Новости за 10.01.2020

On January 3, shortly after killing Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and Kataib Hezbollah commander Abu Mahdi Al Muhandis with a drone strike, the United States also reportedly targeted Shubul Al Zaidi, leader of Kataib Al Imam Ali, the “Imam Ali Battalions,” an Iranian-backed paramilitary in Iraq that he founded with Al Muhandis.

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan repeatedly steered state transportation development money to projects that would increase the value of his real estate holdings, according to a lengthy investigation by Washington Monthly’s Eric Cortellessa.

The slow work of criminal justice reform is often piecemeal, a matter of politicizing the system’s routine practices and developing a moral language to undo them. Bail has become one of those issues, with advocates exposing the predatory bail bonds business, creating community-based bail funds, and lobbying for an end to cash bail. The message behind these various campaigns has been simple: no one who is accused of a crime should remain in a cage simply because they can’t pay for their freedom.

Last month, Fox News’s Tucker Carlson devoted a portion of his nightly white nationalist variety show to litter. Not because Carlson is an environmentalist, or cares about civic pride or public health. Rather, trash was a metaphor for what happens when Democrats take power.

Wednesday’s classified Hill briefing on the assassination of Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani seems to have gone poorly for the White House. According to Republican Senator Mike Lee, Trump administration officials not only failed to fully justify Trump’s strike but also suggested they would have had no trouble assassinating the supreme leader of Iran without prior authorization, as well. Earlier, Lee had described the meeting as “the worst briefing I’ve seen, at least on a military issue.”    

On Thursday, the Trump administration revealed its long-touted updates to the National Environmental Policy Act, the Nixon-era law that requires federal agencies to consider environmental and community impacts before approving major infrastructure projects. The result was about as heinous as expected, further codifying the administration’s current ethos of drill first, ask questions later.

The Supreme Court returns on Friday for the justices’ first conference of the new year. Two of the cases they’ll consider taking up are strange challenges to a California law aimed at preventing fraud among charitable organizations. Two conservative political-advocacy groups, supported by a host of other nonprofits, are trying to keep the identities of their top donors out of a registry maintained by the state attorney general’s office.