Fearless, Adversarial Journalism – Spoken Edition

In the video game aisle of a Walmart Supercenter, Eric, 43, is refreshing his phone. The Superman logo on his T-shirt has been reworked into a hammer and sickle. He’s waiting to hear back from a stranger based, as far as he knows, in Kenya. “He just offered to pay $400,” Eric says. “I don’t feel 100 percent on him, but I don’t have anything real to base it on.” Eric is a currency broker.

Now that themidtermsare finally over, the battle against “Medicare for All” that has been quietly waged throughout the year is poised to take center stage. Internal strategy documents obtained by The Intercept and Documented reveal the strategy that private health care interests plan to use to influence Democratic Party messaging and stymiethe momentum toward achieving universal health care coverage.

Former West Virginia congressional candidate and Democratic presidential hopeful Richard Ojeda, facing questions from reproductive rights advocates about his position on abortion, has fired off a 500-word statement framing the issue in terms of class and racial politics. “There has been some confusion about where I stand on the issue of abortion access so let me clear this up. I wholeheartedly support a woman’s right to make her own decisions about her body.

Donald Trump on Tuesdayissued a statement proclaiming that, notwithstanding the anger toward the Saudi Crown Prince over the gruesome murder of journalist JamalKhashoggi, “the United States intends to remain a steadfast partner of Saudi Arabia to ensure the interests of our country, Israel and all other partners in the region.

A wall mural displays the “2030 Vision” logo and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, on Oct. 4, 2018. Photo: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg via Getty Images It’s been over a month since Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi disappeared into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, where he was murdered in what increasingly seems to have been a state-sponsored assassination.

Barack Obama’s great strength was always his ability shape himself into a vessel for the hopes of a wide array of different people. For Nancy Pelosi, it’s been the reverse, as she manages to become a symbol of the varying fears of the opposing factions of the Democratic Party. For the party’s left, she’s too tied to big money and the corporate PAC model of fundraising, and embraces a “paygo” politics of austerity.

It was mid-afternoon on November 5 by the time Benjamin Smoke took the witness stand in a courthouse in Chelmsford, a small city about30 miles northeast of London that voted for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union in 2016. Smoke is 27 — a freelance journalist and activist with short, black hair, a selection of silver rings in his ears and nose, and no previous convictions.

The silhouettes of attendees are seen during an election night party for 2016 Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump at the Hilton Midtown hotel in N.Y., on Nov. 8, 2016. Photo: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg/Getty Images Google “is Trump racist?” and you’ll find that just within the lastweek, at least three major news outlets have taken on that very question.

Benjamin suspected the Salvadoran gang Barrio 18 Revolucionarios would kill him when he asked permission to leave. He was 21 years old and had been in the gang for a decade. He was ready to die to get out. He had joined at age 12 because his world didn’t feel right. He thought the gang looked cool by comparison; it took him years to name the deeper attraction. Neighborhoods like his were violent places where no one made a living wage, and the justice system was absent except to punish.

In a century that produced its share of ghastly war criminals, Ratko Mladic stands alongside the worst. As military commander of the Bosnian Serbs during the Bosnian war of the 1990s, Mladic helped orchestrate the largest mass killings in Europe since the Holocaust, including a notorious massacre of 8,000 men and boys in the eastern town of Srebrenica.

When Donald Trump’s presidential election victory was announced in the early morning hours of November 9, 2016, like many Americans, I rubbed my eyes in disbelief and dismay. Two questions raced through my mind: What had become of America that a man so unfit, so small-minded, so mean-spirited could be elected? A man whose ethnic and racial bigotry had set the stage for his presidential run when he called Mexicans rapists and made racist birther attacks on President Barack Obama.

At the beginning of October, Amazon was quietly issued a patent that would allow its virtual assistant Alexa to decipher a user’s physical characteristics and emotional state based on their voice. Characteristics, or “voice features,” like language accent, ethnic origin, emotion, gender, age, and background noise would be immediately extracted and tagged to the user’s data file to help deliver more targeted advertising.

At midnight on election day last Tuesday, vote tallies showed Republican candidates ahead in key races in Florida, Georgia and Arizona. However, many votes remained to be counted in all three states. The stakes are high: two Senate seats (Florida and Arizona) and two governorships (Florida and Georgia), plus some lower offices.

The world’s most ambitious “smart city,” known as Quayside, in Toronto, has faced fierce public criticism since last fall, when the plans to build a neighborhood “from the internet up”were first revealed. Quayside represents a joint effort by the Canadian government agency Waterfront Toronto and Sidewalk Labs, which is owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc., to develop12 acres of the valuable waterfront just southeast of downtown Toronto.

So much attention in the midterm elections this year has focused on the gubernatorial race in Georgia between Republican Brian Kemp and Democrat Stacey Abrams that the race for secretary of state, the office Kemp is vacating, has gone largely ignored. It’s arguably the more important race, since this is the office that will control the state’s voter registration database and any purges made to the voter roll going forward.