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Trump officials discussed sending Army’s 82nd Airborne division to Portland, text messages show

Trump officials discussed sending Army’s 82nd Airborne division to Portland, text messages show

Minnesota Star Tribune reports: Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth considered sending an elite U.S. Army strike force to Portland, Ore., to quell protests that President Donald Trump has characterized as “lawless mayhem,” according to images of messages provided to the Minnesota Star Tribune. The messages, casually exchanged last weekend in a crowded, public space, show high-level officials in the Trump administration discussing the deployment of the Army’s 82nd Airborne, an infantry division that has been deployed to combat zones in both…

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Norman Finkelstein: Trump plan has no connection to reality in Gaza

Norman Finkelstein: Trump plan has no connection to reality in Gaza

  President Trump has released a Gaza “peace” plan that would put Gaza under a Trump-chaired “Board of Peace”. While some in the international community have welcomed the move, some question the fact that it bypasses Palestinians and offers no path to statehood. So, with Netanyahu pledging not to fully withdraw from Gaza, will this deal bring genuine peace or cement the status quo? This week on an UpFront special, Marc Lamont Hill speaks with one of the world’s foremost…

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‘We have to move fast’: Jane Fonda relaunches father’s free speech group to counter Trump censorship

‘We have to move fast’: Jane Fonda relaunches father’s free speech group to counter Trump censorship

  The Oscar-winning actress and activist Jane Fonda is relaunching her father Henry Fonda’s free speech organization, the Committee for the First Amendment. First established in 1947 to combat the rise of McCarthyism, the organization brings together members of the film and television industry to push back against and refuse government censorship. Fonda’s announcement comes after the television network ABC brought back late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s show following widespread protest. Kimmel’s show had been pulled from the air after he…

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Marc Rowan: The billionaire behind Trump’s extortion plan targeting universities

Marc Rowan: The billionaire behind Trump’s extortion plan targeting universities

“Traditionally, we are taught to judge the success of a society by how it deals with the least able, most vulnerable members of that society. [But] shouldn’t we judge a society by how they treat the most successful?” Marc Rowan, 2012 The New York Times reports: The Trump administration shook higher education this week when it promised benefits to universities that signed a “compact” closely aligned with conservative priorities. But much of the compact’s construction happened outside of the West…

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How far are colleges willing to go to limit the harms caused by AI?

How far are colleges willing to go to limit the harms caused by AI?

Tyler Austin Harper writes: Since the release of ChatGPT, in 2022, colleges and universities have been engaged in an experiment to discover whether artificially intelligent chatbots and the liberal-arts tradition can coexist. Notwithstanding a few exceptions, by now the answer is clear: They cannot. AI-enabled cheating is pretty much everywhere. As a May New York magazine essay put it, “students at large state schools, the Ivies, liberal-arts schools in New England, universities abroad, professional schools, and community colleges are relying…

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The corruption and Bari Weiss-ification of the media

The corruption and Bari Weiss-ification of the media

  Eoin Higgins writes: Only a billionaire could look at the sclerotic state of network television news and conclude that the problem is that coverage is not sufficiently to the right. Yet that seems to be exactly the conclusion drawn by David Ellison, the billionaire whose company Skydance just bought CBS through a purchase of its parent, Paramount. Ellison’s latest move was to acquire the conservative outlet The Free Press and make the site’s founder Bari Weiss the editor-in-chief of…

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Trump’s so-called ‘compact’ with universities is simply extortion

Trump’s so-called ‘compact’ with universities is simply extortion

Erwin Chemerinsky writes: On Wednesday, the Trump administration sent letters to nine major universities proposing a “compact.” As The Times reports, the agreement would, among other things, require these universities to freeze tuition rates for five years, limit the enrollment of foreign students and be bound to specific definitions of gender. It would also require them to prohibit anything that would “punish, belittle and even spark violence against conservative ideas.” In exchange, these universities would receive “multiple positive benefits,” including…

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Can the Trump regime ban apps that track ICE agents?

Can the Trump regime ban apps that track ICE agents?

BBC News reports: The US government and law enforcement agencies have hit out at developers and users of apps which track Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), arguing they threaten the lives of agents. The FBI says the man who targeted an ICE facility in Dallas – killing two detainees – had used these types of apps to track the movements of agents and their vehicles. A tracking app downloaded more than a million times that shows the movements of immigration…

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White House senses political risk on healthcare despite Trump’s shutdown bravado

White House senses political risk on healthcare despite Trump’s shutdown bravado

The Wall Street Journal reports: President Trump has projected unwavering confidence that he is winning the messaging war over the government shutdown. But behind the scenes, his team is increasingly concerned that the issue at the center of the debate will create political vulnerabilities for Republicans. Advisers are worried that the GOP will take the blame for allowing healthcare subsidies to expire, raising costs for millions of Americans ahead of next year’s midterm elections, according to administration officials. Inside the…

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University of Southern California sold dead human bodies to the U.S. military to train IDF medical personnel

University of Southern California sold dead human bodies to the U.S. military to train IDF medical personnel

USC Annenberg Media reports: Near the end of 2017, the United States Navy filed a notice of intent to begin purchasing human cadavers from the University of Southern California. The purpose: Use dead bodies in trauma surgery training for the Israeli Defense Forces. Since that notice, the Navy has paid USC more than $860,000 for at least 89 “fresh cadaver bodies,” 32 of which were used specifically for IDF training at Los Angeles General Medical Center. One contract is still…

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The destruction of Gaza City is a crime against history

The destruction of Gaza City is a crime against history

Baker Zoubi writes: Palestinians in Gaza City are facing an impossible choice, as the Israeli army works to annihilate what remains of northern Gaza’s last bastion from the air and the ground. Hundreds of thousands of residents have already fled in recent days amid the intensification of Israel’s assault, forced to pay up to $5,000 to relocate in the knowledge that they will likely never see their homes again. Others are staying put, unable or unwilling to flee to areas…

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AI-generated social media has arrived ‘where seeing is not believing’

AI-generated social media has arrived ‘where seeing is not believing’

NPR reports: A fascist SpongeBob SquarePants, a dog driving a car and Jesus playing Minecraft – these are just a few of the things you can see as you flip through OpenAI’s new app populated exclusively with short-form videos generated using artificial intelligence. And if you can’t find what you’re looking for, don’t worry: you can make it with ease using a small text-based prompt window in the app. The result is a highly addictive stream of sometimes funny and…

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Leaked document justifies boat strikes as ‘non-international armed conflict’

Leaked document justifies boat strikes as ‘non-international armed conflict’

The Intercept reports: The Trump administration is waging a secret war against undisclosed enemies without the consent of Congress, according to a confidential notice that was sent to several congressional committees this week and obtained by The Intercept. It marks the most detailed explanation of the legal underpinnings offered by the administration for a series of lethal attacks on boats in the Caribbean that began last month. President Donald Trump has decided that the United States is engaged in a…

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World’s biggest stars unite to revive the McCarthy-era Committee for the First Amendment

World’s biggest stars unite to revive the McCarthy-era Committee for the First Amendment

Rolling Stone reports: More than 550 actors, directors, writers and musicians — including Jane Fonda, Billie Eilish, Pedro Pascal, Gracie Abrams, Spike Lee, Viola Davis, Barbra Streisand, Ben Stiller, John Legend, Janelle Monae, and Natalie Portman — have teamed up to relaunch the Committee for the First Amendment, a group originally formed in 1947 during the Red Scare. In its original incarnation, the group stood in opposition to the House Un-American Activities Committee’s Joseph McCarthy-era interrogations of Hollywood figures suspected…

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