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Israel’s war spreads to the West Bank

Israel’s war spreads to the West Bank

Mariam Barghouti reports: The sounds of explosions, bulldozers, military drones and heavy gunfire are a constant in Jenin, a Palestinian city in the north of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, which has been under full military lockdown for nearly 10 days as Israel carries out a military offensive. “The siege on the camp first began outside, on the edges of the camp,” Shatha Sabbagh, 21, told New Lines, referring to the refugee camp built in the city in 1953 that is…

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How resounding was Kamala Harris’s debate win? Let’s look at the polls

How resounding was Kamala Harris’s debate win? Let’s look at the polls

Aaron Blake writes: Vice President Kamala Harris turned in one of the more resounding debate performances in recent decades on Tuesday night — to the point where Donald Trump’s allies have struggled to locate a silver lining. Precisely how much the debate could impact the race is an open question, as my colleague Dan Balz notes; we’re a very polarized country, and we don’t generally see big and sudden shifts in polls anymore. But small margins can matter greatly in…

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Taylor Swift drove nearly 338,000 people to Vote.gov with Kamala Harris endorsement post

Taylor Swift drove nearly 338,000 people to Vote.gov with Kamala Harris endorsement post

The Hollywood Reporter reports: Taylor Swift‘s endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris led to a surge of visitors to Vote.gov, the U.S. government website that helps citizens understand how they can register to vote. According to a spokesperson for the U.S. Government Services Administration, Swift’s endorsement post on Instagram led directly to 337,826 people visiting vote.gov. “As of 2:00 P.M. on Wednesday, September 11, there have been 337,826 visitors to vote.gov referred from the custom URL created and shared by…

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How swing voters reacted to the Trump-Harris debate

How swing voters reacted to the Trump-Harris debate

Sarah Longwell writes: Last night, Trump was, in a certain sense, a stand-in for strongmen like Putin and Xi, and the voters I spoke with right after the debate said that Harris held her own. They appreciated her ability to bait Trump, counter his lies, and look calm while doing it. Her decision to point out how easily foreign despots use flattery to influence Trump also did her a lot of good. “I was actually pleasantly surprised at Harris,” said…

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Trump Media shares plunge after GOP nominee’s debate with Harris

Trump Media shares plunge after GOP nominee’s debate with Harris

CNBC reports: The share price of Trump Media plunged more than 13% on Wednesday, a day after majority shareholder Donald Trump gave a widely panned presidential debate performance against Vice President Kamala Harris. The company’s stock price was at its lowest intraday level since the Truth Social app owner began publicly trading as DJT on the Nasdaq in late March. Investing in Trump Media stock is often seen as a way to bet on the political fortunes of Trump, the…

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Election officials warn that widespread problems with the U.S. mail system could disrupt voting

Election officials warn that widespread problems with the U.S. mail system could disrupt voting

The Associated Press reports: State and local election officials from across the country on Wednesday warned that problems with the nation’s mail delivery system threaten to disenfranchise voters in the upcoming presidential election, telling the head of the U.S. Postal Service that it hasn’t fixed persistent deficiencies. In an alarming letter, the officials said that over the past year, including the just-concluded primary season, mailed ballots that were postmarked on time were received by local election offices days after the…

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At least two Saudi officials may have deliberately assisted 9/11 hijackers, new evidence suggests

At least two Saudi officials may have deliberately assisted 9/11 hijackers, new evidence suggests

By Tim Golden This story was originally published by ProPublica From the start of U.S. investigations into the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the question of whether the Saudi government might have been involved has hovered over the case. The FBI, after the most extensive criminal probe in its history, concluded that a low-level Saudi official who helped the first two hijackers in California met them by chance and aided them unwittingly. The CIA said it saw no evidence…

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The war crimes that the U.S. military buried

The war crimes that the U.S. military buried

Parker Yesko writes: War entails unspeakable violence, much of it entirely legal. And yet some violence is so abhorrent that it falls outside the bounds of law. When the perpetrators are U.S. service members, the American military is supposed to hold them to account. It is also supposed to keep records of wrongdoing in a systematic manner. But the military has failed to do so, leaving the public unable to determine whether the military brings its members to justice for…

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A quarter of Republicans think Trump should seize power even if he loses

A quarter of Republicans think Trump should seize power even if he loses

Philip Bump writes: If the 2024 presidential election were held today, it’s not clear who would win. Vice President Kamala Harris has a slight national advantage, according to The Washington Post’s average of polls, but margins in swing states are uniformly narrow. If the polls are overestimating Harris’s support, Donald Trump will return to the White House. If they are underestimating her support, she’ll be the next president. Unless, of course, there’s some successful, anti-democratic effort to subvert her victory….

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JD Vance spreads debunked claims about Haitian immigrants eating pets

JD Vance spreads debunked claims about Haitian immigrants eating pets

NPR reports: Using dehumanizing language to describe immigrants is nothing new for former President Donald Trump or vice presidential candidate JD Vance. Accusations of immigrants being criminals, being rapists or poisoning the blood of the nation have become common currency. But this week, the rhetoric seemed to hit a new low: the allegation that immigrants eat pets. Vance, who represents Ohio in the U.S. Senate, spread a debunked claim about Haitian migrants living in the city of Springfield, Ohio, on…

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Missouri high court restores abortion measure to ballot

Missouri high court restores abortion measure to ballot

The New York Times reports: The Missouri Supreme Court rejected a bid on Tuesday to throw out a question on the ballot in November that will ask voters whether to establish a right to abortion in the state Constitution. The seven-member court handed down a one-page ruling less than three hours before the state’s deadline for printing ballots for absentee voters, capping a furious few days of legal maneuvers, as anti-abortion groups and state Republicans made a last-ditch effort to…

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Elon Musk is uniquely dangerous as a purveyor of election misinformation

Elon Musk is uniquely dangerous as a purveyor of election misinformation

The Washington Post reports: The chairman of the board of elections in Montgomery County, Pa., was well acquainted with the regular attendees at his monthly meetings who peddled old, debunked voting conspiracy theories. But something changed after April 4, the chairman, Neil Makhija, explained in an interview. That was the day Elon Musk retweeted a false claim that as many as 2 million noncitizens had been registered to vote in Texas, Arizona and Pennsylvania. Suddenly, the same people were coming…

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Has the tide turned against TikTok, Telegram and X?

Has the tide turned against TikTok, Telegram and X?

Alexander B. Howard writes: Three major events have shaken up the social-media world in the past two weeks. First, French authorities detained Pavel Durov, the iconoclastic billionaire behind the online platform Telegram. Then, a judge suspended the microblogging service X in Brazil. Soon after, a federal appeals court in Pennsylvania ruled that the mother of a 10-year-old child who died copying a TikTok self-asphyxiation video can sue the service, circumventing a blanket legal immunity the company has long claimed. While each of these events took place in a…

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Biden’s ‘red line’ did nothing to prevent Israel from erasing Rafah

Biden’s ‘red line’ did nothing to prevent Israel from erasing Rafah

In March Reuters reported: Asked whether an Israeli invasion of Rafah would be a red line for him with Netanyahu, Biden said: “It is a red line but I’m never going to leave Israel. The defense of Israel is still critical. So there’s no red line (in which) I’m going to cut off all weapons so they don’t have the Iron Dome to protect them.” Biden's "red line" was literally erased by Israel https://t.co/mDJZuZxmJE — Yousef Munayyer (@YousefMunayyer) September 10,…

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