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Warren accuses Congress of complicity in Trump’s continued abuses

Sen. Elizabeth Warren accused the U.S. Congress of complicity in President Donald Trump’s continued abuse of power late Friday, after reports surfaced of his alleged attempts to solicit foreign meddling in the 2020 presidential election, and reiterated her demand that Democrats use their majority in the House to pursue impeachment. Warren’s tweeted statement came hours […]

California finally has a progressive government. Here’s how it’s changing the game.

Democrats won supermajorities in both houses of the California legislature in 2006. They have dominated Golden State politics ever since, defying conservative expectations. Instead of sinking into deficits and collapsing, California is running a budget surplus, and has become the world’s 5th largest economy. However, tensions between the Democratic establishment and grassroots activists have continued […]

Nancy Pelosi faces serious challenges — but she’s failed miserably in two key ways

As I wrote earlier this week, with its muddled messaging on impeachment, the House Democratic leadership may have figured out a way of both demoralizing the Democratic base and firing up Trump’s supporters. It’s a mess. But fairness requires us to acknowledge an important fact: Speaker Nancy Pelosi doesn’t have the votes to launch an […]

Yale psychiatrist on what the whistleblower scandal reveals about Trump’s ‘self-defeating pathology’

On Thursday, information emerged that a whistleblower in the intelligence community had officially submitted a complaint suggesting that President Donald Trump had had a compromising discussion with a foreign leader. As the news circulated Friday, commentators raised the possibility that Trump had offered the president of Ukraine a stronger relationship in exchange for dirt on […]

How Facebook makes money when people are slaughtered

The National Rifle Association nearly doubled its spending on pro-gun Facebook propaganda for three weeks after the mass shootings last month in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, according to analytics provided to The Intercept. The social advertising surge began just one day after the Aug. 3 El Paso massacre, which left 22 people dead, […]

How the tyrant in the White House just took our government to a new depth of depravity

To me, it feels ice-tinglingly creepy that the U.S. Attorney Jessie Liu in Washington wants to bring criminal charges against former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe. The charge, basically that McCabe lied about a leak to a reporter, seems to come nowhere near close to supporting a criminal charge after 18 months of investigation, an […]

Here’s what really went down with Trump’s Taliban peace talks misadventure

Donald Trump is not known for finessing foreign policy but for years prior to his election and during his campaign, he was mostly right about Afghanistan. He called it a “total disaster,” said it was “wasting our money” and that we should leave “immediately.” It seemed that Trump understood the timeless – if sometimes historically […]

Is it an impeachment inquiry, an investigation or something else?

There has been a gymnastic drama going on in the Capitol, where fans of impeaching Donald Trump and those who think that process is not the best way to confront the president are writhing in definitional arm-wrestling. Weirdly, any value you might assign to the actual words used, you can expect a lot more confrontational […]

Trump is all for preventing unintentional suicides — but not intentional homicides of Americans

How revealing that just six deaths from vaping prompted Donald Trump to move Wednesday against e-cigarettes, while at least 276 deaths in massacres since he took office haven’t prompted any presidential move against assault rifles and other guns. Even applying the twisted logic of the Second Amendment absolutists, Trump’s action is surprising since e-cigarettes don’t […]

Your grocery store chain is trying to kill your favorite local newsweekly — but you still have time to stop them

In 1984, Peter Saltas’ dad started writing and distributing free newsletters called Private Eye in Utah bars. Since bars were banned from advertising in Salt Lake, the newsletters were a way to tip patrons off about music shows and other events. In 1989, he combined the newsletters into a single publication called the Salt Lake […]

Longtime Fox News producer: ‘I can’t tell you how unpopular Trump is here’

Does Fox News need President Donald Trump? Or does President Trump need Fox News? If former Fox News strongman and Trump supporter, the late Roger Ailes, were still running the network, those questions might never come up. But as Trump himself tweeted in June after Fox reported that Trump was trailing five presidential candidates in […]

Democrats amass a $300 million war chest — to fight each other

The fund-raising appeals are coming fast and furious, now, particularly toward the end of each month as Democratic Party candidates and organizers use a mix of guilt, pride and begging to press for just another $5 or $50 or $500. We all understand that political campaigns are run on money, and there is a general […]

Unmasked: New planned Alaska pipeline could spew 3.5 billion cubic feet of gas — per day

800-Mile, $43-Billion Project Is Intended to Send Liquified Natural Gas To China Republicans are trying to push through a $43 billion liquified natural gas project in Alaska that could be a financial dud, harm whales and polar bears, and help cook our overheating planet. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which by law is supposed to […]

How State Republican parties are stacking the deck for Trump’s renomination

What is Donald Trump afraid of, besides a leaky Sharpie pen that may draw circles on weather maps by itself? News that South Carolina’s Republican Party, not a group that I follow much, had called off the state’s primary election for next year is a reminder that Trump does not like playing fair. As it […]

Trump and Fox News: Can this marriage be saved?

Does Fox News need President Trump? Or does President Trump need Fox News? If former Fox News strongman and Trump supporter, the late Roger Ailes, were still running the network, those questions might never come up. But as Trump himself tweeted in June after Fox reported that Trump was trailing five presidential candidates in the […]

Even Team Trump found the price for helping the ‘beautiful’ coal industry was more than they could stomach

Hard as it to believe, it appears that the Trump administration on Monday will actually do something right by workers. It’s doing so after trying to save $11 million per year in construction and maritime costs to help one corner of a polluting industry that Trump calls beautiful: coal. The price for those savings: two […]

Trump is losing much more than just a trade war — he’s losing America’s future

While White House reporters investigate who added a Sharpie line to a hurricane map, a huge global story is developing that bodes badly for the economic welfare of Americans for decades to come. China is using Trump’s gratuitous trade war to expand its economic, diplomatic and military influence. And it is succeeding, diminishing America’s influence, […]

A Yale psychiatrist explains the dangerous mental pathology behind Trump’s unhinged ‘Sharpiegate’ fiasco

Over the past week, as Hurricane Dorian battered the Bahamas and parts of the U.S., the news cycle was roiled by the so-called “Sharpie-gate.” On the one hand, President Donald Trump’s original offense—using a map doctored with a pen to suggest, falsely, that Alabama was in the path of the storm—was relatively minor. But the […]

Hurricane forecasts are about to get a whole lot worse

If You Can’t Find Dorian, Blame the New 5G Cellphone Networks If you’ve been transfixed by the minute-by-minute tracking of Hurricane Dorian, thank a weather satellite. Data from weather satellites, weather stations and radar makes it possible for forecasters to use computer simulations to predict a hurricane’s path — and those predictions, though imperfect, help save lives. […]

Donald Trump: America’s dangerous obsessive-compulsive-in-chief

We have a president who gets obsessed. Sometimes these obsessions are relatively innocent, as in demands for personal luxuries on Air Force One or a big scoop of ice cream. But too often, they touch on matters much more sensitive, even dangerous. Trump’s immigration policy is a good example. Yes, it arises from certain beliefs […]

Republicans want to make it easier for corporations to pollute in minority and low-income communities

Republicans are trying to weaken a federal board that helps minority and low-income communities challenge how much pollution can be released in their neighborhoods by power plants and factories. The Environmental Appeals Board would be stripped of its ability to hear appeals of EPA-issued pollution permits from citizens, states, cities and Native American tribes. Businesses […]

Trump ‘conclusively’ failed a basic evaluation of mental capacity: Yale psychiatrist

A new study finds that President Donald Trump’s hardcore fans are driven by “chaos” and think “society should be burned to the ground.” That sentiment is often conveyed by Trump, who seems to delight in blowing up the norms of the executive branch: the president spent the summer riling up supporters at rallies by accusing […]

North Dakota may be hiding an oil spill larger than the Exxon Valdez

Workers cleaning up an oil spill in North Dakota that is officially listed as 10 gallons recovered 240,000 gallons, but the actual number might be larger than the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska in 1989 which released about 11 million gallons of crude. The discrepancy in the numbers, first reported by the environmental blog DeSmog, […]

Is North Dakota hiding a gigantic oil spill?

Happy Labor Day: Trump’s trade war isn’t bringing jobs back from China

If you believe even a scintilla of the Chinese trade talk from the White House, you likely accept the notion that these trade disputes are bringing companies and jobs back to the United States. Here’s my question: Is it true? If the companies and jobs are not coming back, where exactly is the beef of […]