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‘We have certain things in common, Jeffrey’

‘We have certain things in common, Jeffrey’

The Wall Street Journal reports: It was Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday, and Ghislaine Maxwell was preparing a special gift to mark the occasion. She turned to Epstein’s family and friends. One of them was Donald Trump. Maxwell collected letters from Trump and dozens of Epstein’s other associates for a 2003 birthday album, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Pages from the leather-bound album—assembled before Epstein was first arrested in 2006—are among the documents examined by Justice Department…

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Steve Bannon warns Trump’s mishandling of Epstein files might cost GOP 40 House seats in midterms

Steve Bannon warns Trump’s mishandling of Epstein files might cost GOP 40 House seats in midterms

Mediaite reports: Former Trump White House advisor turned MAGA influencer, Steve Bannon, warned on Friday that if the Trump administration doesn’t satisfy the MAGA base on the so-called “Epstein Files,” the GOP could lose up to “40 seats” in the midterm elections. “It’s not about just a pedophile ring and all that. It’s about who governs us, right? And that’s why it’s not gonna go away,” Bannon told a live audience, referring to the recent DOJ and FBI memo concluding…

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Inside an ICE women’s prison: ‘Even God cannot hear us here’

Inside an ICE women’s prison: ‘Even God cannot hear us here’

Tufts University doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk was held as a political prisoner for 45 days in a South Louisiana processing facility. She writes: As a developmental scientist in training, I secretly feel a sense of gratitude for not having a child of my own, knowing how costly adverse early childhood experiences and family separation can be on children’s development. All children should have the opportunity to live, grow, and flourish in nurturing environments, surrounded by the love, peace, and support…

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Holocaust scholar Omer Bartov: Yes, Israel is engaged in a genocide in Gaza

Holocaust scholar Omer Bartov: Yes, Israel is engaged in a genocide in Gaza

  We speak with leading Israeli American historian Omer Bartov about his latest essay for The New York Times, headlined “I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It.” Bartov cites the United Nations definition of “genocide,” which includes an intent to destroy a group of people that makes it impossible for the group to reconstitute itself. “This is precisely what Israel is trying to do,” he says. “Israel is trying to concentrate the population of Gaza in…

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Matt Gaetz: How many Americans do Israeli settlers have to kill before we care?

Matt Gaetz: How many Americans do Israeli settlers have to kill before we care?

The Times of Israel reports: The far-right One America News Network airs a segment on last week’s killing of Palestinian-American Saif Musallet by Israeli settlers in the West Bank. The network’s decision to focus on the phenomenon that was once largely ignored in more conservative circles highlights the shift among a camp of MAGA Republicans that has gradually become more critical of Israel. The anchor for the segment is former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, who was US President Donald Trump’s…

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Israel and the U.S. are no longer pretending they support a two-state solution

Israel and the U.S. are no longer pretending they support a two-state solution

  For decades, the U.S. has officially held the position that it has supported a “two-state solution” that would create a Palestinian state alongside Israel. But after the Oslo Accords, little to no progress was made towards that goal, and the U.S. constantly condoned Israel’s actions that made that goal a more distant possibility – supporting it with military and financial aid. Today, under Trump, the U.S. is supporting Israel during its plans to ethnically cleanse Gaza and annex the…

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This star offers the earliest glimpse at the birth of a planetary system like ours

This star offers the earliest glimpse at the birth of a planetary system like ours

Science News reports: The birth of a new solar system may have been caught on camera. About 1,400 light-years from Earth sits a young sunlike star surrounded by cooling gas and teensy silicate minerals. These mineral solids — some of the building blocks of rocky planets — are among the first to condense from the gas, suggesting that they’re kick-starting the creation of planets in a system much like the one earthlings call home, researchers report in the July 17…

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Trump’s mishandling of the Epstein files provokes a MAGA crisis in faith

Trump’s mishandling of the Epstein files provokes a MAGA crisis in faith

NBC News reports: President Donald Trump disowned his supporters who have called for the release of files related to Jeffrey Epstein, chiding them Wednesday as “weaklings” who “bought into this bulls—.” The lengthy post on Truth Social represents the clearest split from the faction of his MAGA base that has questioned the Justice Department’s handling of the case. My “PAST supporters have bought into this ‘bulls—’ hook, line, and sinker,” he said in the post, adding, “Let these weaklings continue…

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In Trump’s Star Chamber the names of ICE lawyers are kept secret

In Trump’s Star Chamber the names of ICE lawyers are kept secret

The Intercept reports: Inside a federal immigration courtroom in New York City last month, a judge took an exceedingly unusual step: declining to state the name of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorney pressing to deport asylum seekers. “We’re not really doing names publicly,” said Judge ShaSha Xu — after stating her own name and those of the immigrants and their lawyers. It was the first of two separate instances The Intercept identified in which judges chose to withhold the…

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Trump’s Brazil tariffs ultimatum backfires on Bolsonaro

Trump’s Brazil tariffs ultimatum backfires on Bolsonaro

The Guardian reports: Silvana Marques was one of thousands of Brazilians who flocked to São Paulo’s most famous art museum one afternoon last week. But the 51-year-old teacher wasn’t there to marvel over fog-filled London landscapes at Masp’s new Monet retrospective. She had come to join a protest heaping scorn on Donald Trump. Beneath the museum’s brutalist hulk, Marques spotted a cardboard effigy of the US president and took a picture with her phone before the Trump dummy was set…

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Trump regime says it won’t publish major climate change reports on NASA website as promised

Trump regime says it won’t publish major climate change reports on NASA website as promised

The Associated Press reports: The Trump administration on Monday took another step to make it harder to find major, legally mandated scientific assessments of how climate change is endangering the nation and its people. Earlier this month, the official government websites that hosted the authoritative, peer-reviewed national climate assessments went dark. Such sites tell state and local governments and the public what to expect in their backyards from a warming world and how best to adapt to it. At the…

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Effective disaster management is premised on preparation

Effective disaster management is premised on preparation

Zoë Schlanger writes: In the days since the Texas flash-flood disaster, the Department of Homeland Security has had a stock response to questions about delays in the federal government’s response, or about a recent rule requiring DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to personally approve FEMA expenditures over $100,000, including rescue teams. The response goes, over and over, like this: “FEMA is shifting from bloated, DC-centric dead weight to a lean, deployable disaster force that empowers state actors to provide relief for…

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Billionaires project their own grandiosity onto AI as they envision scientific breakthroughs

Billionaires project their own grandiosity onto AI as they envision scientific breakthroughs

Gizmodo reports: Generative artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok have exploded in popularity as AI becomes mainstream. These tools don’t have the ability to make new scientific discoveries on their own, but billionaires are convinced that AI is on the cusp of doing just that. And the latest episode of the All-In podcast helps explain why these guys think AI is extremely close to revolutionizing scientific knowledge. Travis Kalanick, the founder of Uber who no longer works at…

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