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Category: Politics

Trump has no plan for who will grow food: ‘There is just flat out nobody to work’

Trump has no plan for who will grow food: ‘There is just flat out nobody to work’

The Guardian reports: Last spring, Carmelo Mendez was pruning peach trees in Colorado on a temporary visa, missing his children and wife back home, but excited about how his $17.70 hourly wage would improve their lives. This spring, he’s back in the Mexican state of Tlaxcala frantically searching Facebook for a job on one of the thousands of farms across the US that primarily employ guest workers like him. Mendez is one of the more than 300,000 foreign agricultural workers…

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Immigration courts are dismissing cases of those sent to El Salvador, potentially cutting off their return

Immigration courts are dismissing cases of those sent to El Salvador, potentially cutting off their return

NBC News reports: Before he was sent to an infamous supermax prison in El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act, Andry Hernandez Romero was waiting for an immigration judge to decide whether he would be granted asylum in the United States. And even after his deportation, Hernandez’s lawyers fought to keep his asylum claim open as a way of ensuring he didn’t disappear from the American legal system. But an immigration judge in San Diego dismissed Hernandez’s asylum claim on…

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Trump doesn’t like this taco

Trump doesn’t like this taco

Politico reports: Wall Street has a new shorthand about President Donald Trump — and he’s not happy about it. Traders have reportedly come up with the acronym TACO, which stands for “Trump always chickens out,” to take advantage of the trade environment created by the president’s habit of threatening to impose tariffs on countries, and then backing off at the last moment. He bristled when asked about it Wednesday in an Oval Office press conference. “Don’t ever say what you…

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Dramatic rise in threats against federal judges since Trump took office

Dramatic rise in threats against federal judges since Trump took office

The New York Times reports: Threats against federal judges have risen drastically since President Trump took office, according to internal data compiled by the U.S. Marshals Service. In the five-month period leading up to March 1 of this year, 80 individual judges had received threats, the data shows. Then, over the next six weeks, an additional 162 judges received threats, a dramatic increase. That spike in threats coincided with a flood of harsh rhetoric — often from Mr. Trump himself…

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As Trump’s tariffs incentivize fraud, trade crime is soaring, U.S. firms say

As Trump’s tariffs incentivize fraud, trade crime is soaring, U.S. firms say

The New York Times reports: As President Trump’s tariffs have ratcheted up in recent months, so have the mysterious solicitations some U.S. companies have received, offering them ways to avoid the taxes. Shipping companies, many of them based in China, have reached out to U.S. firms that import apparel, auto parts and jewelry, offering solutions that they say can make the tariffs go away. “We can avoid high duties from China, which we have already done many in the past,”…

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Hurdles being imposed on international students by the Trump regime pose a threat to U.S. economy

Hurdles being imposed on international students by the Trump regime pose a threat to U.S. economy

Politico reports: The Trump administration is weighing requiring all foreign students applying to study in the United States to undergo social media vetting — a significant expansion of previous such efforts, according to a cable obtained by POLITICO. In preparation for such required vetting, the administration is ordering U.S. embassies and consular sections to pause scheduling new interviews for such student visa applicants, according to the cable, dated Tuesday and signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. If the administration…

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After receiving a $1 million donation, Trump pardons a tax cheat

After receiving a $1 million donation, Trump pardons a tax cheat

The New York Times reports: As Paul Walczak awaited sentencing early this year, his best hope for avoiding prison time rested with the newly inaugurated president. Mr. Walczak, a former nursing home executive who had pleaded guilty to tax crimes days after the 2024 election, submitted a pardon application to President Trump around Inauguration Day. The application focused not solely on Mr. Walczak’s offenses but also on the political activity of his mother, Elizabeth Fago. Ms. Fago had raised millions…

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White House stunned as Hegseth inquiry brings up illegal wiretap claims

White House stunned as Hegseth inquiry brings up illegal wiretap claims

The Guardian reports: The White House has lost confidence in a Pentagon leak investigation that Pete Hegseth used to justify firing three top aides last month, after advisers were told that the aides had supposedly been outed by an illegal warrantless National Security Agency (NSA) wiretap. The extraordinary explanation alarmed the advisers, who also raised it with people close to JD Vance, because such a wiretap would almost certainly be unconstitutional and an even bigger scandal than a number of…

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Within Pete Hegseth’s divided inner circle, a ‘cold war’ endures

Within Pete Hegseth’s divided inner circle, a ‘cold war’ endures

The Washington Post reports: An enduring rift among Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s cadre of senior advisers has divided the Pentagon’s front office and fueled internal speculation about his long-term viability in the Cabinet post after several episodes that attracted White House scrutiny, according to numerous people familiar with the matter. The conflict within Hegseth’s inner circle persists even after he purged several political appointees in April and attempts to portray a sense of unity among his remaining brain trust. His…

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Trump cuts are killing a tiny office that keeps measurements of the world accurate

Trump cuts are killing a tiny office that keeps measurements of the world accurate

Wired reports: Cuts made by the Trump administration are threatening the function of a tiny but crucial office within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that maintains the US’s framework of spatial information: latitudes, longitudes, vertical measurements like elevation, and even measurements of Earth’s gravitational field. Staff losses at the National Geodetic Survey (NGS), the oldest scientific agency in the US, could further cripple its mission and activities, including a long-awaited project to update the accuracy of these measurements, former…

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Israeli former prime minister: ‘What we are doing in Gaza is a war of extermination’

Israeli former prime minister: ‘What we are doing in Gaza is a war of extermination’

HuffPost reports: Israel’s former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says he now believes his country’s relentless assault on the Palestinian people amounts to “war crimes” and must be stopped. Addressing the people of Israel in an article written in Hebrew and published by Haaretz on Thursday, Olmert, who served from 2006 to 2009, condemned current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government for “waging a pointless war, without a clear goal or plan, and with no chance of success,” according to…

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Trump warns attempts to conquer all of Ukraine will lead to ‘downfall’ of Russia

Trump warns attempts to conquer all of Ukraine will lead to ‘downfall’ of Russia

The Guardian reports: Donald Trump has warned that if Vladimir Putin attempts to conquer all of Ukraine, it will lead to the “downfall” of Russia, while also criticising Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a Sunday night post on Truth Social. “I’ve always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him. He has gone absolutely CRAZY!” Trump wrote in a social media post, adding, “I’ve always said that he wants ALL of Ukraine, not just…

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Suddenly Trump is no longer buying what Netanyahu has been selling

Suddenly Trump is no longer buying what Netanyahu has been selling

Mairav Zonszein writes: On May 12 an American-Israeli dual citizen and Israeli soldier, Edan Alexander, was released from Hamas captivity in Gaza after direct U.S.-Hamas negotiations that sidestepped Israel. The images that accompanied his release looked like an American operation that just happened to take place in Israel. It was a U.S. hostage negotiator, Adam Boehler — who conducted direct talks with Hamas in March — who accompanied Mr. Alexander’s mother on the flight from her home in America to…

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Legalistic noncompliance: How the Trump regime uses the language of the law to defy the law

Legalistic noncompliance: How the Trump regime uses the language of the law to defy the law

Leah Litman and Daniel Deacon write: America seems to be waiting for a clear indication that the country is in a constitutional crisis. Perhaps President Donald Trump will say, “I am defying a court order, and good luck trying to do anything about it.” But short of that, America’s constitutional crisis was always going to be a bit subtler—and that subtler crisis is already here. The administration is already flouting court orders. It’s just that, rather than admitting so, executive-branch…

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For Trump, civil rights protections should help white men

For Trump, civil rights protections should help white men

The New York Times reports: In his drive to purge diversity efforts in the federal government and beyond, President Trump has expressed outright hostility to civil rights protections. He ordered federal agencies to abandon some of the core tenets of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, on the basis that they represented a “pernicious” attempt to make decisions based on diversity rather than merit. But in recent weeks, Mr. Trump has turned to those same measures — not to help…

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A new Washington club for America’s ruling billionaires

A new Washington club for America’s ruling billionaires

Evan Osnos writes: To understand the vagaries of power in Washington, pay attention to where the powerful congregate. When Teddy Roosevelt was ascending, he could be found at the Metropolitan Club, a blue-blood hangout where he and his fellow-members planned the Spanish-American War. The more literary-minded might prefer the Cosmos Club, which hangs up portraits of members who win the Nobel Prize. (Thirty-six, so far.) The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg enjoyed the City Tavern Club, a modest, threadbare place…

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