Section: US & Canada
Trump Is Successfully Running Out the Clock
Fifty-five days ago, President Trump was supposed to file his annual personal financial disclosures, which give a broad snapshot of his money situation. The White House gave its employees 45 extra days to file the report, citing the coronavirus pandemic, making the new deadline June 29.That was 10 days ago, and Trump still hasn’t released...
A First Draft of a History-Textbook Entry for the Year 2020
History never ends. But history textbooks must. As deadlines for new editions loom, every textbook writer lurches to a sudden stop. The last chapter always ends in uncertainty: unfinished and unresolved. I’ve experienced this many times myself, as a co-author on several history textbooks.By now it seems clear that we are all living through...
Facebook Takes Down Accounts, Pages of Trump Ally Stone
Facebook Inc. on Wednesday removed 50 personal and professional pages connected to U.S. President Donald Trump’s longtime adviser Roger Stone, who is due to report to prison next week.The social media platform said Stone and his associates, including a prominent supporter of the right-wing Proud Boys group in Stone’s home state of...
‘Squad’ Backs Bill to Gut Police, End Prisons
Two leading progressive House Democrats on Tuesday endorsed a proposal to radically overhaul the criminal justice system by dismantling policing and incarceration in the United States. Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D., Mass.) and Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.), both known as members of the House’s uber-progressive “squad,” backed the...
Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman — key witness in Trump impeachment trial — announces military retirement following what he says was political retaliation
Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a key witness in President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, announced his military retirement on Wednesday. What are the details? Vindman said that his future in the military would “forever be limited” due to political retaliation by Trump and his allies, according to his attorney, David Pressman....
Facebook Takes Down ‘Inauthentic’ Social Media Pages Connected To Ukraine Ad Agency
Facebook said it has taken down a network of “coordinated, inauthentic” Ukrainian social media pages tied to a digital advertising agency in the nation’s capital as it seeks to combat the spread of disinformation. …read more Source:: Radio Free Europe / Radio...
Republicans Are Political Distancing From Trump
Donald Trump has never been much for encouraging social distancing. He might end up getting political distancing as a result.This week, five senators announced that they will skip the Republican National Convention in August. A Republican governor up for reelection said he wouldn’t attend a Trump rally in his state. And Senator Lindsey...
Vladimir Putin vs. “Citizen No”
For me the enduring image of Russia in 2020 is a photo of a makeshift street voting station where an elderly election commission official is waiting for people to show up and take part in a “popular vote” to endorse the so-called “constitutional amendments”—more than 200 of them—proposed by Vladimir Putin. The woman in the photo bides her time in...
Why Life Feels Like a TV Show
This season of America sucks.People said the show jumped the shark a few seasons back, when the powers that be decided on that whole Trump twist just a couple episodes after the Brexit plot line. I kept watching, even after season upon season of plot threads went nowhere (Ukraine? Impeachment?) and half the cast was abruptly written off (whatever...
Lithuania Bans Russian Broadcaster RT Over Kremlin Ties
Lithuania took Russian broadcaster RT off-air on Wednesday, citing the channel’s ties to EU-sanctioned Russian media executive Dmitry Kiselyov. The move follows a similar ban on RT in Latvia last week, where regulator called RT “propaganda” and also said the channel was controlled by Kiselyov, the head of Russia’s...
