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12:40 PM ET, August 12, 2021

memeorandum

 Top Items: 
Washington Post:
A majority of Americans in highly vaccinated counties now live in covid hot spots, Post analysis finds  —  Two-thirds of Americans in highly vaccinated counties now live in coronavirus hot spots, according to an analysis by The Washington Post, as outbreaks of the highly transmissible delta variant …
RELATED:
Ed Yong / The Atlantic:
How the Pandemic Now Ends  —  In September 2020, just before COVID-19 began its wintry surge through the United States, I wrote that the country was trapped in a pandemic spiral, seemingly destined to repeat the same mistakes.  But after vaccines arrived in midwinter, cases in the U.S. declined and …
New York Times:
Why Only 27 Percent of Young Black New Yorkers Are Vaccinated  —  As the Delta variant courses through New York City, many young Black New Yorkers remain distrustful of the vaccine.  —  A construction site safety manager in Queens said that as a Black man, he was more worried about the prospect …
Los Angeles Times:
California doing much better with Delta variant than Florida, Texas. Here's why
Discussion: ACA Signups
Drake Bennett / Bloomberg:   Business Is Using Less Carrot and More Stick on Vaccinations
Lara Jakes / New York Times:
U.S. Asks Taliban to Spare Its Embassy in Coming Fight for Kabul  —  The demand seeks to stave off an evacuation of the embassy by dangling aid to future Afghan governments — even one that includes the Taliban.  —  WASHINGTON — American negotiators are trying to extract assurances …
RELATED:
Craig Whitlock / Washington Post:   The grand illusion: Hiding the truth about the Afghanistan war's ‘conclusion’
Michael Crowley / New York Times:
Taliban Advances in Afghanistan Could Bring Political Peril for Biden
Discussion: The Hill and The Western Journal
Courtney Kube / NBC News:   Potential Al Qaeda resurgence in Afghanistan worries U.S. officials
Joseph Clark / Washington Times:
EXCLUSIVE: Cyber expert says his team can't prove Mike Lindell's claims that China hacked election  —  SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — The cyber expert on the “red team” hired by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell now says the key data underpinning the theory that China hacked the 2020 election unveiled at the Cyber Symposium is illegitimate.
RELATED:
Daniel Villarreal / Newsweek:
‘This Is a Mistake’: Steve Bannon Slams Mike Lindell's Symposium for Not Proving Voter Fraud
Discussion: Crooks and Liars
Mary L. Trump / New Republic:
Donald's Plot Against America  —  I felt as though I had stumbled across a crime scene so violent that I couldn't process it, let alone synthesize the images in front of me.  The parts remained stubbornly separate, and there was no way to grasp the meaning of the whole.
Adam Serwer / The Atlantic:
Greg Abbott Surrenders to the Coronavirus  —  A year and a half into the pandemic, Texas is running out of hospital beds.  —  The Texas Tribune reported on Tuesday that nearly 10,000 COVID-19 patients have been hospitalized, and that the state's intensive-care units are being overwhelmed.
RELATED:
Washington Post:
Texas Senate passes bill with new voting restrictions after a Democrat filibustered for 15 hours to try to stop the measure  —  AUSTIN — The Texas Senate on Thursday approved a bill that contains new voting restrictions after a Democratic senator filibustered for 15 hours to try to stop the legislation …
Discussion: Mother Jones and National Review
RELATED:
Alexa Ura / The Texas Tribune:
Texas Sen. Carol Alvarado's filibuster against GOP elections bill passes twelve hours  —  The Houston Democrat has been on her feet speaking, not allowed to sit or lean against her desk, and unable to take bathroom breaks or drink water, since Wednesday evening.
Politico:
Emails: Senior DOJ officials wrangled over baseless Trump voter fraud allegations  —  During Donald Trump's final weeks in office, top Justice Department officials wrangled over how the FBI should handle a particularly wacky voter fraud allegation promoted by the then-president and his allies.
Washington Post:
What Rosen told U.S. senators: Trump applied ‘persistent’ pressure to get Justice to discredit election  —  Former president Donald Trump's last attorney general has told U.S. senators his boss was “persistent” in trying to pressure the Justice Department to discredit the results of the 2020 election.
Marc Caputo / Politico:
White House seizes an opportunity to whack DeSantis  —  MIAMI — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis made himself the national face of the anti-Biden Covid-response resistance.  —  So the president decided to punch it.  —  For the past two weeks, Biden and his allies have publicly escalated a war …
Drew Harwell / Washington Post:
Rumble, a YouTube rival popular with conservatives, will pay creators who ‘challenge the status quo’  —  The video site has exploded during the pandemic as a home for anti-vaccine misinformation and conservative complaints about Big Tech censorship  —  A fast-growing YouTube rival popular …
Greg Sargent / Washington Post:
The GOP strategy for retaking power is about to take an ugly new turn  —  It is a brutal reality about this political moment that Republicans can capture the House while dwelling almost exclusively in the safe confines of their alternate information environment.
David Wallace-Wells / New York Magazine:
Don't Panic, But Breakthrough Cases May Be a Bigger Problem Than You've Been Told Current public-health messaging may understate the scale and risk.  —  The term itself, perhaps, is a problem.  “Breakthrough” sounds bad — implying an immune-escape mutation, likely rare, and therefore alarming.
Discussion: Tennessee Star
Politico:
How Schumer's kept his Democrats in array — so far  —  Chuck Schumer got his progressives to swallow a bipartisan deal that tasted about as good to them as wilted spinach.  Now he'll need to bring his leery moderates along for the whole meal.  —  The Senate majority leader is not known …
Discussion: Washington Post
RELATED:
Jazz Shaw / HotAir:
House socialists may hold infrastructure bill hostage. Let them.
Isaac Stanley-Becker / Washington Post:
Rand Paul discloses 16 months late that his wife bought stock in company behind covid treatment  —  An aide to the Kentucky Republican said he prepared the disclosure last year and only recently learned that it was never transmitted  —  Sen. Rand Paul revealed Wednesday that his wife bought stock …
Cindy Krischer Goodman / Sun-Sentinel:
Broward County hospital admissions lead US, as Florida COVID cases hit another daily high at 24,753  —  For the 11th straight day, Florida hospitals set records for the number of COVID patients they are treating, and on Wednesday the state set a new high for daily cases.
The Daily Beast:
Trump Keeps Rejecting Pleas From Allies for Pro-Vax Campaign  —  Donald Trump's former allies keep pleading with him to aggressively back the COVID-19 vaccine.  Trump won't do it.  —  It's been more than six months since Donald Trump left office and, despite pleas from multiple friends and advisers …
Discussion: Raw Story and Joe.My.God.
David Ljunggren / Reuters:
Canada PM Trudeau planning snap election, seeks approval for COVID response - sources  —  Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is planning a snap election for Sept. 20 to seek voter approval for the government's costly plans to combat COVID-19, four sources familiar with the matter said on Thursday.
Discussion: VICE and Politico
Hussein Ibish / The Atlantic:
When They Fantasize About Killing You, Believe Them  —  Decades of living in, studying, and writing about the Middle East have taught me that whenever a political faction becomes obsessed with violent rhetoric and fantasies, brutal acts aren't far behind.  And while there's always been a strain …
Discussion: Twitchy and Raw Story
BuzzFeed News:
The Sunrise Movement's Members Of Color Say The Group “Tokenized” And “Used” Them For Years  —  As the youth-led Sunrise Movement helped catapult racial justice to the center of the national conversation on climate change, many of its members of color repeatedly charged over the last three years …
Andy Puzder / Real Clear Politics:
The Biden Inflation Tax, Made Clear in One Chart  —  COMMENTARY  —  What is all this “Biden inflation tax” talk really about?  What is the actual effect of inflation on the lives of real people?  —  Well, below is a chart that compares yearly wage and inflation rates for each month …
NBC News:
California dad killed his kids over QAnon and ‘serpent DNA’ conspiracy theories, feds claim  —  A California surfing school owner who was charged with killing his two children in Mexico is a follower of QAnon and Illuminati conspiracy theories who thought the children “were going to grow …
Andrew Deck / Rest of World:
Substack's global expansion is risky business  —  From India to Brazil, Substack is awarding grants and lending journalists editorial resources.  How far will that support really go?  —  Over the last year, Substack has ridden a wave of subscription newsletter frenzy in the U.S. media industry …
 
 
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 More Items: 
Michael Brendan Dougherty / New York Times:
Pope Francis Is Tearing the Catholic Church Apart
Michael Hiltzik / Los Angeles Times:
Column: Major study of Ivermectin, the anti-vaccine crowd's latest COVID drug, finds ‘no effect whatsoever’
New York Times:
California's Impending Recall Election Is Unconstitutional
Discussion: National Review and Fox News
Mark Joseph Stern / Slate:
Trump Judges Won't Stop Whining About Cancel Culture
Daniel Greenfield / Front Page Magazine:
The Human Rights Campaign's 40 Years of Colluding With Sexual Predators
 Earlier Items: 
Jennifer Kabbany / The College Fix:
University to create equity-based honors program for students of color
Discussion: RedState
Alex Isenstadt / Politico:
Trump to meet with former Cheney ally about Wyoming primary challenge
Discussion: The Hill and IJR
Shawn Nottingham / CNN:
5th graders at Georgia school are sent home due to Covid-19
Discussion: Poynter and Bloomberg
Josh Boswell / Daily Mail:
EXCLUSIVE: ‘The Russians have videos of me doing crazy f***ing sex!’ …
Katie Benner / New York Times:
Former U.S. attorney in Atlanta says Trump wanted to fire him for not backing election fraud claims.
 

 
From Techmeme:

Javier Espinoza / Financial Times:
The EU fines Meta €797.72M for tying Facebook Marketplace to Facebook and “imposing unfair trading conditions” on other online classified ads service providers

Financial Times:
Sources: the US FTC plans to investigate allegations that Microsoft is abusing its market power in productivity software to prevent customers from leaving Azure

Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
OpenAI says the ChatGPT desktop app for macOS can now read code from some developer-focused apps, including VS Code, Xcode, TextEdit, Terminal, and iTerm2
 
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