Charles Pierce | We Made It Easy for the Russians

19 December 18 PM

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Charles Pierce | We Made It Easy for the Russians 

Charles Pierce, Esquire
Pierce writes: "Hackers and trolls seized on existing fissures and resentment in our politics to wreak havoc."
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Sen. Mitch McConnell. (photo: Getty)

Senate Set to Vote on Short-Term Bill to Avoid Government Shutdown
Lisa Mascaro, Matthew Daly and Catherine Lucey, Associated Press
Excerpt: "Legislation to avoid a partial federal shutdown threatened at week's end and keep the government running through Feb. 8 awaited a Senate vote Wednesday after President Donald Trump backed off his demand for money for his long-promised U.S.-Mexico border wall."
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Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty)

Everything Is Still Going Perfectly Fine for Brett Kavanaugh
Kimberly Truong, The Cut
Truong writes: "Three months after Brett Kavanaugh tearfully proclaimed that being questioned about the sexual-assault allegations against him would have 'consequences for decades,' he's continuing to do just fine."
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Seven year-old Jakelin Caal Maquin from Guatemala was killed in custody of US Customs and Border Protection. (photo: ABC News)

Justice for Jakelin: Lawmakers Demand Answers in Death of 7-Year-Old Girl in Border Patrol Custody
Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "Jakelin Caal Maquín died on December 8, two days after she and her father presented themselves at the border alongside 161 other Central American asylum seekers."
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Amazon workers. (photo: Getty)

How Your Holiday Shopping Drives Us Amazon Workers to Exhaustion
Anonymous, Guardian UK
Excerpt: "Our backs may be aching, our bodies exhausted, our pay still the same, but at least we broke some records. America's sweatshop firing on all cylinders; hundreds of millions of 'customer promises' fulfilled."
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Immigrant rights protesters. (photo: unknown)

ICE's Vendetta Against Migrant Organizers
Angelo Guisado, Jacobin
Guisado writes: "ICE is increasingly targeting migrant labor leaders for arrest and deportation. Their intent is to spread terror and discourage organization.

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Marathon gas station. (photo: Getty)

The Dirty Scheme to Make Americans Buy More Gasoline
Rhea Suh, Natural Resources Defense Council 

EXCERPT: 

At $2.65 a gallon, the national November average, that comes to $44.5 million a day, or more than $16 billion a year, money that American workers won't be able to spend on their families' needs because it will go, instead, to the oil industry. "However," Heminger warned investors, "you have another side who doesn't want to pivot away" from the fuel savings and pollution reductions the rules support. "So we have a lot of work to do to keep this momentum going."

That so-called "work" doesn't come cheap. In the national elections of 2016 and 2018, campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry totaled $176 million, with 87 cents of every dollar going to Trump's party.

It's paying off for the industry—at the country's expense.

Suh writes: "We're not going to stand by and watch Donald Trump put our future at risk to pump up oil profits."
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