Category: Latest News

Kristi Noem still brags about defying public health advice — but an expert just showed why it was a disaster

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South Dakota and Vermont are not only two very different states politically — they are also two states that have had very different COVID-19 outcomes. And Dr. Ashish Jha, a dean at the Brown University School of Public Health who is often featured as a medical expert on MSNBC, lays out some reasons for those outcomes in an op-ed published by the Washington Post this week. 

South Dakota is a deep red state with a Republican governor, Kristi Noem, who is a far-right supporter of former President Donald Trump and has been highly critical of COVID-19 restrictions and social distancing measures. Even now, she still brags about her refusal to comply with basic public health precautions:

Vermont, in contrast, is a blue state that has a Republican governor, Phil Scott, who leans conservative economically but is far from a Trump loyalist. Although Scott has policy differences with Vermont’s Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-described “democratic socialist,” he crossed party lines in the 2020 presidential election and voted for now-President Joe Biden — not Trump. And Scott has never been a coronavirus denier. Continue reading.

Historic Legislation tp Counteract China and Restore American Global Leadership Clears Committee with Four Phillips-Authored Provisions

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WASHINGTON, DC – This week, Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN) and his colleagues on the House Foreign Affairs Committee approved the Ensuring American Global Leadership and Engagement (EAGLE) Act, an unprecedented China policy package that invests in U.S. diplomacy, strengthens U.S. economic leadership that bolsters engagement, enhances transparency, and empowers American workers and small businesses, and holds our adversaries to account for their unacceptable violations of human rights.

“Partisan gridlock and dangerous complacency have hamstrung our economic development and damaged our standing on the world stage,” said Rep. Phillips. “But after years of inaction, the House of Representatives will finally consider bold legislation to revive our role as a global leader and safeguard American interests in the face of growing strategic competition with China. Strengthened by my amendments, the EAGLE Act is a sign that Congress – at long last – would rather lead than cede.”

The EAGLE Act included four amendments authored by Rep. Phillips that would bolster our national security and support U.S. foreign policy priorities in the face of an ascendent China, including:

Continue reading “Historic Legislation tp Counteract China and Restore American Global Leadership Clears Committee with Four Phillips-Authored Provisions”

Senate Democrats, White House agree on $3.5 trillion budget package

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Biden headed to Capitol Hill on Wednesday for sales pitch; Warner says plan is ‘fully paid for’

Top Senate Democrats and White House officials reached agreement late Tuesday on an overall spending target of $3.5 trillion for a filibuster-proof budget reconciliation package that Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer said will fund “every major program” President Joe Biden proposed in his economic plans.

Biden will come to the Capitol Wednesday to help Schumer and Budget Committee members pitch the spending target to the broader Senate Democratic Caucus over lunch. In a key selling point for his fellow centrists Democrats, Virginia Sen. Mark Warner told reporters the plan will be “fully paid for.”

The $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill, combined with $579 billion new spending in a bipartisan infrastructure bill that is still being drafted, will bring the total new spending on infrastructure, climate, child care, education and paid leave programs to $4.1 trillion. That figure “is very, very close to what President Biden asked us for,” Schumer said. “Every major program that President Biden has asked us for is funded in a robust way.” Continue reading.

The dark post-conservative ideas at a right-wing think tank give a foreboding glimpse of Trumpism’s future

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Although not as well-known as other right-wing think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and the libertarian Cato Institute, the Claremont Institute has been around since 1979 — when it was founded in California by students of the late Harry V. Jaffa, who had been a speechwriter during Sen. Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign. Claremont has taken a decidedly Trumpian turn in recent years, and in a lengthy article published by The Bulwark this week, Laura K. Field (a senior fellow at the Niskanen Center) argues that Claremont has been overtaken by far-right conspiracy theorists, “election lies” and authoritarianism.

“The Claremont Institute used to be one of the principal places for conservative intellectuals to come together,” Field explains. “It was founded by scholars who were taken seriously even by people who disagreed with them, and some such scholars still publish in the pages of the (Claremont Review of Books). That Claremont has been unparalleled in its intellectual submission to Trumpism should give us pause. After all, in some respects, the Claremont crowd is precisely the sort who should have known better: deeply read in political philosophy and history, and familiar with the many warning signs that Trump would be a damaging and divisive president. There is also a sense, however, in which the Claremont crowd’s submission to Trump was the most predictable thing in the world — the simple culmination of a political theory rooted in jingoism and denial.”

Field goes on to cite specific examples of how long Claremont has sunk, noting that Jack Michael Posobiec III, who promoted the ludicrous Pizzagate conspiracy theory, and Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk — a promoter of the Big Lie — are both Lincoln Fellows for Claremont. According to Field, Claremont has been hijacked by “intellectual cheerleaders for Trump” and others who have promoted the Big Lie that Trump won the 2020 election and was victimized by widespread voter fraud. Continue reading.

Biden calls passing voting legislation ‘a national imperative’ and castigates voting restrictions based on ‘a big lie’

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PHILADELPHIA — President Biden on Tuesday delivered his most forceful condemnation yet of the wave of voting restrictions proposed in Republican-led states nationwide — efforts the president argued are the biggest threat to American democracy since the Civil War.

Biden’s speech was an attempt to inject new life into flagging efforts to pass federal legislation addressing the issue. But while he intensified his explanation of the stakes, his speech did not include a call for the Senate to change the filibuster, which is seen by advocates as the best, and perhaps only, way to usher in the kinds of changes Biden is seeking.

At the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, in a room filled with images of Benjamin Franklin and quotes from Daniel Webster and Theodore Roosevelt, Biden compared the new laws to voter suppression by the Ku Klux Klan and to the Jim Crow-era laws that disenfranchised nearly all voters who were not White and male. He railed against laws that restrict access — calling them “raw and sustained election subversion” — and said that the 2022 midterm elections could highlight the damaging effects of the new laws. Continue reading.

‘I was there’: Reporters sharply rebuke Megyn Kelly for claiming the media exaggerated the insurrection

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Megyn Kelly is under fire after telling a Trump-voting comedian on her podcast that the “media represented” the January 6 attack on the Capitol “as so much worse than it actually was.”

Kelly, who also claimed on Monday it “wasn’t an insurrection,” was not in the Capitol that day. Her guest, who was at the Capitol January 6 described it as, “like, mostly the, the most chill thing ever, just like people have blankets and picnics and families.”

But an actual reporter who was at the Capitol during the January 6 insurrection made sure to correct the record. Continue reading.

Biden rips Trump’s ‘big lie’ in voting rights address

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President Biden on Tuesday decried inflammatory and false claims from former President Trump and his allies about the 2020 election and broader efforts to restrict access to the ballot in a major speech on voting rights.

Biden blasted efforts from Trump and others to sow doubt about the election months after it concluded, which have spurred action from GOP-led state legislatures to push new elections laws that would limit absentee voting and make it more difficult for certain groups to vote.

“It’s clear, for those who challenge the results or question the integrity of the election, no other election has ever been held under such scrutiny or such high standards. ‘The big lie’ is just that, a big lie,” Biden said at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. Continue reading.

‘It’s devastating’: Unvaccinated woman thought she could ‘escape’ COVID-19 – now she says she’ll ‘never be the same’

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After a rough battle with COVID-19, a North Carolina woman who was unvaccinated is now urging people to get the shot, 13News reports.

“I thought I was healthy enough and that I could escape it,” said Linda Edwards, who contracted the virus about three weeks ago. “Really, it was the most frightening thing I’ve ever been through in my life.” 

“It was devastating. I had no dreams of ever staying that long. It’s the longest I’ve ever been in the hospital,” she said of her two-week hospital stay. “I was there hoping and praying my son was okay here because he had tested positive, too.” Continue reading.

On TikTok, audio gives new virality to misinformation

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The Institute for Strategic Dialogue analyzed 124 TikTok videos featuring vaccine misinformation that garnered more than 20 million views and 2 million likes, comments and shares.

In December, a Wisconsin man who goes by the username the_alpha_k9 on TikTok uploaded a testimonial-style video to the platform, telling his thousands of followers that he wouldn’t be taking a Covid-19 vaccine. 

“You’re telling me in 40 years of research there is no vaccine for HIV … for cancer, no vaccine … the common cold, no vaccine,” he said. “Yet in one year we’ve developed a vaccine for COVID-19 and you want me to take that … thanks, but no thanks.”

It was one of the many debunked, run-of-the-mill anti-vaccination talking points that have permeated many social platforms during the Covid-19 pandemic. But on TikTok, where users regularly reuse popular audio tracks to make their own videos, it took on a life of its own. More than 4,500 videos featuring the audio have been made, which have been viewed more than 16 million times, according to a report published Monday by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London-based organization that tracks disinformation. Continue reading.

‘Stop lying!’ After quitting GOP, Jenna Ellis throws a fit at Ronna McDaniel by leaking election email

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Jenna Ellis, who fought to overturn the 2020 election on behalf of Donald Trump, leaked an email on Tuesday to show that the Republican National Committee (RNC) did not take the former president’s election fraud claims seriously.

Earlier this week, Ellis said that she was quitting the Republican Party after GOP chairwoman Ronna McDaniel blocked her on Twitter. 

During a Tuesday morning appearance on Newsmax, McDaniel was asked about claims that the Republican Party misused $220 million that it had raised in the wake of Trump’s November election loss. Continue reading.