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Category: Politics

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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New pope criticized J.D. Vance and Trump on X just weeks ago

New pope criticized J.D. Vance and Trump on X just weeks ago

The Daily Beast reports: Pope Leo XIV called out Vice President J.D. Vance in a social media post just weeks ago bluntly calling him “wrong”—and bashed Donald Trump in a retweet less than a month ago. Posting on his X profile as Cardinal Robert Prevost, he criticized Vance for an interview he gave about Christianity on Fox News. “JD Vance is wrong,” he said. “Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.” The new pope, 69, posted the…

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Trump’s deal with Paul Weiss has exposed the contrived nature of his attacks on law firms

Trump’s deal with Paul Weiss has exposed the contrived nature of his attacks on law firms

Business Insider reports: President Donald Trump’s deal with Paul Weiss was his first big win in his war against Big Law. In court, it’s coming back to haunt him. For the law firms choosing to fight Trump’s executive orders targeting them, rather than striking deals with the president, the Paul Weiss deal has turned into a potent weapon. They have cited Trump’s quick revocation of the order — just six days after it was initially issued — to argue that…

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Family of Shireen Abu Akleh responds after Zeteo documentary names Israeli soldier who killed her

Family of Shireen Abu Akleh responds after Zeteo documentary names Israeli soldier who killed her

  As the Israeli military kills two more Palestinian journalists in Gaza, a new documentary by Zeteo has uncovered critical details about Israel’s killing three years ago of the acclaimed Palestinian-American Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. The film identifies for the first time the Israeli soldier who allegedly shot Abu Akleh. We get response when we speak with two members of Abu Akleh’s family — her brother Anton and her niece Lina — as well as the documentary’s executive…

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Bill Gates accuses Elon Musk of ‘killing the world’s poorest children’

Bill Gates accuses Elon Musk of ‘killing the world’s poorest children’

The Guardian reports: Bill Gates announced plans on Thursday to shutter the Gates Foundation in 2045 and also strongly criticized Elon Musk for slashing funding to the US Agency for International Development (USAID), accusing the Tesla CEO of “killing the world’s poorest children” in new interviews. In an interview with the Financial Times published on Thursday, Gates condemned the sudden funding cuts to USAID by Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), saying the cuts had led to life-saving food…

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Trump administration plans to send migrants to Libya where they could face forced labor and slavery

Trump administration plans to send migrants to Libya where they could face forced labor and slavery

The New York Times reports: The Trump administration is planning to transport a group of immigrants to Libya on a U.S. military plane, according to U.S. officials, another sharp escalation in a deportation program that has sparked widespread legal challenges and intense political debate. The nationalities of the migrants were not immediately clear, but a flight to Libya carrying the deportees could leave as soon as Wednesday, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they…

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We can’t just be against Trump. It’s time to fight for a bold, progressive populism

We can’t just be against Trump. It’s time to fight for a bold, progressive populism

Robert Reich writes: Demonstrations against Donald Trump Trump are getting larger and louder. Good. This is absolutely essential. But at some point we’ll need to demonstrate not just against the president but also for the United States we want. Trump’s regressive populism – cruel, bigoted, tyrannical – must be met by a bold progressive populism that strengthens democracy and shares the wealth. We can’t simply return to the path we were on before Trump. Even then, big money was taking…

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Intelligence community rejects Trump’s claim that Venezuela controls Tren de Aragua

Intelligence community rejects Trump’s claim that Venezuela controls Tren de Aragua

The New York Times reports: A newly declassified memo released on Monday confirms that U.S. intelligence agencies rejected a key claim President Trump put forth to justify invoking a wartime statute to summarily deport Venezuelans to a prison in El Salvador. The memo, dovetailing with intelligence findings first reported by The New York Times in March, states that spy agencies do not believe that the administration of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, controls a criminal gang, Tren de Aragua. That determination…

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Judge demands Trump officials promptly detail legal grounds for deporting Mahmoud Khalil

Judge demands Trump officials promptly detail legal grounds for deporting Mahmoud Khalil

The New Arab reports: A federal judge instructed the Trump administration on Wednesday to detail the legal precedent for its plan to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist whose presence in the country the government alleges could harm U.S. foreign policy interests. District Court Judge Michael Farbiarz in Newark, New Jersey, ordered the administration to supply a catalogue of every case in which U.S. officials have employed the law being used against Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student. The judge…

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India’s strikes on Pakistan show how warfare has been normalised again

India’s strikes on Pakistan show how warfare has been normalised again

Dan Sabbagh writes: India’s string of attacks on Pakistan overnight – a response, Delhi says, to the killing of 26 in a terror attack in Kashmir last month – comes at a time when warfare has become increasingly normalised internationally and the restraints of the global diplomatic system weakened. Though flare-ups between the two south Asian powers are nothing new, India’s Operation Sindoor is already notably more aggressive than recent military actions launched by Delhi against its neighbour in 2016…

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U.S. pushes nations facing tariffs to approve Elon Musk’s Starlink, cables show

U.S. pushes nations facing tariffs to approve Elon Musk’s Starlink, cables show

The Washington Post reports: Less than two weeks after President Donald Trump announced 50 percent tariffs on goods from the tiny African nation of Lesotho, the country’s communications regulator held a meeting with representatives of Starlink. The satellite business, owned by billionaire and Trump adviser Elon Musk’s SpaceX company, had been seeking access to customers in Lesotho. But it was not until Trump unveiled the tariffs and called for negotiations over trade deals that leaders of the country of roughly…

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Trump says ‘we just want to be friends’ as Canada’s prime minister torpedoes 51st state idea

Trump says ‘we just want to be friends’ as Canada’s prime minister torpedoes 51st state idea

The Guardian reports: Donald Trump has said he “just want[s] to be friends with Canada” after his first post-election meeting with the country’s prime minister, Mark Carney – who used the gathering to shoot down any prospect of his country becoming the 51st state. Speaking in the Oval Office, Trump praised Carney – whose Liberal party won the federal election last week – for one of the “greatest political comebacks of all time”, and described the prime minister’s visit as…

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Trump team urged Ukraine to accept U.S. deportees amid war, documents show

Trump team urged Ukraine to accept U.S. deportees amid war, documents show

The Washington Post reports: The Trump administration earlier this year urged the Ukrainian government to accept an unspecified number of U.S. deportees who are citizens of other countries, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post, an extraordinary request of a nation at war and dependent on American military and financial support for its survival. The documents do not indicate how officials in Kyiv responded to the late-January proposal, relayed by a senior U.S. diplomat, that called for sending third-country…

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