“Trump and his campaign targeted voters regardless of their racial differences with his rural-resonant messages of social conservatism—pro-gun, pro-life, pro-military—and anti-NAFTA broadsides that are catnip for an electorate that blames free trade agreements and globalization for shuttered factories and a sinking standard of living. The campaign also added to the equation a hyperspecific and transactional component: very publicly backing the federal recognition the Lumbee have been seeking since the 1800s. Finally, Trump and his most prominent surrogates kept showing up, a persistence that crested with Trump’s rally in the county seat a week and a half before the election—something no sitting president had ever done here.”
“it turns out that your brain on grievance looks a lot like your brain on drugs. In fact, brain imaging studies show that harboring a grievance (a perceived wrong or injustice, real or imagined) activates the same neural reward circuitry as narcotics.”
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“in substance addiction, environmental cues such as being in a place where drugs are taken or meeting another person who takes drugs cause sharp surges of dopamine in crucial reward and habit regions of the brain, specifically, the nucleus accumbens and dorsal striatum. This triggers cravings in anticipation of experiencing pleasure and relief through intoxication. Recent studies show that similarly, cues such as experiencing or being reminded of a perceived wrong or injustice — a grievance — activate these same reward and habit regions of the brain, triggering cravings in anticipation of experiencing pleasure and relief through retaliation. To be clear, the retaliation doesn’t need to be physically violent—an unkind word, or tweet, can also be very gratifying.”
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“similar to the way people become addicted to drugs or gambling, people may also become addicted to seeking retribution against their enemies—revenge addiction. This may help explain why some people just can’t let go of their grievances long after others feel they should have moved on—and why some people resort to violence.”
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“Trump’s unrelenting efforts to retaliate against those he believes have treated him unjustly (including, now, American voters) appear to be compulsive and uncontrollable. The harm this causes to himself and others is obvious but seems to have no deterrent effect. Reports suggest he has been doing this for much of his life. He seems powerless to stop. He also seems to derive a great deal of pleasure from it.”
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“Like substance addiction, revenge addiction appears to spread from person to person. For instance, inner-city gun violence spreads in neighborhoods like a social contagion, with one person’s grievances infecting others with a desire to seek vengeance. Because of his unique position and use of the media and social networks, Trump is able to spread his grievances to thousands or millions of others through Twitter, TV and rallies. His demand for retribution becomes their demand, causing his supporters to crave retaliation—and, in a vicious cycle, this in turn causes Trump’s targets and their supporters to feel aggrieved and want to retaliate, too.”
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“Political parties and interest groups have come to rely upon inflaming grievances and stoking vindictiveness to generate donations and motivate voters. Media, entertainment and social networking giants also rely upon grievance and revenge-based content to attract viewers and users and increase advertising and sales. More people need to become savvy about how, why and for whose benefit they are being made to feel aggrieved and must decide to stop dealing in the drug of their own destruction.”
“The Biden administration will soon begin allowing migrants into the U.S. who, because of a Trump-era policy, have been forced to remain in Mexico while their asylum cases are processed.
As part of the new administration’s efforts to overhaul the immigration system, the Department of Homeland Security, starting next Friday, will begin the first phase of a program to gradually let in migrants with active cases under the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy.”
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“There are about 25,000 migrants with active cases under MPP, but the new program will first focus on those who have been waiting in the program the longest and vulnerable populations”
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“Migrants being processed through the program will be tested for Covid-19 before entering the U.S. And once here, they will be enrolled in an “alternative to detention program” to track them and their cases will be routed to the appropriate court tied to where they settle in the country”
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“Biden has long vowed to end the program, which has resulted in tens of thousands of asylum seekers being forced to stay in Mexico, often under poor living conditions and facing danger. On Biden’s first day in office, DHS announced that it would not enroll anyone else in the program.”
“A new poll hints at one potential reason so many Republican lawmakers remain wary of distancing themselves from former President Donald Trump and seem reluctant to convict him in the Senate’s impeachment trial: There’s a real possibility they’d endanger their electoral prospects.
In a new survey from Vox and Data for Progress, 69 percent of Republicans said they’d be less likely to vote for a political candidate in their state if that person found Trump guilty in the trial, with 56 percent of Republicans saying they’d be much less likely to do so, and 13 percent saying they’d be somewhat less likely to do so.
Many Republicans, too, indicate that they don’t see Trump as being at fault for the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
Broadly, only 22 percent of Republicans surveyed blame Trump for the insurrection, compared to 91 percent of Democrats and 64 percent of independents. Support for the impeachment trial is similarly split along partisan lines, with 12 percent of Republicans agreeing that the Senate should find Trump guilty; 82 percent of Democrats and 52 percent of independents feel the same. Overall, 48 percent of likely voters believe Trump should be found guilty.”
“The central fact of American politics today is that one of the country’s two major political parties is broken. Not merely wrong, but broken in a fundamental way, hostile to democracy and incapable of serving as a good-faith partner in governing.
Trump repeatedly attempted to overturn a legitimate election, an effort that culminated in inciting a mob that threatened the lives of members of Congress. Yet Republicans in that body cannot bring themselves to inflict the appropriate constitutional punishment for this kind of offense even after he has left office and is no longer needed to get judges confirmed and tax cuts passed.
Democracies require accountability to function. Political elites must be held responsible for grievous errors and punished accordingly. The GOP’s decay has destroyed this possibility — but the Senate trial is a necessary step toward fighting back.”
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“It will show that, even in the dramatic case of outright insurrection against the US government, the country’s political system is incapable of holding elites accountable largely due to one party’s extreme partisanship. Demonstrating this will serve as a justification for people, Democrats and civil society alike, to take more dramatic steps to repair American democracy down the line — including pushing for significant reforms of the political system.”
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“To really fix America, Democrats need to engage in a kind of partisan warfare: They need to inflict costs for past misbehavior not only on Trump, but on the Republican Party that enabled him. Most fundamentally, they need to roll back the anti-democratic practices — like extreme gerrymandering and voter suppression tactics — that permit Republicans to remain competitive while appealing primarily to the most reactionary elements of the American public.
There are no costs that politicians pay attention to more than electoral ones. And if Republicans can’t win in the future by embracing leaders like Trump, they won’t be so comfortable excusing anti-democratic abuses down the line.
The tactics Democrats will need to employ in doing this — most notably, radically revising the filibuster to allow the passage of pro-democracy legislation along party lines — will seem extreme. But they will be more justifiable, including to moderate Democrats like Sens. Joe Manchin (WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (AZ) — in a world where it’s clear that the normal levers of political accountability are broken. It is a way of showing that radical procedural reforms really are a “last resort.”
So failing to convict Trump again will further underscore that impeachment is a paper tiger, at least for Republican presidents. But that horse is already out of the barn. Trying and failing once again, when the anti-democratic offense is much greater and the cost to Republicans for convicting is much lower, will help underscore just how deeply complicit they are in the events of January 6 — and build the case for others, Democrats and non-politicians alike, to punish them accordingly.”
“Rep. Joe Neguse (D-CO) detailed how Trump laid the groundwork for trying to overthrow the election even before November 3 by creating a “no lose” situation in which he repeatedly insisted he could only lose if the election was stolen from him. At the same time, Trump glorified the harassment of his opponents — including, in an October 31 tweet that received attention on Wednesday from Del. Stacey Plaskett (D-Virgin Islands), by lauding fans of his in Texas who tried to run a Biden-Harris bus off the road.
Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) detailed how, as it became clear in the days following November 3 that Biden had won, Trump encouraged unruly “Stop the Steal” protests that presaged the January 6 insurrection.
Instead of trying to tamp down tensions, the Trump campaign instead spent millions on “Stop the Steal” ads that ran until January 5, recounted Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA).
At the same time, Trump repeatedly urged his supporters to turn out in DC on January 6 for a “wild” protest. As Plaskett explained, his team even got directly involved in the permitting process for the January 6 event, helping organizers get permission to march to the Capitol.
“The truth is President Trump spent months calling his supporters to a march on a specific day, in a specific time, in a specific place, to stop the certification,” Plaskett said. “That is why he must be convicted and disqualified.”
Once his followers were gathered in DC, Trump delivered a speech to them in which he mentioned “fighting” more than 20 times, only once in passing urging them to remain peaceful. Videos that impeachment managers played to senators on Wednesday showed how Trump followers reacted to Trump’s speech by chanting things like “Take the Capitol!” and “Storm the Capitol!””
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“Alluding to Republican arguments trying to absolve Trump, Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA) said, “The truth is, this attack never would have happened but for Donald Trump. And so they came, draped in Trump’s flag, and used our flag, the American flag, to batter and bludgeon.””
“President Joe Biden’s first major trade policy move will be disappointing for anyone who hoped his inauguration would put an end to the presidential practice of unilaterally imposing expensive, unnecessary tariffs for vacuous national security reasons.
Biden’s decision last week to reimpose 10 percent tariffs on aluminum imports from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) contains all the major hallmarks of former President Donald Trump’s misguided trade policies. Biden even sounded downright Trumpian as he announced the renewed tariffs—which Trump had lifted during his final days in office. “The available evidence indicates that imports from the UAE may still displace domestic production, and thereby threaten to impair our national security,” says Biden’s executive order announcing the policy.
The idea that aluminum imports are a threat to national security was a bunch of nonsense when Trump did it, and it’s still bunk when Biden says it. It was, and is, nothing more than a cheap excuse for a trade barrier that ultimately inflates costs for businesses that buy and consume aluminum. Since 97 percent of American jobs in the aluminum industry are downstream of production, these tariffs create far more losers than winners.”
“President Donald Trump has never bothered to hide his contempt for the Constitution. By my count, he has openly trashed the principles and safeguards contained in the First Amendment, Second Amendment, Fifth Amendment, and 14th Amendment, plus the doctrine of enumerated powers and the constitutional separation of powers. To that sorry list we may now add Trump’s attacks on the Electors Clause and on the peaceful transfer of constitutional power after a presidential election.”
“The Trump administration will pull virtually all of the US’s roughly 700 troops in Somalia out of the country just five days before President-elect Joe Biden takes office.
The withdrawal, announced Friday by the Pentagon, ostensibly marks the latest attempt by President Donald Trump to scale back US presence overseas in what he’s described as costly and ineffective military operations across regions like the Middle East.
Acting defense secretary Christopher Miller announced in November that the US plans to reduce US troops from 4,500 to 2,500 in Afghanistan and from 3,000 to 2,500 in Iraq. But the strategy shift in Somalia appears to be something different.
Rather than a case of troops being brought home, many of the forces will be repositioned to neighboring Kenya, according to a Defense Department official, although it’s unclear so far what percentage of the Somali-based troops will be restationed there.
“As a result of this decision, some forces may be reassigned outside of East Africa,” the Pentagon said in a statement on Friday. “However, the remaining forces will be repositioned from Somalia into neighboring countries in order to allow cross-border operations by both US and partner forces.””
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“The US forces stationed in Somalia were largely tasked with counterterrorism missions, with a particular focus on fighting the presence of al-Shabaab, an al-Qaeda-linked Islamist militant group. And US troops have also worked on training Somali forces to conduct raids and capture al-Shabaab leaders.
According to the Pentagon, the mission against al-Shabaab won’t end — instead, the troops once stationed in the country will “maintain pressure against violent extremist organizations operating in Somalia” from bases in Kenya and elsewhere.
The Pentagon also said the military will “retain the capability to conduct targeted counterterrorism operations in Somalia, and collect early warnings and indicators regarding threats to the homeland.”
How successful the US has been in Somalia at this mission isn’t exactly clear. And the US’s methods for accomplishing its work against al-Shabaab have been met with sharp criticism from watchdogs, who argue counterterrorism operations in East Africa have been conducted without a proper level of accountability.
One of the US’s primary tools against al-Shabaab has been drone strikes, which it has been conducting in Somalia since 2007. The frequency of those strikes have increased significantly during the Trump administration, with 47 strikes carried out in 2018 and 63 in 2019, according to the New York Times. All told, the Trump administration has carried out at least 192 drone strikes in Somalia, an analysis by New America found.
Under Trump’s tenure, the oversight guidelines for strikes in Somalia, some of which are meant to minimize civilian casualties, have also been loosened.”
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““Despite many years of sustained Somali, U.S., and international counterterrorism pressure, the terrorist threat in East Africa is not degraded: al-Shabaab retains freedom of movement in many parts of southern Somalia and has demonstrated an ability and intent to attack outside of the country, including targeting U.S. interests,” the report states.
And that ability has been on display of late. Recently, a CIA contractor was killed in action in Somalia, and al-Shabaab staged a January attack on a US facility in Kenya that resulted in the death of a US solider, two contractors, and the destruction of expensive military equipment — including a US surveillance craft.
Particularly in light of the January attack, US military officials in East Africa reportedly began to push for greater flexibility to launch airstrikes from Kenya, and Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta also reportedly asked Trump for greater aid with countering al-Shabaab earlier this year. The troop redeployment would appear to accomplish both these aims.
And indeed, while US training of Somali security forces is expected to end, airstrikes against militants in Somalia will be continuing, since the air bases housing the US drones that carry out strikes in Somalia are currently based outside the country.”