Attention to the Unseen

Luke O’Brien reports: High above Constitution Avenue, on a rooftop terrace, “Stop the Steal” organizer Ali Alexander gazed down at the U.S. Capitol and the chaos he’d helped unleash. A mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters had just stormed the U.S. Capitol, forcing members of Congress to scramble for safety. White nationalists, QAnon cultists and Make America Great Again extremists roamed the halls hunting for politicians. Some carried zip-tie handcuffs. One wore a sweatshirt that read “Camp Auschwitz.” “I don’t…

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On Friday, Rep. Andy Levin (D-MI) led a delegation of members of Congress to Bessemer, Alabama, where workers at an Amazon warehouse are striving to become the first unionized facility managed by the e-commerce giant anywhere in the country. David Dayen: Tell me what the mood was like from workers at the Alabama facility? Andy Levin: So on the one hand, the mood was upbeat. Even to some extent euphoric. But also kind of somber and determined. This is no…

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The New York Times reports: To jump-start the ailing economy, President Biden is turning to the lowest-paid workers in America, and to the people who are currently unable to work at all. Mr. Biden’s $1.9 trillion economic relief package, which cleared the Senate on Saturday and could be headed for the president’s signature in a matter of days, would overwhelmingly help low earners and the middle class, with little direct aid for the high earners who have largely kept their…

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Jamelle Bouie writes: This is the story of how a bill to save the vote and preserve a semblance of democracy for millions of Americans died at the hands of an intransigent, reactionary minority in the Senate, which used the filibuster to do its dirty work. In the summer of 1890, the state of Mississippi held its second constitutional convention of the post-Civil War era. The first, in 1868, was an attempt to make biracial democracy a reality. This second…

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Jonathan Chait writes: One of the most predictable developments of the post-Trump era was that the small band of anti-Trump conservative intellectuals and Republican officials would quickly melt away. They had been repulsed by Donald Trump’s combination of grotesque character and ideological heterodoxy — opposing American alliances, free trade, and so on – but when given the chance to support Republicans who believed in traditional Reaganite principles and weren’t career criminals, politics would go back to normal and they would…

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The New York Times reports: A member of the far-right nationalist Proud Boys was in communication with a person associated with the White House in the days just before the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, according to a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation. Location, cellular and call record data revealed a call tying a Proud Boys member to the Trump White House, the official said. The F.B.I. has not determined what they discussed, and the official would…

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David Frum writes: “The constitutional Presidency … has become the imperial Presidency.” The historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. delivered that complaint in 1973, just ahead of a wave of reforms that sought to cut the presidency down to size. The War Powers Act of 1973, the Anti-Impoundment Act of 1974, the creation of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees in the mid-1970s: These and other measures aimed to restrain the presidency and restore power to Congress. Following the presidency of Donald…

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The New York Times reports: Erik Ortiz, a 41-year-old hip-hop music producer in Florida, grew up poor in the South Bronx, and spent much of his time as a young adult trying to establish himself financially. Now he considers himself rich. And he believes shaking off the politics of his youth had something to do with it. “Everybody was a liberal Democrat — in my neighborhood, in the Bronx, in the local government,” said Mr. Ortiz, whose family is Black…

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