Monitoring Biden and other Contemporary Events

In relationships already strained or severed, last week’s violent spectacle of democracy under siege has pushed some people to take a drastic new step: warning law enforcement. Anguished Americans are turning in friends and family for their alleged involvement in the Capitol riots, contributing to more than 100,000 tips submitted to the FBI and playing a role in at least one high-profile arrest.

For months — sometimes years — the informants say they have watched helplessly as loved ones embraced far-right ideology and latched onto conspiracy theories, from QAnon to viral-video claims of a coronavirus “Plandemic.” Extremism has thrived in the Trump era and under pandemic lockdowns, experts say, with more people isolated at home and misinformation rampant online.

Increasingly estranged friends and relatives told The Washington Post they were driven to law enforcement by their own politics, a sense of moral obligation and a fear of what their loved ones could do next.

“They left me no choice because they are on such a destructive path and I do worry about other people’s safety as well as theirs,” said a Texas woman who recounted learning through social media that family members were on the Capitol lawn, apparently beyond the barriers that rioters toppled. Her husband said he can corroborate that she informed the FBI.

Maybe we can get Mr. Trump back in 2024

The United States will soon have a new federal holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the nation.

The House voted 415-14 Wednesday to make Juneteenth, or June 19th, the 12th federal holiday. The bill now goes to President Joe Biden’s desk to be signed into law.

Juneteenth commemorates when the last enslaved African Americans learned they were free. Confederate soldiers surrendered in April 1865, but word didn’t reach the last enslaved Black people until June 19, when Union soldiers brought the news of freedom to Galveston, Texas. That was also about two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation freeing slaves in the Southern states.

It’s the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was created in 1983.

The Senate passed the bill a day earlier under a unanimous consent agreement that expedites the process for considering legislation. It takes just one senator’s objection to block such agreements.

The Supreme Court on Thursday tossed out a closely watched legal battle targeting the Affordable Care Act, rescuing the landmark health care law from the latest efforts by Republican-led states to dismantle it.

The court ruled 7-2 that the red states and two individuals who brought the dispute do not have the legal standing to challenge the constitutionality of the law's individual mandate to buy health insurance and ordered the case to be dismissed. Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented. Justice Stephen Breyer delivered the majority opinion for the court.

critical race theory

Mr. Biden wanted to complain about Mr. Putin's crackdown on Russian protesters.

Tell me if I'm wrong, but I've had the impression that protestors or anti-Putin types in Russia were pretty nearly all leftover communists, pussy-riot types, or possibly disgruntled oligarch types.