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Decision on Georgia election board threatens Kemp’s détente with Trump

Decision on Georgia election board threatens Kemp’s détente with Trump

The Washington Post reports: Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) has enjoyed an unusually friendly public rapport in recent days with former president Donald Trump. After years of heaping insults on Kemp for refusing to help reverse Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in the state, Trump praised the governor on Truth Social this month for his “help and support.” On Thursday, Kemp plans to attend a fundraiser in Atlanta for the Republican presidential nominee, who is locked in a virtual tie with…

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Trump threatens to jail Mark Zuckerberg for life

Trump threatens to jail Mark Zuckerberg for life

Politico reports: Former President Donald Trump writes in a new book set to be published next week that Mark Zuckerberg plotted against him during the 2020 election and said the Meta chief executive would “spend the rest of his life in prison” if he did it again. It represents Trump’s most recent attack on Zuckerberg, who he has repeatedly accused of intervening in the last presidential election. And it comes as Meta has taken steps to assure conservatives it will…

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‘If you try to defend yourself, you’re dead’: A West Bank village’s night of terror

‘If you try to defend yourself, you’re dead’: A West Bank village’s night of terror

+972 Magazine reports: On Tuesday morning, the streets of Wadi Rahal were littered with stones and bullet casings — evidence of an attack the night before. According to the Palestinian residents of the village, which is located south of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, about a dozen Israeli settlers had driven in, some of them armed. They threw stones at cars and houses, and when residents came out to defend themselves, the attackers opened fire. One resident, 47-year-old Khalil…

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Putin’s next coup

Putin’s next coup

Politico reports: Vladimir Putin may be smarting over Ukraine’s surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region this month, but this weekend he’ll likely be celebrating territorial gains farther west — in Germany. Russia-friendly parties across three eastern German states — Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia — are poised to score substantial gains in regional elections in September, two of which are set for Sunday. The pro-Russian Alternative for Germany (AfD) has a strong chance of finishing first in all three states, and…

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Does chaos theory square classical physics with human agency?

Does chaos theory square classical physics with human agency?

Erik Van Aken writes: A slight shift in Cleopatra’s beauty, and the Roman Empire unravels. You miss your train, and an unexpected encounter changes the course of your life. A butterfly alights from a tree in Michoacán, triggering a hurricane halfway across the globe. These scenarios exemplify the essence of ‘chaos’, a term scientists coined during the middle of the 20th century, to describe how small events in complex systems can have vast, unpredictable consequences. Beyond these anecdotes, I want…

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Enthusiasm for Harris is fueling a surge in voter registration

Enthusiasm for Harris is fueling a surge in voter registration

NPR reports: Eve Levenson’s job looked very different just over a month ago. The 24-year-old is the National Youth Engagement Director for Vice President Harris’s presidential campaign, a role she’s had since the beginning of the year when President Biden was seeking re-election. Her task has been the same throughout: get young voters to the polls this fall. But as she addressed a room of Gen Z organizers last week at a coffee shop in Chicago, wearing a handful of…

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The superseding Trump indictment charts Jack Smith’s path forward

The superseding Trump indictment charts Jack Smith’s path forward

Anna Bower, Matt Gluck, Quinta Jurecic, Natalie K. Orpett, and Benjamin Wittes write: On Tuesday, Special Counsel Jack Smith unveiled a superseding indictment of Donald Trump in Washington, D.C. for his effort to overturn the 2020 election. Trump, for his part, didn’t wait long to weigh in. Posting on Truth Social, he declared the indictment “ridiculous” and part of “the single greatest sabotage of our Democracy in History.” The former president seemed particularly insulted that the grand jury handed up…

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Photos of European influencers used to push pro-Trump propaganda on fake X accounts

Photos of European influencers used to push pro-Trump propaganda on fake X accounts

CNN reports: Luna, a self-described 32-year-old “MAGA Trump supporter” from the battleground state of Wisconsin, has gained a huge following since she joined X, formerly Twitter, in March. Her timeline has become a digital bullhorn for the “Make America Great Again” movement, praising former President Donald Trump’s re-election bid, promoting conspiracy theories about his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, and touting Republican talking points to nearly 30,000 followers, who she addresses as “patriots.” “Would You Support Trump Being The President…

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Immigrants to the U.S. are held to higher standards than those applied to Trump

Immigrants to the U.S. are held to higher standards than those applied to Trump

Edgar Chen and Dan Ross write: From the moment Donald Trump descended his gilded escalator to launch his first presidential campaign in 2015, impugning immigrants as criminals has been the centerpiece of his political identity. “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists,” he said that day. This year, “migrant crime” has become a cornerstone of Trump’s campaign. Moments after he became a convicted felon himself in May, Trump took the opportunity not only to attack the justice system but…

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Why the media won’t report the truth about Trump

Why the media won’t report the truth about Trump

James Risen writes: Over the last few years, as it grew increasingly likely that Donald Trump would mount a third campaign for the White House, leading press critics and others in the media vowed that this time had to be different. The press couldn’t fail in its coverage of Trump once again. This time, it must aggressively investigate Trump while focusing coverage on the threat that he poses to democracy. The stakes for the nation in the election, not just…

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Zuckerberg’s spineless surrender: Rehashing old news to enable false GOP narratives

Zuckerberg’s spineless surrender: Rehashing old news to enable false GOP narratives

Mike Masnick writes: Two bits of news came out of the letter Mark Zuckerberg sent to Rep. Jim Jordan this week (and how people responded to it), neither of which are what you’re likely to have heard about. First, Donald Trump seems to be accusing himself of rigging the 2020 election against himself. And, second, Mark Zuckerberg has absolutely no spine when it comes to Republican pressure on Meta’s moderation practices. He falsely plays into their fundamentally misleading framing, all…

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Don’t downplay the risks for democracy posed by AI

Don’t downplay the risks for democracy posed by AI

Suzanne Nossel writes: Midway through a year in which more than 2 billion voters in at least 64 counties are going to the polls, pioneers of artificial intelligence are breathing a sigh of relief and arguing that the worst fears over the potentially corrosive influence of AI on democracies seem to have been overblown. While platforms have removed scores of AI-distorted videos of politicians lying or making fools of themselves, the impact on voters and tallies has seemed minimal. But…

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New HRW report: Palestinian healthcare workers chained, starved, sexually abused

New HRW report: Palestinian healthcare workers chained, starved, sexually abused

  We speak with Human Rights Watch researcher Milena Ansari about the organization’s new report detailing the torture of Palestinian medical workers in Israeli prisons. HRW spoke with eight doctors, paramedics and nurses who were picked up in Gaza before being transferred to the notorious Sde Teiman camp and other facilities, where they say they suffered beatings, starvation, humiliation, electric shocks and other forms of abuse. The men also describe threats of sexual violence during brutal interrogations and seeing another…

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Israeli settler: ‘I think colonialism gets a bad rap’

Israeli settler: ‘I think colonialism gets a bad rap’

  Violence has flared in the Occupied West Bank. At least five Palestinians, including two children, have been killed in an Israeli air strike on a refugee camp, and one Palestinian man was shot dead in an attack by Israeli settlers near Bethlehem. The West Bank has seen a surge in violence since the October 7 attacks. 607 Palestinians have been killed, largely in Israeli military raids, while attacks by settlers have displaced more than 1,500. In the same period,…

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