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Judges warn about Trump’s rapid deportations: Americans could be next

Judges warn about Trump’s rapid deportations: Americans could be next

Politico reports: A fundamental promise by America’s founders — that no one should be punished by the state without a fair hearing — is under threat, a growing chorus of federal judges say. That concept of “due process under law,” borrowed from the Magna Carta and enshrined in the Bill of Rights, is most clearly imperiled for the immigrants President Donald Trump intends to summarily deport, they say, but U.S. citizens should be wary, too. Across the country, judges appointed…

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Are we heading for World War III – or has it already started?

Are we heading for World War III – or has it already started?

Patrick Wintour writes: In a week in which former allies in a redividing globe separately commemorated the 80th anniversary of the end of the second world war, the sense of a runaway descent towards a third world war draws ever closer. The implosion of Pax Americana, the interconnectedness of conflicts, the new willingness to resort to unbridled state-sponsored violence and the irrelevance of the institutions of the rules-based order have all been on brutal display this week. From Kashmir to…

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Is Russia co-opting American far-right groups to attack western democracies?

Is Russia co-opting American far-right groups to attack western democracies?

The Guardian reports: A former Pentagon contractor works with secretive sections of US special forces, then ups and moves to Russia. He gets married, radicalizes and starts popping up on Telegram channels as the leader of a neo-Nazi terrorist group recruiting Americans. Soon, allegations swirl that he is a Russian spy. While this sounds like something Tom Clancy would write, it is reality: Rinaldo Nazzaro, better known as the leader of the Base, once worked in drone targeting with the…

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Syria’s new president has an offer to make a deal with Trump

Syria’s new president has an offer to make a deal with Trump

Murtaza Hussain and Ryan Grim report: Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa has authorized envoys to make a groundbreaking series of concessions to President Donald Trump in the hopes of normalizing relations with the United States. The offer looks to avert a looming financial catastrophe that could disintegrate the state. In a meeting on April 30 in Damascus, al-Sharaa sat down with a delegation led by American businessman Jonathan Bass and Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force. Bass…

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Trump’s deal with the UK sends a clear message: 10% tariffs are here to stay

Trump’s deal with the UK sends a clear message: 10% tariffs are here to stay

CNBC reports: The U.K. and U.S. agreed to a landmark trade deal on Thursday — yet the agreement appears to be far from free of tariffs. The deal is the first made by the United States since President Donald Trump unveiled his so-called reciprocal tariffs on countries around the world last month. The United Kingdom’s position as one of a handful of countries where the U.S. boasts a trade surplus in goods — meaning the U.S. exports more to the…

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Trump is already obsessed with the midterms

Trump is already obsessed with the midterms

Rachael Bade writes: Early in Donald Trump’s first term, the president received what he now views as bad advice: Don’t worry about the midterms, some advisers whispered back then. If Democrats won majorities in 2018, their thinking went, it would only help him politically — giving him a political foil down Pennsylvania Avenue and opportunity to triangulate in a gridlocked Washington ahead of a tough reelection — a la Bill Clinton. That failed to pan out, spectacularly: Trump’s agenda ground…

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Old man tries to convince himself and America that he isn’t responsible for Trump’s reelection

Old man tries to convince himself and America that he isn’t responsible for Trump’s reelection

Politico reports: Joe Biden is in reputation management mode, hiring a veteran campaign and communications strategist to help burnish his legacy at a time when many in his party want him to exit the stage. In a sign of Biden’s intent to remain engaged publicly, his inner circle tapped Chris Meagher, a former Biden deputy press secretary and Defense Department spokesperson, to help him transition past the first 100 days of the Trump administration, according to multiple people familiar with…

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Through an American pope, the Catholic church appears to be taking a stand against authoritarianism

Through an American pope, the Catholic church appears to be taking a stand against authoritarianism

Religion News Service reports: As Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost walked out on the central loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica on Thursday (May 8) and took the name Pope Leo XIV, Steven P. Millies’ initial reaction was a mixture of elation and disbelief. A professor at Catholic Theological Union — a seminary Prevost, a Chicago native, attended — Millies was overjoyed at the idea of a pontiff from so close to home. “It’s incredible to me that we have a Southsider…

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Pope Leo XIV signals his commitment to social justice

Pope Leo XIV signals his commitment to social justice

John Nichols writes: Pope Leo XIII, the leader of the Catholic Church from 1878 to 1903, came to be known as ”The Pope of the Workers” because of his groundbreaking 1891 encyclical on the Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor, which provided the outline for modern Catholic social justice teaching. Taking its name, Rerum Novarum, from the Latin phrase for “of revolutionary change,” the encyclical recognized that a “remedy must be found quickly for the misery and wretchedness pressing…

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Trump shut out refugees but gives White South Africans special status

Trump shut out refugees but gives White South Africans special status

The Washington Post reports: Months after the Trump administration ground U.S. refugee admissions to a halt, suspending a program that lets in thousands of people fleeing war or political persecution, it is preparing to restart that effort — but only for one group: White South Africans. Plans are underway to fly approximately 60 Afrikaners to Dulles International Airport on a State Department-chartered plane Monday, with federal and Virginia officials preparing to receive them in a ceremonial news conference, according to…

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Habeas corpus: A thousand-year-old legal principle for defending rights that’s under the Trump administration

Habeas corpus: A thousand-year-old legal principle for defending rights that’s under the Trump administration

Two Latin words – ‘habeas corpus’ – protect any person, whether citizen or not, from being illegally confined. deepblue4you, iStock / Getty Images Plus By Andrea Seielstad, University of Dayton In some parts of the world, a person may be secreted away or imprisoned by the government without any advanced notification of wrongdoing or chance to make a defense. This has not been lawful in the United States from its very inception, or in many other countries where the rule…

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Judge orders immediate release of Rumeysa Ozturk, Tufts student abducted by ICE

Judge orders immediate release of Rumeysa Ozturk, Tufts student abducted by ICE

Politico reports: A federal judge Friday ordered the immediate release of Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish Tufts University Ph.D. student whose video-recorded detention by masked federal agents drew national scrutiny amid a crackdown by the Trump administration. U.S. District Judge William Sessions III ruled that Ozturk had been unlawfully detained in March for little more than authoring an op-ed critical of Israel in her school newspaper. “That literally is the case. There is no evidence here … absent consideration of the…

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Jewish feud over Trump escalates

Jewish feud over Trump escalates

The Forward reports: More than three dozen former leaders of major Jewish organizations published an open letter in The New York Times rebuking current leadership for being “far too silent about the stunning assault on democratic norms.” Although they did not name President Donald Trump in the letter published Thursday, the signatories — which included directors and former chairs of the Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Committee, Hillel International, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and major federations — decried his…

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China’s exports surge as shipments to Southeast Asian countries offset plunge in U.S. trade

China’s exports surge as shipments to Southeast Asian countries offset plunge in U.S. trade

CNBC reports: China’s exports surged in April on the back of a jump in shipments to Southeast Asian countries, offsetting a sharp drop in outbound goods to the U.S. as prohibitive tariffs kicked in. Exports jumped 8.1% last month in U.S. dollar terms from a year earlier, according to data released by customs authority on Friday, sharply beating Reuters’ poll estimates of a 1.9% rise. Imports slumped by just 0.2% in April from a year earlier, compared with economists’ expectations…

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Americans no longer live in a full democracy

Americans no longer live in a full democracy

Steven Levitsky, Lucan Way and Daniel Ziblatt write: Authoritarianism is harder to recognize than it used to be. Most 21st-century autocrats are elected. Rather than violently suppress opposition like Castro or Pinochet, today’s autocrats convert public institutions into political weapons, using law enforcement, tax and regulatory agencies to punish opponents and bully the media and civil society onto the sidelines. We call this competitive authoritarianism — a system in which parties compete in elections but the systematic abuse of an…

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Conservative critics of Francis will be disappointed with the first American pope

Conservative critics of Francis will be disappointed with the first American pope

Michael Sean Winters writes: As the cardinals discussed the future of the church last week, the happy shadow of Francis loomed large. They wanted someone who shared his commitment to synodality and focus on the world’s poor. With Prevost, a mild-mannered man, they also voted for fewer surprises and a steadier hand at the wheel of governance, someone with experience of the Vatican Curia but not a creature of that Curia. The wealthy and well-organized conservative critics of Francis will…

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