This week: Republicans give the media the treatment it deserves, China prepares for war, Democrats abandon Constitutional processes, the future(s) of America First, reviving the United States Navy before it’s too late, semantic change in American Sign Language, Operation Linebacker, Andalucía, and more. Let’s go —
1) “This view — that approval from the mainstream press isn’t just unnecessary but actually suspect — is one that has come to dominate GOP politics in the Trump era. And while railing against the so-called liberal media has long been a part of the Republican playbook, more than a dozen GOP campaign operatives, senior Hill aides, and political reporters from major news outlets say the past few years have brought something new: actively courting the media’s scorn while avoiding anything that may be viewed as consorting with the enemy.”
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/07/why-republicans-stopped-talking-to-the-press.html
2) “China tried to build a network of informants inside the Federal Reserve system, at one point threatening to imprison a Fed economist during a trip to Shanghai unless he agreed to provide nonpublic economic data, a congressional investigation found.”
3) “The sheer number of people seeking to cross made migrant smuggling an irresistible moneymaker for some cartels … The enterprises have teams specializing in logistics, transportation, surveillance, stash houses and accounting — all supporting an industry whose revenues have soared to an estimated $13 billion today from $500 million in 2018.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/25/us/migrant-smuggling-evolution.html
4) “Conservatives will have to continue this dialogue about how to enact pro-family economic policies that encourage stronger, larger families without unnecessary government intrusion into family life … If conservatives are willing to accept that some pro-family policies may be good even if they come with taxpayer expense and a new government program, we need to start developing a framework to distinguish good family policy from bad.”
5) “The post-2020 Democratic Party’s theory of politics appears to be: The system no longer works, so blow up the system by issuing presidential executive orders on climate, education, guns and abortion; ending the legislative filibuster; packing the Supreme Court; suppressing dissent as ‘misinformation’; and if necessary, redefining reality, such as the ‘1619 Project,’ which rewrote the country’s history.”
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