“Security clearances do not determine who the president can trust; they identify risks that the president may not be aware of.”
Brian O’Neill at The Conversation
One of President Donald Trump’s closest aides, “Natalie Harp, worked in the White House for more than a year without going through the usual security clearance process,” and “the circumstances surrounding Harp are unusual, but the tension they expose is not,” says Brian O’Neill. Spies “don’t need an assistant to take classified files out of the West Wing to get something useful.” “For someone operating within the president’s inner circle, an undetected vulnerability could have significantly more serious consequences.”
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“Rosh Hashanah Teaches a Lesson from the Lasting Legacy of 9/11”
Yehuda Zeitlin at the Arizona Daily Star
“The 25th anniversary of 9/11 this year falls on Friday, September 11,” when Jews “around the world will celebrate Rosh Hashanah and welcome the Jewish year 5787,” says Rabbi Yehuda Zeitlin. 9/11 “taught us a terrible lesson about how far human action can go.” But “human influence works in other ways.” “A mitzvah can have an impact we may never see,” and “kindness can be remembered.” Since “Rosh Hashanah begins on September 11th, it might be worth keeping this in mind.”
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“10 years after Sinjar, the world still fails to protect vulnerable communities”
Kadi Zerey in The Hill
“On August 3, 2014, militants from the so-called Islamic State of Syria and Iraq entered Sinjar, the ancestral home of Iraq’s Yazidi minority,” says Judy Zerey. Within “days, thousands were killed, thousands more were kidnapped and enslaved, and entire communities were uprooted.” But “a decade later, Sinjar’s most important lesson remains largely unlearned.” “The failure was not simply that ISIS committed atrocities.” “The failure was that almost all layers of protection collapsed at the same time.”
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“Head Start offers a model for ending preschool displacement. Don’t weaken it.
Hillary Linardopoulos at The Philadelphia Inquirer
RFK Jr. “announced plans to radically deregulate” the Head Start program, says Hillary Linardopoulos. But “suspensions and expulsions for our youngest students, which are harmful to a child’s development and can seriously impact their future, disproportionately harm Black and brown children.” Head Start’s policy “prohibits the expulsion of students from its programs and strictly limits suspensions to extraordinary circumstances.” This “policy should be expanded.”
