‘The most complex, dynamic and dangerous threat environment I’ve experienced’

‘The most complex, dynamic and dangerous threat environment I’ve experienced’

Politico reports: The toxic political climate and a complex web of threats — punctuated by Sunday’s apparent assassination attempt on Donald Trump — is putting an extraordinary strain on the national security officials tasked with safeguarding American democracy. Security experts say sharp polarization and increasingly hateful political rhetoric — fanned by foreign adversaries and supercharged by social media — have combined to test the nation’s ability to protect its candidates and institutions. “The 2024 presidential election is taking place at…

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Trump ignored warnings from Secret Service about security risks posed by golfing

Trump ignored warnings from Secret Service about security risks posed by golfing

The Washington Post reports: Soon after Donald Trump became president, authorities tried to warn him about the risks posed by golfing at his own courses because of their proximity to public roads. Secret Service agents came armed with unusual evidence: not suspect profiles or spent bullet casings, but simple photographs taken by news crews of him golfing at his private club in Sterling, Va. They reasoned that if photographers with long-range lenses could get the president in their sights while…

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Laura Loomer is the latest symptom, not the disease

Laura Loomer is the latest symptom, not the disease

Sam Stein writes: Over the past week,a small number of elected Republicans (along with a few venerable conservative voices) have aired concerns about Donald Trump allowing right-wing provocateur Laura Loomer to accompany him on the campaign trail. It’s not so much that Loomer says offensive things, they argue. It’s that they fear the influence that her conspiracy-addled mind might have on the former president. “All of this would be ignorable,” the Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote of Loomer amplifying…

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Abortion bans have delayed emergency medical care. In Georgia, experts say this mother’s death was preventable

Abortion bans have delayed emergency medical care. In Georgia, experts say this mother’s death was preventable

By Kavitha Surana This story was originally published by ProPublica In her final hours, Amber Nicole Thurman suffered from a grave infection that her suburban Atlanta hospital was well-equipped to treat. She’d taken abortion pills and encountered a rare complication; she had not expelled all of the fetal tissue from her body. She showed up at Piedmont Henry Hospital in need of a routine procedure to clear it from her uterus, called a dilation and curettage, or D&C. But just…

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A secretive group recruited far-right candidates in key U.S. House races. It could help Democrats

A secretive group recruited far-right candidates in key U.S. House races. It could help Democrats

The Associated Press reports: Joe Wiederien was an unlikely candidate to challenge a Republican congressman in one of the nation’s most competitive House districts. A fervent supporter of former President Donald Trump, Wiederien was registered as a Republican until months earlier. A debilitating stroke had left him unable to drive. He had never run for office. For a time, he couldn’t vote because of a felony conviction. But he arrived last month at the Iowa Capitol with well over the…

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‘Netanyahu wants open-ended war’: Palestinian journalist & fmr. Israeli negotiator on Gaza ceasefire

‘Netanyahu wants open-ended war’: Palestinian journalist & fmr. Israeli negotiator on Gaza ceasefire

  As Israeli forces launch repeated attacks on civilian areas in Gaza, expand their deadly incursion into the West Bank and threaten retaliation for strikes by Hezbollah and Houthis, we discuss ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas with Palestinian writer Amjad Iraqi and former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy. Despite apparent divisions among Israeli leadership over the terms of an acceptable deal — if such a deal even exists — all of the Israeli proposals are “united by an assumption…

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Mega El Niños kicked off the world’s worst mass extinction

Mega El Niños kicked off the world’s worst mass extinction

Science News reports: A barrage of intense, wild swings in climate conditions may have fueled the largest mass extinction in Earth’s history. A re-creation of how ancient sea surface temperatures, ocean and atmosphere circulation, and landmasses interacted revealed an Earth plagued by nearly decade-long stints of droughts, wildfires and flooding. Researchers knew that a spike in global temperatures — triggered by gas emissions from millions of years of enormous volcanic eruptions in what is now Siberia — was the likely…

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Trump’s Iowa lead shrinks significantly, an indication he may be in trouble nationally

Trump’s Iowa lead shrinks significantly, an indication he may be in trouble nationally

Des Moines Register reports: Kamala Harris has significantly narrowed the presidential race in Iowa, cutting Donald Trump’s lead to 4 percentage points in a dramatic turnaround from Joe Biden’s double-digit deficit. A new Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll shows that Trump leads Vice President Harris 47% to 43% among likely Iowa voters — a far slimmer margin than the 18-point lead the former Republican president enjoyed over Democratic President Biden in late spring. Before Biden ended his reelection campaign, a…

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The damage that Trump’s racist rhetoric is inflicting on Springfield, Ohio

The damage that Trump’s racist rhetoric is inflicting on Springfield, Ohio

Politico reports: In this city thrust unwillingly into the white hot center of Donald Trump’s immigration wars, conspiratorial fervor lept from internet memes into the humdrum tasks of everyday life. Just since Tuesday, bomb threats shuttered city hall, closed a middle school and forced the evacuation of two elementary schools. Even the city’s Bureau of Motor Vehicles and the Ohio License Bureau closed Thursday. As its own senator and the former president trafficked baseless claims that immigrants in this blue-collar…

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How Chief Justice Roberts shaped Trump’s Supreme Court winning streak

How Chief Justice Roberts shaped Trump’s Supreme Court winning streak

The New York Times reports: Last February, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. sent his eight Supreme Court colleagues a confidential memo that radiated frustration and certainty. Former President Donald J. Trump, seeking to retake the White House, had made a bold, last-ditch appeal to the justices. He wanted them to block his fast-approaching criminal trial on charges of attempting to overturn the 2020 election, arguing that he was protected by presidential immunity. Whatever move the court made could have…

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The organizers are Jewish. The cause is Palestinian. This college won’t be hosting

The organizers are Jewish. The cause is Palestinian. This college won’t be hosting

Masha Gessen writes: On the surface, this is a small story: A college canceled an event planned by a magazine. But it seems to be a story about something bigger: fear. Rather, it’s a story about many fears — including the fear of antisemitism, the fear of being accused of antisemitism, and the fear of controversy generally — and how they can combine to turn an institution designed to facilitate open discussion into something that makes open discussion impossible. The…

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The assault on Gaza hasn’t put an end to Israel’s constitutional crisis

The assault on Gaza hasn’t put an end to Israel’s constitutional crisis

Gershom Gorenberg writes: When Hamas invaded Israel on October 7, the most bitter political conflict in the country’s history suddenly seemed to be on hold—as if an unseen finger had pushed a pause button with everyone’s mouths still open in a shout. “Judicial reform is not on the agenda,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared at a press conference on October 28, referring to his government’s program to eviscerate the supreme court and give the executive unconstrained power. Major protest organizations…

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Alarm in UK and US over possible Iran-Russia nuclear deal

Alarm in UK and US over possible Iran-Russia nuclear deal

The Observer reports: Britain and the US have raised fears that Russia has shared nuclear secrets with Iran in return for Tehran supplying Moscow with ballistic missiles to bomb Ukraine. During their summit in Washington DC on Friday, Keir Starmer and US president Joe Biden acknowledged that the two countries were tightening military cooperation at a time when Iran is in the process of enriching enough uranium to complete its long-held goal to build a nuclear bomb. British sources indicated…

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Emissions from in-house data centers of Google, Microsoft, Meta and Apple vastly higher than reported

Emissions from in-house data centers of Google, Microsoft, Meta and Apple vastly higher than reported

The Guardian reports: Big tech has made some big claims about greenhouse gas emissions in recent years. But as the rise of artificial intelligence creates ever bigger energy demands, it’s getting hard for the industry to hide the true costs of the data centers powering the tech revolution. According to a Guardian analysis, from 2020 to 2022 the real emissions from the “in-house” or company-owned data centers of Google, Microsoft, Meta and Apple are likely about 662% – or 7.62 times – higher than officially reported. Amazon is the largest emitter…

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