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Category: Politics

Judge dismisses charges against Newark Mayor Ras Baraka while reprimanding federal prosecutors

Judge dismisses charges against Newark Mayor Ras Baraka while reprimanding federal prosecutors

New Jersey Globe reports: A federal judge on Wednesday scolded federal prosecutors and announced he will dismiss trespassing charges against Newark Mayor Ras Baraka related to a standoff at a migrant detention center. Interim U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba announced earlier this week she would drop charges against Baraka (but at the same time announced new charges against Rep. LaMonica McIver stemming from a scuffle during Baraka’s arrest). Federal magistrate judge Andre Espinosa reprimanded the federal prosecutors for…

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Judge finds U.S. violated court order with sudden deportation flight to Africa

Judge finds U.S. violated court order with sudden deportation flight to Africa

The New York Times reports: A federal judge in Boston said on Wednesday that the Trump administration had violated an order he issued last month barring officials from deporting people to countries not their own without first giving them sufficient time to object. The finding by the judge, Brian E. Murphy, was one of the strongest judicial rebukes the administration has faced so far in a series of contentious cases arising from its sprawling deportation agenda. It was not immediately…

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Trump administration asks Supreme Court to shield DOGE from Freedom of Information Act

Trump administration asks Supreme Court to shield DOGE from Freedom of Information Act

Politico reports: The Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to block an effort to open the inner workings of the secretive DOGE cost-cutting effort to public scrutiny. The Justice Department filed an emergency appeal Wednesday urging the high court to put a hold on a judge’s orders giving a watchdog group access to documents detailing firings, grant terminations and other actions proposed by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which was overseen by Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk….

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The Trump-supporting Christians accusing Jews of antisemitism

The Trump-supporting Christians accusing Jews of antisemitism

Michelle Goldberg writes: In The New York Times this weekend, Katie J.M. Baker described a fund-raising pitch that the Heritage Foundation, the right-wing think tank that gave us Project 2025, made for a campaign to crush a subversive movement that threatens “America itself.” The pitch, she wrote, “presented an illustration of a pyramid topped by ‘progressive “elites” leading the way,’ which included Jewish billionaires such as the philanthropist George Soros and Governor JB Pritzker of Illinois.” Whether intentionally or not,…

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U.S. debt is on track to set a record high, going all the way back to 1790

U.S. debt is on track to set a record high, going all the way back to 1790

The New York Times reports: The United States hit its record debt level at the end of 1945, after a world war and the Great Depression. That record, in which the debt was briefly larger than the size of the entire economy, is almost certain to be broken in the next several years. Estimates from the Congressional Budget Office published in January showed that the country was on track to overtake it in 2032 — and that was before the…

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Trump’s brutal treatment of the federal workforce was designed to destroy lives

Trump’s brutal treatment of the federal workforce was designed to destroy lives

The Washington Post reports: The president had called federal employees “crooked” and “dishonest,” and his deputies had vowed to purge them from government and make them suffer. And now, on the sixth day of Trump’s second term, a federal health researcher was missing. Her husband searched every room of their Baltimore townhouse, calling her name. “Caitlin?” Caitlin Cross-Barnet had struggled with depression, and now her husband, Mike, found her on their narrow, third-floor fire escape. As he tried to coax…

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Trump is prosecuting Rep. LaMonica McIver for doing her job, but the media’s response is muted

Trump is prosecuting Rep. LaMonica McIver for doing her job, but the media’s response is muted

Natasha Lennard writes: You may have come across a common thought experiment that asks how the establishment U.S. media might cover a given domestic news event were it to occur in a maligned foreign country. The latest disturbing news from Donald Trump’s Justice Department, for example, might be framed as something like: “Trumpist regime targets opposition politician with fabricated charges for carrying out oversight.” Instead, the typical mainstream reports were muted on the Justice Department’s obscene decision Monday night to…

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As key Israel allies threaten action over Gaza catastrophe, Washington is largely unmoved

As key Israel allies threaten action over Gaza catastrophe, Washington is largely unmoved

The Guardian reports: As Israel orders Palestinians to evacuate Khan Younis in advance of what it calls an “unprecedented attack” on Gaza, much of Washington remains largely unmoved, even as Canada and European countries threaten “concrete actions” if Israel does not scale back its offensive. Despite reports of growing pressure from the Trump administration to increase aid into Gaza, where widespread famine looms, the White House continues to publicly back Israel. National security council spokesperson James Hewitt told the Guardian…

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Federal judge orders Trump administration to restore environmental grant funding

Federal judge orders Trump administration to restore environmental grant funding

Inside Climate News reports: A federal judge said Monday he would order the Trump administration to restore $176 million granted by Congress to 13 nonprofit groups and six municipalities nationwide. The decision by Judge Richard Gergel, a U.S. District Court judge for the District of South Carolina, represents one of the first final judgments in a case challenging the Trump administration, as it has fired employees, frozen funding and dismantled agencies, according to the Southern Environmental Law Center. The organization,…

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‘Render it unusable’: Israel’s mission of total urban destruction across Gaza

‘Render it unusable’: Israel’s mission of total urban destruction across Gaza

Meron Rapoport and Oren Ziv report: In early April, just weeks after resuming its assault on Gaza, Israeli forces announced that they had taken control of the southernmost city of Rafah to create the “Morag Axis,” a new military corridor further dissecting the Strip. Over the course of the war, according to Gaza’s Government Media Office, the army had destroyed more than 50,000 housing units in Rafah — 90 percent of its residential neighborhoods. Now, the army proceeded to flatten…

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Sen. Chris Van Hollen: The U.S. is ‘complicit’ in starving the people of Gaza

Sen. Chris Van Hollen: The U.S. is ‘complicit’ in starving the people of Gaza

Rolling Stone reports: The vast majority of people in Gaza — 93 percent — are facing crisis levels of food insecurity, and Sen. Chris Van Hollen said that the United States is “complicit” in their hunger. When asked on CBS’s Face the Nation about photographs of starving children in Gaza, Van Hollen said, “It’s very hard to look at those pictures. And the United States has been complicit. President Trump was in the region and really did nothing, said virtually…

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Trump’s command economy

Trump’s command economy

The Washington Post reports: President Donald Trump is trying to force down drug prices to specific levels. He has directed tariff rates on virtually every country. He declared that the Federal Reserve “must” lower interest rates. He takes a personal interest in the fate of individual companies like TikTok. He appears frequently with CEOs to tout investment deals, including many that were hatched before his presidency. And in his just-concluded Middle East trip, Trump pitched business leaders on doing business…

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America is sliding into autocracy

America is sliding into autocracy

  A giant banner featuring Donald Trump’s photo just went up at the front of the Department of Agriculture. A military parade is being planned for his birthday, which coincides with the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army. His cabinet members shower him with praise every time they have a meeting. These are not the kinds of things that normally happen in the United States. It’s more in line with how autocratic leaders display their power in oppressive nations like…

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Nobody in Ukraine believes the war will end soon

Nobody in Ukraine believes the war will end soon

Anne Applebaum writes: On Saturday, I asked Andriy Sadovyi, the mayor of Lviv, in western Ukraine, whether he expected the Russian-Ukrainian talks in Istanbul to lead to a cease-fire. “No,” he told me. Later, I asked the audience at the Lviv Media Forum whether any of them expected a cease-fire soon. About 200 journalists and editors were in the room. No one raised their hand. Many laughed. Over several days in Lviv I didn’t meet anybody who believed that the…

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Police secretly monitored everyone on the streets of New Orleans with facial recognition cameras

Police secretly monitored everyone on the streets of New Orleans with facial recognition cameras

The Washington Post reports: For two years, New Orleans police secretly relied on facial recognition technology to scan city streets in search of suspects, a surveillance method without a known precedent in any major American city that may violate municipal guardrails around use of the technology, an investigation by The Washington Post has found. Police increasingly use facial recognition software to identify unknown culprits from still images, usually taken by surveillance cameras at or near the scene of a crime….

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