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Category: Politics

World’s biggest stars unite to revive the McCarthy-era Committee for the First Amendment

World’s biggest stars unite to revive the McCarthy-era Committee for the First Amendment

Rolling Stone reports: More than 550 actors, directors, writers and musicians — including Jane Fonda, Billie Eilish, Pedro Pascal, Gracie Abrams, Spike Lee, Viola Davis, Barbra Streisand, Ben Stiller, John Legend, Janelle Monae, and Natalie Portman — have teamed up to relaunch the Committee for the First Amendment, a group originally formed in 1947 during the Red Scare. In its original incarnation, the group stood in opposition to the House Un-American Activities Committee’s Joseph McCarthy-era interrogations of Hollywood figures suspected…

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Newsom threatens to cut state funding to universities that sign Trump’s coercive political ‘compact’

Newsom threatens to cut state funding to universities that sign Trump’s coercive political ‘compact’

The Los Angeles Times reports: Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday threatened to cut “billions” in state funding, including to USC, from any California campus that signs a Trump administration compact and agrees to sweeping and largely conservative campus policies in exchange for priority access to federal funding. “If any California University signs this radical agreement, they’ll lose billions in state funding — including Cal Grants — instantly,” Newsom said. “California will not bankroll schools that sell out their students, professors,…

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Trump openly embraces Project 2025 after pretending to disavow it during 2024 campaign

Trump openly embraces Project 2025 after pretending to disavow it during 2024 campaign

Axios reports: President Trump referenced Project 2025 Thursday despite distancing himself from it during his 2024 campaign. Why it matters: Project 2025 became a political flashpoint during last year’s presidential campaign because of its controversial outline for reshaping American life. Project 2025, never an official Trump platform, was built by some Trump allies and echoes moves from the early days of Trump’s second presidency. Some of Trump’s MAGA allies called Project 2025 the next-term agenda after Trump’s win. Driving the news: Trump said Tuesday he planned to meet with Russ…

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How to end a war

How to end a war

Megan K. Stack writes: On a steel-skied summer day I dropped by the Northern Ireland Assembly to watch legislators discuss anti-immigrant riots, each speaker straining to upstage the last in outrage and fervor. To my eyes, though, the drama of the day’s debate was utterly eclipsed by the improbable scene itself: such a collection of people in such a place as this. There was First Minister Michelle O’Neill, the daughter of an Irish Republican Army member and the first Catholic…

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Pope Leo denounces people, like Trump, who deny climate change

Pope Leo denounces people, like Trump, who deny climate change

Politico reports: Pope Leo XIV denounced people who deny climate change on Wednesday, arguing that they are contributing to the destruction of God’s creation. “Some have chosen to deride the increasingly evident science of climate change, to ridicule those who speak of global warming and even to blame the poor for the very thing that affects them the most,” Leo said. The pope’s comments come just a week after U.S. President Donald Trump, in a speech at the United Nations,…

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Pete Hegseth’s hatred of Americans

Pete Hegseth’s hatred of Americans

Cathy Young writes: The image of Hegseth that emerges from The War on Warriors (2024), Battle for the American Mind (2022), and American Crusade (2020), is of a militant Christian extremist who is obsessed with the Crusades and whose highest aspiration is redesigning the U.S. military into his ideological mold. The central idea of American Crusade is that the survival of the United States as a “free” country requires a “holy war” to achieve “a single paramount objective: the categorical…

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Howard Lutnick undercuts Kash Patel’s most unbelievable Jeffrey Epstein claim

Howard Lutnick undercuts Kash Patel’s most unbelievable Jeffrey Epstein claim

The New York Post reports: Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, in a notable break with the Department of Justice, claimed late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein was “the greatest blackmailer ever” — and may have traded the feds video of his rich and well-connected associates getting massages from young women in exchange for a controversial 2008 plea deal. Lutnick made the shocking allegations to The Post’s Miranda Devine on the latest episode of “Pod Force One,” out now. The 64-year-old cabinet secretary said…

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FBI cuts ties with Anti-Defamation League

FBI cuts ties with Anti-Defamation League

Reuters reports: The FBI said on Wednesday it cut ties with the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish group that tracks antisemitism, after conservatives criticized the group for including slain activist Charlie Kirk’s organization in a glossary on extremism. In a social media post, FBI Director Kash Patel said the bureau “won’t partner with political fronts masquerading as watchdogs.” The ADL said it took note of Patel’s announcement and “has deep respect” for the FBI. Patel’s announcement followed criticism of the ADL…

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Israel is paying influencers $7,000 per social media post

Israel is paying influencers $7,000 per social media post

Responsible Statecraft reports: In a meeting dedicated to harnessing pro-Israel media energy on Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu alluded to a cohort of Israel’s influencers. “We have to fight back. How do we fight back? Our influencers. I think you should also talk to them if you have a chance, to that community, they are very important.” Being paid by Israel to post on social media is also very lucrative. According to previously unreported recent documents, these influencers are…

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Judge fears ‘Trump believes the American people are so divided that today they will not stand up, fight for, and defend our most precious constitutional values’

Judge fears ‘Trump believes the American people are so divided that today they will not stand up, fight for, and defend our most precious constitutional values’

In a ruling he issued today, William G Young, a federal judge in Massachusetts, wrote: “Freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people.” President Ronald Reagan, Inaugural Address as Governor of the State of California (January 5, 1967). I first heard these words of President Reagan’s…

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Top Trump aides push for regime change in Venezuela

Top Trump aides push for regime change in Venezuela

The New York Times reports: The push by top aides to President Trump to remove Nicolás Maduro as the leader of Venezuela has intensified in recent days, with administration officials discussing a broad campaign that would escalate military pressure to try to force him out, U.S. officials say. It is being led by Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and national security adviser. Mr. Rubio argues that Mr. Maduro is an illegitimate leader who oversees the export of drugs to…

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At Quantico, Hegseth delivered ‘an inane message of little merit.’ It ‘could have been an email’

At Quantico, Hegseth delivered ‘an inane message of little merit.’ It ‘could have been an email’

Politico reports: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s speech to top generals was supposed to serve as a rallying cry for military exceptionalism — but it didn’t land that way with many of the people it was targeting. Numerous defense officials — who watched senior brass scramble to Washington and then sit through a partisan speech from President Donald Trump and a return to old-school military standards by Hegseth — were left wondering why the event had occurred at all. “More like…

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Adelita Grijalva says Mike Johnson is delaying her swearing-in to prevent Epstein floor vote

Adelita Grijalva says Mike Johnson is delaying her swearing-in to prevent Epstein floor vote

Rolling Stone reports: Adelita Grijalva made history last week, becoming the first Latina woman elected to represent Arizona in the U.S. House of Representatives. She won a special election for the seat previously occupied by her father, Democratic Rep. Raúl Grijalva, who died in March after serving over two decades in office. Despite a blowout, uncontested victory — and a precedent of swearing in the winners of special elections almost immediately after their elections — Grijalva still has no idea…

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Britain may already be at war with Russia, says former head of MI5

Britain may already be at war with Russia, says former head of MI5

The Guardian reports: Britain may already be at war with Russia because of the depth and intensity of cyber-attacks, sabotage and other hostile activity orchestrated by Moscow against the UK, according to a former head of MI5. Eliza Manningham-Buller, who led the domestic spy agency two decades ago, said she agreed with comments made by the Russia expert Fiona Hill, who argued in a Guardian interview earlier this year that Moscow was at war with the west. Lady Manningham-Buller argued…

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An entire generation of Americans is turning against Israel

An entire generation of Americans is turning against Israel

Felicia Schwartz writes: President Donald Trump is often at his most frank when he plays pundit, and so it went with his recent musings about Israel’s war with Hamas and the political fallout. “They had total control over Congress, and now they don’t,” Trump told the Daily Caller in an interview published earlier this month, referring to Israel. “They’re gonna have to get that war over with. … They may be winning the war, but they’re not winning the world…

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Majority of American voters oppose sending additional economic and military aid to Israel, poll finds

Majority of American voters oppose sending additional economic and military aid to Israel, poll finds

The New York Times reports: Nearly two years into the war in Gaza, American support for Israel has undergone a seismic reversal, with large shares of voters expressing starkly negative views about the Israeli government’s management of the conflict, a new poll from The New York Times and Siena University found. Disapproval of the war appears to have prompted a striking reassessment by American voters of their broader sympathies in the decades-old conflict in the region, with slightly more voters…

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