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Category: Politics

U.S. added to international watchlist for rapid decline in civic freedoms

U.S. added to international watchlist for rapid decline in civic freedoms

The Guardian reports: The United States has been added to the Civicus Monitor Watchlist, which identifies countries that the global civil rights watchdog believes are currently experiencing a rapid decline in civic freedoms. Civicus, an international non-profit organization dedicated to “strengthening citizen action and civil society around the world”, announced the inclusion of the US on the non-profit’s first watchlist of 2025 on Monday, alongside the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Italy, Pakistan and Serbia. The watchlist is part of…

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Trump is shredding the First Amendment under the guise of ‘national security’

Trump is shredding the First Amendment under the guise of ‘national security’

Vox reports: President Donald Trump is going after a pair of major law firms — and attacking the First Amendment in the process. Trump issued an executive order on Thursday that took aim at Perkins Coie, a law firm that represented Hillary Clinton when she ran against Trump in 2016. Notably, Perkins Coie hired a research firm that produced the infamous “Steele dossier,” which alleged the president colluded with Russia to steal the election. Trump’s order aims to strip the…

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Tesla shares plunge 15%, suffering steepest drop in five years

Tesla shares plunge 15%, suffering steepest drop in five years

CNBC reports: Tesla’s selloff on Wall Street intensified on Monday, with shares of the electric vehicle maker plunging 15%, their worst day on the market since September 2020. On Friday, Tesla wrapped up a seventh straight week of losses, its longest losing streak since debuting on the Nasdaq in 2010. The stock has fallen every week since CEO Elon Musk went to Washington, D.C., to take on a major role in the second Trump White House. Since peaking at $479.86…

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DOGE is the real Deep State

DOGE is the real Deep State

Brian Barrett writes: The “deep state” is a top-tier conservative bogeyman, right up there with DEI and George Soros. But it seems fair to ask: If a bunch of shadowy, unelected figures, many with shared business interests and connections, took over government functions at the highest levels and directly contravened the will of Congress, what might you call that? How about … DOGE? After years of alarm over unelected bureaucrats pulling the strings, what better example can you find than…

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Sen. Lindsey Graham: ‘If we pull the plug on Ukraine, it would be worse than Afghanistan’

Sen. Lindsey Graham: ‘If we pull the plug on Ukraine, it would be worse than Afghanistan’

NBC News reports: Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., on Sunday warned of potentially disastrous consequences for Ukraine if the Trump administration doesn’t restart military aid and intelligence sharing with the Eastern European nation. “As long as the fighting is going on, if we pull the plug on Ukraine, it would be worse than Afghanistan,” Graham said during an interview on “Fox News Sunday.” “Until we have a ceasefire, I would give Ukraine what they need in terms of intelligence and weapons…

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ICE arrests Palestinian who helped lead Columbia protests. He is being held in an unknown location

ICE arrests Palestinian who helped lead Columbia protests. He is being held in an unknown location

The Guardian reports: A prominent Palestinian activist who helped lead Columbia University’s student encampment movement was arrested on Saturday night by federal immigration authorities who claimed they were acting on a state department order to revoke his green card, according to his attorney. Mahmoud Khalil was at his university-owned apartment, blocks from the private Ivy League university’s main campus in New York when several Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents entered the building and took him into custody, his attorney,…

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Trump and Musk have caused ‘complete chaos’ at the Federal Aviation Administration

Trump and Musk have caused ‘complete chaos’ at the Federal Aviation Administration

Isaac Stanley-Becker writes: On January 29, American Airlines Flight 5342 collided with a U.S. Army helicopter near Washington’s Ronald Reagan National Airport, killing 67 people, in the deadliest U.S. air disaster in recent history. That alone would have been a crisis for the Federal Aviation Administration, the agency charged with ensuring the safety of air passengers. But the next day, President Donald Trump deepened the FAA’s problems by blaming the disaster on diversity programs, a pronouncement that baffled many in…

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Will the Supreme Court further expand Trump’s power at the expense of Congress?

Will the Supreme Court further expand Trump’s power at the expense of Congress?

Joyce Vance writes: Who is Humphrey’s Executor and why should you care? Humphrey’s Executor was the plaintiff in a 1930s court case. Mr. Humphrey, a Federal Trade Commissioner, had passed away, and the executor of his will wanted to recover the salary he was due for his work as a commissioner from October 8, 1933, to the time of his death on February 14, 1934. The problem was that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had fired Humphrey, who refused to resign,…

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Tesla is losing in the world’s largest EV market

Tesla is losing in the world’s largest EV market

Fortune reports: It’s almost unthinkable, but Tesla Inc., the company that comes to mind when most people think about electric vehicles, may have had its best days in China, the world’s biggest and most advanced EV market. Elon Musk’s automaker has been backsliding in China for the past five consecutive months on a year-on-year basis, according to data from the country’s Passenger Car Association. Tesla’s shipments plunged 49% in February from a year earlier to just 30,688 vehicles, the lowest…

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Trump is the first president of the United States who surrendered to the enemy

Trump is the first president of the United States who surrendered to the enemy

  Claude Malhuret has been a member of the French Senate since 2014. On Tuesday, he delivered following speech (translated and adapted by The Atlantic): Europe is at a crucial juncture of its history. The American shield is slipping away, Ukraine risks being abandoned, and Russia is being strengthened. Washington has become the court of Nero: an incendiary emperor, submissive courtiers, and a buffoon on ketamine tasked with purging the civil service. This is a tragedy for the free world,…

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Russia launches devastating attack on Ukraine after Trump defends Putin

Russia launches devastating attack on Ukraine after Trump defends Putin

The Guardian reports: Russia launched a devastating attack on Ukraine on Saturday, killing at least 14 people and injuring dozens more, hours after Donald Trump defended Vladimir Putin and said the Kremlin leader was “doing what anybody would do”. Two ballistic missiles hit the centre of Dobropillia in the eastern Donetsk region. Fire engulfed a five-storey apartment building. As emergency services arrived, Russia launched another strike on the same area. Eleven civilians were killed, with five children among the 30…

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They were the watchdogs. Then they got fired by Trump

They were the watchdogs. Then they got fired by Trump

  President Trump has sworn to root out corruption within the government, yet one of his first acts as president was to fire over a dozen independent watchdogs who did exactly that. We spoke to seven of them about the abuses they uncovered, what they really think about DOGE and what all this means for the future of American democracy.

Trump tries to bypass the Senate in executive power grab

Trump tries to bypass the Senate in executive power grab

TPM reports: The Trump White House has taken its attempt to seize direct control over the entire executive branch to a new level and laid out a startling legal rationale for the move in a previously unreported email obtained by TPM. If successful, Trump would be making a dramatic end run around the Senate’s advice and consent power for certain appointed positions. Trump’s wide-ranging effort to bring independent agencies firmly under his control provoked a dramatic confrontation this week at…

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Justice Amy Coney Barrett under attack by MAGA influencers after Supreme Court ruling on USAID

Justice Amy Coney Barrett under attack by MAGA influencers after Supreme Court ruling on USAID

The Guardian reports: Amy Coney Barrett, the Donald Trump-appointed conservative supreme court justice, has been branded a “DEI judge” by furious rightwing figures, after she voted to reject Trump’s attempt to freeze nearly $2bn in foreign aid. Coney Barrett, part of the court’s rightwing majority, split with her fellow conservative justices this week. She and John Roberts, the chief justice, voted to leave in place a ruling from a US district judge which ordered the Trump administration to unfreeze the…

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Fears of a looming ‘Trump recession’

Fears of a looming ‘Trump recession’

The Associated Press reports: With his flurry of tariffs, government layoffs and spending freezes, there are growing worries President Donald Trump may be doing more to harm the U.S. economy than to fix it. The labor market remains healthy with a 4.1% unemployment rate and 151,000 jobs added in February, and Trump likes to point to investment commitments by Apple and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company to show that he’s delivering results. But Friday’s employment report also found that the number…

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