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Increasing numbers of Trump supporters look towards post-Trump future

Increasing numbers of Trump supporters look towards post-Trump future

The Washington Post reports: One recent snowy evening at a gun range in the middle of Michigan, the police showed up at a meeting of the Saginaw County Republican Party that unraveled into a shouting match — the latest flare-up in a power struggle between loyalists to Donald Trump and people like Josiah Jaster. The 20-year-old insurance actuary, dressed up in a coat and tie, had been working with allies to elect a less Trump-centric slate of delegates to the…

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Press freedom in the crosshairs as DeSantis widens his assault on an open society

Press freedom in the crosshairs as DeSantis widens his assault on an open society

Politico reports: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ broken relationship with the mainstream media could get even worse. At the governor’s urging, Florida’s Republican-dominated Legislature is pushing to weaken state laws that have long protected journalists against defamation suits and frivolous lawsuits. The proposal is part DeSantis’ ongoing feud with media outlets like The New York Times, Miami Herald, CNN and The Washington Post — media companies he claims are biased against Republicans — as he prepares for a likely 2024 presidential…

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Biophobia hurts nature and humans

Biophobia hurts nature and humans

Emily Harwitz writes: When Masashi Soga was growing up in Japan, he loved spending time outside catching insects and collecting plants. His parents weren’t big fans of the outdoors, but he had an elementary schoolteacher who was. “They taught me how to collect butterflies, how to make a specimen of butterflies,” Soga recalls. “I enjoyed nature quite a lot.” That early exposure helped foster Soga’s appreciation for nature, he says, and today, Soga is an ecologist at the University of…

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United West, divided from the rest: Global public opinion one year into Russia’s war on Ukraine

United West, divided from the rest: Global public opinion one year into Russia’s war on Ukraine

Timothy Garton Ash, Ivan Krastev, and Mark Leonard write: A year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, there is little doubt the war is a turning point in world history. The conflict has challenged Europeans’ most basic assumptions about their security, brought the spectre of nuclear confrontation back to their continent, and disrupted the global economy, leaving energy and food crises in its wake. Yet while Russia’s aggression is an event of global significance, people in different parts of the world…

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Why China’s Ukraine balancing act might be tilting in Putin’s favor

Why China’s Ukraine balancing act might be tilting in Putin’s favor

NBC News reports: A flurry of European diplomatic activity over Russia’s war in Ukraine has offered a stark contrast this week: While President Joe Biden made a surprise visit to Kyiv, one of China’s most senior diplomats was heading to Moscow. Wang Yi, Chinese President Xi Jinping‘s senior foreign policy adviser, gave one of the strongest indications yet of Russia and China’s strengthening ties on Wednesday. “We are ready to deepen our strategic partnership,” he said according to Reuters. “Other…

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Those who fetishize ‘peace,’ open the door to greater violence

Those who fetishize ‘peace,’ open the door to greater violence

Vasyl Cherepanyn writes: The “never again” slogan, the EU’s common ideological denominator, has become a self-fulfilling prophecy in a perverted sense. Indeed, if one literally accepts the principle that “it should never happen again,” then war is thought of as impossible simply because it’s unimaginable in spite of realities on the ground. The EU has fetishized the idea of peace to the extent that it completely repressed the realities of war—only to be totally unprepared when the repressed came back….

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Fiona Hill: War won’t end until Russia abandons its imperial ambitions

Fiona Hill: War won’t end until Russia abandons its imperial ambitions

Freddie Sayers, at Unherd, interviews Fiona Hill, former advisor to Presidents Bush, Obama and Trump: FS: But how does this end? I understand that we must appear strong and united. But as the years pass, if proposing a settlement is seen as a sign of weakness, how will we ever reach one? FH: That’s not the way to look at this. The way to look at this is to try to create the circumstances for a real negotiation, not a…

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How retired U.S. Colonel Douglas Macgregor serves as a propagandist for Vladimir Putin

How retired U.S. Colonel Douglas Macgregor serves as a propagandist for Vladimir Putin

Polygraph.info reports: On February 15, Russia’s RIA Novosti state news agency quoted retired U.S. Colonel Douglas Macgregor’s interview with the “Judge Napolitano – Judging Freedom” program, streamed on YouTube that same day. The Russian translation of Macgregor’s claim isn’t precise but represents his ideas accurately: “We just don’t have ammunition to send. We have reached the limit; our own reserves are rapidly coming to an end.” This statement is misleading and fits into the Kremlin’s anti-U.S. and anti-Ukraine propaganda targeting…

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Head of the Wagner mercenary group accuses Russian army command of treason

Head of the Wagner mercenary group accuses Russian army command of treason

The New York Times reports: The head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group accused the country’s defense minister and its most senior general of treason on Tuesday, intensifying the most high-profile dispute in the Russian forces since the invasion of Ukraine began. Wagner’s founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has been taking aim at military leaders in a series of increasingly hostile audio messages on social media this week, accused the “chief of the general staff and minister of defense” of withholding ammunition…

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Biden administration announces first-ever wind energy lease sale in Gulf of Mexico

Biden administration announces first-ever wind energy lease sale in Gulf of Mexico

CNN reports: The Biden administration on Wednesday announced the first-ever US offshore wind energy lease sale for the waters in the Gulf of Mexico, an area long dominated by oil and gas production. The White House and US Department of Interior said they are proposing to open up more than 300,000 acres of offshore waters for offshore wind development — one area off the coast of Lake Charles, Louisiana, and two off the coast of Galveston, Texas. However, Interior is…

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War in Ukraine triggered ‘unstoppable’ growth in renewable energy production across Europe

War in Ukraine triggered ‘unstoppable’ growth in renewable energy production across Europe

Vox reports: One year ago, on the cusp of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it seemed unimaginable that renewable energy in Europe could overtake electricity from oil and gas. But not even a year later, it did. By the end of 2022, wind and solar combined overtook natural gas in electricity generation. The latest data on Europe’s renewable transition tells a remarkably upbeat story about the hard things countries can accomplish on climate change with enough political will. Before the Russia-Ukraine…

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Leaked document shows how Russia plans to take over Belarus

Leaked document shows how Russia plans to take over Belarus

Michael Weiss and Holger Roonemaa report: A leaked internal strategy document from Vladimir Putin’s executive office and obtained by Yahoo News lays out a detailed plan on how Russia plans to take full control over neighboring Belarus in the next decade under the pretext of a merger between the two countries. The document outlines in granular detail a creeping annexation by political, economic and military means of an independent but illiberal European nation by Russia, which is an active state…

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Russia poses a growing threat to Moldova

Russia poses a growing threat to Moldova

  BBC News reports: Beneath Moldova’s soaring parliament building, a parade of its most precarious file slowly past – bussed in by the thousand from across the country, each with their private tale of poverty and frustration. “We’re a laughing stock – the government is mocking us,” Ala tells me. Capped in a blue woollen hat, she thrusts her wide pale face close to mine, and says: “There are people with four or five children who literally have nothing to…

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Joe Cirincione explains what it means for Russia to ‘suspend’ compliance with the New START treaty

Joe Cirincione explains what it means for Russia to ‘suspend’ compliance with the New START treaty

In a ten-tweet thread, Joe Cirincione explores the implications of Putin’s announcement: Let’s break down what Putin’s announcement that he is “suspending” compliance with the New START treaty means. The accord limits the US and Russia to 1,550 operationally deployed strategic weapons. It runs thru 2026 and is the last remaining strategic arms control treaty.  First, this is a major violation of the treaty. There is no provision for “suspending” compliance with the treaty. It formalizes Russia’s existing noncompliance with…

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