Browsed by
Category: Politics

Steve Bannon warns Trump’s mishandling of Epstein files might cost GOP 40 House seats in midterms

Steve Bannon warns Trump’s mishandling of Epstein files might cost GOP 40 House seats in midterms

Mediaite reports: Former Trump White House advisor turned MAGA influencer, Steve Bannon, warned on Friday that if the Trump administration doesn’t satisfy the MAGA base on the so-called “Epstein Files,” the GOP could lose up to “40 seats” in the midterm elections. “It’s not about just a pedophile ring and all that. It’s about who governs us, right? And that’s why it’s not gonna go away,” Bannon told a live audience, referring to the recent DOJ and FBI memo concluding…

Read More Read More

Inside an ICE women’s prison: ‘Even God cannot hear us here’

Inside an ICE women’s prison: ‘Even God cannot hear us here’

Tufts University doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk was held as a political prisoner for 45 days in a South Louisiana processing facility. She writes: As a developmental scientist in training, I secretly feel a sense of gratitude for not having a child of my own, knowing how costly adverse early childhood experiences and family separation can be on children’s development. All children should have the opportunity to live, grow, and flourish in nurturing environments, surrounded by the love, peace, and support…

Read More Read More

Holocaust scholar Omer Bartov: Yes, Israel is engaged in a genocide in Gaza

Holocaust scholar Omer Bartov: Yes, Israel is engaged in a genocide in Gaza

  We speak with leading Israeli American historian Omer Bartov about his latest essay for The New York Times, headlined “I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It.” Bartov cites the United Nations definition of “genocide,” which includes an intent to destroy a group of people that makes it impossible for the group to reconstitute itself. “This is precisely what Israel is trying to do,” he says. “Israel is trying to concentrate the population of Gaza in…

Read More Read More

Matt Gaetz: How many Americans do Israeli settlers have to kill before we care?

Matt Gaetz: How many Americans do Israeli settlers have to kill before we care?

The Times of Israel reports: The far-right One America News Network airs a segment on last week’s killing of Palestinian-American Saif Musallet by Israeli settlers in the West Bank. The network’s decision to focus on the phenomenon that was once largely ignored in more conservative circles highlights the shift among a camp of MAGA Republicans that has gradually become more critical of Israel. The anchor for the segment is former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, who was US President Donald Trump’s…

Read More Read More

Israel and the U.S. are no longer pretending they support a two-state solution

Israel and the U.S. are no longer pretending they support a two-state solution

  For decades, the U.S. has officially held the position that it has supported a “two-state solution” that would create a Palestinian state alongside Israel. But after the Oslo Accords, little to no progress was made towards that goal, and the U.S. constantly condoned Israel’s actions that made that goal a more distant possibility – supporting it with military and financial aid. Today, under Trump, the U.S. is supporting Israel during its plans to ethnically cleanse Gaza and annex the…

Read More Read More

Trump’s mishandling of the Epstein files provokes a MAGA crisis in faith

Trump’s mishandling of the Epstein files provokes a MAGA crisis in faith

NBC News reports: President Donald Trump disowned his supporters who have called for the release of files related to Jeffrey Epstein, chiding them Wednesday as “weaklings” who “bought into this bulls—.” The lengthy post on Truth Social represents the clearest split from the faction of his MAGA base that has questioned the Justice Department’s handling of the case. My “PAST supporters have bought into this ‘bulls—’ hook, line, and sinker,” he said in the post, adding, “Let these weaklings continue…

Read More Read More

In Trump’s Star Chamber the names of ICE lawyers are kept secret

In Trump’s Star Chamber the names of ICE lawyers are kept secret

The Intercept reports: Inside a federal immigration courtroom in New York City last month, a judge took an exceedingly unusual step: declining to state the name of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorney pressing to deport asylum seekers. “We’re not really doing names publicly,” said Judge ShaSha Xu — after stating her own name and those of the immigrants and their lawyers. It was the first of two separate instances The Intercept identified in which judges chose to withhold the…

Read More Read More

Trump’s Brazil tariffs ultimatum backfires on Bolsonaro

Trump’s Brazil tariffs ultimatum backfires on Bolsonaro

The Guardian reports: Silvana Marques was one of thousands of Brazilians who flocked to São Paulo’s most famous art museum one afternoon last week. But the 51-year-old teacher wasn’t there to marvel over fog-filled London landscapes at Masp’s new Monet retrospective. She had come to join a protest heaping scorn on Donald Trump. Beneath the museum’s brutalist hulk, Marques spotted a cardboard effigy of the US president and took a picture with her phone before the Trump dummy was set…

Read More Read More

Trump regime says it won’t publish major climate change reports on NASA website as promised

Trump regime says it won’t publish major climate change reports on NASA website as promised

The Associated Press reports: The Trump administration on Monday took another step to make it harder to find major, legally mandated scientific assessments of how climate change is endangering the nation and its people. Earlier this month, the official government websites that hosted the authoritative, peer-reviewed national climate assessments went dark. Such sites tell state and local governments and the public what to expect in their backyards from a warming world and how best to adapt to it. At the…

Read More Read More

Effective disaster management is premised on preparation

Effective disaster management is premised on preparation

Zoë Schlanger writes: In the days since the Texas flash-flood disaster, the Department of Homeland Security has had a stock response to questions about delays in the federal government’s response, or about a recent rule requiring DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to personally approve FEMA expenditures over $100,000, including rescue teams. The response goes, over and over, like this: “FEMA is shifting from bloated, DC-centric dead weight to a lean, deployable disaster force that empowers state actors to provide relief for…

Read More Read More

The ‘enshittification’ of American power

The ‘enshittification’ of American power

Wired reports: For decades, allies of the United States lived comfortably amid the sprawl of American hegemony. They constructed their financial institutions, communications systems, and national defense on top of infrastructure provided by the US. And right about now, they’re probably wishing they hadn’t. Back in 2022, Cory Doctorow coined the term “enshittification” to describe a cycle that has played out again and again in the online economy. Entrepreneurs start off making high-minded promises to get new users to try…

Read More Read More

Trump and Johnson try to distance themselves from Epstein files controversy. Over to you, Pam

Trump and Johnson try to distance themselves from Epstein files controversy. Over to you, Pam

The Washington Post reports: One of the leading Republicans on Capitol Hill broke with the Trump administration’s decision not to release the files of deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein as the controversy deepened over the handling of an issue that has caused unprecedented division among the GOP base. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) told right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson that he supported the release of the Epstein files, days after President Donald Trump’s Justice Department said the matter was effectively closed….

Read More Read More

The five MAGA factions waging an Epstein civil war

The five MAGA factions waging an Epstein civil war

Will Sommer writes: Trump World fell into chaos just before the weekend, as the shock from the Justice Department’s Jeffrey Epstein memo continued to reverberate. Donald Trump’s initial response—a long Saturday-afternoon post that urged everyone to just get over it—earned the president a rare hostile “ratio” on Truth Social, his own social media platform. Even right-wing media figures who would normally fall in line behind the president took issue with his long, meandering, often self-contradictory statement, apparently unwilling to alienate…

Read More Read More

How Musk’s X is fueling the MAGA-Trump rift

How Musk’s X is fueling the MAGA-Trump rift

Politico reports: The Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy saga is blowing up in the White House’s face — and social-media experts say that Elon Musk’s remake of X helped light the fuse. Conspiracy theories about Epstein, and the Trump administration’s supposed complicity in silencing them, are starting to split MAGA’s unruly factions and turn part of the movement against the president. (For those not following closely: The Department of Justice and FBI issued a joint report last week claiming that Epstein did…

Read More Read More

Foreign journalists in the U.S. are self-censoring to protect themselves from the Trump regime

Foreign journalists in the U.S. are self-censoring to protect themselves from the Trump regime

Poynter reports: In 2021, Venezuelan journalist Luz Mely Reyes moved to the United States because she didn’t want to be silenced. As an outspoken advocate for the freedom of expression, Reyes no longer felt safe in Venezuela, where reporters have been threatened, arrested and beaten. Now in the U.S., however, she finds that she must often silence herself. “In my country (Venezuela), I never self-censored. Here, I have to avoid some topics because I feel that it’s dangerous for my…

Read More Read More