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Trump has been rewarded with over $200 million in ‘donations’ since election day

Trump has been rewarded with over $200 million in ‘donations’ since election day

The New York Times reports: Since his victory in November, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s allies have raised well over $200 million for a constellation of groups that will fund his inauguration, his political operation and eventually his presidential library, according to four people involved in the fund-raising. It is a staggering sum that underscores efforts by donors and corporate interests to curry favor with Mr. Trump ahead of a second presidential term after a number of business leaders denounced him…

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How regenerative agriculture can foster peacebuilding in conflict areas

How regenerative agriculture can foster peacebuilding in conflict areas

Drew Marcantonio writes: In the dry valley between the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and the Serranía del Perijá mountain ranges, in northern Colombia, former combatants in the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia guerilla group, or FARC, are leading a surprising new revolution: regenerative agriculture. The region was once plagued by violence between antagonistic groups, including FARC, and is currently under pressure from both climate crisis and deforestation. But through an agricultural cooperative called COOMPAZCOL, former FARC members are forming…

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Why liberals struggle to cope with epochal change

Why liberals struggle to cope with epochal change

Ivan Krastev writes: As I witnessed the despair and incomprehension of liberals worldwide after Donald Trump’s victory in November’s U.S. presidential election, I had a sinking feeling that I had been through this before. The moment took me back to 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down, signaling the beginning of the end of Soviet Communism and the lifting of the Iron Curtain that had divided Europe since the end of World War II. The difference was that the world…

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Who is Tommy Robinson and why does Elon Musk want him freed from jail?

Who is Tommy Robinson and why does Elon Musk want him freed from jail?

NBC News reports: A convicted fraudster with a violent criminal record, Tommy Robinson is well known as the leader of the English far right, inspiring rallies of mostly white, mostly male followers shouting soccer-style chants against Islam and immigration. It has been jarring then, for many Britons to see Robinson — whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon — become the latest cause championed by the richest person on the planet, Elon Musk. “Free Tommy Robinson!” the billionaire entrepreneur and adviser…

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Elon Musk and the right’s war on Wikipedia

Elon Musk and the right’s war on Wikipedia

Molly White writes: When Elon Musk launched his latest crusade against Wikipedia this Christmas Eve, it wasn’t just another of the billionaire’s frequent Twitter tantrums. His gripes about the community-written encyclopedia expose something far more significant: the growing efforts by America’s most powerful right-wing figures to rewrite and control the flow of information. While Musk’s involvement began with grievances about his own coverage on the website, his recent attacks reveal his growing role in this broader campaign to delegitimize Wikipedia,…

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U.S. military service is the strongest predictor of carrying out extremist violence

U.S. military service is the strongest predictor of carrying out extremist violence

Nick Turse reports: The two men who carried out apparent terror attacks on New Year’s Day — killing 15 people by plowing a pickup truck into a crowd of New Year’s revelers in New Orleans, and detonating a Tesla Cybertruck outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas — both had U.S. military backgrounds, according to the Pentagon. From 1990 to 2010, about seven persons per year with U.S. military backgrounds committed extremist crimes. Since 2011, that number has jumped to…

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What is the duty of the Israeli left in a time of genocide?

What is the duty of the Israeli left in a time of genocide?

Hadas Binyamini writes: This past June, the news of a merger between two veteran Israeli political parties on the left of the Zionist spectrum, Labor and Meretz, passed without much fanfare. With the once-hegemonic Labor Party occupying only four of the Knesset’s 120 seats, and Meretz having been wiped out altogether in the 2022 election, that shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. Lacking a compelling alternative vision to the perpetual subjugation of Palestinians under the boot of the Israeli…

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The fossil fuel industry spent $219 million to elect the new U.S. government

The fossil fuel industry spent $219 million to elect the new U.S. government

Karin Kirk writes: The 119th Congress comes with a price tag. The oil and gas industry gave about $24 million in campaign contributions to the members of the U.S. House and Senate expected to be sworn in January 3, 2025, according to a Yale Climate Connections review of campaign donations. The industry gave an additional $2 million to President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign, bringing the total spending on the winning candidates to over $26 million, 88% of which went to Republicans….

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Scientists re-create the microbial dance that sparked complex life

Scientists re-create the microbial dance that sparked complex life

Molly Herring writes: Far from being solo operators, most single-celled microbes are in complex relationships. In the ocean, the soil and your gut, they might battle and eat each other, exchange DNA, compete for nutrients, or feed on one another’s by-products. Sometimes they get even more intimate: One cell might slip inside another and make itself comfortable. If the conditions are just right, it might stay and be welcomed, sparking a relationship that could last for generations — or billions…

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Biden has ‘done more damage to the foundations of international law than Trump did’

Biden has ‘done more damage to the foundations of international law than Trump did’

The New York Times reports: No foreign policy issue has been more divisive for Mr. Biden than his support for Israel throughout its war in Gaza. Emma Ashford [a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan research group] said the administration’s hypocrisy was exposed by “the split-screen much of the world sees on Gaza and Ukraine — with an administration who says one conflict is an unacceptable war crime, and the other self-defense.” The Israeli military, supplied with American…

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Israel’s assassination campaign has renewed Israelis confidence that they can do anything anywhere

Israel’s assassination campaign has renewed Israelis confidence that they can do anything anywhere

Isaac Chotiner interviews political scientist Dahlia Scheindlin, a longtime expert on Israeli public opinion and analyst of the country’s domestic political scene: You mentioned April as a turning point. That was when the war against Hamas broadened regionally— It exactly lines up with April. I think we shouldn’t take the responsibility off of Hezbollah for its fateful decision, in the early morning hours of October 8th, to attack Israel—which basically internationalized or regionalized the conflict. But what happened in April?…

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Vance shares Musk op-ed backing Germany’s far-right AfD party

Vance shares Musk op-ed backing Germany’s far-right AfD party

The Hill reports: Vice President-elect JD Vance took to the social platform X on Thursday to share an op-ed by Elon Musk in which the tech mogul expressed support for the far-right German political party Alternative for Germany, or AfD. Quoting Musk’s English version of the opinion piece, Vance said it was an “interesting piece.” The vice president-elect emphasized that he wasn’t endorsing AfD in the upcoming German elections, as it was not his country and “we hope to have…

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Trump and MAGA are desperately trying to pin New Orleans attack on the border

Trump and MAGA are desperately trying to pin New Orleans attack on the border

Rolling Stone reports: The truck attack that killed 15 and injured dozens in New Orleans’ French Quarter early Wednesday morning has cast a pall over the dawn of the new year — but it hasn’t deterred President-elect Donald Trump and his sycophants from pushing misinformation to politicize the tragedy. Trump responded to the attack on Wednesday by suggesting that Shamsud-Din Jabbar, the suspect in the mass murder who was killed by New Orleans law enforcement, was an undocumented migrant. Jabbar,…

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Net neutrality rules struck down by appeals court

Net neutrality rules struck down by appeals court

The New York Times reports: A federal appeals court struck down the Federal Communications Commission’s landmark net neutrality rules on Thursday, ending a nearly two-decade effort to regulate broadband internet providers as utilities. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, said the F.C.C. lacked the authority to reinstate rules that prevented broadband providers from slowing or blocking access to internet content. In its opinion, a three-judge panel pointed to a Supreme Court decision in June, known…

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