Top Items:
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 …
Discussion:
Wall Street Journal, U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan, Politico, The Hill, Washington Examiner, ABC News, Washington Free Beacon, Al Jazeera, HotAir, CNN, New York Post, New Republic, Honolulu Star-Advertiser, Commentary Magazine, National Review, Foreign Policy, Sputnik News, The Daily Caller, Twitchy and Lenta.ru
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CNN:
US considering moving embassy in Afghanistan and drawing down personnel as more cities fall to Taliban — The United States is considering relocating its embassy to the Kabul airport amid the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan, a US official, Western diplomatic source …
Discussion:
National Review, Reuters, Insider, Forbes and NPR
Saeed Shah / Wall Street Journal:
Afghans Tell of Executions, Forced Marriages in Taliban-Held Areas
Afghans Tell of Executions, Forced Marriages in Taliban-Held Areas
Discussion:
Twitchy, National Review and Forbes
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 …
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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 …
Discussion:
Kevin Drum, Deseret News, Los Angeles Times and Political Wire
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
California doing much better with Delta variant than Florida, Texas. Here's why
Discussion:
Bloomberg, The Atlantic, ACA Signups and Common Dreams
Jeffrey H. Anderson / City Journal:
Do Masks Work? — “Seriously people—STOP BUYING MASKS!” So tweeted then-surgeon general Jerome Adams …
Do Masks Work? — “Seriously people—STOP BUYING MASKS!” So tweeted then-surgeon general Jerome Adams …
Discussion:
Washington Examiner, Liberty Tree, Los Angeles Times and Clayton Cramer
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.
Discussion:
The Hill, Raw Story, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Sacramento Bee, Daily Kos, Ace of Spades HQ and Real Clear Politics
Mike Schneider / Associated Press:
Census shows US is diversifying, white population shrinking — The Census Bureau on Thursday issued its most detailed portrait yet of how the U.S. has changed over the past decade, releasing a trove of demographic data that will be used to redraw political maps across an increasingly diverse country.
Discussion:
NBC Los Angeles and Eschaton
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ABC News:
Gaetz associate providing feds intel, documents as probe into congressman continues: Sources — Former tax collector Joel Greenberg is cooperating with investigators. — As the federal investigation into Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz continues into the summer, sources tell ABC News that Gaetz's …
Discussion:
Raw Story, Insider, The Hill, Orlando Weekly, Joe.My.God. and The Intellectualist
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:
National Review
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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 …
Discussion:
Washington Examiner and The Wrap, more at Mediagazer »
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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 …
Discussion:
The Guardian, CNN, Daily Kos, Mediaite, Los Angeles Magazine, KTVX-TV, NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth, Insider, Forbes, Los Angeles Times and ABC7
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The Daily Beast:
Rachel Maddow Seriously Considers Leaving MSNBC — As her contract draws to a close, sources told The Daily Beast, the MSNBC icon has been weighing taking her brand elsewhere. … Rachel Maddow has been MSNBC's most high-profile on-air personality for more than a decade …
Discussion:
Mediaite, Hollywood Reporter, The Wrap and Variety, more at Mediagazer »
Ronald Brownstein / The Atlantic:
‘Everybody I Know Is Pissed Off’ — The vaccinated, across party lines, have kind of had it with the unvaccinated, an array of new polls suggests. — While most state and national GOP leaders are focused on defending the rights of unvaccinated Americans, new polling shows that the large majority …
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.
Discussion:
HotAir, Power Line, Talking Points Memo, Raw Story, Washington Examiner and Honolulu Star-Advertiser
Trisha Thadani / San Francisco Chronicle:
San Francisco to become first major U.S. city to mandate full vaccination for many indoor activities — San Francisco will become the first major city in the country to require proof of full vaccination against the coronavirus for a variety of indoor activities, including visiting bars restaurants …
Discussion:
Associated Press, Bloomberg, Los Angeles Times, Breitbart, The Federalist, Joe.My.God., NOQ Report, CBS San Francisco and KRON4
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.
Discussion:
New York Times, Fox News, MSNBC, NBC News and Daily Kos
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.
Discussion:
Mediaite, Vanity Fair, The Hill, Raw Story, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Joe.My.God., The Colorado Sun and Law & Crime
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.
Discussion:
Austin American-Statesman, Outside the Beltway, New York Times, The Texas Tribune, Insider and Off the Kuff
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.
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:
HotAir and Tennessee Star
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 …
Discussion:
The Hill, The Western Journal, Trending Politics, Raw Story, Popular Information and Tennessee Star
Kristyn Burtt / SheKnows:
This Recently Arrested Trump Ally Could Have a Lot to Say About Ivanka Trump's Husband Jared Kushner … The private equity investor was booked on federal charges for lobbying the former president on behalf of the United Arab Emirates. This legal situation possibly has serious consequences for one Trump family member: Jared Kushner.
Discussion:
POLITICUSUSA and Hollywood Reporter
U.S. Department of Justice:
San Fernando Valley Man Found Guilty in Terror Plot to Bomb a Rally in Long Beach — A federal jury convicted a California man today for attempting to bomb a rally in Long Beach for the purpose of causing mass casualties. — According to court documents and evidence presented at trial …
Discussion:
Washington Examiner, The Hill, The Daily Caller and Associated Press
Jonathan Chait / New York Magazine:
Ben Shapiro's Book Is a Glib Rationale for Right-Wing Authoritarianism The Authoritarian Moment is anti-anti-Trumpism distilled. — Like many conservative intellectuals, Ben Shapiro reacted to Donald Trump's rise with horror, declaring, “ I will never vote for this man.”
Jean Guerrero / Los Angeles Times:
Column: Here's how Fox News' white supremacist propaganda can be stopped — In March 2006, then-CNN host Lou Dobbs told viewers about a Mexican conspiracy to reconquer the Southwest, which the United States took from Mexico 158 years earlier in the Mexican-American War.
Wall Street Journal:
CDC Director Says She's Struggling to Communicate With Americans About Covid-19 Amid Politics, Mistrust — ‘My job is to put my head down, ignore the criticism and do the right thing for the public,’ Rochelle Walensky said in an interview — Rochelle Walensky said the patients she treated …
Discussion:
ABC News
Michael Brendan Dougherty / New York Times:
Pope Francis Is Tearing the Catholic Church Apart — Mr. Dougherty, a senior writer at National Review, has written extensively about faith and the Roman Catholic Church. — In the summer of 2001, I drove up to Poughkeepsie, N.Y., to find what we called “the traditional Latin Mass,” …
Eugene Scott / Washington Post:
Incoming New York governor Kathy Hochul will enter 2022 gubernatorial race — New York Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Thursday that she will run for the state's top office in 2022 after completing the remaining term of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D), who plans to step down later this month …
Discussion:
Washington Free Beacon, Politico and Crooks and Liars