Trump is out. Are we ready to talk about how he got in?

Trump is out. Are we ready to talk about how he got in?

Ta-Nehisi Coates writes: I’ve been thinking about Barbara Tuchman’s medieval history, A Distant Mirror, over the past couple of weeks. The book is a masterful work of anti-romance, a cold-eyed look at how generations of aristocrats and royalty waged one of the longest wars in recorded history, all while claiming the mantle of a benevolent God. The disabusing begins early. In the introduction, Tuchman examines the ideal of chivalry and finds, beneath the poetry and codes of honor, little more…

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McConnell says attack on Capitol ‘provoked’ by Trump; Pence, other GOP officials expected to skip Trump exit

McConnell says attack on Capitol ‘provoked’ by Trump; Pence, other GOP officials expected to skip Trump exit

Bloomberg reports: Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said the mob that stormed the Capitol Jan. 6 was “fed lies” and “provoked by the president” and others into a violent and deadly rampage. McConnell’s words on the Senate floor Tuesday were some of the strongest he’s used to tie President Donald Trump directly to the attack that disrupted the certification of the Electoral College votes that elected Joe Biden as the next president. “The mob was fed lies,” McConnell said, referring…

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Trump talked out of pardoning his kids and Republican lawmakers

Trump talked out of pardoning his kids and Republican lawmakers

CNN reports: President Donald Trump received an unsettling warning on his final Saturday night in the White House. Huddled for a lengthy meeting with his legal advisers, Trump was warned the pardons he once hoped to bestow upon his family and even himself would place him in a legally perilous position, convey the appearance of guilt and potentially make him more vulnerable to reprisals. So, too, was Trump warned that pardons for Republican lawmakers who had sought them for their…

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Increasingly militant ‘Parler refugees’ and anxious QAnon adherents prep for imminent doomsday

Increasingly militant ‘Parler refugees’ and anxious QAnon adherents prep for imminent doomsday

NBC News reports: Liesa Norris got a panicked phone call Monday from her brother. He told her to buy a ham radio. The radio, he explained, would be one of the few ways they could communicate once President Donald Trump launched his plans to take permanent power. “We were dancing around the subject, and then he just brought up that on the 20th, you know, the truth is going to come out,” Norris said. “He was just going on and…

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Conspiracy charges filed against alleged militia members in Capitol riot

Conspiracy charges filed against alleged militia members in Capitol riot

The Wall Street Journal reports: Prosecutors filed conspiracy charges related to the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol Jan. 6, saying in a new complaint that three rioters had acted in an “organized and practiced fashion” and at one point appeared to suggest the possibility of gassing lawmakers in the tunnels below the building. A search of the home of one of the three people also turned up directions for making explosives from bleach, according to the affidavit filed in…

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Trump’s ‘1776 report’ excuses slavery while likening progressivism to fascism

Trump’s ‘1776 report’ excuses slavery while likening progressivism to fascism

The New York Times reports: The Trump White House on Monday released the report of the presidential “1776 Commission,” a sweeping attack on liberal thought and activism that calls for a “patriotic education,” defends America’s founding on the basis of slavery and likens progressivism to fascism. President Trump formed the commission in September, saying that American heritage was under assault by revolutionary fanatics and that the nation’s schools required a new “pro-American” curriculum. Its report, released on Martin Luther King’s…

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U.S. determines China’s repression of Uighurs is ‘genocide’

U.S. determines China’s repression of Uighurs is ‘genocide’

The New York Times reports: The State Department declared on Tuesday that the Chinese government is committing genocide and crimes against humanity through its wide-scale repression of Uighurs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities in its northwestern region of Xinjiang, including in its use of internment camps and forced sterilization. The move is expected to be the Trump administration’s final action on China, made on its last full day, and is the culmination of a yearslong debate over how to…

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Federal court strikes down major Trump climate rollback

Federal court strikes down major Trump climate rollback

The Associated Press reports: In a last-minute slap at President Donald Trump, a federal appeals court struck down one of his administration’s most momentous climate rollbacks on Tuesday, saying officials acted illegally in issuing a new rule that eased federal regulation of air pollution from power plants. The Trump administration rule was based on a “mistaken reading of the Clean Air Act,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled, adding that the Environmental Protection Agency “fundamentally…

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Fox News launches ‘purge’ to ‘get rid of real journalists,’ insiders say

Fox News launches ‘purge’ to ‘get rid of real journalists,’ insiders say

The Daily Beast reports: Fox News on Tuesday fired the political editor who was tasked with defending the network’s election night decisions that especially angered President Donald Trump and his allies. Politics editor Chris Stirewalt’s exit from the network coincided with the sacking of at least 16 digital editorial staffers, including senior editors. People familiar with the situation said the layoffs—a “blood bath,” as multiple Fox News insiders described it—were perpetrated by Porter Berry, the Sean Hannity crony now in…

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U.S. life expectancy drops dramatically due to Covid-19

U.S. life expectancy drops dramatically due to Covid-19

Live Science reports: U.S. life expectancy just dropped by more than a year — the largest decline in decades — as a result of the sheer number of deaths from COVID-19, according to estimates from a new study. The study researchers project that, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the average U.S. life expectancy in 2020 will drop by 1.13 years, bringing it to 77.48 years, according to the study, published Thursday (Jan. 14) in the journal Proceedings of the National…

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We mock the Capitol rioters as ignorant buffoons at our peril

We mock the Capitol rioters as ignorant buffoons at our peril

Jack Shafer writes: The Atlantic’s Caitlin Flanagan wasted no time in her piece about the blitzkrieging of the Capitol on Jan. 6 to present her class-based critique of the mob. In her first sentence, Flanagan introduced the insurrectionists as “a coalition of the willing: deadbeat dads, YouPorn enthusiasts, slow students, and MMA fans” and went on to claim that they had “pulled into the swamp with bellies full of beer and Sausage McMuffins, maybe a little high on Adderall, ready…

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Biden needs to hit the ground running on climate

Biden needs to hit the ground running on climate

Michael E. Mann writes: First, Americans, let’s congratulate ourselves for having used the power of our vote to create an opportunity for meaningful progress on climate going forward. Joe Biden’s victory in the recent presidential race ushers in a new era of domestic progress and global cooperation. It allows us to begin to repair some of the damage that was done by Donald Trump’s presidency during the past four years—damage inflicted both to our own efforts to address the climate…

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Biden should break the dangerous pattern of nuclear competition with Russia

Biden should break the dangerous pattern of nuclear competition with Russia

Jerry Brown, William J. Perry, and David Holloway write: Dear Mr. President-elect, After the most bizarre presidency in US history, you are now about to take charge and begin restoring a sense of normalcy to our troubled nation. But these are anything but normal times, and your task will be enormous. The pandemic, the brazen attempts to overturn the presidential election, and now the assault on the Capitol itself make this a period of profound uncertainty. The challenges are both…

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New wave of violence and a growing uncertainty about Afghanistan’s future leaves Kabul gripped in fear

New wave of violence and a growing uncertainty about Afghanistan’s future leaves Kabul gripped in fear

The New York Times reports: In Kabul’s uncertain present, fear and dread intertwine in a vise. Fear has become a way of life. “When you’re in the car you feel fear, when you are walking you feel fear, and when you are in the shop you feel fear,” said Shamsullah Amini, a 22-year-old shopkeeper, while watching over his vats of dried grains and beans in the Taimani neighborhood. “If there was any security at all, we wouldn’t all be thinking…

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Why did Fox News keep its Seth Rich family settlement secret until after the election?

Why did Fox News keep its Seth Rich family settlement secret until after the election?

Ben Smith writes: On Oct. 12, 2020, Fox News agreed to pay millions of dollars to the family of a murdered Democratic National Committee staff member, implicitly acknowledging what saner minds knew long ago: that the network had repeatedly hyped a false claim that the young staff member, Seth Rich, was involved in leaking D.N.C. emails during the 2016 presidential campaign. (Russian intelligence officers, in fact, had hacked and leaked the emails.) Fox’s decision to settle with the Rich family…

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Attorney Roberta Kaplan is about to make Trump’s life extremely difficult

Attorney Roberta Kaplan is about to make Trump’s life extremely difficult

The Washington Post reports: On the other side of Donald Trump’s turbulent presidency, the lawyers are waiting. Leaving aside his Senate impeachment trial, mounting government investigations include a civil probe by New York Attorney General Letitia James, a criminal probe by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., and a federal probe by acting U.S. Attorney for D.C. Michael Sherwin that may include Trump’s role in the catastrophic storming of the U.S. Capitol this month. But already pending for the soon-to-be…

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