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Former senior FBI official pleads guilty to illegally assisting Putin ally

Former senior FBI official pleads guilty to illegally assisting Putin ally

The Washington Post reports: Former high-ranking FBI official Charles McGonigal pleaded guilty Tuesday in federal court to conspiring to violate U.S. sanctions and to laundering money by secretly working on behalf of a Russian oligarch he had been tasked with investigating. The former chief of counterintelligence in the FBI’s New York City office, who was charged in January, settled his New York case with federal prosecutors by pleading guilty to one count in a superseding document used to override or…

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Shame makes people living in poverty more supportive of authoritarianism, study finds

Shame makes people living in poverty more supportive of authoritarianism, study finds

PsyPost reports: A series of three studies in Germany found that people living in poverty frequently experience exclusion from different aspects of society and devaluation leading to the feeling of shame. Such shame, in turn, increases their support for authoritarianism due to the promise that that they will be included in the society again authoritarian leaders typically make. The study was published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Poverty is defined as a lack of the capability to live…

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The Global South’s views on Ukraine are more complex than you may think

The Global South’s views on Ukraine are more complex than you may think

Michael Karadjis writes: On July 19, South Africa announced that Russian President Vladimir Putin would not be attending the BRICS summit in Johannesburg in late August, ending speculation about whether South Africa would arrest him because of the warrant issued by the International Criminal Court. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will attend instead. The ICC warrant accuses Putin of illegally deporting thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia. Russia, like the United States, is not a signatory to the ICC, whereas…

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What the heck happened in Coffee County, Georgia?

What the heck happened in Coffee County, Georgia?

Anna Bower writes: Shortly before noon on Jan. 7, 2021, with the nation still reeling from the aftermath of the attempted insurrection in Washington, D.C., a Republican Party official ushers a computer forensics team into an elections office in far-away Coffee County, Georgia. According to a combination of court filings, depositions in subsequent litigation, and the indictment filed Monday evening in Fulton County, Georgia, the forensics team—a group of employees of an Atlanta-based firm called SullivanStrickler—has driven into the rural south Georgia…

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Will the Georgia case really put Trump and some of his co-defendants behind bars?

Will the Georgia case really put Trump and some of his co-defendants behind bars?

Kim Wehle writes: In the months leading up to this indictment, Trump’s lawyers tried mightily to kill this case, filing a 483-page motion seeking to have District Attorney Fani Willis removed and the report from the investigative grand jury (or “special” grand jury) that preceded the charging grand jury thrown out. The motion was denied, but the effort signaled that Trump may be especially worried about this case. He should be, for these reasons: First, Georgia’s RICO statute carries a…

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Special counsel obtained Trump DMs despite ‘momentous’ bid by Twitter to delay, unsealed filings show

Special counsel obtained Trump DMs despite ‘momentous’ bid by Twitter to delay, unsealed filings show

Politico reports: Special counsel Jack Smith obtained an extraordinary array of data from Twitter about Donald Trump’s account — from direct messages to draft tweets to location data — newly unsealed court filings reveal. But it took a bruising battle with Twitter’s attorneys in January and February — punctuated by a blistering analysis by a federal judge, who wondered whether Elon Musk was attempting to “cozy up” to the former president by resisting the special counsel’s demands — before prosecutors…

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Scott McAfee has been a judge six months. He is now assigned Trump’s Georgia case

Scott McAfee has been a judge six months. He is now assigned Trump’s Georgia case

The Wall Street Journal reports: Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee first put on his robes in February this year. About six months into his new gig, he was assigned to oversee perhaps the biggest case in Georgia history: the criminal indictment of former President Donald Trump and 18 others who prosecutors say organized efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s narrow 2020 victory in the state. McAfee, 34 years old, has spent much of his career as a prosecutor, first for the Fulton County district attorney and…

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Critics of ‘degrowth’ economics say it’s unworkable – but from an ecologist’s perspective, it’s inevitable

Critics of ‘degrowth’ economics say it’s unworkable – but from an ecologist’s perspective, it’s inevitable

Shutterstock/Matt Sheumack By Mike Joy, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington You may not have noticed, but earlier this month we passed Earth overshoot day, when humanity’s demands for ecological resources and services exceeded what our planet can regenerate annually. Many economists criticising the developing degrowth movement fail to appreciate this critical point of Earth’s biophysical limits. Ecologists on the other hand see the human economy as a subset of the biosphere. Their perspective highlights the urgency with…

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Canada’s raging fires have burned an area larger than Greece

Canada’s raging fires have burned an area larger than Greece

The Washington Post reports: Wildfires continue to rage in Canada, burning twice as much land as any previous season, an area equivalent to Alabama or nine Connecticuts. The blazes have charred nearly 33 million acres (13.3 million hectares) across the country, with hundreds of large fires still burning. The situation is not improving. Fires from coast-to-coast have stretched firefighting forces thin, requiring help from the Canadian military. Several massive conflagrations in the Northwest Territories have imperiled a number of towns…

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Government’s own experts found ‘barbaric’ and ‘negligent’ conditions in ICE detention

Government’s own experts found ‘barbaric’ and ‘negligent’ conditions in ICE detention

NPR reports: In Michigan, a man in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was sent into a jail’s general population unit with an open wound from surgery, no bandages and no follow-up medical appointment scheduled, even though he still had surgical drains in place. A federal inspector found: “The detainee never received even the most basic care for his wound.” In Georgia, a nurse ignored an ICE detainee who urgently asked for an inhaler to treat his asthma. Even…

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This indictment of Trump does something ingenious

This indictment of Trump does something ingenious

Norman Eisen and Amy Lee Copeland write: When the Fulton County, Ga., district attorney, Fani Willis, filed criminal charges against Donald Trump and over a dozen of his allies for their attempt to overturn Georgia’s 2020 presidential election results, she did something ingenious. In contrast to the special counsel Jack Smith’s latest laser-focused federal indictment of Mr. Trump, Ms. Willis charges a wide range of conspirators, from people in the Oval Office to low-level Georgia G.O.P. functionaries, and is the first to plumb the…

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Don’t let Donald Trump take his case to federal court

Don’t let Donald Trump take his case to federal court

Laurence H. Tribe, Donald Ayer, and Dennis Aftergut write: Now that Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis has indicted former President Donald Trump for his effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election, Trump’s first chessboard move is likely to be a motion to “remove” the case—that is, to transfer it from state court in Atlanta to federal court in the Northern District of Georgia. This maneuver shouldn’t work, as it didn’t work in July in New York, but once…

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The biggest difference between the Georgia indictment and the Jan. 6 indictment

The biggest difference between the Georgia indictment and the Jan. 6 indictment

Richard L Hasen writes: If the recent federal indictment of Donald Trump on charges related to his attempt to subvert the 2020 presidential election was a streamlined surgical strike aimed at ensuring a clean case and a speedy trial of the former president before the 2024 election, Monday night’s Georgia indictment is the equivalent of a blitz. With 19 defendants and 41 charges, the heart of the indictment is a sprawling state racketeering charge that places Trump at the center…

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Trump’s Fulton County indictment, unpacked

Trump’s Fulton County indictment, unpacked

Lisa Needham writes: The latest Trump indictment is out, and it’s a blockbuster. Let’s start with the numbers, shall we? A grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, returned an indictment that has: 19 defendants, including the former president of the United States and 6 lawyers in his orbit 41 criminal counts across all defendants 13 criminal counts against the former president himself 8 types of manners and methods used to further a criminal enterprise 161 overt acts of racketeering activity…

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