Search Results for: BID

Insight about the abuse of power by MAGA Republicans and their “Three Stooges” antics to avoid governance

The Associated Press ran a story by national political reporter Brian Slodysko on December 14 titled “The Republican leading the probe of Hunter Biden has his own shell company and complicated friends.” It told the story of how Representative James Comer (R-KY), the chair of the House Oversight Committee, has a financial history that looks a great deal like that of which he accuses the Bidens, including a shell company that appears to ethics experts to have problematic connections to a campaign donor. Comer is leading the House impeachment effort against President Joe Biden, an effort that Philip Bump...

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Some of Trump’s 2020 fake electors in Wisconsin and other states still have roles in how 2024 race is run

Nearly two years after he signed false documents attempting to overturn Donald Trump’s 2020 loss in Nevada, Jim Hindle thanked everyone gathered in a historic Nevada boomtown’s commission chambers and asked them to bear with him while he learned how to oversee elections in rural Storey County. Hindle was another replacement in what was a revolving door of county election officials across Nevada as the 2022 midterms approached. He had just unseated the interim clerk, who had stepped in after the prior clerk resigned. But Hindle’s tenure in the heavily Republican county is part of a trend across battleground...

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Poisoning our blood: Trump invokes rhetoric against immigrants similar to Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kempf”

Donald Trump, the criminally indicted Republican presidential front-runner in 2024, delivered alarming anti-immigrant remarks about “blood” purity, echoing Nazi slogans of World War II to cheers at a political rally. Speaking in the early-voting state of New Hampshire, Trump drew on words similar to Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kempf” as the former U.S. president berated Biden’s team over the flow of migrants. “They’re poisoning the blood of our country,” Trump said about the numbers of immigrants coming to the U.S. without immediate legal status. Ironically, two of his three wives were immigrants who lived in America for years before becoming...

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The Pandemic We Wasted: How we could have transcended our self-erected barriers of politics

What do you remember about the first days of the pandemic? I remember going to three grocery stores with a rising sense of dread as the shelves became more and more bare. I remember the disorienting uncertainty as our routines were interrupted and our normal imploded. I remember looking everywhere for bread and the bread was gone, so I learned to bake bread — and then could not find flour or yeast. I remember feeling like everything was shifting, that nothing felt stable. I also remember that I thought things were going to be different now. We know the...

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Few specifics reported on how local governments are spending billions of pandemic relief funds

Joplin officials say they have big plans for $13.8 million of pandemic relief funds the tornado-ravaged southwestern Missouri city received under a two-year-old federal law. Yet the latest federal records show none of the money has been spent, or even budgeted. In fact, about 6,300 cities and counties — nearly 1 in 4 nationwide — reported no expenditures as of this spring, according to an Associated Press analysis of data released by the U.S. Treasury Department. About 5,100 of those listed no projects — either planned or underway. So what gives? Is the money not needed? Are cities just...

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European Union snubs Russian dictator after agreeing to open membership negotiations with Ukraine

The European Union decided on December 14 to open accession negotiations with Ukraine, a significant moment and stunning reversal for a country at war that had struggled to find the backing for its membership aspirations and long faced obstinate opposition from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. European Council President Charles Michel, who was chairing a Brussels summit of the EU’s 27 leaders where the decision was made, called it “a clear signal of hope for their people and our continent.” Although the process between opening negotiations and Ukraine finally becoming a member could take many years, Ukrainian President Volodymyr...

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