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On the docket: Atlanta v. Trumpworld

On the docket: Atlanta v. Trumpworld

The New York Times reports: The criminal investigation into efforts by former President Donald J. Trump and his allies to overturn his election loss in Georgia has begun to entangle, in one way or another, an expanding assemblage of characters: A United States senator. A congressman. A local Cadillac dealer. A high school economics teacher. The chairman of the state Republican Party. The Republican candidate for lieutenant governor. Six lawyers aiding Mr. Trump, including a former New York City mayor….

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Understanding why Dobbs is so dangerous

Understanding why Dobbs is so dangerous

David Litt writes: Just a few years ago, a clear majority of Americans trusted the Supreme Court. Now, a month after Roe v. Wade was overturned, poll after poll shows that a clear majority of Americans do not. To which many of the Court’s closest observers would say, “What took so long?” For more than a decade, the Court has issued narrow rulings, decided by slim majorities, that align with Republican political goals. Five Justices unleashed dark money in politics….

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Inside the GOP freakout over J.D. Vance’s senate campaign

Inside the GOP freakout over J.D. Vance’s senate campaign

The Daily Beast reports: When J.D. Vance took the stage at a conservative conference last week, it should have prompted sighs of relief from Republicans hoping to see the Ohio GOP’s U.S. Senate nominee hit the campaign trail harder. There was just one problem: the stage Vance took was in Israel, 6,000 miles away from Ohio. The spectacle of Vance gushing in Tel Aviv about Israel’s high birth rates—to a friendly audience stocked with plenty of conservatives but almost certainly…

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We are moving into an era defined by homesickness

We are moving into an era defined by homesickness

Madeline Ostrander writes: From above, an open-cut coal mine looks like some geological aberration, a sort of man-made desert, a recent volcanic eruption, or a kind of terra forming. When the Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht first gazed at a series of such mines while driving through his home region in southeast Australia, he stopped and got out of his car, overcome “at the desolation of this once beautiful place,” he wrote in his book, Earth Emotions. As a scholar, Albrecht…

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The desperate lives inside Ukraine’s ‘dead cities’

The desperate lives inside Ukraine’s ‘dead cities’

Luke Mogelson writes: People in Ukraine sometimes describe the intensity of shelling in simple auditory terms. A place can be “quiet” or “loud.” As the volume increases, so do the chaos, misery, death, and fear. You cannot experience such fatal noise without instinctively grasping its purpose, which is to brutalize psychically as much as physically—to demoralize and stupefy. Nowhere on earth is louder today than the Donbas region of Eastern Ukraine, where Russia has concentrated its forces and its firepower…

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Russia strikes Odessa port after signing deal to unblock Ukrainian grain exports

Russia strikes Odessa port after signing deal to unblock Ukrainian grain exports

The Wall Street Journal reports: Russia launched a missile attack on Ukraine’s key grain-exporting port of Odessa, officials said, hours after signing an international agreement to ease its blockade of the Black Sea coastline and allow for the safe transport of grain and other foodstuffs necessary to alleviate a looming global food crisis. The attack on Odessa appeared to violate the terms of the United Nations-brokered agreement signed by Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul on Friday, which stipulated that both…

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Panama Papers whistleblower speaks out: ‘Shell companies are Putin’s best friend’

Panama Papers whistleblower speaks out: ‘Shell companies are Putin’s best friend’

Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project: The anonymous whistleblower behind the bombshell leak known as the Panama Papers has emerged anew to warn how offshore companies are enabling Russia’s war machine. John Doe, as the whistleblower insisted on being called, had only spoken out publicly once before, but reached out recently to the two German journalists who had received the leak of documents in 2015 concerning the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. Those two reporters from Suddeutsche Zeitung, Frederik Obermaier…

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WHO declares monkeypox spread a global health emergency

WHO declares monkeypox spread a global health emergency

The New York Times reports: For the second time in two years, the World Health Organization has taken the extraordinary step of declaring a global emergency. This time the cause is monkeypox, which has spread in just a few weeks to dozens of countries and infected tens of thousands of people. Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the W.H.O.’s director general, on Saturday overruled a panel of advisers, who could not come to a consensus, and declared a “public health emergency of…

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FBI investigation determined Chinese-made Huawei equipment could disrupt U.S. nuclear arsenal communications

FBI investigation determined Chinese-made Huawei equipment could disrupt U.S. nuclear arsenal communications

CNN reports: On paper, it looked like a fantastic deal. In 2017, the Chinese government was offering to spend $100 million to build an ornate Chinese garden at the National Arboretum in Washington DC. Complete with temples, pavilions and a 70-foot white pagoda, the project thrilled local officials, who hoped it would attract thousands of tourists every year.       But when US counterintelligence officials began digging into the details, they found numerous red flags. The pagoda, they noted, would have been strategically…

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For Trump, loyalty is all that matters

For Trump, loyalty is all that matters

Jonathan Swan reports: Trump’s move in early 2020 to bring back [John] McEntee, the then 29-year-old former presidential body man abruptly fired in 2018 by then-chief of staff John Kelly, would become one of his more consequential decisions. McEntee had been one of his favorite aides and Trump had long regretted allowing Kelly, whom he had grown to despise, to have his way. After Trump’s Senate acquittal, he gave McEntee an astonishing promotion to run the White House Office of…

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Who dreams?

Who dreams?

Antonio Zadra writes: My fascination with dream characters began while I was in college. That’s when, in the midst of a dream in which I knew I was dreaming (a ‘lucid dream’), I had my first encounter with an older gentleman, who tried to convince me that, actually, my experience wasn’t a dream. Over the next two decades, this man appeared in several other of my lucid as well as non-lucid dreams. He always maintained he was real, one time…

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There’s a reason Trump could try to overturn the results of the 2020 election

There’s a reason Trump could try to overturn the results of the 2020 election

Jamelle Bouie writes: Sometimes, it seems, the Senate isn’t entirely useless. On Wednesday, a bipartisan group of 16 senators, led by Susan Collins of Maine and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, released the text of a new bill intended to make it harder to overturn the results of a presidential election. A direct response to Donald Trump’s multipronged attempt to stay in power, the bill is meant to keep a future candidate for president, including a losing incumbent, from following…

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A plan to install an authoritarian regime staffed with thousands of Trump loyalists

A plan to install an authoritarian regime staffed with thousands of Trump loyalists

Jonathan Swan reports: Former President Trump’s top allies are preparing to radically reshape the federal government if he is re-elected, purging potentially thousands of civil servants and filling career posts with loyalists to him and his “America First” ideology, people involved in the discussions tell Axios. The impact could go well beyond typical conservative targets such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Internal Revenue Service. Trump allies are working on plans that would potentially strip layers at the Justice…

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Ukraine’s Zelensky says a cease-fire with Russia, without reclaiming lost lands, will only prolong war

Ukraine’s Zelensky says a cease-fire with Russia, without reclaiming lost lands, will only prolong war

The Wall Street Journal reports: Any cease-fire that allows Russia to keep Ukrainian territories seized since the invasion in February would only encourage an even wider conflict, giving Moscow a badly-needed opportunity to replenish and rearm for the next round, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned. “Freezing the conflict with the Russian Federation means a pause that gives the Russian Federation a break for rest,” Mr. Zelensky said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal in the heavily fortified presidential…

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