The Plot to Keep Meatpacking Plants Open During COVID-19

This story first appeared at ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

As hundreds of meatpacking workers fell sick from the coronavirus that was spreading through their plants and into their communities in April 2020, the CEO of Tyson Foods reached out to the head of another major meatpacker, Smithfield Foods, with a proposal.

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Behind the Curtain

You can never understand national politics without understanding the elite mores of Washington, DC. People toss around the word “elite.” But here I mean it in a more specific sense of the mix of journalists, staffers, elected officials, lobbyists, activists and more who have power in and essentially run the political town of Washington, DC. (The actual place where most of the population lives is a different thing.) As I’ve written in various contexts over the years that strata of the city remains heavily wired for the GOP, even though there are lots of people from that world who certainly aren’t conservatives and by definition many are Democrats. I wanted to flag something to you that kind of captures it.

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Georgia Judge Laughs David Perdue’s 2020 Election Lawsuit Out Of Court

A state judge in Georgia laughed former U.S. senator and Trump-endorsed gubernatorial candidate David Perdue out of court, saying in essence that he had no idea what he was talking about when he filed suit late last year over the 2020 election results in Georgia. 

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Alito Calls Landmark Supreme Court Decision Expanding LGBTQ Worker Rights ‘Indefensible’

Justice Samuel Alito is evidentially toting around an old grudge. 

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Judgment Day: Durham Finally Gets 2016 Conspiracy Theories Before Jury

Michael Sussmann, the Democratic-aligned attorney, was indicted in September 2021, days before the five-year statute of limitations would have expired.

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How Baby Formula Shortage Turned Into Racist Attack On Immigrants

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.

Just Add Water And Presto!

Just like that you can turn the baby formula shortage into a … racist attack on immigrants?

It played out quickly Thursday. The “credit” for the bank shot from baby formula shortage to xenophobic attack on immigrants to blaming Biden for it all appears to belong to Rep. Kat Cammack (R-FL). Well played, well played.

But she wasn’t alone.

  • The NYPost was ON IT: “Border detention center looks stocked with baby formula despite shortage”
  • It gets 4 Pinocchios from the WaPo factchecker.
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NYT: DOJ Now Investigating Trump Stashing Classified Docs At Mar-A-Lago

A Justice Department investigation into ex-President Donald Trump and White House staffers’ handling of 15 boxes of classified documents that were taken to Trump’s Mar-A-Lago resort in Florida at the end of his presidency is now reportedly underway.

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Trump’s 2020 Coup Failures Could Be 2024 Successes

Donald Trump’s 2020 coup-plotting crew wasn’t exactly an A-Team: You had Rudy Giuliani reaching peak incoherence, Sidney Powell seemingly taking strategic advice from online message boards, the ex-Overstock.com CEO shuttling operatives around the country in a private jet… it was a mess. 

And yet: They got pretty close.