Jones riled up Donald Trump’s fans with lies about a stolen election, he privately expressed revulsion over the 45th president, a video leaked to Hatewatch reveals. “It’s the truth and I’m just going to say it. That I wish I never would have fucking met Trump,” Jones said on camera in January 2019, while shooting a documentary in Austin, Texas. “I wish it never would have happened. And it’s not the attacks…

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Biden’s support for unionizing Amazon is a big deal

Biden’s support for unionizing Amazon is a big deal

Timothy Noah writes: My morning newspapers were so transfixed by Sunday night’s vindictive speech by the president who lost reelection in November that they neglected to take note of Sunday night’s historic remarks by the president who’s running the country right now. Perhaps it was just a matter of early Sunday print deadlines, but I observe with interest that USA Today, the Chicago Tribune, and Axios didn’t post their stories about Biden’s remarks online until this morning. Allow me to…

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Biden betrayed his promise to defend human rights and Jamal Khashoggi

Biden betrayed his promise to defend human rights and Jamal Khashoggi

Robin Wright writes: As a Presidential candidate, Joe Biden called Saudi Arabia a “pariah” state with a government of “no redeeming social value.” He even charged that the kingdom’s flashy Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, had masterminded the murder and gruesome dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi, a longtime Saudi insider and journalist who had fled to Washington in fear of the Crown Prince’s vindictive wrath. Khashoggi became a highly visible voice of the Saudi opposition in a column for the Washington…

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Republicans really hate Democrats — and democracy

Republicans really hate Democrats — and democracy

Zack Beauchamp writes: The Republican Party is the biggest threat to American democracy today. It is a radical, obstructionist faction that has become hostile to the most basic democratic norm: that the other side should get to wield power when it wins elections. A few years ago, these statements may have sounded like partisan Democratic hyperbole. But in the wake of the January 6 attack on the Capitol and Trump’s acquittal in the Senate on the charge of inciting it,…

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How pro-Trump forces pushed a lie about antifa at the Capitol riot

How pro-Trump forces pushed a lie about antifa at the Capitol riot

The New York Times reports: At 1:51 p.m. on Jan. 6, a right-wing radio host named Michael D. Brown wrote on Twitter that rioters had breached the United States Capitol — and immediately speculated about who was really to blame. “Antifa or BLM or other insurgents could be doing it disguised as Trump supporters,” Mr. Brown wrote, using shorthand for Black Lives Matter. “Come on, man, have you never heard of psyops?” Only 13,000 people follow Mr. Brown on Twitter,…

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Prosecutors investigating Trump focus on his finance chief

Prosecutors investigating Trump focus on his finance chief

The New York Times reports: State prosecutors in Manhattan who are investigating former President Donald J. Trump and his family business are sharpening their focus on the company’s long-serving chief financial officer, asking witnesses questions about his dealings at the company, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The increased focus on the executive, Allen H. Weisselberg, could step up pressure on him to cooperate with the investigation if the prosecutors unearth evidence of wrongdoing on his part. He…

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Oil trade group considers endorsing carbon pricing

Oil trade group considers endorsing carbon pricing

The Wall Street Journal reports: The oil industry’s top lobbying group is preparing to endorse setting a price on carbon emissions in what would be the strongest signal yet that oil and gas producers are ready to accept government efforts to confront climate change. The American Petroleum Institute, one of the most powerful trade associations in Washington, is poised to embrace putting a price on carbon emissions as a policy that would “lead to the most economic paths to achieve…

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Book review: The unintended consequences of taming nature

Book review: The unintended consequences of taming nature

By John Schwartz, Undark, February 26, 2021 Elizabeth Kolbert lives her stories. In the course of reporting her new book, “Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future,” she got hit by a leaping carp near Ottawa, Illinois (“It felt like someone had slammed me in the shin with a Wiffle-ball bat”) and visited tiny endangered pupfish at Devils Hole, a small pool in a cave near Pahrump, Nevada. She got her socks wet walking across a mockup of the…

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John Keats’ concept of ‘negative capability’ – or sitting in uncertainty – is needed now more than ever

John Keats’ concept of ‘negative capability’ – or sitting in uncertainty – is needed now more than ever

The gravestone of John Keats in Rome’s ‘non-Catholic’ cemetery. Dan Kitwood/Getty Images By Richard Gunderman, Indiana University When John Keats died 200 years ago, on Feb. 23, 1821, he was just 25 years old. Despite his short life, he’s still considered one of the finest poets in the English language. Yet in addition to masterpieces such as “Ode to a Nightingale” and “To Autumn,” Keats’ legacy includes a remarkable concept: what he called “negative capability.” The idea – which centers…

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India targets climate activists with the help of tech giants

India targets climate activists with the help of tech giants

Naomi Klein writes: The bank of cameras that camped outside Delhi’s sprawling Tihar jail was the sort of media frenzy you would expect to await a prime minister caught in an embezzlement scandal, or perhaps a Bollywood star caught in the wrong bed. Instead, the cameras were waiting for Disha Ravi, a nature-loving 22-year-old vegan climate activist who against all odds has found herself ensnared in an Orwellian legal saga that includes accusations of sedition, incitement, and involvement in an…

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What makes Elon Musk and Carl Sagan worlds apart

What makes Elon Musk and Carl Sagan worlds apart

Shannon Stirone writes: There’s no place like home—unless you’re Elon Musk. A prototype of SpaceX’s Starship, which may someday send humans to Mars, is, according to Musk, likely to launch soon, possibly within the coming days. But what motivates Musk? Why bother with Mars? A video clip from an interview Musk gave in 2019 seems to sum up Musk’s vision—and everything that’s wrong with it. In the video, Musk is seen reading a passage from Carl Sagan’s book Pale Blue…

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Trump has captured the Republican party – and that’s great news for Biden

Trump has captured the Republican party – and that’s great news for Biden

Robert Reich writes: Donald Trump formally anoints himself the head of the Republican party at today’s Conservative Political Action Conference. The Grand Old Party, founded in 1854 in Ripon, Wisconsin, is now dead. What’s left is a dwindling number of elected officials who have stood up to Trump but are now being purged. Even Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell’s popularity has dropped 29 points among Kentucky Republicans since he broke with Trump. In its place is the Trump party, whose…

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As support for party shrinks, GOP focuses on restricting voting

As support for party shrinks, GOP focuses on restricting voting

NPR reports: Republican-led legislatures in dozens of states are moving to change election laws in ways that could make it harder to vote. Many proposals explicitly respond to the 2020 election: Lawmakers cite public concerns about election security — concerns generated by disinformation that then-President Donald Trump spread while trying to overturn the election. The Brennan Center, a nonprofit that tracks voting laws, says that 43 states — including key swing states — are considering 253 bills that would raise…

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