How We Survive Winter
Dec. 20, 2020
The solstice arrives in the depths of the pandemic. But the season of darkness also offers ancient lessons of hope and renewal. For generations, as the days darkened and the blizzards came, the Anishinaabe people warned of the Windigo. He is the monster of winter, dripping with ice and white with snow, and he is starving, said Robin Wall Kimmerer, a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, as she remembered the story of her ancestors. He is a human turned cannibal. His hunger is never satiated, and it endangers everyone around him. He thinks only of himself.
WASHINGTON
President Trump’s dismissive characterization of a massive cyberattack targeting multiple U.S. agencies drew pushback Sunday from lawmakers, cybersecurity experts and
the incoming Biden administration
amid growing questions over the president’s refusal to acknowledge that Russia was likely behind the intrusions.
A month before President-elect Joe Biden takes office, Trump remains preoccupied with his falsehood-filled campaign to overturn the results of November’s election, and the president gave no indication that the United States would seek to punish those responsible for an unprecedented breach whose full scope was still being assessed.
“Russia acted with impunity,” Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said on NBC’S “Meet the Press.” Romney, one of only a handful of congressional Republicans to criticize Trump’s conduct regarding the election, said that “we’ve come to recognize that the president has a blind spot when it comes to Russia.”
Lawmakers Resolve Fed Dispute as They Race to Close Stimulus Deal
Top senators appeared to strike an agreement on the central bank’s lending powers as they struggled to clear away the last sticking points in the $900 billion compromise plan.
Senator Pat Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, at the Capitol on Saturday. His proposal on the Federal Reserve is the primary issue remaining in efforts to finalize a $900 billion stimulus deal.Credit.Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times
Published Dec. 19, 2020Updated Jan. 6, 2021
WASHINGTON Senators broke through an impasse late Saturday night over a Republican effort to curtail the powers of the Federal Reserve, clearing away what had been seen as the final hurdle to a deal on a $900 billion stimulus package as lawmakers raced against a Sunday-night deadline to avoid a government shutdown.
“It’s the most corrupt election this country’s ever had, by far,” Mr. Trump said Sunday on WABC radio in New York. “We’ve already found the answers; now we have to get the support from some politicians.”
In the petition to the Supreme Court, the justices were asked to overturn Pennsylvania state court rulings that the campaign said “illegally changed” the state’s mail balloting laws.
The campaign wants rapid action by the high court, saying the outcome of the election “hangs in the balance.”
“Time is plainly of the essence because once candidates have taken office, it will be impossible to repair election results tainted by illegally and belatedly cast or absentee and mail ballots,” the petition states. “The intense national and worldwide attention on the 2020 presidential election only foreshadows the disruption that may well follow if the uncertainty and unfairness shrouding this election are allowed to persist.”
“The politicization of the intelligence community, and IC retirees emboldened to pile on any anti-Trump movement, is a novel and dangerous development in American politics,” retired CIA clandestine officer Kent Clizbe told The Washington Times. “The genie’s out of the bottle.”
It was not the first time the intelligence community retired and active members of the FBI, the CIA, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and other agencies tried to sabotage President Trump. Leaks, spying and false claims hamstrung the Trump White House for four years.
“Intel leaders act like this in banana republics, not in democracies,” said a congressional Republican staffer. “At least until Trump was elected.”