By Reid Wilson & Jessie Hellman @ TheHill.com, Jan. 21

A Washington state man has become the first American to fall victim to a newly identified coronavirus that has infected more than 300 people in China and several other Asian nations, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported on Tuesday. Global public health officials are growing increasingly alarmed about the virus, initially called 2019-nCov and first identified in December in Wuhan, China.

Dozens of cases have been identified in other major Chinese cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. Five cases have been identified outside the country, in Japan, Thailand, South Korea, Taiwan and the United States. At least six people have died.

The CDC said Tuesday that one case has been identified in Everett, Wash. The patient is a 30-year-old man who had recently traveled from Wuhan, a CDC official said Tuesday. The Washington State Department of Health said the man was being treated at [....]

Bernie Twitter operates under the self-righteous guise of being the true progressives of the internet. But their harassing tactics are anything but progressive.

Op-ed by Kurt Bardella, NBC News THINK contributor, Jan. 19

[....] Time and again, we see how backlash on social media is used to bully people into submission and silence criticism. For writers and commentators like me, sometimes we have to weigh whether or not it’s even worth writing something that could incur the wrath of a political figure’s devout following. The backlash is important because it gives us insights into the nature of the political debate on social media — who has power, and how that power is wielded. And it’s also important to talk about the voices who may be keeping silent — and why.

The attacks against Warren come from the same corners of social media that disparage Democrats (like myself) as being “puppets,” “centrist,” “anti-Semitic, and “ageist” for having the audacity to question or scrutinize their chosen leader. People of color and women who dare to disagree with Sanders’ political assertions have often borne the brunt of this abuse.

This hyper-vocal faction of Sanders supporters — colloquially known as “Bernie Bros” — never went away after the 2016 presidential election. In my personal experience, these bros are almost overwhelmingly white men. And they share, like Trump's ardent supporters, a desire to “put me in my place.” [....]

Roberto Alvim had pledged to create a "cultural war machine" against progressive ideas. 

By Zachary Small @ artnet.com, Jan. 17

The culture secretary of Brazil has been fired after releasing a video on Thursday announcing a multimillion-dollar investment in culture—by quoting Joseph Goebbels and playing one of Hitler’s favorite songs.

A few minutes into the speech, secretary of culture Roberto Alvim said, “The Brazilian art of the next decade will be heroic and it will be national, it’ll be endowed with great capacity for emotional involvement and deeply committed to the urgent aspirations of our people, or it will be nothing.”

The line is a slightly modified version of a Goebbels quote most likely taken from a biography of the Nazi propaganda minister by Peter Longerich, which was published in Brazil in 2014, according to the publication Journalistas Livre [....]

By Sarah Marsh @ Reuters.com, Jan. 16

HAVANA - Haiti’s President Jovenel Moise, who began ruling by decree this week, wants to use his new power to overhaul the constitution in an attempt to break a “decades-long cycle of political crises,” a planned presidential statement seen by Reuters shows.

“We will work with all political actors and our international partners to draft constitutional reforms to ensure a widely acceptable, workable, democratic balance of power which will then be put to the Haitian people in a referendum,” reads the statement, due to be released early on Friday according to a source close to Moise.

The statement does not specify the precise changes sought but Moise is likely aiming to strengthen the presidency which was weakened in Haiti’s 1987 Magna Carta due to a mistrust of strong figureheads in the wake of the Duvalier family dictatorship. Critics say the changes went too far, delivering too much power to parliament and have made it hard to govern. Haiti has had 15 presidents in the past 33 years [....]

I learned to watch for Gettleman's byline during the Iraq war and over the years never regret reading a piece by him, no matter what he's covering and where it's being published:​

By Joe Otterson @ Variety.com, Jan. 17

[....] Clinton appeared at the press tour in support of the Hulu four-part documentary series “Hillary,” [.....]

 She fielded a range of questions from the audience, including what she feels the most important message of the series will ultimately be.

“I think the most important message is we are…in a real struggle with a form of politics that is incredibly negative, exclusive, mean-spirited, and its going to be up to every voter, not only people who vote in Democratic primaries to recognize that this is no ordinary time,” she said. “This is an election that will have such profound impact so take your vote seriously. And for the Democratic voters, try to vote for the  person you think is most likely to win because at the end of the day that is what will matter. And not just the popular vote, but the electoral college too.”

That last line drew laughs from the audience, as Clinton infamously beat President Donald Trump in the popular vote in 2016 but lost the electoral college vote [...]

This article is adapted from “A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump’s Testing of America,” which will be published on Jan. 21 by Penguin Press.

By Carol D. Leonnig & Philip Rucker @ WashingtonPost.com, Jan. 17

[....] Trump organized his unorthodox worldview under the simplistic banner of “America First,” but Mattis, Tillerson, and Cohn feared his proposals were rash, barely considered, and a danger to America’s superpower standing. They also felt that many of Trump’s impulsive ideas stemmed from his lack of familiarity with U.S. history and, even, where countries were located. To have a useful discussion with him, the trio agreed, they had to create a basic knowledge, a shared language.

So on July 20, 2017, Mattis invited Trump to the Tank for what he, Tillerson, and Cohn had carefully organized as a tailored tutorial. What happened inside the Tank that day crystallized the commander in chief’s berating, derisive and dismissive manner, foreshadowing decisions such as the one earlier this month that brought the United States to the brink of war with Iran. The Tank meeting was a turning point in Trump’s presidency. Rather than getting him to appreciate America’s traditional role and alliances, Trump began to tune out and eventually push away the experts who believed their duty was to protect the country by restraining his more dangerous impulses.

The episode has been documented numerous times, but subsequent reporting reveals a more complete picture of the moment and the chilling effect Trump’s comments and hostility had on the nation’s military and national security leadership [....]