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Category: Politics

Germany’s Chancellor Merz compares Putin to Hitler: ‘He won’t stop’

Germany’s Chancellor Merz compares Putin to Hitler: ‘He won’t stop’

Politico reports: Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz compared Russian President Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler in a speech Saturday evening, warning that the Kremlin leader’s ambitions won’t stop with Ukraine. “Just as the Sudetenland was not enough in 1938, Putin will not stop,” Merz said, referring to a part of Czechoslovakia that the Allies ceded to the Nazi leader with an agreement. Hitler continued his expansion into Europe after that. “If Ukraine falls, he won’t stop there,” Merz said, referring to…

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Cuba denounces U.S. seizure of oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast as ‘piracy’

Cuba denounces U.S. seizure of oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast as ‘piracy’

The Guardian reports: Cuban officials have denounced the US seizure of the Skipper oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast on Wednesday, calling it an “act of piracy and maritime terrorism” as well as a “serious violation of international law” that hurts the Caribbean island nation and its people. “This action is part of the US escalation aimed at hampering Venezuela’s legitimate right to freely use and trade its natural resources with other nations, including the supplies of hydrocarbons to Cuba,” the…

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American contractors vie to rebuild Gaza, with ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ team in the lead

American contractors vie to rebuild Gaza, with ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ team in the lead

The Guardian reports: Trump administration insiders and well-connected Republican businesses have been jostling to dominate pending humanitarian aid and reconstruction logistics in the shattered Gaza Strip, according to sources and documents reviewed by the Guardian. With three-quarters of Gaza’s structures damaged or destroyed by two years of Israeli strikes, the rebuilding effort to come – estimated at $70bn by the United Nations – could be a rich prize for companies that specialize in construction, demolition, transportation and logistics. But there’s…

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White-supremacist influencer, Nick Fuentes, is laying the groundwork to go even bigger

White-supremacist influencer, Nick Fuentes, is laying the groundwork to go even bigger

Ali Breland writes: Before each episode of America First With Nicholas J. Fuentes begins, a surreal mix of images and video clips runs, like a screen saver, for an unpredictable and seemingly eternal amount of time. Gentle plains of swaying grass, trickling streams, and the show’s logo flash across the screen. EDM kicks in. Psychedelic depictions of Christian imagery, including Jesus’s crucifixion, come and go. So do snippets of Fuentes talking about, among other things, borders, drag queens, and his…

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New Yorkers band together to protect street vendors from ICE

New Yorkers band together to protect street vendors from ICE

The Guardian reports: On a December day when temperatures dipped below 20 degrees, Street Vendor Project staff walked along a busy commercial street in the Bronx, handing out “know your rights” information to vendors selling fruits and vegetables. Several vendors mentioned they were scared after watching videos of immigration raids across the city. “We used to go around helping vendors apply for permits so they wouldn’t get fined,” said Eric Nava-Pérez, Street Vendor Project’s Spanish-speaking member organizer. “But now, we’re…

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Federal grand jury indicts Cincinnati ICE officer for sexually assaulting immigrants under his care

Federal grand jury indicts Cincinnati ICE officer for sexually assaulting immigrants under his care

CityBeat reports: A former Cincinnati-based officer with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency was indicted Dec. 8 for allegedly sexually assaulting detained immigrants under his care. Documents from the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of Ohio show that Andrew Golobic, 51, was arrested Dec. 7 for allegedly coercing sex from vulnerable immigrants. Golobic was an ICE officer between 2006 and 2020, operating from the agency’s office in Blue Ash. A federal grand jury charged Golobic with…

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Cincinnati ICE supervisor accused of strangling woman held on $400k bond

Cincinnati ICE supervisor accused of strangling woman held on $400k bond

CityBeat reports: A Cincinnati-based Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) supervisor is being held in Hamilton County Jail on $400,000 bond after allegedly strangling his partner. ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations official Samuel Saxon, 47, was arrested on Dec. 5 after police say he attacked a woman he lives with in their Corryville apartment. In court Monday, an officer testified that police have been called to the apartment roughly two dozen times in the last year and a half. Prosecutors also…

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ICE is holding a Chinese man who documented Uyghur prison camps

ICE is holding a Chinese man who documented Uyghur prison camps

The Wall Street Journal reports: A Chinese citizen who fled the country after gathering evidence of alleged human-rights violations against the nation’s Uyghur population is at risk of being returned there after being detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, his supporters said. Heng Guan is jailed in upstate New York awaiting an immigration hearing on Monday that could lead to his removal from the U.S. and ultimately land him back in China, according to his lawyer and a New…

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U.S. immigration and assimilation debates have roots in patterns of settlement that go back centuries

U.S. immigration and assimilation debates have roots in patterns of settlement that go back centuries

Colin Woodard writes: It is said that America is a nation of immigrants, and for a truism, that’s pretty accurate. But it’s also true that the United States hasn’t always been a nation of immigrants — or at least not all at the same time and not in all the same places. These days, the debate over immigration still revolves around age-old issues — whether immigrants can assimilate, whether they must assimilate, whether the nation is augmented by newcomers or…

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Compassion makes people happy

Compassion makes people happy

University of Mannheim: People who treat others with compassion often feel more at ease themselves. This is the key finding of a new study by Majlinda Zhuniq, Dr. Friedericke Winter, and Professor Corina Aguilar-Raab from the University of Mannheim. The study was recently published in the journal Scientific Reports. While the link between self-compassion and well-being is well established, this effect has hardly been researched with respect to compassion for others. In a meta-analysis, the research team analyzed data from…

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For Marco Rubio the Cuba hawk, the road to Havana runs through Venezuela

For Marco Rubio the Cuba hawk, the road to Havana runs through Venezuela

The New York Times reports: A pre-dawn phone call jolted President Trump awake. His national security adviser had urgent news about Venezuela. Protests were erupting, soldiers had defected, and the country’s autocratic leader, Nicolás Maduro, had been hustled to a military compound. It looked like he could be forced from power. “Wow,” Mr. Trump said, according to a memoir by John R. Bolton, the national security adviser at the time. That hopeful moment for Mr. Trump, in his first term,…

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Trump’s dangerous designs on the Fed

Trump’s dangerous designs on the Fed

Catherine Rampell writes: There are many items on President Trump’s agenda that are hurting the U.S. economy: the pointless trade wars, the socialization of the private sector, the mass deportations, and much more. But in the long run, the most damaging policy of all might be one that’s gotten scant attention, at least from non-finance-nerds: Trump’s quest to crush the Federal Reserve. If Trump succeeds, he may doom the United States to high inflation for years, if not decades, to…

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What’s at stake in Trump’s executive order aiming to curb state-level AI regulation

What’s at stake in Trump’s executive order aiming to curb state-level AI regulation

President Donald Trump displays his executive order countering state laws regulating AI. Alex Wong/Getty Images By Anjana Susarla, Michigan State University President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Dec. 11, 2025, that aims to supersede state-level artificial intelligence laws that the administration views as a hindrance to innovation in AI. State laws regulating AI are increasing in number, particularly in response to the rise of generative AI systems such as ChatGPT that produce text and images. Thirty-eight states enacted…

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By rejecting a new voting map, Indiana Republicans refused to be bullied by Trump

By rejecting a new voting map, Indiana Republicans refused to be bullied by Trump

The Guardian reports: The Indiana legislature’s rejection of a new map that would have added two Republican seats in Congress marked one of the biggest political defeats for Donald Trump so far in his second term and significantly damaged the Republican effort to reconfigure congressional districts ahead of next year’s midterm elections. The defeat showed that Trump’s political might is not unlimited. For months, the president waged an aggressive effort to twist the arms of Indiana lawmakers into supporting a…

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The shakedown: Trump’s DOJ pressured lawyers to ‘find’ evidence that UCLA had illegally tolerated antisemitism

The shakedown: Trump’s DOJ pressured lawyers to ‘find’ evidence that UCLA had illegally tolerated antisemitism

By Peter Elkind, ProPublica, and Katherine Mangan, The Chronicle of Higher Education This story was originally published by ProPublica On the morning of Thursday, July 31, James B. Milliken was enjoying a round of golf at the remote Sand Hills club in Western Nebraska when his cellphone buzzed. Milliken was still days away from taking the helm of the sprawling University of California system, but his new office was on the line with disturbing news: The Trump administration was freezing…

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America’s strength is rooted in its people; not its leaders, businesses, or institutions

America’s strength is rooted in its people; not its leaders, businesses, or institutions

Garrett Graff writes: I have always believed that one of America’s greatest strengths is its institutions; they are meant to be the keepers, generation to generation, of long-term values and norms in public life — the pillars of our communities, both local and national. Many of us spend much of our professional lives investing in these organizations — giant long-lasting companies, nonprofits or NGOs, or colleges and universities. Never have we seen so many of them fail the most basic…

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