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Israel’s failed bombing campaign in Gaza

Israel’s failed bombing campaign in Gaza

Robert A. Pape writes: Since October 7, Israel has invaded northern Gaza with some 40,000 combat troops and pummeled the small area with one of the most intense bombing campaigns in history. Nearly two million people have fled their homes as a result. More than 15,000 civilians (including some 6,000 children and 5,000 women) have been killed in the attacks, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run Ministry of Health, and the U.S. State Department has suggested that the true toll may be…

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‘This is grim,’ one Democratic pollster says

‘This is grim,’ one Democratic pollster says

Thomas B. Edsall writes: The predictive power of horse-race polling a year from the presidential election is weak at best. The Biden campaign can take some comfort in that. But what recent surveys do reveal is that the coalition that put Joe Biden in the White House in the first place is nowhere near as strong as it was four years ago. These danger signs include fraying support among core constituencies, including young voters, Black voters and Hispanic voters, and…

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‘Test case’ for America: Colorado’s top court poised to weigh Trump’s eligibility to run again

‘Test case’ for America: Colorado’s top court poised to weigh Trump’s eligibility to run again

Politico reports: The most potent effort to disqualify Donald Trump from the 2024 ballot lands Wednesday in the lap of Colorado’s highest court — and a ruling there could send the case hurtling toward the U.S. Supreme Court just as the election year arrives. The Colorado case is one of dozens around the country that have challenged Trump’s eligibility to return to the presidency. The cases argue that he is disqualified under section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which states…

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Wisconsin Trump electors settle lawsuit, agree Biden won in 2020

Wisconsin Trump electors settle lawsuit, agree Biden won in 2020

The Washington Post reports: In a legal settlement Wednesday, the 10 Republicans who signed official-looking paperwork falsely purporting Donald Trump won Wisconsin in 2020 have agreed to withdraw their inaccurate filings, acknowledge Joe Biden won the presidency and not serve as presidential electors in 2024 or in any election where Trump is on the ballot. Wednesday’s civil settlement marks the first time pro-Trump electors have agreed to revoke their false filings and not repeat their actions in the next presidential…

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Steve Bannon blasts Fox News as ‘TV for stupid people’

Steve Bannon blasts Fox News as ‘TV for stupid people’

The Daily Beast reports: Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon tore into Fox News for cutting away from a Donald Trump speech over the weekend and fact-checking the former president’s election conspiracies, calling the conservative cable giant “TV for stupid people” and an “absolute disgrace.” Briefly covering the GOP frontrunner’s campaign rally in Iowa on Saturday, Fox News anchor Arthel Neville pulled away from the twice-impeached ex-president’s tirade to remind viewers that Trump’s claims about a “rigged” election remained baseless. “Well,…

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Your organs might be aging at different rates

Your organs might be aging at different rates

Scientific American reports: The number of birthdays you’ve had—better known as your chronological age—now appears to be less important in assessing your health than ever before. A new study shows that bodily organs get “older” at extraordinarily different rates, and each one’s biological age can be at odds with a person’s age on paper. The new research, published on Wednesday in Nature, identified about one in five healthy adults older than 50 years old as an “extreme ager”—a person with…

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We won’t stop speaking out about Gaza’s suffering – there is no climate justice without human rights

We won’t stop speaking out about Gaza’s suffering – there is no climate justice without human rights

Greta Thunberg and Fridays for Future Sweden write: More than 15,000 people, of whom at least 6,000 were children. That’s how many people Israel has reportedly killed in the Gaza Strip in a matter of weeks – and those numbers are still rising. Israel has bombed basic societal infrastructure and civilian targets such as hospitals, schools, shelters and refugee camps. Israel has imposed a siege, preventing food, medicine, water and fuel from reaching the 2.3 million Palestinians trapped in the occupied Gaza…

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Trump’s second term agenda: revenge

Trump’s second term agenda: revenge

David Frum writes: If Trump is elected, it very likely won’t be with a majority of the popular vote. Imagine the scenario: Trump has won the Electoral College with 46 percent of the vote because third-party candidates funded by Republican donors successfully splintered the anti-Trump coalition. Having failed to win the popular vote in each of the past three elections, Trump has become president for the second time. On that thin basis, his supporters would try to execute his schemes…

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Trump and his allies will restore their draconian zero-tolerance immigration policy

Trump and his allies will restore their draconian zero-tolerance immigration policy

Caitlin Dickerson writes: Almost as soon as Donald Trump took office in 2017, agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement were dispatched across the country to round up as many undocumented foreigners as possible, and the travel ban put into limbo the livelihoods of thousands of people from majority-Muslim countries who had won the hard-fought right to be here—refugees, tech entrepreneurs, and university professors among them. The administration drew up plans for erecting a border wall, as well as an approach…

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How Trump will try to evade justice and punish his enemies

How Trump will try to evade justice and punish his enemies

Barton Gellman writes: Once Trump has installed loyalists in crucial posts, his first priority—an urgent one for a man facing 91 felony charges in four jurisdictions—would be to save himself from conviction and imprisonment. Of the four indictments against him, two are federal: the Florida case, with charges of unlawful retention of classified documents and obstruction of justice, and the Washington case, which charges Trump with unlawful efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Those will be the easiest for him…

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Trump will break up NATO

Trump will break up NATO

Anne Applebaum writes: “Idon’t give a shit about NATO.” Thus did former President Donald Trump once express his feelings about America’s oldest and strongest military alliance. Not that this statement, made in the presence of John Bolton, the national security adviser at the time, came as a surprise. Long before he was a political candidate, Trump questioned the value of American alliances. Of Europeans, he once wrote that “their conflicts are not worth American lives. Pulling back from Europe would…

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Trump was determined to stay in power ‘at any cost,’ say prosecutors; Mike Johnson protects the insurrectionists

Trump was determined to stay in power ‘at any cost,’ say prosecutors; Mike Johnson protects the insurrectionists

AFP reports: Federal prosecutors unveiled plans on Tuesday to introduce evidence at Donald Trump’s trial for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election that shows he was determined to “remain in power at any cost.” Special counsel Jack Smith’s office, in a court filing, said the former US president had a history of “sowing mistrust” in election results and had repeatedly refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power if he lost to Democrat Joe Biden. “The Government will offer…

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The wisdom of being unsure

The wisdom of being unsure

Maggie Jackson writes: I didn’t intend to write a book about uncertainty. Some years ago, I set off to research a volume on the kinds of thinking needed in a speed-driven, fragmented age. Epistemic uncertainty, which arises when we recognize the limits of our knowledge, was the subject of my first chapter. I assumed that being unsure was merely a preface to good thinking, something to eradicate as swiftly as possible en route to an answer. But I soon discovered…

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