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Trump administration makes a mockery of refugee status by welcoming Afrikaners

Trump administration makes a mockery of refugee status by welcoming Afrikaners

Politico reports: President Donald Trump on Monday defended his decision to take in dozens of white South Africans who were granted refugee status as his administration limits refugee admissions for the rest of the world. A group of 49 Afrikaners claiming to face discrimination and economic hardship in their home country arrived to the U.S. on Monday morning after being awarded an expedited pathway into the country by the Trump administration under a new program established earlier this year. But…

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From defenders to skeptics: The sharp decline in young Americans’ support for free speech

From defenders to skeptics: The sharp decline in young Americans’ support for free speech

Support among young people for allowing controversial or offensive speech has dropped sharply. J Studios/Getty Images By Jacob Mchangama, Vanderbilt University For much of the 20th century, young Americans were seen as free speech’s fiercest defenders. But now, young Americans are growing more skeptical of free speech. According to a March 2025 report by The Future of Free Speech, a nonpartisan think tank where I am executive director, support among 18- to 34-year-olds for allowing controversial or offensive speech has…

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The risks from chemicals in our food may be even worse than Kennedy suggests

The risks from chemicals in our food may be even worse than Kennedy suggests

Julia Belluz writes: The health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., believes toxic chemicals in food are behind the U.S. explosion in rates of obesity and a range of other chronic illnesses. “A facade of normalcy has masked this meteoric rise in chronic disease, and we can no longer ignore it,” he said recently. He intends to rid the U.S. food supply of nine chemicals — all petroleum-based, synthetic food dyes — in as soon as 18 months. Mr. Kennedy has…

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Trump seems to be ceding the future to China while emulating its past

Trump seems to be ceding the future to China while emulating its past

Derek Thompson writes: China may well come to dominate the next century—because President Donald Trump is taking a page from the most famous Chinese leader of the previous one. The United States remains the world’s preeminent soft power. It’s a financial and cultural juggernaut, whose entertainment and celebrities bestride the planet. But as an industrial power, the U.S. is not so much at risk of falling behind as it is objectively behind already. A recent essay in the journal Foreign…

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Judges in several states face threats and intimidation tactics at their homes

Judges in several states face threats and intimidation tactics at their homes

The Washington Post reports: Federal judges say unsolicited pizza deliveries to jurists’ homes that began in February may number in the hundreds across at least seven states, prompting increased security concerns and a demand from a Senate leader for a Justice Department investigation. Many of the deliveries have gone to judges presiding over lawsuits challenging the Trump administration’s policies. The U.S. Marshals Service has been tracking the deliveries, and judges have been sharing details about their experiences in hopes of…

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Pope Leo calls for peace and aid in Gaza as Trump heads to Middle East to strike business deals

Pope Leo calls for peace and aid in Gaza as Trump heads to Middle East to strike business deals

Vanity Fair reports: “Never again war,” Pope Leo XIV exclaimed during his first Sunday address to an estimated 100,000 people gathered in St. Peter’s Square. The new pontiff called for an “authentic, just and lasting peace” in Ukraine and an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Leo, continuing in the advocacy of his predecessor, Pope Francis, advocated for humanitarian aid to be allowed into Palestine and delivered “to the exhausted civilian population,” adding that “all hostages” held by Hamas in Gaza must…

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Musk’s regulatory troubles have begun to melt away in Trump’s second term

Musk’s regulatory troubles have begun to melt away in Trump’s second term

NBC News reports: Tech billionaire Elon Musk’s regulatory problems have started to fade into the past. Since the start of the second Trump administration, federal agencies that had scrutinized Musk and his business empire in recent years have begun to look a lot different. At the Department of Agriculture, for example, President Donald Trump fired the person who had been investigating the Musk company Neuralink. At other agencies including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Trump and Musk have tried to…

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How Trump’s tariffs are crushing small businesses: ‘Nobody in power seems to care’

How Trump’s tariffs are crushing small businesses: ‘Nobody in power seems to care’

The Wall Street Journal reports: The owner of a San Francisco card-game company cashed in his money-market funds. The founder of a tent maker is looking for investors. A watch and jewelry company in Colorado is holding off on signing a new office lease. And a New Hampshire consumer-product company has laid off more than half its staff. Around the country, small businesses that import goods made in China are taking actions—big and small—to try to outlast the current 145%…

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The hidden ways Trump, DOGE are crippling operations in parts of the U.S. government

The hidden ways Trump, DOGE are crippling operations in parts of the U.S. government

The Washington Post reports: At the Environmental Protection Agency, research at 11 laboratories has ground to a halt because the Trump administration has not approved most new lab purchases. At the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, key work on weather forecasting has slowed to a crawl because Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick must sign off personally on many contracts and grants. And at the Social Security Administration, some employees are running out of paper, pens and printer toner because the U.S….

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To my newborn son: I am absent not out of apathy, but conviction

To my newborn son: I am absent not out of apathy, but conviction

Mahmoud Khalil writes: Yaba Deen,* it has been two weeks since you were born, and these are my first words to you. In the early hours of 21 April, I waited on the other end of a phone as your mother labored to bring you into this world. I listened to her pained breaths and tried to speak comforting words into her ear over the crackling line. During your first moments, I buried my face in my arms and kept…

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Judges warn about Trump’s rapid deportations: Americans could be next

Judges warn about Trump’s rapid deportations: Americans could be next

Politico reports: A fundamental promise by America’s founders — that no one should be punished by the state without a fair hearing — is under threat, a growing chorus of federal judges say. That concept of “due process under law,” borrowed from the Magna Carta and enshrined in the Bill of Rights, is most clearly imperiled for the immigrants President Donald Trump intends to summarily deport, they say, but U.S. citizens should be wary, too. Across the country, judges appointed…

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Are we heading for World War III – or has it already started?

Are we heading for World War III – or has it already started?

Patrick Wintour writes: In a week in which former allies in a redividing globe separately commemorated the 80th anniversary of the end of the second world war, the sense of a runaway descent towards a third world war draws ever closer. The implosion of Pax Americana, the interconnectedness of conflicts, the new willingness to resort to unbridled state-sponsored violence and the irrelevance of the institutions of the rules-based order have all been on brutal display this week. From Kashmir to…

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Is Russia co-opting American far-right groups to attack western democracies?

Is Russia co-opting American far-right groups to attack western democracies?

The Guardian reports: A former Pentagon contractor works with secretive sections of US special forces, then ups and moves to Russia. He gets married, radicalizes and starts popping up on Telegram channels as the leader of a neo-Nazi terrorist group recruiting Americans. Soon, allegations swirl that he is a Russian spy. While this sounds like something Tom Clancy would write, it is reality: Rinaldo Nazzaro, better known as the leader of the Base, once worked in drone targeting with the…

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Syria’s new president has an offer to make a deal with Trump

Syria’s new president has an offer to make a deal with Trump

Murtaza Hussain and Ryan Grim report: Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa has authorized envoys to make a groundbreaking series of concessions to President Donald Trump in the hopes of normalizing relations with the United States. The offer looks to avert a looming financial catastrophe that could disintegrate the state. In a meeting on April 30 in Damascus, al-Sharaa sat down with a delegation led by American businessman Jonathan Bass and Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force. Bass…

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