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Category: Politics

Kristi Noem’s negligence led to thousands of calls to FEMA from flood survivors going unanswered

Kristi Noem’s negligence led to thousands of calls to FEMA from flood survivors going unanswered

The New York Times reports: Two days after catastrophic floods roared through Central Texas, the Federal Emergency Management Agency did not answer nearly two-thirds of calls to its disaster assistance line, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times. The lack of responsiveness happened because the agency had fired hundreds of contractors at call centers, according to a person briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal matters. The agency laid…

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George Mason is the latest university under fire from Trump. Its president fears an ‘orchestrated’ campaign

George Mason is the latest university under fire from Trump. Its president fears an ‘orchestrated’ campaign

By Katherine Mangan, special to ProPublica This story was originally published by ProPublica When the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights notified George Mason University on July 1 that it was opening an antisemitism investigation based on a recent complaint, the university’s president, Gregory Washington, said he was “perplexed.” Compared with other campuses, where protesters had ransacked buildings and hunkered down in encampments, George Mason had been relatively quiet over the past year, he said. His administration had taken extensive…

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The Trump regime’s contempt for the rule of law has roots in America’s pre-civil rights era

The Trump regime’s contempt for the rule of law has roots in America’s pre-civil rights era

Steve Chapman writes: America is supposed to be the land of the brave, but under the second administration of Donald Trump, it’s fallen under a climate of fear. Universities and law firms have been punished for their perceived disloyalty. Foreigners have been abducted by masked agents and shipped to foreign gulags without due process. News organizations have been bullied for performing honest journalism. Federal employees have been cashiered by the thousands. Corporations harmed by his trade policies have been vilified for telling the truth…

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How Netanyahu prolonged the war on Gaza so that he could remain in power

How Netanyahu prolonged the war on Gaza so that he could remain in power

The New York Times reports: Six months into the war in the Gaza Strip, Benjamin Netanyahu was preparing to bring it to a halt. Negotiations were underway for an extended cease-fire with Hamas, and he was ready to agree to a compromise. He had dispatched an envoy to convey Israel’s new position to the Egyptian mediators. Now, at a meeting at the Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv, he needed to get his cabinet onboard. He had kept the plan…

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Trump has become an agent of chaos disrupting global trade

Trump has become an agent of chaos disrupting global trade

The New York Times reports: Six months into his new administration, President Trump’s assault on global trade has lost any semblance of organization or structure. He has changed deadlines suddenly. He has blown up negotiations at the 11th hour, often raising unexpected issues. He has tied his tariffs to complaints that have nothing to do with trade, like Brazil’s treatment of its former president, Jair Bolsonaro, or the flow of fentanyl from Canada. Talks with the United States were like…

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Judge blocks Trump birthright citizenship order; DOJ caught lying about men sent to El Salvador

Judge blocks Trump birthright citizenship order; DOJ caught lying about men sent to El Salvador

  A federal judge in New Hampshire has issued a nationwide injunction against President Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship for children born in the United States since February 20. In a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of immigrant parents, the ACLU argued that the order would leave children born to undocumented parents “effectively stateless.” We speak to ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt about the case, which he calls “cruel” and without merit, as well as new evidence that the Trump…

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DHS promotes police state tactics to clamp down on protests

DHS promotes police state tactics to clamp down on protests

Wired reports: The Department of Homeland Security is urging local police to consider a wide range of protest activity as violent tactics, including mundane acts like riding a bike or livestreaming a police encounter, WIRED has learned. Threat bulletins issued during last month’s “No Kings” protests warn that the US government’s aggressive immigration raids are almost certain to accelerate domestic unrest, with DHS saying there’s a “high likeliness” more Americans will soon turn against the agency, which could trigger confrontations…

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Trump seeks to cut basic scientific research by one-third, report shows

Trump seeks to cut basic scientific research by one-third, report shows

The New York Times reports: President Trump’s budget plan guts federal science funding for the next fiscal year, according to an overview published by an external group. Particularly at risk is the category of basic research — the blue-sky variety meant to push back the frontiers of human knowledge and sow practical spinoffs and breakthroughs in such everyday fields as health care and artificial intelligence. The group says it would fall by more than one-third. The new analysis, made public…

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Trump-whisperer Laura Loomer sharpens her knives for Pam Bondi

Trump-whisperer Laura Loomer sharpens her knives for Pam Bondi

Politico reports: MAGA activist Laura Loomer has set her sights on ousting Attorney General Pam Bondi, as the White House fends off fury from the president’s base over its handling of the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal case and death. Loomer called on FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino to ask for Bondi’s public resignation Friday morning, writing on social media that Patel and Bongino had clashed with Bondi over the investigation. Loomer also claimed that Bongino…

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Metadata shows the FBI’s ‘raw’ Jeffrey Epstein prison video wasn’t raw

Metadata shows the FBI’s ‘raw’ Jeffrey Epstein prison video wasn’t raw

Wired reports: The United States Department of Justice this week released nearly 11 hours of what it described as “full raw” surveillance footage from a camera positioned near Jeffrey Epstein’s prison cell the night before he was found dead. The release was intended to address conspiracy theories about Epstein’s apparent suicide in federal custody. But instead of putting those suspicions to rest, it may fuel them further. Metadata embedded in the video and analyzed by WIRED and independent video forensics…

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Grok 4 seems to parrot Elon Musk when answering controversial questions

Grok 4 seems to parrot Elon Musk when answering controversial questions

TechCrunch reports: During xAI’s launch of Grok 4 on Wednesday night, Elon Musk said — while livestreaming the event on his social media platform, X — that his AI company’s ultimate goal was to develop a “maximally truth-seeking AI.” But where exactly does Grok 4 seek out the truth when trying to answer controversial questions? The newest AI model from xAI seems to consult social media posts from Musk’s X account when answering questions about the Israel and Palestine conflict,…

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In Brazil, Trump challenges a country — and a leader — ready for a fight

In Brazil, Trump challenges a country — and a leader — ready for a fight

The Washington Post reports: Since returning to the White House, President Donald Trump has used trade as a cudgel to exert concessions from smaller nations. But Brazil, his newest tariff target, is a much more formidable adversary, analysts said, and is less likely to bend to pressure from Washington. Latin America’s largest nation has a relatively closed economy, more insulated than many of its peers from fluctuations in global trade. China, not the United States, is now Brazil’s leading trade…

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Why a dedicated Justice Department lawyer became a whistle-blower

Why a dedicated Justice Department lawyer became a whistle-blower

Ruth Marcus writes: In the early days of the first Trump Administration, Erez Reuveni, a lawyer for the Department of Justice, went to court to defend the new President’s travel ban on foreign nationals from seven predominantly Muslim countries. He told the federal judge hearing the case to ignore the unpleasant fact that, as a candidate, Donald Trump had argued for a travel ban on Muslims; those statements, he said, didn’t justify interfering with Trump’s authority to take actions that…

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Trump finally realizes that ‘Putin is playing him and the United States for fools’

Trump finally realizes that ‘Putin is playing him and the United States for fools’

Susan B Glasser writes: Donald Trump finally called “bullshit” on Vladimir Putin this week, though nobody seems to quite know what it means. One explanation, and perhaps the best one, is that Trump, belatedly, recognized what has long been apparent to the rest of us: that Putin has been playing him, pretending to talk peace while escalating Russia’s war of aggression on Ukraine. On Monday, Trump announced that he was “not happy with President Putin at all” and overruled his…

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Justice Department efforts to strip citizenship from naturalized Americans likely violate constitutional rights

Justice Department efforts to strip citizenship from naturalized Americans likely violate constitutional rights

New American citizens recite the Oath of Allegiance during a naturalization ceremony in Miami on Aug. 17, 2018. AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee By Cassandra Burke Robertson, Case Western Reserve University and Irina D. Manta, Hofstra University The Trump administration wants to take away citizenship from naturalized Americans on a massive scale. While a recent Justice Department memo prioritizes national security cases, it directs the department to “maximally pursue denaturalization proceedings in all cases permitted by law and supported by the evidence”…

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Senate committee poised to reject Trump’s proposed massive science cuts

Senate committee poised to reject Trump’s proposed massive science cuts

Nature reports: A key US Senate committee has indicated that it will reject the massive budget cuts that President Donald Trump proposed for some science agencies, including the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA. The US Senate Committee on Appropriations was prepared to vote today to advance a bill laying out fiscal year 2026 funding for science. However, the senators came to an impasse on an unrelated matter — the location for the new headquarters of the Federal Bureau…

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