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Nikki Haley draws growing interest from deep-pocketed donors as GOP presidential field shrinks

Nikki Haley draws growing interest from deep-pocketed donors as GOP presidential field shrinks

CNN reports: Tim Scott’s loss appears to be Nikki Haley’s gain. Several of Scott’s financial backers have quickly pivoted to Haley in the days since the South Carolina senator ended his bid for the White House, as Haley jockeys with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to become the alternative to former President Donald Trump, the current front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. In one sign of growing donor enthusiasm for her campaign, billionaire hedge fund founder Ken Griffin said this…

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The world is ‘woefully off track’ on dozens of climate goals, scientists find

The world is ‘woefully off track’ on dozens of climate goals, scientists find

The Washington Post reports: Among the many dramatic ways society must transform to limit the worst effects of climate change, the world is only moving fast enough on one of them — the uptake of electric vehicles, according to a new report from seven climate organizations looking at 42 indicators of climate progress. On the other 41 points of transformation, change is either too slow, too hard to measure, or going in the wrong direction. For example, the global rate…

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Earth facing dire sea level rise — up to 20m — even if climate goals met

Earth facing dire sea level rise — up to 20m — even if climate goals met

Global News reports: Capping global temperature rise at two degrees Celsius over baseline is no longer seen as enough to avoid a catastrophic rise in sea levels that would decimate the earth’s coastlines and displace hundreds of millions of people, climate scientists warn. A report released Thursday by the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative, compiled by more than 60 scientists and policy experts, is sounding the alarm on new modelling data that indicates the 2015 Paris Agreement is woefully out-of-date. The…

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Israel’s ludicrous propaganda wins over the only audience that counts

Israel’s ludicrous propaganda wins over the only audience that counts

Jeet Heer writes: On November 11, an Arabic-language Twitter account maintained by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs posted a video purporting to be a selfie by a nurse in al-Shifa hospital in Gaza, a major battlefield in the current conflict that was taken over by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) a few days later. In the startling video, as bombs went off in the background, the tearful nurse warned Gazans to heed the call of the IDF to flee to…

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Trump’s plan for immigrant concentration camps points to a brutal 2024 reality

Trump’s plan for immigrant concentration camps points to a brutal 2024 reality

Greg Sargent writes: Donald Trump’s advisers have declared that if he regains the presidency, he will launch an extraordinarily cruel crackdown on immigration. Given that Trump lost reelection in 2020 after attempting a far tamer agenda, advertising such plans might seem like foolish political malpractice. But the politics of immigration can be peculiar. The public tends to turn on the president in power when the situation on the border goes wrong, leading voters to seek a diametrically different approach —…

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Trump’s 2024 trial schedule drifts into chaos

Trump’s 2024 trial schedule drifts into chaos

The Messenger reports: In theory, Donald Trump is facing down the prospect of four criminal trials in four different cases next year that clash with the core period of his campaign to return to the White House. In practice, as court filings, judicial rulings, public statements and other recent developments have illustrated, Trump could face just one trial on his road to Election Day 2024. By all accounts, including her own, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan has no intention of…

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Stephen Miller’s America First Legal rakes in $44 million with $27 million from a single donor

Stephen Miller’s America First Legal rakes in $44 million with $27 million from a single donor

The Hill reports: Longtime Trump adviser Stephen Miller’s legal group saw a major jump in revenue last year, raising $44 million, significantly more than the $6 million garnered during 2021. Miller’s national non-profit, America First Legal, registered as a 501c(3), saw a near 600 percent revenue jump, according to a Bloomberg New analysis of tax fillings provided by Accountable.US, a progressive watchdog group. The revenue increase comes after the group started filing more lawsuits, focused on challenging major law firms,…

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No Labels depends on six-figure donors to fund ‘grassroots’ 2024 third party ticket

No Labels depends on six-figure donors to fund ‘grassroots’ 2024 third party ticket

CNBC reports: No Labels, the nonprofit group actively working to field a third party ticket for president in 2024, doubled its annual revenue last year over 2021, collecting $21 million, nearly all of it from wealthy donors who gave $100,000 or more. No Labels is not required to publicly disclose the names of its donors, but CNBC obtained a list from the group of contributions last year that exceeded $5,000. The list did not include names, but it revealed that…

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Advertisers flee X as outcry over Musk’s endorsement of antisemitic post grows

Advertisers flee X as outcry over Musk’s endorsement of antisemitic post grows

The New York Times reports: The blowback over Elon Musk’s endorsement of an antisemitic conspiracy theory on X gathered steam on Friday, as several major advertisers on his social media platform cut off their spending after his comments. Disney said it was pausing spending on X, as did Lionsgate, the entertainment and film distribution company. Apple, which spends tens of millions of dollars a year on X, also suspended advertising on the platform, a person with knowledge of the situation…

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Does Sam Altman know what he’s creating? Or why he just got fired?

Does Sam Altman know what he’s creating? Or why he just got fired?

Ross Andersen wrote in July: On a Monday morning in April, Sam Altman sat inside OpenAI’s San Francisco headquarters, telling me about a dangerous artificial intelligence that his company had built but would never release. His employees, he later said, often lose sleep worrying about the AIs they might one day release without fully appreciating their dangers. With his heel perched on the edge of his swivel chair, he looked relaxed. The powerful AI that his company had released in…

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Israel fails to produce evidence supporting its claim that Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital sits atop Hamas’s HQ

Israel fails to produce evidence supporting its claim that Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital sits atop Hamas’s HQ

The Washington Post reports: The Israeli raid of the Gaza Strip’s largest hospital stretched into its second day Thursday as troops searched for evidence of the extensive Hamas infrastructure that Israeli and U.S. officials have said lies beneath the facility. The Israel Defense Forces said Thursday that searches had uncovered the body of a captive Israeli woman in a house near the hospital, along with weapons. On Wednesday, the IDF released photographs and video of small caches of weapons it…

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Progressives warn Jeffries: AIPAC poses a threat to the Democratic Party

Progressives warn Jeffries: AIPAC poses a threat to the Democratic Party

Politico reports: Progressive Democrats who’ve condemned Israel over its war offensive in Gaza are demanding that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries do more to protect them against primary challenges from pro-Israel Democrats. In a closed-door meeting at party headquarters last Thursday, the three lawmakers who lead the Progressive Caucus’ PAC met with Jeffries and Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), the head of House Democrats’ campaign arm. They told the Democratic leader he needed to keep the influential American Israel Public Affairs…

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The 2023 state of the climate report: Entering uncharted territory

The 2023 state of the climate report: Entering uncharted territory

William J Ripple et al write in BioScience: Life on planet Earth is under siege. We are now in an uncharted territory. For several decades, scientists have consistently warned of a future marked by extreme climatic conditions because of escalating global temperatures caused by ongoing human activities that release harmful greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Unfortunately, time is up. We are seeing the manifestation of those predictions as an alarming and unprecedented succession of climate records are broken, causing profoundly…

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