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Military veterans are becoming the face of Trump and Musk’s government cuts and Democrats’ resistance

Military veterans are becoming the face of Trump and Musk’s government cuts and Democrats’ resistance

The Associated Press reports: As congressional lawmakers scramble to respond to President Donald Trump’s slashing of the federal government, one group is already taking a front and center role: military veterans. From layoffs at the Department of Veterans Affairs to a Pentagon purge of archives that documented diversity in the military, veterans have been acutely affected by Trump’s actions. And with the Republican president determined to continue slashing the federal government, the burden will only grow on veterans, who make…

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Canada is Trump’s Ukraine

Canada is Trump’s Ukraine

David French writes: I had a conversation last week with a Canadian journalist about the culture war on American campuses. After we finished talking about that, she had one final question for me. “What the hell is Trump thinking about Canada?” She wasn’t just asking about President Trump’s tariff threats. She was also asking about Trump’s obsession with referring to Canada as the 51st state. The tariffs were somewhat understandable, even if terribly misguided. They are, after all, one of…

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Trump’s predatory advances on Greenland are backfiring

Trump’s predatory advances on Greenland are backfiring

The New York Times reports: For more than 150 years, U.S. officials have been trying, as President Trump puts it, to “get” Greenland. The idea came up in the 1860s, then again before and after the world wars. In a way, the timing couldn’t be better than now, with Greenlanders re-examining their painful colonial history under Denmark and many itching to break off from Denmark, which still controls some of the island’s affairs. But President Trump seems to have overplayed…

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How migrating birds use quantum mechanics to navigate

How migrating birds use quantum mechanics to navigate

The Observer reports: To the seasoned ear, the trilling of chiffchaffs and wheatears is as sure a sign of spring as the first defiant crocuses. By March, these birds have started to return from their winter breaks, navigating their way home to breeding grounds thousands of kilometres away – some species returning to home territory with centimetre precision. Although the idea of migration often conjures up striking visions of vast flocks of geese and murmurations of starlings, “the majority,” says…

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Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the courage to brawl for the working class

Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the courage to brawl for the working class

The Guardian reports: Bernie Sanders is not running for president. But he is drawing larger crowds now than he did when he was campaigning for the White House. The message has hardly changed. Nor has the messenger, with his shock of white hair and booming delivery. What’s different now, the senator says, is that his fears – a government captured by billionaires who exploit working people – have become an undeniable reality and people are angry. “For years, I’ve talked…

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U.S. to revoke legal status of more than a half-million migrants, urges them to self deport

U.S. to revoke legal status of more than a half-million migrants, urges them to self deport

CBS News reports: The Trump administration will be revoking the legal status of hundreds of thousands of Latin American and Haitian migrants welcomed into the U.S. under a Biden-era sponsorship process, urging them to self-deport or face arrest and removal by deportation agents. The termination of their work permits and deportation protections under an immigration authority known as parole will take effect in late April, 30 days after March 25, according to a notice posted by the federal government. The…

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Trump won’t win the war against the courts

Trump won’t win the war against the courts

Judge J. Michael Luttig writes: Judge Boasberg doesn’t want to assume the role of president; the president wants to assume the role of judge. At a hearing on Friday, in a further development in this showdown between the president and the judiciary, Judge Boasberg expressed skepticism about the administration’s use of a wartime statute to deport immigrants without a hearing to challenge whether they were gang members, as the government has asserted. “The policy ramifications of this are incredibly troublesome…

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Trump administration tries to use post hoc justification for detaining Mahmoud Khalil

Trump administration tries to use post hoc justification for detaining Mahmoud Khalil

The New York Times reports: When Mahmoud Khalil, who helped lead pro-Palestinian demonstrations while a Columbia University student, was detained this month, the Trump administration argued he should be deported to help prevent the spread of antisemitism, invoking a rarely used law. Lawyers for Mr. Khalil, a legal permanent resident who is being detained in Louisiana, quickly responded that the administration was retaliating against their client for his constitutionally protected speech criticizing Israel and promoting Palestinian rights. Last week, the…

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Musk needs to quit openly threatening Social Security, Trump allies warn

Musk needs to quit openly threatening Social Security, Trump allies warn

NBC News reports: After his election, Donald Trump told NBC News that “we’re not touching Social Security,” other than to make it more efficient. But Elon Musk, who now wields enormous power in his role cutting government spending, has recently made comments critical of the program that are coming into conflict with Trump’s promise and worrying members of the president’s own party. Those concerns have prompted some Trump allies to question whether the billionaire should continue to do so many…

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Investors who were all-in on U.S. stocks are starting to look elsewhere

Investors who were all-in on U.S. stocks are starting to look elsewhere

The Wall Street Journal reports: Keith Moffat was born in Canada, lives in the Netherlands and has an Irish passport. But until recently, his stock portfolio was (almost) all-American. At one point, around 90% of Moffat’s investments were in U.S. stocks. He sold all of his American holdings in the past few weeks and piled into exchange-traded funds that hold shares of European and other international companies, alongside European defense stocks. Moffat said the U.S. market is overpriced. But President…

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We see the world suffused with causality

We see the world suffused with causality

Mariel Goddu writes: Causal understanding is the cognitive capacity that enables you to think about how things affect and influence each other. It is your concept of making, doing, generating and producing – of causing – that allows you to grasp how the Moon causes the tides, how a virus makes you sick, why tariffs change international trade, the social consequences of a faux pas, and the way each event in a story leads to what happens next. Causal understanding is the foundation of all thoughts why, how, because, and what if….

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Trump decree aimed at lawyers everywhere strikes a menacing tone

Trump decree aimed at lawyers everywhere strikes a menacing tone

The New York Times reports: President Trump broadened his campaign of retaliation against lawyers he dislikes with a new memorandum that threatens to use government power to punish any law firms that, in his view, unfairly challenge his administration. The memorandum directs the heads of the Justice and Homeland Security Departments to “seek sanctions against attorneys and law firms who engage in frivolous, unreasonable and vexatious litigation against the United States” or in matters that come before federal agencies. Mr….

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Legal community shaken by a powerful law firm’s decision to capitulate to Trump’s demands

Legal community shaken by a powerful law firm’s decision to capitulate to Trump’s demands

The New York Times reports: Since President Trump’s first term, Brad S. Karp, the chairman of the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, championed himself as a bulwark against what he saw as an unlawful and unpredictable presidency. Mr. Karp, who has a long history of fund-raising for Democrats, sought to unite major law firms in “a call to arms” to fight Mr. Trump in court on issues like his administration’s policy of separating migrant children from their…

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Chaos and disruption are central to Trump’s objective

Chaos and disruption are central to Trump’s objective

Stephen I. Vladeck writes: For all of the judicial interventions we’ve seen in the first eight weeks of the new Trump administration, alarmingly little has changed on the ground. Much of the unlawfully frozen federal money is still frozen; many of the unlawfully fired federal workers are still out of work. Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia graduate and green card holder arrested March 8 in New York on exceptionally tenuous legal grounds, remains in an immigration detention facility in Louisiana. The…

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