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706,357 PEOPLE HAVE DIED FROM CORONAVIRUS IN THE U.S.
216 MILLION PEOPLE IN THE U.S. HAVE RECEIVED A VACCINATION DOSE
NPR News
Former White House Russia expert Fiona Hill warns the U.S. is on a path to autocracy
Russia expert Fiona Hill warns that American democracy is under attack — from within.
In November 2019, Hill became one of the key witnesses at … Donald Trump's first impeachment hearing, where she condemned the false narrative that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that interfered in the 2016 election…
"The United States is teetering on the edge of violence here. We're already, I think, in a cold civil war," she says. "We've got a chance now to turn this around. But if we don't take it, we're heading down that autocratic path that we've seen in other countries."
The 'Poohsticks Bridge,' made famous in Winnie the Pooh, has gone up for auction
[…] What was once known as the Posingford Bridge in Ashdown Forest in England was later renamed as the Poohsticks Bridge, a moniker coined from the game that Christopher Robin and Pooh would play in A.A. Milne's books, according to the Summers Place auction house.
In the 1920's, the bridge was where Milne and his son, the real-life Christopher Robin, would play a game consisting of watching sticks float downstream. That game would later inspire the Pooh books, according to Summers Place.
The literary landmark has been put up for auction, with all bids due Wednesday. It's estimated to sell for around $54,000 to $81,000, according to the auction house.
CNN
Biden ramps up pressure on Republicans to raise debt ceiling: 'The United States pays its bills'
President Joe Biden on Wednesday ramped up the pressure on Republicans as the nation nears the deadline to raise the debt ceiling and argued the GOP is putting the country at risk of a possible debt default by standing firm against raising the nation's debt limit.
"The United States pays its bills. It's who we are, it's who we've been, it's who we're going to continue to be, God willing," Biden said.
Biden noted if there was a default, it would be the first time in the nation's history. He stressed there would be catastrophic consequences, and echoed comments he made on Monday by calling the Republican position "hypocritical," "dangerous, and a bit disgraceful.
House committee investigating January 6 can't find Trump aide to serve subpoena
More than a week after subpoenaing former Donald Trump aide Dan Scavino to cooperate with its investigation into the January 6 riot at the US Capitol, the House select committee investigating the attack has been unable to physically serve the subpoena to him, according to multiple sources familiar with the effort.
The news comes just days before the committee's deadline for Scavino and three other close allies of the former President to comply with subpoenas requesting documents by October 7 and a deposition by October 15.
The Guardian
Top Trump aides set to defy subpoenas in Capitol attack investigation
The former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and other top aides subpoenaed by the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack are expected to defy orders for documents and testimony related to 6 January, according to a source familiar with the matter.
The move to defy the subpoenas would mark the first major investigative hurdle faced by the select committee and threatens to touch off an extended legal battle as the former president pushes some of his most senior aides to undercut the inquiry.
All four Trump aides targeted by the select committee – Meadows, deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, strategist Steve Bannon and defense department aide Kash Patel – are expected to resist the orders because Trump is preparing to direct them to do so, the source said.
Canada invokes 1977 treaty with US as dispute over pipeline intensifies
The Canadian government has invoked a decades-old treaty with the United States in its latest bid to save a pipeline that critics warn could be environmentally catastrophic if it were to fail.
For nearly 67 years, Calgary-based Enbridge has moved oil and natural gas from western Canada through Michigan and the Great Lakes to refineries in the province of Ontario.
But Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer, says that one section of the company’s pipeline – Line 5, which crosses the Great Lakes beneath the environmentally sensitive Straits of Mackinac – is a “ticking time bomb” and has ordered it shut down.
Bloomberg
Democrats Signal They’ll Accept Short-Term Debt Ceiling Hike
Democrats signaled they would take up Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell’s offer to raise the U.S. debt ceiling into December, alleviating the immediate risk of a default but raising the prospect of another bruising political fight near the end of the year. […]
McConnell made his offer as he was coming under increasing criticism from Biden and Democrats that he was acting recklessly by blocking attempts to lift the debt limit, risking economic calamity. The attempt at a compromise also reflects increasing nervousness from some Republican senators that the country was moving too close to the brink of default.
While Democrats declared it a victory, it leaves them in a politically difficult bind. In about two months they will be facing the same fight, and have yet to articulate a strategy to avoid it.
Manchin Rejects Altering Filibuster Rule to Raise Debt Ceiling
Democratic Senator Joe Manchin will block any effort to carve out an exception to the chamber’s filibuster rule to bypass Republican opposition to raising the federal debt limit.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Former Supreme Court Justice Gableman, head of Republican review of Wisconsin election, says he does not understand how elections work
The attorney leading a partisan review of Wisconsin's 2020 election acknowledged this week that he doesn't understand how elections are supposed to be run.
The admission by former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman comes as he subpoenas mayors and election officials.
His comment raises fresh questions about how long Gableman's taxpayer-financed review will take. He called an Oct. 31 deadline set for him by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos of Rochester unrealistic.
"Most people, myself included, do not have a comprehensive understanding or even any understanding of how elections work," Gableman said in an interview late Tuesday before addressing the Green Bay City Council about his plans.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Parnell seeks gag order against wife as dispute spills into campaign
Pennsylvania Republican Senate candidate Sean Parnell has asked a judge to seal records in his ongoing custody case and to ban his wife and her attorney from talking publicly about past protection-from-abuse orders against him — matters that have stirred political attacks and media scrutiny.
A judge in the case, filed in Butler County, heard arguments on the requests Tuesday morning. Mr. Parnell, asking for a seal on the case for a second time, argued that he was trying to protect his three children from media prying and being exposed to harmful information about their parents’ dispute.
“I signed up to run for office,” he said during the hearing. “My kids did not.”
An attorney for his wife, Laurie Parnell, said the candidate is trying to protect himself and his political ambitions. She noted that in 2019 he sought permission to use the children’s photos on social media, filing a motion that cited a brand strategist’s advice to do so “in order to harness the potential of his customer base, secure new followers,” and improve sales of his books.
EuroNews / AFP
Rachele Mussolini: Fascist dictator's granddaughter wins most votes in Rome's municipal elections
The granddaughter of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini looks set to win the most votes in municipal elections in Rome.
According to a near-final count on Wednesday, Rachele Mussolini of the far-right Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d'Italia) party was the most popular candidate.
Al Jazeera
What is Serbia trying to achieve with its military buildup?
In 2019, Serbia made headlines by overtaking NATO member Croatia as the Balkan region’s biggest military spender, spending $1.14bn, an increase of 43 percent from the previous year.
This year, Serbia’s defence budget almost doubled from the 2018 figure of $700m to about $1.5bn, according to open-source intelligence specialists at Janes Defence Budgets.
As the pandemic intensified last year, many Serbians questioned the country’s priorities when it was reported in November that more money was being spent on weapons than setting up COVID-19 hospitals.
Meanwhile, displays of military power have become regular.
Malaria vaccine a ‘breakthrough for science’, WHO chief says
The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday the only approved vaccine against malaria should be widely given to African children, marking a major advance against a disease that kills hundreds of thousands of people annually.
The WHO recommendation is for RTS,S, sold as “Mosquirix”, a vaccine developed by British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline. […]
“This long-awaited malaria vaccine is a breakthrough for science. This is a vaccine developed in Africa by African scientists and we’re very proud,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Reuters
Brazil police find 3 million euro Nazi haul at home of suspected pedophile
Police in Rio de Janeiro said on Wednesday they had found a haul of Nazi memorabilia and weapons worth an estimated 3 million euros at the home of a Brazilian man suspected of raping a minor.
Rio's civil police said they found more than 1,000 items at the home of the 58-year-old unnamed suspect, including Nazi uniforms, periodicals, paintings, Nazi insignia, images of Adolf Hitler, flags and medals of the Third Reich. They also found guns and ammunition from the era. […]
"He is a smart guy and articulate, but he's a Holocaust denier, he's homophobic, he's a pedophile and he says he hunts homosexuals," Luis Armond, the lead detective on the case, told Reuters. "I'm no doctor, but he seems to me an insane psychopath."
BBC News
Sarah Everard vigil: Police officers contacted arrested woman on Tinder
A woman who was pictured being arrested at the Sarah Everard vigil has said "about 50" police officers have since contacted her via a dating app, leaving her "terrified".
Patsy Stevenson, 28, said the officers approached her on Tinder after she was handcuffed at the vigil on 13 March. […]
"They were all in uniform on their profiles or it said 'I'm a police officer'," she said. "I do not understand why someone would do that.
"It is almost like an intimidation thing, saying 'look we can see you', and that, to me, is terrifying. They know what I went through and they know that I'm fearful of police and they've done that for a reason."
China-Taiwan military tensions 'worst in 40 years'
Tensions with China are at their worst in 40 years, Taiwan's defence minister has said, warning of the risk of an accidental strike between the two.
Taiwan considers itself a sovereign state. China, however, views Taiwan as a breakaway province. It has not ruled out the possible use of force to achieve unification.
Columbia Journalism Review
The problem with ‘moderates v. progressives’
In June 2018, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive, defeated Joe Crowley, then the chair of the House Democratic Caucus, in a Congressional primary in New York. […]
More than three years later, Ocasio-Cortez is a fixture in Congress and—with President Biden working to push through a hugely consequential spending package and a linked bipartisan infrastructure bill that already cleared the Senate—divisions among Democratic lawmakers are a big story. Not that the language problem has been solved. The dynamic among Congressional Democrats has been characterized, in much coverage, as a civil war between “moderates” and “progressives,” even though both terms remain fuzzy: the former increasingly feels unmoored from any actual ideological position; the latter at least reflects the name of the Congressional Progressive Caucus—a nearly hundred-strong group of lawmakers whose leader, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, has tirelessly toured cable studios in recent days—but has not been used with much consistency. Late last week, after House Democratic leadership shelved a planned vote on the infrastructure bill as progressives sought assurances from recalcitrant colleagues on the other package, the New York Times characterized the delay as the result of a “liberal revolt.” On Saturday, another Times story reported that Biden had “thrown in” with his party’s “left” rather than its “center,” leaving “his agenda in doubt,” while CNN ran an analysis piece that referred to “the left” in its headline, “liberal Democrats” in its first paragraph, and “progressive Democrats” in its second. On Sunday, Axios splashed: “Left seizes control.”
In recent days, critics have pushed back on such framing, taking issue both with the imprecision of the labels and the insubstantial “civil war” emphasis.
ProPublica
Recent White House Study on Taxes Shows the Wealthy Pay a Lower Rate Than Everybody Else
[…] The White House-backed proposals on taxes advanced by congressional Democrats largely followed the traditional approach of raising rates on income. A separate bill introduced by Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders to impose a 3% tax on all wealth above $1 billion is seen as having little chance of passing.
The reluctance to embrace a wealth tax is deeply rooted. The biggest donors to both parties would be hit hard by such a law. And as we pointed out in our initial story, the complexities of taxing wealth are not trivial. […]
None of the proposed changes come close to addressing the biggest hole in the system, which is that an ultrarich person can live comfortably off gains in wealth while never selling a single share. As our initial story pointed out, the Buffetts and Bezos of the world can borrow against the value of their considerable holdings and live comfortably without selling stock or receiving any income from dividends, which new companies like Tesla and Amazon don’t pay.
The strategy, known as “buy, borrow and die,” allows the wealthy to amass fast fortunes, pay no taxes on those gains and pass on much of the wealth to their descendants.
Los Angles Times
California lawmakers demand more info from two federal agencies on massive oil spill
Federal lawmakers are demanding more information on the massive oil spill off the coast of Orange County as a legislative battle looms over whether to include a ban on future offshore drilling in a scaled-down $3.5-trillion bill.
The House Oversight and Reform Committee on Wednesday requested records from federal agencies to figure out whether regulatory failings contributed to a pipeline spilling an estimated 144,000 gallons of crude oil into the Pacific Ocean.
In a letter to the federal regulators, Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), chairwoman of the oversight committee, and five Democratic members of the California delegation documented what they described as troubling compliance issues with Amplify Energy’s San Pedro Bay Pipeline, which is operated by Beta Operating Co., the source of last week’s leak.
The Oregonian
Hanford nuclear site’s contamination, growing risks to entire Northwest region detailed in new journal article
[The Hanford Site, the federal government’s decommissioned nuclear-production facility, continues to be a looming problem in the Pacific Northwest.]
The literary journal Virginia Quarterly Review (VQR) is now reminding us of this looming threat. Its deeply reported new piece “Cold War, Hot Mess,” available online for free, is well worth the time of anyone who lives in the region. […]
“Geologists have also found that the power plant at Hanford -- which stores spent fuel rods in pools similar to the Fukushima reactor [in Japan] -- is at risk of experiencing seismic activity two to three times stronger than it was designed to handle,” the VQR piece states. “If power supplies failed, ‘it would take about a day for enough water to evaporate [from the pools] to cause a catastrophe.’”
Fire season over for half of Oregon; eastern, southern regions need more rain
Half of Oregon is officially free of fire season, while the state’s eastern and southern regions need significantly more rain before they’re in the clear, experts say.
Record-breaking September rainfall, longer nights and more humid air have signaled the beginning of the end of a historic 2021 fire season. But fall rains have a decades-long drought to overcome in most of the West, meaning thicker fuels like timber aren’t yet saturated by the season’s precipitation.
The Washington Post
White House proposes restoring key parts of landmark environmental law, reversing Trump
The White House proposed restoring parts of one of the nation’s bedrock environmental laws Wednesday, requiring agencies to conduct a climate analysis of major projects and give affected communities greater input into the process.
Brenda Mallory, who chairs the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said in a statement that the changes would not delay major projects because they would make it easier to forge a consensus on how they would be built.
Pressure builds on Fed, Powell over stock trading among top officials as independent probe is underway
Pressure is mounting on the Federal Reserve over whether the stock trading activities of top officials violated ethics rules and the law, raising questions about who within the central bank should be held responsible.
Scrutiny on the central bank has intensified since two Fed regional bank presidents — Robert Kaplan and Eric Rosengren — exited their posts last week amid revelations of their trades during the covid crisis. Then on Friday, Bloomberg News reported on trades made by Fed Vice Chair Richard Clarida, which were made the day before the Fed said it would “act as appropriate to support the economy” in February 2020, as the pandemic began to wreak havoc on the economy.
The incidents spurred an independent review by the Office of Inspector General for the Federal Reserve Board, and the Fed on Monday issued a rare public statement saying the probe was meant to ensure the trading behavior “was in compliance with both the relevant ethics rules and the law.” The Fed is also undergoing its own ethics review of trading rules for top officials.
Ars Technica
One America News founder claimed he started network at AT&T’s request
AT&T "told us they wanted a conservative network," OAN founder said in court.
A Reuters report published today with the title "How AT&T helped build far-right One America News" alleges that the telecom giant played a significant role "in creating and funding OAN, a network that continues to spread conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and the COVID-19 pandemic." […]
OAN owner Herring Networks claimed in a 2016 lawsuit that AT&T promised to carry OAN on DirecTV in exchange for OAN's public support of AT&T's attempt to purchase the satellite provider, which required government approval. OAN's lawsuit claimed that AT&T reneged on the deal once its purchase of DirecTV was finalized in 2015. OAN finally got on DirecTV in 2017, weeks after agreeing to drop its lawsuit against AT&T. Herring also claimed in court that AT&T in 2013 proposed acquiring a 5 percent ownership stake in Herring, but that purchase was never made.
Algorithms shouldn’t be protected by Section 230, Facebook whistleblower tells Senate
Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen testified before a Senate panel yesterday, recommending a slate of changes to rein in the company, including a Section 230 overhaul that would hold the social media giant responsible for its algorithms that promote content based on the engagement it receives in users' news feeds.
“If we had appropriate oversight, or if we reformed [Section] 230 to make Facebook responsible for the consequences of their intentional ranking decisions, I think they would get rid of engagement-based ranking,” Haugen said. “Because it is causing teenagers to be exposed to more anorexia content, it is pulling families apart, and in places like Ethiopia, it’s literally fanning ethnic violence.”
Haugen made sure to distinguish between user-generated content and Facebook’s algorithms, which prioritize the content in news feeds and drive engagement. She suggested that Facebook should not be responsible for content that users post on its platforms but that it should be held liable once its algorithms begin making decisions about which content people see.
Just Security
How Facebook is Misleading the Public About Its Role in January 6
On Sunday, Facebook Vice President of Policy and Global Affairs Nick Clegg pushed back on CNN’s Brian Stelter when the host of Reliable Sources asked Clegg to respond to expected allegations from Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen about the role the platform played in the events of January 6th.
“I think if the assertion is that January the 6th can be explained because of social media, I just think that’s ludicrous. The responsibility for the violence of January the 6th and the insurrection on that day lies squarely with the people who inflicted the violence and those who encouraged them, including then-President Trump, and candidly, many other people elsewhere in the media who were encouraging the assertion that the election was stolen,” he said, suggesting that the relationship between social media and divisions in society is unclear. “I think a sweeping assertion that the violence that happened on January the 6th can be explained primarily, secondarily, any other way by social media is a woeful simplification of the much wider divisions in society, which had been brewing for a very long time.” […]
The Facebook argument about January 6th is a classic scarecrow. No one can plausibly argue that Facebook or other social media platforms are primarily responsible for the deep divisions in the United States or the incitement to violence on January 6th. But that does not mean it is wrong to be concerned with the role that social media plays in exacerbating divisions, and certainly in creating the conditions for — and indeed facilitating — political violence. Haugen’s account adds to what is known, and prompts new questions that congressional investigators should pursue. The publicly available evidence now suggests Facebook and its most senior executives are deliberately misleading the public about the role the platform
The Atlantic
The Rot of Democracies
If America succumbs to its internal divisions, to its preoccupation with partisan feuding and its desire to withdraw from international politics, the world order, such as it is, will crumble.
Kamala Harris Might Have to Stop the Steal
For a few hours inside the ransacked Capitol on January 6, then–Vice President Mike Pence helped to preserve the democratic order by insisting that he was powerless to change the outcome of the election. On January 6, 2025, that responsibility could fall to Vice President Kamala Harris, but the task of preventing a stolen presidential election won’t be that simple.
The nightmare scenarios that most frighten election observers heading toward 2024 all culminate in a quadrennial Joint Session of Congress—the same formal meeting that rioters interrupted in their failed bid to keep Donald Trump in the White House earlier this year. What scares them, however, is not necessarily a reprise of that violent day. They fear a bloodless coup that begins in state capitals, wins the blessing of conservatives atop the courts, and then secures the decisive votes of Trump-supporting Republicans in Congress. The risk of an even worse crisis is greater in 2024, these election experts say, because Trump supporters are likely to be far better positioned than they were in 2020. “Our democracy is in great peril today,” Norm Eisen, a prominent Democratic lawyer who co-founded the nonpartisan States United Democracy Center, told me. “We’re in a Weimar moment in America.”
Should Trump or his acolytes try to subvert the 2024 election, the last Democrat with any power to stop the steal—or at least try to—would be Harris. “She’s certainly going to have quite a job on her hands on January 6, 2025,” Laurence Tribe, a Harvard law professor and liberal constitutional scholar, told me. Nine months ago, Tribe and other Democrats praised Pence for interpreting his authority narrowly, but the next time around, they might ask Harris to wield the same gavel more forcefully.