Reading archive 2021-05-17

Experimental drug shows potential against Alzheimer's disease: Removing 'garbage' from brain cells improves memory in mice

Company: Ex-Trump lawyer raiding nonprofit for personal use

Caitlyn Jenner voted in 2020 despite telling CNN that she didn't

Opinion: Elected Republicans like me must stop the Big Lie about the 2020 election: True Republicans would never dream of hiring an unknown cybersecurity firm with no experience auditing elections to chase insane rumors of fraud.

Republican Arizona election official says Trump “unhinged”

Off the Rails Episode 9: Trump's war with his generals

Supreme Court to review Mississippi abortion law that advocates see as a path to diminish Roe v. Wade

Black, Brown and extremist: Across the far-right spectrum, people of color play a more visible role

Chamber of Commerce draws fire after a risky bet on Democrats - "And Republican animus toward the business lobby has filtered down to congressional staff. At a recent meeting of Senate Republican committee staff directors, one suggested freezing out Chamber experts from testifying at hearings, two people familiar with the session said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to disclose private conversations. 'Once you taint yourself on a political issue taking a position in support of Democrats, we’re not going to call your staff and listen to them as nonpartisan experts,' one Senate Republican staff member said. 'There are a lot of people in the country to listen to.'"

Reading archive 2021-05-14

What Is Going On With Inflation? Vacations and Chips.

As protesters flee Hong Kong, Taiwan quietly extends a helping hand - "Taiwanese authorities brought the five ashore, housed them in a government complex and provided clothing, cigarettes, television, table tennis games — even English teachers. Eventually, the Taiwanese, who treated the presence of the five as a state secret, helped arrange flights to the United States, their new home."

Seth Rogen Says Tom Cruise Tried To Sell Him On Scientology: ‘Dodged That Bullet’: “If you let me just tell you what it was really about, you would say, ‘No f**king way,’” the comedian said Cruise told him.

Arab Israelis are rising up to protest. Here’s what you need to know about their status in the country. - "Because support for the Palestinian cause is widespread within the Arab Israeli community, Arab Israelis often report encountering hostility and suspicion from police, politicians and others who view them as a security threat. A 2016 Pew Research Center poll found that nearly half of Israeli Jews supported expelling Arabs from the country or transferring them elsewhere."

Cicadas are increasing in D.C. area and are poised to erupt next week

Army captain who spied for Russia sentenced to 15 years in prison - "He also tried and failed to get jobs at the FBI and on President Donald Trump’s National Security Council. Debbins was a graduate of and teacher at the D.C.-based Institute of World Politics, a small but influential school in conservative foreign policy circles. Former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and military contractor Erik Prince both have ties to the school."

Opinion: A cop’s anger at GOP lies about Jan. 6 should put Republicans on the defensive

Opinion: Without swift action, the Chesapeake Bay will decline even further into national disgrace - "The Patuxent’s case demonstrates that the struggle for clean water is both intensely local and necessarily regional. Nature is agnostic to county and state boundaries. The Chesapeake Bay system, science instructs, must be managed as a single ecological system, even as it encompasses such a vast political geography. Only the federal government can serve this vital role."

Reading archive 2021-05-13

Opinion: America is having a Black Renaissance. We should learn from it.

Opinion: So much for the Abraham Accords. Trump made things worse in the Middle East. - "Right-wing Israeli settlers have been trying to evict six more Palestinian families from their homes in East Jerusalem by arguing that the houses belong to Jewish owners who were dispossessed during the 1948 Israeli War of Independence. Netanyahu has tried to portray this as an ordinary land dispute that the Israeli Supreme Court will adjudicate; a decision was due Monday before the violence spiraled out of control. 

"But Palestinians rightly point out that the Israeli legal system is biased against them. The law allows Israelis to claim possession of houses they lost in 1948 but does not extend similar rights to Palestinians. Palestinians see the looming evictions as part of an Israeli plan to take such firm possession of East Jerusalem that it can never be the capital of a future Palestinian state. Again, Trump made the problem worse by seeming to recognize Israeli sovereignty over all of Jerusalem when he moved the U.S. Embassy there from Tel Aviv."

CDC says fully vaccinated Americans no longer need masks indoors or outdoors in most cases: The relaxation of restrictions incentivizes people to get the shots and helps pave the way for a full reopening of society.

Opinion: The GOP has lost its way. Fellow Americans, join our new alliance.

Gaetz associate signals he will plead guilty in federal case, a worrisome development for the congressman

Rep. Greene aggressively confronts Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, causing New York congresswoman to raise security concerns

Israeli forces escalate campaign in Gaza with tanks, artillery, planes; Hamas launches rockets

Opinion: In Virginia, Biden and Democrats face a major test

Bowser pledges $10 million for road safety after recent traffic deaths: More speed and red-light cameras are among the changes planned to address a spike in traffic fatalities

Reading archive 2021-05-12

The ‘Can men and women just be friends?’ trope dominates pop culture. ‘Together Together’ flips it on its head.

After spreading false claims, Michigan Republican wants to register, fine fact-checkers: ‘You better be right’

Students for Trump co-founder sentenced to prison for posing as lawyer

Ransomware gang says D.C. police won’t pay $4 million demand, begins leaking files: Hackers leak alleged police data and screenshots of their failed negotiations.

Officials opened 12 slots to kill bison at Grand Canyon National Park. 45,000 people applied.

A ‘beautiful’ female biker was actually a 50-year-old man using FaceApp. After he confessed, his followers liked him even more.: The middle-aged father’s big reveal sparked a debate over identity in the Internet age: ‘The only thing I’m creating is … my appearance. Everything else is me.’

Inside Liz Cheney’s plan to take on former president Donald Trump

House Republicans oust Cheney for calling out Trump’s false election claims, minimize Jan. 6 attack on Capitol

Liz Cheney’s Liberal Critics Are Missing the Point - "Cheney’s decision to challenge the party on democracy is remarkable for several reasons. First, she is putting the issue squarely. Rather than softening her line or couching her stance in the logic of messaging (i.e., Trump’s rhetoric will hurt Republicans with swing voters), she is straightforwardly instructing her fellow Republicans that their current path is a menace to the Constitution and the rule of law. Second, she has absolutely nothing to gain and a great deal to lose. 

"And third, the fact she is such a dogmatic right-winger on economic, social, and foreign policy gives her support for democracy more, not less, weight. The very point of her dissent is that support for democracy ought to be separated from policy outcomes. Republicans should not succumb to the temptation of siding with a would-be authoritarian merely because he promises to advance their policy goals. 'He’ll undermine the Constitution, but give us low capital gains taxes and friendly judges' is not a morally defensible trade-off. Democracy is the one question not subject to horse-trading."

In Iraq, powerful militias assassinate protesters with impunity

Ransomware attacks could reach ‘pandemic’ proportions. What to know after the pipeline hack.: Ransomware attacks in 2020 were estimated to have cost billions of dollars - "'The underlying enabling factors for this cybercrime explosion are rooted in the digital dumpster fire of our seemingly pathological need to connect everything to the Internet combined with how hard it is to actually secure what we have connected,' Krebs said in his testimony."

Reading archive 2021-05-11

Opinion: Sheikh Jarrah highlights the violent brazenness of Israel’s colonialist project

Girl, 15, pleads guilty to murder in fatal carjacking of Uber Eats driver in D.C.

Hamas and Israel exchange rocket fire following contentious ‘Jerusalem Day’ clashes - "Tensions have been rising amid a court effort by a Jewish settler group to evict six Palestinian families from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah, a mostly Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem."

After Jerusalem erupts, deadly strikes and clashes spread across Israel and the Palestinian territories

Trump endorses GOP’s Youngkin for Virginia governor as campaign mudslinging gets underway

Grievance, rebellion and burnt bridges: Tracing Josh Hawley’s path to the insurrection: From his teenage writings to his incendiary support for false 2020 election claims, the Missouri senator is staking out a place in today’s far-right Republican Party - "On one, he has pursued elite privilege, even relative to other senators, commuting to a private high school, attending Stanford University and Yale Law School, clerking at the Supreme Court, and working for a powerful Washington law firm, all while courting liberal professors and establishment Republicans who enabled his ascent. 

"On the other, he has expressed sympathy with some of the country’s most far-right, anti-government extremists, demonstrating a willingness to see the world through their grievance-infused prism even after horrific attacks — from Oklahoma City in 1995, when he was 15, to the Capitol attack in 2021.

...

"'I feel very responsible for Josh Hawley being in the Senate. I feel terrible about it,' said former senator John C. Danforth (R-Mo.), who recently called his encouragement of Hawley’s Senate run the 'greatest mistake of my life.' He added, 'Josh Hawley played a central role in creating if not the darkest day in American history, one of the darkest days in American history.'

...

"Hawley, an evangelical, had seen how Trump captured the presidency in 2016, in part by winning the White evangelical vote by 80 to 16 percent. 

"So, when Hawley spoke before a group of ministers in Kansas City in December 2017, he sounded like a different person than the one who had written five years earlier that there were 'distinct missions of church and state — is it really the role of government, for instance, to promote ‘Christian values’ or refurbish America’s Christian heritage?' The state, he had written, should not be used 'to convert non-believers.'

"But in his 2017 speech, he advocated going into 'the public realm and to seek the obedience of the nations, of our nation … to transform our society to reflect the gospel truth and lordship of Jesus Christ.'"

Opinion: Ted Cruz just sent a very important message to Joe Manchin

Opinion: Think Republicans in Washington are bad? They’re far worse at the state level.

Opinion: Jeff Flake: In today’s Republican Party, there is no greater offense than honesty

QAnon resembles the games I design. But for believers, there is no winning.: The trail of ‘clues’ plays the people who follow it

Liz Cheney strikes defiant tone in floor speech on eve of her expected ousting from House GOP leadership

Trump family members got ‘inappropriately close’ to Secret Service agents, book claims: Concerns over bonds involving Trump’s then daughter in-law Vanessa and daughter Tiffany revealed in Carol Leonnig’s Zero Fail

Reading archive 2021-05-10

Child care has bipartisan support. But the culture war could wreck that.

The Jean War between millennials and Gen Z cannot be won

An off-duty officer ‘terrorized’ a family displaying a BLM flag. Police drove him home without arrest.

German priests defy Pope Francis with blessings of same-sex unions

The making of a myth: Russell J. Ramsland Jr. sold everything from Tex-Mex food to light-therapy technology. Then he sold the story that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. - "The campaign foundered amid revelations she had previously appeared on Infowars, the right-wing website operated by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, and on another occasion had said she believed data showed that military-grade explosives were planted inside the twin towers on 9/11. That comment prompted the Austin American-Statesman to retract its endorsement of her. (Pressley told The Post she had 'no opinion' on whether planes brought down the World Trade Center.) 

"The race was not close: Her opponent, a community organizer, defeated her by a margin of almost 30 points. 

"Pressley could not believe it. 

"'I knew in my heart that I had won,' she recently told a gathering of law enforcement officers outside Houston, one of hundreds of speeches she has given about the case, 'and I became convinced there was fraud.'"

Reading archive 2021-05-09

The Media Needs to Stop Pretending that Elon Musk is a Wise Sage rather than a Grifter

Why Is LaKeith Stanfield Flirting With Anti-Semitism on Clubhouse?

The Disturbing Rise of Anti-Semitism Among Black Celebs