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In December 2019, I traveled to Hong Kong, where a heavy unease hung in the air. For months, young people had taken to the streets to protest the encroachment of the Chinese Communist Party on what was supposed to be a self-governing, democratic system. On walls they’d scrawled: “Save Hong Kong! If we burn you burn with us!” All the protesters I spoke to knew their movement would fail; it was a last assertion of democratic identity before it was extinguished by a new order which saw democracy as the enemy within. I met with a government official preparing to...

Philippe Reines has a well-earned reputation as one of the most odious operatives in politics. No wonder Hillary Clinton made him a close adviser! Reines is the guy who taunted Donald Trump, Jr., writing that every time he was intimate with his wife, she was fantasizing about a former Latino boyfriend. Even Chelsea Clinton found Reines' comment "vile." Reines turns up regularly on CNN This Morning, and on today's show said: "Donald Trump is about as complicated to some of us, and to me, to figure out as a clogged toilet is to a plumber."Get the rest of the story...

At the end of his first term in office, then-President Donald Trump sought to install Kash Patel, a hard-line MAGA loyalist, as deputy CIA director. But the head of the agency at the time, Gina Haspel, a career intelligence officer, threatened to resign in protest, and the appointment was scuttled. Now, four years later, Patel is considered a possible pick for CIA director or another high-level national security post in a second Trump administration. And there likely will be no one to stand in his way this time. Patel is one of several fiercely loyal political allies who President-elect Trump...

Tens of thousands of people are expected in Washington ahead of Inauguration Day in January to protest President-elect Donald Trump and policy priorities that they say will undermine the rights of women, immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community and racial and religious minorities. The demonstration, dubbed the “People’s March on Washington,” is scheduled for Jan. 18, two days before the inauguration. It is being organized by leading civil rights, racial justice and reproductive health organizations, including the Women’s March and Abortion Access Now, a coalition of organizations including the ACLU, Planned Parenthood and the National Women’s Law Center. Organizers estimate 50,000 people...

The Assistant Director for Fraternity and Sorority Life (FSL) at the University of Oregon has been placed on leave after telling Trump voters to kill themselves by jumping off a “f——— bridge” in reaction to President-elect Donald Trump’s landslide victory in the 2024 election. “I’m done crying. My sadness is over. My anger has set in. I am a very petty person, and I am very proud of that — love it about myself, actually,” Leonard Serrato said in a video posted to social media. “And so, I say this in the most disrespectful way possible: I don’t care if...

CNN - Donald Trump believes presidents have almost absolute power. In his second term, there will be few political or legal restraints to check him. The president-elect’s sweeping victory over Vice President Kamala Harris suddenly turned the theoretical notion that he will indulge his autocratic instincts into a genuine possibility. When Trump returns to the White House in January as one of the most powerful presidents in history, he’ll be able to take advantage of his own filleting of guardrails during his first presidency, which he continued through legal maneuverings out of office. It’s not guaranteed that just because Trump...

Donald Trump was elected president again last night. After being voted out of office in 2020. After trying to rig the vote and then to overthrow the government by force in the wake of that loss. After all but welcoming a pandemic that ended up killing more than a million of us. After ripping away abortion care rights from millions of American women. After being impeached, twice. After being convicted of multiple felonies. After dogging it on the campaign trail, playing to emptying halls while speaking in demented tongues unknown even to him. After all of that, and God knows...

Steve Bannon told us he was feeling “empowered” after his release from prison last week. It’s quite obvious he means it. Hours after Donald Trump’s victory, the former Trump campaign official and self-described “political prisoner” went on an angry rant, during which he revealed what very well may be the first targets in Trump’s second term. “You stole the 2020 election.… This entire phony thing is getting swept out,” Bannon said. “Biden’s getting swept out. Kamala Harris is getting swept out. MSNBC is getting swept out. The Justice Department is getting swept out. The FBI is getting swept out. You...

PHILADELPHIA — As Donald Trump yet again tells his supporters he can lose Tuesday only if there's massive voter fraud and as he ramps up violent rhetoric about Democrats and other "enemies," members of the far-right group that put more "boots on the ground" than any other at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, say they're mobilizing. The last time Trump tried to overturn his election loss, the Proud Boys played a critical role, jumping into action on Jan. 6 just weeks after Trump gave the group a major recruitment boost by telling it to “stand back and stand...

JUST IN: MSNBC host Joy Reid says the media has "said all they can" to help Kamala Harris before doing a whole segment on how Trump is like Hitler & Mussolini. The propagandist compared Trump to every historical dictator she could think of in the bizarre meltdown. "We begin our final sprint having arrived at that point in the election season where basically we, on this side of the TV screen have said, all we can, we've laid out the stakes in this crucial election where one side stands for freedom while the other meets the textbook definition of fascism."...

Former Trump staffer Alyssa Farah Griffin has been a vocal critic of her old boss, but whenever she was asked directly, she wouldn't commit to voting for Kamala Harris — until Tuesday morning. To kick off the show, she revealed that she officially cast her vote for a Democrat for the first time in her life.

As it becomes increasingly likely that women will decide this presidential election, both parties are scrambling for women’s votes. Kamala Harris continues to position herself as the “girls’” candidate by foregrounding abortion rights and appearing with Beyoncé and on podcasts like Call Her Daddy. Meanwhile, Donald Trump and J.D. Vance seem to be recognizing that a campaign whose gendered messaging has consisted almost entirely of overt misogyny is not doing them any favors with women voters. The last few weeks have seen the Republican ticket making a host of promises to women: to “protect” them, to give them “choices” that...

WATCH: Rachel Maddow says the government will pull all of @elonmusk ’s contracts for supporting Trump.

Election officials across the country are trying to prepare for what's out of their control. When millions of Americans head to the polls on Tuesday, some voters might encounter minor issues including equipment malfunctions or delays. Election officials say that they are prepared for those inevitable challenges, which can come up every election year -- but that they struggle with the torrent of misinformation that could follow, where bad actors or election skeptics will sometimes use minor issues to amplify unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud. Anticipating issues on Election Day, election officials in some counties have prepared pre-written fact...

The Kamala Harris campaign has escalated from pandering to threats in the election’s closing days with an ad featuring Saturday Night Live alum Will Ferrell, who vowed to hold people “personally accountable” if they do not vote for the Democrat candidate. The Kamala Harris campaign has once again drafted Will Ferrell in an apparent attempt to browbeat white males into backing the Vice President’s bid for the presidency. In an advertisement released by the campaign on Sunday, the 57-year-old Hollywood actor spoke to a fictionalized hesitant voter named ‘Gary’, seemingly chosen to represent the average white male in the United...

With Pennsylvania expected to be a close and crucial state in the 2024 race for the presidency, it's unusual election laws are again under the microscope. First, there's the counting. The state doesn’t have early voting — instead offering the time-consuming and paperwork heavy option of on-demand mail balloting. It also doesn’t process its mail ballots ahead of Election Day. So, in the hours after polls close on Election Day, when many battleground states will be reporting their early, mail and Election Day totals, Pennsylvania will be counting ballots around the clock in a mad dash to catch up. Then...

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump has spent months laying the groundwork to challenge the results of the 2024 election if he loses — just as he did four years ago. At rally after rally, he urges his supporters to deliver a victory “too big to rig,” telling them the only way he can lose is if Democrats cheat. He has refused to say, repeatedly, whether he will accept the results regardless of the outcome. And he’s claimed cheating is already underway, citing debunked claims or outrageous theories with no basis in reality. “The only thing that can stop us...

Actor Harrison Ford has revealed he will be backing Kamala Harris for the presidency with just days until the election. The 82-year-old star said in a dramatic black-and-white clip that he would be backing the incumbent Vice President and expressed concerns about Donald Trump. The Indiana Jones actor said: 'I've been voting for 64 years, never really wanted to talk about it very much, but when dozens of former members of the Trump administration are sounding alarms, saying "for god sake don't do this again", you have to pay attention.

A man is accused of beating up a stranger who was wearing a Trump 2024 hat on Friday in Bath, New York. The Village of Bath Police Department officers were called to a fight at the Tops Friendly Markets on West Morris Street around 10:00 a.m., the agency said in a press release: It was determined that Robert Yott, 60, of Bath, initiated a confrontation with a stranger inside Tops, after becoming aggressive over the fact that the stranger was wearing a Trump 2024 hat. Mr. Yott punched the victim in the mouth and head several times, causing the victim’s...

There have been a thousand warnings about former President Donald Trump. If polls are to be believed these warnings have fallen on deaf ears. What accounts for this imperviousness despite clear evidence of his dangerous and egregious flaws? This question has stumped many. As a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who has long worked with complexities of mind, let me offer psychological explanations then suggest remedies that could help permeate this apparent impenetrability. He offers a sense of omnipotence. Trump makes it seem like nothing is hard, meaning it's easy to be all powerful....... He helps people deny painful realities and threats,...