The Committee to Protect Journalists increases its Washington staff by one.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has created the new position of Washington Advocacy Manager to lead efforts to advance press freedom around the world with the U.S. government and other policymakers in Washington, D.C. Michael De Dora will be the first to occupy the post.

“The United States plays an important role in promoting and protecting press freedom worldwide,” CPJ Advocacy Director Courtney Radsch said from Washington, D.C. “It is imperative that press-freedom norms are respected here and serve as a benchmark for other governments. We look forward to increasing our cooperation with partners, policymakers, and lawmakers to promote and protect a free press, in the United States and

More from the Times on Darren Osborne.

He had family problems and was known by locals as belligerent and aggressive, with a drinking problem. He had Muslim neighbors, who described his behavior as fairly unremarkable, and his children had Muslim friends.

No one on the cul-de-sac in Cardiff, Wales, where Darren Osborne, 47, lived could readily explain what he is believed to have done: rented a van, driven it 150 miles to London and plowed into a crowd of Muslims as they finished prayers at the Finsbury Park Mosque early Monday.

Numerous residents here said that Mr. Osborne was often agitated, even disturbed, but few described him as frightening and none said he had expressed political sentiments, much less

Damn but misogyny is casual sometimes. Ben Mathis-Lilley lets it all hang out at Slate.

Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff lost a special House election in Georgia on Tuesday to Republican Karen Handel. It’s the fourth high-profile special election Dems have lost since November. California Rep. Nancy Pelosi is the leader of the House Democrats. Should she be replaced, as some rabble-rousers are starting to suggest?

Oh yeah, obviously, because the Speaker of the House is to blame when a same-party candidate loses.

Reasons to put Nancy Pelosi on a raft in the Hudson Bay (metaphorically):

Ahhh fuck you, dude. That’s “metaphorically” the way “die in a fire” is metaphorically.

• She’s both unpopular and, for a congressional figure, relativelywell-known

The man who died in the Finsbury Park terror attack died of injuries from the attack, as opposed to dying of whatever had caused him to collapse on the pavement before the attack. He was Makram Ali.

Makram Ali moved to Britain from Bangladesh when he was 10. He and his wife raised four daughters and two sons. He loved strolling in parks with his two grandchildren. His family was about to take a vacation in Canada.

Mr. Ali, 51, was returning from Ramadan prayers early Monday morning when he collapsed on a street in North London; he was known to have a weak leg.

First aid arrived, and Mr. Ali was receiving medical assistance. He appeared to feel

Max Ehrenfreund at the Post says Republicans have had good success at putting a halt to current progressive policies but not so much at reversing them. I think the 1994 Congress did a fair bit of reversing, but that may be an exception.

Throughout the modern history of Congress, lawmakers have inexorably expanded progressive social policies, and while conservatives have successfully forestalled expansions to the social safety net, they’ve had very little success in reversing them.

Right now, however, Republicans have a chance to buck that trend, as they prepare legislation aimed at repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. The Senate bill released on Thursday, coupled with the House bill passed earlier this year,

The Times summarizes the Senate Republicans’ health insurance bill.

Senate Republicans, who have promised a repeal of the Affordable Care Act for seven years, took a major step on Thursday toward that goal, unveiling a bill to cut Medicaid deeply and end the health law’s mandate that most Americans have health insurance.

The 142-page bill would create a new system of federal tax credits to help people buy health insurance, while offering states the ability to drop many of the benefits required by the Affordable Care Act, like maternity care, emergency services and mental health treatment.

The Senate bill — once promised as a top-to-bottom revamp of the health bill passed by the House last month — instead

Remind us how Kushner managed to get a security clearance? And why he still has it?

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee want to see White House records on the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, his security clearance and his access to classified information.

In a letter to White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, the oversight panel’s 18 Democrats question why Kushner’s security clearance hasn’t been revoked.

The Democrats say Kushner, one of President Trump’s closest advisers, had meetings with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and the CEO of a Russian state-owned bank. They say he failed to disclose the meetings as he applied for security clearance and allowed administration officials to say he’d had no such meetings.

“It is unclear

Nothing like bringing an archbishop in to convince people to shut up about lethal corporate malfeasance.

Ford South Africa has been having a tiny issue over cars that burst into flames. (The Ford Pinto had that problem back in the 70s.) The family of a guy named Reshall Jimmy, who died in a Ford SUV that caught fire, have been battling Ford via social media.

Since his death over 50 Kugas have caught alight across South Africa with the National Consumer Commission placing the company under official investigation.

Police and private forensic investigators maintain that the fire was caused by an electrical fault behind the dashboard on the passenger side of the vehicle. Ford believes the fire started at the

The BBC reports a second arrest in connection with the Finsbury Park terror attack.

A man has been arrested on suspicion of posting an offensive Facebook post about the London Finsbury Park attack.

Police said a 37-year-old, believed to be the son of an owner of the Rhondda Cynon Taff company whose van was used in Monday’s attack, is in custody.

Richard Evans allegedly posted: “It’s a shame they don’t hire out steam rollers or tanks could have done a tidy job then.”

Oy.

That’s a disgusting thing to say, and it should have been (and probably was) reported to Facebook, and Facebook should have removed it promptly and perhaps suspended the poster. But arrested?

It’s straightforwardly a … Read the rest

Guest post by Lady Mondegreen.

There are numerous parallels between the way trans women are depicted in the media and the way that they have been depicted by some feminist theorists. While many feminists—especially younger ones who came of age in the 1980s and 1990s—recognize that trans women can be allies in the fight to eliminate gender stereotypes, other feminists—particularly those who embrace gender essentialism—believe that trans women foster sexism by mimicking patriarchal attitudes about femininity, or that we objectify women by trying to possess female bodies of our own.

Last time, I looked at Julia Serano’s discussion of media depictions of trans people, specifically trans women. Today I’m going to finish up with chapter 2, which is mainly given … Read the rest

Originally a comment by A Masked Avenger on The Way Forward.

All this huggy-bear stuff is bullshit.

That said, there’s a point to bear in mind that stands out starkly to me as a former right-wing fundie. My therapist made the cogent observation that the attraction of zombie movies is that zombies represent what jingoists want the enemy to be: relentless, implacable, utterly non-human, incapable of reason, incapable of showing mercy and undeserving of mercy.

When the enemy is literally beyond the reach of reason, literally relentless in their efforts to kill you without mercy or quarter, then there’s only one thing you can do: either you shoot them in the head, or they eat your brains. Separation is … Read the rest

Originally a comment by iknklast on The way forward.

Funny how much of this we hear, but few people point out that the women, people of color, and foreign-born citizens that Trump and his supporters hate (with a passion that exceeds anything I’ve ever seen from the other side) might be lost and afraid. That we might need some support. That we might need some sympathy. And that all of these pundits (I read tons of this) saying WE are the problem because of our “identity politics” and determination that we want to be part of the voice in this large, diverse, noisy country is the reason Trump won. I see tons of this on the so-called left, beating … Read the rest

Terry Gross talked to Roxane Gay yesterday.

GROSS: So when you were in college, you fell in love with theater. I guess earlier than that you fell in love with theater. You went to Yale, in part, because of their theater department. And you worked behind the scenes. Was that a way of being involved with storytelling and with people but also being kind of invisible because you were literally offstage?

GAY: Absolutely. It was a way of being a part of something because I’m not a joiner. I never was. And so I was never really interested in extracurriculars. I did them because that’s what you do to get into a good college. But theater is where I found