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Trump claims he owns White House pardon and immigration policy records

Trump claims he owns White House pardon and immigration policy records

The New York Times reports: Former President Donald J. Trump is claiming that nine documents seized by the F.B.I. from his Florida residence are his personal property — but the Justice Department says they are official records that should be deposited with the National Archives, according to a new letter to the special master who is overseeing a review of the materials. The letter, filed on Thursday by the Justice Department, describes disputes over ownership and executive privilege claims involving…

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Putin’s last hope to win in Ukraine is a GOP victory in November

Putin’s last hope to win in Ukraine is a GOP victory in November

David Rothkopf writes: Vladimir Putin is fighting a two-front war. Sure, he’s losing badly in Eastern Ukraine, but things are looking up for the Russian dictator in the West—at least on the political front that runs through every ballot box in America. Although the resilience, courage, and skill of the Ukrainian military has driven Putin to increasingly desperate and depraved measures to avoid further battlefield humiliation, he can see a glimmer of hope on the horizon. And it’s being provided…

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After Ukraine, Biden administration turns to Musk’s satellite internet for Iran

After Ukraine, Biden administration turns to Musk’s satellite internet for Iran

CNN reports: The White House has engaged in talks with Elon Musk about the possibility of setting up SpaceX’s satellite internet service Starlink inside Iran, multiple officials familiar with the discussions told CNN. The conversations, which have not been previously reported, come as the Biden administration searches for ways to support the Iranian protest movement that exploded just over a month ago after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died under suspicious circumstances after being detained by the country’s morality police. The White…

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A diplomat defects from the Kremlin

A diplomat defects from the Kremlin

Boris Bondarev writes: For three years, my workdays began the same way. At 7:30 a.m., I woke up, checked the news, and drove to work at the Russian mission to the United Nations Office in Geneva. The routine was easy and predictable, two of the hallmarks of life as a Russian diplomat. February 24 was different. When I checked my phone, I saw startling and mortifying news: the Russian air force was bombing Ukraine. Kharkiv, Kyiv, and Odessa were under…

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Daniel Smith, one of the last children of enslaved Americans, dies at 90

Daniel Smith, one of the last children of enslaved Americans, dies at 90

The Washington Post reports: Growing up in the 1930s, Daniel R. Smith would listen to stories from his father, as young boys often do. He was not supposed to hear these stories — they were meant for his older siblings, not for a child as young as 5 or 6 — but after dinner on Saturday evenings he would sneak out of bed and listen to accounts of the “whipping and crying post,” of the lynching tree and the wagon…

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Michael Luttig, long seen as most conservative Republican judge in U.S., challenges far-right threat to democracy

Michael Luttig, long seen as most conservative Republican judge in U.S., challenges far-right threat to democracy

Jane Mayer writes: A powerful new litigant has joined one of the most momentous cases slated to be heard by the Supreme Court this term. The respondents in the case of Moore v. Harper filed a brief today that included a surprising new signatory: J. Michael Luttig, who has been known for years as perhaps the most conservative Republican judge in the country. Now, though, he has joined a coalition of veteran lawyers and nonpartisan government-watchdog groups who are fighting…

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Education is at the heart of America’s many divisions

Education is at the heart of America’s many divisions

Eric Levitz writes: Blue America is an increasingly wealthy and well-educated place. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, Americans without college degrees were more likely than university graduates to vote Democratic. But that gap began narrowing in the late 1960s before finally flipping in 2004. John F. Kennedy lost college-educated voters by a two-to-one margin yet won the presidency thanks to overwhelming support among white voters without a degree. Sixty years later, our second Catholic president charted a…

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Leaked texts reveal Marjorie Taylor Greene’s private push to overturn 2020 election

Leaked texts reveal Marjorie Taylor Greene’s private push to overturn 2020 election

Rolling Stone reports: Marjorie Taylor Greene was privately pressuring former Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler to get on board with the effort to overturn the 2020 election, text messages obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reveal. The leaked trove of texts show that before losing to current Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock in a Jan. 5, 2021 runoff, Loeffler was repeatedly pressured by Republicans to join Trump’s efforts to manipulate the certification of Electoral College votes that would finalize President Joe Biden’s election….

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U.S. busts network providing military technology to Russia

U.S. busts network providing military technology to Russia

The Associated Press reports: The Biden administration on Wednesday announced a round of criminal charges and sanctions related to a complicated scheme to procure military technologies from U.S. manufacturers and illegally supply them to Russia for its war in Ukraine. Some of the equipment was recovered on battlefields in Ukraine, the Justice Department said, and other nuclear proliferation technology was intercepted in Latvia before it could be shipped to Russia. The Justice Department charged nearly a dozen people in separate…

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With GOP skeptics of Ukraine aid poised to gain seats in Congress, lawmakers look to lock in a huge military assistance package

With GOP skeptics of Ukraine aid poised to gain seats in Congress, lawmakers look to lock in a huge military assistance package

NBC News reports: Amid concerns that a new Congress could take a more skeptical view of aid to Ukraine, lawmakers from both parties are looking to lock in billions of dollars in military assistance to Kyiv before newly elected members are sworn in in January, according to a lawmaker and congressional staffers. House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy of California, who is poised to take over as speaker if the GOP wins a majority in the House in the November midterm…

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EU media and leaders blame Brexit for UK political ‘insanity’ as Truss quits

EU media and leaders blame Brexit for UK political ‘insanity’ as Truss quits

The Guardian reports: Six years on from the Brexit referendum, continental observers have become used to Westminster meltdowns – but many see in the latest cataclysm the inevitable finale of a project that was always divorced from reality. “Listened to, perhaps; understood, not really,” said Le Monde of Liz Truss on the news of her resignation. “A terrible orator who could do little more than repeat ‘growth, growth, growth’, seemingly impervious to criticism … she was rejected by both the…

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Inside the proton, the ‘most complicated thing you could possibly imagine’

Inside the proton, the ‘most complicated thing you could possibly imagine’

Charlie Wood writes: More than a century after Ernest Rutherford discovered the positively charged particle at the heart of every atom, physicists are still struggling to fully understand the proton. High school physics teachers describe them as featureless balls with one unit each of positive electric charge — the perfect foils for the negatively charged electrons that buzz around them. College students learn that the ball is actually a bundle of three elementary particles called quarks. But decades of research…

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Russia ramps up deportations, as Putin imposes martial law in illegally annexed regions of Ukraine

Russia ramps up deportations, as Putin imposes martial law in illegally annexed regions of Ukraine

Politico reports: Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday imposed martial law in the four regions of Ukraine illegally annexed by the Kremlin’s forces, against the backdrop of mass deportations of Ukrainians to Russia and as Moscow lays the ground for further losses of territory. Kremlin-backed authorities in the Ukrainian city of Kherson are planning to “relocate” about 50,000 to 60,000 people to Russian territory, the Moscow-installed regional governor Vladimir Saldo said in a television interview Tuesday. Ivan Fedorov, the Ukrainian…

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Where have all the men in Moscow gone?

Where have all the men in Moscow gone?

The New York Times reports: Friday afternoons at the Chop-Chop Barbershop in central Moscow used to be busy, but at the beginning of a recent weekend, only one of the four chairs was occupied. “We would usually be full right now, but about half of our customers have gone,” said the manager, a woman named Olya. Many of the clients — along with half of the barbers, too — have fled Russia to avoid President Vladimir V. Putin’s campaign to…

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