Top Items:
Lydia Saad / Gallup:
Justice Roberts Tops Federal Leaders in Americans' Approval — WASHINGTON, D.C. — Chief Justice John Roberts earns the highest job approval rating of 11 U.S. leaders rated in a Dec. 1-16 Gallup poll with 60% approving of how he is handling his role. — Only two other leaders on the list …
Discussion:
The Daily Caller
Hugo Lowell / The Guardian:
Capitol panel to investigate Trump call to Willard hotel in hours before attack — Committee to request contents of the call seeking to stop Biden's certification and may subpoena Rudy Giuliani — Congressman Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack …
Discussion:
emptywheel and Raw Story
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Stephen Collinson / CNN:
Trump and the January 6 committee are now locked in a full-on confrontation — (CNN)Nearly a year after his failed coup attempt, Donald Trump's habit of putting his own political gain over truth is playing out again as the ex-commander-in-chief and his associates seek to delay and defy …
Mike Allen / Axios:
Arizona Senate candidate brings NFTs to politics — Blake Masters, co-author of tech pioneer Peter Thiel's blockbuster “Zero to One,” and now a Republican U.S. Senate candidate in Arizona, is offering NFTs with a limit of 99 copies. — Why it matters: Masters, 35, told Axios the plan is to attract support …
Discussion:
The Daily Caller
Colby Itkowitz / Washington Post:
House MAGA squad seeks to expand by boosting challengers to fellow Republicans — The defiant far-right acolytes of former president Donald Trump in the House Republican caucus have embarked on a targeted campaign ahead of the midterm elections to expand their ranks — and extend their power — on Capitol Hill.
Discussion:
Raw Story
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Peter Wehner / The Atlantic:
The Gospel of Donald Trump Jr.
The Gospel of Donald Trump Jr.
Discussion:
HillReporter.com, Mediaite and Raw Story
Parul Sehgal / New Yorker:
The Case Against the Trauma Plot — Fiction writers love it. Filmmakers can't resist it. But does this trope deepen characters, or flatten them into a set of symptoms? — It was on a train journey, from Richmond to Waterloo, that Virginia Woolf encountered the weeping woman.
Washington Free Beacon:
2021 Man of the Year: Ed Durr — New Jersey's pantheon of legends is, well, legendary. It includes the likes of Frank Sinatra, Bruce Springsteen, Steven Spielberg, Derek Jeter, Zach Braff. Joining this long and illustrious list is a state senator-elect by the name of Edward Durr Jr.
Mark Niesse / Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
Alleged ‘dead’ Georgia voters found alive and well after 2020 election — Trump's allegations of vast voter fraud debunked — False claims that there were thousands of ballots cast in the names of dead Georgia voters can now rest in peace. — Election investigators found …
The Daily Beast:
Why 2022 Could Be ‘The Year of the Political Comeback’ — It's a redemption year for these politicians. — Every election year, American politicians find new and ever more brazen ways to disprove that old F. Scott Fitzgerald adage—that there are “no second acts in American lives.”
Discussion:
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Daniel Greenfield / Front Page Magazine:
FrontPage Magazine's Man of the Year - Kyle Rittenhouse — Kyle reminds us that any American can stand up to evil. And win. — Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
Washington Post:
Michael Fanone deserves the nation's gratitude. That's not what he has gotten. — Michael Fanone, who resigned Dec. 20 from the D.C. police, was a profile in courage twice this year. — First, when he stood his ground against a violent mob of President Donald Trump's supporters on Jan. 6 …
Discussion:
The Guardian
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David Bauder / Associated Press:
Outlets hurt by dwindling public interest in news in 2021 — NEW YORK (AP) — The presidential election, pandemic and racial reckoning were stories that drove intense interest and engagement to news outlets in 2020. To a large degree, 2021 represented the inevitable hangover.
Tal Axelrod / The Hill:
GOP optimism grows over possible red wave in 2022 — With less than a year to go until the 2022 midterms, Republicans are increasingly bullish on the prospect of a red wave that could flip both chambers of Congress and end Democrats' unified control in Washington.
Discussion:
New York Post, Breitbart, Jacobin and Bloomberg
Ian Millhiser / Vox:
Just how much is Trump's judiciary sabotaging the Biden presidency? — More than a year after Trump's defeat, Biden is forced to share power with increasingly partisan judges. — No one has ever elected Matthew Kacsmaryk to anything. — Kacsmaryk, whom former President Donald Trump appointed …
Discussion:
Associated Press and Raw Story