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Category: Politics

How Jeffrey Epstein got rich — as a prodigious manipulator and liar

How Jeffrey Epstein got rich — as a prodigious manipulator and liar

  The New York Times reports: One evening in early 1976, a bushy-haired Jeffrey Epstein showed up for an event at an art gallery in Midtown Manhattan. Epstein was a math and physics teacher at the city’s prestigious Dalton School, and the father of one of his students had invited him. Epstein initially demurred, saying he didn’t go out much, but eventually relented. It would turn out to be one of the best decisions he ever made. At the gallery,…

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The most powerful politics influencers don’t typically speak about politics

The most powerful politics influencers don’t typically speak about politics

Wired reports: Donald Trump’s appearances on the podcasts of Joe Rogan and Theo Von, among others, were seen by many as a key part of securing his second term in office. But while Trump was speculating about alien life on Mars with Rogan, he had a team of acolytes appearing on dozens, if not hundreds, of much smaller niche podcasts hosted by right-wing content creators who typically don’t talk about politics. This is how, just six days before the election,…

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Jack Smith tells Congress he found ‘proof’ Trump engaged in ‘criminal scheme’ to overturn election

Jack Smith tells Congress he found ‘proof’ Trump engaged in ‘criminal scheme’ to overturn election

NBC News reports: Former special counsel Jack Smith told a congressional committee Wednesday that his team found “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” that President Donald Trump engaged in a “criminal scheme” to overturn the results of the 2020 election, according to parts of his opening statement obtained by NBC News. Trump also “repeatedly tried to obstruct justice” to keep secret his retention of classified documents found during an FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, Smith told members of…

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Trump regime aims to strip more foreign-born Americans of citizenship

Trump regime aims to strip more foreign-born Americans of citizenship

The New York Times reports: The Trump administration plans to ramp up efforts to strip some naturalized Americans of their citizenship, according to internal guidance obtained by The New York Times, marking an aggressive new phase in the president’s campaign to make the country less friendly to immigrants. The guidance, issued on Tuesday to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services field offices, asks that they “supply Office of Immigration Litigation with 100-200 denaturalization cases per month” in the 2026 fiscal year….

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Europe could burst Trump’s AI bubble

Europe could burst Trump’s AI bubble

Johnny Ryan writes: Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, has two cards to play that might pop the AI bubble. If she does so, Trump’s presidency will be thrown into crisis. First, Dutch company ASML commands a global monopoly on the microchip-etching machines that use light to carve patterns on silicon. These machines are essential for Nvidia, the AI microchip giant that is now the world’s most valuable company. ASML is one of Europe’s most valuable…

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Susie Wiles confirms Trump’s ‘war on drugs’ is really about regime change in Venezuela

Susie Wiles confirms Trump’s ‘war on drugs’ is really about regime change in Venezuela

Chris Whipple writes: During my first visit with Wiles at the White House in November, Trump’s revenge tour against his domestic enemies was in full swing. So was his lethal campaign against Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, who, Trump was convinced, headed a powerful drug cartel. Over lunch, Wiles told me about Trump’s Venezuela strategy: “He wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle. And people way smarter than me on that say that he will.” (Wiles’s statement…

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Trump orders oil tankers blockade in Venezuela, labels it a ‘terrorist’ regime

Trump orders oil tankers blockade in Venezuela, labels it a ‘terrorist’ regime

Axios reports: President Trump designated Venezuela a “foreign terrorist organization” Tuesday and formally ordered a blockade of all U.S. sanctioned oil tankers servicing the country. Why it matters: Trump’s newest escalation, backed by a giant U.S. armada, exerts unprecedented pressure on Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro’s regime, threatening to bankrupt the country’s already struggling economy. “Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America. It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like…

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Trump’s new National Security Strategy targets liberal democracy itself

Trump’s new National Security Strategy targets liberal democracy itself

Anne Applebaum writes: Last year, a team of American diplomats from the State Department’s Global Engagement Center traveled to two dozen countries and signed a series of memoranda. Along with their counterparts in places as varied as Italy, Australia, and Ivory Coast, they agreed to jointly expose malicious and deceptive online campaigns originating in Russia, China, or Iran. This past September, the Trump administration terminated these agreements. The center’s former head, James Rubin, called this decision “a unilateral act of…

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After Bondi Beach shooting, Republicans are calling for a purge of Muslim immigrants

After Bondi Beach shooting, Republicans are calling for a purge of Muslim immigrants

The New Republic reports: MAGA world is calling for a mass deportation of Muslims, following a mass shooting in Australia—ignoring the reality that it was a member of the local Muslim community who intervened and stopped the violence. At least 15 people were killed Sunday in a horrific attack at Sydney’s Bondi Beach. Two men—a father-son duo—allegedly opened fire on a crowd of Jewish Australians on the first night of Hanukkah. The country’s leadership has declared the incident a terrorist…

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BBC will fight Trump’s $10bn lawsuit, saying it should be dismissed

BBC will fight Trump’s $10bn lawsuit, saying it should be dismissed

The Guardian reports: The BBC is preparing to argue Donald Trump’s $10bn court case against it should be dismissed, arguing it has no case to answer over the US president’s claims he was defamed by an episode of Panorama. The development comes after Trump filed a 33-page complaint to a Florida court on Monday, accusing the broadcaster of “a false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory and malicious depiction” of the president in the documentary. On Tuesday, the BBC said it would…

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Trump’s callous attack on Rob Reiner shows a shameful moral failure

Trump’s callous attack on Rob Reiner shows a shameful moral failure

Anita Chabria writes: In a town — and a time — of selfishness and self-serving, Reiner was one of the good guys, always fighting, both through his films and his politics, to make the world kinder and closer. And yes, that meant fighting against Trump and his increasingly erratic and authoritarian rule. For years, Reiner made the politics of inclusion and decency central to his life. He was a key player in overturning California’s ban on same-sex marriage and fought…

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Trump officials celebrated with cake after slashing aid. Then people died of cholera

Trump officials celebrated with cake after slashing aid. Then people died of cholera

By Anna Maria Barry-Jester and Brett Murphy This story was originally published by ProPublica On the one-month anniversary of President Donald Trump’s inauguration earlier this year, a group of his appointed aides gathered to celebrate. For four weeks, they had been working overtime to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, freezing thousands of programs, including ones that provided food, water and medicine around the world. They’d culled USAID’s staff and abandoned its former headquarters in the stately Ronald Reagan…

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John Roberts has been working to neuter the Voting Rights Act since the beginning of his career

John Roberts has been working to neuter the Voting Rights Act since the beginning of his career

David Daley writes: In 1982, when the Voting Rights Act was up for reauthorization, the Reagan Justice Department had a goal: preserve the VRA in name only, while rendering it unenforceable in practice. A young John Roberts was the architect of that campaign. He may soon get to finish what he started. Last month, at the oral argument in Louisiana v. Callais, a majority of the conservative justices seemed to signal their willingness to forbid any use of race data…

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The goal of AI development is ownership of the means of thinking

The goal of AI development is ownership of the means of thinking

Matthew B. Crawford writes: As near as one can tell, the business rationale for artificial intelligence rests on the hope that it will substitute for human judgment and discretion. Given the role of big data in training AI systems, and the enormous concentrations of capital they require to develop, the AI revolution will extend the logic of oligopoly into cognition. What appears to be at stake, ultimately, is ownership of the means of thinking. This will have implications for class…

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‘I didn’t vote for this’: DOGE cuts for public lands are waking a sleeping political giant in Montana

‘I didn’t vote for this’: DOGE cuts for public lands are waking a sleeping political giant in Montana

Cassidy Randall writes: The road to the tiny hamlet of Marion in northwest Montana is lined with the thick trees of the Flathead National Forest, with modern homesteads of trailers and modest homes dotting clearings here and there. Outside a timber frame café called the Hilltop Hitching Post, one of the only gathering spots for Marion’s population of less than 1,200, hunter Terry Zink pulled up in a dusty, well-used F-150 pickup and got out wearing a camo jacket against…

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Intoxicated by their wealth, power, and insularity, the billionaires are unprepared for a societal backlash

Intoxicated by their wealth, power, and insularity, the billionaires are unprepared for a societal backlash

Michael Hirschorn writes: An ever-more-stratified scale of luxury allows the staggeringly rich to avoid coming into contact with even the merely wealthy, let alone the rest of the world, “to glide through a rarefied realm unencumbered by the inconveniences of ordinary life,” as The Wall Street Journal reported. Chuck Collins, who gave away his family fortune and who now investigates inequality, describes it this way: “Wealth is a disconnection drug that keeps people apart from one another and from building…

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