Schiff censured as GOP could be lining up impeachment votes next

[Daily Kos Morning Roundup]( A morning roundup of worthy pundit and news reads, brought to you by Daily Kos. [Click here to read the full web version.]( - [Schiff censured as GOP could be lining up impeachment votes next]( Schiff censured as GOP could be lining up impeachment votes next, Mary Ellen McIntire, Roll Call Schiff is the 25th House member ever censured, and the first since 2010. The vote came as some House Republicans were preparing to force votes on the impeachment of President Joe Biden and potentially other members of his administration. After the censure vote, the Rules Committee met and approved a rule to refer a Biden impeachment resolution to the Judiciary and Homeland Security committees. The full House would have to vote on that rule for the referral to take place. The censure vote was 213-209, with six members voting present. Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna offered the resolution to censure the former House Intelligence Committee chairman, who Republicans say unfairly targeted Trump. The resolution argues that Schiff abused his power as the ranking member and chair of the panel and falsely spread allegations about Trump’s 2016 campaign colluding with Russia. - [Migrant Standoff At Polish-Belarusian Border May Be Set To Explode]( Migrant Standoff At Polish-Belarusian Border May Be Set To Explode, Joanna Klimowicz and Ekaterina Lemonjava, World Crunch Polish authorities are arming themselves in preparation for provocations and hybrid attacks from the Belarusian border. Inhabitants along the border fear that the zone may be closed once again. And refugees, stuck between two armies, are fighting to survive. From the beginning of this week, activists from various aid groups have noted greater numbers of troops, checkpoints, and air patrols, especially in the area surrounding the Białowieża forest, a national park located between the two countries. This past weekend, Piotr Czaban, a journalist and activist from Podlaskie Volunteer Humanitarian Rescue, told Gazeta Wyborczaabout the route. Only 15 kilometers ahead of Hajnówka, a Polish border town, the police are stopping and checking every vehicle, whether they are entering or leaving the area, searching the insides and the trunks. He said he didn’t remember such strict controls since a state of emergency was declared in September 2021, excluding journalists, humanitarian workers, and non-residents from entering the area. - [Daily Kos has been struggling to make ends meet for the past six months. We have a lot of work to do to get ready for the 2024 elections and could really use your help right now. Please donate]( - [Modi’s U.S. visit sends a big, if quiet, signal to China]( Modi’s U.S. visit sends a big, if quiet, signal to China, Ellen Nakashima, The Washington Post Prime Minister Narendra Modi is in Washington this week, with the full pomp and circumstance of a state visit that comes on the heels of Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s tense trip to China, followed by President Biden’s comments on Tuesday calling Xi Jinping a “dictator.” Neither Biden nor Modi would frame their engagement as primarily being about containing the China challenge, but the subtext is plain. Rather, officials say, it is about lifting up a rising power — the world’s largest democracy, if an imperfect one — and showcasing the momentum in the relationship based on a set of shared interests. “This visit is not about China,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in an interview with reporters this week. “But the question of China’s role in the military domain, the technology domain, the economic domain will be on the agenda.” - [Everyone Likes Reading. Why Are We So Afraid of It?]( Everyone Likes Reading. Why Are We So Afraid of It?, A.O. Scott, The New York Times The reading crisis reverberates at the higher reaches of the educational system too. As corporate management models and zealous state legislatures refashion the academy into a gated outpost of the gig economy, the humanities have lost their luster for undergraduates. According to reports in The New Yorker and elsewhere, fewer and fewer students are majoring in English, and many of those who do (along with their teachers) have turned away from canonical works of literature toward contemporary writing and pop culture. Is anyone reading “Paradise Lost” anymore? Are you? Beyond the educational sphere lie technological perils familiar and new: engines of distraction like streaming (what we used to call TV) and TikTok; the post-literate alphabets of emojis and acronyms; the dark enchantments of generative A.I. While we binge and scroll and D.M., the robots, who are doing more and more of our writing, may also be taking over our reading. There is so much to worry about. A quintessentially human activity is being outsourced to machines that don’t care about phonics or politics or beauty or truth. A precious domain of imaginative and intellectual freedom is menaced by crude authoritarian politics. Exposure to the wrong words is corrupting our children, who aren’t even learning how to decipher the right ones. Our attention spans have been chopped up and commodified, sold off piecemeal to platforms and algorithms. We’re too busy, too lazy, too preoccupied to lose ourselves in books. - [Stay cool this summer with a Daily Kos t-shirt. Get yours now!]( - [For Biden and Modi, Interests Prevail Over Ideology]( For Biden and Modi, Interests Prevail Over Ideology, C. Raja Mohan, Foreign Policy The United States has been drifting in this direction for quite some time. If Sino-U.S. bonhomie peaked in 2000 with then-U.S. President Bill Clinton’s visit to Beijing, his successors have all sought to recalibrate assumptions about Beijing’s benign rise. George W. Bush began his time in office with clear recognition of the need to counter China in Asia but was distracted by the 9/11 attacks and subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Barack Obama took the shift a step further, outlining a security “pivot to Asia,” but the presumed need to cooperate with China on economic and climate issues limited its implementation. Donald Trump’s 2017 National Security Strategy outlined the centrality of the Chinese challenge. Biden, in turn, doubled down on the China threat and articulated a more systematic U.S. response. All presidents since Clinton signaled a strong desire for deeper strategic ties to India as part of the effort to restructure U.S. foreign and security policy toward Asia. Modi’s state visit to Washington this week is just the latest step in steadily growing U.S.-India relations, a process that has accelerated under Biden. [...] Handwringing in the Indian political class prevented New Delhi from seizing the new opportunities with Washington under Bush, but Modi has now stepped forward to build a substantive strategic partnership. Put simply, the imperatives of a stronger U.S.-India partnership have been evident for more than two decades. The delay on the Indian side was about sorting out lingering suspicions about the United States. Today, Modi says there is “unprecedented trust” between the two nations’ leaders. - [In Hosting Modi, Biden Pushes Democracy Concerns to the Background]( In Hosting Modi, Biden Pushes Democracy Concerns to the Background, Peter Baker and Mujib Mashal, The New York Times In granting Mr. Modi a coveted state visit, complete with a star-studded gala dinner, Mr. Biden will shower attention on a leader presiding over democratic backsliding in the world’s most populous nation. Mr. Modi’s government has cracked down on dissent and hounded opponents in a way that has raised fears of an authoritarian turn not seen since India’s slip into dictatorship in the 1970s. Yet Mr. Biden has concluded, much as his predecessors did, that he needs India despite concerns over human rights just as he believes he needs Saudi Arabia, the Philippines and other countries that are either outright autocracies or do not fit into the category of ideal democracies. At a time of confrontation with Russia and an uneasy standoff with China, Mr. Biden is being forced to accept the flaws of America’s friends. Two and a half years into his administration, the democracy-versus-autocracy framework has, therefore, become something of a geopolitical straitjacket for Mr. Biden, one that conveys little of the subtleties his foreign policy actually envisions yet virtually guarantees criticism every time he shakes hands with a counterpart who does not pass the George Washington test. Even some of his top advisers privately view the construct as too black-and-white in a world of grays. 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