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Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of March 20

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Tags: usa, politics, recurring.weekly

This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

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  1. cmccabe
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    Link
    Waco, Texas: Donald Trump rallies on anniversary of deadly standoff https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65068125 Edit: more on the significance of Trump holding his rally in Waco on that...

    Waco, Texas: Donald Trump rallies on anniversary of deadly standoff
    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65068125

    The campaign event, planned for Saturday, marks the former president's return to a traditionally conservative state in which he remains very popular.

    But his decision to hold the rally in Waco - best known for an armed standoff 30 years ago - has raised eyebrows.

    The 1993 tragedy is seen as a landmark event for the American far-right.

    The [Branch Davidian] calamity - and a similar incident one year earlier in Ruby Ridge, Idaho - tapped into a vein of anti-government sentiment often linked to the rise of far-right militia groups in the US through the mid-1990s and early 2000s.

    "[Anti-government and white supremacist circles have] taken up the cause that this was an out-of-control government ... that citizens couldn't live the lives they wanted and the federal government came barrelling in and burned them out of their facilities."

    Two years after the siege, Timothy McVeigh - a young man who had shown his support at Waco and became fixated with the federal response as evidence of an impending New World Order - bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, killing 168 people and injuring nearly 700 others. It remains the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in US history.

    Edit: more on the significance of Trump holding his rally in Waco on that date:
    WHAT IT MEANS FOR TRUMP’S CAMPAIGN TO START IN WACO, Mike Giglio, The Intercept_

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