“Proud Boys, stand back and stand by,” President Donald Trump told his supporters in the far-right street-fighting group from his podium at the first 2020 presidential debate. “Somebody’s got to do something about antifa and the left.” Four years into the Trump era, Americans have struggled to habituate themselves to the persistent presence of armed paramilitaries at demonstrations and flashes of lethal political violence. What do these hard men herald for our political life? Are they stormtroopers waiting for Trump’s signal to hasten the transition from autocratic attempt to autocratic breakthrough and the final demise of American democracy, as some liberals fear? Or are they a sideshow of confused, lonely men acting out fantasies with semi-automatic rifles? Both hyperventilating over paramilitary fantasists and laughing off potential death squads miss the mark. The whiff of putsch may be more pungent than feels comfortable at the moment, but the far-right’s window for an extra-legal takeover remains quite narrow, especially if polls hold and Biden wins by a healthy margin. At the same time, American politics really has been destabilized by political violence, overwhelmingly perpetrated by the extreme right. But if the United States is heading into an era of fear and violence, it won’t be the first time this has happened in a democracy—or even the first time this has happened in America itself. If proud boys and vigilantes can’t pull off a coordinated drive for power, they may opt for a time-honored approach in democratic politics: the “strategy of tension.” In a paper published this spring, University of Winchester criminologists Matt Clement and Vincenzo Scalia defined the strategy of tension as a political method of “state crime,” designed to produce “a climate of fear within communities. [Strategies of tension] employ deceit, threats, and acts of violence in order to maintain control across society through fear of the consequences of challenging the government of the day.”

The White House on Saturday created a startling amount of confusion on the status of President Trump’s health and precisely when he contracted covid-19 — issuing conflicting statements and injecting uncertainty into the nation’s understanding of the president’s well-being and whom he and his associates may have exposed to the novel coronavirus. At a news conference at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda on Saturday morning, Trump’s medical team suggested that the president tested positive for the virus earlier than initially disclosed by the president. Trump’s physician, Sean P. Conley, later issued a “clarification” through the White House on that timeline, as well as the time frame in which the president was administered Regeneron, an antibody cocktail that is part of the complement of drugs Trump has taken to fend off the virus. Conley also declined to answer specific questions about the president’s health, including how high his fever rose in recent days, when he last tested negative for the virus and whether he was ever administered supplemental oxygen since being diagnosed. A senior administration official later confirmed that Trump was given supplemental oxygen at the White House on Friday before going to Walter Reed.

A developer’s powerful resignation letter is the latest condemnation of the social network’s attitude to hate speech.

A major national union, the American Federation of Teachers, is exposing Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, for her connections to a hate group espousing criminalization of homosexuality. Barrett has apparently been paid for speeches she delivered to the right-wing hate group, the “Alliance Defending Freedom.”

Network run by fake news-publishing father and son spreads word to Trump supporters they should prepare for violence in November.

The Trump Administration is poised to make a settlement with Purdue Pharma that it can claim as a victory for opioid victims. But the proposed outcome would leave the company’s owners enormously wealthy—and off the hook for good.

The beaver—yes, really, the beaver—is Animalia’s most generous member. By building woody dams and engineering ponds, beavers furnish habitats for just about every creature that flies, walks, and swims in North America and Europe; scientists thus refer to the rodent as a keystone species, an animal that sustains entire ecosystems. A visitor to a prehistoric beaver pond in Britain, writes Derek Gow in his delightful new book, Bringing Back the Beaver, would have experienced nature at its most exuberant: moose, wolves, otters, frogs, fish, all overseen by the “(s)olemn sentinels of the black storks in the leaf dim gaps on the limbs of the high trees.”

Thirty years after Germany came back together, the former East has become the stronghold of a once-marginalized movement that now sits in Parliament.

I think most Switch owners would agree that Joy-Con drift is an issue. Countless people have complained about the problem, contacted Nintendo about it, and gotten replacements. Even with all that evidence out there, Nintendo is reportedly arguing that Joy-Con drift isn't really a thing in a court battle. The Chimicles Schwartz Kriner & Donaldson-Smith law firm is currently involved the class-action lawsuit with Nintendo about Joy-Con drift, and they're looking for more input from Switch owners who've dealt with the issue. Their firm has sent out an email to a number of people who've gotten in touch about Joy-Con drift, as they're looking for more video evidence of the problem. You can read the law firm's email below.

Democrat Joe Biden opened his widest lead in a month in the U.S. presidential race after President Donald Trump tested positive for the coronavirus, and a majority of Americans think Trump could have avoided infection if he had taken the virus more seriously, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Sunday.

Winfrey learned to not let her platform get hijacked by hate.

Dealing with one crisis at a time was a luxury that is now over, and climate change has become the “threat multiplier” we knew it would be.

As short stories go, Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death” is very short. At 2,378 words it would qualify as a decently economical Jamboroo installment, and can be neatly summed up in a sentence. During a time of plague, a prince and his royal buddies repair to a well-provisioned castle, weld the iron gates shut, and throw themselves a heedless, non-stop party in defiance of the sickness ravaging the world outside, until such time as that party becomes immediately and entirely untenable. It’s a perfect story, but it’s not a subtle one. If there’s any aspect of the presidency in which Donald Trump has come close to flourishing during his first term, it is the ceremonial one. To the extent that anything in his plummy, anxious, relentlessly public life prepared him for the job ahead, it was this. Trump has bobbed and leered through gaudy ballrooms all his life, blithely cutting the line at one buffet after another and demanding one more ashen flap of beef than any other guest is permitted, rising to Make Some Remarks at some point in the evening, and otherwise circling and circulating to receive the thanks and praise that are his due as host. He may enjoy all of that, but it’s just as likely that he doesn’t. Trump is not at these parties to have fun, anyway. He’s there because it’s the only place he can be.

Kentucky's only Black woman State Representative, Attica Scott, is facing felony charges that could lead to her losing the right to vote and hold office. "It's clear to me that this is based on race, and it's based on keeping a foot on Black folks' necks. That's what this is about," Scott said. In the aftermath of last Wednesday's grand jury announcement that no officers would be charged for murdering Taylor, grief and outrage overwhelmed Louisville, and protesters again took to the streets. Scott, who was previously tear gassed alongside her 19-year-old daughter while protesting over the summer, was arrested last Thursday and charged with felony rioting, unlawful assembly, and failure to disperse. She and others are facing class D felony charges, the same class of offense that Brett Hankison, the officer who pleaded not guilty to Taylor's murder, was issued for his role in the raid on her apartment. Scott denied the protest-related charges, calling them "unbelievable."

Not because it’s something I want to do, but because of the sheer absurdity of it.

Top aides of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton have asked federal law enforcement authorities to investigate allegations of improper influence, abuse of office, bribery and other potential crimes against the state’s top lawyer. In a one-page letter to the state agency’s director of human resources, obtained Saturday by the American-Statesman and KVUE-TV, seven executives in the upper tiers of the office said that they are seeking the investigation into Paxton "in his official capacity as the current Attorney General of Texas." The Thursday letter said that each "has knowledge of facts relevant to these potential offenses and has provided statements concerning those facts to the appropriate law enforcement."

The White House’s history of lying makes it difficult to assess the truth of Trump’s condition. But allies are bracing for an election blowout, and at least one G-7 nation is predicting president Ivanka.

President Donald Trump went through a “very concerning” period Friday and the next 48 hours “will be critical” in his care as he battles the coronavirus at a hospital, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said Saturday. Meadows’ comments contradicted the rosy assessment of Trump’s condition offered by his staff and doctors, who took pains not to reveal the president had received supplemental oxygen at the White House before his hospital admission. “We’re still not on a clear path yet to a full recovery,” said a weary Meadows. It was a dramatically different picture than the one painted by the White House staff since Trump revealed his diagnosis as well as by his doctors, who updated the public at a press conference at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

A Philadelphia company that sells software used in hundreds of clinical trials, including the crash effort to develop tests, treatments and a vaccine for the coronavirus, was hit by a ransomware attack that has slowed some of those trials over the past two weeks. The attack on eResearchTechnology Inc., which has not previously been reported, began two weeks ago when employees discovered that they were locked out of their data by ransomware, an attack that holds victims’ data hostage until they pay to unlock it. ERT said clinical trial patients were never at risk, but customers said the attack forced trial researchers to track their patients with pen and paper.

Dublin Police confirmed a shooting near a pro-Donald Trump parade Saturday morning. According to police, a participant in the parade fired a shot through a victim’s truck window. The incident happened on I-270 east north of the Tuttle area and west of the Sawmill Road area. Police said they are searching for a black pickup truck with Trump and American flags and Marines sticker.