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Good evening! We're leading the newsletter with a column about Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. It was recently reported that Ginni texted Mark Meadows, Donald Trump's chief of staff days after the 2020 election. The texts include her embracing conspiracy theories about then-President elect Joe Biden. Columnist Rex Huppke writes that this is evidence these conspiracy theories have grown to a dangerous size. |
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By Rex Huppke |
It's high time the majority of Americans who still have both oars firmly in the water come together – whether they're liberal, conservative or otherwise – and shout one word at the conspiracy theorists in our midst who have turned the Big Lie about the 2020 presidential election into the Big Delusion: "ENOUGH!" |
Enough of this abject nonsense. Enough parroting unhinged garbage that should never have drifted beyond the darkest, most fetid fever swamps of the internet. |
Enough already. |
| A sign supporting QAnon at a rally in Olympia, Washington in May 2020. | Ted S. Warren, AP | |
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By Jill Lawrence |
In his new book, then-CIA officer Will Hurd describes participating in a 2008 CIA briefing in Kabul, Afghanistan, for members of the House Select Committee on Intelligence. He overheard several of them pressing for time to go rug shopping. A congressman then asked Hurd why the Taliban wouldn't coordinate with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. He replied that one was Sunni and one was Shiite. What's the difference? another lawmaker asked. |
Hurd assumed he was about to make a joke. He was not. He really didn't know the history of the long-running sectarian conflict. |
"This should have been easy stuff for these Washington, D.C., intelligence 'experts,' " Hurd writes. They were, after all, deciding how to spend billions in taxpayer money and whether to send U.S. troops to war zones. |
By the next year, Hurd was home in Texas running for Congress. He lost that first House race, won a few years later, and took his oath of office in January 2015. Six months later, Donald Trump declared his presidential candidacy and ushered in the age of "experts." Mainly Trump himself because, as he puts it, "I know what I'm doing," and people with no experience for their jobs. |
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By Connie Schultz |
Most of us feel something after witnessing this, and our responses are fueled by our life experiences. More on that in a moment. First, let us pause to lift the one voice that matters above all others here. That belongs to Jada Pinkett Smith. |
We don't know what she thinks of her husband's decision to hit Rock. However, it is easy to know what she's had to say about her own journey with hair loss in a culture that does not celebrate bald women, especially if they are Black. Most white Americans have never thought about the ongoing burden of discrimination Black women have endured because of white standards for acceptable hair. Less than two weeks ago the House of Representatives passed the CROWN Act, which bans race-based hair discrimination. It has not passed the Senate. |
Against this backdrop, here we are the day after the Oscars, talking about Jada Pinkett Smith's hair. |
Other columns to read today |
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This newsletter was compiled by Jaden Amos. |
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