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Hunter Biden steps off Marine One at Ft. McNair, after spending the night at Camp David, in Washington, U.S., June 25, 2023.

REUTERS/Tasos Katopodis

Hunter Biden catches a gun case

Federal prosecutors indicted U.S. President Joe Biden’s son Hunter on three federal gun-related charges on Thursday. The indictments come after a plea deal the younger Biden believed he had struck with federal prosecutors dramatically fell apart at the last minute in July. Hunter now faces up to 25 years in prison for allegedly lying about his drug use on a federal form that was required to purchase a handgun in Delaware in 2018.


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Is the US covering up UFOs?
Is the US covering up UFOs? | Quick Take | GZERO Media

Is the US covering up UFOs?

Ian Bremmer's Quick Take:

Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here, and we're talking about aliens, a Quick Take. Very exciting, of course.

A Congressional testimony by a whistleblower, a former Air Force intelligence officer. His name is David Grusch, Major David Grusch, who says that the US government has been covering up UFOs.

David Grusch: “I like to use the term non-human, I don't like to denote origin, it keeps the aperture open.”

They come from other galaxies. We have no idea, but it's a coverup, and the fact that it's covered up is clearly evidence of an even deeper state than we had been aware of before. It's one thing when the deep state can fake your elections. It's another when they can actually cover up extraterrestrial species. And we know that, because if you look at all of the sightings of aliens that have happened over the past decades, they've mostly come over the United States, not just continental, Alaska too, a little Hawaii. But still, we should be the ones that find the real ones and then cover up the real ones if that's where the sightings are.

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Too many people have US security clearance: former House Intelligence Committee member
Too many people have US security clearance: former House Intelligence Committee member | GZERO Media

Too many people have US security clearance: former House Intelligence Committee member

The US government has an over-classification problem. Too many documents are marked "secret" that shouldn't be. And according to this week's guest, the over-classification problem has also created an over-clearance problem. Jane Harman, a former nine-term Congresswoman who led high-level intelligence committees, says that the two problems are closely related. "We over-classify, we over-clear. Our clearance problem is very cumbersome" Harman tells Ian. As a result, many people with clearance tend to err on the side of classifying information rather than risking their position by making public the wrong document.

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US Government information: What's the threshold for "classified"?
US Government information: What's the threshold for "classified"? | GZERO World

US Government information: What's the threshold for "classified"?

There are many reasons for a government to classify information. The US does not want Vladimir Putin getting his hands on our nuclear codes, for example. An estimated 50 million documents are classified every year, though the exact number is unknown—not because it’s classified, but because the government just can’t keep track of it all. But in the words of the former US Solicitor General Erwin Griswold, some “secrets are not worth keeping.”

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Why Clarence Thomas has eroded trust in the US Supreme Court
Why Clarence Thomas has eroded trust in the US Supreme Court | GZERO Media

Why Clarence Thomas has eroded trust in the US Supreme Court

Few Supreme Court Justices have tested the Court's ethical limits like Justice Clarence Thomas, says this week's GZERO World guest, Yale Law School legal expert Emily Bazelon. And that's because, for centuries, Justices have been reluctant to test the boundaries of an ethical system that has few limits. "Federal judges and lower courts are subject to ethical codes," Bazelon explains, "but not the Supreme Court justices themselves."

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Podcast: (Un)packing the Supreme Court with Yale Law's Emily Bazelon

Transcript

Listen: The Supreme Court, one of the three branches of government that makes up this country's democratic system of checks and balances, doesn't have a military. As a result, when its justices make a ruling, they are counting on a strong sense of public trust to ensure their decisions are carried out. Not all countries on this planet can count on that public trust, and with popular support for the Court plummeting to record lows, some experts fear that the United States may soon be unable to as well.

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Biden expected to announce vaccine mandate for federal workers
Biden Expected To Announce Vaccine Mandate for Federal Workers | US Politics In :60 | GZERO Media

Biden expected to announce vaccine mandate for federal workers

Get insights on the latest news in US politics from Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington:

Why can't President Biden order a vaccine mandate for all Americans?

Well, the reason is it's out of his powers. The one of the fundamental challenges in the pandemic is that the federal government has actually been fairly limited in the steps they can take to stop the spread of the virus. So, that's why you've seen President Biden order masks on transit, mass transit, airplanes, and the like. But he can't order masks in workplaces because that's not within his power. That power lies within state governments. State governments and other entities, like employers, can require vaccinations before you come into their buildings, or you come back to school, or you go to work in your office. But the federal government can't do that. What Biden is doing is, allegedly, supposedly going to announce a mandate for federal workers to get vaccinated.

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Gabriella Turrisi

Biden's big bet on Big Government

There are many differences between America's two main political parties, but the most fundamental is this: Democrats say government can and should act boldly to improve people's lives and strengthen the nation. Republicans insist that government itself poses the greatest threat to individual liberty and the nation's lasting competitive strength. The past 100 days make crystal-clear which side of that argument President Joe Biden lives on.

Ronald Reagan's presidency in the 1980s seemed to finally settle this question in favor of less government. Bill Clinton, the first post-Reagan Democrat in the White House, famously told Congress in 1996 that "the era of big government is over." A generation later, outside of his ambitious healthcare reform plan, fellow Democrat Barack Obama was notably cautious on this question.

But the pandemic has given Biden an opportunity to show government can go big. Historically big.

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