Masha Gessen | The Weaponization of National Belonging, From Nazi Germany to Trump

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Masha Gessen | The Weaponization of National Belonging, From Nazi Germany to Trump 

Masha Gessen, The New Yorker
Gessen writes: "This past week I found myself in Stuttgart, an industrial city in southwest Germany. As I usually do in a European city I haven't visited before, I went to the local history museum to see how the story of the Second World War is presented."
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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in Queens, New York at an immigration town hall. (photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Ocasio-Cortez Calls for an Independent Investigation Into Child Separation Policies
Riley Beggin, Vox
Beggin writes: "Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proposed a '9/11-style commission' that would investigate family separations at the US-Mexico border during an immigration town hall in her home district Saturday."
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Demonstrators protest the Food and Drug Administration's policies related to pharmaceutical opioids at a rally in front of the Health and Human Services headquarters in Washington in April. (photo: Scott Applewhite/AP)

'Ship, Ship, Ship': Drug Firms' Emails Show Indifference to Crisis
Scott Higham, Sari Horwitz and Steven Rich, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "In May 2008, as the opioid epidemic was raging in America, a representative of the nation's largest manufacturer of opioid pain pills sent an email to a client at a wholesale drug distributor in Ohio."
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People protest conditions at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, 24 July 2018 in Los Angeles, California. Under the Trump administration, a growing number of asylum seekers have been placed in detention. (photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images)

'This Is an Emergency': The Volunteers Bailing Out Migrants From Detention
Andrew Gumbel, Guardian UK
Gumbel writes: "For more than a year, Julie Sharron went quietly crazy reading news stories about migrants detained at the border, herded into detention centers, separated from their children and demonized by Donald Trump and his supporters as 'criminals' and 'animals.'"
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School lunch. (photo: AP)

PA School District Threatens to Call Foster Care on Parents Who Don't Pay Off Children's Lunch Debt
Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, Jezebel
Shepherd writes: "Joseph Muth, a director of federal programs for Pennsylvania's Wyoming Valley West School District, sent a letter to approximately 1,000 parents last week threatening that the school district would report them to 'Dependency Court' if they did not immediately pay their children's outstanding school lunch balance."
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March organizer says 430,000 people participated while police put the figure at 138,000. (photo: Vincent Yu/AP)

Hong Kong Protesters Demand Inquiry Into Escalating Police Abuse of Power
Casey Quackenbush, Al Jazeera
Quackenbush writes: "Mayhem erupted on Sunday as riot police fired multiple rounds of tear gas and rubber-coated bullets to disperse thousands of protesters who defied orders by occupying major roads and vandalizing Beijing's liaison office."
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A portion of a plastic bottle found on Mothecombe Beach at the mouth of the Erme Estuary in South Devon, England, on May 30, 2019. (photo: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

Sharon Lerner | How the Plastics Industry Is Fighting to Keep Polluting the World
Sharon Lerner, The Intercept
Lerner writes: "The Westmeade Elementary School worked hard on their dragon. And it paid off. The plastic bag receptacle that the kids painted green and outfitted with triangular white teeth and a 'feed me' sign won the students from the Nashville suburb first place in a recycling box decorating contest."
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Let's start saving taxpayer $$$$

Washington genuflected before the drug companies to allow them to charge what they choose, costing us BILLIONS.

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Al

P.S.: Make sure you sign my petition today-- but then don’t just take the rest of the day off. Tell your friends and let’s build support for this common-sense solution.