Haley Stevens needs to put the political theater away and get out of the way

Haley Stevens needs to put the political theater away and get out of the way

Jeremy Allen writes: Some moments in politics are bigger than politics, and good leaders know that. Sometimes you have to put personal feelings aside, recognizing the stakes, and understanding that the people you’re supposed to represent have bigger problems than your bruised political ego. Congresswoman Haley Stevens appears to be struggling with that assignment. With Election Day approaching, Stevens has reignited a fight with Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, the candidate who defeated her in August’s Democratic primary. Instead…

Read More Read More

The price of defying AIPAC

The price of defying AIPAC

  As the United States approaches the midterm elections, a new wave of progressive candidates is challenging the Democratic establishment, campaigning on affordability, medicare for all, and opposition to big money in politics. But with divisions deepening over capitalism, US foreign policy and support for Israel, can the Democratic Party embrace its growing left wing? And even if progressives win elections, can they deliver meaningful change for working-class Americans? This week on UpFront, Marc Lamont Hill speaks with former US…

Read More Read More

AIPAC isn’t retreating. Here’s how it’s already shaping the next Congress

AIPAC isn’t retreating. Here’s how it’s already shaping the next Congress

The Intercept reports: In the words of the biggest name in the outside elections-spending game, “Being pro-Israel is good policy and good politics.” This midterms cycle, however, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s strategy seems to suggest the opposite. Contrary to its signature slogan, AIPAC’s name has become anathema to voters across the political spectrum repulsed by Israel’s genocide in Gaza and frustrated by Washington’s outpouring of military aid for a foreign government while domestic costs soar. So it’s going…

Read More Read More

Data center utility execs maxed out donations to Sen. Dan Sullivan

Data center utility execs maxed out donations to Sen. Dan Sullivan

The Alaska Current reports: Within a nine-day period last spring, executives tied to a data center utility investor with major public projects in the Arctic dumped more than $50,000 into Alaska’s tightly contested US Senate race between Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan and Democrat Mary Peltola. The money flowed to Sullivan shortly after he successfully pushed the military to open up Alaskan Air Force bases to data center developers. Federal Elections Commission filings show the donations occurred between April 23 and…

Read More Read More

How Trump is dismantling America’s scientific research machine

How Trump is dismantling America’s scientific research machine

The New York Times reports: The warning, buried in an obscure government report this summer, was unflinching. The Defense Department’s vaunted network of research laboratories — whose scientists helped develop satellite communication, radar technology, and even the computer mouse — was in trouble. The labs lost a significant share of their staff last year, largely in response to the Trump administration’s efforts to thin the federal work force, the report found. Refilling critical positions was proving difficult due in part…

Read More Read More

Milorad Dodik, a pro-Russia strongman, at Mar-a-Lago

Milorad Dodik, a pro-Russia strongman, at Mar-a-Lago

Isaac Stanley-Becker writes: In the days after Tuesday’s midterm elections, luminaries of the MAGA movement will gather at Mar-a-Lago to turn their attention to 2028. Speakers will include a Cabinet secretary, the head of the Domestic Policy Council, and several members of Congress. Also present will be Milorad Dodik, the pro-Russia strongman who has bragged about spying on Americans and recently called Russian President Vladimir Putin “one of the most peace-loving leaders of our time.” Dodik is the de facto…

Read More Read More

Twenty-eight years walking across the globe and discovering the kindness of strangers

Twenty-eight years walking across the globe and discovering the kindness of strangers

Jonathan Wolfe writes: Karl Bushby’s plan to walk across the globe began with a note in a birthday card. It was the mid-1990s and Mr. Bushby was a paratrooper in the British Army, obsessed with endurance tests. He was trying to find the longest distance he could travel by foot, but none of his options felt challenging enough, maxing out at a few thousand miles. Then his father suggested in the card that he look into traversing the Bering Strait…

Read More Read More

Is this Elon Musk’s world?

Is this Elon Musk’s world?

  Ahead of the midterm elections, Elon Musk has become the single largest campaign donor in any election cycle, giving about $450 million to Republicans. It is just a fraction of a percent of his near-trillion-dollar net worth. Musk’s control over SpaceX, Starlink, X, Tesla and Neuralink, on top of his riches, has given him power over wealth, attention and critical infrastructure that few human beings have ever amassed before. What does he want to do with all this power?…

Read More Read More

Researchers uncover signs of massive Israeli surveillance operation on Starlink users

Researchers uncover signs of massive Israeli surveillance operation on Starlink users

Gizmodo reports: Discover-Tech, an Israeli advertising firm previously linked to the delivery of zero-click spyware, is the top bidder for Starlink ad impressions in 105 countries, according to a new report from Reuters. Researchers say it all points to a large-scale tracking effort aimed at users of SpaceX’s satellite internet service. John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, posted on X that data from TrendAI suggest the existence of a “worldwide surveillance op targeting @Starlink…

Read More Read More

‘Black October’: The entire internet is breaking

‘Black October’: The entire internet is breaking

  AI-hacking swarms are poking holes across the internet at such a rate that some cybersecurity professionals have dubbed this month “Black October.” The AI-cybersecurity professional Alex Stamos argues that it’s time to be proactive rather than reactive, and that might mean rewriting the code for the internet in newer programming languages that could make all of our online systems and personal information safer. He joins “Galaxy Brain” host Charlie Warzel to explain why that’s not as big of a…

Read More Read More

The $6.3 billion Binance hack was pulled off in just twenty minutes

The $6.3 billion Binance hack was pulled off in just twenty minutes

Wired reports: Cryptocurrency firms and investigators are racing to freeze and track down billions of dollars of stolen digital cash following what appears to be the largest crypto heist of all time. On Thursday, starting at around 4pm ET, hackers started quickly siphoning around $6.3 billion in cryptocurrencies, spread across multiple blockchains, from wallets belonging to crypto exchange Binance. Following the theft, Binance almost immediately suspended all deposits and withdrawals from its services as part of its investigation into the…

Read More Read More

Gulf states must rethink trillion-dollar defence in light of U.S.-Iran war, IISS reports says

Gulf states must rethink trillion-dollar defence in light of U.S.-Iran war, IISS reports says

The Guardian reports: Gulf states are going to have to reconfigure their trillion-dollar defences given the damage inflicted on their economies and the questionable continued value of US bases in the face of Iranian attack, according to a study by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. The report says that in the weeks before the 8 April ceasefire, 12 regional states, overwhelmingly in the Gulf, faced 4,670 Iranian one-way attack drones and more than 1,400 ballistic missiles. Nearly half were…

Read More Read More

How a secret vote by UN scientists legitimized carbon capture and skewed decades of climate policy

How a secret vote by UN scientists legitimized carbon capture and skewed decades of climate policy

By Katie Worth This story was originally published by ProPublica In the spring of 2005, the United Nations convened more than 100 of the world’s top scientists in the medieval town of Oviedo, Spain. They were there to finish writing a paradigm-shifting report about a technology that they hoped could help stop climate change.  To celebrate the report’s impending completion, the meeting’s hosts handed out bottles of cava, Spanish sparkling wine, with tongue-in-cheek labels stating that they were to be…

Read More Read More

Twice as many plants and animals sold in wildlife trade as previously thought, report says

Twice as many plants and animals sold in wildlife trade as previously thought, report says

The Guardian reports: The number of plant and animal species in use or sold in the wildlife trade is more than twice as high as previously thought, researchers have discovered. A study, published in Science Advances, warns that there are huge gaps in global assessments of how wildlife is traded, and that past estimates have failed to keep up with changes such as the boom in the online exotic pet trade, where sellers offering to post spider eggs across the…

Read More Read More